It Could Happen Here Weekly 45

it could happen here? Oh boy? Yeah, we've can't rob it into being here for Civil War week no less. We're also joined by special guest Margaret Killjoy. Uh and so if you can get who are less special? Now we're whole week. Yeah, we're here to start a civil war. Right, that's what I've read and read it started civil war sophy. We cleared that. We cleared that with corporate righte I hear officially backing the start of a civil war essentially corporated you know, go, go go ahead, cool Zone Media,

start a civil war, start a civil war? Do we be civilly and criminally liable for all violence that occurred? See I Heart Radio guarantee. Yeah, and we've been listed the people on this call who are Margaret Kildrey, Devans, Garrison Davis, James Stout and myself, Sophie. They are also all civil and criminally liable. But do we get to collectivize a huge maybe, like or so of all the industry obviously, I mean some of us do. Okay, Okay, what it's like any civil war. You're going to find

out who later. Okay, we're going to find out who today. Robert this is my death guy into how to beat a coup, start a civil war. And when the first part of it good, well, that's the only part of it you really need to win, Yeah it is. You don't want to get too bucked down in the latest staff because it's just depressing. So we we just want to focus on how to win the first forty eight

hours and from there you can take it. Take a week, take the weekend off, yeah, break off, chill out, yeah fine, or just go down as a hero and let everyone else sort everything else out afterwards. And that's probably the best option. That's going to learn about a guy who dies within twenty four hours at the war starting as a hero and gets a gun named after him, which is all we can really want for ourselves. Ah, that does sound like the dream. Yeah, that's that's a that's

the way Robert Evans needs to go. Not suggesting that anytime soon, of course. All right, I'm sure to imagine. Would it be the Robert or would it be there? Yeah, Robert, just give him a good old bobbin. It would be named after my nixt name, my nickname, the Jesus Christ of podcasting, right, Sophie, Now, yeah, no, Sophia says yes. If there's not already a gun named after Jesus, I will be shocked. Yeah, it's probably not a kind of company you want to. We've we've really gotten off, and

I think, in all fairness, it's not my fault. I think it's Garrison's fault. Yeah, that's why I was going to blame. I think we've all agreed on that. What are we talking about, Jim talking about the Spanish Civil War? Today? Will be be desegrating the name of Jesus Christ. A little bit later as well. So desigrating the name of Jesus Christ, i'd gathered. Yeah, we'll do. That's just some more for you today. I'll send you some pictures afterwards

that you will enjoy. All Right, So we're talking about the Spanish Civil War. We're not talking about all of it because that's a lot, and because I think it's important when we talk about the Spanish Civil War to talk about like the moments when revolutionary things happened, because they are as important as the moments when terrible things happened and the moments when the people in arms defeated the coupe, because that's both instructive and inspiring and interesting

way to have a question. Yeah, what's the spanning a civil war? That's a great question and one I've failed to address thus far. It is a war that happened in Spain. It wasn't very civil, so only two out of three remarkably uncivil. Actually, so we're looking at nineteen thirty six today, we're looking at July nine and twentieth ninety six, right, But you can see it as like

the precursor to the Second World War. You have people who are fascist or fascist a jacent you have people who are explicitly anti fascist, and they are killing each other from nineteen thirty nine, and the anti fascists win, right, not entirely unfortunately, Yeah, that they have some wins along the way, you know, Okay, Yeah, there's some moments, the friends that you meet along the way. Yeah, what is civil war if not the friends that you make along

the way? Don't answer that because it's sad. But yeah, these these are some friendly times. These are some good times. These are the first forty year hours of the Spanish Civil War. We're going to start with an anecdote about the pure Olympics, which you probably have never heard of unless you're me, because it's a it's a thing that I've written about ship Ton, but not many folks have read about. It's the antifer Olympics. It's the best way

to understand the pot to Olympics. It was a gathering held in nineteen thirty six in Barcelona and opposition to the Berlin Olympics. So the Olympics are given to Weimar Germany in one right, they're not given to Nazi Germany. But when Germany, yeah it's Germany is the pre Nazi it's before Hitler takes power. Yeah, when they were actually pretty cool in some way, it's pretty pretty progressive for the time period, right. In lots of ways, it's the

woke Germans. Yes, it's the work Germans. It's it's like if if if AOC was running nineteen thirties Germany, that's what you get. I bet they had a whole institute that trans people got to hang out at and learn about themselves. I've heard that, Yet what happened to the

institute I can't remember. The Nazis game and killed the first woman to medically transition in the Western Hemisphere and burned all of the books and then stole the records that the people have been keeping about all the gay people, and then rounded up all the gay people and murdered them in camps. That's that's what happened. Well, that's disappointing. Well, good thing. That'll good thing. That will never happen again. Anyway, we've learned our lesson. Yeah, there's absolutely no echoes of

that in current political discourse. So that's fine. Hey, let's learn how to kill fascists. Yeah, buck them. Okay, So we're talking about the popul Olympics, the anti for Olympics. The Olympics that happened because the Nazis are ship and you shouldn't play games with ship people. Uh, to include the Olympics, even if you very much want to win

a medal. Uh. Take note, athletes doing sports and dictatorships, and so a lot of people, about twenty people instead decided to go to Barcelona where they're going to host this alternative games. Uh. And the seb text of the popular Olympics. It's not just that like shouldn't have the Olympics, it's that gasp shouldn't exist, and the anti fascism is strong and youthful and perfectly capable of fighting a war and killing the fascists. Right. That that's sport. George or

Will called sport war without the shooting. Right, Uh, this is a war with the shooting. It's a good quote. George Orwell pops up a few times in this one. Not always right. Bad everything that he was right about that, Um, we passed up at the wrong time. It's never mind trying to make a George or Will gets shot shot in the throat. Now I just feel bad about it because at least that's the least I mean, before podcasting, the throat was the best place to get shot as

a writer. That's true, that's true. Yeah, it didn't go well for him in the end. It sort of did end his life prematurely, I guess but he got some bangers out in terms of books. First, yeah, it can't him, all right. So we're talking about the popul Olympics, talking about the night before the Popular Olympics. You're gonna learn why you haven't heard of the Popular Olympics. So guests

keep listening, okay. Any six years ago in Barcelona, Pau Casal, the father of modern cello, was leading the final rehearsals for the opening ceremony of the Popular Olympics. They had already practiced. The Hymn of the Popular Olympics was a song co written by a Catalan composer and an exiled Jewish one who had fled oppression in Germany. Now they moved to beethoven Tonight's symphony. You might know it as you know too. Joy Kassals recounted what happened next in

his memoirs. I just called the chorus on stage to sing the Kali. When a man rushed into the hall. He handed me an envelope, saying, breathlessly, this is from Minister Gasol. An uprising is expected in the city at any moment. I read Gasol's message. It said our rehearsal should be discontinued. Immediately or the musicians should go straight home, and that the concert schedule for the following day had

been canceled. The messenger told me that since the message was written, an insurrection had started in Madrid and fascist troops were now marching on Barcelona. I read the message aloud to the orchestra and to the chorus, and then I said, dear friends, I do not know when we shall meet again. As a farewell to one another, shall we play the finale? And they shouted yes, let us finish it. Then the orchestra played and the chorus sang as never before. I could not see the notes because

of my tears. So that's how power Casal started civil war. They finished that concert, incidentally, they came back to the same place, and yeah, it was very the same people. Uh no, not well, the same institutions. Right, these are called or fails, like I guess, popular chorus is popular

kind of city orchestra kind of thing. So they finished it in the same place because in the intervening eighty eight years they was a little issue with the Franco dictatorship, which there still is in Spain incidentally, but yeah, Barstilon has very much reclaimed its memory is an anti Fascial city. Following the dictatorship, I could, really, I can really see myself in those musicians, you know, like it just feels

like a very possible thing. Unfortunately, to just be like, Okay, well we're going to do this thing and then well, I guess I don't know, should we finish? Like yeah, yeah, right, like at some point maybe not. Like, Look, all of us were doing something else when we learned that a bunch of Chudd's had stormed Congress, right and that the yak hatman was inside the Senate chamber. Um like like the it and some of us gonna. I was on a bike ride. I kept riding my bike like there's

not there's not much I can do. Uh. Sometimes you have to take the moments of joy because there might be much joy available for the next little while. Um So yeah, I think it's easy to see myself and a lot of this stuff. Perhaps that's why I'm drawn to it, uh all right. The following morning, the city woke up before dawn to the sound of gunfire. To most of the Catalan working classes, wasn't a surprise. The cure had begun two days earlier in Morocco, and word

traveled quickly among the anarchists. By the time the men of the Fourth Division and a General Fernandez Bodiel began their march to the central Plataa Catalunia, the people of the Popular Front were ready. The uprising had begun in Morocco in se an all day tension, A bit building Union radio had called a general strike, and despite the refusal of the Republican government to acknowledge how deep of trouble they were, in their union to render no allusion

as to the stakes. By lunchtime on the nineteen Spain had gone through three prime ministers since breakfast, and Barcelona had defeated a coup. So what happens to the other prime ministers? Like okay, you be prime minister and you're like, oh, fun, now I don't want to be prime minister. Or they're getting killed by the fascists, or no, no, Madrid is very it's not very safe. It's safe. They basically your

first guy. It's like, I've done funked up here. I should have seen this one coming, given that I was explicitly warned about it for weeks. He's like, peace, I'm out. Second guy pops in. He's like, don't worry, guys, we can fix this. What we need to do is call the call the general's talk it out. It's interesting, Yeah, give them just a just like a reason with them. And it's interesting because what happens is in that conversation, it's the fascist general. I think it's capable, the young know.

He calls I can't remember good d maybe maybe good head. Anyway, it says like you have your people and I have mine. And in that moment, what's happening is a fascist general who is leading a coup is reminding an elected politician that he has an obligation to serve the people who elected him and and not just to make like unilateral compromises with fascists. Right, So that the what a country at a time at that moment, that second prime ministers

also doomed. Right. So then we move on to number three. And at that point we opened up the armories to the working class, right, which is what they should have done earlier. In in every city where the working class is armed, the coup is defeated. In every city where it's not armed, the coup succeeds. And that doesn't have any ramifications for today. So keep going no, absolutely, none, no, and it's something that we can't learn from, so we

shouldn't we shouldn't try. Um And obviously it's not direct parallel. There are some really interesting moments in this particular arming of the working class. One did I to come back to is that the there are the soldiers, right. It's obviously the weapons are in the hands of the military, and obviously the military has just done a coup, but

not all the military has just done a coup. So you have some generals or colonels who are in charge of barracks, um who or armories, and they will be like, yeah, okay, I've got the order. That's what I'm going to do. I think it's who's kind of bullshit, like it hasn't succeeded yet, it might not succeed. Here are the rifles union members. But in Madrid you have another colonel who's a die hard cou coup guy, big big coup person,

who is in control of the bolts of the rifles. UM. So like the rifle doesn't work without the bolt, right. The bolt is a bit like plugs a hole and makes a bullet go bang. I've explained that properly, right, Robert, that's a that's a technical terminology. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just the piece that makes the gun go bang. Yeah. So the about critical to the functing the rifle held by another guy who turns out to be a fashion

and so he doesn't issue them the bolts. So you have all these working class militiamen being like, how rifle work with no bolt? Just like entering the streets anyway, right, slapping on the bayonet. Now you have a pike. You have other people who have never operate to the rifle before. So like allegedly everyone's calling the Socialist Union headquarters in Madrid being do this, do that, and they're like, I

can't hear ship. There's just hundreds of people behind me trying to operate the bolt on a bolt action rifle, trying to learn how to do this, and like they're taking their newsprint from their union newspaper right and trying to wipe the cosmoline off the rifles because they've been in like deep storage. It's very evocative scene, like you can smell it, you can hear it of these people being like, well we never used these before. They've been

a deep storage for a long time. They're covered in Greece, but fuck it, like it's now or never. Yeah, and it was. Right. So if we go back to what happened in Barcelona, they had radios in public places, right, it is very common whole books about how Nazis used radios, but it's common in the thirties parts of the city. The paving stones had barely been relayed from October fighting.

Then they were quickly pulled up again. Barricades were constructed, old rifles and pistols, and the bombs that the anarchists particularly love, would dragged out of the bottom of drawers. These people fucking love throwing bombs, like the just the Yeah, there there's a there's a lady later on in the war called rosal Ladina Mitra like Rows of the Dynamiter who who just like it becomes the legend right for

just throwing dynamite fascists. Yeah, Like, there's so much awesome ship that happens that gets lost because ultimately, like Hitler and Mussolini win the Spanish Civil War basically, right spoiler. Yeah, So actually that night before the before the troops march on the city, the u g T, the Socialist control the dock union, the dock workers union, and they're like, hey, hang on, I'm pretty sure there's a ship in the

harbor that has dynamite on it. Let's raid it. So they raid the ship, okay, steal the dynamite and drive through the city, distributing it to union members who spend the entire night making bonds. I'm sure that that went badly for several of them, but yeah, it went Badies of fascist too, but well yeah, almost undoubtedly. Uh, Like Robert and I have talked to some people in some other contexts who have made homemade bonds, and I don't smoke. It's what I will say, do not smoke if you're

in the process of making bombs or explosives whatever. That's the same people say that you can't smoke whirer fuel in up your car. Yeah, cowards, Yeah, you go down like a chat. Yeah, that's my message to you. The other thing they did was they put on like their mono, so like a mono is like a like a onesie, right, like an overall blue mono was kind of the militia

uniform because they weren't an army. They were just working class people who worked at factories who are not taking any ship from the army that day, and they put on their little union hats, which you can see in all the photos. They look very cool, very quaint um. So to understand why the conflict they fought that day began, it's probably beyond the scope of this podcast, and to understand where did the way it did will infuriate just about everyone listening, which is fine, but we don't have

all day. Okay. If you want to know more about some of the people involved, kill Joy's podcast and the Spanic Anarchist is a great place to start. What. Yeah, I thought it was wonderful to check that out. Yeah I do. Yeah, great podcast, really great. I love it. So if you listened to look at that, Yeah, yep, you should like and subscribe. Is that? Is that still the thing? Cool people who did? Yeah? I think I've heard of that. Yeah. The host is brilliant. Yeah, she's amazing.

I'm trying to make the clever, but instead I'm probably blushing. You deserve. Oh okay, Yeah, if you want to read some books, I'm going to list some books at the end, probably far too many because this is my ship, but I've more books written about the SPA, A civil war then, um, well, I guess war in general, but I think anarchists have written more about the Spanish Civil War, though maybe undoubtedly

anything else combined. Yeah, the the device we are speaking on is currently propped up on a large stack of them, actually most of my material possessions. It's yeah, it's nice. It's the way your life should be. It's I've written one to uh and it's heinously expensive, but you know, I'm happy with it. If if you struggle to obtain it materially, please just shoot me a direct message, unless you kind of have some kind of gross disagreement because

you're fascist or something, in which case please don't bother. Um. Okay, I don't know how you got this far. If you are a fascist, I guess yeah, yeah, yeah, I probably have some no uh funk off Nazi. I guess. I think I think fewer people hate listen. I okay, my theory I know that we wanted to hear. My theory about why podcasting to um is because it's harder. People don't have the attention span to hate listen the same way that they can like hate skim or like hate

read tweets and reply. And so I've made a lot of different media and a lot of different ways over the past couple of decades, and I get less hate mail about podcasts than most other forms. Um. So that's my theory, is that people podcast because no one wants to sit there and like hate listen. I mean people

like hate listening to clips. That's why we all listen to those like clip shows where they take the right wing person and you know, show them saying something that we all I think it's not an intelligent thing to say, and then we laugh or whatever. But so anyway, if you're the person who has been put on this earth to hate listen to, it could happen here in order to I don't know, um, make fun of it to your audience. Um, thanks for the lessons, I guess, I

don't know. Yeah, yeah, we're getting that that sweet revenue. I know, where does that revenue come from? It just appears. It's like like liking, It grows on the side of a wet building. It doesn't come from ads. Ads do organic could grow a lot a lot like liking. They just start showing up, um and replicating we really have no choice. But yeah, anyway, Yeah, it's a fact of nature. If you have that person, I will say that my messages stop being a Nazi. That's that's me being polite.

On the night of some assault Guards members, some elite paramilitary police force it was founded by and sometimes mostly loyal to the Republic, went against your their officers has sneaked rifles out to members of the c NT an anarchist union. And that's pretty that's pretty based. It's the one day, as you will learn, this is the one

day all cops took off from being bastards. Some of them, it turns out, are capable of doing the right thing, or were I should say, Yeah, of corps were handing out rifles to anarchist the that would be not a parallel that I can easily imagine in the modern context. Yes, yeah, somewhat unique. Right. It doesn't mean that these people had not spent the past decades killing each other. It does not mean that they would not return to doing so within less than a year. But just for a day,

everything was hunky dorry. And it's leftist Christmas. Yes, this pretty yeah, this more or less is leftist Christmas, like because there's even like there's gifts. They call them proletarian shopping trips um. But what they do is requisition merchandise from stores and uh and distributed to people who need it. Are you just are you referring to armed rubbery? Is that that's a different thing, that was only armed robbery. If somebody tries to fight back shopping with a gun,

that's it. And what if there is no law, is it really a crime? M hmmm. I don't know, no one, No one can say I will say that they only it seems like they only robbed the shopkeepers who were turds, people who like lent a lot of money at a very high interest rate, things like that in these predetorian shopping trips, which I'm not being against what happened. I'm just I'm stripping away some of the niceties. Yeah, if people hadn't gathered, they weren't picking up when I was

putting down. Yes, it is going into a shop with guns and taking things and giving them to people who need them. Whether or not that is bad. Who can say Robin Hood, famous villain in history. Yeah that's right, Yeah, bad bad dude. Sheriff of Nottingham, on the other hand, would have been big into crypto. I'm sure all around legend so when I said if there is no law, I wasn't really joking. Like at this point Luis Compans, who's a Catalan leader. He's a liberal leftist politician, and

earlier that evening he'd refused to open the armories. He realizes that things are out of his control, and so he sets off for a walk and he walks down the Rambler. Right. If you've been to Barcelona, it's this big old street now it's full of a kind of restaurants to have photographs on their menus so that German people can understand what they're going to eat um, which is much of Barcelona and American people. But yeah, people who don't speak Catalan or Spanish who go to Barcelona

can eat very well there for lots of money. M if you've been on holiday, you've probably been there. I did not eat very well in Barcelona, really. I had almost no money and was vegan, and my Spanish there's more in my coutoy is non existent, so I mostly were ung out and cooked pasta. There are not a lot of cities I've been to where it's harder to eat vegan than Barcelona. That is, that is a challenge. Maybe Belgrade where where the national dishes thirty pounds of

meat on a plate. Yeah, Sophia, Nos Sophia, so I can't remember to pronounced the name of the capital of Bulgaria. Um also a hard place to eat vegan. That was hard for me. Yeah, that does not surprise me. Yea, yeah, yeah, surprise me. It's a big part of the catle In cuisine. You'll be like, oh, yeah, I'm having some lentils, and then they'll be like, psych, there's a pig in here. We put a whole fucking pig in this thing. We did reverse vegan. We made lintels out of pig. I

just ate everywhere I go. You can crush in falafel. And one of the Catalan national dissues is called kappi potta, which means head and foot because those are the ingredients and it's it's a bit of a pig that no one else wanted. One of the American national dishes is also the head and feet of the face of a pig, but they call it a hot dog. At least the

