Cool Media.
Hi everyone, Margaret here and I'm not in my studio, so this sound sounds different because I'm on tour. This isn't a blurb about me being on tour. That's just my excuse for the bad audio. Also, there's a large dog next to me and she wants to be involved in this recording, but she can't be. But the point of this This week's episodes are about formal and informal disaster relief organizations working together or as best they can to try to help people in disaster situations. And I
recorded it a week and a half ago. Just a few days ago, Hurricane Helene hit the US pretty badly, and it in particular hit western North Carolina, and so they n Apalachia in general in some of the least resourced parts of the country, and people are as of me recording this on Saturday, cut off from cell service, cut off from food, gas, and water, and people are
working right now to try to alleviate that. And one of the groups that I talk about a little bit in this episode is Mutual Aid Disaster Relief Matter MADR, and they are currently looking for resources and gear to donate to the people, and they are working with pilots and trucks to get your donations into the affected areas. And I would heavily recommend that people check out Mutual Aid Disaster Relief on social media, which is the name of the organization, as well as the idea to find
how to donate. There are going to be in a lot of areas elsewhere in North Carolina and likely elsewhere staging ground areas where people are collecting gear to get it to where it needs to go. But you can also just donate money, and I have done so and encourage you to do so because well, as they say, we keep us safe, and there's a lot of people that we can help keep safe right now, and I hope you help me in doing that. Okay, I hope you enjoyed the episode. Hello, and welcome to Cool People.
Did Cool Stuff your weekly reminder that hope is a discipline and we have to find it sometimes and sometimes it's hard, but it can usually be done, and so we try to do it. I'm your host, Marrak Kiljoy with my strangely earnest intro, but I have a guest who's Katie Stole. Hi.
Hi, Hi, I loved your strangely earnest intro. I think it's important and everything you said is accurate.
Thank you. I feel like hope is a thing that is extra important at times when it's really easy to.
Not have it.
So yeah, absolutely, And you know what, people love a little bit of earnestness, just a bit.
People appreciate it.
I hope so because otherwise I'm doomed on social media, although I don't love it, so maybe if being doomed off of it. Every now and then, I'll like say things on Twitter and people will be like, you're just not actually getting that. There's like levels of sarcasm and irony happening here, and I'm like, I just don't know. I'm old in earnest. Leave me alone. But listener, you might know Katie from even more News and some more news and lots of news, just the news, the news.
In general, Katie, the news stole coming at you. The ones and twos. I don't know that's a recording saying right, ones and twos? I think so, yeah, I think so an old fashioned one. We don't really use ones and twos these days.
The other voice you're hearing is Sophie.
Hi, Sophie, Hi, you talked to me about the practice of hope all the time, and I appreciate it.
Oh thanks. I just feel like I the last couple episodes I've did were dark and long, are complicated.
Well this one isn't that isn't that way, and it talks deeply about the practice of hope and how it should be disciplined into our dam and I appreciate that.
Well, I don't know what we're talking about, but I'm already thrilled you invited me because that feels like my own existential battle at all times, because I do have inherent hope and it's hard, but I appreciate being reminded and not having to search for it.
Yay.
Yeah, I I've written about hope a lot. Actually it's a thing that I try to avoid discourse. But I will discourse about hope until the end of my day. Is because of the fact that I believe in it anyway, but also I believe in Rory our audio engineer, Hi Rory, Hi Roy, Hello Rory, And our theme music was written forced by old woman. This week's cool people is someone you might have heard of, people, humanity.
People in general.
Yeah, I mean we're going to in specific context, right okay, but we're gonna like, Okay, look, it's easy to get cynical. I do it myself. Pretty much everything bad humans have done has been done by humans. It's in the name. Although we're increasingly entering a stage where I don't think that's true. I think that AI is going to do some bad stuff for us.
Oh yeah, we're handing it over to them.
Yeah, But this week we are going to talk about the natural instinct to help one another out and how that seems inextinguishable. Because you ever seen like a disaster movie, like anything where anything bad happens, Yes, okay, you know how when bad things happen, everyone like runs around and kills each other and steals everything, and it's every person for themselves, and the best you can hope for is people like holding up with their family.
That's what I've been told, that's the trope.
As soon as disaster hits, everyone loses their fucking minds and turns into the purge and runs around, kills each other and loots, but in a bad way. Actually turns out most looting as the people trying to feed themselves. But you know whatever, hmmm, and everyone holds up in a weird American frontiersman, dream homestead to wait things out. That's the best you can hope for. That is essentially
every media depiction of disaster you'll ever see. And you know that that's like not what happens at all.
Yeah, that's what I thought you might be getting at. Yeah, I do, I do know how that's not really what happens.
