Evil Rich White Dudes

last interview of twenty twenty two. I've been doing a lot of reflecting, as I know that many of you have been, as we wind down this year, and one of the areas that I have been thinking a lot about has been work and labor and the way that work and labor has been transformed or is in the midst of a big upheaval and transformation, and it was brought on in large part by the pandemic, where those that were privileged and able to stay at home and stay safe had a lot of time to be able

to think about the ways that we wanted to engage with work for those that were laid off but then were cared for by our government by giving us our tax dollars back in terms of being able to have breathing room as we were given the opportunity to transition into something else. Then, of course, there are those the quote unquote essential workers that are so essential we don't pay them a living fucking wage, who kept the world going while the rest of us were able to take

a respite from it. I've been thinking a lot about the ways in which our lives are controlled by capitalism, are driven by other people's greed, and is about extraction

more so than it is about investment. I think about the relationship that we have to rest and the relationship that we have to work, and how there is this sense of guilt that comes over at least I will speak for myself, that comes over me when I am not consistently producing, consistently creating content, consistently putting out into the world, which means I am taking from myself in order to give. And I think about those people who are extracted from and are given very little in return.

And so it makes sense then that my last interview for twenty twenty two would be with organizer and freelance writer and author Kim Kelly. If you listen to my other podcast, Democracy, Ish was Jahat and I had her on several months ago to talk about her book, told

story of American labor fight Like How. And in this conversation with Kim, you know, I get to do a bit more of a deep dive and a bit more of what I hope to make the theme of twenty twenty three, which is I don't want to have us be brought down, beleaguered with the minutia of the thing. I want us to work towards being an existing, even

for a little bit in a dreamscape. What does it mean to think bigger and better outside of the reality of the current moment, so that we can create the future that is equitable, the multiracial democracy that we need, That we should have the equitable workforce that should be human centered and not centered on how much can be extracted. And the value of your humanness is measured by how much you can produce when you start to think about it, folks,

as many of you will. And again, this is for the privileged few who are actually able to work themselves to death to get to the end of the year, to be able to claim that seven glorious days of being so exhausted, so worn down that you probably don't do all of the things that you imagine that you would have yourself do on your winter break because you were so exhausted depleted that you end up sleeping the entire break. And look, I'm not saying that you should

feel bad about that. I'm saying, think about how hard it is that we all labor in our different industry reason spaces to just get to claim seven days of respite. I've been saying this for the past couple of weeks that I have been I don't know, with the three podcasts that I now have recording at least five interviews a day in order to be able to take one week off right. The other shows will have outside of woke AF, will have new content that comes out woke AF.

I'm giving myself as well as my producer Andrew, a break from needing to put out content every day for

a week. And you know, I have been thinking a lot about my personal relationship to work and to worthiness, as well as the mentality, the American mentality in our culture of capitalism and greed that drives it and makes us even believe that when we are when we do have the ability and the privilege to take a respite, to have some downtime, that it's saddled with guilt, or that we've been working ourselves to the bone so much that we don't even get to enjoy it fully because

we spend most of it unconscious. That shouldn't be the way it really shouldn't be. I want to end the year feeling refreshed and recharged, not depleted and exhausted and miserable. Frankly, and I'm not, you know, I am admitting this as much to myself as I am to all of you, that my challenge and my intention for twenty twenty three is to think about the ways in which I want to engage with work, and the way is I want to engage with rest, and that rest is not a

gift that I'm giving to myself. It's not something that I am earning by virtue of Oh, Danielle, you've put out so much content, you get to take a nap. It's the only way that I get to continue doing the work that I do is because I'm a human being who requires rest and rest from guilt, and rest from shame, and rest from oppression, and rest from racism, and rest from all of these fucking things that pick

at us all day, every single day. So for those of you who do and will take holiday break and have the ability to think, I want us all you know, as you listen to this episode and this interview with Kim Kelly to think about your own relationship to work your own relationship to labor and what are some of the ways and maybe write them down. What are some of the ways that you want to challenge yourself to think better and be better to yourself to yourself this

coming year. What are some intentions that you want to inseet and some boundaries you want to create so that you can show up better for yourself daily. Coming up next my interview with author, freelance writer and labor organizer Kim Kelly Folks. I am very happy to welcome back to woke f Daily Kim Kelly, author of the book The Untold Story of American Labor Fight Like Hell. Freelance writer and organizer Kim, You know, it has been a