Catalans are honest about it, that's true. But yeah, if the it's better now to eat vegan, I'm vegan, and I was there in have to move among the right circles. But yeah, on the rambler it would be hard. And so that night, companies, he's walking down the rambler. He's got his hat across his face so no one could see him, and he's pulled up his color kind of like an old timey private eye, and up and down the rambler. Anarchists and socialists are stealing cars and welding

armor plates to the front of them. Yes, yes, another time honored anarchist tradition. Yeah. King of war is the improvised technical And so what they do here is, well these steel plates, right, and then they write the name of the union on top, just so people and know who's killing them on so they could keep track of their stolen cars. Yeah. Yeah, that's right, Like you don't

want anyone stealing your stolen car. Yeah yeah. There comes a point in the next couple of weeks where some of the more ideologically committed anarchists will stop or take down traffic signals because they feel they're an unwarranted restriction on individual liberty. Those Twitter discourse Yeah yeah, get on that tank you Yes, time was a flat circle. Yeah, it's it's very funny. Um, I bet they. I bet there were was a contingent of them that were taking

down libraries to for gate keeping knowledge. Libraries. Libraries are pig prisons, book pigs. Yeah, yeah, they burned them, just in a class of anarchist fashion. Or we all know that libraries are better served under a free market system like that. One guy tweeted, Yes, Amazon should run the library and every book should cost you ten dollars. Yep, that's uh, that's the only way we can grow as a society. And if you don't like it, well something

in front of your truck. Also, if you have an idea that's based on a book and Amazon owns the copyright, they now own the idea. That's the only thing that's fair. No thinking without proper copy right, Is it okay to use words if Jeffrey Bezos already owned words? No? Does that mean that we're going to be fighting the next one of these situations with instead of spray painting CNT, someone's gonna come by and spray paint Amazon Basics onto them with a third chase. I'm doing that tonight. I

would be up armoring my trucks as soon as we're finished. Yeah, and spray painting Amazon basics and then just going to the beach after that and actually what they spraint painted on the There was CNT, there was U g T, there was FI. These are C and T Confederate, your National de Trabajo Right Nation, nor Labor confederation. This is an anarcho Syndicalist Union uh PHI federon Anarki barrier is

the Iberian Anarchist Federation. They're a group within the c NT that is more committed to a hardline, illogical ideological anarchism. The hug Tier or Socialist Union. You have other groups to the pum is probably any other one you need to know. They are not trotsky It's Trotskyites. Anyone who tells you they are either doesn't know what they're talking about or is consciously misleading you. And they were in

open beef with trotsky right like that they are. They are writing letters to trotsky beefing about whether they should exist, which trotsky Is is a no on that question. So yeah, they're not trotsky As. They just get called trotsky Is by Stylinists because everyone who they don't like is a Stylinist. Right that they are anti Stylinist Marxists. Um, that's what I will call them. What some folks do is they paint you HP on top of their cars. You nidos

armanos proletarios. I think it stands for United Proletarian Siblings, I guess. And that's important, right, because these groups had been fighting among themselves and with each other for a very long time and having like what appeared today to be kind of comical beefs about inconsequential things, but they were important and then you know, this ideological commitment is

what gets them through this period of time. But the uh P comes from a Studius where anarchists and socialists had come together to fight against the state rank to fight as part of a minor strike minors particular love for dynamite, by the way, that's how they, yeah, kings of the dynamite throw that, that's how they dealt with the local garrison. Really and actually the first use of a combat helicopter was against the Popular Front, the UHP in Asturius, and that strike was eventually put down by

one in Francisco Franco, who will learn about later. Nice guy, No problems with him. That's a lie. Yeah, shocking, I know it turns out to be a total turd of a human being. But he was, wasn't he? Um, Oh no, I'm going down a rabbit hole. Wasn't he like some sort of vaguely? Wasn't he like a right wing syndiclaus for a while? Yeah, he had all kinds of sort of. I don't think Franco had any convinced political views other

than like that he wanted to be in charge. But yes, he was a radical scendic list I said, right wing syndiciclast but yeah, no, but so a number of officers I don't know if Franco was with, but there were like a group called the Party who Okay, I see, I'm not sure if Franco was one, now that I think about it. I try not to learn too much about the person of Francisco Franco, because he is a turd.

He he does pivot, and he pivots when he's in power, right from like a soon a more totalitarian project to this national Catholic project to sort of Yeah, he's a problematic dude with yeah, with no clear ideology of than he should be in power, and he doesn't care who he has to roll over to get there. Um, that's a common political ideology, it is. Yeah, it pops up a lot on the right, something something there with dudes

on the right that maybe we should think about. No, it's never happened again, and never in this country of course, fortunately saying it could never happen right where we are. Yeah, that's not in my backyard, that's the right. Yeah, America is different, I think as the subtitle, Okay, so sorry, no, no, I'm just sad. Anyway, the people in Barcelona that day were even more numerous and diverse, and the already bustling

he was used to. The nineteen July was slated to be the start of the largest anti fascist spectacle the world have ever seen. That's a direct quote from a public the article about the Popular Olympics. Right, as I said, these games aim to show the strengths of the popular front with a series of events. Some of those event to the ones you might expect, But some of these events were designed to reward nations with a healthy working

class rather than nations with a few exceptional athletes. Right, So we look at the Olympics today, having one or two exceptional athletes, especially in certain areas, can like vault you to the top of the medal table. Right. Medal table, of course, invented by the Nazis to illustrate eugenics. Uh wold really yeah yeah. Before most six there was no Olympics table. Uh, not in the fable way that we

see it now. So much of the pageantry that we associate with the Olympic Games was invented by Carl D. M uh the torch relay, the parade of flags in the opening ceremony, like, yeah, the the Olympics are fucking Nuremberg, like with the rainbow rings. It's wild how much of that ship is cribs straight from Nazi pageantry? Oh? Um. The book called The Nazi Game is pretty good on

that if you want to read it. Um. Lots of books about the thirty six Olympics, But yeah, um, I should just acknowledge that the the International Olympic Committee did fund a lot of my research for reasons that maybe becoming clear, have since ceased. Also, Clay didn't think I was very good, I guess. But anyway, institution that has some ship to deal with that it hasn't dealt with, I will say, um. And yet it was on its

bullshit heavily in right. Um, so one of the things they did at the popular Olympics was they had a ten by hundred meter relay. And it's just like, I don't know if the Americans have school sports days. Yes, I try to Why I I don't remember anything about public school sporting events. Okay, at the risk of sort of unveiling more trauma, what happens here, now, that's fine, Okay.

What happens here is that, uh, you line up right in groups of five and you just run back and forth, passing a bat on to each other, and much like school sport today, with the caveat being that the people in this event had to already be entered in other events at the games, and so like you just get like weightlifters, and there was a chess event at the games, right, So you get the chess athletes and they're just hauling as as fast as their chess playing legs can carry

them back and forth to prove the like superior health of their nation's working class. Think chess chess leads, chess chess leads, chess leads. Yeah, thanks, yeah, I really say with that one. Yeah, you pulled it back out of you. M. Yeah, they didn't have any athletes. Sadly, Yeah, they did have people who built human castle, so it's another event. And really wait wait wait wait a castle made out of humans?

Whoa wait, you are not familiar with cash down as the like the the Great Catholic and tradition of building human towers. No, no, okay, like pivot. Uh it's fucked now. One of my friends wrote her PhD on these uh about that they just made up? Just now listen, okay, A you can write your history PhD about literally anything, as long as no one else has written it before. The scene a quan history PhD s And I wrote my PhD about the anti for Olympics, right, I wrote

my master's about predatarian shopping trips. Uh that's cool, yeah, I thought so um at the time, the yes, so Cashel. Right, you get your people at the bottom, right, and they sort of wrap a ribbon around their waist and then they often bite the corners of their shirt. I'm aware that I'm biting my shirt and this is mainly an audio medium. But they'll wrap their hands over the other people, right, men and women, non binding people. I'm sure to form a big old circle. And then the next layer climb

up them right and stand on top of them. There's slightly fewer people, and the people get smaller, and the layers have fewer people in them, like concentric circles. Right as you get higher and higher, and then a small child wearing always a horse riding helmet for reasons that I'm not entirely clear, ascends and this ship is high like if you're standing on your balcony, like you are eye to eye with this fucking toddler who climbs up the top, get to the top like arm in the air,

and then climbs back down. And these groups people do people do this all the time. Yeah, Look, American's national sport is is this thing where like young young men give each other brain damage. So, oh, I'm not anti this, and I'm just well, I'm actually impressed by it because we do the human pyramid thing, which is the same thing.

All they're not nearly as impressive or interesting. No, I check out castas the cool thing about them as they exist within communities, right, these colds, these groups of castodiers are groups of people who do this from a neighborhood, right, so that they'll all be from a certain town, like the Talagona group was the one near me and my friends. Dissertation Ida reports a name, you can probably look it up.

It was about like how this this practice has been integrated into incorporating migrants into Catalan us, right, like Catalan identity by being again come and come and stand on us or be stood on by us, and you two can be Catalan. Oh that seems like that would yeah, that would bring a community closer together into a heap on the ground. Yeah, and it has all kinds of other uses, right, cat stuck up a tree, just call those guys. Yeah, I want a rubber house. Yeah. Famously

ladders a band in Catalonia because there for cowards. Yeah yeah, just all day casteus. But yeah, this was part of the popular Olympics, right, human castles. I'm glad we went there for everyone who didn't know. People googling that. It's part of the u n like United Nations Protected Human Patrimony or something like. It's it's it's a bit important. So do you ever just like make up stuff to tell Americans about and then we believe you because you

have an accent? I mean we have an accent too, sure, but like yeah, yeah, yeah, Luckily your accents are all neutral and vanilla. Yeah exactly, voice yeah yeah, um uh no, I did. I think I've told this story on the internet before, but one time I was giving a talk about diabetes and the bronx and this I asked if this kid wanted to ask the kids they wanted to ask any questions, and young women itching to ask a question just goes, do you guys really have pies with

meeting them? Like if she didn't misled her whole life, I was able to confirm that for her, I savory pies like fucked me up. When I was in France, I was completely unprepared for the existence of these things. I volunteered to cook for a bunch of um, a bunch of activists who are busy having their meeting, and I was like, yeah, sure, I'll come cook for you. And I figured I would just like show up and

make pasta burritos because I'm an American. And they gave me a lemonnu and on it was tarde legume and I was like, I know what those words mean. That means pie vegetables, and that isn't that doesn't exist. I don't know what the funk you're talking about, Um, this is not a very interesting story and now everyone's heard it. But I learned how to make a vegetable pie on no notice because that was what the menu insisted upon.

And yeah, I I feel for this person and the bronx who wasn't convinced that you were telling the truth about meat pies. Yeah. And if they're listening, I was a promise look it up. Now they've got Google. Yeah. The lesson we've learned there is don't cook for French people. So at the Games, one of the cool things is that nations competed instead of states, right, And we can fucking go off on the difference between nations and states.

The state is the entity that has political control and exercise of monopoly on the legitimate violence in the geographic area. A nation is an imagined community that exists across base of time. That's the shortest I'm going to do that, and I'm not going to say anything that what's a country between those country is it's a geographical area that the state controls. But sometimes it's mapped onto nation as well, right, like Catalonia being a good example. But for most of

the time people use it synonymously with state. So countries aren't competing. Nations are right. The egg styled Jews of Europe are competing, right, because if you're Jewish and it's six, don't want to fucking like marching there with the German flag, I would imagine doesn't feel good, negative vibes, so they don't do that. There they are the exiled Jews, right, and the anti fascists who are exiled from Germany in Italy.

They also come in with their own different flags, right. Um. Initially there was some rumblings about the nub A CP sort of competing in the end of the United States team, which is made up of trade unionists, had black and white folks on it. The organizers are actually so invested in like um, the I guess including a pressed black people from the United States within the remit of people who sort of anti fascism wanted to advocate for that. They threw this whole Olympics together in like three or

four months. It was shoestring budget. It's funded by the French government, the Spanish government, the Catalan government in a

vidual donors and some trade unions from Norway. And they took their very sparse money and we're like we will pay your way if you if you're black people from America want to come over here, cause we understand its ship over there if you want to come and play with us, and that's fine, which is cool, Like fuck you to the fact that, because the whole Olympics is a fuck you to to Nazi Germany, right, and so it's cool that it also was like and fuck you

too racism in the United States also like I like that, yeah, and like it's also worth noting, Actually, look, why are we saying fuck you to the Nazis and that like the people at the popular Olympics like ran faster, jumped higher, worth stronger, like the Olympics are extremely gate kept by class. We see that. We see that kind of crumbling like

with your with your man Jesse Owens and stuff like that. Right, but at this point there were still workers sports and bourgeois sports and bourgeoire sports twins the Olympics, right, Like the Olympics still had an amateurism rule. If you got paid for exercising, you couldn't go, so yeah, which meant that like working class people, right, like if you don't get paid time off, and one gets paid time off,

its six then they can't go and compete. Right, Like if even if you work full time and I say, hey, Margaret, I'll pay for a couple of weeks, you know, I'll make sure I take care of your rents so you can go and do the Olympics. Nope, if you run a benefit race after the Olympics, they will take your medal away. Tom Longboat who they did that too. They do that a whole lot to people who aren't white. Shockingly.

Um so, yeah, Olympics not great. Actually, maybe we'll do a whole left bord and what have the Olympics do some bad ship. But yeah, these people come from America right on the team. It's Charlie Burley. Charlie Burley goes on to be kind of a legendary boxer, right. He's biracial man from Pennsylvania. Uh. And Dot Tucker she's a black woman. She ran her union in the Bronx and

she ran hardrometers as well. Yeah, fucking plan that one out. Yeah, I love a good written into the script like planned out. It's good. Don't It sounds sarcastic, but I actually mean it really honestly. You can appreciate the joy that I'm feeling right now. And so that games brings twenty thou anti fascist to Barcelona, right and some of them are watching, some of them are competing, some of them are staying

in hotels. The Hotel Olympic is where most of them stay, but they ran of space, so about two weeks before the games, they went around random houses and we're like, hey, can you have someone to stay? So lots of the athletes are just like crashing with people and it's kind of cool. If you go to the archive in Barcelona, you can see the little forms where they go up to a house and be like, okay, this person has two beds and they can take care of breakfast, and

that's two athletes who can stay here. They went door to door. Yeah, it's heartbreaking seeing that ship and then knowing what happened. Um. I was just thinking it was like a better way to Um. Yeah, like that's what Airbnb should be, you know, yes, yeah, I think if the Airbnb, if we compare this to the Berlin Olympic village where the Condor legions stayed before they headed off to bomb people in Spain, we will see that one side is better than the other side. And yeah, so

these people are staying all across Barcelona, right. They's trained in the stadium the day before, they're distributed all around the city. So in the morning of thee these are kind of hardcore Catholic conservatives. Um, they report to the

San Intario barracks outside of Barcelona. Meanwhile, at the Pedroldes barracks, officers get their troops up but think at four in the morning, serve them a ration of rum for breakfast and tell them that there's been an anarchist uprising in the city that they have to put down, and so they send them my right, this is a lie. Yeah, the uprising is in fact what they are doing as they march into the city. It's telling that they lie because the troops are conscripts and are not really brought

into their nationalist crusade at the point. Yeah, and it's worth always remembering there, like working class people get trapped up in wars, often not by their own choosing. Well, so it's kind of like how they're like, you have to go out and fight Antifa, you have to go out and do a coup against the United States because otherwise Antifa, who are all stalinists, are going to turn the us into the uss are. Yes, yeah, yeah, that's yeah.

There there's no parallel. No, that's that's not a parallel. Sorry, okay, no, it could never happen here. That's that's our big message for today. So these guys they start heading down Agnula Diagonal right towards Plasfa Cataluna, at the heart of the city. The cavalry or on a different street carried Tarragona. There are dragoons on a different street. They leave a little later because the Spanish army is something of a clusterfuck,

and they all plan to join up, but they never did. Instead, all across the city, sirens sound the alarm in factories and where these troops have been planning to meet up with one another. They met up with sniper fire and those homemade bombs we talked about. Yeah, yeah, this is where ship gets gets good. At the barricades, they met men and women with everything from modern machine pistols to blunderbusses and slingshots. Yeah, the blunderbusses are pretty cool. You

can find some pictures. Many troops were forced back into their barracks. Some made it as far as a telephone exchange and the hotel's Rits and Cologne in the middle of the city. What the troops, who are incredibly poorly trained consecuts with little or no combat experience and even less willingness to fight, ran into It was the most unlikely of alliances. Catalonia's Nationalists had governed the autonomous region

since the declaration of the Republic in ninety one. They formed a broad leftist alliance called the Esca Republicanady Catalonia. That means Catalan Republican Left. I was calling the e r C to avoid that. It's a bit of an alphabet soup, but I'll try and explain where I need to so. Before the Popular Front existed, they're kind of

a proto popular. They combine liberal and leftist parties who share agreement on autonomous and progressive Catalonia, and they tend to be either aligned with or to the left of the government in Madrid, most often to the left of

um They don't cover support of the anarchists, right. That's important um luis compounds who's the leader right there, the Catalan leader of the generality that at that point has been a lawyer for the anarchist before, so he may have more personal support than the party as a whole had among the anarchists. Um, for decades, right, the police in Barcelona have acted on behalf of capital against labor. They do violence for the people who aren't stuff against

people who make stuff. And even under the republic, this has continued, right, They had called it the Republic of order, and Margaret, I think you covered the li the pistols right there, the years of the pistol in the nineteen twenties. Yeah, yeah, but um, it was, yeah, they like shooting the anarchists in order to bring about order. They and they it wasn't like a legal thing. They weren't like, oh, it's

our legal strategy. It was just like we're in charge, so we will assassinate the anarchists and then the other thing that like, I feel like it's like we're thinking about because if if someone's hearing, you might be like, why does the government care if the anarchists are on their side? And it's to my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong. The anarchists are like a huge chunk of the working class of Barcelona at this point, so it's like they actually do care because it's a huge,

huge swaths of people. The anarchists by the end of the night will own the city. Right, and they have always been the majority of the Catalan working class in this period. They they control the way elections go. Right. When the anarchists abstained, then the right winds. When the anarchists they don't say, don't vote, like they don't like, they're not like, yeah, I go vote, They're like, they don't maybe consider not abstaining, then the popular front winds. Right. Yeah,

it's very funny how they how to use words. But yeah, the the anarchists are the working class, for the for the most of the most of the industries, most of the unions are anarchos cynicalist. Right, so you don't have support the anarchists, you don't have support the working class. In the twenties, the cops called the anarchirts. The anarchists called the cops. Right. This is how we get the famous affinity groups, right, lost Darios, los Quixotes, delidial and

being some famous ones. Right, And we'll talk about them a little bit in the next episode. How that works and what they mean. Uh so not one. Their declaration of Republic was a massive boost for the anarchists. Um More people have joined anarchist unions they felt safe for doing so. Primo de Rivera, the previous dictator had been very harsh an anarchists. They actually briefly in the out job the GAT secured like libertarian socialists and they just

took over some towns. Uh and like they they see his weapons from the cops and abolished currency for a week and it was just like, get it's on. It's it's anarchism. And so for five days for goals belonged to the people of the gold. And this is before we talk about before the the coup and all of that. Yeah, this is republic begins in one So there's a number of these early on in the republic, when the state is less violently postured towards anarchism, the anarchists really fucking

send it. Um. You see it in cassas via hearsts, you see in fig goals. Um. So yeah, they more people joining because they feel safe for joining, and that leads to more open conflict with the sort of civil order I guess. But with the threat of fascism looming, the CNT establishes defense committees and these become like a quick reaction force for the city, right, So by the time the troops leave their barracks, activis within the CNT

were ready for them. Barcelona's Reval, the densely populated district just off the more tourists friendly Rambler, have become known as a Bali chins and that means Chinatown, not because Chinese people are people with any Asian extraction lived there, just because they watched gangster movies about Chicago's Chinatown and they were like, oh, yeah, we're we can go that hard. Okay, they just called it that. Chris Ellim has a great

book on the construction of Chinatown. Now, people have been shooting each other in those streets for decades, right, But for once everyone in the revol was pointing their guns out every balcony, and the raval becomes a sniper's nest, and by the time the sun came up, it was an impenetrable fortress of the working class. And at this time the state would find itself begging the anarchists for

support and not the other way around. And I think that's maybe where we'll end it today, so that people can be sort of teetering on the edge of the seat to know what happens next. Thank you very much for joining me, Margaret. Would you like to plug anything? Do you have any plug doubles? Well, I have a book that's available for preorder. It's called We Won't Be

Here Tomorrow. And if you like um transwoman who robs guys and then feeds them to her mermaid lover, or you like the um the dead in Valhalla coming back and joining in an American civil war to fight against Nazis, then you might like this book. Um. Actually, I think I read that story on this podcast. UM fucking ruined the next episode, because that's what happened as well, I know, I know. Well, actually there's a different story that I didn't write. I think. Oh no, there's one about um

velociraptors in the Spanish Civil War. Um that that anyway, that's completely unrelated. Okay, So that is where you I'm The book is currently available for pre order and if you get it from a k Press or a couple other different independent bookstores, then it comes with the free art print that comes from the book, and so if you like that, you could consider getting it or ask your library to get it. And you can follow me on the internet at Magpie killed Joy on Twitter and

Margaret kill Joy on Instagram. That's myable. I have a podcast, I do. I actually have two podcasts. I have a podcast called Live Like the World Is Dying, which is an individual and community preparedness podcast, and I also have a podcast on this very network. Um I do. Yeah, you all haven't noticed it yet. I've just been kind of uploading my stuff without checking with you all called cool people who did cool stuff, which is all about history, but in a fun way about stuff that cool. I'm

exciting against it right now. Thank you very much, thanks for having me. Ah, welcome back to it could happen here. This is part two of it can happen here, the podcast that Fox. All right, that's my job done today. Okay, Part two of James The Spanish Civil War and the the Antifa Olympics. That's right, yep uh Civil War week. Closing out with this one. Why does the Olympics? Why did the Antifi Olympics hate freedom though? Is my question. The Antifa Olympics are going around and destroying all of

the balls. Yeah, they are taking your children and Bustloads of black clad athletes are showing up in your city. Stay. This does make me think back briefly to win. A couple of different anti fascist groups in Seattle and Portland played soccer and it became a whole thing because yeah, they were oh I used to play anarchist soccer in New York City and oh that got that got canceled hard.

