Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, your weekly podcast that doesn't always devolve into laughing about the strange news, because usually.
It has nothing to do with news. But as I mentioned before, we're recording this on the day that Trump got convicted.
I'm already cynical.
Yeah, we're already over it.
I was excited because it happened four seconds before we recorded part one, and by the time we got to recording part two, I was like.
Yeah, the reality sets in that.
Hear me out. Here's the reason I find interesting because it's not boring. Like I don't think it's like good or bad or is going to save anything or make anything worse. It just it's not boring. It is making this the plot of this book we're trapped in more interesting.
Yeah.
I'm already just like, well, that was fun for five minutes.
It was a sugar rush. Was definitely a sugar rush.
I was like, I got I got my I got my flashy tweets out and immediately regret all of them.
And Twitter's regret machine.
I normally don't tweet right after something happened, but it was so funny watching his little speech after he got he got a convicted of thirty four felony counts that I, uh, thirty four felony counts, sorry a Shaquille O'Neill amount of felony accounts.
That the number makes it funny.
The shack daddy counts. Yeah, but now I'm like, you know what, that thirty four shack daddy a felony counts is probably gonna get elected because are gonna.
Be and is going to earn him votes.
It's and I already and I was, I was telling prop and Magpie was like I already got like a like a donate I am a I am a political prisoner, donate to my to my campaign and absolutely not, sir, but please keep just targeting me your your obvious target audience.
It's just so unhinged and it's like photos amazing, it's so funny.
I think, I think that's what it is to me.
It's like, you're right, yeah, I wish I could see it. The photos have served out here looking like you know, Leonard Peltier, like come on, like it's just so that's to be.
It's it. It's just funny, like.
This is exactly it's funny.
You know, Yeah, and just completely unhinged, absolute nasty work. Just it don't matter, Like, yeah, nothing matters.
This is the fact that it doesn't matter is what's so interesting. And I think it's gonna have knock on effects that someone listening to the same Someone's gonna be listening to this like four years from now because they have love searched podcast about Argentinian Uprising two thousand and one, and they're gonna be like, what the fuck that's the thing that started World War three?
Like why are they laughing about it? Yeah? Yeah, totally.
Well, the other voices on this call is prop the host of Good Politics of Propy, Sophie, the producer of every show, all other shows, yeah, pretty much podcasts in general, all things. Sophie is in charge of podcasts. I was thinking about how like in Catholic church, like you have the saint of everything, you know, like there's like the Saint of political prisoners, who's also the saint of amateur radio. Ye, Sophie, you're the saint of podcasting.
See see. I can't be the producer of everything because I would have canceled so many shows, so many shows.
But that's part of your that would be part of your duty. As a saint.
Yeah, yeah, canceled, Saint.
Man, you canceled this Saint of canceled podcast.
We found it calan after I was like, you're gone, You're gone, You're gone, You're gone doing this for the world. Seventeen more history podcasts.
Would you say that it would be they all must go? Yeah, where we last left our heroes. Yes, the working in middle classes of Argentina. They just ousted a whole ass government. Sounds fun, and I know, I know I would. I'd be riding that high for a long time. Like it's like one of those things where it's like, yeah, Argentina not run by popular assemblies, the existing cooperatives forced to compete in the capitalist marketplace. I still be riding that fucking high.
I really.
I like as you file that under the like wait, wait, that's an option we could just we could just get rid of the like we could do that, we could just.
Get's like the burning of the precinct. Yeah, yeah, it's that the Overton window has shifted for what counts. Yeah, yeah, the act that was more popular than either presidential candidate or whatever. Yes, the burning of that fucking precinct. Yeah, so they've aused a whole ask government. Thousands of people are organized in neighborhood assemblies and they're reopening medical facilities themselves,
are occupying their factories. And I don't want to talk about how they did it because it's actually interestingly like legal, the way they did it. I just assumed they were like, we stormed it and it's ours and fuck you, and there's a part of that, but they also they found a loophole. Squatting gets a bad rap. Like I've talked about a ton on this show. It's almost never I'm going to run into this house that people are living in and start living there instead of them. Instead, it's
shit like this. The factory owners abandoned factories by the hundreds or thousands because the factories were no longer profitable due to shifting economics. They would abandon them overnights, sometimes
often owing millions of pesos to their employees. And whenever I say paeso in this particular episode, I'm basically saying dollar because for most of this period the peso was tied to the dollar, and actually the fact that it got distied is part of how it all fell apart, And honestly, that's the level of economics that goes above
my head. Yeah, But whenever I read about like nineteenth century American politics and we're like the gold standard, the silver standard, the papers that I'm like, I don't know. I've read so many books about this fucking period in history and I still don't fucking know. That's how I feel about all that.
I taught high school history, and you have to pass in California. Part of the credentialing program is you have to do like a three part government like you have to do world history, US history, California history. Then you have to do like civics, geography, and economics. I flew through five of the six of those.
Yea.
When it got to economics, I was like, I don't understand kind of what you're asking, yeah, because I'm like the premise doesn't make sense. I'm like, so a dollar is worth gold because but I'm like, that's a rock. It just come out the ground. Why does why is the gold worth that?
Like?
Is it the amount of effort it took to get out? But the thing is that takes the same amount of effort to get that out as every other rock, Like why is this one? Just all of it? And then like, it seems pretty simple to me. You don't spend money, you don't have make more, Yeah, make more than you spend much. No, but that's not even Yeah, and I'm just like I don't necessarily yeah this is chart me
like yeah, yeah, yeah, you're the same. I'm like, I can explain it to you, but I don't mean I understand it.
Yeah. Yeah, And honestly, that's a lot of what's happening is that they rely on people. They're like, neoliberalism works, and they pull out these charts and people are like, we don't understand. I guess it does work, and then it doesn't work, and then they were like, I guess we were wrong, and like.
And you're like, so I kind of felt like y'all was bullshit in us, but I wasn't smart enough, which is it. Look, I love this because that's the central premise of her politics, and like, in my brain, I feel like what you're saying is bullshit. But you present yourself like you're smarter than me. So maybe and prop comes in and say, no, they're not smarter than you. You're right, Yeah that's that's what they're saying.