Yeah, And I have a feeling that everyone secretly, deep down also has been in a bad situation where people help each other out. And I don't know if there's ever been a greater difference between the common media representation of an issue and the reality of the issue. Because even war, right, which is the other one you could come up with, there's a big difference between how media
depicts it and how it actually is. But for every couple of like Hoai, American flags and Eagles battled, everything is great movie, you get it all quiet on the Western front, you get some like, oh, actually war is horrible. But the reason that I say that our capacity to help each other out is inextinguishable is because I really believe that overall, like when we create things as society, we kind of make them true, right, Like if everyone convinces themselves of something we all kind of start.
Doing it absolutely like money.
Yeah, totally, Like oh that's a concept of money.
Yeah yeah.
Yet despite overwhelming media representations of everyone freaks out in a crisis, that's not what people do. We help each other out. Disaster brings us together more times than not. It breaks down the social barriers between people.
It feels like perhaps one of the most innate aspects of it. There's lots of innate, but I'm gonna put it up there as innate as anything else. We that's how we have formed societies and grown and you know communities.
Yeah, no, totally, and like we have these like well'll talk about a little later in the script too, but it's like we have these ideas that you know, oh, we all are just these isolated individuals, and especially America is like built on this, right, but it's all a lie. Like the Frontiersman was like well, stealing land but also like getting subsidies from the government to do it. You know. Yeah. The easiest way that I've ever found to explain how
we've come together in crisis, social barriers break down. Imagine waiting for a bus in lots of places in the US, if you're waiting for the bus. You don't talk to the people who are standing right next to you. The social barriers are in place. You might ask the time if you're doing this in the nineties before cell phones. You might ask for directions if you're doing this in the early ots but smartphones. Yeah, but the conversations are short and curt right, And this is not universally true
across all cultures within the United States. But it's a thing that happens if the bus is exactly two minutes late, Suddenly you're all friends because you have a common problem, big or small, common problem. Where's the damn bus? Because it's not even a we need each other that brings each other together, this minor hardship. And I think the trick is that the hardship needs to be shared right, one person having a bad time. Unfortunately doesn't always work right.
People don't like talking to folks on the street who are asking for money and help overall. Obviously some people do, I hope many of our listeners do. I mean, but you know whatever, I like. Also, sometimes we're all busy and it's like, no, I don't want to have a conversation about something right now, you know, but folks who are living on the streets do talk to each other.
And if you're riding freight trains, which is the weird example that I can use because they used write freight trains, you talk to other freight riders even if you don't trust them, right, Like, that's like a weird, scary, dangerous thing where you're all breaking the law and everyone has a reputation for being fighty and dangerous, and you still all talk to each other because you have a shared hardship. Yeah, that is my hypothesis of how this happens. Shared crisis
brings us together and disaster studies. The title of this episode this is called Catastrophe Compassion.
Hmmm, I'm going to write that down. I like it.
Yeah, yeah, I know it's good. And there's a there's a bunch of articles that talk about this, well, mostly papers. This guy Jamil Zaki wrote a paper called Catastrophe Compassion Understanding and Extending pro Sociality under Crisis. That's a word I know how to say.
That is a that's a mouthful sociality.
I know it doesn't look like it would be, but it gets stuck. Yeah, And I'm going to quote from that for decades, social scientists have documented two narratives about human behavior during crises. The first holds that following disasters, individuals one panic, two ignore social order, and three act selfishly. This cluster of beliefs characterizes popular media accounts of disaster
as well as lay forecasts. In one study, members of the public generally agreed with statements including when there is an emergency, crowd members act selfishly, and when there is an emergency, social order breaks down. The second narrative comes from historical records. Far from rendering people anti social and savage, disasters produce ground swells of pro social behavior and feelings
of community in their wake. Survivors develop communities of mutual aid, engage in widespread acts of altruism, and report a heightened sense of solidarity with one another. And one of the wildest things about all of this is that people therefore miss crisis. Yes, because I mean, one, there's like trauma bonding with people, but two, people like being in solidarity where you have a sense of purpose, you know.
Yeah, absolutely, they probably feel little lonely after that because you're surrounded by people.
This is just all true.
I'm just going to share this, Yeah, I'm not sure what's the right because this is going to be the theme of.
The episode I see.
But one of my earliest memories was the eighty nine earthquake in San Francisco Bay Area, and it is so vibrant in my mind. Every like there's plenty of dark spots, but when it hit and what happened and rushing outside and my community. I spent the whole afternoon going around helping people with my parents. I was very young. I wasn't helping. I was mostly cheering people up by trying to be cute.
Yeah that's helpful.