really interesting year for workers in America. I think that more people, regardless of whether it is an office job, whether it is a delivery job, a rail job, teachers that how we have been thinking about work, how we have been engaging with work has changed and fundamentally changed because of the global health pandemic that had those of us who were privileged and not quote unquote essential workers the opportunity to slow down or forcefully be fired and

laid off, but to think about how we value our humanism, right, our ability to have rest, to have breaks with the relentlessness of capitalism and the requirement of production, and can constant and unrelenting production to show our value. And I wanted to get a sense before we into kind of the nitty greedy, just how you have been thinking about twenty twenty two and how conversations around labor and work have shifted differently in this year than they have in

years prior. Yeah, I mean, I think you're exactly right by mentioning the pandemic which we're still living through those of us who are lucky enough to survive it, right, even though where there's this sort of perception being pushed on us that it's it's over, it's fine, go by Christmas presents. But like you're saying, these past god two three years, people I guess people I guess who got to stay inside and kind of think a little bit more, and workers who had to go out and keep the

world running. I think there's been this this kind of mass shifting consciousness around the value of our lives and with that the value of our labor, and a lot of people have been taking action and and just acting upon those new realizations by organizing, by striking, by protesting, by standing up against their bosses, no matter how rich or fancy or scary they may be, and saying this

is enough. You know, you can't make the profit, you can't enjoy the luxuries, you cannot bask in the unearned social capital that you have without us, without our blood, sweat and tears. And we're coinciding with this the very least compared to the previous administration, pro labor administration, that has opened up some wiggle room, that has empowered the NLRB,

even if it hasn't funded it properly. That is, at the very least been making pro union statements, which I know it's all hot air, but it helps for some people to see, okay, like the people in charge, the president, he cares about us. He thinks she used her a good thing. At the very least for some people that matters, and that's fine. And for everyone who is not necessarily interested in that propaganda spectacle, it's opens up some wingle room.

And we've seen so much more organizing happening with younger people. I guess, gen Z, I hate acknowledging that there's a generation younger than me, But it happens with us all eventually, everyone but this younger generation. And you know, we've seen all of these, especially headlines around graduate student work and Amazon workers and Starbucks workers, workers in retail that are

leading this kind of new organizing charge. So many of them are young, So many of them are black and brown specifically, so many of them are queer and trans. The face of labor as it's understood in the sort of mainstream level, you know, the white guy in a hard hat. That's changing too, and that is showing that there is so much more space for so many other kinds of workers and kinds of identities and kinds of backgrounds. Like that's what my whole book is about, right, And

that's what we're seeing play out. We have an entire generation who have come of age post recession, post Bernie the first time, post you know, the rise of these tech oligarchs that somehow are able to control our entire lives. This generation is not as it seems like, they're maybe not quite as beaten down as ours was. And they're like, Okay, we got to get out there and do some more about this. The world's on fire. We have zero options.

Maybe we can unionize and do something about it. So there's all these different things happening at the same time, and we have this moment in labor where it seems like we're actually, you know, pushing forward a little bit instead of being stuck on our back foot like we've

happen for so long. You know, I want to talk about Generation Z for a minute, because I think that, right, like every every generation has its moment in the sun, meaning that there is something or some things that occur that are defining moments, right and for Generation Z, I think that, you know, and again they are referred to in allotted hood from ways and TikTok, generation Generation Z, right,

the the meme generation, all of these things. But the reality is is that they are the first generation, as economists have said, that will actually be doing worse than their parents and caregivers, right, that actually will most likely not be buying a home, not be buying a car that don't have the ability, which personally, you know, and this is coming from a privileged middle class space that, like your twenties, are supposed to be about finding out who you are and what the fuck you want to do,

as opposed to clinging on for dear life. So what is it you know that that you see or that you hear and you read and you write about this generation as to what is sparking them in terms of unionizing, in terms of pushing back that didn't happen for millennials or jen As right, that is unique, I guess to

this generation. I think the fact that this almost this entire generation are so digitally native, like they grew up with the Internet and with that social media and with that access to sharing information among their peers and taking in new sources that aren't just MSNBC or Fox News or where others they had. When I was a kid, I grew up in the middle of Wes. We've barely had the Internet like at all, and now you have an entire world on your phone if you have one.