Well it's it's in Portland, got canceled art it Also because it was in New York City, there was a bunch of like semi famous actors who would come and play anarchist soccer, but then couldn't be like visually associated, so like people would all mask up in solidarity. Whatever camera people would come by because like some famous actor it was playing anarchist soccer in the park. That's very funny. Yeah,

that's that's standing. More of that needed. And yeah, these anarchists, of course, would just busy doing the traditional anti faster Just think of starting forest fires in Oregon before okay, before the Civil War. So anyway, picking up from the last episode where we left our heroes, Yeah, we're talking about the heroes, right. So with the minitary merging towards the city and every balcony in the working classroom ault

quickly becoming a sniper's nest. Every rifle was needed at the barricades with Spanish and catle and tops took an impressed, idented break from being bastards and instead significant elements of the most squad Guardsville and the elite paramilitary assault guides grabbed their hand carbines rifles with names like Tiger and Destroyer and took none of them are called Roberts saddi um and took to the barricades. What a missed opportunity. This is why the Spanish lost. Get me my robbit,

I can see it now. I'm prepared to help you with the advertising. It no, just just gonna bob them right up. That's why they called them bobbies. Yeah, famously. I think we need to make I think it needs to be some sort of like nine barreled electronic volley gun. Yeah, somebody we could take out to something that could take out at least two Japanese prime ministers at once. You only need two barrels for one prime minister, so you

could get up to four. Yeah, yeah, say some time. Yeah, all right, today you go back and get Joan shiro Koaizumi, finally bring him to justice with a nine barrel pipe gun. M okay so these people. So the cops and the anarchists are fighting alongside each other. Is that what you're telling for wrecked? Yep. The anarchists are pulling up paving stones, building barricades, which they had learned in previous conflict with the state could stop light artillery, and they are welcoming

the cops. It's worth pointing out that the here is a Day are not cops, and the here is a Day are very rarely cops. Instead, it's the ordinary people of Catalonia, right, Everyone from liberals to left libertarians runs to the barricades. But the anarchist affinity groups, the anarchist defense committees are the mortar that holds together the resistance. Right. They are experienced, they have plans, They provide impetus and inspiration to the working class. They are ready when their

liberal government is not um. They're a pretty good handle on fighting in the streets of Barcelona too. This is their home turf right, And incidentally, we see this ship a lot like people who are good at fighting the cops become integral and fighting the state happened in the Maidan, happened in ter Rear Square, both with ultras right liquor football fans, people who go to football games that also

like fighting cops. Um, so, like, it's not unprecedented that the folks who are good at fighting the cops become integral at fighting the state when state turns bad turns bad in many cases. They also have more experience when it plating their weapons than the poorly trained conscripts, because it would be pretty hard to have less. There's a little bit of a debate, a discussion about causality here.

Does the cooper fail where it does because the cops remain loyal or does the beach head established by the working class a lava cops who were sympathetic but not convinced to safely remain loyal. Right, so, across Spain, it's like not quite the same as us to the cops are better trained and better armed than the military, but they often hung back until the working class to take

a decisive action. Right. Um, the it was where the winds blowing, Yeah, exactly like they sometimes like occasionally they will do some sort of kingship like in the one city they couple of the assault guards their officers side with a coup so they get shot by their own men. Love to see in other places they signed to do nothing. In some places the soldiers come for them, where they're like, suck it, it's on now. But in other places they join with the working class, as they do in Barcelona.

The civil Guard is older. The civil Guard tends to be in more rural places where the coup tends to be more successful, and civil guide tends to be less loyal to the republic. The civil Guide in Barcelona waits until noon. The coup is really defeated by noon. By noon, the soldiers all hold up in the food buildings and it's very clear that they haven't won. And then they come in on a horseback clip clopping down the street doing the raised fist salute, like just milking it to

announce their sort of loyalty to republic. They did have better guns and better marksman, so they were helpful in assaulting their buildings. That came next. Alright, alright, everyone, we're here. We saved the day. Yeah, here we go, thin blue line. So what happens all across Barcelona is the tremendously poorly organized army meet well organized when in trench resistance, and they're killed a turn back. So I want to give one example of this from Avenue D Carrier. It's related

by Beaver in his book. Now, what they've done in the carrier was taken out huge rolls of newsprint like the stuff that you put newspaper on, and rolled them into the streets to make a barricade. Right, Um, so yeah, the degree to which people were like ready in amusing ways is it's a great part of this, you know. That was what they had available to them. Seems to be stopping bullets. So is the way to stop bullets?

It is, Yeah, lots of layers of newsprint, um, different places, so yes, it was yeah, yeah, it certainly seemed to work here. And they had their big old guns like Spanish mouses, certifying stops for a second, and a small group of workers and an assault guard close the distance between themselves and to seventy five millimeter field guns. But

they're holding their rifles above their heads. They said that they wanted to talk and not to fight for a few minutes, to give a passionate speech informing the soldiers they've been lied to that the anarchists were not in revolt, that they were in fact part of a coup, and

that they should not fire on their Predatorian brothers. It's not exactly clear what they said, but whatever they said, it worked, and very slowly the seed of class consciousness was planted and it bloomed in about the time it takes to turn a seventy five millimeter gun a hundred and eighty degrees loaded and fired at your offices. Again, it's just so good like that that these powerful anecdotes of like someone just being like, ha, yeah, now that you phrase it like that, we're on the same team.

Let me turn the stund Yeah, I ALSASO just love to think of a guy who has just been like previously like for God and country gets vaporized by seventy five millimet Again, it's truly magnificent to death. So the popular Olympians are still in town, right, Uh that they turned up to show off as anti fascist, but they didn't really expect to be showing off their anti fascist BUTTA fighters quite like this, But lots of and were winning participants. The Americans were down by the buck of

ther market. You've probably been there, you've been to Barcelona. He probably bought an edible arrangement um what tourists like to do. Um. And they watched the streets around them turn into battle brands. You can see the bullet holes in the hotel where they stayed in some of the cafes around there, and that some of these bullet holes that should be mentioned from a sadah and altogether different battle.

A year later and this day they popped out of their hotel rooms to take a look at what was going on, got shot at, and then went back inside and then out of different balconies. But they had this big of popping out of different balconies, like I don't understand what the fund is going on in their heads, whether like people keep shooting at us, let's continue to

try different balconies. I can see doing that, just being serious, right, like yeah yeah yeah, they and they'd all made friends with Spanish people, right, they were just they were not the athletes of today that they were out late drinking every night, and they were really bummed, very quickly, very upset that we need to get stuck in like you know, we're young, healthy people and their diaries. They also right about seeing the Spanish women at the barricade and just

being like, oh funk, yes this is outstanding. Yeah, um yeah, they're they're just like because they're very committed, right, like these these anti fatties are very committed to gender equality, Like they really are. And it's it's demonstable in all the communications about the popular Olympics, when they send stuff to unions and unions like here's a team. It's tend dude say like, well that's fucking disappointing, Like where are

the women? What are we doing here? Hey? How are we making the world better with just a bunch of dudes exercising together? Like? Um? So that it really is. I think it's very genuine commitment for them, and they're yeah,

they're just so pumped. So when the fighting lolls, these guys come running out and they saw those cavalry horses, right, the cavalry horses that they'd expected to parade down the Rambler in the victorious coup had now been stacked on top of each other as barricades, and so the horses, Yes, they used the horses as cover. You can find pictures of this. Yeah, yeah, it kind of the horses didn't want to be fascists. Yeah, but I think you can take some solace in knowing that the people who are

riding them also got killed. Yeah, you say, the horses didn't want to be fascist. This is in the intersection of ship. You enjoy Robert Actually, yeah, yeah, shifting on horses and hating fascists, which are the same horses would be very good at shifting on fascists for a great night. Yeah yeah, I know, r I P. Horses did nothing wrong. Paul went out for the horses. So Charlie Burley runs down into the street, right, He's pretty accustomed to fighting. He's a boxer. He is a mixed race kid who

grew up in Pittsburgh. He's refused to go to the Olympics because he doesn't want any of Hitler's bullshit and he doesn't speak Spanish. So all he needed, oh he knows how to do. It's pick up a crowbar, start leavering up paving stones and helping to build a barricade the universal language, yeah, breaking ship. And so he just

gets stuck in and now I'm rhythm do right. These barricades he built, like I said, they were so strong that they would stop like artillery across the city whipped and snaps of bullets cracked across the wide boulevards that cut through the regimented grid as the exemplar snipers were stationed in the bell towers of churches. They picked off the newly formed People's militiaies a dash between the barricades carrying ammunition of food. A French athlete the right wing snipers.

That's correct. Yeah, yeah, so that you will definitely read it. They were priests, but they're not. I don't think, just a weird you know, if you're gonna put a sniper, then you want to put something up there who knows how chees a rifle. But yeah, that makes yes, yes, so they probably weren't pretty that doesn't mean the priests. We're not betting them. Surely were. It's some points, um, But yeah, this is why the churches get burned. It's

one of the reasons. A group of German exiles suspected their companies diplomats might be involved, so they raided their homes and found massive statues of weapons, which is great. The Republic had very liberal asylum policies, So you have a town of German Italian anti fascists already in town and elsewhere. People found each other in the streets, were joined up with pre existing affinity groups to form Centuria Centorio is a Latin word for units for a hundred soldiers.

They're broadly based on language, and they're named after some famous leftist like Tom Mann, Karl Marx or Salomon Rent their founder of Antifa with a capital uh. Later these would become the nucleus of the International Brigades. But the International Brigades were the army of the commintern and the

Centuria went basically like under Soviet control. Yes, that's right there Soviet controlled communist internationals, so they would not trying lee stylist more or less right, and certainly like you can read our ship hand about the International Brigades going from a broad popular front leftist alliance to straight up stylist and what that does to their their desire to fight and their ability to fight. And I would suggest that it's not great, but it's a story as all

the time, Yes it is. Yeah, draw your own conclusions. Cecil lb is very good on that if you want read his book. So these Centuria don't have officers, and they certainly don't have commissars. Right and off their roll too fight the Nazis. By eleven am, General Goddard has landed from New Yorker. He was hoping to command the city, which he The nationalists thought that the Backburner would be the easiest city for them, right, they thought it was

a soft target. They were wrong. I don't know what again, Yeah, not smart. It was only through the intervention of Caddida, her son incidentally killed Trotsky, that his life was spared. He hold up in the headquarters. Headquarters was over run. They wanted to execute him immediately. She intervened. She says, no, you know, we've gotta we gotta do this pretended justice. So we put him on the prison ship of Uruguay and then he's killed a little later, after a court martial.

He's executed a few weeks later in the mounch Wee Castle. That day in the mounch Wee Castle, the troops had shot their officers and the n c o s had lead did a raid on the armory where they began and distributing guns to anarchists. Again yeah, very cool, Yeah, I love to see it. The Cattle Left and the Catholic Church had some historical disagreements. Right, the Church had a long history of violence towards the left, and the left had equally long history of violence towards the church.

The church had been part of brutal oppression of the working class, right victimization of people, especially of working class women, and as troops withdrew from the city in July, anarchists began to take revenge against the churches. Nun's corpses were disinterred, priests accused of collaboration were executed. By the afternoon, the sky began to fill with smoke. Churches burned all over

the city. Sometimes they have these things called checkers, which are like revenutionary tribunals where they put the priests or the churches themselves. Later outside Madrid, there's a famous photo of them like executing a giant statue of Jesus tries so after put it on trial. That's watch in the future for Robert Evans is that is a pretty funny bit. It's good. There's a firing squad and everything. That is like a pretty good dedication to the bit. You've got it.

Whether or not you agree with it, you have to respect it. Yeah, yeah, it's a good T shirt. Maybe we could return to merch and have that that image. But yeah, some Catholics rebuilt it. Daddy, it's it's no longer riddled with bullet holes in its face. Well, let's time to do well, yeah, you know what that means. Yes, it's time to kill God and storm heaven. Yeah, and

redistribute all the stuff harps for everyone. Yeah. People wore robes. Actually, this became a bit of an issue because people will be like, lo, look at me, I'm wearing a robe. I pretend to be a priest. And then other people will be like, fuck you priest and shoot them. Yeah, I don't do that. Actually, ropes for everyone. Bad idea. At a time of anti clerical violence. What you can do is drink all the communion wine, which is what they did. I'm sorry. All the blood of Christ is

what they're donk. Yes, yes, I'm sorry. Actually, I guess it only becomes that in the stomach. Yeah, no, I'm a bad Catholic. I don't remember any of this. Or it's just wine until they until they do the thing and say the words, and then there's something special happens. That's that's that's the the Eucharist. So it was the pre blood. Yeah, it's it's pretty glad. It's just sweet wine. M By the twenties, a July, the military was all but done for in a city, right, But they some

of them had retreated back to their barracks immediately. They came out promptly, got shot up by a ship ton of people and went nope, and poll returned to the barracks. So smarter than the tourists at the hotel. Yes, although I know about that because these guys end up dying there and the tourists do not, the side one. But yes, yeah, idea true. Well I would be lying if I said the tourists do not, because one of those tourists does, a guy called Albert I'll Chacken. They called him chick.

He was a coach of the team, community college professor actually, and he leaves, goes back to America and just can't deal with like missing. It's not so much at the guilt of not being there. It's and I think some of us maybe can relate to this in a way, right, like the missing of being there too, like that, Yeah, and how special it feels roberts off. Robert can relate to this, right, like sometimes it's some time you feel the most alive is when you're trying not to be dead.

But also like this was a fucking awesome time right, Like the cops have joined the working class, the churches are on fire, the bosses are running for the hills, and the army has just had its ass handed to it by like a bunch of men and women in blue overrules. Like I can imagine. It felt pretty cool. And so he goes home and then he decided to come back. He comes back with his wife. His wife wins the first art therapy program for children traumatized by conflict. Yeah,

that the the pictures are ECSD. I used to go sit with them all the time, just kind of I don't feels like a special place, like a nice connection. That's the kind of stuff that gets like left out of history too much, too rights. These contributions like and these like developments that come from political articles that are like not just the gun the Robert you know, or the you know, season of workplaces, but the developing of

art therapy for people dealing with traumatic event that rules. Yeah, absolutely right, Like these people made homeward bombs, but they also made it easier for kids to process their trauma and like that's what anarchism is, folks. But yeah, Jenny Burman, they hyphenated their last names Berman Chaken, uh yeah, advanced, Yeah, highly progressive. Yeah, his wife Jenny was definitely the radical and she she sort of brought him on and he was like, yeah, fucking you got it. So yeah, he

goes back. You can see the pictures at UCSD. They're online too. But Al dies in a sort of chaotic retreat to the International Brigade. No one knows where. Right, I'm trying to write a book about him, have some of his diaries. Just an inspirational guy in a lot

of ways, very nice guy. He's also like he sort of draws a lot of disdain from the other passengers on the boat when they're crossing the first time, because the passages keep getting mad that the black folks and the white folks are eating at the same table at dinner from the popular Olympics team, and he's just like super mad at this and like why would you be that way? So it just keeps like getting And he

is a wrestler, right, He's a collegiate wrestler. He at Olympic trials, just keeps getting in people's faces about it. I guess, which like, yeah, is I guess being an ally or something. But yes, Jenny Berman is in there's a film called The Good Fight, which is about the

American volunteers, and you can see her talking about him. Cool, and yeah, I think it's it's obviously pretty difficult experience for her talking about him, but I'm sure the whole thing it's pretty rough, given you know, the things that happened afterwards. But yeah, again, I'm a wonderful person. She's passed away now. But yeah, actually it's it's the interview. It's the full interview with her that I'm waiting for us I can write about him, and yes, she does.

