Live Like the World is Dying

Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness

How do we live in a world that might be ending? By preparing to survive that end and by working to prevent it. A production of Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. read less
EducationEducation

Episodes

S1E109 - This Month in the Apocalypse: March, 2024
1w ago
S1E109 - This Month in the Apocalypse: March, 2024
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Brooke, Margaret, and Inmn talk about the environment, how a Boeing whistle blower died suspiciously, Abbot's newest attempt to make Texas a mini fief, and remember the lives of 3 teens. They also talk about hope and some nice things that happened for a change. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: This Month in the Apocalypse: March 2024 **Margaret ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff your podcast. . . I did the wrong. . . Did I do the wrong one? Should we keep it? **Brooke ** 00:23 [All laughing] I love you so much. **Margaret ** 00:26 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, the other podcast that I'm one of the three hosts of. I'm Margaret killjoy, and with me is **Brooke ** 00:37 Brooke. Hi.  **Inmn ** 00:38 And Inmn, who can't tell if this was a bit or not, **Margaret ** 00:41 Let's pretend it was a bit. [Sarcastically] I have functional memory. I'm not on podcast recording number five for the week. I don't know what you're talking about. And this is Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. And welcome back. We've been on a break because we were all a little burned out and we wanted to catch up because we didn't want to. . . We thought through our options, we could either have gone off a weekly schedule, but we're like, "Well, we like having a weekly schedule." So we took a break. And I don't remember whether we told you about that break, but it's over. Don't worry. It'll never. . . It'll totally happen again. And whatever, you like watching TV shows that have season breaks, you can. . . I'm sure you all figured it out. Anyway, it's This Month in the Apocalypse, only this time, we're going to be a little bit messy because it's been a little bit. So it's like this month and a half in the apocalypse. So you get an extra. It's like 1.5 as much apocalypse as usual. Y'all are so lucky. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcast and here's a jingle from another show on the network.  **Brooke ** 01:14 Okay, so it just occurred to me that if we're doing half of March, we're at some point going to have to do half of March. So we're either going to have to have half a month in Apocalypse or do half of March and April, and then there'll be another month and a half. So maybe we should call this 45 Days in the Apocalypse? I'm just saying. **Margaret ** 02:52 I'll just continue to messily not exactly keep track of "Oh, that happened on this date instead of this state, so it can't come in." But I'm open to it. I can be convinced. So I want to talk about some stuff. One of the things I want to talk about is how I would never say Boeing assassinated a man. But I would say that everyone who pays attention to the following news story comes to the inevitable conclusion that the private company Boeing, which manufactures an awful lot of the planes in this country, has been having a lot of problems lately. A lot of people think they assassinated a man. There was a man named John Barnett. He was a Boeing whistleblower and he was found dead on March 10th. And the news can't say, quote, "he was assassinated." So instead, they're dancing around it, doing things like putting "self-inflicted," in quotes, when they talk about the gunshot wounds that this man had to his head. I honestly. . . like this one, it's like, it's like one of those things where it didn't surprise me, but it still surprised me. I don't know how to describe this. It's a very common feeling these days were something absolutely horrible happens, where you're like, "Oh, of course that happened." But you're still a little bit like, "I can't believe that happened." John Barnett was a quality control manager at a Boeing plant in South Carolina. He worked on the 787 Dreamliners. And he had been pretty upset about a lot of the quality control that was going on. There's been a lot of conversation recently about Boeing and its lack of quality control, because their planes are literally falling apart in the air. And of course, there were two crashes a couple years ago that killed hundreds of people, that had to do with some faulty technology that caused the planes to go into nosedives that the pilots couldn't correct. **Brooke ** 04:52 And John Oliver just did a longer piece on Boeing too. So that brought it out in conversations. **Margaret ** 04:57 Yeah, well, and then the main thing that brought it up I think is that in the US it actually happens to US people. So people noticed. An airplane had the plug in the side of the plane blow out. And it was before it had gotten up to cruising altitude and it would have gone a lot worse if it had happened a little bit later. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured and the plane was able to land. And from there, it's just been this cascading thing. I really recommend John Oliver's The Last Week Tonight about Boeing and what's been going on with the planes. Anyway, John Barnett, quality control manager, and he was in Charleston to give a deposition against Boeing because he was suing them for retaliation because of his whistleblowing, and then they were like, "Hey, how come he didn't show up in court?" And so they went to his hotel and they found him dead in his pickup truck, having a quote unquote, "self-inflicted" gunshot wound. He was 62 years old. And rest in peace. And I have yet to meet anyone who has heard this news and not been like, "Yep, Boeing killed a man." **Brooke ** 06:15 Sure seems like it.  **Inmn ** 06:16 That's what reasonable people would come to the conclusion of because it's what's happened in the past. **Margaret ** 06:27 And, you know, I mean, there's also. . . Sure there's technically a version of the world where he was like, "I'm just so sad about. . ." No, he was. . .whatever. Anyway, Okay, so then I'm gonna talk about environmental news.  **Brooke ** 06:42 Do that.  **Margaret ** 06:44 Don't worry, it's worse.  **Inmn ** 06:46 Oh, no.  **Margaret ** 06:48 So let's see. This was the warmest February in Earth's history. This is the ninth month in a row that we have been in the warmest of this following month on record. The time we beat this time, for February warmest, was 2016 was the previous warmest month of February in history. And charts are literally being recalibrated to show the excessive heat. If you look at a lot of these charts, the lines from this year don't even touch previous years, you know? Next, there's the warmest winter on record in the United States. This month, the average global sea surface temperature was the highest it's ever been in the recorded history of the Earth for any month at all. The average global sea surface temperature was 69.96 degrees Fahrenheit. And we're very likely to have a very active hurricane season this year in the Atlantic because of the fact that. . . We actually might not have a hotter year this year than last year because the--I get El Nino and La Nina mixed up--but overall we've been--I'm pretty sure it's like El Nino is the thing we've been in and it's the thing that makes it warmer and La Nina cools things down a little bit. And so that's like, cool, right? We're like, "Oh, all right, we could definitely use some cooling things down a little bit." However, people have guessed. . . "Guessed" is the wrong word. Scientists who study this shit have looked and been like--you know, or climatologists have looked--and been like "Well, this slight cooling coming at this particular way that all this heat is working we're very likely to have a very active hurricane season." **Brooke ** 08:27 Do you know what that starts?  **Brooke ** 08:31 I don't live in a hurricane zone, so I. . . Like I know it's always summer and early fall that it's crazy, active , busy and the worst of it, but I feel like I don't know when that season quote unquote, "starts." **Margaret ** 08:31 No, I don't.  **Margaret ** 08:43 I can't remember that I don't live in that area anymore. But speaking of seasons not being what they used to be, there was a study that showed that--it's not just in your head--spring is indeed on average 13 days earlier in the United States than it was in 1981 There's a chart up you can look at--the Washington Post actually has a pretty good article about it--that shows, it's kind of a U shape of the country, is having way earlier springs, whereas some parts of the the Upper Midwest are a little bit later springs than usual, although not this year. But--and especially on mountain ranges--Spring is remarkably earlier, which made sense as I was walking my dog today in the middle of March and looking at the flowers blooming and thinking to myself, "Ah, yes, April showers will bring those flowers to me in May." [sardonic] **Inmn ** 09:42 It's early. **Margaret ** 09:43 Yeah, so that's not just in your head. It's a thing that's happening. Texas saw an incredibly destructive wildfire in the past month or so. It's the most destructive in Texas history, is the Smoke House Creek Fire. It burned more than a million In acres. And Texas is primed for more fires. That, actually, that fire came earlier than the usual fire season, which is March and April. In the panhandle of Texas there's a lot of basically dry grasses. And there's specifically ways where it's like when it comes out of freezing, it is more primed for these fires--I think the way that the grass breaks or something in the freezing. And so that is part of why the. . . You know, obviously, it's like things are getting warmer on average, but we're also seeing all these crazy weird cold spikes, you know? And this fire killed at least 3600 animals. I believe that it means cows in this case, and the fire was started by power lines. However, it's unlikely to affect your beef prices this year, so don't worry. However, the meat that you will have trouble getting this year for a reasonable price is crawfish. The crawfish population is dropping rapidly in Louisiana, and it's fucking up the harvest like wildly. I actually care more about the ecosystem than the harvest of crawfish, personally. But I also recognize the importance of crawfish to traditional dishes and things like that. And, you know, in Louisiana, a combination of drought heat and saltwater intrusion up the Mississippi followed by a hard freeze has fucked up the harvest enormously. It is an estimated $140 million in losses. And crawfish meat has gone from $3-5 a pound to $10-12 a pound. And a critically endangered fish called the Small-tooth Sawfish has been washing up dead in Florida. And it's funny because it's like 20 or 30 of them have washed up, but this is a very endangered fish. So when one of them shows up, it's a big deal. And scientists are trying to figure it out. And they're ruling out all of these different, you know, bacterial causes. But the sort of fish going crazy and then dying is a thing that is happening. We've talked about more on the show before. I think Inmn talked about it. Almost positive environmental news, there is a plan in place from the Biden administration to limit drilling and cattle grazing on a fuck ton of BLM land. And as part of a plan to save the Greater Sage Grouse, adding restrictions to 67 million acres on drilling, adding drilling restrictions to about 67 million acres across 10 states. And this seems really good. And it is really good. It is. . . What actually happened, Obama passed a law limiting a bunch of drilling, and then Trump was like, "Nah, we don't need that. Drill, baby, drill." That's a slogan from the 80s. And so that got reversed. So Biden is like, "Well, what if I half reversed it?" **Brooke ** 12:52 So reinstating some of it?  **Margaret ** 12:54 Yeah, bringing back some of it.  