Yeah, Yeah, they're they make up a premise, and then they're like, we're going to sell you on this premise. And yeah, sometimes they know what they're talking about, and sometimes they don't. And and so in this case, you know, they just hoodwinked everyone. Oh God, that probably is a terrible origin, doesn't it. No, probably not good. Winked, Yeah, not bad when that comes from I don't know, I don't.
Know right now.
In my brain it goes to Malcolm X, you've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, run a muck.
I love how people use to say bamboozled.
Yeah, shit's so good, so great.
So Argentina have been bamboozled. Yeah, and the factory owners abandon these factories and abandoning their debts, it means they've robbed their workers. See the aforementioned chart. Unpaid wages are the largest theft, at least in America. They've extracted all the wealth that has been produced by these people and then they cut and run and never pay. God damn it. I'm trying not to bring up Trump, but that's the other thing he fucking does famously.
He's so good at it.
Yeah, I know, which, in a very indirect way, is part of why he was convicted okay because like nobody none of them was tripping like this is I mean, we're way off the rails. But like the National acquired Nan Pecker and then was like listen, I'm not buying no more stories until you pay us back for the last other ones. Yeah, and it was like that why that's why uh Cohen had to pay the thing anyway, because this nigga wouldn't pay.
I'm like, that's what you do, bro, anyway, I'm sorry, No, this is this.
Is literally why I listened to your podcast to explain this kind of thing too. Okay, you are the person I listened to explain this kind of thing about modern politics.
Yeah. Oh man, it feels like a heavyweight on my shoulders. I like that.
Yeah, you better get it right now, better get right Like yeah, I'm like, So these factories are built with public dollars buy and large And this is one of the things that people don't tell you when they talk about capitalism. Yeah, capitalism is often a system by which public money goes to private enterprise. So it's not like your tax dollars go to these giant corporations directly. So these factories were built on public land with public subsidies.
A factory owner will have built a subsidized factory, extracted the value of hundreds of employees, not bothered to pay them, and then split as soon as it's financially advisable to do so. And we know that the factory could have continued to be productive and profitable because as soon as the workers take it over it is because it was Yeah, yeah, this put the factories into bankruptcy since there's just abandoned, right, and by law, this should be sold off to pay
the company's debts, including the debts to the workers. But illegally, factory owners were liquidating their assets ahead of time, selling all the assets out of the factory on the side. So of course the cops stopped them. I'm just kid, The cops didn't stop them. Yeah, I was like what and yeah, no, no, the cops stopped the people, stopping the people breaking the law. Instead, factory workers were able
to prove that liquidation was happening. They had a case in court that they should just be given the factory in lieu of the debts that are owed to them. So hundreds of factories did exactly that. But like all legal systems I've ever run across. This legal system was built to support the rich, so it is an uphill battle for them in court. And so while they're fighting in court, the cops would come and try and evict them,
and they'd have to physically fight off the police. They would break into their own workplace and occupy it, saying this should legally be ours. We are owed money by the person who abandoned this. They formed a federation to coordinate all these what they were called Recovered Factories, the National Movement of Recovered.
Factories, Burst of Creativity.
Their slogan was occupy, resist, produce.
Oh that's better.
I was like at first, I was like, in a burst of creativity, but then that one's actually creative.
Their urgentities are fucking good at slogan aaring is what I'm learning.
Pretty good slogan. It is something to be said about how.
When I was when I was going through like this, uh sitting on the board if it's nonprofit. We was trying to figure out like how to like cut ties with the founder and all that stuff like, and one of the one of the people we brought in was like, usually the simple and most elegant is probably the best and it's probably the best way. Like it's simple and elegant. We'll get to it. And so when I think of like you just explained that, like really the easiest thing
is to say how much y'all owe these workers? Oh word, okay, how much is that factory worth?
Cool? It's a wash easy. Next, Like how easy that would be?
Like you owed him that money anyway, and they already there, so you're gonna sell stuff to pay them back about the thing that they actually make him profitable? Just give them the what do we Why are y'all wasting my time? It's just it's such an easy solution, but it doesn't benefit the rich.
Yeah, and there were judges who made those decisions, and a lot of people won in court, but a lot of it was also super uphill because there were you know, when I'm like, oh, the system is rigged against the poor, it is, But that doesn't mean that every individual within that system, within the system is like trying to fuck over the poor. A lot of people are specifically trying to help them. The Brookman factory, those seam sources. This
is one of the first factories that did this. Another one, which is another one of the most famous ones used to be called zenon ceramics, it's still around two. Now it's called fasten pot for fabricus and patronas or factory without bosses. Yeah yeah, yeah, scene, yeah yeah.
I'm not correcting your Spanish. I'm sorry.
Oh no, no, no, it's okay. My Spanish is bad, so I like, you're probably right. I think I've said before on the show. The main use that my Spanish ever gets is what I'm in countries that were more people have Spanish as a second language. I get by with my Spanish. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like France and Italy, I get by with spac.
Your Spanish is great, yeah, Spain Spanish is not very so much.
Yeah, I mean in your defense, in your defense, my Spanish isn't good in Spain either.
Yeah, you don't wanna you don't wanna lisp all your take? Yeah, and I and what's funny? And then there they're like, we don't even fucking speak Spanish. Fuck you this if we speak Catalonian basically, and uh, I'm like fuck, I've like trying to learn him anyway. Whatever. Yeah, yeah, I can't win. I mean, I'm proud and glad that they are trying to resist Spain whatever. So Zanan was founded on public land with public funding in the nineteen eighties.
The ceramics factory, its owner, Luigi Zanon, was friends with that neoliberal asshole men I personally. But it's workers were unionized, so they were like, oh cool, we'll totally be able to do this now. They was a problem earlier when that manifesto was listing out all the people that they didn't care about, one of them was union leaders. And you're like, well, why, Well before the workers could get around to fighting their boss, they had to fight their union.