Look at The Good Fight. It's a good film. So on the twenty July, the anarchists are assembling outside these barracks. Right, they had to support of the police, but I didn't want it anymore, and so they assembled their own troops instead, right, Gati Olivier, Abat de Sanio, Lascasso and anesome Chad Shit, and they do what the anarchists did at this time, which is they lead a frontal charge on the barracks where they are still machine guns, and so they are

brave but perhaps not tactically astute. I've read about this where basically one of the problems that people had, like strategically about the anarchists is that the anarchists in Spain were so uh fervent in their beliefs that they basically were like, hooray, soon I will be a murder and like all charged the machine guns and like weren't always

the most strategic is that map to your understanding? Or in the early days of the civil war, they're like because they have been raised for decades of propaganda of the deed, right uh, And like propaganda of the deed is is saying like, you know, like you can die as a hero and become an example to the working class and you will elevate the cause. So it's close to martyrdom as you can get in an atheist political belief I think. And yes, so they would just like

like Ascarsa Ascarso is a famous anarchist leader. Ascarso is a guy who dies like literally leading the charge frontly on a machine gun at this time, at this barracks, right, he dies in less than twenty four hours after the war started. And he's a member of this Nostos group with the Routine and others and Garthie Oliver, and he's

the one who gives his name to the pistol. Right, So in Talassa, the CMT, the the anarchists, anarchis single guests take over an arms factory, taken over, the workers run the factory, and they start making these pistols with his name. It's like the only gun that is not in some way morally compromised. So I guess in that sense he goes on to kill a lot of fascists and yeah, but yeah, they don't want the help of the police, they don't want the tactical advice. The Routie

actually later is very good at this. He had regular army officers embedded with his column and he listened to them, and that allows him to be more successful than the other anarchists. But yeah, here the battle cries Atlantembre, which is like, you know, forward, men of the c NT. They had women to but I guess that's not what they were going for. And they took the barracks along with thirty thousand rifles. Pretty much all of those would be in the hands of working people within a couple

of days. Yeah, there's a vast like this is a decent slice of the Republic's weapons until they get resupplied later. And interestingly, like the Soviet Union and Mexico supply them, but they the Republican government in Madrid doesn't want people supplying the anarchists, so only um CZ overzor the Czech Gun Company are willing to elicitly violate two different arms embargoes to supply the anarchists. Later in the worst yeah based cz Yeah, maybe we can have them be the

advert for this episode. Finally, a a solid case for the hammer fired arm and in in modern days they have to honor the legacy of c Z. Yeah. Yeah again, the only the only morally correct firearm to buy. Wouldn't have done that? Motherfucker's Nope, No, I don't see any glocks in an anarchist hands. Uh yeah. By thirty two a c P because it also killed Hitler. It's the most anti fascist you can you can. Hitler killed Hitler,

but you know we don't have to go there fascist. Yeah, critical support to Hitler, or you could say, yeah, well, you know who else tried to kill Hitler? Hitler he did once before in nineteen three after the failed Munich putsch, but his friend puts the han Stengel's wife, who he had a crush on, from killing himself which was a mistake. Yeah, yeah, she let the team down. So see that's where cz came in, giving him an efficient way to kill himself

with no wives around. Did have a wive around, didn't he? See? Well, thank you, Sez. Hitler's dead. And with that, let's go back to Spain Catalonia. I guess um. So the French Popular Olympics team left that day. They sang the International Aisle from the deck of their boat as they pulled out the port. A few days later, on the Rambler Parade was organized. The various nations of the Popular Olympics march down the street led inexplicably buy some bagpipers who

had arrived with the British team. Hell yeah, that's another international bag page. Yeah yeah, yeah, why why not? I love that? Like, yeah, some anti fascist bagpipers had been recruited by this point, and they all sang the International in their own languages, did the race fist salute that would become the popular French salute. And they heard a speech and in the speech they were told, you've come for the Games, but you have remained for the greater

front in battling in triumph. Now your task is clear. You'll go back to your countries and spread the word, the news of what you've seen in Spain. So some of them went back and some of them stayed. All in all, about two hundred of them actually uh stayed to fight or came back to fight. Um. Some of their names Bill Scott. He was an irishman who came for the games. He he went back and forth between Spain and Island. A bunch wrote in. Some wrote some

letters to newspapers to encourage other people to join. His big slogan was a victory for fascism in Spain is a victory for fascism in Ireland. Um the that's the same slogan that the other side used to write. Yes, but the Irish volunteers who fought for the fascists were fucking exceptionally useless. Yeah yeah, and may have excelled more than Iris volunteers who fought for the anti fascists. A

killing fascist, which I guess critical support to them. Um. He fights in the Battle of Madrid, Bill Scott, we gets shot in the neck? Or will style do they go? Robert? Maybe they really were sticking their next out m hm. And you've got Otto Bosch. Otto Bosch was a lover of novelists and poet Muriel Rook isiser. He was a cabinet maker, sprinter and literally an actual card carrying Antifa member, and now he was a soldier. Um, he also died. The sad part about this part of the war is

everyone dies pretty quickly afterwards. Yeah, yeah, it's really sad. These people are, you know, as good as people came and they all end up dead. But let's not talk about that. I whant to focus on the victorious part. Okay, So that evening right, Ruccioli there, and about this Anthion go and meet with compounds. Ascaso is dead right because he was on his heroics nest in their monos. They're still covered in blood and they're still carrying their weapons

with bitches away. One should meet with a politician. So he gives them this little speech and I, like some people say it's apocryphal. I don't really give a funk. I think it's nice. I'm going to read it. It's not very long. Um. Firstly, I must say that the C and T and the FI have never been treated as a true importance merited. You have always been halfhly persecuted. And I with much regret was forced by political necessity to oppose you, even though I always once with you.

Today you are the masters of the city and of Catalonia, because you alone have conquered the fascist military. And I hope that you will not forget that you did not lack the help of the loyal members of my party. But you have one and orders in your power. If you do not need me as president of Catalonia, tell me now, and I will become just another soldier in

the fight against fascism. If, on the other hand, and you believe that I, my party, my name, my prestige could be of use, then you can depend on me in my yalty as a man who is convinced that the whole past of shame is dead. So that's nice. That that's cool. I mean, it's yeah, interesting, you know, right, it's fascinating. I think it's the clearest we get to a person at a time, being Like in the last twenty four hours, I have gone from president to a guy who has to ask the anarchist for a rifle

so I can fight. Yeah, And like it's a you know, people get on that the Lensky stuff, but this is kind of different. I guess you know, like it's good to find someone who cares about a cause more than power. Yeah. As a rule, if it's your job to be in charge of people, I'm probably not a fan of that job existing. But if when it comes down to it, you you you throw down rather than the hide in a bunker or flee the country to live in exile in I don't know, whatever friendly country, then that's better

than the alternative. Yeah, yeah, i'd agree, And I think, yeah, being more attached to this and to your self preservation or your power, I think is admirable. M For example, if Joe Biden had burned down the Third Precinct himself, I think a lot of people would feel more positively towards him. He did, though we're not supposed to talk about this on the podcast, guys, all right, you're right, this is this is yeah again wraps until the midterms

really start to heat up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's surprisive video of Joe Biden with a firebomb. I was told that he had a kind of ax body sprain of lighter mm hmmm. Yeah, that's how he normally roles when he's in block And al right, sorry, that image is like so cursed that I'm like Joe Biden and Block doing the smile like he's in the Camaro but just

holding the ax body spin. But everyone can figure out it's him because he keeps touching people and everyone is get sniffing everybody's hair, asking if he can smell the inside of their bala clavas. Uncle Joe a hero, true anti fascist? Are you are you going dark Brandon on us? Oh? God, we are. We gonna have to explain what dark bread it is on the pod. I don't think we need to. I don't think that's ever going to be irrelevant. I

think we'll just say let's go brand. Get up, kids, Just type dark Brandon into your Twitter search and see what happened and educate yourself right now. But please get yeah, please do because I don't have a clue. No, I have no idea what they're talking about. Yeah, I'm not on the internet enough and I don't think I ever want to be um So things go differently wan across the country right um the Navy. I'm waiting to hear Margaret squeal or scream or cry. I just don't understand, Okay.

I think it's that he's a vampire. Yes, go fucking go ahead, tell us about dark brand. I don't know, it's just weird. I don't want to know. Yeah, you don't need to know. It's fine, Okay, it's it's a good time. It's it's it's a good time on the internet. That's on the dark Brandon is all right. The Navy doesn't fall for the coup, right, and this leads to this spectacular exchange between the crew of Him the James, the first Battleship right of the Ministry of Marine, Crew

to Ministry of Marine. We have encountered serious resistance from the commands and officers on board crew to Ministry of Marine. We have subdued them by force. Urgently request instructions as to bodies. Ministry to Marine to crew, lower the bodies overboard with respectable solemnity. What is your present position? So what they've done there is the officers have declared for the crew for the coup, and the minute the sailors on board the ship have killed them and throwing them

over the edge. Subdued by force, what do we do with the people we have subdued? Just the most amazing radio message like the officers turned out to be Rudd's and then like, brief pause, what do you want us to do with their bodies? Again? King? Shit. So it's a few days before the battle lines really get drawn as to who is where, who's on what side of

the Spanish Civil War. It's a few days before it becomes clear that this is a civil war because without boats, the rebels seemed to be in trouble, but the Fascists came to their abe with planes to where lift the troops from Africa. The Republic had more troops and more access to supplies, and it looked like they were going to win a war of attrition. That doesn't work out because France, the UK, and the United States abandoned Spain and the Fascists do not abandon Franca. I don't really

want to finish there. I want to backtrack and think about how many times in the past or the present the working class of a city is spontaneously organized to prevent an army from entering that city, and it's actually in the age of the tank and the bomber. I can't already think of any and I know if you guys can, but I couldn't come up with one. I

got nothing. Yeah, anyone, I mean other than Kiev kind of yeah, some of it was at least spontaneous, but yeah, yeah, and it wasn't against their own army, like they had an army, no, that is, yeah, I mean you could there are pieces of that, and it was it was not as organized or clearly as successful in you know, the Holy Week uprisings and the Watts riots and stuff. Yeah, yeah, true, yeah, pieces of it. Yeah, I mean even like in Minneapolis, right, like, yeah,

where the state didn't exist for a while. But uh, this, this revolution is somewhat unique at least in that right. And what happens afterwards and what happened in the Civil War isn't what I want to end on. You can see this kind of idea in ken Loach's film Land and Freedom, that that this was a romantic failure, and I don't think that's true. I think that the the only way for the Civil Water succeed was doing what

it did. For the Republic to succeed was doing what it did well, and what it did well with harnessing the enthusiasm and passion of the working class people to build a better world for themselves. When it became not worth fighting and dying for something. Then the war was already lost for a lot of people. Trying to mass behind a conventional war effort doesn't make sense when your enemy has every advantage in a conventional war effort. But

I don't want to focus on that. I want to focus on the last week, when the cities in the hands of the people, when there are no cops and no bosses, but people go back to work as collectives, when there's no money, but people distribute food to people who need it all across Spain, and not just at

the bar of a gun. People collectivized, the collectivizing castile, and the socialized industry and Lentcia And it's a remarkable moment in human history, and it doesn't last more than a year, but I think it shows us that this, this other future was possible. Right. The path we took from six to the present day was not the best one, but I like to think that, just for just for a little while, it could have done better. And and I think that's where I want to end really, is

thinking about how we could do better. And if people want to read books, Sister has already been a long episode, I will say Helen Graham's very short introduction is very good. Um. Anthony Beavo's newer book is good, and you can get an audiobook. Julian Casa Nova. It's one of my favorite writers in Spanish and some of his stuff is translated into English. Augustine Giarmad's book Ready for the Revolution on the affinity groups of the CNT and and Chris ellen

stuff on Barcelona is excellent. And if you're in Barcelona, Nick Lloyd's Walking Towards are excellent. Yeah, that's hope. That's enough there. You can watch kind of loches film. You can watch I think it's called Parallel Mothers. That's on Netflix. A couple of good films. Yeah, thank you so much, Margaret again for joining me too, and hem me drone on about the Spanish Civil War for an hour and

I'm into it. I didn't know, well, I I've only been learning the details more recently, you know, I've always just heard about it in in broad strokes and the like. You know, a lot of people like talking about what it means, right, But talking about what it means is cool. But the stuff that's like really interesting to me is the stuff that actually like makes it matter is the the person who shows up and you know, develops ways

to deal with trauma by art therapy. And the people who bravely steal dynamite and become named named Rosa the Dynamite. What was what was her name? Yeah? Yeah, she los the hand. Yeah, it's better than Rose of the Riveter. I mean, no offense the Rose of the Riveter. But Rose of the Dynamiter is is is doing well? Um? What was it called? Dynamiter? Go after all of the libraries, keeping the books in prison free knowledge keepers of thought. I really like variants taken away get canceled, but I

like libraries and librarians. You all aren't ready for this discourse, Margaret, But librarial comblematic. That's how we know you're a CIA asset because your pro library style. Yeah, exactly, classic capitalist infrastructure. What where did the CIA train all those people to overthrow governments? The School of the America's what does every school have library? Libraries? Is the problem because that's the School of America's is there's two things wrong with School

of America's school and Americas. The problem is the school part. I think the real problem is School of the Americas that had school in the Dame and We can't have that. That is, that's an opressive, hierarchical system of learning. Unbelievable. If America Vespucci never came here, maybe things would be different, maybe even better. Anti Italian slander, I'm here for it. Well, let's all end on that note. Fuck Italy. Yeah, and funk traffic lights, Margaret. Do you have anything to plug?

I do. People can get my they can pre order my book that is all about why traffic lights are bad. Um. It's called we Won't be here Tomorrow, and it's written from the point of view of a traffic light that no,

it's knows it's about to be abolished. It's out from a k press Um who uses the red and black flag is the logo, and much like the anarchist in the Spanish Civil War who developed the red and black flag, which is to reference, of course, the negation of the red, because the red in the traffic light is what stops you, um, and so the black is the negation with the red in this in this case, and that's what happens when you disconnect a traffic light from power. It goes black. No,

it's disconnecting ship, Robert. People are shooting the traffic light. And you know what a K Do you know what press? Do you know? Do you know what a k? Press? Cells? Books and and books? Where where do books get kept? That's right, that's right, it's all. It's your everyone is in on it. Okay. Well, if you don't want to be part of the evil world, you can do what is clearly good, which is listened to podcasts and create para of social relationships. Yes, the proletic medium of podcasting.

And if you want to create a para social relationship with me, you can listen to my podcasts, one of which is called Live Like the World Is Dying. It's an individual and community preparedness podcast. And the other one is called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is all about people who defend libraries from people like you, um and anti anti learning, nihilist radicals. Yeah, anti lib reaction. That's right. That's right. That's it. That's that's what that

that is why I fly the black and gray. I'll just watching alight, alright, Thank you wants to make me an an arccho goth flag that was black and then black lace. That's great, Thanks for I would fly that al right, Well, thank you for listening. James. Where can people find you online? I'm on the internet. You can just put in my name at James Stout on Twitter. Um.

Sometimes I write things I will talk about in there. Great, well you can find me at I right, Okay, you can follow the show on by cool Stone Media and happened here pod and send any complaints to at Sorry no send no, send any complaints to. Okay, Yeah, it's okay. I don't read responses. Bye bye, bye, bye bye. It could happen here is the podcast that This is where we talk about things that are happening here. Generally things

fallen apart um, sometimes things getting put back together. Today we have a story that I wasn't sure if we were ever going to cover. Um. In brief, we're going to be talking about a group called Black Hammer that is on its surface a leftist anti colonial political organization UM, and in reality is more or less occult. Um. The reason we're talking about them is that at someone is

now dead connected with them. The story is interesting and messy and says a lot about the way social media works today and the way that the United States is essentially like forty different cults in a trench coat. UM. So uh, today, I'm here with James Stout and we are talking with journalist W. F. Thomas. H. Thomas? What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? How? How are you doing today? Uh? Today is a day. Um, this story is stuff is still coming out. About an

hour ago, charges were finally posted, um for the cult leader. Um, but that's further a long Yeah the story. You hear chirping in the background, those are for live chickens. So my apologies a little babies. I just got rabbits that I have now living in my my chicken facility, and they seem to be thriving. It's nice. I like having little animals around all right, So who are Black Hammer and how did how did they get to the present position?

So I think we should probably start with like nineteen right, is kind of when these these folks sort of start to come on the scene. Yeah, Um, you know you could take this story back a lot further. Let's do that. Um. So sometime in the late eighties, Um, Augustus Romaine Jr. Is born. Um, this is the person we're commonly known as Gazikazo. Um. They used they then pronouns too. Would go on to be the leader of this group. Um.

You know Caso grew up in Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta. UM, and in the early tens had kind of a lifestyle blogger YouTube thing going on. Um was a self professed Cosmos biggest fan, and generally seemed like they were trying to get famous. Yeah, like influencers style famous. Right, this was not at all political at this period. Yeah. And UM, that's gonna be kind of the red thread through this story is Caso. I'm gonna refer to them as Caso.

I guess this remained junior. Um. Wanting to be famous is kind of, unfortunately the main thing that drives most of what has happened. Um. At some point, you know, in the mid um, Cardso took this turn and started making more incendiary videos. UM. I don't have them directly

in front of me, so I don't want to misquote them. Um, but kind of like going out pushing this concept like white people are evil, going for this very specific type of leftism, and um Ghazi Caaso gets taken taken under the wing of and I'm going to mispronounce this name, uh O'Malley, Yes should tell um. And this is a person who is leading a group in St. Petersburg, Florida called the African People's Socialist Party UM and Africans People Socialist Party. It was part of this larger thing called

the Huru Solidarity Movement. I don't know if they're still around, but you know their their ideology was third world communism, African internationalism, that type of thing. And what is Let's talk a little bit about the word of Huru, because that's something if you if you've ever been in and around Proud Boys. First off, I'm sorry, it's not a fun experience generally, but they they like to shout at huru um. And I understand that that's kind of related

one way or they outed the other to this. Yeah, so um, I don't have it directly in front of me what or whuru means. But you know the reason help ways say that is because of Gazi Cazo. There are times several times when Caso spoke made appearances with Gavin Mcinness, founder of the Proud Boys, and Cazo generally became and still is treated as a loll cow um kind of this target for derision to poke at to see what is this person doing, which is still happening

right now. Unfortunately, UM. You know, Caso rose through the ranks of this group UM and then eventually found out that this is basically a cult. The African People's Socialist Party UM had a specific focus on membership from colonized people, people of color UM, but it turns out this was

being steered entirely by a group of white people. So it's out of the ashes of this experience, this abusive experience UM, this Coli group, Corso along with some other people leave this group and they go onto for a Black Hammer in February of two thousand nineteen, which the originally was the Black Hammer Organization UM. And there's some really good write ups, especially read Voice. Definitely recommend that, and there are I think you broke out for a second.

