The Dual Power Gathering!

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

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

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

beyond it. Dual power is the project of building self determination, mutual aid, solidarity, and direct democracy in our communities by creating spaces that empower us all and from which you do in mansipatory institutions can emerge. It's a pretty yeah. So what does that mean? What does that mean? Um? First off, I want to say like a shout out to a lot of people have been working on this vision of what dual power is for years and years now,

and that includes uh a lot of groups. Um, that we are either in conversation with or have been taking inspiration from UM. One of the biggest, I think most developed groups that's doing that work is cooperation Jackson Jackson Jacks Mississippi UM and UH. I think the goal is people went up. Oftentimes when people do like here dual power, if they don't have any other UM context for it,

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

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

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

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

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

So like there's a lot of things they're kind of percolating that we've been like that have been happening in North America that takes inspiration from areas of the global South, UM, but also our homeown homegrown like traditions UM. So that could being anything from like your local mutual aid network to uh your local tenant union to like a rank and file UM union of like Amazon workers or teachers

or care workers, UM. You know whose existence puts them in conflict with the state capital UM and like patriarchy, settler colonial relations um. You know, like indigenous water protectors UM, folks who are building up places where the more developed it becomes, the more it kind of built its own momentum.

And you have spaces that are like autonomous fully like autonomous regions from like state power and to begin to like pick apart at capital and like reconfigure are like relations of like how we make things and do things and take care of each other in like fundamental ways, and we have lots of beautiful examples of this from the like organizing history not even that long ago, and people will be familiar with some of the Black Panther programs or some of the programs that were integrated into

the farm workers movement, and some of the programs that were put together by the anarchi feminists who were trying to support women's bodily autonomy and secure abortion rights through things like mutual aid healthcare and and things like that. So we'll see there's like a lot of really beautiful examples of this work happening over time around successful organizing movements.

And we're all really excited about what's going on now and we want to see that just to sort of come together and a flourish I think it's important to think about do a power or something that's like I don't know, like I I think there's a lot of people who look at it as sort of like dual power is planting a garden, and it's like, I mean sort of yes, but like there's you know, they're there. There's there's sort of two components of it right there.

There's this sort of there's a defensive component and an offensive component. There's a component that's about taking care of each other, and there is a component that is attack. Right, there's there's there's a component that is the people who are preventing us from taking care of each other need

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

dual power gathering? And yeah, I guess you sul want to talk about what what that is because yeah, yeah, well, you know, we've all been sitting around the past couple of years dreaming about being together, and so I think

this is kind of the fruit of that dream. Right coming up at the end of July, UH, we're inviting everyone out to the Indiana Dunes for a camping trip, uh and during that time, we're hoping to see a collaboratively produced event that incorporates everything that the participants can bring to it, which we know far exceeds the uh sort of even the scope vision of the organizing body. So we're really trying to um, just create a space

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

get people together in space. You know, a lot of us have been to these kinds of events before and felt like the most important thing that we got out of that was the relationships that we were able to build and the people that we were able to meet that we could then carry on ongoing dialogues with, and that we could find inspiration uh in in those dialogues and in those connections that would birth new projects that

you know, we don't yet know are even possible. And so this is kind of, at least for me, like that's the really important and exciting force of the of

the plan. Yeah, yeah, I think that why they're the Some of the things about this I think are really like it's been like really a collaborative effort to come up with this thing, Like we had the discussions about this is a thing that needs that we thought need to happen, because at the end of like by the end of the middle of one, we're like, look, clearly, we've all been through so many different experiences over the

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

of all this knowledge. Is like we need to debrief like the like the past five years I think in particular, have been like it's like crammed. It feels like, you know, the whole saying like some some years nothing happens, and some you know, in some months decades happen paraphrasing or whatever,