What.
Okay, I am. I'm totally pro union. Whenever you create power structures, you create spaces where corruption can sometimes slip into. Yeah, the union at Zanon had been taken over by organized crime that was coordinating with the owners.
Yeah, and this is.
Actually kind I mean it, I don't know if it reached the same level. But in the US there's this you know, you've got this golden age era of unionism up until like nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, and then you've got this era that like like my dad grew up working class and he was like he didn't grow up super pro union because he was like.
No, they're just corrupt ran by mobs. Yeah, yeah, no, that's true. That's real, like that reality. Like you said, like you just you inevitably find you create a crevice for a hustle to happen. And one thing that like organized crime is and like street level stuff is, is it's finding the hustle. And it's like once we found it, it's like, dude, this is an easy leg you know.
Yeah. Yeah, and then why would you leave?
Yeah, it's simple, you know, clean, It's like it's already laundry. It's like it launders itself, the union hustle. Like from a from a street like gang life perspective, it was the that and like getting the getting the contra the construction contracts. Yeah, from a pure economic perspective, brilliant.
Yeah. And again yeah, most unions, even the even the more corrupt ones in the US, you're still better off at a union drive You're still better off, like.
And they can make that argument. It's like, dude, you're better with us anyway. Yeah.
Yeah, all right, I've got to work for the organized crime than the other organized.
Care basically the state organized crime.
Yeah, so the workers, this is a non retook their union, and I only found like the one sentence version of that, And I'm annoyed because I would watch a whole ass movie about Argentinan factory workers fighting a corrupt mafia union. Absolutely damn After they won that, the boss is suddenly didn't like the union anymore, so they started firing union organizers. And then when that didn't work, because you know, everyone
is a potential union organizer. Yeah, in autumn two thousand and one, so before all the pots and Pans riots, the owners went for what's called a lockout, which is like a reverse strike where you're like, fine, we'll lock up the factory, so no jobs for anyone. Fuck you. Until you break the union, you can't come back to work, which is you know, a strike is until you accept the union, we won't go back to work. On October second, two thousand and one, the workers voted to occupy the factory.
I think against this lockout, and I think the only reason that they're not called one of the first occupied factories is because it wasn't until March second, two thousand and two, after they've been occupying it for months, that they were able to get the place back to work. I think the owner abandoned the place kind of. In
the meantime, soon enough, they turned the place profitable. It turns out it's sometimes easy to be profitable when you don't have an ownership class life off the extra money backs. And people talk all the time about democracy as like a compromise, like in order to have liberty, we have to give up efficiency, like the Mussolini thing, the trains ran on time. Yeah, I want to shit talk that
for a second. Okay, study after study shows that workplace democracy aka worker ownership is more productive and more efficient. And as for the Mussolini and the trains thing, I've heard a few versions of that about that from Italian friends, and none of them are that, yes, the trains ran on time because of fascism, you know, because people will be like, well, I don't want I don't care if the trains run on time. I don't want fascism. That is a good position to have, even if the trains
ran on time because of fascism. Fuck fascism. Yeah, but it's not even true.
Yeah.
The two versions of the story I've heard, One was that the train industry was heavily unionized under anarchist unions before Mussolini's takeover, and so it was a decentralized organized labor union that got the trains running on time.
Yeah.
The second version I've heard from a different Italian friend. So the trains did not run on time, and Mussolini just had the trains run on time while foreign journalists were there. Wow, wow, any of those three reasons. Yeah, still fuck Mussolini, Yeah.
Fucking Sini.
Yeah, But to your point, it's like, if we have a shared invested interest and a mutual benefit, we're all taken care of, we're all fulfilled, we're all satisfied, and we all feel ownership on this project. It's gonna work, Like I just I don't it's gonna work. Like whether it's care for each other or just simple pragmatism, it's gonna work if we're all invested. If I know, it's just it just seems so like I know, it's not
that simple. Obviously, it's obviously not that simple, but it's also pretty simple.
Like that's why it works.
It is one of those things, yeah, where it's both simple and not simple, Like, yeah, when I worked at I'll talk a little bit more about it at the end. To see commons in the place that I worked, But you know, we ran during the pandemic, and a lot of the co ops in the US are like restaurants, right, And for some weird reason, restaurants didn't do very well during twenty twenty. Can't quite put my finger on the wife that none of the co ops that we've supported
closed their doors for good in twenty twenty. And for the restaurant industry, that was like unheard of that we had one hundred percent success rate of all of these restaurants. And it's because the worker owners were able to be like, Okay, bad things are happening, and they were very nimble because they could pivot, which is the jargon that we had to use constantly. It annoyed me. It's nonprofit world still
has all the same jargon as everywhere else. Yeah. But then even like when it came to like layoffs, they made those decisions together. They were like, who here can survive not working.
For the niceties?
Yeah, yeah, and like they survived, you know. Yeah. So there's a reason that the most part powerful informational organizational system in human history, the Internet, is a decentralized network that shares protocols, but not central control. You know. Yeah, Xenon is up and running soon enough, and Xenon and Brookman are sort of the flagship of the flagships of the occupied Factories movement. Zenon immediately goes out of the way to prove that they care about the community, and
vice versa. The community goes out of its way to prove that it cares about it. So it's not just like capitalism, but more efficient and more democratic. They're donating tiles to community centers and hospitals, they're organizing cultural events. And then for two decades in this poor community that they're near, or maybe in I'm not sure, people have been like, we wish we had a fucking community health clinic, and for two decades, activists, we're trying to get one.
So the workers that Xenon just built it in three months, sesh, they're like ceramics workers. But they're like, all right, we'll make a medical center, we'll organize it, we'll make it happen.
Damn.