So the title of that article is the Devil Wears

a Dashiki. It's like six seven parts, but it's really good comprehence and that gets into a lot of what that's where I get a lot of this information from UM, and there were Additionally, what would happen is some of these people who founded this grew Black Hammer Organization, who are also parts of the African People's Socialist Party UM would disavow GHAZI Kadza would disabout Black Hammer and have kind of their own statement about here's what happened, you know,

and which they say, Hey, we never recovered from this experience in this traumatic group, in this cult like group, and instead of went on to found this new one, and we're very you know, it was kind of failed from the start to become this other cult like group. So just to clarify on the hurry thing that it comes from the African People's Socialist Party, right, and then he's they have taken it and run with it in

the Black Hammer organization. So the African People's Socialist Party was part of this umbrella or group called the Who Solidarity Movement. This group is still around if you look at like the Channel five with Andrew Callen and has a video where they go to this march for reparations, and that group is the Huger Solidarity Movement. Got it,

Okay if you're familiar with that. Yeah, so we get this organization founded and kind of from what my perusal of because I've also you can go to their website, Black Hammer has like a news site. Um, they are kind of building uh oh yeah, yeah, they're they're kind of for now Yeah. They bill themselves as like an anti colonial organization that is specifically like um, like one of the things they do is they have like a white people's auxiliary that like is for the purpose of

people paying reparations. Um. They have. You know, they carried out a couple of actual direct actions during including like handing out masks and whatnot. Um, but for the most part they seem to exist primarily to drive attention to themselves and thus donations via social media. And yeah, that that's that's I think if you've if you've personally interacted with Blackhammer propaganda at all, it is probably because you've seen someone on the internet talking about how Anne Frank

is a Karen or something like that. Let's get into it. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I want to touch on something real quick that you mentioned, you know, in these comments from the people who found the organation, left the organization, these were these are still true believers who believe in this cause of de colonialization of African internationalism and who do want to build a better world

and do good things. Um. You know, in talking with people have survived the cold, it sounds like Causo probably never was a true believer, but there weren't true believers

around Causo who believed in this cause. Um and because about we're able to be abused, to be profoundly abused by Carso and the people working directly under Carso pozos behest um So April in a tweet, I believe uh, Caoso calls, and Frank Becky follows it up by how she's a Karen, which one is a ridiculous statement, two is entirely meant to cause this kind of uproar around that,

you know. Um. Back at this time, there was acceptance of the Black Hammer organization in leftist circles, in that kind of online communist community, um, and there were people who came out kind of like, oh no, let's hear what they're saying about this, you know, talking about how victims. You know, the term genocide was invented to describe the Holocaust, but that term wasn't used to describe slavery that kind of thing, which, to be clear, is not the conversation

that Caoso was trying to have. That was not, and that is a worthwhile conversation to have. Is like why, you know, like why is that not? Why is the the enslavement and like mass murder of a huge number of African people not seen as an act of genocide. Certainly a valid conversation to have, but also should not at all intersect with Anne Frank or how we think about the Holocaust. Yeah, and because we're living in hell. Yeah, this fake you know, kind of propped up, not a

real discussion. It's meant to just piss people off. Is

back again. Oh good, what a great time. Yeah. Based on documents that have come out that are purported to be from internal Black Hammer documents, this is part of their operation Storm of White Tears, um christ which was seemingly this and again I don't know for sure if these documents are from them, but these documents that are purported to be from block Hammer UM lay out this strategy to cause division two, kind of bring other groups down,

to elevate Blackhammer's own status by putting themselves as the center of attention in all of this that is happening UM, in this online fiasco UM. Because again, the ideology is not the point. The attention is the point. The control

is the point. Along this way, there's there's you know, there are a lot of allegations out there there are you know, for example, allegations that false, false allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault were used against people who left the group, people who spoke out against the group, that they were recruiting people on tinder. Um. Yeah, So along the way, some more chapters form. Um. There's one believe

near Aurora, Colorado, or at least in Colorado. There's a New York City and and kind of the group continues to rise as almost you know, you know, your typical revolutionary communist cell that we have wait a few of in the United States going on right now. Um. The structure they purport to structure themselves around the tenets of democratic centralism as some of these other groups do, UM, which to dump things down a lot, and there's probably

gonna be left is screaming at me right now. Um. Was this idea from Lenin where a group takes a vote and then if that vote passes, they all agree to go along with that platform with usually about UM, so that there's not kind of the splitting off of faction. So it can lead to this very centralized and hierarchical control structure. That's certainly what happened in Black Hammer. Um. There are other democratic sexualt groups that have been in

the news lately who use a similar strategy. Um. But you know what this meant is it allowed gold cause it allowed Cadso to run this group with an iron fist. Um. You know, on paper, there were there was a group of people leading the group. Um, someone else was in control of the money, but in fact it was Cadso controlling all of this. Um. They also had you know, shared living spaces where members of different chapters of Black

Hammer lived Hammer houses. Um. And that's always going to end. Well, yeah, don't Generally it's a good rule not to go live with the revolutionary cell you just joined. Yeah. If if you are joining a political party and they want everyone to live in the same space that is controlled by that political organization, you may in fact be joining a cult. Yeah. And you know there's there continues to be kind of

trying to get more attention. At one point, you know, Caso starts beef with a local anti fascist crew in Colorado. You know, another thing to mention about this group is it's a lot of queer people in the group. You know, Gauzi identifies as non binary. There are you know, several many members who love people of the same sex. And you know, one of the things that happens as Gauzi is beefing with the local anti fascist crew. Is something that people are probably thinking of when they hear the

name Gazzi Kozo. Is this bizarre video of Caso running around in joker makeup talking about white anarchists and anti fascists, which the background is actually even more funked up than you would I think having just heard that, UM as outline read voice goes into this specifically, UM, there were members of the group who were, you know, practitioners of Yoruba um, an African religion UM. And one of them

was a trained UM. I don't know the correct term, so I'm just gonna say practitioner of this religion had gone through an education process in that that took some time. UM. And this video of Gazi running around and joker makeup was Gazi's idea too channel the DD issue and my apologies on mispronounced now which is a Euroba deity, you know. UM. And before this happened, apparently Gazi had brought this up to the person and the person said, that is extremely

disrespectful of my religion. Don't do that. And Gazi did it anyway. Um. And this is you know, another one of the things where this gets sent around all the time, as you know, treating black Hammer as a lull cow. But you know, even osis was going on, there was this abuse that was going on as well and people being preyed upon by this group. Black Ham announces that they are planning to build Hammer City, which is supposed to be this utopian settlement in the Rockies. Um, you

look like you have something you want to say. Well, I mean, look there, it's a perfectly normal dream to want to build a utopian settlement and the Rockies. There's some downsides to that. One of them is that the Rockies is actually a terrible place for a large number of people to live. Um. And this is why repeatedly, I don't know, there's been a lot of utopian settlements out in that part of the world, and they don't tend to last very long or they turn into normal towns.

But it's it's it's always interesting when folks try, when folks want to do a commune type situation and then they immediately go for a place like that, because like the mountains is the hardest place to do it. If you want to have a self sufficient commune like fucking Kansas, you know, Arkansas, like somewhere where the soil is good for growing stuff and you can get like a flat track attractive land that can grow food as opposed to

high alpine elevations where very little is gonna anyway. Whatever. This is compound talk, um, So yeah, there's there's If there's one thing you take away from this episode, don't build your compound in the Rockies. Don't build a compound in the Rockies. Look, Okay, that's all. That's all I got. Yeah, that's a that's a messages podcast, unless you're the tenaceous

Unicorn Ryan, which case go right ahead. But yeah, and then you gotta think you know what they're doing, which is raising alpaca as opposed to relying on like growing crops, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I didn't actually see any advanced I was just looking at their at the Harmas City website. If they just told they just say sustainable farming, I can't see advanced plans. Pratt. They

could raise a hundred and twelve thousand dollars. Yeah, according to their website, they raised dred and twelve thousand dollars so far. Okay, yeah, okay, that's more on this project. Yeah, really interested to know how much money they actually raised. Um, maybe it was that much. The point is we don't really know because there's no there was no kind of open record keeping within this group. Um. And it was

Cazo who was in control of the money. So the group found land to buy, and they actually began the process of a land deal in early they and and this is some information now coming from a fantastic Colorado Sun article about the whole Hammer City thing um that I also recommend if someone wants to read more in depth about this. So as the landual was in the process of going through, a portion of the group moved

out there. So about two dozen people this was This wasn't you know, it was remote, but it wasn't on top of a mountain. This was in a subdivision that had parcels for sale, which leads to some problems. And this this is a subdivision with the homeowners association and strict limits on land use as well. So they didn't have water rights for one thing, Yeah, exactly, they didn't

have water rights to land. Um, which I have not started compound, but I imagine water rights is something you want to have figured out if you if you just want to live in a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, it can be fine. If you want to grow crops, then yeah, having the ability to irrigate said crops is kind of important. Yeah. So another thing at this time is Black Hammer tends to be a pretty heavily armed group. You know, the group moved out

to this land. They were camping out. They're basically squatting on the land that they did not own, and brought their you know, armed security along with them. UM. And we're also like blogging road access for residents of the subdivision. UM. So they they had neighbors, you know, and UM. At one point, this leads to an altercation with a neighbor

UM with three armed Black Hammer members UM. And a neighbor driving his car who you know, according to this Colorado Sun article, gets out with an unloaded shotgun and there's a standoff. This could have been one of those things that went really bad. It went about as good as you can hope a situation like that can go where UM, nobody got killed. UM. But while this was happening, the member of Black Hammer, who was responsible for the land deal. I forgot to sign or didn't sign the

paperwork on time. Um and after information comes out about the standoff, the land deal completely falls through. There is no hammers to be that is going to be built UM and cadso was maintaining in black Hammer as a whole, is maintaining a superactive social media presence at this time as well. So you know, one of the other things that gets brought out is like this video of them talking about, oh, we built this bridge on our land, which is kind of a bunch of two by force

across the ditch. Yeah. Are they planning to buy UM in and then as like an organization or as kinds are planning to buy themselves as an individual? Between know they This is actually something I did some research on UM. They did this fun thing. They created a front group, a front organization to buy the land nice which they called Hammerstone Industries Incorporated. Yeah, it's stealthy. They one of the member, one of the prominent members, was responsible for that.

So power of Google. Yeah. I also found their bitcoin what what we were talking and it has never had any donations and it remains empty. Oh my god, Yeah, that one has it gone well? Ah? So after this land deal falls through, hammer City is not being built, a lot of people get really fucking piste. But also it sounds like they shot through the real estate sign on their way out of the stuff division. So on.

On the seventeenth, that is when the group leaves hammer City. UM. So going back to what Robert mentioned earlier, UM, the group took a very i'll say interesting approach when COVID nineteen started, UM, which is the belief that COVID nineteen is real, that we should wear masks and be protected, but that they should not take the vaccine, and that

fought Fauci was a liar, which comes out a bit later. So, so they were doing, for example, there's a there's a news article with a video of them doing mutual aid distribution of masks and food in Colorado. So lots of people are really fucking pissed UM when Hammer City falls through. There's also been you know, these allegations that have been coming up again and again UM. And at this point, several chapters break apart from Black Hammer, UM break away from Caso and kind of go off and do their

own thing. UM, and Caso is left with this core group of members UM kind of true believers and says, fuck it, We're moving to Atlanta. So the group does a marathon drive on Colorado to the southern suburbs of Atlanta and outside of Atlanta's where cause that grew up on the east side, UM from the northeast. UM. And they keep going. They rent a house where everyone lives together, another one of their hammer houses. I believe at this time there is another active chapter that is still connected

with CASO and the Carolinas as well. UM. But you know this is a when prophecy fails moment for Caso UM. And the people that are left behind are these true believers UM. And CASA doesn't take this well, it doesn't take the failure of this deal well, becomes even more paranoid than they already were, more controlling and more abusive than they already were. So there's the Red Voice gets into some of the really wild allegations that come out

at this time. Allegedly, CARSO has members sign over UM control of the bank accounts to them at gunpoint, as people reveal personal information at gunpoint. And again these are allegations.

I'm not saying godso did this UM that we get some of these classic cult techniques coming out, forcing people to sit and listen to Caso kind of preach, having people constantly working, not getting enough to eat, um, having you know, love bombing where God where Caso makes you know, deep eye contract with the person, talks about how important they are, how much they love them, and the consumption of psychedelics as well. Cool, that's good. Yeah, yeah, you

love to hear that. Um. Yeah, just a bunch of heavily armed people being cops for each other and drugging each other in support of I don't Charismatics seems like a weird word for ghazi, but it must be right, Like, clearly it works on some people. Yeah, I think they think they are charismatic, right, Like I think it's necessarily they are to be good to be charismatic, but no good as some people seem to be responding to their

I don't know the way they present themselves. It's so I guess that's always the way with cults, right that, Like to the outside, the cult leader is always an obvious cult leader, but everybody's got different things they're vulnerable

do and and for some people that's well. And I also I said, I think a lot of it is they have like presented themselves differently in different periods and them, I think from what I've been reading, it sounds like a decent chunk of the folks who were kind of most deeply wrapped up and it have been with it for a while, so they've kind of followed along with

Ghazi as they've you know. Yeah, and this is a group that preyed upon young people, preyed upon queer people, preyed upon on a house, people, preyed upon people of color who are out there in sections you know of

oppression in our society, um, and disagree. Like most cults, it offered them a cause, a purpose, something to fight for, something to do, friends roof over their head even you know, um yep, which is a huge part of it, right because if you if this, if this place is not just your social circle but also your safety net, and like how you keep roof over your head and how you stay fed and you don't have close ties to family or maybe your family aren't people that you can trust.

Like I mean, again, it's not a different story than you get in a bunch of other cults, but like this is yeah, it's it's it's a very frightening situation

for those people to wind up in. And of course one of the things that is unfortunate is that so much of the stuff that the Blackham Organization said and did is so absurd that like it leads to this kind of mockery of anybody who gets wrapped up in it and the people who are very much vic dyms of it, which I think is also one of the things that makes it harder to leave, right, is that

siege mentel and outside. That's where the term collegnitive dissonance comes from, specifically people, right, you know, when when things that go according to plan stick with this group and you know, have already given always so much of their time, so much of their life in any of their connections, that they just roll with it. Yeah, And then there's I'm just thinking back to a story I wrote years ago.

Were fortunate enough to interview someone who's like an expert on these small cults, and they had actually been a survivor of I think it was a trotsky Is cult, so they were very familiar. They like, this group exhibits all those patterns, right, like the charismatic leader that you mentioned, the use of their own language, the control of their relationships and their contacts inside and outside the group. Yeah,

and then they mirror this like very positive. It seemed to like, just look at their aesthetics after you mentioned it that they're definitely sort of seeking to mirror that like Black Panther Party as sthetic, right, which is obviously something that has, for good reasons, very postive associations for a lot of people. So I can see they've constructed it's very appealing package. But yeah, and now there's a body right now, a person has died connected, let's get

to the station. So yeah, let's talk about this. So in Atlanta is where things get really wacky basically, as is often the case with Atlanta, has is often the case with this beautiful, beautiful city owned by Coca Cola and home depot with with I have to admit it as a Texan the best barbecue in the South, that's true. Excellent Ethiopian food as well. I was there this weekend. Yeah, yeah, fucking amazing, fucking amazing Ethiopian Ethiopian food. Yeah. Big refugee population,

that's besides the point. So you know, cause I was found themselves in this city without a ton of money, um, and so needs to get more attention, needs to appeal to more people. So this is when Causo announces that Black Hammer is forming a coalition with the Proud Boys, which is one of those things that comes out and

really sensationalized headlines but doesn't actually happen. What happens is cause of goes on a podcast with Gavin McGinnis and they talked about we have so much in common and there's you know, a little toast evidence of actual organizing or work together between the two groups. But with this group like this, no, especially because Gavin doesn't organizing anymorevolving problems anymore. What was the podcast they went on? Stead

of interest? Daniel cut that and add in the entire audio from b movie condensed into a two second blast like we talked about, you know, the group gets more attention to that. UM. They start talking about how great Trump is, how much do they love Trump, how Fauci is evil? UM. Because again, ideology is not the point. The attention is. And this is how you continue get attention by acting ridiculous, UM, by asking Trump voters to

donate money to you. UM. And at this time they also begin an extremely aggressive fundraising campaign in the city of Atlanta. So there's a park in downtown Atlantic called Woodroff Park that has a huge on housed population. Because our city is about at being a city and it's it's just back but Black Hammer there there are other groups. There are other e leftist groups that do mutual aid that help people out in the park. Black Hammer says,

we're gonna do this too, you know. So they'll go there and have these sessions where they're screaming into a megaphone about whatever, UM and you know, handing out clothes and some food to unhoused people. UM. And they also start setting there. The members of their group pretty much every day of the week two go out into the Steve Atlanta and ask people for money on the streets UH, in their matching branded Blackhammer t shirts and masks. A site to see and yeah, so this is what they

call their robin Hood campaign. UM. They specifically target college campuses at Georgia State University and Georgia Tech especially UM with the idea that college kids have a lot of money to give away. It's not a great idea, UM, but they do this aggressive fundraising where they you know, follow people and if they don't take no Franchwis say, oh, you don't care about homeless people, you don't care about unhoused people. Um, you know, you just have so much

white privilege and really attacking people. Um, which is great. When you're coming home, you're riding your bike home and then you keep passing Black Hammer members m outside of uh, you know, on your commute home. Not fun. Yeah, And they appear, you know, on the belt Line, which is this kind of public green space and shared walking space in Atlanta. Um. They do this outside of concert venues. You know. I went to see The Dead Kennedy's and as I was walking into the venue, a Black Hammer

guy asked me for money. I have to explain to the guy in front of me handing them five dollars, this is an anti semitic colt. You don't want to do that. And they they're also taking in unhoused people. Um. You know there's this video of of one of the lieutenants saying, you know, we want to get you, the

unhoused people to come fundraise for us. You know, if you come fund raise for us, you can keep half of it slay and whoever fundraises the most in this week gets to cume live with us at the Hammer House, so it's pretty fucked up, you know. Um there's a case where a professor at Georgia State University, because these people the blood can't remembers out there every day all day. Um, this is what they do, this is their job, this is how the group makes money, you know, calls them

out and says, hey, stop asking for money here. I know you're a cult. And a member follows the professor and films her, you know, and specifically films her license plate and says, we got you. For example, members are arrested for having a megaphone in Woodruff Park and get some of their guns taken away when the rest because they're in the park with a bunch of guns. You

just have guns out. Yeah, Yeah, it's Georgia, which sometimes is cool when the Proud Boys show up and anti fascists have guns, but it's not not great when black hammers doing that. Definitely, tracking following people who criticize you in taking pictures of their license plate to try to docks them online is not at all cult behavior. They

attack X members. They leak the addresses of the family of X members and their social Security numbers as well because they had them give them all this information at gunpoint. They seem to get very close to encouraging people to shoot cops in a couple of pieces on their website as well, they talked about killing white people a lot. Eventually in Yeah, in two, they have this rally outside of the CNN Center and solidarity with the January six

political prisoners. UM. Along the way in Gauzy claims to find have found Jesus and uh, Black Camera becomes a religious group, you know. They they turned their mutual aid distribution into what they're calling the Revolutionary Church, which of course is filmed in live streamed. They have several live streams that they do regularly throughout the week that are

mandatory for members to attend. UM. You know, there there is corporal punishment going on within the group of people living at the house UM and and the people that they're picking up off the street. It's not just adults, it's kids as well, UM cause of claims to have the sixteen year old that they have adopted. UM and you know, cause of post these videos of them giving the sixteen year old guns and money and clothes to where um the kid gets taken into state custody, um,

before the current thing that we're taught talking about. Um, and this is going to be important later on in the story. Um. Yeah. So there are also these stories from members who have escaped, who have to do these elaborate escape attempts to get out because they're not allowed to leave, who have to kind of run away in the middle of the night with none of their stuff through a thunderstorm to get out. So this is what

we're dealing with. All right, everyone, it's James here, and I just wanted to correct a couple of things from the episode or add to them. One of them was the date of that shooting, be it murder or death Bay suicide. That was the nine of July, note of February, and so it happened about a week ago at the time that you will hear this if you hear this on the day that we put out. Secondly, I also just wanted to give some context to the word huru.

It's Swahili word means freedom or independence, and it was used as part of a a backronym, which is when when a group has a name with them, they create an acronym that fits to that name, and the word huru was part of a backronym for a group called the Mau Mau Revolutionary anti colonial group who existed in Kenya, and the word of Huru was used a decent amount

of ACTI colonial struggles in Kenya in the backronym. The backronym is miszoom end Ufrica Party or Huru let the foreigners go home, Africa should be independent, will be independent. I suppose I just wanted to give that context. And obviously it's been appropriated now by by the Proud Boys, but that is part of the etymology of the word. And then we get to um, what happened on February two. Um, you know, this is an ongoing story, so the fact

what we know might be changing. But early in the morning, someone is one and talks about being held hostage by an organization, by a group. They don't give the address, but the police are the authorities are able to track the number to this house in Fayetteville stuburb south of Atlanta. UM, and show up and they see someone is outside walking a dog who runs away. That person gets arrested. Um, that's a member of Black Hammer. They see someone kind

of waving from the garage seemingly in distress. UM and the police are able to get that person out, they asked that the rest the people in the house come out as well. UM. About ten people come out and one person remains inside. Now by about two pm, with the use of an explosives ordinance, with the use of an EO D A bomb robot UM, the police enter

the building. UM. The SWAT team goes in and they find one person dead of a gunshot wounds to the head, which we at this current time we don't know the full details on that might not ever hopefully something comes out. Carso is being held, you know, the group is kind of like sitting around outside, not in handcuffs, but being held by the group. UM and Caso does what Causo does and starts to live stream. So here's a clip

from this thirty minute live stream Facebook live that Causo does. Look, there's a lot of media girls, so this is just going to build me up at the end of the day. So thank you. H SO. If you think that no I am concerned anything like that, you're out of your mind. M at the end of the day, they're still breath

in my body. I still run an amazing revolutionary party, our community is epping with us, and now all these news channels are going to want to interview us, and we're going to get to communicate about all the great work that we are doing here. So this is great at the end of the day. So my chickens coming home to roost is more more media, more followers, more you know, advancement of work, more movement, more greatness, and so be it, sweetheart. Things like this have a non stops.