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

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

how do I get like rank and file union radicals in the same space as like a like a neighborhood abolitionist or a tenant union organizer or a community land trust and getting all these like different groups because together and then like thinking about how they overlap in support

and build off of each other. Because we I think the operating theory of many of people who are involved in this is that every context is different where we're organizing, but many there are many kind of principles that can kind of translate across context, but the context will shape very like like the I was just talking with one of the organizers who's like twenty minutes away over in northwest Indiana and you're like in Gary, and you know

those areas and their context for building something like a

an ecosystem too. Power organizations is going to be very different from my context where I am like down the street from this big global center of capital that's like University of Chicago and like, and it's doing all in my neighborhoods being gentrified by two billion dollar corporations and I've got a big nurse union, whereas they're in the middle of like a neighbor community that's being actively divested and destroyed like just like eating away at by like

because capital just pulling out and has been doing that for basically as long as you've all been. At the same time, y'all are dealing with the same like biosphere complications and climate change implications, and so yeah, we're thinking about the ways in which like the kinds of affiliations that makes sense for us to be successful in our projects are like, you know, they're not just They're not just local, they're not just national, they're not just continental.

There's like a lot of different things that are going on there. And that's the only way for us to really like sort out who we need to be in coaligion with on any particular issue is to know everybody, uh and to try to understand better there They're specific contexts and their specific experiences. And I think there's like, you know, I think, you know, to John's point about, you know, how much has changed in the last two,

you know, handful of years or whatever. I think one thing that we've all come away from the pace of change is pretty humbling, you know. Um, I think we definitely all we gotta we got We took in a bit of the humility around around that what is it that we actually need to do? We are definitely not prepared for it, you know. And it doesn't matter how many decades we've been doing this organizing work. We just are not ready for how quickly things are changing right now.

And the only way for us to get ready is to make sure that we show up and strengthen the networks of people that we can rely on to produce kind of positive interdependence um as we move forward with

the continued chaos that is the contemporary world. Yeah, I mean, and then part of this is also like thinking about because the way this is structured, this isn't just like a series of panel discussions where we've like the organizers have curated like you you're gonna listen to you know, uh, so and so who's like, you know, a prominent tenant organizer so and so. It is like a prominent like

uh like in like climate change direct action work. Like the goal is is that we like specifically chose a format and like officially it's called like like an unconference, but the way I think of it is it's like which which comes out of tech, which I find kind of irritating, But that doesn't But the core of the idea of the thing is is that we're coming into this space in generating new knowledge, not necessarily sitting there and receiving a bunch of knowledge from people who designate

as like movement leaders or experts. That doesn't mean that people who don't have a lot of experience and a lot of like skills aren't going to be there. It just means that we're going to be because one of my things is popular education, coming from the tradition of like Palo Fair and like um, everybody learning together is like it's like taking those principles and kind of like doing them in parallel in various circles. Where there will be a circle here of like cooperative organizers or people

who want to get coops off the ground. Will be a circle here of people doing land trust work, will be a circle here of like unionists. There will be a circle here of people doing like abolition work, and or interest are people who are interested in all those things,

are getting those sorts of things off the ground. And as they work through like a like they present tell stories, share ideas, do debriefs on like the various things that we've all been going through over you know whatever, how far back our timeline is depending on how far which

elders decided to attend UM. But then taking that knowledge with our facilitators and then being like, you know what, I think that these two conversations are happening kind of like in parallel would be better if they were merged together and beginning to kind of like build that sort of like and so the idea isn't necessarily come away with like a pre like we're not setting up like a like a predetermined set of conclusions for people we believe and based off of we've been having monthly community

calls for people who are going to be attending. All the different groups of folks who will be coming to this is going to be I think, like the depth

of experience is going to be really phenomenal. Um and people coming from We definitely have people confirmed who are coming from Canada, people who we may be having folks with experience the indigenous communities is uh in Mexico, we maybe have We're fairly confident we're gonna have people who are like just come from areas like northern Syria and iraq Um and taking all these different ideas and experiences and then generating next like coming to new conclusions, maybe

