It Could Happen Here Weekly 91

And while we normally talk about it could happening here, if you've been living in France recently, then some of it has been happening to you. I don't know if that's a bad introduction. We're talking about the riots that have recently convulsed large chunks of both European France and some of their overseas territories. So we're gonna be chatting

about that. I've seen a lot of disinfo. There's a lot of like people flipping out about guns and stuff, and you know, a lot of bad information, people blaming it on like Ukrainian weapons sneaking over all that's bullshit. But there's a real fascinating history here and the riots as much as people specific bad actors have attempted to make them into like some new and horrifying thing, It's not just like a oh France b riot and thing. There's like there's like a history.

is kicked off, like I it's it's okay. It's always difficult to like measure how intense a riot is. When it started, people were I saw people saying it was like more intense than like the two thousand and five one. This is like, you know, we've talked a lot about French riding on the show. These specific kinds of riots are like by far the largest and most intense like

kinds of riots that happened in France. This is like a significant escalation from everything that's been happening, even in the last sort of like yeah, seven years, which had been you know, there have been a lot of riots in France recently. These are by far the most intense in the time I've been writing this. The police killed a second person by okay, so I'm going to give my account of what I think happens. The French police are going on like, oh, who can say how this

person was hit by a projectile? But as best I can tell, they shot a guy in the chest with a flashball, which is a flashball is like it's effectively a grenade launcher that shoots flash bang grenades. Now it's supposed to be like a it's a quote unquote less lethal munition. But the thing about less lethal munitions is that I have to shoot people directly with him they die, And they just fucking killed this guy.

killed him. The reporting about it has been terrible, Like the Guardian headlines said man struck by man struck by projectile let protests, which again, this guy was shot by the cops like directly into his chest with one of these weapons. So it's been really bad. And you know, because so again understanding of what's happening here to I want to go through this. There are sort of like

four broad types of people who rioted France. So okay, so the first kind of writer, I think is the one where people are like maybe most familiar with, which is like the French far left like riots a lot. This is mostly anarchists some other people, and that's like a kind of standard Parisian riot will be these people rioting, you know, which we talked a bit about sort of the development of the Black bloc in France, and in

the last episode we did about this. There's you know, there's also sort of like more mainstream, mainstream left, like trade union groups who will have giant marches and those also sometimes turn into riots because they get attacked by the police and stuff like that. And those ones tend to be larger, like the the trade union ones, have

more people, but tend to be less riety. There's the Jean or the yellow vests, who are mostly people from rural areas who either sort of like do roadblocks in rural areas or they come into cities and do marches and riots and they riot pretty intensely. And these three groups have started to be, you know, part of what we've been seeing in the pension, like reform protests and like riots have been these groups were starting to work together. But there's another group of people in France who riot,

who are the residents of the bon Luis. I that's not how you pronounce it, God damn it. Okay. Before, before, before I did this, I looked at how you pronounce it and have now forgotten. It's bond lie that that's how you well, okay.

public housing and stuff for them. I think the under the idea was that if you like moved people over in communities into these neighborhoods, it might make integration and

stuff easier. There's a lot of reasons why this this didn't work that I'm I'm, you know, not an expert on, but like, there were a lot of problematic aspects of the execution, including the attitude among the attitude that goes back pretty far among a lot of French folks that like, well, you know, a positive thing is if they just kind of become French and uh, drop any other aspects of their of their heritage and anyway whatever. It's a whole thing.

lot of people from Algeria, like specifically. And the way that like the French understand this basically it is like all these people are like black and Buslim and like that, you know, Okay, the French are very racist like and and and this is the thing that like I was in academia for a little bit, right, Like I I like thought I understood the like average level of racism of an academic. Holy fucking shit, Oh my god, I'm gonna I'm gonna quote for something about the suburbs like that.

That's from a piece. I'm gonna talk about pieces a little bit because I think it's a really interesting way of thinking about like what the attitude in front in front, like France is. So this is about the bondlier. The French word for suburb is bondlie, a word derived from bonnier mite a bond that is to exclude or banish. And this is the thing. This is from a a an article called the French Autumn Riots twosand and five

and the Crisis of Republican Integration. And this is a really interesting piece because like half of it is like pretty reasonable sort of like analysis of how the left sort of just like failed and portrayed these people. And then the other half of it is them talking about how like like Muslim people and like people from like North Africa have like inherently patriarchal, like reactionary family structures and that because of this they can't be like integrated

to French society. And I'm like, what the f luck Like, this is just a random academic and he just like sounds like a stormfront guy. It's it's it's fucking wild. So I want to talk a bit about how how these things came to be because I think it gets to sort of like you know, what what what what what these places actually are and why these people are writing and to do this for you to go back to the French conquest of Algeria. So all right, so so the French government.

And the French were just like no. So this ended in like a tiff where the governor of Algeria hit the French ambassador with the flyswater and this this led to the French monarchy at this point is led by his guy named Charles the Tenth, who's Mike Duncan calls him, one quote, one of the great idiots of history, and he's like about to get overthrown. So he's like, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna invade Algeria and this is going to like distract everyone from the fact that everyone hates

me and they're gonna overthrow me. And this doesn't work, right, Like, so the French like conquer Algeria, but Charles Otant is overthrown literally three weeks after this finishes. But the sort of crucial thing here is that like the successive French governments keep control of Algeria and they you know this this is like one of the places where there's sort of like modern French racism emerges from is there there's this you know, the whole invasion is wrapped up in.

a backwards culture. It easy to be like integrated into French republicanism, and you know, this is yeah, this specific kind of French racism is very very old. You also briefly mentioned we're gonna mostly talk about Ageria here because like a lot of the people who end up living in the suburbs are Algerian. But like the French had a whole empire, they conquered a bunch of parts of like a bunch of Western Africa they you know.

of their acquisitions. If you can't call it.

in what period of time in French clobal history. You get to the straight is just the the French state is just structurally anti black, like it is so unfathomably racist. And you know, the way this sort of plays out in Algeria, right is like they hold on to Algeria

for one hundred and thirty years. But one of the sort of products of this, right is that, okay, so, like Algeria is now part of just like the French Empire effectively, right, and this means that over the over the sort of decades, the French government starts like importing Algerian like workers into France because okay, so one of the the French carry out basically like a series of genocidal campaigns where they just like like progressive different French

regimes like steal more and more of the land that anyone ever in Algeria had until you get to a point where Algeria is just effectively a French settler colony, and so Okay, so they they've displaced all these people and they start, you know, recruiting them to go work in France. But this this becomes a huge problem for the French state because you know, now they have a bunch of colonized people in France who they need to

like keep colonized. And in order to do this, you get like, you know, you get Fucoast boomerang, right where you have these French police that are trained in Algeria who are used like against Algerians in France. And you know, I've said that was like it's not just that it's used against Algerians, right, It's used against like people from all over the sort of French empire, from like northwest Africa, even people who were from Haiti who like wound up

in France. But this comes to a head in nineteen sixty one when there's just one of the weirder parts of French history is there's like a second coup attempt where all of these officers, these like these French officers in Algeria are like terrified the French people had voted to like that could have led to Algerians getting the ability to like vote over like self rule. Right, and the French like colonial officers in Algeria go nuts over this and they try to overthrow the government and it fails.

But the result of this is that Degaul gets like dictatorial powers in France for like five months, and in October of that year, the Algerian National Liberation Front, which is like the you know, this is like the giant sort of movements of the like franchise of the Augeri anticlonial move But like they have this giant protest in

Paris and the police just start shooting them. I mean, this is this is this is this is you know, like this is not a riot, right, like this is this is just like they have a giant piece of march, the police start just killing them. They kill several hundred Augurian protesters. Uh, they throw their corpses into the Seine. I'm going to read this quote from the BBC. One photo captured the chilling sentiment of the time, showing graffiti scrawled along a section of the Sin's embarkment saying, here

we drown Algerians. And they kill like at least two hundred people, probably more than that. They are like they're throwing like children into the river. To try to drown them. It is fucking awful. And the French government, like they deny that this happened for decades. The first this massacre is in nineteen sixty one, right, the first the first like French prime minister to are French president to admit that this happened. Did it in like it was I

think it was. I think it was twenty eleven. It was fifty years later that the first French politician like admitted they did it, And the government has still never apologized for this. So these are this is what the French police are, right, Like they are These people they are you know, they're the people who like a bunch of Algerians did a protest for independence and they killed they like theyre they threw their children's corpses into a river.

And this is the sort of long rage backdrop of like everything that's happening in modern France like today, right is the fact that like France was an empire still like is in a lot of ways an empire, and their police are just like unfathomably violent and racist.

place has gone to hell. Like violence that exceeds that by by many factors, has been like the norm for segments of French society going back as long as the

United States has existed. So you know, like the the the ugliness that you see in the moment of the riot is not like it like focusing on that and ignoring what what's caused it, Like why people have been like reached a pitch where they're doing stuff like that is kind of an error, an error at least in like historical analysis, and I think also an error in terms of like the severity of what we're looking at, Like none of like all of the ugly shit that's happened,

because at least one person was killed by rioters and all this, but like all of the ugliness of this current set of riots doesn't compare to one boat sinking in the Mediterranean. Yeah, like, and that those things are very much tied together. You know, France has had a significant role in why northern Africa is the way it is right now, and why large chunks of like the

that continent have endured waves of successive starvation, famine, death war. Like, Like I want to I want to, like I want to just briefly talk about Vietnam for a little bit, because sure, I think something that like people don't really understand is.

why people like drive them out, is that there are like just innumerable people who just fucking starve and die because the French colis which just like fuck you, and you know, like they the French Empire. It doesn't get as much attention as like the British or the Spanish or like the Americans, but it was like incomprehensibly inhuman in terms of just like the shit that they did and fuck them. They lost yen been food, they'll lose again.

shoot mash. Yeah, there was just this like belief that because two police officers were killed in that and there was this kind of belief among segments of the population that maybe if the police had been able to be more aggressive, they would have responded more successfully to the shooting. I think the existence of the American police and the number of mass shootings we have might argue against that. But that's one of the things people will say, is why this shooting happened?

religion after Catholicism. There were seven million French citizens of Arab or African origin. They had no representation in the National Assembly. Not a single member of the National Assembly was a Muslim or even Arab or African in their descent, so there was literally no representation. They were targeted by the police. These kids die a suspicious death and people people riot like like like motherfuckers, you know. And I was a pretty good set of riots. Yeah, it was

that one the five ones. I can pull some of the stats on it before I want to go back. I think I've got some right here. Actually, yeah, at least I.

police deployed. So this is I think, like it gets to like the severity of what's happening and how scared the French state is of it, because you know, like as the current French government is not very stable, they've been trying to like they're on you're like, this is like the fifth round of like riots that they've seen in the last like seven years. Yeah, yeah, which.

for them. What they you know, like they what jobs they can get are like the just awful, Like you know, like Americans are familiar with dogshit service sector jobs, right, Like it's like it's that kind of stuff. And you know, and this is a product of a lot of sort of long range like political trends, right. It's it's you know, like capitalism is and spitting people out of the social system.