It's not as strong of a bill as the Biden [meant to say Obama] administration did, which sort of shows the like, constant rightward drift of American politics. **Brooke ** 13:07 As soon as you said that the Biden administration had passed a bill, I was like, there's a caveat coming into this. I was also like, I wonder if someone else is the President next, are they just going to undo the whole thing? **Margaret ** 13:20 Well, considering the next president will almost certainly be Trump. I continue to hold by my theory that the next President will be Donald Trump unless Donald Trump or Biden dies a natural death. If any of them die--well, and obviously if Trump dies an unnatural death, he won't be the next either--but if Biden dies an unnatural death then Trump is the next president, and if. . .anyway. Whereas if anyone else runs--this is my theory. Okay. Anyway, so it's sort of actually positive. . . Well, I guess we're gonna save the positive stuff for the end. I'll save this positive thing for the end. That's my environmental news. And the one other thing that I wanted to talk about before I pass it off, is I want to just sort of. . . I suspect that a lot of people already have been following what happened when an anarchist and active duty service personnel person named Aaron Bushnell killed himself by setting himself on fire while saying, "Free Palestine." I think that's something that people are already aware of. And so I don't want to go into it too much. But I just feel like that is a thing that needs to be on our mind that happened on February 25th this year, and, I don't know, "Never let them say that you curse the darkness instead of lighting a candle," Aaron Bushnell. Inmn, what do you got? **Inmn ** 14:51 Only happy things. **Margaret ** 14:55 You're lying. **Inmn ** 14:56 I'm lying. You know, it's like, to kind of put it in perspective. . . I mean, this is a perspective that we and I'm sure all our listeners already have, about just the severity of what is happening in Gaza. And this is not a new thing, but it is a thing that is taking particular note right now in Gaza, we had something that people are calling the Flour Massacre in the last like month or two. And the Flour Massacre occurred when an aid convoy was announced in Gaza City. And so you know, thousands of people showed up to receive food, receive aid, and Israeli forces used it as an opportunity to kill 118 people. Literally just shot into the crowd as people were scrambling to get flour, bread, you know, basic stuff to stay alive. And these are people who have been experiencing very long periods of malnutrition-- because Israel cut off most aid from coming into Gaza--and these are super basic things that are keeping people alive. Since then, there have been another string like this. Like this big one happened and then it's been a repeated tactic by Israel over the last month or two is attacking aid convoys, or using aid convoys as a way to gather and then attack a lot of people all at once, people who think that they're showing up to receive food and instead are getting killed. I think of like, right now, they're like. . . A couple days ago, there was another instance of this where like 20 people were killed, who had shown up to a supply convoy. And like another 150 or so were injured. And to make things worse, I have a story kind of about--well, it's three. It's three stories. It's three very different but similar stories about three teens who died in the last month or so. And the first one is connected to Palestine as well. We have Rami Al Halhouli, who was a 12 year old Palestinian boy who was killed by Israeli border guards in the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem on the third night of Ramadan. Rami was out in the street playing with fireworks with his friends. And they were just shooting fireworks up in the sky and a Israeli border guard--whatever the fuck they're calling them--shot Rami three or four times. And the way that--one of the disturbing things about this is the way that it's being talked about in some media sources--and especially by Israel--is that if you read the Israeli reports, you might imagine a night of rioting, you might imagine a wall of people encroaching upon the border guards--whatever they're called--and you might imagine people throwing Molotov cocktails at lines of soldiers. And you might imagine Rami standing out in front of them shooting a bottle rocket at border guards. This is the media narrative that Israel, and you know, consistently conservative news sources, want people to believe. In actuality, there's video footage leading up to Rami getting shot and it shows like three or four kids playing in a vacant street and next to them, you see, like 100 feet away or something, you see the giant border wall and you see watch towers in the distance. You see a line of parked cars and you see no people in sight. And that is the scene that we have for Rami and his friends playing with fireworks on the third night of Ramadan, and Israeli forces just rolling up and shooting them for playing with fireworks. And so they're. . . It's like. . . They're, you know, there's all these, there's all this media narrative build of "There were riots. There were disturbances--" as they're being called. But there's no, there's no proof of any of that happening. And there's literal video footage showing a few kids playing on a secluded street with fireworks. One of the security Prime Ministers of Israel was then. . . People were following him around being like, "Yeah, what the fuck? Like, what happened?" And he's. . . there's all this video footage of him congratulating the soldiers who shot Rami. And he then like, eventually, he eventually makes a statement, where he condemns the child as a terrorist and praises his soldiers who he's calling warriors for killing a "terrorist." Basically being like, you know, calling for the extermination of an entire people based on this myth of terrorism. And it's just, it's just supremely fucked up. I had a quote prepared for something that this Prime Minister--whose name I can't remember or find and I truly hope is lost to time, and that no one remembers him ever. And I'm not gonna say it because it's just, it's just too fucked up. And we can all kind of imagine what it sounds like. But it reminded me of a similar story from the Southwest United States where in 2012, Lonnie Swartz, a border patrol agent shot Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who Swartz said threw a rock at him through the border wall. Jose was on the Nogales, Mexico side of the border wall and was just throwing rocks at the like 60 foot wall, you know, and Lonnie Swartz shot at him 30 times through the wall. Swartz was later acquitted of all charges and Jose's family was blocked from suing him. **Margaret ** 22:56 It's pretty cool that you can just kill people in other countries. **Inmn ** 23:00 Yeah, yeah, it's pretty. . . I can't even make this joke. **Margaret ** 23:08 Okay. **Inmn ** 23:08 So yeah, that is a story of one teen who was killed for playing with fireworks. Next, we're moving back to the United States and I want to talk about Ryan Gainer. Ryan Gainer was a 15 year old black, autistic teen living in Apple Valley California. And, Ryan--this is the report that I've read--Ryan was having a dispute with his family that turned destructive and. . . Because people experiencing different realities, different needs, were having a destructive outburst and a family member called 911 for help because they didn't know what to do for someone having this experience of a very--like a fairly mild thing turning into a destructive outburst. And police, instead of psychiatric services or something, showed up and within 30 seconds of the police showing up, they had shot Ryan three times. The officers say that Ryan, when they found Ryan, Ryan was wielding a garden hoe and the officer ran from him and shot him while running from him or something. And family members who, you know, were immediately, they were like, "Oh my God, wait, you shot my kid?" had maybe been expecting officers to come and--or you know anyone--to come and just like help them calm their son down. And instead the police shot him within 30 seconds of being there. **Brooke ** 25:20 This is why we don't call the cops. This, among other reasons, but it's a good. . . It's not good reminder. It's a terrible reminder. **Inmn ** 25:31 Yeah, it is a grim, grim reminder that any one who believes that calling 911 will help someone, especially people experiencing either like a break in reality or just having different communication needs,  the police will not help you. And they will most likely harm your loved one. And this is not me throwing any kind of blame on Ryan's family. Yeah, but it is a grim reminder. The last person that I want to talk about is Nex Benedict. **Brooke ** 26:20 This one hits real hard. **Inmn ** 26:22 Yeah, it's a hard one. Nex Benedict was a 16 year old nonbinary Choctaw teen living in Owasso, Oklahoma. Nex loved nature, drawing, reading, and inventing new recipes. On February 17th, Nex was involved in a fight at school in a bathroom and Nex was very badly beaten up by three older teens. And, so much so, that Nex had like, you know, raccoon eyes. Meaning like visible contusions around the eyes from head trauma, from having like--I'm actually not going to describe it. And Nex, I believe, went to the hospital after that and then the next day, Nex collapsed at home and was brought to the hospital and pronounced dead. And there's kind of these two waves of media around this. One was right when Nex died, and one was just within the last few days when a medical examiner ruled Nex's death as a suicide because of a like blood toxicology report. And it's like, the way that the media is kind of spinning this is like, "Oh, Nex. . ." Like, people are exacerbating what happened, like "Nex wasn't beaten to death. Nex. . ."  **Margaret ** 28:10 Was just beaten into suicide.  **Inmn ** 28:12 Was just beaten into suicide.  **Margaret ** 28:14 That's totally different and better, somehow. [sarcastically]  **Inmn ** 28:17 Yeah. And that's a lot of the media going around is like it's trying to absolve blame from the people who bullied and beat Nex up so badly that they killed themself. Or, they took a lot of drugs and either meaning to or not, died as a result. **Brooke ** 28:47 And the lack of care and support. It was after Nex went home and talked to the family that the family took Nex to the hospital. The administration, the school teachers, counselors, looked at what happened and didn't call in medical professionals to help at the school. **Inmn ** 29:10 Yeah. And it kind of raises this point of like you know, suicide in the queer community that if people are living in such like desperate and violent measures that people are driven to self harm or driven to like any of these things, whether intentional or non intentional death, like that is the fault of society. And yeah, if you bully someone so badly, that they self harm and die as a result, you killed that person. **Brooke ** 29:51 Yeah. And I don't know why I found this particular detail so disturbing, but I read that it was three teenage girls that had beat Nex in the bathroom. And I don't know why the fact that it was girls that, you know, caused this that was so. . .It was just like an extra layer for me. You know? Like, I guess I did not expect, but when you talk about bullies and physical violence--maybe it's just from my own childhood or life experience--you expect that to come more from men, boys. Like they're the ones trained to have more physical altercations. So the fact that it was three girls was just, I don't know, it's extra weird to me. **Inmn ** 30:43 Yeah, this one hit especially hard for me and just being someone who was like, you know. . .Like, I didn't know I was queer when I was a teen, but it seems pretty obvious now. And like the things that I was heavily bullied for were things that, looking back, I'm like, "Oh, yes, I was bullied because I was queer. Like, this is pretty, pretty obvious to me." And it's like, the amount of stress that you can experience from like, the daily reminder and like daily fear of being bullied is horrifying.  **Brooke ** 31:23 And yeah, well, you know, there's someone else out there who's a real big bully and has a lot of power. . .  **Inmn ** 31:31 Before we segue, I just want to wrap this into like, that these are, these are three very different and very similar stories at the same time of teens who were killed for being Palestinian, for being autistic, for being queer. And like, they all happened in the same month. And I don't know. I think. . . Obviously, these are systemic problems and systemic and individual and personal problems in our society of like people, not knowing how to. . . not knowing how to and being aggressive towards these identities. And I don't know. That's just bad. And some more bad things. So, I've been talking on the show for a little bit now about how Abbott has kind of turned Texas into like a little mini fief via these like. . . like testing of power with the power of the Texas governor and the power of the federal government. And in the newest series of that, we have Texas, SB4. Texas SB4 is a law that was passed last year, which would allow Texas law enforcement to detain, arrest, and prosecute suspected migrants. And this is in. . . so if this seems like what normally happens, the difference between this and what normally happens is that Border Patrol is the agency that arrests people. And this would allow any Texas law enforcement to detain suspected migrants, arrest them, and prosecute them under Texas law, not under federal law. **Inmn ** 33:15 This is like, you know, you can stop every brown person and check their papers law, right?  **Inmn ** 33:47 Yeah. Or, sort of. Yeah, **Margaret ** 33:51 Well the, "suspected migrant" I assumed, made it specifically around some racial indicators. **Inmn ** 33:57 Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's that one. And the sentences that people could have from it, for the first time, it would be a misdemeanor, and you could get six months. And for repeated prosecutions, it would be a felony carrying a maximum sentence of 20 years. And this is what's interesting is like, this is the exact same sentence sentencing procedure for Operation Streamline, which is the court that does this at a federal level. So it's like, it is the same sentencing that already exists. This would just grant Texas the power to do it as a State rather than at a federal level. And it is specifically aimed at circumventing asylum procedure. Yeah, so that people who are presenting for asylum can just be arrested by Texas law enforcement and prosecuted for illegal entry instead of going into asylum proceedings, and that is one of the bigger deals about this bill. And it is a bill that passed, but the Supreme Court has put a pause on it. And that pause has been recently increased until like March 18th, or something. But it seems like the Supreme Court is probably going to shut this law down. **Margaret ** 35:28 You all listeners know, and we don't know. **Inmn ** 35:32 Yeah, yeah. And another legislation aimed at migrants and people seeking asylum, the Castle Doctrine in Arizona is trying to be expanded. And this is around like, you know, home defense with HB 2843. And this bill would expand the Castle Doctrine to not only include the use of lethal force to protect your home--someone from trying to break into your home--but for merely trespassing on the land that you own. **Margaret ** 36:13 Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. **Inmn ** 36:16 It doesn't suspend any need for there to be the presentation of fear of your life, you know. It just kind of expands the area. And it's like, caused this thing, which I think is really indicative of politics right now, which is politicians bickering with each other over like, I don't know how to say it, like schoolyard antics, where, the Republicans are like, "Democrats are blowing this out of proportion. And they're spreading misinformation that this law means that anyone can just shoot anyone for trespassing on their land. And that's going to get...that's going to get good people prosecuted for murder, because Democrats are spreading misinformation about the harm of this bill."  **Margaret ** 37:10 Oh, okay, because they're like. . . I have a feeling that no good person will shoot someone just for being on their property. I have to admit that like, I mean, I'm a gun rights supporter, right? And, overall, like the concept of Castle Doctrine, I'm not inherently opposed to Stand Your Ground laws and all those things. Like, obviously, they're used, like every law, in horrible, racist and classist ways. But I am like, you know, if someone...if I'm out walking my dog on my property, and someone's like. . . Well, I guess like, it's so weird, right? Because then it's like, well, what's the difference? Because if I'm walking my dog anywhere, and someone pulls a gun on me and tries to kill me, I'm allowed to shoot, unless it's his property or something, I guess. I am allowed to defend myself, right, from the threat of lethal force. And like, I guess it's like. . .No, it's just interesting. Because people shouldn't be able to shoot people just for being on their property. And same as you shouldn't be able to shoot someone just for taking your TV. But there's also like...it's fairly understandable that someone breaking into your house, in the middle of the night, can be perceived as a threat to your life. To me, the problem here is not the gun rights of the house owner. To me, the problem is the systemic poverty that has led someone to a life of stealing TVs, you know, and I don't know, I need to learn more about this one. And I'm sure it's being used in horrible ways and stuff, but. . . I don't know. **Inmn ** 38:48 Yeah. Because it's like, it's just an expansion of protecting people who are defending themselves, you know, right? And it's like, in the goodest sense, in the goodest situation, it protects people. But the intent that it's being crafted for, is to provide more protection for ranchers and farmers to shoot migrants for trespassing on their property. **Margaret ** 39:20 Yeah, yeah, I see what you're seeing. **Inmn ** 39:22 That is the intent with which the bill is being explored. **Margaret ** 39:26 No, I believe you. Yeah, that makes sense. **Inmn ** 39:30 Yeah. That's...that's all I've got. **Margaret ** 39:36 Well, that means it's time for good news. Good news with Brooke **Brooke ** 39:43 Are you two ready for some good news? Ready to cleanse our palates and feel joy again? **Margaret ** 39:49 I'm sure I'll come up with some way where the good news is not actually all that good.  **Brooke ** 39:53 Whatever, you're our Pollyanna. Madam positivity. Margaret, we look to you for hope. **Margaret ** 40:04 Yeah. Okay, what do you got? **Brooke ** 40:06 Alright, good things that have happened. Okay, so in February, the country of Greece legalized same sex marriage, **Margaret ** 40:17 And they invented democracy. [Sarcastically] **Brooke ** 40:20 That's right. By a pretty good margin as well, much more than two thirds majority. So that's cool. That's wonderful. And then, kind of related, although, wow, maybe it's not, but it's like related in my mind, because, you know, leftist stuff. France became the first country in the world to put abortion rights into its constitution. **Margaret ** 40:52 Okay, so they probably did it because they looked over across the ocean, and we're like, "Oh, God, we should probably enshrine this."  **Brooke ** 41:04 Right, which it's been legal in the country since the 70s. But they, you know, putting it into their constitution is the thing, but yeah, first, and I mean, you know, France has written and rewritten their constitution more than once. **Margaret ** 41:20 They're pretty prone to revolution, traditionally, **Brooke ** 41:23 Right? And like, willing to fucking edit the Constitution, like "What we can do that?" **Inmn ** 41:29 Wait, you can decide that something wasn't a great idea and then change it? You're not beholden to things that happened. . .  **Margaret ** 41:37 I hate defending the US legal system, but we have amendments. We have a system for this. It's happened. How dare you put me in a position of defending the US government. **Brooke ** 41:55 But we act as a society like it doesn't happen. Like that's what we do. **Margaret ** 41:59 It's true. And there's that word like necrocracy, like ruled by the dead. And, and what's funny is you're like, "Ah, ha, ha, that's like a fantasy thing." We're a necrocracy, like, we're ruled by laws made by dead people every single day. The Constitution was written by people who have been dead for a very long time. **Brooke ** 42:22 Okay, I see you trying to ruin this good news, but you're not going to do it, Margaret. No, no. **Margaret ** 42:29 I have nothing negative to say about them enshrining abortion in their constitution. Great. **Brooke ** 42:34 That's great. So all the rest of the world, let's go ahead and follow suit there. Thanks, as a woman and a queer. Good news coming out of Europe. Another bill that France is working on passed half of its legislative body, and they're working on trying to curb fast fashion. Which I don't know if y'all are familiar with fast fashion. Right. So yeah, you know, basically, that's what it sounds like. It's very wasteful and polluting. And the slightly sad part about it is that France is looking at doing this, so working on it, because they want to protect their high fashion industries from the influences of the fast fashion world. But as a fashion leader, the choices that they're making here are, you know, have impacts on the fashion world in general. And it's, you know, it's an important statement to make too, and is ultimately good for the environment. If they can move that forward and slow that trend. That's good. Yeah. So always look on. . . [singing] **Margaret ** 43:46 No, so that is actually the perfect song to sing. And that's because that song is most famously sung by people who have nails through their hands attached to boards of wood and are going to die. At the end of the Life of Brian, when they're all being crucified, they sing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." This is not a visual medium, but the face that Inmn is making right now is truly for the history books. **Inmn ** 44:13 I've never seen Life of Brian so I was like, "What the fuck are they talking about?" **Margaret ** 44:19 Yeah, like one of the other crucified people is like, you know, "Just got to kind of think about it, just think about different ways," which is really just cognitive behavioral therapy in a nutshell, you know? **Brooke ** 44:29 Find that YouTube clip of that. It'll be the really highest bright side at the end of this episode. **Margaret ** 44:37 Alright, anything else? **Brooke ** 44:39 Yeah. Two more happy things in the world. **Margaret ** 44:42 And then I got something to stick on at the end too.  **Brooke ** 44:44 Yeah, you do. Okay, Japan has a program for child care support that has existed for a while and prioritizes, currently, the children of working parents, but starting in April, they're expanding that program to a large portion of the country for childcare access for all, basically, kids that are between six months and two years having free childcare options available. It's limited in the number of hours that people can get with free childcare. But it is open to working and non-working parents. And the long term goal is to, over the next couple of years, actually roll that out to the whole country. And long term, also expand the number of hours that people can access that. So as a parent who formerly had a small child and knows what a nightmare child care is, I am very happy to hear that they're working on this. Thank you. Thank you, Japan for that program and for where you're going with it. And in broader news, just an overall fun note about millennial parents, specifically dads, millennial dads doing a better job than previous generations, in many ways, like changing more diapers than ever before, taking more paternity leave. . .  **Margaret ** 46:13 Doing the dishes without being explicitly asked to. That's a really major one, right? **Brooke ** 46:19 I don't know about that. I was reading about parenting, but hey, that's also...that's great. That's wonderful. And of course the, you know, the highest portion of stay at home male parents in modern history amongst millennial parents. So, millennial dads, thanks for stepping up and doing a good job. Yay, families. **Margaret ** 46:50 Okay. So, Elon Musk has this Gigafactory in Berlin. I'm going with something positive here.  **Brooke ** 46:58 I know, but then you say, "Elon Musk!" No, but then.  **Margaret ** 47:01 But bad things are about to happen to him. **Inmn ** 47:03 Yeah, it's a cool thing. **Brooke ** 47:04 Speaking of bad dads. **Margaret ** 47:08 Well, he's not amillennial. But he acts like. . .No, he doesn't.  **Brooke ** 47:12 But his partners are.  **Margaret ** 47:14 Yeah, that's true. Okay, so, Elon Musk has this Gigafactory five kilometers outside of Berlin in a forest. And it is for building Tesla's, and people don't like it. And it builds most of the Tesla's...or more Tesla's than anywhere else in Europe. And people don't like it for a lot of reasons. One, Elon Musk is at war against labor unions in Europe and keeps running across that Europe actually has some decent labor union culture built into it right. And on March 5th, the entire Gigafactory was shut down for several days by an arson that targeted its electrical grid substation. Basically, someone burned an electrical pylon
S1E107 - Ben on Communication After a Disaster
02-02-2024
S1E107 - Ben on Communication After a Disaster