unexpected conclusions or things that we didn't quite that we weren't anticipating, but maybe asking new questions right Like this is a kind of intended to be a pre figure of space for engaging with things where we don't know what the right answer is. And I think we all need to release sit with the fact that we do not have like a clearer right solution into the problems that we're facing right now. Like I've been kind of

pulling on the slogan a little. It's like no gods, no masters, no right answers, you know, just like get used to it. We need to be more creative and we need to be more open to experimentation. And you know, there's just a lot of there's a lot of stuff that's going to be coming at us fast. And you know, this is a we we we hope this can be a space where we can kind of take some time to slowly get square with what it is we're going to have to be thinking about, even if we don't

know what to do exactly yet. So I had I had a really good experience where I was listening to like one of the like a person who came out of act Up giving a talk in my neighborhood. And she was saying, because we had had questions, is this going to be about a lot of theory? Are we're

gonna be talking about a lot of abstract stuff? And um, this organizer was like, you know, act Up had no theory, right they did, they took action and the theory followed afterwards, and so the idea that we're like necessarily having coming to this with like the right answers already figured out is just not like something that I think it's going

to be a super generative discussion. The idea of coming up with like coming up with orientations and thinking about like where we are heading kind of in a general sense, and then seeing how that unfolds and builds is I think a big, key, key aspect of what we're trying to do when we come together. We'ch is not to say yeah, which is not to say that there won't be theory, because that's not up to us. That's up

to y'all. So you know, um, I probably you know, like what I'm really interested in is having conversations about the community mental health care, you know, And like, for me, the theory is less interesting than you know, like talking about what we actually need in the spaces that we again, but that's you know, that's where I'm coming from, and everybody else is coming at this from their own perspective too, So I'm really excited to see what people bring to

that space and what we can get out of it. Um by just thinking that we all are contributing something constructive to that conversation. Well, and then also there's gonna be a lot of discussions about like literal practical skills, like here's how you like, here's how you uh. This has always been the perennial thing. This is how you pick a lot, This is how you uh, this is how you organize comms at like at like a like

on a picket line. This is how you pull together uh a demand letter for like a list for like tenants, like you know, these are the sorts of things that like we're gonna be talking. We're going to be doing concrete skill shares, plus these discussions about our experiences and sharing our stories and you know, hopefully we're going to come away from this. A big goal of it is to um come up with a lot of like different

like um just like content. We're going to be recording videos and uh like audio and like also and then transcribing things and writing things up and we're hoping that once we're then we're gonna have a big report that we can share out with people who can't attend. Yeah, privacy concerns obviously considered, so yeah, for sure, Yeah, there is a very consent is a big is a big thing with us as organizers, I should help. So yeah, you would think, but you know, not everyone is down

as you would imagine. Okay, So basically we're building a perfect little utopia for like four days and you all come out because we're going to fix the revolution. So kidding obviously, on on on a work on crete level, Like, what does like a day here look like? Like? What what are what? What are we doing? Oh? That's fun, that's a fun question. Uh, if I may, John, Yeah, yeah,

go for it. Um, what we're thinking right now basically, is it a day It looks like we get up in the morning, we drink coffee, we have breakfast, and we have a little assembly check in to see how things are going if we need to make any major adjustments, and we put up a uh sort of schedule for the afternoon's events that was populated from the conversation that was happening in the evening the night before and anything that anybody wants to bring up to that schedule that

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

in the day. Um, the you know, we're we're talking about having sort of just like sandwich bars and you know, make your own lunch kind of situations going on. There should be a lot of different things happening in different geographical locations on the site, so you kind of get get a choice of where you want to go. It's

not like there's one big event. Um, we're going to try to group things that are sort of thematically similar in so that they're nearby each other in case you want to go around and see, um what the different kind of stuff is going to be. And then in the afternoon it's going to be like I mean you okay, of course, this is like how we're intending right now.