The other thing that I think is I think is really important about these protests is that like the kids in the suburbs are like not really connected to the French left. And there's a reason for that. And the reason for that is this movement that happened in nineteen eighty one. So in nine eighty one we got really the first of this kind of riots. So you know, these these suburbs were like mostly these like housing developments.

I guess we're mostly built like in the seventies to accommodate like a new flow of migrant workers from mostly from Algeria, from other places too, And in nineen eighty one you get the first of these riots, and French society is like, holy shit because there's a bunch of

non white people rioting and they lose their minds. And after the first set of riots, which the first, and the thing, the thing that's I think interesting about this too is the initial riots aren't that big, like they're they're like pretty small compared to like what has come after happen.

to Paris. But the problem is this movement starts to like fail almost immediately, it starts to fall apart because you know, at this point Midrand, who is he's like on and off again as the French Frime minister for a lot of the eighties, and Midrand is from the Socialist Party and his his plan for this is to basically to attempt to co opt this movement and to turn all of these people who live in the suburbs into like a new into a new voter base for

the French Socialist Party. But the problem with this is that instead of you know, okay, so the Midran does some reforms kind of to like put money into these communities, but like again, these people are being structurally disenfranchised by a combination of sort of French racism, like the physical urban geography of these of these suburbs, like capitalism in general, and you know, these are these are sort of like macro forces, and I Mida RAN's plan to stop the

riots is he has he has these summer music festivals that like higher unemployed youth that are that are that go by the name and I'm not making this up, so os receives me. So they're just like, this is this is our plan to saw the riots. We're just gonna have like these like good work guys music concerts.

guys haven't changed anything. And and you know, there's and there's there's a lot of promises that the French Sovices Party breaks. One of the important ones is that they the French Loss Party had been promising to let immigrants vote in local elections and that's just fucking vanished, right, This has never happened. This is part of why there was, like, no, there's so little representation in the French governments. And you know, the actual the actual sort of broader goals of this

anti Rais movement it fails. And there's a there's an undocumented workers movement that sort of comes that like splinters off from it, but it's completely destroyed by the French business class. And you know, France in this point period still has some very strong unions, and the unions just like we're like, now, fuck you, like die and just

hold them to fuck off. And from there and from from the betrayal of the Socialist Party, and also simultaneously, the other thing that's happening in the eighties is the rise of sort of like these French new Like the

French New Right is like resurgence. These guys. When I say the French New Right, these people are like fucking neo Nazis, right, like very very very very A bunch of very famous French neo Nazis who modern neo Nazis read, appear in this period and they start doing there's a bunch of anti immigrant murders that are just horrible, and but you know, the state is just kind of gone like eh, whatever, like fuck it, you guys can die.

And so and this has a massive impact on the culture of these suburbs, and you know what what the what kind of political possibility these they have because these people like like to this day you will get people talking about like the Great talked about the Great betrayal and how they got fucked by the Socialist Party and so like these people don't like they have very little contact mostly with the mainstream French left the mainstream French

left is, especially the central left is really fucking racist, like even like the communist parties really fucking And part of what was happening here too is the eighties the perid where the Communist party collapses and you know, and so like all of the sort of like the organized left factions like don't like them. The unions are like

what the fuck are these Algerians? Like fuck them, they're Muslim, we hate them, uh, and you know, and so so the legacy of this is that the government does some welfare policies and they like try to do some job creation a little bit, but this was always just doomed to fail because these are you know, like what like

France in this period is de industrializing. And so the product of this is like you have all of these people who are now just unemployed, who were attempted, like you know, there's a a temp to integrate them into the left and the left just fuck them. But you know, obviously they can't. They're not going to go to the right because the right hates them like even more than

the French left does. And you get these you know, and what happens is like these people, these like these masses of like precariously employed like unemployed immigrants become this like massive focus of the French state. And when Conservatives take over in the nineties, like they use them as

this like raci escape guilt for like every problem. They begin this like massive authoritarian like campaign against black and Muslim people and like you know, like we're we're in the US, right, like we know what that looks like. And you know, and one of the other things that that starts to happen is like like the French state and the French right like portray all these peoples are like like the eighties is also the period like you know this this is this is right after the uh

the Iranian Revolution. There's this like rising fear of like Islamism, and you know, and and and the way that like the state responds to this is basically by just by going with all these people are like like Islamist terrorists, we hate them. All of all of the jobs programs that have been set up, and all of the wolf programs disappear, like there's the funding for the music concerts even just vanishes, and all of this stuff is happening.

Particularly it is like particularly intensely in the early two thousands, and that's that's the other contacts that leads up to two thousand and five riots, is that like by by two thousand and five, people who are living in these places have seen like like really serious deteriorations in their standards living in like the last like four years because these programs are just being destroyed, and you know, and then you know, when you get these these protests thatts

are in two thousand and five. And there's another very similar thing that happens in two thousand and seven when the police like crash into two kids on a motor like a police car crash into two kids on a motorcycle and kill them. And there's like there's like a smaller but like very very intense like series of riots. And then it's kind of weirdly quiet for a bit, you know, I mean, I might I say quiet. Okay, it's been quiet from the rioting and the French police

keep killing people. One of the things that everyone that people are talking about in this one is in twenty seventeen, it came out that the French police just like fucking

raped a teenager and it's fucking horrible. Yeah, And then I think leads us kind of into like into the sort of modern like the thing that's happening right now, which is that you know, like the kids who are rioting in the street, And I think I think this is a big part of the reason why it's this intense is that you know, these are these are like seventeen and eighteen year olds, right, They're old, and they're you know, they're too old to believe in the sort

of like fairy tales of French liberty inequality. Right, they know what that looks like. They know that it's like, friend, like French liberty inequality means a police baton fucking breaking your skull because you were walking down the street.

the fuck did they get guns? Something suspicious must have happened. They must have come in from Ukraine. France is a European country, and European countries don't have guns in the civilian population, like, yes, yes they do France. Actually, interestingly enough, France is one of those countries that primarily regulates who is allowed to own what kinds of guns, as opposed

to what kinds of guns can be owned. So in France, with the right licensing, you can own most of the kinds of firearms that you can own in the United States. In fact, in France, if you have the proper kinds of permits, you can own something like an AR fifteen with a thirty round magazine, which you could not purchase

in the state of California. Now these are these are these are still very stringent gun control if you're going to have because again they split the kinds of firearms into category and the most restricted kind of firearms are semi automatic rifles like ar platform guns. If you're going to have something like that, you're doing an intense background check, You're doing like you're submitting to random searches, you know, by the police. Like it's not nearly as easy as

it is to acquire firearms in the US. But there aren't quite a lot of firearms. I think you're allowed to own up to like ten magazines per gun and a thousand rounds or something like that. That said, I don't believe the majority of the guns that we've seen on the streets and the riots are normal, legal, civilian

owned arms. That said, the existence of guns in these protests has also been heavily overstated, largely result of footage of shit like people shooting out cameras with what are actually air rifles that folks just assume our real firearms. There's also been shit like there was one video that went really viral that was a petrol bomb being set off by protesters at a government building and it was

just blue checks on Twitter. People who pay elon for it were spreading it saying, look, people are using RPGs in the riots. You know, rioters have rocket launchers. These are in some there were a number of folks who got tens of thousands of shares and likes claiming that this was These were examples of like heavy weaponry from Ukraine getting over to the US. For one thing, if guns were if weaponry was getting out of Ukraine, RPGs are not like the thing that people would be psyched

to get. You can get RPGs in Europe, and you're generally getting them from North Africa, right like, or from the Balkans. You know, there's no shortage of com block weaponry in that part of the country, but it was not an RPG being used. Well.

they set the they set the cabin on fire. It's like, I don't even know how you do that? Because like, like did they did they climb up the thing like they got like did they set it on fire and then climbed down will was on fire? Like, how do you even do that? I saw I saw another video that was unbelievably funny where a bunch of protesters like like in front of the mayor of their town, covered his car and gasoline and lit it on fire, which

was very funny. But like, but like, you know, this is this is the thing like fire is.

happened here is food and medicine. Yeah, and that is the most depressing thing. But the fact that people are doing subsistence looting is like maybe the most depressing thing I've ever heard in my entire life.

they fight back. The other thing I want to talk about is that a lot of these people are like one of the things that people focus on is I actually think it's very funny that there was there was a guy interviewed in the New York Times, who had like the moderate position on the riots, and their moderate position on the riots was it's okay that they're burning

police stations, but why are they burning schools? And I want to talk about the burning schools thing a little bit because this is something that gets talked about a lot, and you know, okay, like this this is you know, this is the sort of sociological question that get because because this is like, burning schools has been a thing that's like this is this happened inwo thousand and five, happened in two thousand and seven, even going back to some of the riots in the eighties and nineties, people

were burning schools. And the reason these kids are burning schools, right, is that most of the people, the people who are burning these schools are like there are kids who went to these schools, right, and you know, they were either in these schools or they just got out and they realized these schools didn't do shit, right, Like, going going to one of these schools doesn't lift you out of poverty.