As an another aside, because it's a good chance to use one of my favorite quotes. During the Spanish Civil War, this anarchist general named General Derudi, and he's asked by a journalist. They say, well, even if you win, you'll be sitting on a pile of ruins. And De Rudy says, we have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For you must not forget. We can also build. It is we the workers who built the palaces and cities
here in Spain and in America and everywhere. We the workers, can build others to take their place and better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeois may blast and ruin its own world before it leaves this stage of history. We carry a new world here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute. And the reason I give
this quote it's not unrelated culturally. The quote the slogan a new world in our hearts from De Rudy, and they all must go from the Argentinian uprising or two of the most common slogans of the anti globalization era, like hey, we can do this. Yeah, oh yeah, that's another one, that's a yeah, I guess we can yeah, and then the other slogan from the time from the Zapatistas was that we were fighting for a world in which many worlds are possible.
Beautiful.
So these workers they know how to build shit and they inspired solidarity from across the country. One of the most iconic moves that they did that like just like put a fire under a ton of people. They all got these slingshots right to fight the cops. They just like made slingshots and just like cheap kids, Dennis the Menace slingshots And I was like trying to figure out exactly why. It's because they're seramesists. They made their own marbles, brilliant.
There's like footage of just like crates of marbles, like white mar beautiful.
Yeah, amazing.
They fought off six eviction orders by two thousand and four. Every time that the police would come to evict them, thousands of people would show up from the nearby community and drive back the police every single time. As soon as the place was profitable the owner wanted it back of course.
There.
Yeah, there are these smug interviews with him from the documentary of the Take where he's like, well, it's because all the slogans are like Xenon is a Zenon belongs to the people, and Zanon himself he's a guy, so he's like, no, that's my factory, it's not the people's yea. The interviewer is like, well, how are you gonna how are you gonna get it? And he's like, well, government's gonna give it to me.
I'm like, I like, it's like, you know, cut to the government actually giving it to him, and you're like.
But they didn't. Oh, word, Okay, that's the thing. Xenon still exists as a cooperative. That's amazing that they want. Yeah.
They were like, they were like, sir, you walked away from it.
Yeah. And I mean, you know, a couple times the five or six times or whatever that they had to fight off of diction orders, the government was trying to clear out the occupiers, you know, while the but in the end, I think it's two thousand and nine or something that they finally won in court. I think it might be later in the script. The local government fucking
hates this cooperative and still does. And they're like, like, they ship tiles all over Argentina and like the one place that doesn't buy from them is the local government of course, in two thousand and five, one of the workers or a wife of one of the workers, either way, a woman who's associated with this place, I've read both, was kidnapped and tortured, like she was disappeared into a green Falcon We might be fell Colantum, not sure the
kind of car that was specifically and intentionally emblematic of dictatorship era, like this is the car that the dictators of the seventy would disappear leftist in two tonver, like.
The like the black van, white van.
Yeah, white van, yeah, like the black suv or what black yeah? Okay yeah. And so they get one of these and four people, three men and a woman, kidnap her, take her into the car, h cut her and leave her bleeding and say like, if you all don't stop, this is going to happen to following leaders of your movement or whatever. They she gets out, they call the cops. The cops come and protect her house. Then that night all the cops leave but one, and then the people
break back in. She survives, and I try not to go into detail about abuse and stuff on the show. They break back in and they hurt her again, and the one cop on guard was like, oh and see her here anything.
Wow.
So no one knows who did this. Everyone suspects it seems like open secret that the local government did this. Yeah, and that the cop was in on it. But you know what the local government isn't in on is these deals. They're only for AKP.
Wow.
Wow.
Yeah, all right, well we're doing deals.
Someone emailed emailed us. So we've been running a we've been running like promo to help get donations for the Portland Diaper Bank.
Yeah.
His diapers are so unreasonably expensive with some behind the bastards. And the next ad after we said that was for Huggies.
Oh my god, it's amazing.
And like obviously we have no idea what what ads are.
Yeah, we can never know.
We never know.
But anytime it lines up that perfectly, I'm like, yeah, you know what, I'm.
Getting a lot of chumb of casinos.
I was like, Don Draper would be like, you did it, kid. I appreciate that.
I like back when it was go to the forest, do you remember those?
It was like a local were dope too.
Yeah. So even if they aren't a paid sponsor, go to a forest, to go to a forest, touch ground, don't get.
Lost and we're back.
People all over Argentina supported Xenon, not just the three. The thousands of people would show up every time that they were being evicted. But there's like huge rock concerts, like the biggest rock bands in Argentina at stadium shows and shit have like banners saying like Zenon belongs to
the people. In two thousand and nine, I wonder if there was like a supporter like the like the people who get mad about rage against the machine, you know, oh yeah, the right wing people are like wait what yeah. In two thousand and nine, they finally won in court and it was expropriated legally to the workers and the state paid off the loans from when Luigi Zanon was in charge. The workers were actually mad about the state paying off the loans. They wanted Uigi imselfd have to
pay them. But so it goes. And the most important way that people showed up to support them, though, was to just join the movement themselves. More and more places were taken over and cooperativized. At least one private health clinic was abandoned by its owners and so it was staffed by its own workers. Two hundred and fifty doctors offering healthcare at this place, which when I hear medical clinic,
I don't think two hundred and fifty doctors, no hospital. Yeah, the court battles were not as dramatic as the physical defense of the space, but they were important and they were harrowing. Take a four Husts and Martin. It's a foundry and they make gears and shit for like tractors. Their story is sort of typical. It's the one that the documentary The Take focuses on the factory.
Es Owe.