But my mom had ran her catering company out of a retirement home at that point, and so she went and checked in on all of the old folks and helping our neighbors and there's burst pipes and so we're bringing friends what they need. And that has stuck with me my whole life, as during a crisis, you go and help your neighbor.
Yeah, we should be doing that all the time, and we forget.
This lesson in my mind, but it's like, now is the time when we need each other and we're going to show up, and yeah, I do. It's not that I want something terrible to happen, but there are times in my life where I'm like, I miss that feeling of that you're protected and that you are a protector at the same time.
Yeah, but anyway, it's just I keep thinking about that as you're speaking so far.
No, that makes so much sense, and that's exactly the kind of stuff we're talking about, and like, yeah, I like that phrase that you're a protector and you're protecting at the same time, that we are like interwoven instead of like, yeah, one of the and I didn't end up writing about this in papers and scripts. I'm off script, so it's considered anecdotal because the sources for this one
aren't in the aren't in the notes. But one of the things that I talked to one of my friends is a therapist and a social worker about how one of the main things that defeats PTSD is acting with agency in the moment, and so when we create disaster responses that incorporate everyone, including the people who are in trouble, we reduce the actual amount of suffering caused by the disaster.
Yeah.
I believe that there.
Is a reverse side of catastrophe compassion. There are people who in a crisis, start shooting and act antisocially and hold up and ignore everyone else. Those people are the rich, yep, and the powerful.
Gonna say, the people that are most likely, in my mind to go there are the people that have othered everybody else.
And they're the people who are the most dramatically invested in the previous status quo. And in disaster studies, this is called elite panic. This term was coined by Rutgers researchers Lee Clark and Karen Chess in a two thousand and eight paper. They talk about how the reason that policymakers tend to assume that everyone will panic, Like you see this all the time in like I watch a
lot of sci fi shows. I'm sure they do in other shows too, right, But they're like, we can't tell everyone that the space alien bomb is going to kill everyone, because then everyone will panic, So we have to keep it hidden, you know, we have to not tell the public. And it's like always this like moral compromise that the like protagonist who is morally compromised, Like I guess I'm gonna have to lie to everyone, and that's what's good.
Yeah, yeah, you know for everybody.
Yeah, there is a lot of evidence that proves that that is the exact opposite, because if you hide it from everyone and then the bad thing happens, then everyone freaks out. If you are honest the entire time, people handle it, you know, right, And so in this paper they talk about how the reason that policy makers tend to assume everyone will panic is that assuming everyone will panic works out in the policy maker's best interest. This makes for poor disaster response, of course, because it's not
based on truth. Their policies emphasize lying to the public to soothe everyone, centralizing resources and prioritizing the prior status quo or recognizing how things have changed. And so this is like, these are all bad ideas, right, these make situations worse. You're the elite, Yeah, so if you centralize all the resources, you're like, oh, I have to be the one who controls where they go out. You're not going to do a very good job of.
It, exactly.
And that's just for their interests. Yeah, that puts them in a position to at least attempt to maintain control throughout the situation.
It makes sense. It's terrible, but it makes why they would think it that way.
Well, And it's like and as we record this, this last week might be a couple weeks ago to you all, unless it's happened again. The NYPD has shot and killed someone for hopping a turnstall for two dollars and ninety cents, right, and then they also shot other people, including another cop in the process.
A cop.
And realistically, you're not supposed to kill people for stealing, right, But if you're the cops, your priority is the continuance of governance. It is the it's called COG and various government things. You know, this idea that like we need to be in charge is the greatest social good, even if we have to kill people to do it, even if we are basically judged dread acting as the executioner in the streets, and so cops are basically always doing an elite panic. But in disasters it gets worse. Yeah,
elite fearing panic actually tends to cause panics. In fall two thousand and one, do you remember the anthrax attacks.
In the mail I mean last from the past, Yeah, I do.
Yeah, I hadn't thought about that, and forever till you said those words.
I know, I hadn't either, until it was like in this paper I was reading right, Yeah, you know, there was anthrax attacks in the mail and it happened so shortly after September eleventh that like no one remembers it because like all we remember is September eleventh, you know, but.
I do now.
I'm like, oh, yeah, there was a period of time where that was a thing and then it was a joke.
Yeah, and it scared the shit out of everyone. It did cause panic. Clark and Chess, the two researchers, proposed that one major reason everyone freaked out was that the government didn't tell anyone what the fuck was happening. Right, They were afraid of people panicking, so they didn't talk
to people about what was happening. And they were like, like, it was the first pulmonary anthrax poisoning in twenty five years in the United States, like period or something, and they were like, oh, I think he drank some bad water out of a creek in North Carolina, you know. Yeah. And so when everyone's being lied to and then they find out that something's happening that's different, people start to.