Movements are readers before, so not even overcome. This is a great moment, right comment. This is a great moment, a moment where no voices will be amplified and our mission cause will be informed. Well that's cool. I like that he clearly understands the gravity of the loss of a human life. So I will say this is probably before it became someone was dead. But the point is that this is exactly what Cauds have wanted, was this attention.

Yeah they seem pumped. They seem pumped and also like deranged. Yeah yeah, yeah, that wasn't how it envisioned them speaking at all. It's sort of very almost like calming, and they seem very very calm in a tone of voice. Yeah, I mean calm, but like, I don't know, I see an edge to him, but maybe that's any reading. Um, so do we know more detail about, like what happened with that person who died? Oh, I don't want to mention the name of the person. Um this place, this

is a minor too, right. This is so the person who is killed, who's dead now, was not was not the sixteen year old. The sixteen year old was already in state custody weeks ago. I believe, Um, this is an eight According to the what the group has said and other survivors that I have spoken with, this is an eighteen year old the group took in off of the street. Um, there's a kid, you know who wanted

to be a rapper, who had dreams. Um. You know, according to black cameras, own media, they made this person their minister of defense. That's a good job for an eighteen year old who's dead now because of this group, potentially from a self inflicted gunshot wound, which that is the case came about because of KASO putting that eighteen year old in this situation. Yeah, so dirty south right, watch the news. They have a really good threat that

I also recommend about this happening. It seems like the local news they started covering the story and the am when it was happening, but didn't quite make the connection. There's there's one article it's out there from a local news site that just interviews Gazzi Kozo, homeowner of the house. Yeah, so that happens, one of the members of the group is immediately charged and booked. It's a really fucked up situation,

you know. There there's like an unhoused individual who that who who other good activists were in touch with, who are at the house when this happened, because this person had no other choice but it was live outside or go with black Hammer went through all of this happening um and then it was still on how it was still on housed. After all this happened, Canso was arrest did and booked. The charges didn't come out until an

hour before we started recording. The charges are two accounts of participation in streaking activity, two accounts of aggravated assault, two accounts of kidnapping, two accounts of false imprisonment, two accounts of conspiracy to commit a crime, and I'm gonna talk about this one one account of sodomy which in Georgia, the sodomy law refers to non consensual oral or anal sex or oral and anal sex performed with the minor got you so one way or the other that they're

being accused of sexual assault. Yes, the other person arrested um was charged with the same crimes, except not sodomy officer instruction instead, presumably because they fled. And that's where we're at. That's where we're at right now. Cool. Well, that's rough. Yeah, it's it's a pretty bleak story. But

I don't know at this point. We will probably be hearing more as this case blows up, and there's always the chance that you know, the rights going to wind up adopting it to try to, you know, make it into a left wing bad kind of deal. So when we yeah, yeah, I mean, we'll see what kind of

legs it gets. But it's important to understand both what's happening here because a person is dead and a lot of people have been hurt, and also kind of broadly the trends that are at play here, the way like cult dynamics can intersect with radical politics, I think is important for people to be aware of because this kind of thing isn't going to get less common as ship

continues to unravel. Yeah, and if there's some takeaways, if someone can leave this with you know a few points that the people who we're in this group, they are victims in the situation. They were preyed upon by this abuse of person because they were in a vulnerable state. Um. Anyone. This could happen to anyone who falls on hard times, who has a bad enough day and then someone comes in and offers them this that they say yes, you know. Um. The the other thing is to know about groups that

are out there before you get involved. Do your research, listen to voices that might be critical of the group. Um, I know what you're getting yourself into. There are other sensibly left as groups out there who will not as abuse of as Black Hammer. Um, have cases of abuse

coming out of them that gets covered up. Yeah, it might be good for us just to just to suggested if folks find themselves in a difficult situation on someone they know is in is in one of these situations, like maybe we can linked to some resources in the notes or something. Yeah, aren't Yep, there's not there's not a whole lot of committed to me that I've been

trying to find. It's probably Stephen Hassan's book, which um sawn is also he's an expert in the field, but he's also the guy who talked about how Trainning Hitno Mind Control porn was. Yeah, he's got he's problematic. Yeah, well, I mean part of the reason that this is such a problem is that there's very little in terms of

good resources or good writing. One of the things that is, like, there's good writing analyzing cults, very little of it will give you much that's useful in terms of how to get people out of cults, for a couple of reasons, including the fact that, as we talked about earlier, what makes people vulnerable, people aren't vulnerable to cults broadly usually, I know there's there's a certain subset of people, but like, as a general rule, people who get trapped in a

cult get trapped in a specific cult because it is something that they are specifically vulnerable to. And so if you don't like it's more or less a matter of like, if you want to get someone out of a cult, um, are you close with that person? Like are they someone that you know? Are they someone that you have a deep relationship with because if so, like that relationship and the care that you have for them is primarily the thing that is most likely to eventually help them get out.

Which doesn't mean it's a magic bullet, but like, there's no reliable way to get people out of colts yep, I'm a I do. I do step recovery stuff UM for different reasons. But the closest analogy that I can think of is dealing with someone who's abusing drug and alcohol in your life. You can't force anyone to stop, You can't make any moe. When people talk about cult deprogramming, what that entails kidnapping someone and then putting them through

more abuse. So there is a magic bullet. Yeah, a lot of extremity problematic ship gets offered to people who understandably concerned for their friends and family members, and I just want to help. The best time to get someone out of a cult is before they join, you know, is to raise awareness about abuse in communities UM and share that information and take these things seriously. I truly believe so much of how this was able to happen is because people we're just laughing at them and didn't

take it seriously. That this could get someone killed, that this was ruining lives, that's still happening. People are treating this as a joke, not yeah, And I think that's one of the things if you're like I don't know a parent or or somebody who otherwise works with their interfaces with there is raising young people, and you're trying to think about how you can make them less vulnerable

to this. It is a mix of educating them about cults and not in a way that's like laughing or mocking or talking about how silly it is, but actually to discussing the very real reasons why people fall in for this stuff, because that's that's the important one of the most important things. It's the same as COVID. Really, one of the most important things for protecting yourself is not thinking that you're immune, which is a natural thing.

Most people who have fallen into cults earlier in their life when they heard about colts, said well, that's stupid as hell. I would never get trapped in something like that, and then they did. And that's basically a hundred percent of COAT membership. You know, um, because yeah, if there's if I can recommend some resources for parents, Shannon fully Martinez who is on Twitter, is you know, was involved in extreme right skinhead stuff unless it is committed her

life to helping people leave extremist movements. The same things you know that are going to make someone easily preyed upon by Colt and by an extremist group. Those are the same things. Um. And Shannon has some good resources out there. She has a Patreon as well. The resources are available for free. You don't need to join on her patreon. Awesome. Yeah, Shannon is awesome. UM. And other than that, you know, don't ye. Try to avoid falling for a cult, um except for you know this podcast.

Keep listening to this podcast. Make it the center of your life. Have no friends of the nuts for in para social relationships with us? Uh huh, Well we're the only We're the only people you can trust. I think that's clear. Ye. Yeah. Would you like to plug anything before we carry off? Thomas? Yeah, I'm at Twitter at w underscore f underscore, Thomas. Don't be weird on Twitter. Um, have empathy for the people around you. Almost gonna plug HASHTA un housed people because they know what best can

help them. Yeah, fucking provide people with options for housing, so that they're not. Yeah, having a could be the best thing they can do. But yeah, yep, I'm not a happy note. Thanks for having me. Yeah, checking onund your friends, debanding people when they're in difficult times. Uh, it could happen, It could happen here. That was my Robert Evans impression. Thank you very much. Hopefully that wasn't an assault in you. Um yeah, drums, but here we are, here,

we are. I am Andrew, and this is it can happen in And this is the podcast where we talk about stuff that happened in places. And I'll be yes listening this episode. This is the Andruism segment where I talk about whatever comes to mind. So I'd like to open up this episode with a question, honestly, genuinely, how are you all doing? Well? There's a lot of stuff going on right now. Um, you know, not not the best time, um inside this country or really around the world.

Um so yeah, not, I would say, not ideal, not idea. Yeah, I'm everything bad is happening and also being compounded that I have been. I have been once again awoken at it a genuinely egregiously early hour by someone pounding a hammer about eight inches from my head, which is fun and good and cool. So without context, without context all a wild thing to say. I am giving no context about that. This is literally true. So yeah, basically it's like that, but for everything. Yeah, I respect that. Not

ideal is the perfect explanation. Yeah, yeah, not ideal, not ideal. Personally, I feel like i'm, you know, cost being pulled in a bunch of different directions and it's exhausted. And I mean, let's say upfront, I do have the privilege of having more control over my will day than a lot of other people do, and that's not something I take lightly. I'm very appreciative of that. UM shout out to my

Patreon supporters. But you know, between all my online responsibilities and offline responsibilities and obligations and demands I might time, it really is not easy. And that's not even getting into like the social and politicals to the world right now. To Coach and Smith, you know, that's that's something I think we can all relate to on some level. Yeah, I mean, some weeks are much harder than others, but the through line has been stress and that is the

subject of today's episode. That's so stressful that we're going to talk about stressful. Yeah, a discussion about stress. It really could happen here. Um. Stress is not something that's new to me, al really to most people. Me perasonally. My plasonality is very much lending itself to that um sort of outcome because I'm constantly like spinning a bunch of plates at the same time, and every time, like I dropped one, I put one down, I pick up

the next one. And I'm not very good at relaxing usually. All right, I've basically been going non stop for a long long time, and I'm not alone because of adults suffer from chronic stress and to night to a sense of doctors visits are stress related and it's trash. You know, he feels in your skin and your muscle, in your bones. I remember this one. Someone was working at that same

winery I was talking about in a recent episode. I was in UM and I'm sure my experience, it really felt like my blood was running into water, like I was barely eaten. It wasn't getting enough water, I wasn't perfectly hydrated and was just going We call that, we call that a reverse Jesus. When you're when you're I mean, I think when Jesus was stabbed. He did like bleed

water for some reason. Yeah, treat ring. You know, they tell the story and I think all bodies tell the story as well, and for a lot of us that story is stress rather because of events or thoughts or circumstances that needs frustration. Angle new business, do you mistress? What would you guys say, is some of your like mean stress triggers? I was going to say family, most of it's probably work related, based on the type of

things I surround myself with for over twelve hours a day. Yeah, I think for me it's it's work, and then it's a lot of just sort of like personal life stuff. I have to do stuff which is just like like I'm trying to move right now, and that's like incredibly stressful. And yeah, a medical stuff that's been that's been a holy hell. Yeah, we are excited that Chris is finally moving out of the hammer factory into the into the into the electric drill factory. So the audio will still

be a bit weird. I mean, look, if if if it's if it's anything like college, it'll be twelve hours a day of a guy with a jackhammer directly below my window. Which you'll all get to hear an incredibly large amount of It's gonna be great. That's fantastic. That's a perfect encapsulation of exactly the topic we'll talk kind of about. It's like a jackhammer on your brain constantly. I mean, that's on the only form of stress. I mean, there's a stress that comes from like loss stress, it

comes from like social drift stress. It comes from like this consumers rotteries, um, you know, mental illness, just general uncutainty and change and grief and guilt and trauma, um, you know, dicty to ship that a lot of people are subject to, and of course climate change go to a climate change. I think more and more people need to realize there was a stress is a symptom of

like systemic violence. You know, when we're dealing with these headaches and sleep problems and muscle opinions and digestive problems and sex problems and blood pressures, use and moodliness and restlessness and demotivation and irritability and substance abuse and all

these other responses and consequences. It's just the outcome of daily systemic violence, of the way that this system deprives us of support and care that how it atomizes us, how it contro rules us and really squeezes us forward worth. I mean it's not to say that like there's no stress outside of capitalism, or that stress is a capitalist invention. Absolutely not. I mean stress in small doses to be a good indicator in certains vibal situations that need to

change the situation um motivation to act, you know. But and the capitalism is really pathological, and yet you gotta keep playing normal. You have to keep on pretending that everything is okay. I mean, we all know how deeply unhealthy this society is, how deeply an equalist society is. Many people didn't stress related illnesses. Are people don't like hyper vigilance? Are we a constantly scanning this urban jungle

for threats? But of of insecurity and decimation of public life and of entire economies in sectors as like well held in captivity. I will say one thing, and that is that while capitalism produces a lot of stress, it was so alleviates stress by producing an economy organized around the production and circulation of addictive substances and practices of all these different vices that you know, people pick up.

I mean if you look at the roots of capitalism and how capitalism really funded itself initially through the plantation economies and the Caribbean and the rest of America's um you know, growing like sugar and tobacco and you know, producing all these spirits and chocolate and coffee. The thing that that that that helped bring capitalism to fruition and helped fund industrial capitalist soon is the thing that people are using to self medicate in response the effects of

the now global capitalist dominance. And people love off their chocolate and their coffee. Personally, I'm not a big fan of coffee. I think it's tastes disgusting, but you know, yeah, I tried it once and it was like it tastes like the sensation of burning. You know, I just wasn't having it. I like the smell for some reason, like the smell of coffee beans, but the actual taste is like nah. And surprisingly, I actually used to not like chocolate as a child. It is only when I matured

my taste buds that I actually came around to it. Ironically, and of course we don't think of these things as you know, spaces or medications, but they're like small pleasures that help us get through our day. Practically everybody is some level of alcoholic these days. And of course there's social media, which is like algorithmically teelered and tuned to keep us on it, to keep us like it. Basically like like a puppet master controuls the highs and lows

of all emotions on a daily basis. It basically functions as an addictive drug. It just the drug is just is caused by chemical reactions in your own brain, but it's manipulating your brain into causing it to happen um. But it's it's a very similar addictive process that has like, you know, a reward system. You know that. That's why, like around a decade ago, a lot of social media companies changed their UM loading style to be like you like scroll it down and it flicks back up, which

was specifically it was specifically copying a slot machine. Because it is it's it's like an addictive pattern that's ingrained into what we find pleasurable. So it's it's all like none of this is this isn't new information to a lot of people, but like it's all obviously very intentional

to it's designed to be extremely addictive. Yeah, and this this is just like this is just like what like most of gaming is now too where it's like, I mean, okay, like you're playing a video game, right yeah, but like yeah and now and now literally like the the the revenue model of the gaming industry is selling gambling to children. You know that. That is My one who complained about casinos is that eight year olds couldn't spend thousands of

dollars of their parents money on skins. Now, thanks thanks to the wonders of gaming, eight year olds too can basically just live in a casino in their own bedroom all the time. Modern society. Okay, there's there's there's conflicting accounts about this, but there's there's a new like free to play Dio Diablo game. And yes, that the the amount of money it would take to get like a max level character in this game I have seen. Okay, I I've I've the latest calculation I've seen is saying

it would take over five thousand dollars. The lowest range calculation of how much it would cost I've seen was about fifty tho it's probably at least a hundred thousand dollars to literally get the guy's level characters in games. It is like like this is this problem is exactly where why that's problem is exactly why. Um, the only mobile games I play us to do a Google on mine sweep and even those have ads. Yeah, I did have a brief for it until among us, but that, um,

that period has has ended. Un Plus, this is also why I tend to you know, sail the high seas, if you know what I'm saying. The funny thing is that we don't have to do this, and I mean it's kind of all the us. It's kind of like it's a phrase I'm looking forward, like it doesn't need to be said, but it also kind of needs to be said. That we built We built this society, and as people within it, we do have the power to change it. We don't have to work as much as

we do. We don't have to you know, structure and attend school the way that we do. I mean, even under capitalism, there there are people who are starting to shift from that hour a week day which we had to fight for a lot of people died for, um till you know, three to six hours a day, which or four hours pretty it depends. UM. I think that's the one on experiment was like six hour days, four

days a week or something like that. But despite you know, studies coming out and saying that humans grooling is sup productive in a certain period of time uninterrupted, it doesn't matter, you know, despite the fact that you know, productivity decreases, it's not like productivity rises or the amount to hours you work. It doesn't matter. I mean, I remember when

I was working in a um an insurance company. I was a people pusher, just like scanning documents and uploading documents and then scanning some more documents and then uploading those documents, and then every once in a while I got to print documents. Exciting um but I was dealing with like a backlog of documents, and I was typically able to get like a decent chunk of the work done within like the first two to three hours, as in like having it fully sorted, scanned, uploaded, completed, you know.

But unfortunately I had to be there for eight hours, and so I had to drag out my day, you know, typically by listening to like the Communist Manifesto and audiobook yea or The Conquest of Bread and audiobook. I had to find things to do, is like make myself look busy, um what to like tovvy up my tasks and extend

them and artificially stretch them out. Because instead of doing this BS job because I'm not doing this BS job at all, or instead of doing this b S job based on tasks completed rather than time spent, I had to rely on the time spent in the contractual hours. And of course the pay was terrible, but I mean

that was expected at this point. But the whole point is really to like squeeze all our time and energy, so that's we're stressed out so that we don't have any leisure, so that you know, we look for convenience, and convenience is profitable. I mean, who really has the energy to fight for their rights when they don't even have the energy to cook a meal when they get home,

you know. And it wasn't always like this. The social bond was broken by capitalism and replaced with the bond to money, and until we like sever that bond, nothing's going to change. The question is how can we address stress? Right, and so capitalism has an answer, um and then there's like an actual proper, real systemic answer, And personally, I deal with stressed by just not thinking about it. Um, But I mean, what what do you guys do be

really sad? I was talking about like like mitigation strategies you know that I don't know, Like when it's nice already, like I go take walks, Um, looks are nice. Yeah, I have a have a shark that I got from somewhere that's like it's like the like the squashy phone material, but just a shark it rules. Do you have an idea shark? No? No, no, no, no, it's okay, it's all right. It's like a stress ball. But about to just like yeah, that's very funny. I don't have a

whatever that I don't know what. I don't know. I don't know how to say it either. I don't know. I've been trying to get back into doing more park or training when I'm stressed, but honestly, it's a lot of the time I just do stuff that I know I am capable of, which oftentimes is the same thing that kind of caused me to get stressed in the

first place. Looking at nonsense propaganda, writing about it, writing about like different like philosophies around Doumerism, and like because those are things I just my my brain can just do with little efforts. So it's almost it's almost peaceful in a way. Yeah, it's it's it's bizarre. Mean in some ways you would think that these things are what's causing me to have problems, but also in a lot

of ways that kind of calms me down. Um, to look at a whole bunch of this type of thing, or to write about it, or to like try to like you know, just do like formatting inside like a Google doc about it. Um, I don't know. It's like it's like sorting out this stuff. It's almost like this this idea, This is like um thing called knowling. It's when you get a whole bunch of stuff out on

the floor and you sort it into piles. It's done with like Lego a lot if you dump a giant like box of Lego for all these different legal pieces, Um, if you're gonna annul them, you're gonna take all the pieces that are like the same color or size and

sort them into their little places. It's it's it's so it's I kind of do that but with like ideas, um and like and like with writing projects, I dump out all the things I'm currently thinking about into like a spreadsheet or a Google doc and sort them into related topics to be like, Okay, here's how this thing leads into this thing, and I just it's like that kind of like organizational thing. Um. So like like how

organizing is kind of like a therapeutic thing. So it's like I can do that with all of the random stuff floating around in my brain. Sometimes I'll try to like just sort of out. Even if it doesn't get turned into like a work project, it's still like it's like an external way to sort out my thoughts, right, Sufie, I have a dog, very good dog of a dog. We listen to music, we go outside. We'll like to go to the park and listen to music outside. You know,