Studying heart doesn't lift you out of poverty. You're fucked, and you know, and so like yeah, of course, like of course these people are lighting these are lighting their

schools on fire right there there. They're attacking. They're they're they're like they're they're attacking like the actual friends like institution, they were systematically set up to fuck them and one of one of the other, like you know, and like one of the things that always that people always talk about it is like, well why why you you know this?

they that they imported into the country. And so you know, and it's like yeah, and every every single day, the bars of the cage are just are fucking getting are shrinking, right, the cage is shrinking, The walls are getting tighter and tighter. There's less food, there's less money, there's less opportunities, and yeah, you know, at some white people start burning down the cage and and everyone just is like walking around going why why are you burning your cage down? It's your home,

but it's still a cage. Like the fact that the fact that people are made to live in the cage doesn't make it any less a cage. And that's that's why these people are That's why, that's why these people are burning it, because they like they know from you know, just the the the experience of their everyday lives of what it's like to live here, that this place is

fucking killing them. And so you know, they're they they they responded in sort of the classic French fashion, which is to light it on fire.

like guns. And it's largely honestly when I talk about that, Largely the reason why is because there's a whole ecosystem of mainly largely right wing people, like media influencers, a lot of whom got blue checks as soon as Elon offered it because it puts them up higher and the search results. Who started making money in twenty twenty posting riot born from the United States and who are desperate

to return to those days. So anytime there's disturbances anywhere, they're going to try to like what is the most you know, Oh, you know, a lot of folks on the far left and a lot of folks on the riot are angry at you know, the US for sending

weapons to Ukraine. Well let's blame this on that, or you know, I want to make some sort of point about gun control and pretend that like French gun control laws, you know, don't work because some of the Rioters have old shotguns or aks that got smuggled in from across the Mediterranean. So I'm going to make it about that.

But all of which is number one, like calculated in order to increase the profit of a specific a specific kind of dishonest media influencer, and all of which ignores like the humanity of people who are are in a desperate situation and acting desperately as a result.

they they didn't, they didn't. They ended up failing. Because this is one of the other things that's been happening is lots of countries have police anti terrorism units, right, the French have like multiple kinds of them. They also have like military police units, but the French were using these like anti like like specifically anti terrorism units against the protesters, and that that's one of the units that

got deployed. I'm pretty sure if if i'm if I if I if if the sources have been reading, are correct, that was one of the things that happened in this was an anti terrorists. They sent an anti terrorism needed to stop a prison break, and that's I think, you know, it's it's a really sort of emblematic thing of of

what the French state is and like where it's going. Right, It's like the the French Republic was born from a bunch of people trying to storm a prison, and it has now gotten back to a bunch of people trying to storm a prison, and they send a bunch of like fucking anti riot like antim Some.

could make them quick cash. Yeah, but it is kind of a reminder that those people are still there, that like infrastructure of deceit still exists, and every time, you know, the next time there's big riots or protests here, every time it happens anywhere, that shit is all going to spin up. I will say one of the in terms of like stuff that worked, the use of pellet guns to take out cameras was seemed to have been extremely effective.

ideological perspective, but from an organizational perspective, is that they've created like a bunch of networks with affinity groups. And so though like the way this stuff is happening is you get a very small group of people who are capable of moving very quickly and they just go do a thing, right, they don't they don't tell anyone else what they're doing. There's no sort of like there's there's no sort of like top down central command that you can just sort of like stop.

tries to arrest a bunch of people right simultaneously. Like I don't see a world where we don't see another one of these in the next like five maybe ten years, because none of the structural problems are like all the structural problems with the French state are just getting worse

and worse and worse and worse. And ye, you know, at some point someone is like, like, I think, I think the problem with this and the problem with the French movement in general has been for the last about twenty years, there have been a lot of very very similar sort of riots trying to bring down governments and

they mostly don't work. But at some point someone is going to figure out something and they are going to do it, and France like could well be a place where that happens, just because the state's capacity to do violence is you know, like, well, the state's legitimacy is just purely reduced to its capacity for violence. And I don't know, that's not great, but I mean it's what's happening.

an author, and an activist. And Marianna Travina Wright, who people remember as the Butterfly Lady, the previous owner of an M four assault rifle, the lady who made the cop walk off her butterfly sanctuary once, and hero occasionally of Twitter dot com.

can't go in between them. And then the booyes also spin, so if you grab onto them, you're going to just spin down, and then underneath the booys is four feet of netting, so if you try and swim underneath it, you will be captured in the netting and then you will likely drowned. It's originally I think the original design for the makers was to prevent groups like Green Peace and so forth from getting to oil what do you call them, oil stands out in the middle of the

ocean and keep their boats from getting to them. So now they're going to use them and string them because the border technically most Americans, I don't think. No, there's the border technically along a lot of parts of the Rio Grande and Texas is in the middle of the river, depending on where the river's flowing that year, and so they will have to also be weighted down as well.

And the hope for the governor is that most of the people will drown trying to get over to the US side, which means their bodies will remain in Mexico and then we won't have to deal with them easypasy.

and overwhelmingly people don't die on the way here. They die within a few miles of US border, normally on the northern side our borders already and Jen has covered this extensively how our border is already killing people, But this is I think particularly cruel. Is it something that like Abbott started talking about it maybe a month or so ago, maybe two months ago?

this happen. Yeah, but I think that they in that because they knew that that's just not going to fly federally. But although why wouldn't it. I mean, all deterrence policies are based on this kind of cruelty, so I guess visually they thought it would be too much. But since since Rodney Scott is no longer the chief of the Border Patrol and he resigned, he's been working with the State of Texas and specifically with Governor Greg Abbot to

develop new policies and so forth. And he's been down there helping the union and helping other ex Border Patrol agents come up with new policies and new cruelties for Greg Abbott to install. So I think originally the idea was a federal idea, and now it's come down to the State of Texas.

RGV one ninety one, one ninety three. We thought, are these mile markers like we have on the freeway, But they weren't at any particular distance and they were put at various spots that appeared as though they could be areas where migrants crossed. They can also be the paths where the cows and the horses come down to drink. Jenn's been on the river with us. She's observed that at various platforms on the river where water pump stations are for farmers and irrigation districts and such. So we

saw these signs. The RGV one ninety one is facing the river facing Mexico. The backside of it is a caution danger risk of drowning sign in English and in Spanish, but it is facing the United States, on the bank of the Rio Grande River in the United States, so it's in no way a caution to anyone who might

be approaching the river. And we thought, why are they suddenly putting up these signs, because you know, forever people have been crossing the river, and Border Patrol is on the boats there, Texas DPS, the Coast Guard, the US Coast Guard now Game Wardens now Florida Highway Patrol and Florida Fishing Game and all these. I mean, it is everybody's floating the river now, not for recreation but hunting migrants.

the North American Free Trade Zone. So if you have a television or a refrigerator, or you drive a car in the United States today, chances are those pieces and parts are manufactured in Mexico in the Free Trade Zone and then they get brought over by truck. Same thing with so much of our produce, So the amount of that trailer traffic is enormous, and those trailers are used for human smuggling at much higher numbers, we should note

than the river area. Same as for narcotics trafficking. Those things are coming across by the truckload and in shipping vessels, not in small bundles across the Rio Grand River.

the other deployments. It's not just even Texas National Guard who are now deployed to the border. So could you give us like an overview of all the ridiculous lapping that's been done.

DeSantis obviously was the first to do that because he's been very vocal about envy Abbot and how Abbot had kind of a leg up on him in any campaign because.

his own. And what we see is the reality is it is a joint operation between the state government and the federal government, but the Feds won't admit to it because of the optics. It's bad enough that Biden continued border wall construction, which most of his supporters opposed. Now

he is working hand in glove with Abbot. And when I say our experience, what we see daily and what I have documented is US Border Patrol working with Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and Operation Loan Star Texas National guardsmen literally riding in the same vehicles together, responding to scenes, patrolling together. And at the Butterfly Center, we had National Guard Texas National Guard parked on the levee

at our property, blocking our access back and forth. And I went and said, hey, guys, you know this is our property and we have to have access to it during regular business hours for you know, my staff who are working here and our members and visitors who come to explore and enjoy. So I need you all to move. I need you to move your humbyes so we can get back and forth. And I recorded this interaction as I do all and they said, ma'am, we don't take

our orders from you. We take our orders from Border Patrol. And that was a revelation to me when this happened a couple of years ago. So I actually got on the phone with the patrol agent in charge, the highest ranking Border Patrol agent at the McCallen station, and I said, his name is Tony Crane. I said, Tony, you need to come out here and tell these guys to move. They're saying they'll only do it for you, and they

only take orders from you. And Tony drove out there to the Butterfly Center, to the levee and instructed the National Guard to move their vehicle and they did. And this is something we've seen over and over. And I now have in email commander or Regional director rather of Texas DPS, Victor Escalon, who the rest of the nation

may know from the Uvaldi tragedy. I have email from him where he is invoking the federal statute that DPS claims gives them the authority to ignore our Fourth Amendment rights and enter private property without warrant as long as they're working with Warner Patrol, and they are claiming that they are doing so at the request of the United States Attorney General according to the federal statute.

you know, their rights are limited. We're allowed within twenty five miles of the border by the law to go on anybody's private property and even search their buildings, as long as it's not a domicile, and that can sometimes be in question whether it's being used as a domicile or we consider it as a domicile. And then within one hundred miles of any land or sea border, which encompasses two thirds of the United States population, we can basically stop you and ask you to prove that you're

a United States citizen. And so then they increase that with checkpoints that are a little ways away from the border, where they under the guise of asking for or your citizenship. They then get to police American citizens or legal residents. And as the years have progressed, Border patrol keeps trying to push those authorities. In the beginning, you know, we weren't allowed to work with local PD, the local sheriffs.