Factory owners started laying everyone off for a few years, and then one day they up and abandoned the place. By March two thousand and three, the workers went back in and started inventorying in the place. They had to prove exactly what had been stolen and liquidated by the owner. The raw materials had been sold off, which later they
just not the government. The company just denied that. They were like, no, it was just over there in the first place, and that's like how they lost at their lower level court things, as the judge believed the person who was like, what, no, it's just nothing there. But the legal justification for their occupation was basically we're going to sleep here and guard the place from whatever thieves are stealing all these raw materials. This is how they
can legally break in and stay there. Is that they're like, well, someone's stealing the raw materials, so we have to stop them. And so for months they occupy the factory and they clean the place up and preparation for opening it again, but they can't run it apparently until the court's okay it. I don't really understand the ins and outs of this particular part. So they're working there and living there unpaid. They're all organizing all the while their families are living
off of mutual aid, trying not to starve. As far as I can tell, prior to the downturn of the economy, being a factory worker was skilled labor, and it was essentially a middle class income, or at least it was a working class income that provided like dignity savings and vacation time and shit like that. So they're gambling everything on getting the place running instead of going out and looking for other work. It helps that there's not really
other work for them. But and they're not political types. They're folks trying to feed their families and keep it the skilled labor that they know. They're across the political spectrum in their ranks, including MENEM supporters. The more I read history, the more I understand that these radical social movements are often fought for and organized by people who just aren't political, Like that shopkeeper guy we were talking
about earlier. So they're occupying the factory. They cleaned the place out, they paint Fabrica occupata and co op on the gate to the property and they start fighting in court. Starts off badly. The judge is like at the bankruptcy court is basically like, look, you're getting in the way. You want to get paid. We want to pay you leave, We'll sell off the place and give you some money.
But they refuse to budge, and it takes months, but eventually they won in legislature and the factory was legally expropriated to its workers and the gate went from occupied factory to cooperative. So meanwhile, the seamstresses over at Brookman, the seamstress factory, the sewing factory, they keep getting evicted in ship by the federal police because they haven't won in court yet. On April eighteenth, two thousand and three, three hundred federal cops evicted the workers in the middle
of the night. They show up with like machine guns and attack dogs. I think machine guns. I think that they just mean like assault rifles or whatever, not like yeah, yeah, it tanks with whatever. It's still not nice. They fence off the entire block with tall black riot fences, and they like weld the doors shut to the fucking factory. Although I've read that, but then I've also seen footage where it's like, you lock some shit, I don't know whatever,
They locked the place down. Yeah, before dawn. This happens a mil. The night before dawn, three thousand people show up to gather these workers. Protesters start camping out in front of the place. The city government was like, all right, we can't let you in until we've contacted the Ministry of Labor, and we're waiting for that meeting to conclude, and then we'll decide what to do. We'll decide whether or not you get to go back in. And there's
like middle aged woman on the megaphone. It's like, all right, for now, we're waiting, but when the moment is right, we're fucking going in.
Period.
By April nineteenth, the's a non ceramics factory blockaded a road in solidarity on April twenty first, so like day three to quote Naomi Klein quote. Unable to get into the factory and complete an outstanding order for three thousand pairs of dressed trousers, the workers gathered a huge crowd of supporters and announced that it was time to go back to work. At five pm, fifty middle aged seamstresses and no nonsense haircuts, sensible shoes and blue work smocks
walked up to the black police fence. Someone pushed, the fence fell, and the Brookman women, unarmed and arm in arm, slowly walked through, and then the police attacked.
Oh damn, he said, with sensible haircuts. Such a such an interesting note of specificity, I know.
And it's like I think it's like this like very painting, Like look, these aren't the wild eyed protesters, you know.
Yeah, And I love that.
It's like we are fighting the cops because we owe a client three thousand pairs of pants.
You know, it just seems again simple and elegant, where it's like we just have a we just have orders to fulfill.
Yeah, we're trying to do like normal ass life here.
This is normal shit, Like, look the owners left, Yeah, we're continuing the business. I don't see what the problem is.
Yeah, we like living in an economy. Do you like living in an economy?
You remember when you went to the bank and they wouldn't open and you couldn't get your money out?
Yeah?
Remember that.
Imagine if we went to the store you couldn't buy pants, remember that?
Yeah?
Yeah, I bet you I sold dimp pts you wear it?
Yeah?
Fuck yeah. And so the police attacked the demonstrators with water cannons, tear gas, rubber bullets, and I think eventually live ammunition. Twenty people were wounded and one hundred people were arrested. And meanwhile, during all this shit, like April two thousand and three, there's a presidential election going on, and this is like the we swear it'll stick this time election.
I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was like, there's forty fifth election.
Yeah. I think a lot of those previous presidents were selected, not elected. I think when you have five presidents in three weeks.
Yeah, yeah, no somebody, yeah I chose The.
Four erunners of this presidential election is carlos Menhim, the guy who sold the country out in the first place. And this guy named Nestra Kirscher, who he's sort of a He's a lackluster center left guy who promises change but is making deals with the eye, so it's unfamiliar to the American Aunty.
He is a large cheese pizza.
Yeah, he probably likes ice cream. Yeah in malarkey, yeah may Yeah, No one's gonna be bamboozled on his watch. Nope, Menim starts winning initially, After all, the country was stronger under him than it was currently, even though he's the one who made it fall apart. But there's still like this golden shine too.
Yeah.
This man, God, the comparisons are going to keep going. Compared himself to Jesus openly during his campaigning Lord and his billboards are like, I will bring back the rule of law. During the first round of elections with candidates from every party, he actually wins, but it goes to a second round with only the top two candidates because every other country in the world has figured out a better way to do democracy than the US.
Everyone. Yeah, we were like the iPhone one. Yeah, democracies and we never upgraded. We swear we still have the best version.
No, totally because yeah, like the modern the modern republics around the world like mostly modeled themselves after US, but figured out a better way to do it.
Yeah, they all upgraded.
Yeah, like a multi party system that then goes to run off. Yeah, and you know, and so menhim. He looks at the odds of the second election and he's chicken shit. He just fucking drops out. He's like, I don't want to lose. That be embarrassing or whatever. The fuck. I don't know. I don't know his motivation. Yeah, so just like Jesus. He no, no, he really has nothing to like Jesus at all. He compared himself to Jesus earlier and I'm pointing out these.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know, brother Jesus actually got up on that cross fam Yeah.
Yeah, like that's a that's a love the band, hate the fans kind of thing for me. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, and not here I hate the band and the fans with many this is different.
Yeah.