I think just the ease with which communication is fostered between younger folks and information is shared and spread and grievances are aired, and the fact that these digital spaces are places for people to organize and come together. I think that it's had such a big shift because I mean for millennials, yeah, we had the Internet, we had some technology, but it's not like what this younger generation

has and they're so fluent in that. And I think of this organizer in Alabama saying he's twenty one, he's part of the effort to organize an Amazon warehouse and bestomer and I asked him about all this, so I saw him. I saw him down there recently. It's like, look, I grew up watching my parents struggle and work over time, and I never saw them. And there were millennials, and I knew that I didn't want that for myself. Like my generation, we know that the politicians don't care about us,

they just want our votes. We know that all of these power structures that you know we're supposed to rely on aren't there for us. We're born into this burning planet, like it seems like everything stacked up against us. So why wouldn't we organize and try and fight back and do something about it? Because we have some of these tools, We have the energy, we have the motivation, and we

don't really have any other choice. Right It's either stand there and let the world happen to you, or get out there and try and make it a little bit better at least tolerable while you're there. You know, I think that that is so right. Just there's so much philosophy and what you just said, either stand there and let the world happen to you, or you know, or

do something or organize, you know, around it. And I think that we have had such a and such a disturbing relationship with capitalism, right, it is it is this

burden sum necessary evil. But I didn't feel that way, Kim, when I was coming out of college, when I was entering into into the workforce in a real way for the first time, I felt like, and you know, maybe it's because the the the dust of you know, the gas lighting and the lies that have been told about You're only as worth worthy as you are fruitful, right, fruitful in your production. You're only as worthy as you

are fruitful. So if you have nothing, right, it is because you have invested nothing, you have worked for nothing, right, it is it's the way that we have built this belief that if you are in poverty, it's because you just don't work hard enough. Right. And then we have idolized and deitized these ultrawealthy, right, saying that if they bless you, if they have so much wealth, right, if

they are multibillionaires, it's because they are geniuses. It's because they work so hard, right, and then there's there's the shrinking rest that fall in the middle, but are still

a paycheck away from that struggle. So what do you think has happened over the course of I guess you know, thirty years right in this country that has shifted the way that we talk Because when folks used to talk about capitalism, you were thought about on the fringe of the fringe, right when you talked about it was kind of this conspiracy theory of all these people are puppeteering us in all of these things. Now it's part of

mainstream discourse. So what do you think has happened over the last thirty years that has us in the place that we're in right now when we discuss capitalism, worthiness, labor, laziness versus genius. Man. So I'm thirty four, so basically this has been my whole life just living through this shift, right.

And I remember, like you said, growing up, my parents, like we're a blue collar construction worker family, and like my dad loved Ronald Reagan and had terrible opinions, And I was like, you gotta work hard because no one's going to hand anything to you. People that people this unwellfare, people that like the message that was drilled into my head I was like, you have to work harder, you ain't gonna have nothing. And I was like, okay, and

I took that to heart. So I worked hard. But I ended up in like this this non traditional space. Like I worked in the music business, was a roadie in a music journalist before I started cover R Labor, So I never really thought I would have access to

that path anyway. But that was a choice obviously, like I was going to do something different, almost famous it, but like and it just throughout that experience of getting to know people in like different backgrounds and reading books and finding marks and finding anarchists and finding all the things that that some people are able to come across when they go digging, Like that helps shape my political perspective perspective in the way that I kind of moved

in the world. But but the generation who like were coming up after me, they didn't have to, like, you know, dig around in the university library and try and find a copy of Capital, Like they could look to Occupy Wall Street. They could follow Bernie Sanders or AOC on Twitter,

and of course, yeah, they're politicians. That's not necessarily like I'm not a here, you know, I'm just saying that is a place where some people can come across these ideas in a way they can translate and use in their own political development, right, Like I think these ideas post I mean, I think we can't undersell the importance

of Occupy High. We can't undersell the importance of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, like just in terms of shining a light and really publicizing this idea of the one percent of these class divisions, of this rampant inequality that's to find our lives. I think those were big moments for people that maybe weren't necessarily hanging out with food not bombs, or like didn't have cool radical parents. Like that was an entryway and you kind of can't put

that genie back in the bottle. Those conversations opened up, and now there's been so much more development and so many more people chiming in as so many other movements have, you know, have opened up that space even further, whether it's talking about the movement for Black Lives or me Too, or gender justice and trans rights, like there's it's all just out there in the open now because it's been cracked open and people have access to social media, there's

a younger generation of journalists and content creators who are getting these messages out there and sharing these ideas. Is like it's not and you know, podcasting happened in the past thirty Yeah, Like there's I think there's just so much more access to information that you could stumble upon if you don't have to know what you're looking for.