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Ben and Brooke talk about communication systems during a disaster. They cover basic communication infrastructure and equipment as well as what kind of information is vital to be able to communicate when cell phone towers go down. They also cover just how awesome amateur radio is. Guest Info Ben Kuo (he/him) is an amateur radio operator. Ben can be found on Mastodon @ai6yrr@m.ai6yr.org Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Ben on Communicating After a Disaster **Brooke ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Brooke Jackson, your host for this episode. Today I'll be talking with Ben about communication and sharing information after disasters. But first, we'd like to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by playing a little jingle from one of the other podcasts on the network. Jingle, Jingle jingle goes here. **The Ex-Worker Podcast ** 00:45 The border is not just a wall. It's not just a line on a map. It's a power structure, a system of control. The border does not divide one world from another. There is only one world and the border is tearing it apart. The Ex-Worker Podcast presents "No Wall They Can Build: a guide to borders and migration across North America" A serialized audio book in 11 chapters released every Wednesday. tune in at crimethinc.com/podcast. **Brooke ** 01:29 And we're back. Ben, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about communication and information sharing after a disaster. We'd love to know a little bit more about you if you're willing to share your pronouns and where you hail from and anything else that you want to say to introduce yourself?  **Ben ** 01:49 Sure. My name is Ben Kuo, and I am in Ventura County, California. My pronouns are he and him. And my background in disasters is I have been very involved in responding to disasters, providing information on social media, and making sure that people, you know, get the information they need to stay safe and stay healthy and help other people. **Brooke ** 02:17 Nice. Was this something that you got into because of a disaster that happened? Or was it something you were interested in before...before it became useful in this context? If that makes sense? **Ben ** 02:28 It's interesting. I really got involved in this in 20--I believe it's 2018--when Hurricane Maria hit, and hurricane Maria was a category five hurricane, and I am...one of my hobbies--and I have many hobbies-- but one of them is amateur radio. And for folks who have never heard of amateur radio, what it is, is a hobby where you learn how to use the radio and to communicate with people. And that is locally, you know, with people in your area, that is internationally. And you can talk to people all across the globe using just a radio, a power supply, a battery, and an antenna without any of the world being up. So that's no internet, no telephone, no power supply, no power grid. And you can communicate with people all over the world. And it's fun. And I started because it was a lot of fun. But it ends up being very, very, very useful nowadays with the increasing pace of disasters. And so I became an amateur radio operator partially because of the emergency aspect of it. There's a big community around it. But also just because it's a lot of fun for the technology and playing with the technology. So the big story of how I got into the disaster is Hurricane Maria was bearing down on the Caribbean. And it is...I don't know if you've seen the trend in recent years but hurricanes have been spinning up much faster and much more intensely. And it's called rapid intensification. And because of that you don't have quite the warning that you used to with hurricanes. And so people go, "Oh, we can watch this. And we can react." or "Oh, it's gonna be coming in a week." And that's not happening as much anymore. So what happens is someone says, "Hey, it's a tropical storm. We don't have to worry too much." And all of a sudden, it goes from a tropical storm to category five hurricane. This actually happened only a few months ago in Mexico. A tropical storm, everyone says, "Oh, it's just going to be a tropical storm." Even the expert of the National Weather Service said, "Oh, it's just gonna be a tropical storm." And it went from a tropical storm to category five hurricane. And it totally decimated a resort area in Mexico.  **Brooke ** 05:16 I had no idea. And it's interesting because I feel like I seem to hear about them going the other direction so often. Like, oh, there's a hurricane off the coast and it, you know--especially on our coast here on the West Coast--and then it dissipates into, you know, just a tropical storm or what have you. So I wasn't aware that we're seeing an increase of them going from tropical storm to hurricane. That's really interesting. **Ben ** 05:40 Yeah, I think the scientists say, you know, it's an outgrowth of warmer oceans and with the climate crisis and all that, you have more energy. So it hits a warm spot in the ocean and all sudden, you know, it becomes quite crazy. So how I got involved is--I was not involved very much with emergencies and disasters, until hurricane Maria--and I was, you know, monitoring things here and there. And I learned that amateur radio was the only way to get to the...there's a little island nation called Dominica, it's not affiliated with any large country. It's kind of its own country. And they were cut off from the world by hurricane Maria. So they had, I guess they lost 90% of the roofs. They lost...they had no power system. They lost their telephones. And interestingly enough, everyone thought they were okay, because they didn't hear any messages from Dominica. They were like, "Oh, category five, it should be fine." And no one called for help. [Brooke exclaims incredulity] I got on--the amateur radio operators had already been active. There's an active Amateur Radio Group on the island. And I stumbled upon them and discovered they were in big trouble. And they were just begging for help. And so I stumbled in here--I'm all the way in California--and using the magic of amateur radio was actually talking to these folks in the Caribbean. And actually also using the internet kind of to bridge some of the parts of it. It's interesting, all the technology aspects. But the important thing ended up being that they were in a lot of trouble. There's no one to help, and they just needed to get information about what was going on. And I started relaying information to the amateur radio operators there in the region on what was going on, what help was on the way or not on the way. In the meantime, they actually had...the amatory operators actually arranged a rescue of the Prime Minister of the country. And that's like, you know, rescuing the President of the United States. Yeah, they rescued the president of Dominica, the Prime Minister. And they had...they were laying information back and forth like, "Oh, we need this. There's a problem here. People here need dialysis. How can we get help from these people? These people are trapped." At one point, I relayed information from them about someone who had been...who was able to--I guess there's limited cell phone coverage within the country--where they were able to tell somebody else that they were stuck underneath the house. And that got relayed by amateur radio operators out of the country, and I got it and it went back into the country elsewhere. And I rescued somebody. And in fact, I ended up relaying information from the US Embassy. And they actually were sending in...they actually sent in an entire warship, the USS Wasp. It's an amphibious carrier. And they were airlifting US citizens out of the country. And they would actually go in and, you know, drop people off and pull them out of the, you know, whatever vacation villa they're staying at and have them evacuate. It was a big operation. No one...no one really heard about it here. But that was kind of my introduction to the fact that amateur radio was very, very useful in really, you know, like a worst case scenario. And I learned a lot of lessons there, for sure, about how to deal with it. And eventually after Hurricane Maria hit Dominica, it actually hit Puerto Rico.  **Brooke ** 09:37 What year was this by the way?  **Ben ** 09:39 It was September of 2017. And it first hit Dominica, but then the hurricane curved up and it hit Puerto Rico. And I was involved in that. There's a huge...Puerto Rico also had no communications. And the only communications was amateur radio for a good two days I believe. And I was really relaying information back and forth there. And how this ties into social media is I was collecting all this information, relaying it back and forth. And I said, "Hey, I'm listening to all this, I can see what's going on and I might as well post it up on Twitter." And I did that. And I also put up a YouTube stream of all the radio communications that were happening.... **Brooke ** 10:25 Back when Twitter was good and useful and we loved it.  **Ben ** 10:29 Yeah, back when it was a cause for good as opposed to what it is now. **Brooke ** 10:33 Sorry, go on. Mourning the loss of Twitter. **Ben ** 10:38 Yeah, exactly. It's actually quite a thing. So interesting...that would have been it for me. I was going to delete my account. But shortly after that, there was a fire in my own county. And it's actually between Ventura and Santa Barbara County, the Thomas fire. And I said, "Oh, I've got a social media account." And one of the things about amateur radio is you learn how to listen to what's on the radio. And not...this is not broadcast radio. But this is police and fire channels, official agencies, people talking back and forth about what's going on the ground on the scanners. And I was relaying what I heard there. And my followers went from, I think, you know, a few thousand to, you know, 50,000 people because information was so useful to know. So, you know, if you think about what you see on network TV, you'll see the same, you know, Hillside burning the whole newscast, no context. Where is it? What's going on? And when you listen to the Police and Fire Radio, you can say, "Hey, I know that that is in this neighborhood. The fire is moving in this direction. We need to get people out and to safety." And, "Oh, hey, we heard that there's an evacuation here." And it takes...it takes, you know, a couple hours sometimes for the firefighters on the ground to say, "We need to evacuate this neighborhood," to actually, you know, you getting that on your phone or the press picking up on it. So that's kind of how I got into the disasters. And, you know, it kind of has kept on going because, as I mentioned, you know, I think the pace of disasters has increased. I think they just saw...there's just a report this week that said we had the largest amount of billion dollar disasters in the US in 2023 on record. **Brooke ** 12:40 Wow. Like the largest total dollar value amount or like the largest number of disasters? **Ben ** 12:48 Yes. Total dollar amount.Yeah, and so, you know, it's just an ongoing, increasing need in the world. **Brooke ** 12:55 Alright, interesting. So I want to talk about what we can do to prepare before a disaster but I think it would help if we talk about, really quickly, what you lose communication wise in the beginning of a disaster because I think that's going to help make it clear why you need to prepare, if that makes sense. **Ben ** 13:16 Yeah, you know, I mentioned, you know, we are so used to having a smartphone with us. We have a phone with us all the time. It is our way of getting information. It's our way of communicating with people. We text people back and forth. We may use Snapchat or Instagram or whatever your social media is. And people don't realize how much we rely on that today. And what happens during a disaster is the first thing that goes down is the cell phone network, right? Your cell phone network goes down. The cell towers only have so much battery before they fail. And then all of a sudden you don't have a way to say "Hey, is my you know Aunt Marge, okay or not?" right? It's, "What's going on? Where should I go? What should I do? Where can I go?" This was brought home really.... A really terrible example of how we are depending on this and what goes wrong when it fails is Lahaina Hawaii. **Brooke ** 14:22 And I don't know if you listened to it, we released, just a couple weeks ago as we're recording this, I did an episode about Lahaina and kind of reviewing what happened and where they are right now. **Ben ** 14:39 Yeah, and so you're familiar with the fact that, you know, the warnings went out too late. And then the cell towers went down. So no one knew what was going on. And so you were down to, I believe there's a video of some guy without a shirt, you know, bicycling down the street yelling at people to get out. You know, that is your early warning system because your phones don't work. And, you know, if the cell phone network goes down, you know, that cell phone that you're holding is, you know, as good as a rock. You could throw it at something I guess, but it's not going to do much good. **Brooke ** 15:20 Yep. Yep. That's right. **Ben ** 15:22 Yeah. And, you know, I don't think most people think about how much we depend on communications for all the things we do, especially in a safety situation, you know. Should I be evacuating? Where's the disaster? Where's help? Where should I not be going? That is all information that when you lose communications, you've lost, and it can be fatal. So that's why, you know, as much as people often say, "Hey, well, you know why are you doing this amateur radio stuff? You know, we have cell phones now. We have the internet. Why do we need this, you know, old fashioned stuff?" It's not really old fashioned. But, you know, that is the struggle that I often have with people thinking about disasters. And the other problem that we have is--and not obviously listeners of your podcast--but we live in a world where everyone thinks that it will never happen to them. And people don't want to prepare. They say, "Hey, I, you know, this is never going to happen to me. I don't want to think about bad things." And