There was a very clear separation, a very clear line between Border Patrol and local cops, or at least legally on written paper, there were supposed to be. And after nine to eleven, what we end up seeing is the Border Patrol decides to get very heavily invested into surveillance. And it's not a coincidence. Former Chief Rodney Scott was in charge of that during that time, and his basic statement was, you know, if a car is bombed in Iraq,

the Border Patrol needs to know about it. So they considered anything in the world to be important to the Border Patrol, and they wanted the Border Patrol to be the go to agency and as far as surveillance. So that's why you see them being used in Black Lives Matter protests and things like this. And we saw them a lot in the Trump administration where they were supposedly guarding federal buildings and then went and attacked them. So what you see is the Border Patrol trying to quietly

eke into what is typically considered peace officer authority. So they're trying to get peace officer authority in Texas through the state legislature, and they just keep trying to expand their authority more and more. What I see in Texas specifically, is when you look at the history of immigration when the United States, when we first you know, when Texas first became a state and all this other stuff. Originally

the states did their own immigration patrolling. And so if you went and you just decided you're going to somehow you landed on the coast in Georgia, then you would have to go to a Georgian official and pay whatever it is that they require of you and stuff. And so what I see more and more is like Texas is taken back that authority and saying we're the ones that are going to say this, and so then they can make money off of the deterrence policies and all

of this other stuff. So it's just a constant expansion of the rights of the cops, while at the same time constantly reducing the rights to the people who live here and even the people that cross here. A lot of people think, they'll say, you know that migrants don't have any constitutional rights.

and all this other stuff. Border patrol agents will just flat out tell you constitution doesn't exist down here, and they never get in trouble for it.

them all with criminal trespass. So we hear a lot about how awful the cartel is and how much money they take from migrants and then hold them for ransom, and how expensive it is to get across. Well, once they get across the state of Texas becomes the cartel, they arrest them, charge them with criminal trespass, put them in the county jail. It's a five thousand dollars fine.

Then when they're released from state custody, they're immediately handed over to federal detention, and that is generally the for profit geogroup or cor civic. And there my understanding is fines for detention can be ten thousand to twelve thousand dollars for your federal detention. And so here we have it used to be just the for a profit federal detention facilities cashing in on our criminal immigration policies. And Governor Abbot's like, hey, why aren't we getting a piece

of the pie. So that is what Operation Loan Star is really about. It's not about public safety. It's not that all this fetanyl is coming across the Rio Grande River being smuggled by migrants. It's about chi ching chi Ching, chi ching, chiching, putting all of them in to the county jail at five thousand dollars ahead.

Overwhelmingly the people in that in Lone Star who have died have died because they've got drunk and drove because they had an accident with a personally owned firearm. Because Texas law doesn't allow them to stop the National God bringing their own weapons.

was destroyed. The local police will not release any public information related to calls and reports that they have to take of drunken disorderly conduct, noise complaints, property damage, sexual assault, all of these things happening at the hotels where National Guard is staying. But we know from visitors and from property managers and others that.

are seeing increase rates of suicide. And that's that's something that's particular to Border Patrol agents because when you're an oppressor and you do that cut of work, then you're going to end up the suicide rates go through the roof, as they are with the Border Patrol, and now you're seeing that with the National Guard. But Marianna's right, there's a lot of stuff that they're suppressing about what these National Guard kids are getting into because they're bored down there.

So they're sitting down there in Texas drinking and opening it up and getting in trouble. But it's all kind of hush hush quiet about that.

so they're taking another hit for that. And so these were all things that I guess the state didn't really think through when they called all these people up and forced them to come sit on the border and do mind numbing work.

who were because like, yeah, you were. It's just this is this is an inevitable consequence, which is why you shouldn't do something like this unless there's like a dire reason to need to bring the National Guard into a situation like a natural disaster.

I think the only case like I can come across of this happening of someone dying trying to rescue migrants was a National Guard soldier who tried to rescue some people from the river and drowned from what I understand, and like, obviously this drowning barrier is going to if border patroller even invested in investing in getting people from the river, which they might not be if they're from the Mexican site, if they're still on the Mexican side

of the border, right in theory, would put those people, those like National Guard and Border patrol agents in danger to So what have Border patrol to say about the floating barrier so far?

management who's gone along with it. And if they didn't like and if the buying administration didn't like it, then they would come out and say so, or they would come out and have Chief Gloria Chaveez come out and say no, we're not going.

the concrete with the steel ballards. So for even though Trump floated the idea of this Wui border barrier, this floating border wall, to get congressional approval or US Army Corps of Engineer approval for such a thing would have

been an issue. Also there's the issue of the International Boundary and Water Commission Treaty, which is a bi national treaty with Mexico that governs the Rio Grande River, the water that flows in it, the boundaries, who gets to take how much water from it, things that are built and might affect the flow of the river. As Jen mentioned, the inter national boundary is the middle of the river, no matter where the river is flowing now, because over

millions of years, it has shifted. The channel has shifted many, many times and greatly. So we know the FEDS probably border patrol with the Trump administration. So DHS wanted this floating border wall. The easiest way for them to get it is to have Governor Abbott do it. In two thousand and five, the real ID Act, in that act of legislation, Congress gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive every law local, state, federal for border barrier.

So it doesn't say border wall, it says border barrier. So presumably this buoy border barrier would also be covered, so the FEDS don't have to worry about something like the National Environmental Policy Act or the Endangered Species Act or the Rivers and Harbors Act in deploying this. But they do not have authority to waive treaties or the Constitution.

One of the ways in which they have done that is with the We Build the Wall campaign, which built you know, they built border barrier on the International boundary line in Sunland Park, New Mexico and in Mission Texas, and the US government settled with them, allowing this illegal structure to stand in violation of the Tree in spite of Mexico's objections, thereby setting a legal precedent, effectively waiving the treaty.

have to abide by NEPA or any equivalent law. And we know that the FEDS have in the past devised really nasty reach arounds for the law where if they get busted doing something illegal like having Customs and Border Protection spray imas appear a broad spectrum herbicide that is a known carcinogen all over people, animals, and plants on the border, they get sued and made to stop that, they'll simply pass the money through to the state of

Texas and ask them to continue it. And I think this floating buoy border barrier is exactly that kind of thing. The Biden administration can say, we're not doing it, and they don't have to get approval for this design, and they'll just find a way to either pass the money through to Texas or allow Texas to continue to basically fundraise for it by prosecuting immigrants for criminal trespass and finding them to get out of county jail.

what we did. We've got everybody standing in line doing it the legal way.

maga Republicans. Like if you if you look at kind of how Americans are polling on border issues and immigration issues, it's it's pretty bleak at the moment. And I don't really, I don't think anyone has a great clear clue as to like how to reverse that at the moment, which isn't to say that it can't be reversed, it's just it's it's difficult.

to the national security infrastructure. So people that argue that we shouldn't have an asylum system because it's a threat to national security or completely ignorant about what they're talking about, and so they have to start framing it as as a national security issue, you know, one where we can have people come and be inspected and so forth. And

then the people who are the affair various people. Yeah, they're going to go in between the ports of entry, fine, arrest those people, but let's have a humane system otherwise.

my country. I want to come here to see my family, to work for a season or for a spell, to send money home, but then I want to be able to return, and our current system it's too deadly to allow them to make it through and then go back and attempt to do that a second time.

US can't accept everybody. And you know, you get this walking back of.

West that's happening in what like two months ish. Yeah, it's Cordon Miro. Welcome to the show.

opposition to the state powers. So you know, like tech stuff, so internet, mesh, networks, just alternative infrastructures, alternative medical care. Though I'm sure that specific phrasing can and imply something else which I did not mean, but just working with communities to try to not rely on the state. And so dual power gathering is bringing together you know a bunch of people from orgs and independent activists and honestly people who just want to get involved and don't know

a lot to help build those counter structures. And honestly, this cool Zone media brought a lot of people went to the podcast from last year, so it seems like your audience really really likes this stuff.

different well different like regular unions like caucuses and unions, uh like mutual aid networks like worker centers, and so there's there's you know, there's all sorts of things that can be involved in this. But so now now now having gotten we've gotten through dual power, we've sort of gotten through gathering, but we should should Yeah, I want to ask a bit more about like what what Okay, what what happens at the thing when you go to it?

they want to. So you can talk to these people to go to a skill sharing event on stop the Bleed training, you can talk to these people to go to a skill share event on how to facilitate meetings. You can talk to these folk to learn a bit about anarchist history. You know, just all these different things that can be formatted however that you may so choose, and that are all kind of happening at the discretion

of people who are involved. So it's very much so just up to you to build your own day, and of course you can also talk to other people there if you need some help. Plenty of the organizers involved are more than willing to help out and you know, lend people a hand in figuring out where everything is and what they might want to do and what other

people are doing start their day around. But at the core, you know, it's built around individual choice, autonomy and just a non hierarchical method of going about it.

that on a Friday. But then that Saturday, after breakfast, which I don't even remember, it was like oat meal or something, we got together in this assembly area and brought out whiteboards and marked out days and people just stuck up what they wanted to talk about in a session on the board in a time slot, and then we got everyone to figure out, you know, which ones

of these can be condensed. You know, do two people have similar ideas, can they talk about how they might want to have a session together, And then people just chose which sessions to go to. We kept the whiteboards up so people could see what was going on and where, and that worked out pretty well. I think the biggest concern from that was people wanted to go to everything. We simply did not have time, and they were like, can we make this a week And I think that's

pushing it money wise. It's expensive enough to rent a campsite for a weekend, but it has.