You can be sixteen and go on TikTok and see someone doing a video about how their boss sucks or how they're unionizing, or how capitalism isn't cool, and like that could start an entire lifetime of political inquiry. Like, there's just so much more that's more accessible for everyone, not just people that go to college, not just people

who come from these various traditions. Anybody who can get access to a phone or to a computer in the library can come across these ideas and decide how they feel about them, and digest them and apply them to their own lives, you know. And I think that that's right.

And on the flip side of that, as you're talking and I'm thinking about what the original nature and desire was for social media and social mediators was for us to be able to come together, to communicate in different ways, to globalize in a way right outside of the body politic of what it meant to understand what was happening in other countries that are not covered in mainstream news

is what's happening outside of your own community. Then you mentioned something earlier too about tech oligarchs, and now I'm starting to think about Elon Musk and the thing that I've been saying, as people have said, you know, he's such a genius, he's such this, that and the other thing, like, Oh, I can't believe he's fucking up Twitter in this way. And I'm just like, why do you guys think that

this is an accident? Because for all of the things that you just offered about this generation, about Generation Z, about why things have come to pass in the way that they have over the last thirty years, it is because of social media. It is because of the advent of the internet. It is because of our access to information. But when you start to commodify information, right, when you

privatize information, then what happens. What happens is what we are seeing unfold with Twitter right the world Square is now held up by one court gesture, right by one court, you know, because I won't call him a king, right by one court jesture, that then is able to destroy it at will because he wants to, because that's going

to be his personal entertainment. Fuck the rest, right, And so I wonder in the schism of that right where at one time technology has allowed us to communicate, to understand, to connect to organizing ways that we were never able to before. Then on the other side of that is the commodification of said platforms and the ability to do that, And we all exist at the whim of the billionaires and the venture capitalists that have created said entities. Where

do you see us going, Kim? Where do you see like? And I know that it's a big it's a big, big question, but we're in a big, big space, like where do you see this going? Because on one hand, I'm like, are we in the Hunger Games? Is this black mirror? Like? You know? And on and on the other side, I'm just like, you know, are these tools that we're using to organize they're also being used for our demise, right, They're also being used to organize against workers.

Right to you know, to push back against this this uprising. So where do you see you know, what do you see forthcoming? I'm asking you to look into the magic eight ball, you know, as we change the calendar year. Gosh. I mean, honestly, I'm going to be following the sex workers because those folks are always the canary in the coal mine when it comes to online repression and criminalization. Right They've been barred from so many platforms way before

other people. Their labor is criminalized across many parts of that industry. They're not allowed on so many social media platforms already. They with Passage, Sesta Foster, they lost in critical digital infrastructure that they needed to keep themselves safe and continue their business. And I think the way that sex workers have been treated online is something that a lot of like sex worker thinkers that I follow, they,

I mean, they're very very vocal about this. Like what they do to us first, they will do to you later or soon. It's the same the thing with trans communities, communities of color, folks that are able somehow to scrape out bits of meeting, a connection, and even sometimes livelihood from these digital spaces in spite of all the structural barriers and the fact that evil, rich white dudes are

running the whole thing. Those folks are always the first ones to get kicked off, to get silenced, to get booted. I mean, like Twitter, look at the kind of people

that Elon Musk kicks off this journalists and transactivists. It's not Jeff Bezos, right, And just thinking about the way that this has been happening and the way it's going to continue happening, it scares me because, you know, it's in a personal sense because I'm a freelancer and like a lot of my friends live on the computer, you know, and a lot of like I get a lot of

work that way. But that's just me. But like outside of just my little personal fears and worries, it's like, like you said, the idea of having this open space for information to flow and for people to connect and debate and find things out about places far away from where they are, Like, that's so important, especially if you're living somewhere where you're isolated, or you feel isolated because of who you are, or you're made to feel that