if you don't do that, then you're in a much worse spot when it does happen. **Brooke ** 16:33 For sure, for sure. Okay, so when it happens, you know, we lose...we lose our phones. That's one of the biggest things and basically all of the ways that we're used to communicating. So what do we do before a disaster to get ready for that scenario? What kind of things do we need to have on hand or need to know how to do? Please teach me? **Ben ** 16:57 Yeah, so. So some basic things you should do is have an alternate communication plan, or at very least someplace you can meet people. So say you don't have, you know, a radio or anything like that, you say "Hey, if we have a disaster, here's the plan," right? "This is where we go if there's a fire or a flood or whatever it is. What are we going to do?" Okay, and that doesn't require you to have communications. It just means you have to pre-plan what you're doing. But, you know, the first level up--and this, you know, there's kind of levels of how much you want to invest in communications--but, you know, you can buy off the shelf radios at sporting goods stores, which, you know, they're called FRS radios or GMRS radios. **Brooke ** 17:47 Is that a special radio then? Or is it like the old school radios we grew up with? **Ben ** 17:50 Yeah, so it's different. So, a lot of people are familiar with CB radio. And that's an old technology. And people still use it. But it's not really used a lot for this kind of thing, mainly because it doesn't have very long range. You can't go very far. But FRS and GMRS radios do have a little bit of range. And in radio, the key is something called line of sight, which is how far you can see. So if you are standing on top of a mountain, you can talk a very long distance. If you are in the bottom of the valley then you're not going to get very far. And so most of those handheld radios that you can buy don't require a license, you just have to pay your money and get them. You know, their range is probably--they say 20 miles--but really, practically, it's about two--five miles. And those are great for your family group. Or if you've got a group of folks that are in your neighborhood and you want to communicate then that is kind of the first step and you have now.... Now, you can say instead of all of sudden everyone's lost their phones, no one knows what's going on, everyone can turn their radio on--as long as it keeps it charged and knows how to use it--they can go "Hey, Jill, you're down the street. How are you? You know, are you okay?" "Oh, yeah, we're okay. You know, there's an earthquake. Oh, yeah. Everyone's okay. We're outside, right." So, you know, that's something that's very easy to do. It's off the shelf there. They're actually sold in blister packs at the sporting goods store. And it's a level one. It's like, oh, do you have a plan to at least communicate with your family and people in your neighborhood? **Brooke ** 19:40 Okay, that sounds so much like walkie talkies that we had as a kid but like a higher end farther distance thing. **Ben ** 19:48 Essentially, it is a walkie talkie. And that is what they are and, you know, they sell them as kids toys, but it's a first level of basic communications that you may want to consider, especially for your family. It's like, even if you look at some of the...if you see people fleeing from fires and from disasters, you know, see these videos of people, they can't talk to someone else in another car when your cell phone network goes down. And you can with a little walkie talkie. So that's, you know, you may have two people, one person in one car, another person in another car, and you can at least talk and say, "Hey, you know, this is what we're doing. This is where we're going." **Brooke ** 20:26 Do those--I'm getting into the weeds here but I'm just so curious to those--like, if you buy a set from the store and somebody else buys a set from the store, I'm assuming those must like cross traffic with each other? **Ben ** 20:41 Yeah, as long as you buy the ones that are licensed in the US. It's called FRS and GMRS. radios. GMRS actually requires a license, which is I think it's $25 for 10 years. But no one's checking on those. It's kind of the Wild West. I would advise getting a license, but they saw them everywhere. And a lot of people don't.  **Brooke ** 21:04 Okay, so if you get those planning to use them to communicate with loved ones and neighbors you may have other people using theirs that you'll have cross cross talk. **Ben ** 21:16 Yeah, for sure. For sure. And those are the same frequencies that, you know, the kids down the street. So you'll turn it on and go, "Oh, there's little kids playing cops and robbers." They are shared frequencies. Yeah, so your next level up is--and I advocate for this because I am an amateur radio operator--is to actually get a license. And in all the countries around the world, you can get an entry level, amateur radio license and you can use a lot more frequencies and much better gear even at a very basic level. And in the US, there's, I think it's a 25-30 question test. And all the answers are pre published. So you can actually go and, you know, cram for this thing and get it in a week if you're...if you so desire.  And so that actually can get you much, much farther. And so in the US it's called a technician license and you can actually.... With those, I've talked to someone 50 miles away direct. So that is, you know, nothing in between. And there's also things that are called repeaters that sit on top of hills, and you can talk to people hundreds and hundreds of miles away because they're all linked together. And there's actually...and there's an interesting tradition among the amateur radio community, which is they have groups that work on doing communications and they focus on, you know, those kind of bands on VHF, UHF, those things are all local. So you have a group of people.... In our area, they actually have people, you know, you're on a list, and they say, "Hey, who's on the list?" They're all licensed. And this is licensing in the US by the FCC. And they actually check to say, "Who's here? Who's not?" And it's a practice, right, to see whether or not. So it's a good thing to do, at least in our area. And I'm in California. It is, you know, men and women and kids and that sort of...anyone who can get a license, and, um, it's definitely something to think about. **Brooke ** 23:46 Okay, so anything else kind of on that part of things you can do before the disaster to help get ready with communication and information sharing? **Ben ** 23:58 Yeah, so the, you know, the other thing to do is I found that you need to know who is out there in the community that you are going to communicate with. And I think too many people do not think about it. You need to know who you're talking to and whether you trust them or not, and have your resources lined up. And I saw this in hurricane Maria where people were asking for help, but no one had ever met the folks, didn't know them, didn't trust them. And so, it was a very different thing, right? You're.... When you're talking to someone, communicating with someone, you need to have a pre-existing relationship with them. And, you know, I think in this world, you know, you're asking for some kind of mutual aid but you kind of want to have an idea of who it is or what group it is or do you trust them or not? And it's good to have that stuff kind of thought of, to, you know, think of think of that stuff beforehand, right? Who are the resources In our area if we had a disaster? Hey, you know, the folks in the next city, we've got to...you know, we're okay here. Do we need to bring some of them in? Do they have, you know, the resources? And would they help us if there's a problem? There's a lot of stuff that needs to be, you know, thought about, which is beyond the communication but more the organization. **Brooke ** 25:20 Yeah. Is it devastating if you haven't built out those networks yet prior to? **Ben ** 25:26 It's not. It's just hard. I think it's just harder. **Brooke ** 25:29 Yeah. Makes sense. Alright. Other things to prepare before your disaster hits? **Ben ** 25:38 Yeah, the other piece of it that I run across is because the communications folks tend to be very good at communications if they don't cover the basics, right? So you need to think about all the basic disaster stuff first, before the communications, which is, "Hey, do I have the basic food and water kind of things? Have I got, you know, all the safety stuff for myself, my family. And, you know, for yourself first, before you even think about, "Oh, do I even have a way to communicate?"  **Brooke ** 26:10 Yeah, okay. That makes sense.  **Ben ** 26:13 You're not useful in that role of communicating if you, yourself are no longer able to help. You know what I mean.  **Brooke ** 26:25 Alright, okay. Alright, shall we move into talking about, you know, you're in the aftermath of a disaster and you need to communicate and share information? **Ben ** 26:36 Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the things that happen after a disaster is people are looking for ways to get information to family and friends. And the number one thing I find is people either have to ask for help, because there's a medical issue or they need to be rescued or something like that, or the other big thing is people...I don't think people understand how much people miss knowing what's going on. Right? So if there's a disaster, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of people who go all sudden, "Hey, is my grandmother okay? Is my grandfather okay? Is my friend okay? What's going on?" right? And it is.... A lot of times people say, "Hey, if I call somebody in such and such an area, maybe they can go find, you know, whoever is missing, or whatever, or something like that, right? So this...we saw this during the Lahaina, right? There's people, you know, thousands of relatives going, "Oh no, I know somebody in Lahaina. Are they okay?" And the lessons I've learned from so many disasters is there's no way to get information into a disaster zone. Not very efficiently. **Brooke ** 27:55 That's a really good point.  **Ben ** 27:56 Yeah, so information can come out of a disaster zone, but it doesn't go into a disaster. And so, if you...so for example, if you're an amateur radio operator, generally, you could get a message out saying, you know, "Help me. I've got a problem." Or you can say, "Hey, I'm okay. Let someone know that I'm okay." If you are just someone with a smartphone, and no communications, you are just out of luck, unless you can find someone who can lay that information. And there's a lot of these systems, and I hate to...I hate to criticize some of the nonprofits that exist in the world for these things, but they have "Oh, hey, check in safety." It's like, they say, "Yo, check in on Facebook that you're okay." It's like, well, you have no way to get on Facebook. There's no internet, there's no power. How are you supposed to do that, right? Yeah, and even even the case, there's a system by a big aid organization that has a red symbol and it says, "Oh, it's a safe and well if you need to know someone's okay." And two things. One is, if you try to ask for someone's information, they say, 'What was their phone number and their last address?" And you go, "Well, how am I supposed to know that? You know, I just know that they're in this town," and whatever. There's a lot of stuff like that that's like, "Oh, do you have their social security numbers?" It's like "No, I don't have their social security." So there's a lot of stuff in the way of that. And it's a lot easier, and I found all these disasters, if someone's able to get out themselves. So like I said, the amateur radio operators can relay information to other people. So if you've got a neighbor who's an amateur radio operator, they can go "Oh, hey, I'm gonna call somebody up." This happened actually after--famously after Katrina--Katrina. Hurricane Katrina took down took down communications and there was a lot of communication out by people relaying information to other amateur radio operators they knew. So they said, "Hey, you know, this is where the Smith family is. We're at this street. Can you let somebody know at our family that we're okay." And they would pass on a phone number to call or someone to text or something like that. I did that a lot in Puerto Rico. So a lot of people who are in Puerto Rico, they have family somewhere else, they have no way to tell them that they're okay and they really don't need anything, but people are worried, right? Imagine your family is in the middle of a hurricane or something like that, or wildfire, and how do you let people know you're okay. **Brooke ** 30:45 Yeah, that makes sense. With the amateur radio networks and whatnot, you know, I know you just mentioned a few times about how you can relay information through those. And I'm curious if they're sort of existing networks of communication at all. I mean, obviously, there are folks that know each other. But do you guys have any kind of, I don't know, pre existing.... Like, do you already know where some of your people that you talk to live? Like if you had to get information to, I don't know, Montana--random example.  **Ben ** 31:27 Yeah, there's an established network to do that. I have my own opinions on how effective it is or not, but they do have a.... It's actually one of the reasons amateur radio exists in the US. It was very early in the 1900s when there were disasters, radio was the only way to get out information. And so they actually started doing that back in the days of Morse code, believe it or not, when they were relaying it. And that's part of the reason why the hobby has such a strong tradition in the communications and emergency area. And so, you know, I mentioned I was doing a lot of stuff online about, you know, wildfires and hurricanes on Twitter and what's going on. And a lot of what I do and have done is stuff that the hobby, as a whole, has been doing since its beginnings. **Brooke ** 32:22 I didn't think about how deep those roots are. But that's kind of cool to think about going all the way back to, you know, using Morse code to relay the information. **Ben ** 32:32 Yeah, well, in fact, you know, if you think about it, you know, everyone knows SOS in Morse code, right? Did, did, did. Dot, dot, dot [making noises like someone speaking in Morse code] All that came from--an amateur radio started around the same time as all that kind of communication was going on, you know, like the Titanic or whatever else like that. So, that is, you know, a long standing tradition. And before the internet, before we had phone networks, we had radio networks. So that's kind of the long tradition there. **Brooke ** 33:06 Yeah, that makes sense. So you said you have some opinions about the efficacy of the system of relay that they have now and it sounds like maybe you're not entirely happy with the way that works. I'm curious to know what you think there are and why? So, you know, if there's a limitation that we need to understand. **Ben ** 33:29 Yeah. So they have a very regimented way of sending messages. And they try to pass messages...they try to do it the old fashioned way, which is you get a message, you know, here and then you pass it. Say I want to send something to Boston. Well, they may send it to somewhere in between. And then it goes through the neighborhood and then eventually, at some point, it gets there.  And nowadays, I think it's more effective to just get out of your disaster zone and get the message there. And so, you know, for me, what happens is during the hurricane issues that I had, trying to use that network didn't work because I said, "Hey, I just need...I have a real disaster here. This is not pretend. This is not a simulation. I have people who need to know that their family's okay." I had a text on my phone from people--it was actually relayed from a boat after a hurricane--saying, you know, "We're docked here. We are okay. We just want to let someone know. And so this is the boat name. This is our location. And here's the neighborhood. Here's our relative. We need to let them know that we're okay. They don't need to send the Coast Guard." and trying to send that through a network which is used to passing it by hand, it's like can someone just call them? Like, we don't need to do this. It's great practice. But when it comes to a real disaster, why are we doing all this stuff when we can just call them up? The first person who's on a cell phone network can call them up and say, "Your relatives are okay."  **Brooke ** 35:04 That's a good point. And, you know, the children's game of telephone that you're practically doing with passing it from one place to the next place to the next, you know, is not ideal, as we all know, for many reasons.  **Ben ** 35:22 And I think that's their legacy is they don't use it as much as they ought to. And maybe they're using it more now with the disasters we have. But there's a lot of experts in the world who've never applied their knowledge. I find that also the case in just disaster preparedness in general. You have a lot of people who are disaster preparedness experts and they've never had to deal with a disaster. And the worst is that people sometimes they'll say, "Hey, you're a prepper. Blah, blah, blah," and I go, "No, the preppers don't have any concept of actually reacting to a real problem." The pandemic was the big one that I saw. All these folks who said, "Hey, watch out for the zombie apocalypse, we need to, you know, stock our homes with guns and MREs." And then when there's an actual, you know, pandemic, they go, "We're not wearing masks. We aren't gonna get vaccinated." You're going, "Oh, my gosh," you know? So there's, you know, there was a miss, a complete miss, because they're just not...you know, they call themselves one thing, but they don't have...they didn't have the experience or the right mindset going into it. **Brooke ** 36:40 So I'm curious about the types of information that we need to share. You know, we talked about after a disaster, you know, being able to relay that, you know, this person is okay, you know, finding so-called missing or unknown people and figuring out what's going on with them. But what else...like what other kinds of things do people need to relay that this network could be useful for after a disaster? **Ben ** 37:08 Yeah, help. Help is number one. So life threatening information. So if somebody is trapped or needs help, medical help. And, obviously, you have to know where to get it to. But in most cases, if you can get that information to the authorities, somebody is going to come and help you. And they just need to know it, right? So your local fire department, right? Or, maybe it's a search and rescue team or something like that. You need to be able to get that information to them. And so that's definitely a big one with communications. I don't know if you've ever seen that 911 systems go down in the US all too often.  **Brooke ** 37:53 I have heard.  **Ben ** 37:54 And if you don't have 911, you have to be able to call for help, right? And so we haven't seen that a ton where people have used radio to do that. But it is one thing. So if our 911 system here goes down, I know that I can call somebody else who can get to, you know, fire and rescue or whatever it is. So, help for sure. And the other part of it, the communications, is for your community, is helping out in the community, is knowing more situational--it's something called situational awareness--what's going on? Where are the issues? What's happening? And, you know, that's not just for you to communicate. It's another thing to listen. So, you know, the nice thing about radio is you can both listen and also communicate. And being able to listen to know what's going on is a huge piece of it. So you'll find that even if you're not somebody who's on the air communicating after a disaster, you can at least listen and hear what's going on and know what to watch out for. Like, hey the freeways shut down, so don't go that way. Or, you know, the fire is in this area. Or, you know, in hurricanes, hey, you know, this is where the aid center is, or whatever it is, or this is where someone's distributing food, you know? So there's all that information. It is really helpful as a part of a disaster plan is how do you know what's going on and where things are happening. In the amateur radio community, which is something that everyone should do, you know, they actually share information. So there's people all around town and they go, "Hey, no one said this on the news. There's no information about this. But you guys can't go there. The bridge is down."  **Brooke ** 39:42 That makes sense. So, escape route, maybe for lack of a better word, but just like, you know, communicating infrastructure issues. That's really interesting. Other things that you can think of that are, you know, types of information that people need that can be useful in sharing, if any? If not, that's okay. **Ben ** 40:09 Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I think it's the general awareness. And this is a tool, you know, the radio stuff I talk about is just a tool for what's going on. And, what I'm sharing on social media, it's not just the radio stuff, although it's a big part of it, but it's things like, you know, where do you get information about evacuation zones, right? Where is--during fires we can see maps of where the fires are. You can look up... You can look up evacuation centers. You can get maps of flooded areas. There's a lot of information sources. And I think on the communication side, even if you're not cut off, there's a lot of things that just letting people know about--and that's what I do--is what is this situation? Where are the issues? What's going on? I mean, today, I've been sending out messages about flooding. And I don't know if you know, but there's huge waves off the coast of California right now. And they're parts of Santa Cruz, there's parts of the Pacific Coast Highway that are underwater because of these big waves. And just knowing about that stuff is useful in that general awareness. And this whole area of communications, you know, the situational awareness is something that in disasters, you know, it really does make a difference. And I've had people say, "Hey, you know, we knew, because you were paying attention to what's going on with the fire, that we needed to get...we needed to take our horses and get them evacuated," And it takes a while to evacuate horses, right? And, "Oh, our house, we knew that our house was in a threat area. We needed to get...we needed to get our aunt, you know, to safety." And it's just that time, that information, you know, you don't want to be the last person to know that something's happening in your neighborhood. And this whole part of the aspect of listening to the radio helps with that in just the general situational awareness. **Brooke ** 42:11 There's, you know, kind of a component after the radio, because not everyone's going to have the radio, you know, if then, you know, if you are the one who gets the information via the radio, then how you go out and disseminate it. But that's maybe kind of another topic, unless you want to get into it. But, you know, do you put up posters? Like, you know, letting other people know, "Oh, I found out that such and such bridge is down. How do I communicate that to folks that don't have a radio? How do we spread that
S1E106 - Zena on Parenting
26-01-2024
S1E106 - Zena on Parenting
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Zena and Brooke talk about parenting. Guest Info Zena Sharman (she/her), PhD is a writer and consultant whose body of work pivots around the questions “How do we create change?” and “How do we care for each other?” She’s the author of three books, including The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021) and the Lambda Literary award-winning anthology The Remedy: Queer and Trans Voices on Health and Health Care (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016). Her next book, a memoir, is forthcoming from Arsenal Pulp Press in 2025. She’s an engaging speaker who regularly gives virtual and in-person talks and workshops to audiences across North America. You can learn more about Zena and her work at https://zenasharman.com/ Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Zena on Parenting **Brooke ** 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Brooke Jackson, and today I have with me Zena Sharman, and we're going to talk about collective parenting. But before we get that, we want to celebrate being a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts by giving a little shout out to one of the other wonderful podcasts on our network. Insert jingle here! **Brooke ** 01:31 And we're back. Zena, thanks for being on the podcast with me today to talk about collective parenting. I'm really excited to discuss this topic more with you. But first, let's, I want—I want to get to know you a little more. Let the listeners get to know you a little bit more. So, would you introduce yourself? Tell me name, preferred pronouns, other things you want to share? **Zena ** 01:54 Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for the invitation to be here. I'm a really big fan of the podcast and hopefully will have some useful things to share with the community of listeners. So I'm Zena Sharman, I use she/her pronouns, and you can find me on unseeded Cowichan territories—so colonially known as Vancouver Island up in Canada. And I come into our conversation as a queer femme. I'm in my mid 40s, which feels salient to how I'm moving through the world as a parent, and I am a parent to three kids. And I'm raising them collectively with three other queer people. And outside of the work that I do—the care work that I do as a parent, I am also our writer, I have done a lot of queer and trans health advocacy and systems change work over the years, and then have a growing practice in my communities as a death doula and a hospice volunteer. So thinking about many facets of how do we care for one another?  **Brooke ** 02:51 That's really great. We recently did an episode with a death doula and talked about a little bit of that subject. But— **Zena ** 03:00 You know I listened to that one.  **Brooke ** 03:03 I'm glad. But we're gonna talk about the other end of the life spectrum, and the the little ones, and how we care for them. So you mentioned that you collectively parent, and of course I've mentioned that that's our subject for today. So I'm curious what that phrase means to you, how you define it, and what it looks like in practice. **Zena ** 03:29 I think practice is the operative word, in the sense that I'm definitely not coming into this conversation as someone who claims any kind of expertise or definitive take on how to do this. And what I can say is I'm coming into the conversation sharing some of the things I've learned, and I'm still in a process of learning now, having been in this experience for more than five years, almost six years. So I wouldn't say that I use collective parenting necessarily, kind of, consciously in my day to day life. And I do think it's actually a really nice way to describe what it is that I do. And I mean, I think if I had to give the most distilled down definition, collective parenting would be parenting together, including with more than two parents are multiple kinds of caregivers and whatever that family or caregiving formation looks like. And I think it's useful to think about how there are many ways in which different kinds of ways of taking care of children are collective. Though there's definitely variation in maybe the shape or intensity of the collectivity kind of inherent in that. And I mentioned that because I think about the ways that family structures continue to change, right, like if we think about the dominant norm of the nuclear family, which is such a structuring shape in the context of settler colonialism, in the context of the ways in which the state seeks to legislate family. Yet many kinds of communities are creating family in different kinds of ways, you know, even down to kids with multiple parents because of having blended families, you know, maybe with divorce, for example.  **Brooke ** 05:01 Right. **Zena ** 05:01 So I think it's useful to think about that bigger picture piece, but also think about like, what does it mean to make an intentional choice to parent together outside of the nuclear family form? And that's the particular kind of collective parenting that I'm practicing. **Brooke ** 05:18 Very interesting. Did you—I'm really curious, did you start doing that when your your first child joined the family? Or is that something you discovered, sort of after they, you know, after you became a parent?  **Zena ** 05:34 Yeah, it started even before that, actually.  **Brooke ** 05:36 Okay, cool.  **Zena ** 05:38 I'll give you that the micro genesis of our family. So many years ago—so our—I should maybe you kind of bring us into the present for a moment and say that there's four adults in our family, there's three kids. So we have a five year old and we have 20 month old twins. We're busy. And among the adults, we have two romantic couples who are coparenting together, we all live together in one big house, and at the core of that, as well is a platonic coparenting dyad. So two of my coparents many years ago, as friends, said you know, we keep dating people who don't want to have kids, but we really want to have kids. What if we committed to co parenting together as friends? You know, we're queers. We do what we want. And so that I think was really cool origin story was them basically saying, look, we know we want to become parents, we don't want to have to wait to find, you know, quote, unquote, like the one, you know, the romantic partner who is going to be your like perfect coparent. And then eventually, you know, my other coparent, like, dated her way into this family system. And then I kind of laugh because my agenesis was actually initially, like, what was very much supposed to be a casual hookup with my now-partner. So I hooked up my way into this family. And the process of becoming a parent, you know, it took longer than that. But actually, by the time my partner and I really very first got together, they were already in the process of trying to become pregnant, and were already committed to coparenting with these other two folks. And so, as our relationship became more serious, as they were still in that ongoing process of trying to become pregnant, you know, then I became essentially folded into this family through a lot of conversation between us. So it started on purpose before our first child was born. So that's where we've been at this for nearly six years. So that's where it is—an everyday practice in my life, and one that I'm still learning from. **Brooke ** 07:42 That's a really great origin story. I love that so much. **Zena ** 07:47 Yeah, like it wasn't—it wasn't through any kind of, you know, there's different kinds of apps I think now that some people are using to find coparents. This was definitely born thorugh the classic queer practice of hooking up. **Brooke ** 07:59 [Laughing] Yeah, well, as a as a polyamorous person who is very—I purposely call myself slut positive, because that word to me is a compliment that I use about myself—I can identify, especially being part of a polyamorous community and watching the fluid dynamics of so many of those relationships, and that do sometimes lead to coparenting situations. Which is I think—not to say that you have to be, of course, polyamorous or even queer, to do collective parenting at all. It's just interesting how that ends up intersecting a lot of the time, it seems like.  **Zena ** 08:38 Yeah, I mean, I think certainly something that I think about in the context of our family system is, like, what are the lineages were part of. And for me there is that aspect of, by parenting in this way, we are connected to lineages of queerness, you know, thinking about historical movements for gay liberation, for children's liberation, you know, and that there are these really interesting kind of entanglements and histories that I think, you know, feel important for me to be able to lean into, like, as a queer person doing it in this way. But I think also recognizing that these kinds of family formations exist in so many historical and cultural and geographic contexts, you know, and that, you know, they're very deeply tied into particular kinds of communities. You know, thinking about many Indigenous communities, for example, or Black communities and all of these different ways of practicing forming family, and what does it look like to actually be in a conscious or intentional practice of pushing against the kind of narrow family forms that the state—and again, through processes of settler colonialism and white supremacy—tries to impose, often violently, you know, on particular communities and particularly in people and families. **Brooke ** 09:50 Yeah, I was gonna say, as an Indigenous woman, you know, that was a rich part of our history, you know, before colonialism came along was the more collective parenting and, you know, grandparents, if they were still around, were always very involved in taking care of children—and not just their, you know, biological grandchildren, but the children in the tribe. So that collectivism was there for a long time and was—it worked very well. And it was a very healthy and functioned for the better of the community. So it's unfortunate, for many reasons, that we don't have that now. And really inspiring and uplifting that folks like yourself are putting that into deliberate practice and helping teach others about, you know, collective parenting and ways to do that, because I think it, it does strengthen our communities and, you know, helps us all as individuals, and parents, as well, you know. As a single mother now, it's nice when I've had friends, or when family lived nearby that I could have more shoulders to lean on. Anyway, we can get into more of that. It's just, uh, yeah, I'm just really touched by that. **Zena ** 11:15 Well, and it feels like an important point of connection for me as someone who is the only child of a single mother, you know, and I think so much about how the image of parenting I had growing up, you know, was certainly of seeing a mother parenting in a lot of isolation because of the really important survival-driven choices my mother made around purposely moving us away from her family of origin as a way to break cycles of intergenerational trauma—which was really necessary for our survival, and also was something that did cause different kinds of severing from kinship, right? And so I think a lot about, like, what does it mean to be parenting the way that I am now? And how is that teaching me really important lessons, and simultaneously allowing me to do a lot of unlearning, I think, about maybe narratives of independence or isolation that I think I internalized really deeply as a young person. And that, I think for many years, gave me the idea that I couldn't want—couldn't becme and didn't want to be a parent because it felt overwhelming to contemplate the idea of doing it on my own or doing with a single person, a partner. And it was really only through this family formation that I realized, oh wait, you can do this. And I know—I now know, of course, it's so possible, but those possibilities hadn't been modeled for me until my late 30s, was how I came into this.  **Brooke ** 12:37 Wow. **Zena ** 12:38 Yeah. And I wonder too, I know that, given I think particularly the focus of this show, I wonder if it would be helpful for me to talk a little bit more about maybe some of the practicalities or structural aspects of our collective parenting, because I think it's—I think it's maybe sometimes useful to sort of turn it inside out a little bit. And the specific things I'm thinking about are, so domestically, you know, we are a family that, we live in a house together, we share our resources and financially share all of our resources on a sliding scale basis that shifts according to what any person's income is at a given time. So there's, I think that experience of, like, what does it mean to be dwelling together. But we also have different parenting roles. So we have to lead parents, you know, those platonic coparents at the center.  **Brooke ** 13:30 Ah, okay. **Zena ** 13:30 And then to vice parents, so me and my other coparents. So we kind of made up our own name.  **Brooke ** 13:35 Yeah, I like it.  **Zena ** 13:36 I think that that maybe is useful to talk about, too, because I like the idea that parenting—or parent—isn't a monolith. Like, it also gets to be something where there's that opportunity to really think about, okay well, what does this look like in practice. And I mean, in our family what that's looked like is the lead parents are the people who, you know, individually, each were pregnant and carried our kids, they nursed them, you know, we're really fortunate to be in Canada where more people have access to extended parental leave from work. So they were ones that took longer periods of leave to care for our children when they were really young. And they also, I would say, kind of carry a heavier, heavier mental load of parenting, you know, which is I think a big part of the work of parenting is just— **Brooke ** 14:20 Yes! **Zena ** 14:21 —holding it all in your head. And for me, as an early morning person and recovering Insomniac, I'm also grateful that I don't do nights in the same way that the lead parents do. So that's a real win for me and I think can also be, you know, for some people, you know, thinking about parenting through the lens of accessibility, like, what possibilities might collective parenting create in terms of thinking about, like, how can we each show up as parents in ways where we can both meet the needs of the family system and have our needs met? And as vice parents, you know, we're very, very actively involved in the everyday work of parenting, you know, getting the kids ready for school, making lunches, giving baths, taking them to school and daycare, putting them to bed at night, all of those kinds of things—particularly because of living together and having three small kids. But I think it's useful maybe to think about some of those practicalities, and I'm happy to answer questions if there are specific things you're curious about. **Brooke ** 15:18 Yeah. When you when you say vice parents, you know, I just inherently hear a word that makes me think there's a hierarchy to it. But then, of course, what you just said, there's, you're very actively involved in all these other aspects of their life. So I am quite curious about whether there is any sort of hierarchical structure in your collective parenting situation. And also noting—this is a very random question, I'm sorry—but, you know, sometimes when you fill out school forms for a kid, there has to be like the