The afternoon would be the discussions and skill shares and events and circles and spaces that um, we're generated out of the conversations that have been happening in space, so that people came and thought, you know, we had this conversation yesterday that really inspired me. Let's talk about this, and I'm going to make space for that. So we're gonna have big map where you figure out where you want to go, and you're gonna be able to wander

around and meet people. We're trying to incorporate a lot of events that make it easier to meet other people that you don't know yet. Um. Where there's gonna be tables where you can do arts and crafts. There's gonna be game space for whatever kind of games you want to play. There's gonna be places for kids to hang out. There's gonna be a quiet tent where you can take

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

building and expanding our networks. We're building expanding our trust with different people and building expanding our knowledge so that we can go out and do the kind of work that we think we need to do to I don't know survived as a species on this planet. So Um, that's one of the reasons why if there are some people are like, oh, I don't know, this seems really

kind of wishy washy. It's very that was a very deliberate decision based on previous experience from organizers who have been to these sorts of things, and the goal is really too to have a place where we can have discussions about high stakes issues without being so invested in it that we feel like if our concept of how to solve that problem doesn't come out as the like solution,

that we've somehow failed. So it's like, yeah, I was to say that I think one of the one of these things that you that you brought up there that's really important. It's like, not even just in these previous conferences or congresses or gatherings that we've been to have we seen to be a problem. But basically, at least I can speak for myself in a lot of organizings spaces that I've been in over the past, you know, like fifteen years that I've been pretty active in in

the organizing universe. Um, basically that one of the main problems that we have with this kind of like space of trust that we definitely know that we need to

be able to work together and moving forward. Is that we don't really have shared language a lot of the time, and we think we do because we use the same words, but we often use them to mean different things, or we often use different words to mean the same things as well, And that we come from kind of different organizing cultures and a lot of different places like that

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

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

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

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

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

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

to bring groups in, everyone is selling us our capacity. This sounds great, Our capacity is incredibly low. Uh. And that has just been across the entire spectrum of organizations, and that includes huge, big put together organizations like you know, unions versus little mutual a groups. Everybody is dealing with

this like feeling of exhaustion and like capacity. Our goal is to get people together so that they can build capacity um through these discussions and be prepared for or think because capacity is always going to be an issue and our goal is to get people to this point where because they're um, their mindset is okay, new challenge. Let's think about it critically and come up with solutions that fit this moment as supposed to keep trying to

force things into um preset like easy. I mean, I don't want to say easy, but like I think that sometimes like everyone's trying to mind history for the like the one weird trick to solve all these problems. And I think that the one weird trick is that human beings are creative, critical thinking machines. Like our our brain is like this thing for taking in information and generating new new thought and action. And we need to embrace that, um because if we don't, I don't think we're going

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

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

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

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

keep them from participating fully in the events. There's UM the discussions and circles themselves will be UM at like shelter space UM a bit away from where the camping is happening, So we're organizing transport between us to split those spaces UM for people who cannot camp. We are working organizing some hotel space for folks UM and then for people who can camp but don't have any equipment.

Our goal is to we're going to um basically acquire like enough camping equipment for a sizeable chunk of folks to come. And uh it's like literally today walking through a Walmart with my daughter looking at their camp equipment in pricing out things like sleeping bags and camp like sleeping mattresses, intense that sort of thing. So yeah, if people have have stuff they want to donate to the cause to like, I think we should be able to

take some of that in. I think we were just talking yesterday about the possibility of having like camp gear repair zone, so you have things that you find at the thrift store that like a tour intent or something like that will help you fix it. You know. We just want to make sure that everybody has these uh applies as well because they're they're broadly useful. I know I've used my camping gear in uh some politically motivated ways in the best I think that it's not bad

for people to have it if you need it. Just also, you know, the camping aspect of it is also it's more of a feature than a bug, Like there's like a like so to so to speak, like the pandemic is not over yet, as we're like seeing right um in spite of everything that like a ruling class is desperately trying to get us to uh agree to and so having um the accommodations outside and doing the doing the actual events like out of doors where there's lots