Panic, yeah, and kind of a roads trust.
Yeah, no, absolutely, Well that just allows for a vacuum for people to fill in the blank. Whatever they want about what the government or those the powers that be, whatever they're doing. It's just yeah, maybe beside the point here, but had to say it.
No, no, it's it's absolutely worth pointing out. You know. It's like we're supposed to be able to trust the EPA, we're supposed to be able to trust the Department of Health, you know, and like right, the CDC. And it's like, like I believe in vaccines, like real upfront, absolutely, but it's like I understand where vaccine hesitancy comes from because I understand why people don't want to trust the government because it keeps lying to them.
Absolutely, Like what do you expect people?
You know, it's really hard to sift through what you're allowed, what you should trust or shouldn't because.
You know you're stupid for ignoring them, you're bad. But also you should have known better than to trust the government.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But you know how you can trust me to cynically introduce ads because I can't say that you can trust these ads because I don't know if you can or not.
We just got to be upfront about that.
Yeah, listener, discretion is advised. Here they are and we're back and of course, the leads themselves often also panic, like declaring that looters will be shot on site Katrina, which is like, not even it was never the law
that that's allowed to be done. But they were like, we don't care, We're just declaring that, right because of this continuance of governance, this panic of you know, and you have all these like in Katrina, there are white militias going around and shooting people of color, right, and it was mostly affluent from like affluent white neighborhoods. But we are not focused on elite panic today or this
week or panic at all. We're focused on cool people do cool stuff, like just getting in the worst places and helping people out like you and your mom did.
Yeah, and my dad but mostly my mom fair enough, Well I don't know he was around, but my mom's the mom memories stands strong in my fay.
Okay, sorry, I continue.
Yeah, no offense, Dad, I'm sure you did fine. We did a couple episodes a while back about Common Ground, which was the disaster relief organization set up in New Orleans and the wake of Hurricane Katrina in two thousand
and five. This is like scrappy activists and anarchists from all over the country working with folks based in New Orleans, like tying into old Black Panthers and New Orleans and all this shit just set up a messy, imperfect, deeply impactful and memorable collective to mitigate the worst effects of the crisis. How they managed to go where traditional nonprofits
and government relief agencies were unable to. And there are stories from that about like the National Guard accidentally redirecting supplies from the Red Cross to a bunch of punk kids because the Red Cross was like going to put it in wearhouses for two weeks, and the punk kids were out in the streets handing.
It out right as they should be.
Yeah. No, And the thing that I love about that isn't just like the punk kid isn't the only hero in that story. The uniformed National guardsman, who is probably not supposed to do what they are doing, is also one of the heroes there, Which is to say, different groups can and will and do work together in times of crisis, ignoring all the reasons we're supposed to dislike and distrust each other. And there is literally nothing in this world that gives me more hope than that. Yeah,
And I think about all the time. Like we were talking kind of before we started recording BOHW, like we live in a like bonus polarized America right now, right, and there are absolutely people who are like extreme right and are not to be trusted in any way, in any position, right, yeah, But overall, you're like my random ass neighbor. We might not agree about some stuff, it's probably gonna be fine if we have to like deal with some shit together, you.
Know, absolutely, I honestly living in this community that I live, and I live in the mountains for people that don't know, Yeah, surrounded by people that a lot of people I agree with different shades of agreement, and a lot of people like don't they all have my back?
Yeah?
They have my back, and they're going to bring a wide variety of skill sets to the table if if I need them, you know, yeah, my random neighbor.
Yeah, no, totally. And I want to give one quick anecdote about all this that I've probably done before on this show, but it lives in my head, so I will say again every now and then, including right now. I think as I recorded this, I was like looking up floods in eastern North Carolina and I was like, which year was that, and it was like current news
about flooding in eastern North Carolina. Yeah, the eastern shore of North Carolina floods terribly in this or that storm, and it happens more and more often as climate change kicks in. During one of these flood events, I think maybe this is twenty sixteen with Hurricane Matthew, could be wrong.
A bunch of my friends were out there helping doing disaster relief, and a coalition between all sorts of unlikely folks came together, and so you had these like one of my friends is this like scrappy, middle aged anarchist who's telling soldiers what to do, like just directing where the supplies need to go, because they're like we just got here. And my friends like, yep, they got to go over there, and like, you know, it's like five foot two and yelling at these uh, you know, soldiers
or whatever. And you also have this moment where okay, a lot of the places that needed relief could only be reached by plane because flooding made the roads impassable. And by the way, if you ever like I'm just gonna go do flood relieve don't drive your pickup truck into the flood.