So Kertcher wins and he like doesn't make things way worse, and he doesn't make things way better. He's he's the fucking ratchet mechanism of representative democracy. The right pulls to the right and then the center keeps it from going to the left. He's fine whatever, Yeah, But soon enough
Brookman won in court and its workers were given the factory. Rather, they were given the equipment of the factory, but the building itself remained in state hands as of twenty ten, as the last article I found specifically on the Brookman factory, okay, leaving them at least at that point of some percrity, but they are still there, is there?
So okay?
Even more than most topics of what I've covered on this show, most of the books and documentaries and articles about all this were written like during the moment, and the retrospective pieces are much less in depth. So like when you read the book about this, it came out in two thousand and four, with an update in two thousand and eight.
You know word Soday was there.
Yeah, yeah, Actually that's that's who was writing the books. Is the you who were there. And if you want to be there, you can be at wherever the next ad tells you to go, and we're back. So after the crisis of two thousand and one, most of the forms of social organizing, the street protests and the assemblies, most of them fade away or absorbed into existing structures. They existed because everything was in chaos and crisis. The co ops, however, overall, remain but without the larger social
movement for them to tie into. Look, I think they're fucking amazing and I want them to continue to exist, but they no longer represent a break from the old order so completely. This is a common It's this thing that comes up in like when people talk about co ops, We're like, co ops are the answer, and you're like, co ops are part of the answer. Yeah, but if when co ops are tied into a larger struggle, they're an amazing source of power or counterpower, if you want
to use jargon that I have to understand. When they're not tied into these larger movements, they they exist within capitalism, they compete within They're doing what they can.
It's just one of many options inside of the same system.
Yeah, which is I mean familiar to all of us who run small businesses, And I mean I'm actually I actually do both. I'm part of a worker cooperative publisher, but I also, like, for years and years ran my own small business, making and selling bullshit on Etsy and things like that. It's like I don't want to have a boss, and I want to survive.
That's listen, it's a salt water ocean, man. Yeah, you just gotta swim.
Yeah.
But viewed correctly, even when they're not currently tied into a larger struggle, they can be seeds beneath the snow, waiting to germinate the next time that the spring comes around. That's what I hope for them and see in them, you know, very poetic. Well, I got the idea of them being seeds partly from seed comments. The idea of cooperativism spread. The idea of cooperatism has been around forever. It's like stronger in every country that except the US.
You wanted to do a like complicated dive. Mandragon is the largest cooperative corporation in the world, and it's in the Bosque region of Spain, and it like is a huge trunk of the Bosque economy. But it also like
started making more compromises during the neoliberal era. And like, of course, you know, like like a lot of these co ops, even in even these occupied factories, a lot of them do like a one to one pay thing where everyone gets the exact same pay, and then other ones that I actually think are still just as radical.
Well sometimes have like some pay discrepancy, like hey, yeah, your first year, you don't make as much money as the person who's been your twenty years, like whatever, you know, yeah, and then you get to like I think Mandragon has like a six to one ratio, and there's like interviews with the workers who are like, when they find out how bad it is everywhere else, they were like, man, I thought six to one was kind of fucked up.
But in the like I think the average CEO to median salary of an employee, not lowest salary of a employee in the US, it's like two hundred and seventy to one or something like that. Good God, Like.
I don't think he always says, man America, America is a scam, y'all.
Yeah, yeah, it really is. It really founded by grifters.
What a hustle?
Yeah, okay, But cooperativism is spreading. Some folks went down to learn in what was going on in Argentina, and they came back to the US and they started an organization called the Working World, and it started to put investment capital non extractively into the hands of these recovered businesses. In Argentina is what it first started to do. It's sort of a reverse of the globalization process. You get money from the well far country into the less wealthy
country and reverse the extractive process. But in this way that like encourages growth instead of I mean, don't get me wrong, I think that like the US pain reparations still the part countries of the world that it's fucked over. It makes total sense to me. But this way that like helps grow an economy, you know, very specifically indirectly.
So when you say non extractively, meaning like they're not going to get no return on that investment, Like.
Okay, so here's it's kind of interesting. There is a return on this investment, but the return on investment that they ask for only can come from the profits generated from the capital put in. So it's like if you come to see Commons and you get alone because see Common is now the larger US version of this, right, yeah, or is not larger, but it's the version of the US. You come to see comments for a loan, you don't
put your house up at all. Yeah, if see Commons buys your restaurant equipment, the worst thing that can happen and I think hasn't happened in the history of c commons, but I'm not sure. Is that that restaurant equipment is sold as the collateral for the loan. So no individual person loses any money through this process. You cannot end up worse off than you started financially by working with a non extractive loan. They also don't look at your
credit record or any of that. Instead, they're locally embedded, so they know who's a good loan because they know that that person's part of a community. Right yeah, And so they centralize getting the money and decentralize spreading the money out. It's really interesting. And then the money that people pay back goes then into the commons to then spread out to other places, so like real people. So it's instead of and so sometimes companies will be a
little bit confused. They'd be like, well, I want a grant, and we'd be like, well, we don't do grants, you know, we do loans. When you pay back your loan, the money the interest on that loan, which is like negotiated with everyone all along, pays for the ability to then go around and turn and do do it for someone else. And so see Commas does all this shit, like like one of their groups is called Poda Emma, just power Emma.
Emma's a neighborhood in Ashville, North Carolina, which is one of the fastest gentrifying cities in the country.
Bonkers.
Yeah and yeah, and the LATINX community that lives there is pretty fucking fucked by this gentrification. So Poter Emma is is you know, run by them and buys trailer parks and puts them into cooperative ownership so that everyone who lives there now is part of a housing cooperative and can't lose their land, you know, can't be gentrified out. Yeah, I went totally off script here. Actually, what I did
is I went onto a different script. I went onto the script that was my job for two years, which is explained comments to people.
Yeah, but no, that's that's important because like it's it's it's brings the history you're talking about too now, and like that if you drill down, if you have the will and the desire to make something work, you can.
Yeah. And that's to me one the beauty of your whole show.
And to like what you're explaining is like and even this episode, it's like dude, if you got the will, yeah, you can make it work. And like, newsflash, you could make money.
Yeah.