that's the basically work a lot. But work is also like if I don't work, I'm more stressed exactly exactly. Yeah, I definitely relate. I relate to that, which is like a lapdog for I know, right, Like it's not something that like proud of, but also like, you know, I'm lucky enough. Nothing that's indicative of the problem, right, Like, it's not like people don't necessarily like to work, don't necessarily like to leave, Yes, she was like not having

what's one to me? You know, because I mean if most of the things I do for work now are things that I've been doing for years unpaid because I was just interested in them. So you know, if we're talking about theorizing about like a post work world, yeah, people are still going to do all kinds of ship. Obviously there's questions around, you know, tasks which are not

like not the most fun to do. As we've had discussions on antiwork stuff before, but for a lot of stuff, everyone has little interests in little skills that they find kind of slightly therapeutic. And also like you know, it's in terms of us to know what wants to do. Like I fixed my own plumbing in my bathtub a few weeks ago because my landlord it's not going to do that. So like, you know, people when you when when you have to do something, you kind of become

capable of it. That's fair. I think one of the most popular responses, like the stress is COMPLISSM and pooses is like this concept of self care, you know, this way of escape from from the grind of it all and sure dealing with you know, with issues by like getting to bed early and eating well and physical exercise, which I've been doing a lots of, um, you know, and and all that we have to change your little drug into like into like the chat version. Well I

actually did that recently. That's great. Yeah, it's definitely you know this thing also things like like Jornane and meditation and yoka and all that. As I mean, you never never really got into meditation because I tried it a couple of times and every time I do, I kind of fall asleep. I definitely do some meditation stuff, um, but that's what's kind of slightly part of my like metaphysics interest um. And I mean also mean like in terms of like self care practices in that vein that

can help you kind of relax. There's obviously stuff like you know, mushrooms are m D M A, which if done and you know proper, you know, it's space spaced out, not not doing them all the time, but doing them at certain intervals, um, can definitely be be therapeutic in their own way. Or Drey Lord, one of the foremost black feminist scholars of our time, one set and I returned to it is cool to lot um. Karen for myself is not an act of self intelligence. It is

self preservation, and that is an active political warfare. Self care used to me in prison, on yourself in a world hostility, very identity community. We have life event not we gin yourself to an early grieve, you know, practicing say and new and being mindful of your sensitivities and triggers. And then you know, as white corporate feminism does, white corporate feminism appropriated it and turned it into a industry now worth a start or and eleven billion dollars. I

mean now self care. When people think of self care, it's all about intelligent cosmetics and serious bodies and overpriced candles and quintin expensive qualities and subscriptions to social media apps that are about like and it's it's turned into this own like grifting industry almost like that that the self care industry. It's like self care influencers and self

care content creators and like it's just like it. It just gets it gets the same icky de realization for think that everything else under capitalism is slowly getting Yeah, I mean they even have like their own self care funds, like if you not. Just a lot of self care content has a very specific visual style yeah, you know, I mean hashtog self can Instagram just like a bottomless screwl of graphics and products. It just makes me feel

kind of unsettled. It kind of has this like uncanny aspect to it, Yeah, because it's almost as of self care is unaccessible to the wise was creepy to help the moves. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's there's that. I mean, the fundamental part of the uncanny is that is that disconnect where they the gap between the phenomenon and the thing is really is really big and you can't really understand why it's uncanny, but if you think about it, it's because that gap between the thing what's supposed to

be doing is so large. So yeah, this thing that's supposed to help all these people is now of white millennial like like up like middle upper class like aesthetic. Now, um, and that sucks exactly. I mean these days, the people like it's mostly a salve for like white collar workers whose jobs are also sucked in with their time managing creativity.

But the people who are actually in the blue collar workers, they often have the time or money to be able to invest in themselves, not way self care and work collars and basically two sides of the same coin. Right, it's preserve yourself so you can produce small It's a solution to capitalism. Within capitalism, the solution doesn't actually alleviate the conditions and stress, but lines pockets and fuels the

economic system that creates it in the first place. I mean, if you're selling self care helps that you've got a constant supply of customers living in perpetual anxiety and wellness rather than means of resistance to the system. It's been recognized by the system. It's become this performative thing we put on, this image of put togethernes where you carefully curate your feed and your Instagram stories in your highlights and as an individualized solutions systemic issues is it's like

the system telling you to calm down. Why I continue to denegrate and and exploit you. None of these things address stress systematically. I'm not saying that it's necessarily bad to address stress individually, because everybody has their own personal conditions, but without dealing with the broader material conditions, Without addressing people's lack of free time, lack of access to social connection, lack of access to housing and healthy food, and fudable

medical care. You know it, it misses the point. And I haven't I haven't read much um in the field of I believe there's some NICUs was when a lot of time writing and talking about it, but I haven't read much in the field of like psychotherapy and that sort of thing. But it's it's kind of a realization of me that therapy is basically focus in on fixing an individuals would just to a sick society, rather than

healing the society itself, fixing the society itself. I mean, so much about their therapy is about, you know, addressing things that are impairing your functionality to complete your work. Yeah, Like it's it's all the base of mental healthness is is it inhibiting you from doing your job? And that's when it becomes a problem, and the only way to solve it is through it. Like, like what what deems a success is if you're able to complete your job

at a high level of functioning. Again, it's not actually about your mental state, it's about how much you can produce center the calp C list framework. Yeah, And I mean not to say that that medication doesn't have a tremendous benefits in people's lives and you know, helping them get back on track and take control of their circumstances. But you know, when you have a society that has distress and misery and loneliness woven into it, um into its core, trying to adjust people and adapt people to

that is just responding to sickness and more sickness. And you know me, I like to try and keep things on the practical, um helpful, positive side. You know, it could happen here and genuinely with a smiling face, you know, like it could happen here. Um. And so I just wanted to put forward some recommendations. I guess yeah, um. I mean, obviously we can't afford to wait until capitalism

has been abolished to be happy. That's just ridiculous. I mean, that's long term cure for a lot of the moralities and and it's used people are facing um. But in the meantime, when assigned the roots of our stress in these systems can make the personal political and drive us to act and connect with people who can support us.

I think that in organize in spaces, they need to be special attention but towards creating support groups that have allowed for solidarity to be built, you know, allowing people to share their feelings and work through the challenges together. Self care kind of frames things in a way that makes it seem as though healing has done on an individual level. When healing is communal, like you don't have

to go through all this alone healing. It's an act of communion and the world must be force to change to reflect that, recognize that we have each other, and recognize that south care and community care and extricably linked. And once those facts at the forefront, once we put community care at the forefront, outside of the close of the market, accessible to all um, I think we can find hoope, you know. And it really it can start with something as simple as just reaching out, you know, um,

grabbing groceries or twin dishes or watching kids. All the care work that is stept to the side when we think about organizing and what it means to organize, but with an your home, money, neighborhood, or at work or at school, because I think in especially neighborhood settings, developing that sense of new bliness consideringly help even something like a community garden being able to connect with Nietzsche again

well at all for the first time. You can really help lifeheart and we don't have to make it harder for each other. So you can follow me on Twitter, I don't discuss seeming Drew on YouTube dot com, slash andreids m pature dot com slash seemed True and I have been your host of It Could Happen You Pece Hey. It's it Could Happen Here, a podcast about usually bad things happening, all the bad things that are happening everywhere, but occasionally about good things happening and people doing cool

stuff to make a better world. And this Lucky you, Lucky all of us happens to be one of the latter kinds of episodes when we talk about good things happening. UH with me in the studio, which is more of an a femoral concept than a physical studio because there's a plague going on. Is James Stout and Garrison Davis co hosting the podcast Hello Fellas Now Today. The thing

that we're talking about. UM, we we had about a week or so two weeks ago represent a couple of representatives from the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Dallas, Texas come in UH, and they had been providing armed security at a couple of different Dallas area protests against Christian nationalists. UM. I do recommend checking out those episodes.

This week, we have one representative from that organization back on and what we'll be talking about is there have been a series of attempted sweeps in Dallas at a homeless camp UM. And if you're not familiar with the concept, basically, people who are experiencing homelessness set up encampments in order to live with some degree of comfort and have you know, their stuff with them. UM. These are generally in places like parks, under overpasses, that kind of situation, and periodically

the city will come through and sweep them. The city's language is always very much focused towards we're trying to help them, you know, get into some sort of situation where they can find help. But what usually winds up happening is the city takes a bunch of people's stuff and throws it in the trash, often before extreme weather events. UM. It's a really gnarly thing to experience, and activists in a number of cities have experimented with different tactics to

try and stop and delay sweeps. And what we've had happening lately. Over the last week in Dallas is representatives of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club have been showing up armed alongside activists with Say It with Your Chest Dallas, And the kind of thing that's been spreading on Twitter is, of course the fact that activists have shown up with guns to stop the sweeps and the Dallas police have not shown up to do the sweeps.

The thing that often gets missed in this kind of Twitter level discourse, although is covered in a pretty good Dallas Morning News article on the subject, is that there have also been activists, as I said, from the Say It with Your Chest movement, who have been showing up to help people, to provide laundry service, transportation, food and water.

And essentially what they've been doing is trying to help people get things together and organized to move to a new location, um, in a manner that allows them to do so with like dignity and comfort and not get their stuff thrown out by the city or experienced violence from the police while it's happening. So um, that is the broad situation. I'm not gonna say anymore myself. I want to introduce Danny from Say with Your Chest Dallas and Bubble from the um Fort John Brown Gun Club.

Thank you both for being on the show, Thanks for having me, Thank you for having us. Um was that a broadly accurate summary of events? Um? Yeah, for the for the most part, the city has actually been sweeping several They're they're cracking down on houselessness right now, very very aggressive. And so it's not just that one camp that we were defending the other day, but um, the

monday before we were defending another camp. And UM, I've never seen this many sweeps happen at one time, and I've been doing this for a little over two years now. I want to actually go a little bit into how your organization formed, but before that, do you have any kind of can you posit why the city has suddenly ramped up sweeps so aggressively in Dallas so uh normally talking to the residents, I've never I've never seen it

happen like multiple times in the week. Usually they'll do one uh way a little bit we'll hear a couple years later or something, but multiple in a week at different spots is definitely, um, definitely new to us. UM As for why the typical reason are like you know, the state there comes up in October, so they'll try to sweep then. UM. Or they'll do it um usually like a housing development UM and things like that, where like the land is brought up or you know something.

But recently, UM, the motivations have been a little bit more unclear with the aggression. UM. It's kind of the the city in terms of how they execute sweeps. It used to be that code compliance could not touch people's belongings. Recently it has shifted to take everything, throw away everything. UM. But yeah, we still don't know why all happening yet. It is certainly like part of a nationwide trend because

we're having the same things happen in Portland increasingly. And obviously Portland and Dallas aren't the only cities were sweeps have been ramped up. UM. And of course you also have oh gosh, I I just ran across the article today that like there's discussion in certain cities about like, yes, somewhere in Florida about like putting houseless people in like essentially an island compound and whatnot, like basically like a

concentration camp. Right. Yeah, that's been also mentioned by people affiliated with like the Portland City Council in the Mayor's office. It's like essentially getting a concentrated collection of homeless people in one closed off area and you're like, uh, I wonder, I wonder what they mean by that. Yeah, it's it's unsettling. So I'm curious because obviously I think what y'all are doing in Dallas right now is extremely important, and you've

been having a lot of success so far. I wanted to talk a little bit about how your organization because we we chatted with the John Brown Gun Club folks a couple of weeks ago about how they started organizing. How did say it with your chest get off the ground? Um, so that was interesting. Stay with your Chest originally started along with a lot of orcs and mutually at works in Dallas. Um after George Floyd was more murdered back

in June of like, um, we started. Um. I was in play Now at the time, which is like a suburb Yeah, where I grew up. Oh really Yeah, I wasn't playing at the time, and uh, you know, I, me and my friends were kind of like these suburban people can turn off their TVs and not really have to worry about the protest going on. Downtown and things like that. So we would protest on street corners and just yell at you know, white people in their Mercedes

and you know, make them uncomfortable on purpose. Um. Then we started linking up with other mutual aid orcs in Dallas, and you know it was just shaping food, trying to carry that stuff up north. Um. And then uh then we um, well I started going to Camp Ronda UM, which was like a probably the first and like it was a very solid example of a self sustating, houseless encampment where we're just allowed to be and left alone.

We're helping people left at them and recovery and things like that, and um, everyone looked out for each other. It was a really great community for that was such a rad project. Um. Not to derail it too much, but I want to tell you guys about Camp Randa. Yeah, like that's tically organized on houses camp. The organizers outside organizers were there everyday helping. The camp itself was organized amongst themselves. They had political theory meetings, they had community

meetings to solve issues and resolve inter personal problems. Fucking rad um. And it stayed together for nine months. It was it lasted for a minute. I know it was a proximate. It was over six I believe. But it lasted for a while at one location and then it had to move and then um the next location we ended up moving all the people to. They stayed there first all ten months before um the city sold the land and like some under the table deal and showed

up and swept everybody. It reminds me quite a bit of a place I I worked out in Seattle for a while, Nicholsville, which was a plot of land, a couple of acres large where houseless people had set up basically built like a tiny home village for themselves. They provided solar power, um, they had arranged their own like trash pick up. Um. It was safe and uh, very well organized and very comfortable, like an actual fairly high standard of living UM good level like good good wastewater

treatment and all that kind of stuff. Um, which existed for a couple of years before the city came in and swept it and destroyed everybody's houses and force them,

you know into again kind of a series of camping situations. UM. Yeah, which is you know, you get these It's it's very frustrating because there's this understanding that like, well, we want them in And part of the understanding you get from a number of cities is like, well, we do want them in one place, and we want them in something that's more permanent than you know, a bunch of tents.

But if they set that up on their own and have autonomy and have the ability to like exist with any kind of personal freedom, then we don't want that, and we will send armed men and to break it up. Yeah, Like the city is like, oh yeah, well I don't I genuinely do not think that you Dallas wants to

house people. Um. Otherwise the Office of Homo Solutions simply would not exist and they wouldn't have a way to just have money sitting around um, and all those people would lose their jobs, you know, because it's not not housing people. You know, people are like, how do you do that? It's not hard, it's not difficult. The city is spending what two billion dollars. I'm innovating the convention center that could house every house this person in Dallas

for years, you know. But but then we wouldn't be able to have all of the wonderful things. Someone who lived in Dallas fifteen years I can remember one, maybe even two times when I went to the convention center. What would we do? I think maybe one time? What's along with it to where we had like it's Dallas prioritizes developers over anything else, and that is more than

a parent in how they treat the house's population. Um, they're definitely because it's like my my problem, right, Okay, if the city, the city is gonna do sweeps, that's something that I can't really necessarily stop them from doing on my own, but we can and alleviate some of the effects of you know, Um, but when this is sweeping people in the heat like that, we're in the cold, elderly, just a people, It's like, y'all really are just telling

them to die in the least you could do. And I've emailed Marcy Jackson, who's the community outreach chair for OHS, you know, She's been like, well, they can go to the shelter. It's it's about it's within three miles, And I'm like, you you're gonna walk three You're telling somebody who's older than this able to walk three miles in a hundred and seven degree heat to get to a cooling station. That is only open to like five. Well, uh,

there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the city. Just for a little bit of reference too, because like we have cooling stations and stuff up in Portland and you have similar problems. One thing that is a benefit to folks in a place like ore Agon is that after five six pm, when like this cooling stations start to call down, it actually does cool down here, Like it gets cool at night even when it's a hundred outside.

That doesn't happen in Dallas during this Yeah, I've literally had it be triple digits at midnight in fu Dallas, Texas, Like that's the place it is. No, so you're still it's it's still a threat to life and limb even when the sun's not beating down on you. Yeah, sometimes it was cooling shelters, I know. Certainly, like here, we have a bunch of issues with shelters and calling shelters and stuff, like you don't have privacy, you can't bring your pets. They want you to look all your possessions

up somewhere else. There are like a number of other things that really limit people's ability to feel safe accessing. I don't know if it's the same there, but like it's not that there's necessarily a place where someone would feel safe and I'm not going there. It's when I

made that clear. Pets are a big issue, and this is something that again when I was at Nicholsville, people would point out that, like folks would accuse them of being like abusive because they had a cat or a dog, you know, that was living with them in the encampment. And they'd be like, well, number one, like it's okay for me to live this way, but it's not okay for like a cat or a dog. And also just like do I not deserve companionship and love in my life?

Like this is what this animal is one of the is one of the things that helps keep me. And I talked to a number of folks who got back into housing who were like, if we had not had our cat with us, like, I don't know that we would have made it, because just having that animal with us like helped. Like it's it's for the same reason everybody has animals, right, Like every single house, this person that has a pet has a service animal has as a service animals far as I'm concerned, would you separate

somebody who is disabled from their wheelchair. Would you separate somebody from there, like their service animal, their dog that they eat, you know, And it's like when you're out there, UM, I know that a lot of people will have dogs for comfort, but also dogs are protection, they are security in such a dangerous environment UM, where people are always you know, like it's just it's just it is unfathomable how much trauma UM goes into being houseless, especially in Dallas,

in places like Dalla. UM. So I'd like to ask you a little bit, so you have been Is this kind of the first collaboration this last week or so, let's say it with your chest has had with the the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club. Have you guys been working together prior to this? Uh? Yeah, yeah, like we UM I originally met members of Elm Fork when UM Camp Ronda first started, uh back in UM and we were collaborating on like getting people's supplies, UM tents

and things like that. I would run laundry UM with my org uh and yeah, we were we just you know, always collaborated to make sure like the people could get

what they need. If somebody had supplied, someone was able to show up and we couldn't you know, UM just working together again And I'm curious, UM, could you kind of walk us through sort of how what you see is the benefit of having folks who are visibly armed UM for this kind of for these kind of actions, Like how did how did number one sweep defense tend to work before y'all were doing that, and how has that altered kind of the way in which you're seeing

this activism like take effect. UM. As far as I know, people from members of ELM four because I have always shown up with UM firearms in some capacity, whether it's concealed or open. But UM, there was a noticeable difference with the open carry UM. I know that back in Chad you worry when one of our other camps was getting swept UM and they showed up Like afterwards, we had a meeting with the director of UM Home Solutions,

Christine Crosley. She sucks UM and uh. She was like, people were like, we were hearing reports of people that were openly armed, and we want to we really care about the safety of like the unhoused residents out there, And I was like they were more afraid of the cops than of the five people out here with with rifles, and that's that's something It's like, if you're gonna show up with twelve dudes with guns, what's the problem with some of us showing up with like a little something

just in case? You know, the state should not be the only one to have access to firearms that very dangerous. UM. But also I don't mean that in a to a kind of way if that makes sensitive. Yeah, that does kind of bring up an interesting point, which is if you're showing as you're showing up kind of in this capacity with both activists to kind of help folks with their stuff, with with laundry and other needs, but also people who are are carrying are fifteens and wearing plate carriers.