No, no, no, please no. Yeah, you'll make it worse.
Yeah, because then people got to rescue you because the air intake's in the grill. Yeah, and then your engine stops. Ironically, electric vehicles, like an electric sedan is better in a flood than like a pickup truck. Oh really, I mean an electric pickup trub even better. Yeah. Electric vehicles don't use air intakes, so they don't have this thing. Sorry I could, I won't get into this.
Look being surprised.
I know, I was really surprised with this too. I saw on this who rabbit hole of it recently, and because those videos of you know, when you're sitting around watching videos to see what vehicles can drive through what floods, and that's one does. Yeah anyway, but you know it isn't affected. This isn't an ad transition. You know, it doesn't have to worry about roads as fucking planes. Oh yeah, so yes, tiny planes would fly supplies in And you
know who has tiny planes, rich libertarian dudes? Yeah they do, and I suppose they like should be in my elite panic category. But it's like not always right, not every rich libertarian You.
Feel like they're on the cusp there.
Yeah, but in this case they didn't. This case, they were like, hell, yeah, I get to be useful. This hobby that I have that is real weird and will probably kill me gets to be useful, because I think deep down that's all we want.
Absolutely.
We don't want to be useful.
Absolutely, especially if you have a specific piece of gear equipment, oh yeah, vehicle like a plane.
You're like, this is my time to shine.
Yeah, Like I'm always the one with a knife on me at Christmas, and so when people have to open the weird blister packages, I'm like, ha ha, yeah, exactly which one of my knives do you want? So it leads to this moment where one a different one of my friends, who's this like crust lord Goblin who rides freight trains and fixes bicycles with a you know, huge beer.
I really want to get it invited to one of your parties with all these cool setting friends of yours.
You should you definitely come. People will be into it, come out. Yeah. And so he loads up into this tiny plane with a retired libertarian guy and then they fly into a storm wild you know, and it's just like, and it's one of the scariest moments of my friend's life. Right. And they've of course ridden trains and been in riots and whatever, you know, but like, yeah, they were like, oh, I'm currently flying into a storm because I believe in what I'm doing with this, Yeah, libertarian man. And they
made it safely. They distributed supplies and then they went back for more.
Yeah, and that.
Makes me happy. And even the Department of Homeland Security, the last people you would expect to give props to anarchists, have had to admit in print that decentralized efforts are like really important to disaster relief.
Yeah, people that are trained in Yeah, decentralized, that's the key word here, because when and then you're in the midst of a disaster and your normal modes of communication or transportation are no longer effective, you have to be able to rely on people that have the infrastructure and training and just generally know what they're doing, and boots on the ground know the area.
Yep, totally, and just are already there, you know. Yeah. And in twenty thirteen, the Department of Homeland Security put together a task team and they wrote a report called the resilient social network. And it's a case study of Occupy Sandy. You heard of Occupy Sandy, No, okay. This report focuses on the response to Superstorm Sandy, which in twenty twelve just yeah, fucked up New York City and New Jersey.
Yeah.
Yeah, And a bunch of occupy activists came together formed Occupy Sandy, which was like, you know, the kind of like almost cringey thing, where like in two eleven and twenty twelve everyone was like, occupy this, occupy.
It became the thing.
Yeah, and they were like, all right, Occupy Sandy, and they changed the way that disaster relief works and on some level, like are probably why climate change hasn't yet been as bad as it could be. Yeah, because climate change is getting worse, disasters are getting worse. Both informal and formal networks for dealing with crisis and disaster are getting more experienced. And a lot of that was learned from both sides during Superstorm Sandy.
That's really incredible.
The report put it like this. At its peak, it Occupied Sandy had grown to an estimated sixty thousand volunteers, more than four times the number deployed by the American Red Cross. Wow, and they did it with no leaders, no bureaucracy, none of that shit. The DHS ignowed that quote and they didn't use the word anarchist anywhere in here, and I'm annoyed, but anyway, but we know, yeah, and I didn't want to spend all my time searching like
Department of Homeland Security anarchists and on my Google. Yeah, yeah, that's a dicey search. Maybe, yeah, And the DHS acknowledge that quote. It is clear from our research that the occupy movement complemented the efforts of the official response and in some cases filled critical gaps. We can learn lessons from Occupy Sandy successes to ensure a ready and resilient nation. And it then is like a like long ass report just being like, here's everything that can be learned for
us from what these like scrappy folks did. Sandy did nineteen billion dollars in damages and killed forty three people in New York City. It is the second most expensive storm to ever hit the US, I believe, after Katrina. So when that happened, people just got together and did shit. They used a wedding registry on Amazon to announce what they needed and so people could just buy them what they needed. They up relief centers all over the place.