Like that's and that's what I like. I'm hoping, Yeah, I'm hoping listeners is hearing that these factories are profitable.
They're making they are making money. What do you like they making money y'all? Yeah.
One of the like, one of the people that I worked with, this guy, Ed Whitfield, who like there's a photo of him from nineteen sixty nine as an armed black man coming out of a Stanford building that he had just occupied, you know, as part of a student occupation in the sixties or whatever. Changed my thinking about
economics more than anyone else that I've ever met. When, through his work with the Southern Reparations Loan Fund, which is now part of the Commons Network, he talks about how he's like, no, we we want as a as a leftist, I don't know exactly what ideology he would identify with as a leftist, we want profitable businesses in
these black communities that are not. This is how we reverse the extractive process that white capitalism has done to us, is by like, because we make money and then they take it from us.
Yeah, that's what happens.
Yeah, so we just don't let them take it from us, you know, And it's just like it really it really blew my mind. Anyone who wants you should He has a couple of videos up on YouTube, but he's on Panels or something talking about this shit, and he's just this like fucking brilliant economic thinker. Anyway, and if you're listening and misworking with you. Sometimes I don't know if anyone from my old job is going to listen to this.
This is a big talk around like killing Mike and jay Z them being like very much capitalists, you know what I'm saying in a lot of ways, but you know, black capitalism and like even the argument that like for a time drug money was our VC, Like you know what I'm saying, And it's like this is this is generated by us. And now, of course obviously that's nothing to be proud.
Of, Yo'm saying.
But for the example of what you're saying is like, no, we generated funds right invested in ourselves that way, like you said, we don't owe to white people like we
did this ourselves. The money stays here and a lot of those guys think to themselves, Well, we clean our conscious for how we raise the VC by investing in neighborhoods and communities and businesses within our neighborhood, even though it was built off drug anyway, all that to say that is one of their things about black banks and black businesses and then and that's being critique because it's like, yeah, mean still you know, but to your point, Yeah, I mean I I kind of tend to fall in the
position that you you articulated, which is like yeah, like you I mean, I'm on, I'm on this spinning rock. You know what I'm saying, Like it's you can't. You can't unplug, Like it's like it's not possible, so you can't. I have to try to do this in the less extractive way as possible.
Yeah, and so this model, like it's so interesting to me because this model, to me in the US seems to be like a synchronization of coming from these occupied factories in Argentina and the methods that they developed a financing and then a lot of stuff specifically coming out of like a Southern reparation loan fund and like other
black anti capitalist market ways of thinking. And I'm using words that I'm not entirely certain that everyone involved would use I want to describe it this way, but it's it's real fucking interesting to me about how people are trying to work about. And they started in the US. Well, they started in Argentina, and then they moved to Nicaragua, and then they came to the US and they started with a factory that had been abandoned by its owner. So this exact thing that has happened in Argentina has
happened in the US in the same way. Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago shut down in two thousand and eight during our collapse of our economy. Everyone was fired without being paid the money they were owed, both backpayan severance. So the workers occupied the factory and they won in courts, big social movement around it, and they won what they were owed. They didn't get the factory, but they won
what they were owed. But then the people who bought the factory had like a shit business plan and it didn't work out. So the workers of the factory teamed up with the United Electrical Workers Union, the Working World the organization was just talking about, and the Center for Workplace Democracy, and they bought the factory from its owners. It's now called New Era Windows Cooperative. It is financially successful.
It grows and expands every year. I know this intimately because I my last job was to write grants that included spreadsheets and graphs of all the successes of all the worker cooperatives. Wow. And I've been pondering more and more about how to make sure the stories they tell in the show tie into things that are happening now so people don't see it as like, oh, it's history, it's dead and gone or whatever. And this one's easy
because the through line's so direct. The working world realizing that non extractive finance should be locally directed, decided instead of like growing to conquer the world, it federated into a decentralized cooperative of these non extractive loan funds. They're about thirty five of them currently around the country, and
they work together under the name Seed Commons. But they all have their own total unique identities and things like that, like Poe Deer Emma is not the same as Yeah Cooperation New Orleans or anything like that idea, And the leadership comes from the actual communities. The money is going into reversing the extractive process. So it's not just helping communities enrich themselves. It's literally just coordinating between various communities that are all enriching themselves.
Wow.
And I quit my job with Seed Comments to focus on cool people who did cool stuff, and so I constantly challenged myself to do as much good with the show as I was able to writing grants for this. That's dope because I consider See Comments to be genuinely one of the most transformative projects, uh in the current modern economic world.
So it's really encouraging to hear someone gush about a financial institution, you.
Know, like when when the last time you heard that?
Like yeah, and Magpias, like I I have the exact.
Opposite feeling I have at the end of a Bastard's episode.
It's all great succeeding.
Yeah, that's the show. We did it, We did the concept.
Yeah, yes, exactly, Yeah, you know, mission mission accomplished. And what I love about this one is that it's not about a cool person. Yeah you know what I mean, like this hero character. This is about a bunch of people who don't need their names on T shirts that are like, we got bigger stuff to do. Total, that's another thing America could learn. Yeah, wow, how.
Many of those factories are still owned? None of them? You said?
No, So a lot of them are still cooperative, A lot of them still I think hundreds of them. But I'm not sure. I like, I really struggled. Like even the piece that I found, like following up on the old cooperatives was like from like twenty ten, you know, because the media cycle sucks and it's like recent enough that it's like most of the stuff I cover, I'm reading history books about where is this case, I'm reading current event books from twenty years ago about you know.
Yeah.
And then the window company because I am also a homeowner and I'm like, so if I'm gonna upgrade my windows, I need to order from them, right.
I think that they might be Chicago market only, but I'm not sure.
But uh, it makes sense, you know.
Yeah, but there is let's see, in LA, there's a network of cooperatives. I'm not sure whether they're doing much industrial stuff. I can't remember what the LA cooperatives are up to off the top of my head. I used to know this stuff inside and out.
That's fine, I'll go, I'll look them up. Yeah.