I imagine there's like a degree to which you are trying to give people a heads up before just so they don't be like, oh, suddenly there's folks with guns. What's going on? Right? Can you kind of walk us through the community outreach explaining sort of like how you how you actually go about letting people know what's going to be happening and stuff and and what the folks showing up are doing well when it comes to sweeps UM and normally I focus a lot on just making

sure that people are okay and defending them. Um. When I I do not necessarily like ask for work to show up with guns. I'm more like I assume if y'all are going to be there, they are going to be um, you know. And sometimes there was Usually the residents are like the residents have some of the residents

have firearms themselves, you know, so they're like, well aware. Um, there are some cases where like people will get a little bit anxious about it, and you know, we kind of have to be like, if you really don't want the guns here, then that's fine, we can move them. But in the past, with this track record, like usually the city kind of backs off a little bit when they know that y'all are actolutely protected, you know, because um,

the city is the city is a bully. They really do like picking on people who the most vulnerable of us, you know. Um, And so lately the guns have been seeming to have them back off a little bit. I know when they pulled up, Like when ELM we're pulled up and hopped out the car with the rifles, all of the cops are at we squatted up into like a little a little I don't know, pick circle and they started talking, uh, and they were genuinely like what

do we do? Hold on? You know? Yeah, And it's I mean that's kind of the that's kind of the story as we're coming into it right now, which is there were supposed to be a sweep. What is it

five days ago now, Friday? Yeah, almost a week and you all have been showing up a couple of times in that period to help people get there, get things together and whatnot and get get which is an important The fact that you're helping them kind of move and and doing it more in kind of their own time frame as opposed to the city shows up and you've got to like grab what you can or lose everything, um, is important because you're also you're not just showing up

with activists with guns and saying like the city we're not going to let any like no one's going to move, and we're like we're we're drawing a line in the sand, which is not would not be a particularly safe call.

I wouldn't think my my main priority out there, because there's a lot of black and brown bodies out there people is making sure we are safe and um, even before this last one, Like a lot of us were concerned about the guns because like we didn't want things to escalate, and we never know with police, sometimes they get really excited and then sometimes they back off. It's really, uh, we really don't know. Um, So we were also taking

that into consideration. UM. And I was kind of like the unfork No, like, listen, there's a lot of black and brown people out here, and we don't want to escalate anything and you know, put people in danger. Um. And it seems like this time, the city I didn't really want to mess with that. So that's good, but it's always important to keep that in mind any time

you have firearms. Oh yes, population And I'm curious, um, bubble, can you talk a little bit about the how this kind of organizing is sort of different than the stuff you've been doing at at counterprotesting events. Like what are kind of the different things that y'all are keeping in mind as you as you make action plans for days like this compared to when you know you're showing up to at a at a protest to kind of counter

groups of Proud Boys or whatever. Yeah, it's pretty different, um, in that when we're doing security for marches, or um, you know, protecting pride events. Uh, it's not like a direct confrontation with so it's it's a bit it's a bit different. It's a little bit more high stakes. Um. When we do stop the sweep things, you know, we want to we want to push back, but at the same um, you know, not be the first to cross any lines. Um. So it is, you know, it is.

It is a more sensitive situation. I think it requires different kind of planning. Um. And of course there's there's all these bystanders, there's all of the residents there who were there the help that we don't want to endanger in any way. Um. Like Danny was saying. I actually had um what ended up being a pretty cool conversation with a resident afterward. But he was kind of an organizer in the camp and he was talking to me and he said, you know, I don't think we want

the guns, like, we don't want any trouble. And I leaned over to him and I whispered to him, Look, we're just here with guns to try to get the cops to back off. Um. I think they're actually backing off now because we had actually just heard the cops that we're going to leave. I said, I think they're backing off. We're gone, don't worry about it. And he said, wait wait, you know, don't leave yet, wait till they leave. Um. And now that that's uh, I am interested like as

the uh the actual folks showing up armed bubble. Do you guys have kind of a like standard set of responses and stuff that you work through ahead of time to kind of explain things to people and make sure everyone's on the same page in terms of how they're doing it. Um. Yeah, we have some of that worked out. That's an evolving thing where we're trying to standardize. Yeah. Worked a long time with a core group of people

that knows each other really well. Um. So we have like seen each other at you know, dozens of these things and we know how each other operate. With some newer people coming in, you know, we are working now on kind of standardizing those responses and uh, you know,

sharing our past experiences and are thinking and all that. Um. Now, question for for both Slash either of you, as you've gotten more into do sweep defenses, what have been some of kind of the lessons learned things that have been like, Okay, we went into it thinking like this was a good idea and it turned out that like that doesn't work very well. So we've had to do this like just things that have kind of um best practices that have

kind of evolved over time doing this UM. Honestly a lot of it a lot when when tensions are really high like that, UM, because you come to sweeps like I'm the one kind of like dealing with UM a lot of like overseeing and stuff like that, and when tensions are really high like that. Honestly, the thing is

harm reduction. Harm Reduction is at the pinnacle of it's at the core of like whatever we do, and part of that is meeting people where they're at UM and making sure that we UM help the people I show up, I shoot you not. One of the best things that we started doing is showing up with packs of Newports

on God. It makes it a lot UM. You know, when you're going through trauma like that, UM and someone hands you a cigarette, that's something that not only helps you kind of regulate yourself when you're experiencing this high stress situation where you're being evicted from your home and you're gonna lose your stuff and you're afraid people are gonna steal things, and it's a whole lot that helps bring people back and it makes it a lot easier for us to UM work with people and UM still

maintain the bonds that we've created and maintain the levels of trust that we have with the community. UM literally some simple things like handing out cigarettes, UM during because that's a way that we're like, hey, we're here for you, we know what you need, yeah, and we're not We're also we're not here to like judge what's best for you, you know, and do some like nanny state ship, like you need a cigarette right now, right like it's stressful, not really like hell, I would need a cigarette to

you know. At that point, UM, there was somebody who was like, you're asking people for newports. You need to stop doing that, Like that's really unhealthy. And I thought you were trying to say these people and it's like, I'm not trying to say for starters. M. We're not Captain America. We're not no avengers. Okay, we are regular people fulfilling a responsibility, and that responsibility is to be

there for our neighbors. That's how movements happen, That's how anything happens, and all of that is rooted in you know, indigenous UM communalism and theory and stuff like that that I think is really important. It's just fulfilling that responsibility and being there for people and when it comes to because you know, we always try to provide folks listening in other towns and stuff who maybe like inspired by this, with options for how they might move forward on trying

to replicate some of y'all's successes. If people are looking at okay, I would like to help do sweep defensive I would like to do, you know, work kind of

like this in my own community. How do you recommend because obviously there's you know, how how to build organizations is another matter, But like, if you've got a group together to help folks, how do you recommend kind of starting the process of introducing yourself Because you can't just like show up and be like hey, like just be like, hey, we're gonna certainly not with guns, but yeah, and don't um you have to develop a really really strong report

with your community first, and you also need to make sure that's your community. Like you know, um, I I've spent a really long time creating relationships with the housed populations of South Dallas, and that took literal years, you know, expecting people to trust you off the bat, and expecting people to just like I feel like, oh, you're one of the good guys. It's not going to happen, especially

if you're white. Like, honestly, if we'd be if we're keeping in a book, because like, there's a whole lot of black and brown people out there in these vulnerable communities, and usually the white people that they see are the white people who are talking down to them and not treating them as human beings. The main thing that people, the people out there need most is consistency from you, even if you don't even if one day you don't have anything and you can just hand out water there

with them and developing community that way, you know. And one of the things that people tell me a lot is that just it was It's been very shocking to me how much I've heard it is people are like, you don't talk to us like how other people talk to us. You talk to us like people. And the sheer amount of time I was really shocked by how many times about stare that because I'm like, you know, I don't really think I talked much differently from anybody else.

But then when I go out there and see other people, just random people handing out macgriddles or whatever, you know, there's definitely a switch. Like if you were talking to a pet or to a child, you know, um, like you pity something, people will not want you around because honestly, they don't want your pity. What they want is bottles of water. You know. If you're just only showing up when ships going down, um, you don't actually have the

people's trust. And I think, if anything, that that hurts it a little bit because it's like, oh, I am only here to make you feel good about yourself. You want to be the one saving everybody. It's like you've got to dismantle your savior complex first before you do anything. And I think it's good to talk about, um kind of how this actually how these actions actually look on the ground, because again, the thing that sort of has gone semiviral on Twitter has been the fact that like,

you know, people with guns stood off the cops. But if you're imagining some sort of like big armed standoff, like that's not how this has looked. Which is the thing I liked about the Dallas Morning News article, Um, which we will do you mean the article or the opinion piece. Sorry, yes, um, I am pulling it up

right now, just to have that we have an opinion already. Oh, any time on howse people pop up in the discourse, someone is ready to write and I again, Yeah, it's the the article, the article armed activists block Dallas workers from cleaning a homeless camp. That's an acceptable opinion. That's

That's not the one I was talking about. The one I'm talking about is titled and it is a news article Dallas delays moving homeless camp after activists show up, which did a good job of not kind of over emphasizing the armed part and talking about the actual work y'all we're doing in the community. I was kind of impressed with it, especially given the Dallas Morning News is most recent like general trends, shall we say, and considering

their opinion piece they published yesterday. Yeah, I hadn't seen that one. Could you talk a little bit about how these these actions have actually looked on the ground during the day of Yeah, so on the ground, Um, some people arrived very early, and you really never know when the cops in the city are going to show up. So ELM Fork showed up close to nine and they are already like four cops there, UM, and that you know,

that's unfortunate. We probably should have shown up earlier. We you know, if if we're going to go to protect the other activists, you know, you don't want to leave the unarmed activists exposed to um police violence. UM. But either way, you know, we we formed up. It was maybe two unarmed activists for every armed activist, and we discussed what to do. Some people decided to block off

the streets with their vehicles. UM. The cops were there for a solid hour and a half before almost Solution or the Office of Homeless Solutions and Code Compliance started arriving. So by that time, UM, a good number of armed activists were there and the cops had been discussing amongst themselves, UM, you know, whatever it is that they were talking about. But when oh HS and Code got there, they talked with the cops for about thirty minutes and then they

started leaving. During that time, the unarmed activists were packing things up, UM get you know, getting people ready to move. If those people wanted to move, UH. One thing to to kind of go back a little bit. One thing that we've learned carrying is it's very difficult to do the same things that we were doing as an armed activists. Um, you know, we we don't really want to be carrying tents and stuff while also trying to negotiate, you know, having a rifle in our arms. So uh, you know,

there's kind of a division of labor there. But you know, before two hours had even passed, basically the sweep was called off. The city and the cops left and the mutual aid work continued Throughout the rest of the day. H Elm Fork had some members switching out. You know, some people had to go to work. Some people arrived around noon that was kind of the main switch out point, and uh, you know, a lesser number of people but still a significant amount stayed there until four or five

pm whenever four comes with guns. The main thing that I like to have them do is surveillance and be watching so that way we can focus on, um, having other volunteers actually help people, you know, and like have them help them move and stuff. And the surveillance definitely helps because what happens when the cops leave and when the city leaves is that they'll still have people like watching um and driving around and trying to surveil us UM, and so having more eyes on that situation and having

them know like, yeah, we're still here is really helpful. Great, Um, Thank you. Did anybody else have additional questions to ask? James? You had one or two more things? Yeah, I'm like, I'm interested in and maybe asking bubble this because I'm just looking at the pictures on the on the Dallas Morning News story And incredibly they didn't lead with a picture of you all sort of suited and booted in full battle rattle, which I think is good on that part, um,

But how do you present an event like this? Right? Like, obviously I think we should probably mention that, Like I'm guessing it's legal to open carry where you are, Uh, so you're not like immediately criming and therefore provoking a superfining confrontation with the police. Um, although obviously the police are always turning up armed um and that always brings violence into the equation. But are you like masque? Do you full like this person I'm seeing is like masked, helmet, goggles,

plate carrier? Is that generally how you present or is that just left up to individuals I wonder, Um, we try to be pretty uniform, but it definitely varies by action. I think the last time we came out armed, um, we were not in helmets and plate carriers. Um, but you know everyone has one now and uh, we discussed

it beforehand. We decided to go that way. Um. We try not to arc directly where we're going to get seen, you know, if all possible, Um, because we do need to get out Europe, you know, walk over in all our stuff. Um. But yeah, I think you know, for a lot of actions now, including security, that's kind of been our uh go to way of presenting. The full masks are very important. We've moved from like you know, medical style masks too, all the clava style masks, just

to get more skin coverage, protect our identities better. Yeah, it makes sense. And one other thing I just wanted to ask and perhaps like explaining in a context it might might not be read of in Texas. I don't know. Um, in California, at least you need two proofs of address to a firearm, right um. Uh, and if you're inhoused you might not have those, and therefore people alienated from

what it's theoretically they're right. Um, whether you want to see that as a universe or right or constitutional right, is that the case there or at these people? But if they to Texas, Texas, you don't. You don't have to file a four four seven three to buy a gun in the state of Texas. My gun literally was just given to me by somebody. I didn't have to do a DAL transfer or nothing. Like. Guns are so easy to get in Texas, it's actually really scary. Yeah,

private sale, you can basically do whatever you want. Yeah, it is hard not to wind up owning a gun in the States. Easier than owning a place to stay. Definitely, way easier. Yeah, what a country method in the house? Okay, magnificent. Okay, well yeah, not the case in other states. I guess to know. And and nothing that we've said here should be taken as legal advice, are e, how to protest or partake an armed activism, because that can vary. That

varies wildly based on your zip code. And everything we've talked about today is a massive series of felonies and a number of other parts of the United States, like, you're not You're not going to be providing sweep defense in New York City in this manner. You know, you do this where I live in show up into consideration. Yeah, so take obviously, I mean that's a big part of what you're saying. Those you have to take the situation

on the ground. You have to take the situation with these people's individuals into You can't just you can't just go in and impose like this is how we're going to do sweep defense. You have to go in there like being willing to learn and adapt because, um, this is not you know, your day to day life, and it is life for folks there, and you have to come in willing to learn and understand what they need rather than like what you think they need. Yeah, the we never know what the city is going to show

up with each time. Like the Monday sweep before this past one, it was all marshals. It wasn't even act like regular dp D. It was all marshals. They were ready to arrest. They had bulldozers and cranes and all types of ship. Um. And that was also that was kind of often because I was like, wow, y'all are being mad aggressive this time. I think we just pissed them off too much to the point where they were like,

we have to be you know, meaner about it. Um. I mean, but we ain't been arrested yet, So yeah, fingers crossed. I do want to win. I do want to mention one more thing. I know we've talked about how this kind of pertains to Dallas, and you know, had the similar you know situations on increasing sweeps across

the country in Portland. I think last month there was an episode on this show about a homeless encampment in Ohio and in terms of like similar stuff that has happened to kind of demonstrate this is like, you know, this is the thing going on all across the country. UH. There was a really interesting situation in Boise, Idaho earlier this year that we may want to cover more in

depth in the future. But in January, when it was freezing outside, protesters and UH and homeless people launched an encampment in front of the Boise State Capital UH to kind of both provide you know, some type of shelter and community to help keep each other warm, but also in front of the capitol as like a protest to demand access to shelter. Um. You know, and when while in the middle of like a pretty bad housing crisis

and as it's freezing outside. UH. People at the camp faced a lot of basically NonStop harassment from the state, whether that's police or like state state police. UH. They also faced a lot of UH problems from far right militia groups. The Idaho Liberty Dogs showed up to harass people.

There was you know, militia showing up with guns. UM. So you can see like another instance where something that you know arm where another instance where armed community defense could be UH could be a part in trying to key of situations like that from not escalating if done properly. Obviously, if done improperly, that can escalate situations. It was up to you know, you have to make sure that you're with people who are you, who you know, who you trust,

and who are responsible. But it's just it's it's another instance of stuff like this happening. UH. Anti fascists and other activists were able to push were able to keep conflicts from these militia groups to be relatively low at at the at the encampment and after a few months and like courts were trying to shut the protest. That was unsuccessful because of certain laws around camping on on

like Capital grounds for protests. But after a few months the protest was able to end and the city is now been pushed by the protest to open up possibly hundreds of units of shelter in the near future. So you see other instances of of these types of protests that you know, rely on, a lot of like radical mutual aid, a lot of resistance to the state violence, a lot of a lot of resistance to far right

violence actually being some like successful. Um, so there's a lot of places to learn from in this type of thing around homeless encampments and encountering state violence. Would recommend, uh, It's going down, has a lot of good coverage of the Boys the Idaho thing. So yeah, that's just like a whole whole other angle to this, to this sort of trend that we've been seeing the past year. I would like to say that you are not for the al Castro. You know, you are not the revolutionary leader.

You are not the one you know like, and you need to keep that in mind when you're moving in these spaces and doing this type of work. Is if your goal is to try and be like the guy you know, uh that does way more harm than good, and that's really important to keep in mind, UM and dismantling your save your complex as part of that. Um. Of course, in that case, you know, the house is people uh residents, were you know, consenting to it and

things like that. But please do take into account the amount of danger that you're putting very the most vulnerable populations into. Um. It is not necessarily a good idea, we're morally okay, idea to uh make houseless people into your people's army, you know that is not And I want to make sure that everybody you know listening is also well aware of like, that is the wrong way to go about this. The people's army should be people like us, not the most vulnerable of us, because they

are already fighting very hard. So that means that's like it's the same thing like saying white people should be at the front lines protecting black and brown people during protests. It's the same exact concept. You protect the most vulnerable of the group. You do not make them, um, you know, your army and try to convert them into something and be the leader of that either. Um, that is that

is not the way to go about that. Yeah, if you're if you're if you're entering into this relationship with the plan that like, this is a way for us to build power for whatever end, as opposed to we're here to help these people. Um, then you're you're putting them second to whatever your political goals are, which is

bad broadly speaking. I mean, and I know I know at least in the case of the IDA of of in the Ohio encampment that we talked about earlier this month, um, and the IDA who want as well a large number of people who are like leading up that project and in prominent ortization rules where houses people who are living at those camps, Like, it is very important to have people who are like you don't want to go in as someone with stable housing and be like, Okay, I'm

in charge of this thing now. No, it's like the people that are actually experiencing it need to be the like a critical role in actually how it functions. Yeah, and there we've had not we but like there was somebody who tried to do that, um, and it definitely did more harm than good. Um, putting your political goals over just the people is always going to fail every single time. Yeah, listen to the people. If they're not

leading it, don't do it. You know, like at that point your only priority should be getting them what they need and defending them if necessary. Trying to lead stuff and you know, have them putting them into more vulnerable situations than they're already at without like fully being transparent with people or being transparent with all the risks involved. You know, like it's that's real, grimy, real, not okay behavior. Um, So that's just something I also want to caution people against.

And all of that definitely roots back to dismantling your savior complex. And there's um a lot of good um resources out there, um for starting with that process if you have not already, some of them wrong with your chest Instagram Also you get out and follow us or something? I don't know, Yeah, yeah, do you wanna I think, I mean, I'm I'm I'm at the out of questions personally, do we want to um uh end with kind of Yeah, how folks can follow you and stay in touch with

what y'all are doing or potentially even support you. Yeah, we are at say it with your chest dt X on Instagram. UM. I also organized with the Dallas Seberation Movement, which is a bigger or that mobilizes across the nine thousand square miles of d FW. UM. I run that with three of my good friends and organizers. Uh. And so you can follow us at Dallas Liberation m b MPT on Instagram. UM. Oh, if you're willing, able and financially stable, throw us some cash please and listen to

black women. Listen to black and indigenous women. That's all I got, all right, um, bubble, did you have anything to add? I think it's important to have diverse collection of groups. UM. You know, Danny's a hero, she's out there almost every day. UM. For ELM Fork, we do a lot of trainings, we do a lot of classes, UM that take up our resources, but we have these longstanding relationships so that we can support each other UM

when need be. UM. You know, take care of your take care of your spaces, take care of your communities. Like Danny said, UM, focus on the people in those spacesther that be UH and housed people or your own organizers, activists. You know, you gotta keep you gotta keep things safe. It's hot out here. There's been a lot of stress and conflicts, and you always have to practice UM restorative justice and accountability. UM. And you know just keep fighting,

keep keep loving each other. All right, Well that's gonna do it for everybody here at It could happen here today. Uh yeah, go go go do something good. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now and totally 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 sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.