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

two UM and as a healthcare worker. That was one of our big concerns because we when we started making these plans, we really weren't sure what was going to be happening in terms of the pandemic, and having it out of doors was just like a sure fireway that we knew that we could at the very least we can minimize the chances that people would be getting sick

from just showing up and being the same space together. Absolutely, and we're definitely encouraging people who are coming together with friends and comrades and little groups to self organize their camps as much as they would like to do that UM, to sort of make plans together to limit the UM

you know, the need for spaces. You know, we're sharing up tents and all this kind of stuff, which to the extent that people are comfortable with that that you know people well, if you need to get in touch with people from around you, if you don't know anybody, you can reach out to us. If we know anybody else who's looking for somebody to try to coordinate with,

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

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

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

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

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

people together, as successful as it can be. Understanding implementations of who's gonna be We're gonna be outside, so there might be you know, all the some of the fun of having like a collective group of people all outside together, which can be a lot of fun, like I'm I'm waiting for karaoke and for um like our open mic and people bringing out like instruments and like just having like you know, we were people discussing like um, you

know some soccer uh potentially being a thing, um determining like placing that song. Who's going to be more into soccer based on various ideological reviews and past experience and yeah, hit us up if you want to play some music, if you've got an idea for something fun that sounds cool to do. And just to come to circle back to this, I think like with the point about conflict mediation.

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

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

I don't know, I don't actually know how widespread bonfires are in the US, but we do a lot in the Midwest, and bonfires are a great time. I'm excited people to experience that. It's it's good. Um. Yes, So I guess, um, do you if anything closing that you want to say, and also where can people find this and attempt to go to it? Also when is it happening, because that's that's another important It's going to be July uh twenty nine UM. And attendance is free, there's no

there's no charge, but we are soliciting donations. So we're doing a fundraiser UM through Open Collective UM and we've spend very generously given UH an offer of matching donations from one of the organizers who got like I got a little bit of a chunk of change to kind of contribute to that sort of thing. We're very I'm excited about that. So if you go on too, you can follow us on Twitter and I believe that's at

Dual Power uh to let me tell the chat. I think it's at Dual Power gathering is our Twitter and um. The website is Dual Dual Power dot org. Yes, yeh um. Yeah. If you go on the website, you'll find the links to everything you need to know. You can get in touch with us, you can like, you know, give us your your feedback if you love it, if you hate it, if you've you know, whatever, we're we're probably not going to change the whole thing right now, but show up

and we can change it at the time. I'll also say we do have like an organizing discord and people who are like serious about like getting involved in want to have things like I want to come to this and with things that they have specific visions for now. It's like absolutely time to get engaged with that because we're like we're working towards making getting people into the like who are the participants to really own the event itself,

So that'll be like that's something we have. I believe we're going to need probably two more community calls wanted June and one in July. Every one of those calls

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

like is really key to U being successful. So UM, we encourage people who want to come get signed up, and then we'll get into our mailing list, and our mailing lists is where we disseminate like when those calls are happening, and you can also hoping our discord u as long as you're cool and agree your community very men like bring you in and like get all sorts of shipped together. And we're very excited for people. I mean there's still a fair number of thoughts open for

the events itself, were like almost half way full. So yeah, I mean definitely, we've we've been trying to think about this as an event that we would want to go to, and we wanted to be an event that you want to come to also, so help us make it. So yeah, yeah, that's that's yeah, this is really exciting. I'd be going to it. Yeah. So yeah, thank thank thank you, thank you to you you both for joining us for talking about this. And I'm excited too. I'm excited to see lots of

people there. Hey, I mean we've all been wanting to see each other. Are two and a half years, right, so I miss your missing your face with dimension. Yeah, I'm sick of your flat face real. Yeah, thanks so much for having us on to talk about it. Really looking forward to it. I mean we're getting closer and closer. It's just like it just gets more exciting and also a little nerve wracking. But thankfully a lot of people have been stepping up on a very I'm confident it's

gonna be really like a really great thing. Yeah, and we will we we will have links to everything in the show notes. Um yeah, this has just make it happen here. You can find us in the usual places happened to your pod stuff? All right, goodbye, have fun. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.