I think the first two were in churches, and then they just kind of spread out everywhere that people needed stuff, right, because all these people are suddenly like homeless, vehicleless, without places to stay warm, maybe just without power or whatever. You know, hot meals available everywhere. To quote New York Times from twenty twelve, there is an occupy motor pool of borrowed cars and pickup trucks that ferries volunteers to ravaged areas, and occupy weathermen sits at his computer and
issues regular forecasts. Occupy construction teams and medical committees have been formed. Wow so fast too, Oh yeah, like less than twenty four hours. And I think I think a lot of those people were like they're the day of like while it was.
Happening, also probably being affected. Oh yeah, absolutely everything. Yeah.
Yeah. They coordinated with volunteers from all over the city.
And the main thing I remember hearing from my friends who were doing it is just like the walking up endless flights of stairs because the elevators were out, and so people would just go door to door to make sure everyone had what they needed, Like they'd just like go knock on your door and be like you need candles, you need flashlights, you need a medications filled Like what do you need because like a lot of people didn't leave because without an elevator, they can't get out of
their buildings, you know, depending on your level of fitness.
Yeah, and like what are you walking out into?
Yeah, totally. It took formal organizations days. Occupy Sandy was there within twenty four hours. The local FEMA office. Don't worry, they're on it. They saw that weather coming and they closed quote do to weather, come on. Yeah. They put signs on the door of the office.
It's believable. It's believable.
It's like handwritten in surpy.
Like bite later losers.
Yeah, exactly, exactly, And it would be hilarious if it was I mean, it's still hilarious, but if it was just an office, it'd be hilarious. But it's also where they stored their like mobile warming centers and food distribution hub and stuff like that. What the right, So they were like, oh, gotta get our warm centers out of here, and just drove everything out all six of the FEMA centers in New York City, including those that were not in harm's way, closed ahead of the store.
That's absurd.
Yeah, and then the National Guard just packed up and left because it was too risky. There's the National guardsman. Meanwhile, volunteers at churches just kept handing out food and water.
Yeah.
Yeah, And so Occupy Sandy was informal but not unorganized, So it wasn't just like total chaos time, right. It was organized. New volunteers were onboarded, people are giving sensitivity trainings and like trainings on how to go door to door, how to talk to people, and there's just like it was all coordinated with like huge numbers of Google sheets and like just fucking weird online twenty twelve. Shit. These days, the emergent relief organizations are part of disaster planning, right,
even like FEMA and all those groups. When they're like, okay, what's gonna happen in this crisis, They're like, Okay, well, fortunately, scrappy people are going to do all the shit we're not going to do. Yeah, which is a little bit like aggravating, but whatever.
That is what it is, Yeah, it is what it is. It is both aggravating and it is what it is. Yeah.
Yeah, Occupy Sandy, as far as I can tell, is the first time in the US that the emergent relief like the you know, the DIY, Scrappy whatever stuff, coordinated actively with the formal relief like Red Cross and you know, FEMA and all that stuff. But there was always some
tension there. One of the co founders of Occupy Sandy, Michael Primo, told the website The City quote, these behemoth aid organizations play a role within the broader landscape, but are ultimately unresponsive to community needs and aren't designed to be agile. They aren't designed to communicate long term needs. And that's what Occupies Sandy was really trying to do. Because there's this like it's interesting because right, it's easy.
It's not easy. It's very hard. It's easy to show up when it's like sexy and cool to go help people, like when you're standing in the flood waters. Don't stand in floodwaters anyone, Yeah, don't. But the long term work of rebuilding is also part of it. Right, So Occupy Sandy, I think on some level considers itself still around it.
I think it overall is like not really, but it was like around for a long time, and then it well, the same network came together during the early days of COVID to get food to people and like to coordinate all the different mutual aid groups that were popping up in the city once again with like spreadsheets and shit, you know, to make sure that everyone knew where everyone else was and what they were doing.
And now we've got Google spreadsheets.
Yeah. Yeah, And of course twenty twenty saw the largest explosion of mutual aid groups the US has ever seen. And yeah, so many people found their way into disaster relief as a result of Occupy Sandy, including people who like now work in the formal organizations or like I worked for a while as a copy editor for a
friend who specific wrote really lengthy papers. I couldn't find them in my hard driving time to do the research, but I used to copy it at these papers about informal and formal disaster relief organizations and how they work together, and like how the strengths and weaknesses of each one can help each other. But you know what can help everyone is owning medieval weaponry.
Absolutely. I was hoping you would say that.
Yeah, because it often gets forgotten about in the mix you know everyone's talking about it because it's medieval. Yeah, yeah, exactly. People think that you don't need it.