think that also facilitated a lot of networking. You were able to see, hey, there's a DIY medicine circle going on in this camp site. Well I'm going to go maybe stop by. I might not say the whole time, but I'm gonna check it out. See if I'm interested, see if I like I like the people there, And it allowed for especially newer folks to interact with veterans veteran activists and just engage with stuff they might have only felt uh interested in slightly and actually get involved

and contribute. So yeah, that that's how it practically went for the unconference, And we didn't hear that many complaints about it, except that it maybe sometimes sessions were not time like the time was too short or too long, or that it wasn't like a week or two.

better at because you know, I guess what what what what what of One of the things that we are in fact learning at these is how to do these things that you know, I guess in this way hasn't been done before.

happening at any given time, and so you know, and I think that the consequence of this is a lot of people sort of relearning or you know, relearning and inventing things that like had been known. But you know, ever, everyone's working through it together, and you know, it turns out we're like we're pretty good at building things.

effort and work. It does, but it's still ultimately something that is in the power of people to do if they really set themselves onto it and are able to find enough helping hands, both physically and in terms of the actual event. So it's like it's really cool to see just everyone coming together in the organizing process and

it just being a very organic, natural thing. It's like, I don't know, you see it a lot with like other specific events I've done food not bomb stuff, and I've seen it there too, but like it's different, but it's something that you typically for see, at least I did for sea as like, oh, you know, building a whole weekend long event, you know you need, yeah to have corporate big shots doing that, you know, how can you expect the little guys to do that?

helped organize the last one. And we're hoping to create a similar, similar thing this time.

everyone can use a bit more of right now. In a sort of in a very sort of depressing and bleak, like there's there's a lot of bad there's a lot of bad stuff happening and the ability to generate hope, and I you know, you could even think of it as sort of in just in terms of like morale, right, Like it's it's really really, really hard to actually achieve or change anything if everyone has just sort of given up already, and you know, like being around other people

and being like planning events with people and doing stuff with people like is a very very good way to you know, just sort of break the kind of like existential dread and like depression of like living and you know, sort of hopelessness of like living in in in this like disaster that we've all been thrown into.

There's just there's often more need and not necessarily more anarchists.

of geography and regional stuff. But yeah, like I think I think this is you know, an important tool to sort of break that and to bring people together and to bring like I don't know, like I think I think like another part of this we haven't talked about as much as like just like really incredible things happen when you bring people together from struggles that like turn out to be very similar, but like aren't like aren't usually involved with each other, Like aren't you sort of

like not like I haven't been able to sort of like link up before. You get very sort of like I don't know, you get a lot of really interesting sort of like ideas and strategic stuff from it.

isolated radical cultures and like specific regions. And it's not a great pitfall to fall into because you miss out on law of developments that might happen else sort of nice out a lot of other things that might happening in other regions, and even beyond just regions, going into specific intersectional issues like different different organizers who might focus specifically on racism versus corphobia, versus ableism. There's all things

to learn from each other. Yeah, there's all interconnectedness, and when you tie that into interconnectedness of different regions, there's just a big need for things to be kind of like a large web of connectivity instead of just you know, oh things are kept separate and now we're stuck developing on a road.

So in terms of specific so we might have planned at is where we're currently at. We're aiming for it to be like last year in that it's a skill share event and a discussion. It's, like I said, of discussions and just a way for people to share what they know with each other. And a few of us currently involved, you know, we all have our own ideas.

I personally want to talk about unions and kind of be like, hey, unionize your workplace, but that's more so just me, and that it could be up to anyone, but what they want to do, kind of building off the Young conference model. It's if people want it, and you know, it's not like how to be a fascist one on one, then it's welcome.

those DIY people. It's a problem and an addiction at this point, but like you know, people who wanted to just build their own car, it's cool stuff. Yeah. The the random expertise of people coming was wonderful, and that all came together in ways I don't think anyone could have predicted, like literally the showing how to use batteries and how to like in a correct way chaining them education. I have an engineering degree. A lot of this stuff was so new to me in a very good way,

and I hope that similar people come back. We can never predict. Leftists are wild. You never know if they're going to take to something. If we don't even know if certain people liked it because they just dropped off the map because they were, you know, just walking to

Denver or something after the gathering. But I think the gathering is our focus has been on getting people to network, and so I think what we've planned besides food, which I think we can talk about in a second, is just making sure people come away with the relationships we've talked so much about already, and trying to give people the opportunities explicitly to socialize, because we also know that people tend to be not veries friendly when approached in

maybe every day organizing, even though you say they should be. Maybe, but life stressful, and I don't blame people, So we're trying to make it a very friendly environment for talking to other people and trying to maybe make that the only other structured thing in the day besides meals.

more welcoming, more open. We invite people to come and let us know. We're still learning and still trying to do this better. So anything we can improve upon, please let us know, because we want to do right by folk.

want to be. Last year, I think that it ended up working out with the kids that were there, and they're amazing and you can see that in the documentary too, but we want to make sure that's something we actually plan for this time, to make sure that they don't feel excluded and also that parents are able to fully participate. And yet you can see more on our website which is Dpgmidwest dot org.

campsite and people don't have to pay too much upfront. Two. Uh, by the by the campsite, I guess rent the campsite for the days and get food and stuff, and then there's options to get reserve a spot in a cabin if there's still spots left. We don't need to have a reservation, but we're trying to make sure that it's that we're prioritizing people with those access needs. And of course our emails also listed on both the Open Collective and the website, so that'll probably be the main source

for info. We also have a collective account.

little control over. But yeah, other people should go. It's going to be a good event. And yeah, thank you to again, thank you, thank you. Yeah, and this has been it can happen here. You can find us in the usual places if they still exist by the time that's eppen so it comes out. Oh yeah, we now have the cooler Zone media thing. If you don't want to listen to the Reagan ads or like, I don't know, a bunch of other ads for podcasts or whatever weird

things playing right now. I think I've been getting casino ads lately, which is kind of interesting. But if you don't listen to that, we have a subscription service from Apple that you can buy, and then you don't want to have ads for all of our shows. We're working. We're still working on the Android one that hopefully will be happening soon. But that's anoverything that's we're doing. We're

doing our best. We're not we unfortunately are not Apple, Like we don't own all of the stuff, so we have to do a bunch of stuff to work through it. But yeah, go go out into the world, build dual power and have a good time while you do it.

question being in my podcast on the Growth. So when I first stumbled upon this concept of conviviality, I thought it was just you know, one of those exciting, fluffy aged prop buzzwords, right, something you you throw into you know, your your propaganda, your conversations, your descriptions of a better world. You like, Oh, I would love to live in a world it's more convened on these different things. Convivial being defined in the Dictionary as the quality of being friendly and lively.

their way into the English language. We could talk about the Spanish concept of contivencia being interpreted literally as living in the company of others, or in one particular context, such as in Spain between the eighteenth and fifteenth centuries, describing the peaceful co existence between different religious groups. But

I'm not going that far back. I'm sticking to the history of the term, from ivan Ilich to the de growth movement to the conviviality manifestos that have come out of online and offline discussions, academic and nonacademic discussions of this idea of conviviality. Now, I gave a sort of a basic dictionary definition before, but I want to go a bit deeper, right, So what is conviviality exactly? Conviviality is about creating a fun and friendly atmosphere where people

can come together and have a great time. That's it in this essence, right, It's that feeling you get when you're surrounded by lively conversations and laughter and a sense of celebration. You know, those moments where everyone's enjoying each other's company and it's a real sense of camaraderie. I think using conviviality as a barometer is really helpful in

organizing situations. Right, If you're in an environment where you are organized and where you're doing practice and you're not picking up those convivial vibes, it may be a sign that there's some toxicity in the mix there. I'm not saying that the work of activism has to be a trip to amusement park, right, It doesn't have to be a carnival, but I think there does need to be for sortidarity to exist. I think there should have some

level of camaraderie and conviviality in the atmosphere. So you can think of conviviality as the spirit of hospitality and warth Right. It's like when you gather with your friends or when you have those family occasions and bring it around together. Even in workplace, you know, when union workers get along really well and you're organizing to create this

union and you're going to take down your boss. It's a fun time, right, And so how do we get from this, you know, sort of seemingly simple, sociable idea of living and enjoying life in the company of others, making people feel welcome and included. How do we move from that idea this conviviality is a vital part of

human interaction, to conviviality in a more political context. How do we go from just talking about social connections and adding meaning to our lives and enjoying festivities and shift to conversations about the social and political stay of the world.