Oh, but there was also like Downtown Crenshaw Rising. Did you catch that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was tied into all of this, But I think that one didn't I think we didn't win that one. There was a mall that went out of business and was abandoned is in a primarily black neighborhood, and some people were like, oh, let's gentrify the shit out of it. And then a whole bunch of people were like, what if you didn't, What if we built a giant, beautiful cooperative community center instead?
And they raised funck tons like hundreds of millions of dollars to buy this building. And now I am not speaking for my former employer here, this is Margaret's opinion time.
Yeah.
I think the company that sold it for the company that bought it didn't bid as high as the community. I think the community bid higher and was like, we will pay more for this, And I thought we lived in fucking capitalism wherever pays the most wins the bid.
That's what I thought, But in.
This case they were like, but we don't want it to turn into like, yeah, a black community center, and this most important cooperatiation we.
Have been holding on Nick Crenshaw. I mean it's been at least a century.
Like, yeah, I've been holding Crenshaw Is like Black Renaissance for so long and fought them off for so long that like I could see them just being like, no, we don't even want your money because it's so central, like the location of Crenshaw is perfect.
Yeah, well I haven't. I haven't kept up with it in the PASTA is about two years ago that this last time I have an update for it.
But what a beautiful story, Margaret.
Thank you. And if people want to hear more current events and other stuff, where can they do that?
Yeah, hit me at her politics will prop.
I'm gonna help you navigate all kinds of things going on in this unbelievably odd timeline that we're in, with a few glimpses of joy, like you know, bleach blonde, butch built, bad body, Like just just a great moment. Y'all know what I'm talking about?
Right, I.
Never know anything. I haven't heard that episode yet.
No, that's not Senator.
Our congress Woman Jasmine Crockett just absolutely eviscerated Margie Taylor Green.
Yeah, yeah, it was great.
Anyway, she photoshopped that photo because the sun the Sun's not that shape.
I like prop that. This means that your podcast sometimes reaches kind of the opposite of your necessarily intended market, where if you live in the hills and you only read history books, yeah and hang out with your dog with politics is prop is a great way to learn about what's going on. It's a great way.
It's I never knew, man. I assumed I was talking to my city. But apparently keep it y'all up, you know, yeah, which is great.
He's part of the holler listens to.
Yeah, but yeah, Hill of Politics with prop please.
You know, we're doing Hill of Politics for eyeballs too, where it's you know, I remove all the things that need to be bleeped and they're a little shorter and they're for eyeballs, you know, so you can show your classrooms.
Hell I am. There's a new cool Zone media podcast called sixteenth Minute of Fame. I made that pause because there's a parenthesis there. Thank you. It's by Jamie Loftus. Today I listened to Jamie Loftis talk about a cop falling down a slide and it was hilarious, so so much joy I know. And I have a book that's coming out in September. It's called The Sapling Cage. It's it's a crossover book, which means it's a young adult book that knows that's mostly adults who are going to
read it. And it's about a young trans girl who becomes a witch. And it is being kickstarted probably next week. If you're listening to this episode when it comes out it starts. I think June tenth is the kickstarter and you should read it. And that's it. We'll talk to you all next week. Hi, this is a special message from me, Margaret. It's not an ad message. It's just not related to what we're going to talk about today
on the podcast. And I'm recording this separately. I'm recording this separately because on June tenth, twenty twenty four, Leonard Peltier is going to have a parole hearing and I want to talk about that. One of the guests that we have a lot on this podcast, but also just like Cool Zone Media podcasts in general, is my friend Moira Meltzer Cohen, who is a lawyer, a defense lawyer who is on Leonard Peltier's court case. And Moira asked us to read this statement and I just want to
say I co signed this statement. I've done a lot of research about Leonard Peltier for this podcast and also on my own as an activist. Some of the first protests I ever went to were related to free Lanard Peltier,
and so this is the statement. On June tenth, twenty twenty four, Leonard Peltier, enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa of Lakota and Ajibwa Ancestry and the longest serving political prisoner in the United States, will be appearing before the US Parole Commission for the first time
since two thousand and nine. He faces staunch opposition from the FBI and other law enforcement due to having allegedly killed two FBI agents and a firefight on June twenty six, nineteen seventy five, after the agents appeared on reservation land to execute a pretextual warrant. The initial firefight occurred during the quote reign of Terror on Pine Ridge in the wake of the occupation of Wounded Knee, a time of extreme violence when federal law enforcement installed a puppet tribal
chair and was arming vigilantes who targeted Indigenous traditionalists. Everything leading up to these events, as well as the subsequent investigation and mister Peltier's extradition, trial, conviction, and sentencing were characterized by gross misconduct on the part of law enforcement, the prosecution, and the courts. Mister Peltier's co defendants were
separately tried and acquitted on grounds of self defense. Mister Peltier was railroaded, and his case is tainted by discrimination at every level, ranging from the withholding of exculpatory evidence to the torture and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the refusal of the trial judge to dismiss in avowedly racist juror to the apologetic gymnastics of courts affirming his conviction in the face of meritorious legal challenges
and admitted evidence of outrageous government misdeeds. Mister Peltier has been in prison for more than forty eight years and is almost eighty years old. He suffers from chronic and potentially lethal conditions for which he receives insufficient and substandard medical care. If you want to take action to free Leonard Peltier, you can call the US Parole Commission at two zero, two three, four six seven thousand. Again, that's
two zero, two three, four six seven thousand. Or you can sign the petition and this is a string of This is a URL, so I'm going to read it out nd NCO dot c c slash us PC dash free Leonard Peltier. Again, that's NDNC dot c c slash us PC dash free Leonard Peltier. Leonard Peltier is spelled l e O n A R d p e l t i e R. Or you can follow Indian Collective on social media, which is n d N Collective for more information on Leonard Peltier. Listen to Margaret's podcast on
the Low Coda Nation. Oh thanks Maira, and read In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matheson. And again, just want to reiterate, I co sign all of this. I've done a lot of my own research into this. You can and should too, and free Leonard Peltier.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.