They want the new gear.
I know, I know that you do write like a guisamar. I actually don't pronounce this, but I remember, mind, I was gonna try and talk about pole arms, but then I realized it had to pronounce any of them cause they're all French.
I was just gonna go ahead and pretend like I knew what these things are.
But yeah, there's a bunch of polearms that are new fangled compared to like older ones. And I was trying to unfangled full arm. Yeah you know they're from like the sixteen hundreds instead of the twelve hundred.
Yeah, but oh that fancy new tech.
Yeah, so is this This podcast is sponsored by new Fangled Pollarms.
Yeah, new Fangled poll arms for all your fangled poll arm needs, just check out. It's also sponsored by the nonprofit that will be starting called Give your Friends Medieval Weapons.
Yeah, it is a vital vital.
It's a decentralized one, and so it's just up to you to give your friends medieval weapons. And we're back. Hopefully no other podcasts snuck in, but I mean other ads. You ever get to the point of tiredness and overworked where nouns just replace each other in your brain.
Absolutely.
Sometimes I'll start speaking hoping that I have words to finish the sentence and I don't.
Yeah, totally, that's just called being a podcaster.
There have been several times I'm talking and I'm blah blah blah, and then I'll say and I was hoping i'd remember my point, but I don't, so end of sentence.
Yep, thats just podcast.
This a little peak behind the curtain, y'all.
Yeah, h I talk for a living. It's strange.
Yeah, It's just like there's different sentences and points and phrases just kind of wriggling around in there.
Yeah. I remember when I first started trying to do this podcast. I was like, I'm just going to make a list of notes and then I'm going to kind of free form it. And Sophie was like, you are going to write a script and I was like, oh, thank God, and.
Yeah, you're gonna be grateful for it.
Yeah. I didn't yet know how to deviate from a script, you know.
Yeah, And I get the allerb that You're like, I'm prepared but in the moment you get lost.
Yeah, but who doesn't get lost? If there's one mutual A disaster relief group, I would point people towards. It's the one called mutual A Disaster Relief. This is a decentralized national network of semi autonomous working groups. I know that's sort of a mouthful, but all those words mean things. The national network, all these different working groups get together and coordinate and show up where disaster relief is needed,
and they put on trainings. They have all kinds of resources on their website mutual Aid Disaster Relief dot org and has information about how to join start your own group. Two and I want to read you a bit of their r history section. Early in the morning. Are September nineteenth, nineteen eighty five, a major earthquake hit off the Pacific coast of Michoacan, Mexico City was devastated. At least five
thousand people lost their lives. Eight hundred thousand people were made homeless as soldiers and police largely stood by neighbors, fed and sheltered each other, formed cleanup crews and relief brigades. These brigadistas, as they were called, dug people out of the rubble, and students laid down in front of bulldozers so the search for survivors could continue. Demificados as the new houseless, were called one housing rights seamstresses after witnessing
owner salvage machinery. Before people started a women's union, people organized collectively in popular assemblies. These experiences led many to question why they needed a centralized state that did not care for the well being or survival of its people. With this understanding, Mexican civil society was awakened.
Yeah.
I did some more digging. This is not where mutual aid relief, disaster relief starts, but this is like kind of the earlier you know they talk about the blood survival programs nineteen eighty five. Okay, mutually disaster reallyf more formally is going to start like in the twenty odds, after things like Katrina and after some of the Occupy Sandy and things like that. I did some more digging about that particular research speaking of nouns that don't work
with each other. I did more digging on that earthquake and the response to it. Five thousand is the minimum death count anyone has suggested. National Seismological Service suggests as forty five thousand people died.
Wow. Yeah, wow, that's a huge difference.
I know, I know, and I think the five thousand was the ruling government at the time that really wanted to downplay it. Yeah, of course, Ugh one of the groups that came out of it, and they actually are a formal organization now. But this is like a good example of how that the line between formal and informal like is kind of meaningless in some ways. A group of youth got together and started digging tunnels into collapsed buildings to rescue people.
Wow.
Yeah, within a week they tunneled into a collapsed hospital and then okay, I only found this on one guy's blog. I couldn't find another source of it. And it's a little bit wild. They found forty three newborn babies in the nursery who had gone a week without sustenance and were alive. Wow.
Yeah.
Today that group is still around today. They are known as the Brigata de Topos de Tulatukum the Mole Brigade of Tula Tukum, and they are a professional research organization that travels around the world to save people. And they they're nonprofit and that they're like stilly, they're traveling on their own dime by commercial airlines, so they can't even bring much gear or whatever, but they've saved so many
people's lives. They just go everywhere that people need help, and they're just like, all right, we know how to dig into buildings. We're gonna do it. Yeah, We're the fucking moles.