Right now, Right, there's this one particular guy who's kind of respons reponsible for this, A guy I personally like to call the illest, that being the one and only Australian philosopher, social critic and Catholic priest Ivan Elch Over the course, it was nearly eighty years of life since nineteen twenty six. This multi hyphenate, I think that's the tam where you use people who have a lot of

different titles. Right, This multi hyphenate from Vienna, Italy had a significant impact on a bunch of fields, you know, from education to medicines, technology to social justice. I know his name because he came up a lot when I was doing research on unschool and te school and and just the education system as a whole. But apparently he's done a lot more than just that. He's challenged. He's challenged conventional thinking in all sort fields, and he's questioned

the inherent assumptions and structures of modern society. Evans, and I hope he doesn't mind that I call me I Van, because I don't know if I'm pronouncing his German name correctly, right, his German lasting correctly, So just call him Ivan. He probably wouldn't mind, because he's dead. But Evan's intellectual journey

took him through a bunch of different paths. Right. He studied theology and philosophy and eventually became a priest, and he lived and worked in different parts of the world, including Latin America, where he witnessed firsthand the effects of development projects and the power dynamics between developed and developing nations, and those experiences deeply influenced his critical perspective on the

modern industrialized world. He also became a very prolific author, known for his thought provoking and often controversial writings such as The School and Society, which he published nineteen seventy one, Tools for Comality published nineteen seventy three, and Medical Nemesis, published in nineteen seventy six, and in these books he challenged established institutions and systems offered alternative visions that emphasized

individual autonomy, community engagement, and wait for it, convivial relationships ilicious or evans critique of education systems contributed to development of altunative educational approaches such as homeschooling, on schooling, and

learners centered education. His examination of the medical establishment sparked discussions on patient empowerment and the need for a more participatory model of healthcare, something I would like to discuss in a future episode, though I would like to find someone in the disability justice space to have that discussion with, because that is an area of experiential ignorance for me. Yes,

So if anybody has a suggestions, I'd appreciate it. But Evan's legacy, right, it extends far beyond his lifetime, as it's clear he has elasting impact on critical theory, on social philosophy, and the quest for a more just and humane world. And I'm gassed up the guy a lot, and I'm sure he has some flaws that someone will no doubt inform me about and I have not read

all of it. Yeah, he does go. He did go sign the Catholic Change byb being a priest, I se right, So I'm sure he has his flaws, and I have not read all of his literature. I haven't even read Medical Nemesis yet. But in Tools of Conviviality in particular, I want to discuss his perspective on conviviality and its

role in society. Right in the book, he expresses these deep concerns about the negative effects of modern institutions and systems, and he argued that they often hindered personal freedom, autonomy, and human flourishing. He believes many of our social structures had become oppressive as they dictated not only how we should live, learn, and interact, but also how we saw

ourselves as people. He argued that our systems had become highly centralized, reliant on professional expertise and complex technologies that limited individual agency and self determination. Now, one could be bad faith, I suppose and say that, Oh, is he saying that Ivan was anti complex technology? Is he some sort of popular culture vasadization of Luodites or something. But his concern was not necessarily on the technology itself and the complex dat of technology, but more so how that

technology slotted into the structured society as a whole. Right, his concern was about how these elite professional groups had established called a radical monopoly over fundamental human activities including health, agriculture, home building, and learning. And this monopoly, it's monopoly is criticized and all the technology, but the monopoly, according to Ivan, had led to a detrimental war and subsistence that deprived formerly pasant societies of the essential skills and know how.

of social technological aspect of it. Of like the fact that this was combined with this massive sort of social technological push to you know, dry farmers into debt, you know, so they could afford the inputs for this stuff, and what it did to sort of what it did to the actual farming communities and what it did to people's livelihoods. And you know the way that like a lot of this was just the sort of smoke screen for like

consolidation of major landowners, et cetera, et cetera. Like I think, I think he's pretty on the right point.

farming techniques. And the Green Revolution is basically responsible for a lot of the most damaging practices that we see in agriculture today, right from the heavy reliance on chemical inputs like fertilizers and pesticides, which leads to you know, soil degradation with war's a pollution lost by diversity, you know, the emphasis on monocultures and replacements of traditional crop varieties of high yielding ones that reduced agrobi diversity and led

to diseases proliferate in between certain species, intensive farming practices that could not be kept up with by small scale farmers, like Mio was saying, the consolidation of land and the ability to manage that land into these acribusiness corporations and major landowners.

people should have good things. Oh you're dirty red comedy you but you know it's it's just well, it's just literally wealthier capitalism. But apparently that's too much for a lot of capitalists. Apparently. I mean literally, the reason we have welfare capitalism is because socialists forward for it in the early twentieth century and early to mid twentieth century. So you know, we have socialists to thank for everything, basically.

But I'm getting off track, right, So, like I was saying, this monopoly, this radical monopoly over fundamental human activities, that's a detrimental war and subsistence that are deprived peasant societies of the essential skills and know how, instead of promoting human flourishing, all this economic development ended up feeding into

what Yvane has termed modernized poverty. And it's something I think about often, right, this idea of the poor back then versus the poor now, right, And of course it depends on which society you're talking about, which time period you're talking about. But let's just pick some random like historic poor person. Right, Let's just say, I don't know, generic civilization, A. This person is poor, right, They after work,

they have to work the land, backbreaking toil. Sometimes raiders would roll it and be like, oh, we're going to take your stuff now, and then they would like ride their horses away and probably I don't know, dab on you or whatever, or the raiders will roll in, they'll take your stuff and then they'll be like, oh, I want to stay, and then now you have to pay taxes to me every year. And you know, that's how

a lot of states were created. But whether it's you know, nomadic warlords or settled warlords, at least you had a house. At least you had a community. At least you had the ability to grow your own food, even though a lot of that food was being taxed. And you know, at least you had certain skills that you could use to sustain yourself. Right. Compare that to modern poverty, where you have this large swath of people who are dependent, who are mechanical parts in a system that they cannot

fully understand, comprehend and control for themselves. With this, you know, whole industrial revolution, where you take this process of making a chair, for example, and you break it up into a bunch of different steps, and each person that step, well, you knows how to do one thing, but they don't

have to do the entire thing right. Like the poor today versus the poor of yesteryear, the latter still had these skills for subsistence, and many of today is poor, particularly the urban poor, because I know the rural poor, a lot of them still sustain themselves, still practice you know, sustem subsistence farming and that kind of thing, but particularly the urban poor, they don't even have like a lot of those skills to rely on to even sustain themselves

in that level. For the urbanists in the audience, you might appreciate the Devan also talks about the dominance of cars and how they've created this radical monopoly over land sitting out urban environments into the domain of cars, which not only compromises the environment for pedestrians and cyclists, but also disrupts our innate mobility as human beings. Stephen takes

it a step further right. And this particular opinion, opinion of his is a bit shaky for me, so something I've been let in stewing my brain a little bit more. But let me just read the quote. The radical monopoly cars establish is destructive in a special way. Cars create distance. Speedy vehicles of all kinds render space, scarce. They drive wedges of highways into populated areas and the next door tolls on the bridge over the remoteness between people that

was manufactured for their sake. This monopoly overland tour in space into cough fodder. It destroys the environment for feet and bicycles, even if polices and buses could run as non pollutant, even if planes and buses could run as non pollutant, non deplice in public services, they're inhuman velocities, wo degrade mans inned mobility and force him to spend more time for the sake of travel. I'm sure he could pick up on why that particular opinion is a

bit shaky, right, Yeah, it's not just anti car. He's also a bit anti fleen and bus.

It sheds light on the negative consequences of excessive specialization, technocratic control, and the prioritization of speed and efficiency over human well being. Zoeb on YouTube actually has a really great video and the idea of efficiency as this ultimate moral good, so I recommend checking that out, especially since the standard narrative that we are utterly bombarded by is that all these things are uncontroversially good.

look like to him? Well, let's continue. Ivan's solution argues for the developments of new, accessible and user friendly instruments that would allow average citizens to regain practical knowledge and reclaim control over their lives, as well as resist the domination of specialized elites. That's why Ivan Ilich's book Tools for Conviviality is sponsored by Skills. All right, I know

that's a bad joke. Yvan believed that society should be organized to save the needs and aspirations of individuals, rather than creating systems that their potential and autronomy. And so for Yvan conviviality. Here we are back to the original topic. Conviviality represented a society in which individuals had the power to shape their own lives, free from excessive dependence on

institutionalized systems. He envisioned a will people had access to convivial tools, simple user friendly technologies that empowered them to take control of their own destinies. For example, the dominant education system separates learners from the real world and disempowers them. Yvan advocates for more self directed and community based education, where people could pursue knowledge and skills according to their

own interests and needs. Van also critiques the over reliance on medical professionals and call for a shift towards a more participatory model of healthcare that gives individuals access to information and resources that allow them to actively participate in their own health decisions rather than be in these passive recipients of medical interventions. In transportation systems, he also advocates

for more human skill and community oriented transportation alternatives. He envisions neighborhoods designed for walking and biking, which would foster social interactions and reduce the environmental impact of excessive motorized transport. In essence, Evan viewed conviviality as a transformative concept that aimed to restore individual agency and personal connections and a

sense of empowerment in society. He challenged the prevalance structures and systems that limited human potential and proposed more participatory, community driven alternatives, and to this day, his ideas continue to inspire discussions on how we can create a convivial society that values human relationships, self determination, and a shared

responsibility for shaping our own lives. What I found particularly in in researching this was learned that the book's vision of tools that would be developed maintained by a community of users that actually had significant influence on the first developers the personal computer mind blowing I know most notably one of the create first developers of the PC, Lee Felt Felsenstein, Lee Felsenstein, he and several others were just were inspired by this idea within the book, because we

remember Ivana's righting this before the internet, and they go and they take this idea, and then they make the internet, or they make the personal computer, because computers existed prior to the personal computer, but they weren't as accessible, they weren't a tool of conviviality, whereas the personal computer of today is. And I just think that's beautiful and amazing. But Ivan's ideas did more than just, you know, shape the course of human history. He also would shape the

creation of confivulist movement. In twenty ten, eight years after Ivan died and thirty seven years after Yvan published Tools for Conviviality, Raymond de Boiver published Confivialism, a philosophical Manifesto, and in it, Barvert begins by discussing the key theme in Michael Polland's books The Botany of Desire, which is a creage read by the way, and The Omnivores Dilemma, which I haven't read yet, But the key theme is co evolution.