way because of who you are. They're incredibly vital connections made on these platforms, and I don't think they're going to go away. I think maybe they'll start looking different, maybe the Internet. And there's a I read a lot called Ryan Broader who's written about this idea of the Internet sort of pulling apart into what it used to be,

like smaller specific spaces for people. Like I said, you see it on mastadon, when people can choose their experience in a way even though it's already issues there or discord communities or YouTube communities, like, I think people are going to look at the available options and look at what's happening to the major platforms and decide for themselves how much they want to give and how much of that nonsense they want to take and sort of crash

their own experiences online. And I think it would be a real shame if we lost those big like Twitter type platforms where you can see what everyone's up to. But I mean the way that Twitter has been and is has heard a lot of people too, So you know, what's the You don't need everyone know in your business, but sometimes you really need to share and you need to get messages out there. So I'm not sure what

the best thing is really. I just I would encourage people who are concerned to pay attention to down top of it, but also talk to your neighbors and get to know people in your community and maybe build up some I don't want to say real world, some physical connections too, because if Twitter goes out tomorrow, who are you going to talk to? Hopefully you have some other people out there. You can go organize those food out bombs in your neighborhood, or talk to other people in

your block, or do something. Because we can't let them dictate the way that we communicate with one another, right if they can pull it all away to minutes, so we have to forge things that they can't touch. Yeah, last question for you can because I want to end. I want to do something that I normally don't do, which is try and end on a hopeful place. I want to go into like a dreamscape for a minute,

around work and around labor. Because if we were to design, if you were to design or provide what you believe the feelings are behind a human centered work life positioning, what does that actually look like? Right? Like? What you know? What are some of the elements and maybe not all of them, but some of the elements that that balanced equitable space would provide well, if we're gonna dream a

little bit. I mean, that's why I'm an anarchist, right like that, just that very idea of doing away with hierarchy, doing away with top down someone's better than anybody else, thinking and organizing society around cooperation and mutual aid and care and compassion from one another, organizing horizontally, making sure that everyone's voice and everyone's life matters and is valued in their labors, appreciated. I mean, since that's the way things are set up right now, it makes it difficult

to even dream of a world like that. But that shouldn't stop us, and it shouldn't stop us from trying. Okay, we might not reach it to the full, you know, anarchist future I would love to live in while I'm still alive. But we can unionize our workplaces and talk to our neighbors and build up mutual aid networks. We can make changes, even if the people in charge really

don't want us to. You know, I think there is so much potential for growth and for building and for connection just as humans and as workers, especially as more people are embracing this consciousness of like, you know, it's us against them there's a lot of us and they've been getting away with this shit for way too long.

Let's try and do something about it. Like throughout history, throughout labor history and human history, the only reason anything has ever changed or gotten better is because a bunch of people, usually poor folks, usually exploit of folks that come together and said enough. So I'm just waiting for this current moment to continue to bear fruit. I mean, twenty twenty two big for labor, twenty twenty three, let's make it big for labor. Let's see that ups strike.

You know, it's kicking off with a strike across prisons in Pennsylvania on January six, and cars raty to workers across the straight are going to go on strike, and that's going to be the first big one of the year. And seeing our most vulnerable fellow workers taking that step

and publicly standing up and say we deserve better. If someone who is forced into a cage and has no other options is able to take that step and organize with their fellow humans and actually do something, there's nothing stopping any of the rest of us who aren't stuck in that situation, you know, like there is always something you can do and I hope people really take that to heart and just move with it, you know, like keep pushing forward, because we can't go any further back

than we already have. There's no other option. Absolutely and so true. Kim Kelly, this was the most perfect last interview for me of twenty twenty two. Um. I always appreciate your your your voice, because it's just like it's like I it's like talking to a poet. I feel like when I when I when I talk to you, Um, folks, the book is the untold story of American labor fight.

Like hell um, I encourage everyone to pick it up. Kim, thank you so much for winding us down in twenty twenty two, and I hope that we have bigger conversations around the power of people in twenty twenty three. I appreciate you. Hell yeah, thank you so much. I'm excited to save a kind of good trouble we get into this year. Yes, that is it for me today, dear friends, with this last interview of twenty twenty two, I wish you all an extraordinary, RESTful, rejuvenative holiday break, and I

will see you back here in the new year. As always, Power to the people and to all the people power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.