Yeah.
I really like them.
I love I mean, it's a horrible story, but yeah, also incredible.
Yeah, and I love DIY mutual later really organizations. But where I find the most fascinating and kind of as I've been talking about, is where they intersect with establish
larger organizations. Just I mean, I don't necessarily like the giant organization, I don't know, whatever, but like I like that there's people at all levels trying to do a thing, and the scrappy people have the problem of lack of institutional power, right, and then the institutional people have the problem of institutional right, Yeah, And like the people are trying to figure out how to solve that problem because there's a role for everyone in disaster relief, although the
roles of groups like FEMA often seems to be to get in everyone's way, even in the way of smaller government.
Make it worse.
Yeah. Yeah, but we'll get into that even more. There's a role for everyone, even it turns out the city of Portland, Oregon. Oh, and we'll talk about that on Wednesday. That's okay, that's my uh, that's the cliff cliffhanger. Yeah, my cliffhangers. I'm going to talk about Portland. It's not that it's not I've done better cliffhangers in my life, but.
The city of Portland, Oregon.
Yeah. Well, they're going to break their own rules and get in trouble for helping people, which is about all I want for governments to do.
So absolutely, Yeah, okay Portland, I see you. Yeah, awesome. I'm excited for that part.
But if people are excited about what's happening currently in the world, do you have any suggestions about where they could find news or analysis of news. Maybe with puppets, maybe without puppets.
Yeah. I recently stumbled upon my show, Yeah, the first and only news podcast.
Have you heard of it?
I run Some More News along with Cody Johnston. We have a YouTube channel you can check out. We also have a podcast called even more News. Also on our YouTube channel. Both shows are available as a podcast that you can just listen to or with as a video that you can watch, so yeah, you can do that. We talk about things happening now, pretty dialed in on
the election at the moment, makes sense. Yeah, we got puppets, we got characters, strange storylines, and a lot of very well researched and thought out content.
So check it out.
And we were even just talking about it beforehand. It's like, you all have fact checkers.
Oh, yeah, we do.
We do.
We try our best.
A lot of people who are like I get my news from YouTube. That's not always a good sign, but it's not There are people who do well, I don't know, it's DIY, but it's not like CNBC or whatever. You know, No, there are people who do it right.
Yeah, we do our best.
Yeah, we we have researchers compiling stuff on each topic and then it gets fact checked by two different people. So every so often something slips through the cracks. But you can trust us to correct ourselves when that happens. But for the most part, it hasn't happened a long time.
That's pretty good because yeah, all of us, the best we can do is be like we are pretty sure that this is what we is true.
You know, we're doing our very best.
Yeah, if you are listening to this, I might be on tour. I might be on tour with The Sapling Cage right now, depending on when you're listening to this, Although maybe five years from now still be touring with that book. That'd be a little bit strange. I'll probably be dealing touring with the third book in the trilogy
of the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy. But the first book comes out September twenty fourth, twenty twenty four, which is in the past, and it's called The Sapling Cage, and it is about a young trans witch who has to save the world with her friends for everyone who is really mad about Harry Potter. Here's another story about kids learning magic, only they have spears, because I like spears. There's a lot of medieval weapons in this book, a
lot of medieval weapons. Yeah, that one was definitely brought to you by medieval weapons, kind of in a literal way. The first time I ever sold a book with an advance, like a real advance, like a I mean real advance was two grand I immediately bought my first sword.
It's money well spent, seems like I think so it's paying off.
Yeah. So if you think got anything you want to plug.
Oh so Weird Little Guys by Molly Conger. Listen to Better Offline hosts Red Citron.
Oh Weird Little Guys is so good.
Yeah. Have you listened to it, Katie?
No, but I'm writing it down to remind myself.
Katie, you'd love it.
Yeah.
I will be listening to it later.
Listen to A sixteenth Been a Fame Jimmy loftus but politics hosted by propaganda Buying the Bastards, opened by Robert Evans.
I think the filmmaker.
Yeah, yeah, the ghost of that filmmaker, and it could happen here. A daily show. Did I forget anybody?
I'm so sorry you guys have so much going on?
I forget? Did I forget anybody?
I have this?
I wake up every day going did I give? Did I do it?
Did all of your children get love?
Yeah?
You're like Aria's little list, but it's different because it's people that you love and want to succeed.
Okay, I just fact checked my own website. I did it, hooray.
And what we're going to do is take a break for a few minutes, and you all are going to take a break for like two days, unless you're listening to the future, which because you know, take a break at all. But we'll talk to you on Wednesday. Bye bye.
By Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. A more podcast some cool Zone Media. Visit our website foolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.