relies on humans for survival. Bavert proposes that focusing on the prefix co in co evolution could have philosophical implications similar to William James's emphasis on the preposition with by you know. Examining the significance of these prepositions co com con or coal as well as sin, the author argues

for a philosophy that recognizes omnipresent interconnection. Michael Polland's books do this well in the context of food, but Waver wants to take this The implications of this uh taken preposition seriously into rearrangement the philosophy itself, and now we're getting, you know, kind of heavy, right, As Quavert argues, philosophers have often neglected the significance of interconnected relationships, while farmers recognize the importance of interconnectedness. You know how things like

land and water and stuff all work together. Modern philosophy, on the other hand, according to Bova, since the Renaissance has been focused on these self standing and independent entities, not interconnected entities. And I don't know how true this is because I'm not I didn't study philosophy. I'm just

communicating Varveir's arguments here, right. And so the idea of autonomy in modern philosophy, according to Barva, seem to exclude the with factor in existence, relegating relations and interconnections to a secondary role. So Whatver is saying is that philosophy is sort on this foundation that we are autonomous and self sufficient first, right, and then everything else comes after.

disengagement from connections. The concept of freedom itself became something that was anti interdependency, and so the focus shifted away from this idea of humans being inherently interdependent. But then this alternative point of view came about, right, And this shift coincided with the introduction of the term symbiosis and biology, which combined the Greek word for life with the preposition with and the concept of sympiosis found its way eventually

into everyday language and discourse. So that's the Greek term symbiosis. Let me go to the Latin term conviviality, meaning with living, and that long predated you know, science and philosophy used to describe just ordinary experiences. And so to avoid getting lost into the philosopher's favorite past time of you know, navigating various words and all their package to bort a downed simplicity, Boivert is seeking to ask what a conviviloust turn in philosophy might look like and what changes in

philosophy might be taken place. For one, he's concerned with how embracing convivialism might change our understanding of metaphysics.

In the sphere of philosophical anthropology, while Vera argues that are contrivial to and would mean redefining humanity, you know, taking this concept that you know, we're not just these purely logical and calculating beings. We are Homo sapiens. And the term sapiens is derived from the Latin word for taste, which highlights the human capacity to constantly try and test, to constantly experiments, to actually participate in interactions with our surroundings.

So in this cond of your turn, we return to the original definition of the name we gave ourselves right as taste does as flexible, educable, subject to investigation and improvement, constantly testing and experiment and then seeing what is best in specific contexts. Seeing that taste as sapiens, as homo sapiens, taste is inherently pluralistic because there is no universe cell taste. There is no single taste that is like, oh, this is the taste. Everybody must have cared to this taste.

Everybody has a different taste. We talk about that when we talk about taste, and I think the implications are particularly profound when we bring it into the preferative, this sphere of profriative politics. Right whereas tasters as experimenters, we are looking for ways to prefigure new social relations and institutions and relationships and structures and systems for the future in the here now, and that requires tastes, and that

requires experimentation. That requires an acceptance of pluralism, because everyone has a different taste, and everyone's going to bring something different to the table, and that's beautiful. And then also in the field of epistemology, the confribulist perspective challenges the opposition between subject and object to understand reality, rejects the idea of the mind as a mere mirror reflecting reality

or project imposts and conceptual schemes onto reality. Because confivialism is about how the intermediaries, the facility to interactions, how they affect the way that we perceive and reflect on reality itself. It also requires us to let go of this subject object dichotomy in our pursuit of knowledge and understanding, which itself has implications on even the field of science. Because you know, the idea of the scientists and the popular imagination is you know the subject who is whatever

that scientist is studying, that is the object. But contrivialism caused us to pause and reflect on how that subject, that object, and how intermediary is between them affect their perception of each other, affect the subject, the scientist's ability to pursue knowledge and understanding the objects if the object is a pooston to do the same. And finally, Baver digs into the rigid division between nature and culture and

how the convivilous perspective challenges that. The continuous interactions and transformations that occur in existence makes it problematic to consider the divisions between human societies, between human societies and the ecosystems that surround them as fundamental aspects of existence. Right, the boundary between nature and culture is one that constantly blues.

It is difficult to place, particularly when there's an embrace by certain cultures of that interconnectedness and interdependence between their

culture and the nature that surrounds them. And then when you see that blurring of lines between culture and nature, you might also recognize a blurring of lines between human and non human In the context of community, the idea of community being exclusively human domain becomes less apt, I suppose, as it recognize the way that non humans influence and effect and engage and interact with humans in this you know, collectivity.

We use terms like community and city and society and stuff to refer to the human aspects of interaction, and we use things like ecosystem and biome to emphasize non human aspects of interaction. But the interactions in humans, animals, and inanimate entity is to not always thought so neatly into that metaphysical description of reality. Of course, we use these divisions for certain specific research purposes. We say, oh, I'm a sociologist, I'm an anthropologist, I'm a biologist and ecologist,

et cetera. But we can't forget that convivialism. Conviviality asks us not to forget that those are human impositions that we should not let obscure our ability to make sense of reality as a whole. I know, things got really heavy there. I hope that everything I said made sense. And if you need a breather or some time to pause and reflect further on the implications on this simple

cute fun to say a little Latin word conviviality. We're going to take a pause here, but next time you can join us as we discuss how people have gone from this term to urge his ideas two Jourve's philosophical indications to more recent manifestos of the convivial movement and how they can relate to the growth and beyond. You can find me on YouTube dot com slash Andrewism and you can support beyond peach in dot com slash Saint Drew once again, I'm Andrew, joined by Mia and this

is it could happen here. Its welcome to Part two of conviviality.

We spoke about the illist multi hyphen it. That is Ivan Ilich. We spoke allut the philosophical foundations that are being built around conviviality, what those implications have been on metaphysics and philosophical anthropology and epistemology and more. And so now we're going to get into the actual movement. So the first manifesto was published by the Center for Global

Cooperation Research in twenty fourteen. It discusses some of our current threats, including global warming and its consequences, ecosystem degradation, nuclear disaster risk, resource case ty, poverty, well disparities, political disintegration, instate conflicts, terrorism and security, criminal networks, influencers, specultive of financial politics, blah blah blah blah blah. You know, you know the drill. If you're in this space, everything sucks.

It could happen here. That's the name of the show, et cetera. The central challenges that we could drive ourselves the extinction right now, and if we don't turn this car around, and we could take most of the world with us. This particular manifesto, which is asking four basic questions and their considerations and what we should consider about them. Right For one, for moral question, what may individuals legitimately

aspire to and where must they draw the line? And the Manifesto answers with considering that every individual has a legitimate aspiration to be treated with equal dignity, to have access to the necessary material conditions for their vision of a good life or considering other's perspectives, and participate meaningfully

in political life and decision making. However, individuals must also avoid exceed inbounds and succumb in to this infantile desire for power and control, which jeopardizes social cohesion and the principle of common humanity. What that means is that we need to actively be combatant corruption, refusing to engage in actions that compromise police and values for personal gain, posing the corruption others to the extent of wuntabilities encourage fighting hierarchy.

I mean to manifesto doesn't say a thing about fighting hierarchy, which I think is a fall to the manifesto. But I think for ANATICI is reading it, the implications are pretty clear. And that's what I have to do with a lot of stuff I read, you know, like read between the lines and pick up the points that the author missed. And so that's the moral consideration right, What should we aspire to? Where must we draw the line?

We aspire to being true with equal dignity, have an access to decision making power, having a good life by having access to material conditions met, and we try to avoid exceeding boundaries our social boundaries, and we should try to avoid exceeding social boundaries related to hierarchy and control and power. The second question is political. It asks us

which are the legitimate political communities. So the manifesto argues that the establishment of a single wild state in their future is unlikely and the political organization will continue to be based on the plurality of states, and that I think demonstrates the limitations of this manifesto's imagination are configurable.

This well, that's what happens when you have this clearly radical idea and you try to squeeze the radical idea into a fundamentally unradical and statistical idea as nation states. But let me not excessively editorialized. I'm just presenting this movement and what its proponents have been arguing. Right, according to their perspective, states and political institutions are considered legitimate only if they uphold principles such as common humanity, common sociality, individuation,

and managed conflict. To me, that's wishful thinking. But I digress legitimate states, and it pains me to even say this. But again, just communicating, just communicating what the manifesto argues. The legitimate states extend rights beyond civil and political rights, encompass economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights. They ensure a minimum income for the poorest citizens, while also implemented a

maximum income to prevent excessive wealth accumulation. The legitimate states maintain a balance between private, common, collective and public goods and promote associational activities within a global civil society. They view digital networks as cools, as tools for democratization and treat them as commons foster and openness, free access and

partiality and sharing. And they also revive the tradition of public service and prioritize the preservation of existing common goods while promoting the developments of new common goods for the benefit of humanity. Again, it goes without saying I take issue with this investment in states. I think a lot of their goals are noble, if not if they were not so tied down with this investment in this state structure. Because from an anarchist perspective, many of these ideas are

not compatible with the structure of a state. And even theoretically, even hypothetically, if a state would implement all these changes where people had full participerty involvement and decision making, where the where the hierarchies were flattened, and where everyone had free access and open access and their commons and all this laddida some anarchists, not every but some anarchists wouldn't

even consider that to be a state anymore. But that's just getting the weeds of anarchist discourse and we're moving on. The third question that the Manifesto ask is an ecological question, which is what we may take from nature and which is what we must take from nature? Which is what we may take from nature and what we must give back? And the Manifesto asks us to consider that human beings should no longer see themselves as owners and masters of nature,

but rather interconnected with it. Right to ensure ecological justice and preserve a well managed natural heritage for future generations, humans us establish a relationship with nature based on giving

back as much or more than they take. The Manifesto argues that the level of material prosperity that can be sustainably extended to the entire planet is roughly comparable to the average wealth of the wealthiest countries in the nineteen seventies, and that wealthier nations must be the responsibility to reduce the demand on nature relative to nineteen seventy standards, even

as they maintain their current quality of life. Priorities of this Manifesto include reducing to two emissions, emphasize and renewable energy sources over nuclear and fossil fuels, and shifting away from viewing animals as mare resources for industry. The principles of gift and interdependence should thus guide relationships with animals

and the earth as a whole. Lastly, the first Manifesto leaves us with an economic question, which is how much material wealth we may reproduce and how should we go about producing it? If we had to remain true to the answers given to the moral, political, and ecological questions, Manifesto asks us to consider there's no proven connection between monetary or material wealth and happiness, which promotes the need then to explore alternative forms of prosperity beyond economic growth.

As you can see early on, we're making those connections to the idea of de growth. More on that later, And so this cause for a plural economy that balances the market, the public sector, and social solidarity economy based on the nature of goods and services involved. Again their perspective, but while the markets and profitability are legitimate, they must align with principles of common humanity, social cohesion, and ecological considerations.

And by addressing the issues of the financial economy such as renterrorism and speculation through strict regulation, oversight, market restrictions and elimination of tax events, humanity can tap into a broader spectrum of riches beyond economic and material wealth, including fulfillment derived from duty, solidarity, enjoyment, and creativity inferious domains, which of course highlights the importance of creativity and meaningful

relationships with others as an essential component of a prosperous society,

even if not materially or monetarily prosperous. The manifestor goes on to define confrivulism, the term that they use to describe all those elements and existing systems of belief that help us identify principles for enabling human beings simultaneously to compete and cooperate with one another with a shared concern to safeguard the world and the full knowledge the reformed part of that world and that its natural resources are finite.

When it comes to convivialism, it's crucial for us to hold on certain principles that can guide us imagine conflict, prioritizeing cooperation while being mindful of the limitations posed by scarce resources, recognizing respect not to interviewpoints and doctrines, opening the door to engage in dialogue and praise to his perspectives, and being open to question it and growth. All of that this manifesto sees as essential to the idea of confibulism.

It even goes on to propose convivialist policies, right, you know, the minimum maximum income, protecting natural resources through various reforms and regulations, tackling unemployments, promoting reduced working hours, supporting the growth of the Associationists economy. Of course, I feel that's where the manifesto falls short, But I do appreciate they had some of the ideas that it introduces or that it expounds upon. I mean, I'd appreciate all of the

answers to the questions that itself that it raises. But I appreciated raising those questions, even if I might have slightly different answers to them. The thesis of this manifesto seems to be that a different kind of will is not just possible, but crucial and urgently necessary. I don't like that it doesn't call out capitalism sufficiently or really at all.

only one that there can be. I'm sure by this particular passage they mean that there will be socialist orientations of convivialism and liberal orientations of convivialism, and Christian orientations of convivialism and et cetera, because they don't see convivialism as incompatible with any of them. I think I might take some issue with I guess not refining contribualism further.

I appreciate that they themselves didn't refine it, because you know, they're clearly quite liberal, but I think that contribualism as an idea is something at least we uh distilled further. Because when you have this sort of free for all, everybody and everything goes approach to the ideology, I think it opens up a lot of room for states and corporations and ngus to kind of slip in there and be like, oh, look at us, we are going to add confriviunism to our constitution and that kind of thing.

It's like then they go and everyone applause and like wow, xyz government just added contribualism to their constitution. Three chairs for them.

to drill the oil. And we want to set this precedent for other countries to follow, and YadA YadA, and we added to our constitution and all our cash money. Right, but then they got like two hundred million dollars worth of pledges, and then they were like, actually, you know, we're still going to do it even though we didn't get all the money. And then related they're like, nah,

we're not going to do it anymore. And then a couple of years after that they started drilling in the National Park, and a couple of years after that, yeah, they started drilling even for the even closer to indigenous territories within the park. So you know, that's like I caught up in the fluffy words of states and corporations.

like them? And it's like, well, yeah, it to be fair, you know, there are politicians and governments that are doing better than other politicians and governments, and I'm not gonna like blind my eye to that.

pitch for anarchism. By the way, but I did say they were two manifestos, right, So what about the second manifesto right, Contributist Manifesto number two published by the Convivialist International in twenty twenty recent and they define Confiviualism as a comprehensive philosophy that encompasses humanist, civic and political principles aimed at foster and harmonia scooling systems in the modern era, emphasize and the importance of living together and outlining normative

principles to guide that enteval second Manifesto of Convivialism emphasizes the need for a new political philosophy to challenge neoliberalism and address global issues. Pause. This idea of is something that you see a lot, particularly in that sort of engio space. Right, A lot of not radical organizations and movements will speak about challenging in newliberalism. And he could usually tell because they specify new liberalism, they don't say capitalism.

They're not anti capitalists. They're just anti neoliberalism, which in itself is not u radical because new liberalism in itself is just a recent permutation of capitalism.

is something to keep in mind. Even if you and even if you know you take part in the movement, nothing wrong with that, still something to keep in mind. So the Second Manifesto, it also highlights the interconnectedness of young people's concerns about climate change and environmental degradation. Talks about the struggles of those seeking freedom from dictatorships or those being forced to migrate, and it aims to offer an alternative vision for a post neoliberal world where promoting

shared values and a sense of agency. Furious intellectuals, activists, rights and artists so all committed to this collective project with the aim of creating this globally shared vision for the future that is more inclusive and more participatory. The manifesto, the second manifesto, like the first one, talks about the post World War two growth in principles like human rights and the shift in capitalism towards speculative and rent air practices.

Talks about the decline of liberal democracies and the rise of illiberal democriturs, and it speaks about resentment growing from

pastical domination and radical movements including Al Qaeda, reflecting that animosity. Again, like the previous manifesto, talks about ecological threats like global warming and air pollution, oceanic pollution and accumulation of plastic waste, nuclear disasters, weekends, ecosystems rise and employment, job displacement, wealth inequality, lack of regulation for transnational company is, political fragmentation, and terrorism.

All that fun stuff and this time the second Manifesto outlines five principles to form the basis of policies or ethics or organizational actions. Right common naturality, common humanity, common sociality,

legitimate individuation, and creative opposition. These principles emphasize one the interconnectedness of humans with nature to the importance of respecting the shared humanity of all individuals, three the value of social relationships for the need for individuals to develop the individuality or respecting others, and five the recognition of peaceful rivalry for the common good. These principles are meant to be guided by the imperative of hubrist control, which promotes

cooperation and prevents the desire for power and excess. The manifesto all symphasizes the importance of balance and these principles

to avoid their potential negative consequences. One of the things that the Manifesto is really trying to get at in particular, and the reason that it even establishes this imperative for hubrist control, is because it argues that ideologies focus primarily on satisfying material needs and overlook the crucial role of recognition and desire, and that by reducing politics of the fulfillment of needs. Ideologies fail to address the problem of

limiting the desire for power and control. To me, it just seems like the people who wrote this manifesto aren't familiar with anarchism and anarchism's centuries long confrontation with power, control and the desire for it that has altered the course of very various human societies. Right I digress. Manifestoo instead points to religions as playing the historical role of trying to curb our desire for power and control. That seems to me like a very poor argument considering the

history of religion. But the point that the manifestoro is trying to make is that modern democratic discourses struggle to restrain limitless desire and often reproduce the humors that they aim to combat, and so the role of a contributist movement then should be in part on persuading individuals to renounce the desire for dominance and reinforce the principles of

common humanity, sociality, naturality in legitimate interviewation and create opposition. Again, I don't think that the direction people are taking conviviulalism is rotically enough, because I think it leaves room for it to fall into existing structures. I mean, the manifest even talks about creating a convivialist party to reignite hopen liberal democracy.

will be hunky dory. Like nah, there's still there's still like you still haven't confronted the way that that structure, that position incentivizes certain behavior. But like I said before, I'm an anarchist. I take what I like, I leave what I don't They're also say, a manifest with the confivilism belongs to nobody. So I've decided that, you know, my version of confiviulism is not going to be this water down, watercress salad kind of pathy, weak limpristed take on,

you know, world alter and structural change. Lastly, I didn't want to touch on because I could say I would. The significant role that conviviality is played in the de growth movement, particularly highlighted in texts like The Growth of Vocabulary for a New Era inspired by Evan's ideas conviviality and the growth has referred to me nature society that values joyful sobriety, responsible consumption, and the use of limited

tools that are emmanspiratory and responsor to human needs. The ideas that Ivan outlined and tools of conviviality which I spoke on in the first part of this two parter is considered part of the intellectual roots of the growth as an idea itself, and conviviality is often discussed in relation to technologies, including digital technologies, and how technology is

suitable to a de growth society must be convivial. One particular tool has been developed for self assessment political education and researcher and I with confivial principles, and that is the matrix for contrivial technology or MCT, and the matrix for convivial technology is to go through a very basic definition, a normative schema that Forster's discussion concerning de growth technologies in context of political education them city is meant first

to reflect on the dimensions of the materials we use in technology is and how we produce the technologies, how we use the technologies, how technologies fit into the infrastructure, how accessible they are, how interactive they are with the environment, how adaptable they are and change in circumstances, and much more,

how appropriate they are and much more. But beyond the MSCT, conviviality is are also being used in the de growth space to describe public spaces, goods, conservation movements, and even humans. Within the growth literature, transitioning to a convivial society is considered to be one of the core objectives of the de growth movement, one of the core shifts that needs to take place us for us to de grow as a society. And so that's all in short of it.

The convivialist manifesto convivialism and contriviality, as ideas how they've changed and been adapted, and how people have been building on the ideas therein in the sphere of philosophy and politics, education and technology and more food for thought. I hope you appreciated this briefly exploration, as I like to say at the end of my videos, and I consider it particularly aptaining the context of conviviality and convivial technology. Is

all power to all the people. Once again, you could find me Andrew on YouTube dot com slash andeurism and support me on feature dot com slash saying true and as usual this has been It could happen here, where things happen, we talk about stuff. Peace.