medical decision maker who they contact and, you know, gives permission if there's an emergency. There's some of that kind of stuff, which isn't necessarily hierarchical, but it is like, you almost have to decide, okay, whose name is gonna go on, you know, this part of the form. So, that's a two or three part question, if you want to try and tackle that. **Zena ** 16:17 I like it. I feel like it's an inherently polyamory-inflected question. Like, is there a relationship hierarchy? And I would say, you know, yes and no, in the sense of the hierarchical nature, like, one of the things I think is really interesting in the context of our family system is to see how attachment operates. And like— **Brooke ** 16:35 Oh, yeah. **Zena ** 16:36 Our kids are all attached to all of us. And it is true that the children in our family, at this time anyways—and they're all pretty little still—have particularly strong attachments to the parent who birthed and nursed them, right, and was their primary caregiver through the first year of life. So I think that's an aspect of it. And I think we run very democratically in terms of how we show up in our family and how we make decisions together. And there's also the both explicit and implicit understanding that, by virtue of the roles that we have, we get to participate in different ways. I would say, for me, as a vice parent, the way that I would describe it is maybe I have a little more freedom and flexibility to tap in and out of parenting, which is helpful for me as someone who has a full time job, a writing practice, you know, thinking about the other ways that I'm spreading my time and attention across all of the things that I do. So I think that's a—that's a piece. And one of the things that I think is a really crucial, honestly, tool for our family is we have a weekly schedule, and every weekend we sit down and have a meeting called Week In Review. And we look at the schedule for the week and we say, okay, who's doing bedtime for which kid? Who's doing school drop off? Who's doing daycare drop off? Who's doing daycare pickup? Who's doing school pickup? Who's cooking dinner? What are you cooking dinner? Who has a massage appointment? Who has a volunteer shift? When is our friend coming to visit? **Brooke ** 18:04 You do that every week, once a week? Wow. **Zena ** 18:05 Yeah, and it takes like half an hour, you know, because we—we're so practiced at it, right? It's very straightforward, because we also have places where we try to have a regular cadence of, you know, this is the bedtime rhythm we work with, this is the school drop off and pickup rhythm, that kind of thing. And it creates predictability for the kids to which is helpful for them. But I also find it—it takes, I think, maybe the decision fatigue out of having to do it on an everyday basis— **Brooke ** 18:32 Yes. **Zena ** 18:32 Because we just have it mapped out for the week.  **Brooke ** 18:34 Oh, yeah sure. **Zena ** 18:35 And then—and then we flow and flex, of course, as things come up. So— **Brooke ** 18:39 Are there— **Zena ** 18:40 Yeah? **Brooke ** 18:41 Are there—are there defaults at all in the schedule? Like so-and-so usually is able to do Tuesdays and, you know, person Q is able to do Wednesdays, or anything like that, that you can kind of start from a place of predictability, or—because it almost sounds like every week you're reinventing—not reinventing the wheel, but like, figuring out who goes into all the slots. But I'm hoping—I'm guessing that there's a little more that's maybe already built in normally that you can work from. **Zena ** 19:10 Definitely. **Zena ** 19:11 Yeah, there's definitely some predictability, like we have a standard bedtime rotation, and we just go basically in alphabetical order. And so—and then it's also really helpful because it means that the couples, we get two date nights a week. **Brooke ** 19:11 Okay. [Laughing] **Brooke ** 19:26 Nice. **Zena ** 19:27 Because we are not on a kid bedtime those nights. And so even just being able to have more time off, right, than would be afforded if we were doing this, you know, if there were just two of us, or if it was one of us doing it on our own. So I think that's also something that's been really helpful to build in. And I know you asked a question, too, about what I would think of maybe more around, like, how have we chosen—what are the decisions we've made around legally formalizing our roles. And I would say, we're in a space of evolution around that. So we made a very intentional choice, including after talking with, you know, radical queer lawyers who've done a lot of work in this area, to think about, you know, what do and don't we want to have legally or state-sanctioned around the family relationships that we have. And the choice we had made was to have the coparenting dyad be the two people on the birth certificate for all of our kids. There's some greater degree of flexibility where we live in Canada because of the legal advocacy of people with different kinds of family structures. But we still would be limited. We couldn't actually put all four of us on the birth certificate, it isn't allowed, given the nature of the relationships that we have.  **Brooke ** 20:37 Yeah. **Zena ** 20:38 And that's been fine up until this point. But now that our older kid is in public school, we're actually now in a process of realizing that it is really necessary for the two parents who are not on the birth certificate to go through a process of formally—we're choosing to do a legal guardianship of our kids rather than going through becoming kind of a full legal parent. And again, that's through consultation with other radical queer lawyers. And I say that because I think this is one of the tricky things about, like, what would be most values are politically aligned around, I don't want the state to sanction my relationships. Like that, that feels values misaligned for me.  **Brooke ** 21:17 Right, oh yeah.  **Zena ** 21:17 And simultaneously, like, what does it mean when, you know, we and our children become implicated with these institutions in different kinds of ways, and when does it become a barrier around things like getting to be recognized as a parent by the school, getting to be a healthcare decision maker in the event of an emergency, that kind of thing.  **Brooke ** 21:34 Right. **Zena ** 21:34 So we're in a space of having to make some different choices now. And that's complicated, because it involves the courts, it involves getting criminal record checks, like, things that are highly inaccessible to many people in many communities. And that we're muddling our way through. **Brooke ** 21:49 Yeah, that's quite the—that's quite the journey, for sure. And I'm sure very—a very interesting process to go through and figure out and— **Zena ** 21:59 My learning is: don't casually mention to the lady at the police station that you're doing gender open parenting. She will immediately become icy cold to you.  **Brooke ** 22:11 Okay. **Zena ** 22:11 Why did I not predict that? So many reasons. She asked me about the gender of our children and I chose to answer honestly. It was probably the wrong choice. **Brooke ** 22:23 Yeah, I hear ya. In our—in our pre-taping conversation, you mentioned that phrase, the gender open parenting, and this is maybe kind of an aside and not exactly collective parenting. I'm intuiting what I think you mean just from the phrasing, but I haven't actually heard anyone use that phrase before until you said it. So I'm wondering if you might be willing to go off on a little tangent here with me and teach me about that.  **Zena ** 22:50 Yeah, I mean, the maybe the simplest way is that we didn't assign a gender to the kids when they were born. And we just use they/them pronouns. Which, again, I recognize is still a choice. But in our family, we've opted to use they/them pronouns for our kids until they were big enough to say otherwise. And so with our older kid, it was very clear—just before she turned three she said, I'm she, I'm a girl. And we said, okay, and proceeded accordingly. And our other kids are still little enough that they haven't articulated that to us. And, you know, the message we always want to give to our kids over and over again is, whatever that looks like in the future, if it changes, wonderful. You know, we will celebrate and accept you exactly as you are. And that also feels really important in our family with a couple of parents who are nonbinary, all of us who are queer, you know, and really trying to create a space for our children that's really affirming of them in the fullness of who they are, and who they're in a continual process of becoming. **Brooke ** 23:47 With your—with your older child who has now identified her own gender— and I guess, as you're doing—you're raising the younger ones too, are there—I'm thinking about, like, when I go to the toy store, right, and there's still, you know, the "girl" aisle and the "boy" aisle kind of a thing. And there's probably other scenarios of that kind of, like, classic gender division, and I'm wondering how much you all had to work to, like, to avoid any of that, or if you did, or how you manage some of that while you were trying to keep this gender open parenting philosophy going on. Practice, practice.  **Zena ** 24:27 Yeah, I mean, I think gender is always present, right?  **Brooke ** 24:32 Right.  **Zena ** 24:33 In so many ways, and certainly becomes this like shaping and structuring thing in our society. **Brooke ** 24:38 You go to a public bathroom.  **Zena ** 24:39 Yeah, absolutely. **Brooke ** 24:40 Yeah, okay.  **Zena ** 24:41 I mean, you know, even thinking about it at the level of like children's clothing you know as a micro example, it is so fascinating to me how different the cuts are— **Brooke ** 24:50 Yes. **Zena ** 24:50 Which means a tshirt for a quote unquote girl and a tshirt for a quote unquote boy, identical sizing in terms of the kid clothing size, but actually, in our experience, like vastly different size, right? **Brooke ** 25:05 Yes. **Zena ** 25:06 And so I use that as a micro example, I think, to think about the ways in which, you know, gender shows up in so many layered ways and obviously shows up for kids in a whole bunch of kinds of ways. And I think what we try to do was just create a space of possibility, giving the kids lots of choices around the type of garments that they wear, not attaching labels around, this is a boy thing, or this is a girl thing, you know, just really saying, oh, okay, this is what you want to wear, this is what you like, Great, how can we support you in that and give you lots lots to choose from, whether it's around how they want to express themselves or what they want to do. I mean, I like it in the context of our multi parent family too, because I think about the different strengths we bring as parents, and I know that I will never be—nor do I want to be—the sports parent. As a queer femme, you know, who has been deeply immersed in femme community for 20 years, I am definitely the parent who will paint your nails.  **Brooke ** 26:04 Nice.  **Zena ** 26:05 You know, if you want your nails painted, like, my got you, you know? And so I think about that too in the different ways we can model, like, what are the gender expressions we have as adults in our family—we're very lucky to have a community of people around us with a lot of really diverse gender expressions. And so I think that's also something that's really helpful for our kids to see that there's a lot of kind of ways to be, **Brooke ** 26:27 Yeah, that's really neat. So I imagine that you, you know, probably don't even sort of approach clothing from a gendered standpoint a lot of the time. Like, you know, I need to work on my own thinking—but like, if I were to pick up a two year old size bright pink shirt, my brain immediately would go, oh, you know, girl, or, you know, if I pick up a two year old shirt that's got, you know, big old monster trucks on it, I think, boy. And so my original question to you was—was trying to imagine like that scenario, and then what you do or don't put on the kids, but I suppose that if you're coming at it with a really non-gendered perspective, and saying, this is not a girl thing, this is not a boy thing. it doesn't matter who's wearing what. You need—you don't have to try to put them in quote, unquote, gender neutral things, either. Am I—am I right in thinking that?  **Zena ** 27:20 Yeah. And I think especially because I think sometimes what gets coded as gender neutral, you know, often is something that might look more sort of, quote, unquote, kind of masculine. And I see this, I think, probably more reflected in my observations of some of the sort of ostensively gender neutral clothing lines that have come out, like, I think often in context of queer community and being marketed at queer community. But then, multiple times I've seen femems say, hey, but is that actually neutral? Or is it—is it really kind of like repackaging something that, you know, might be coded in other contexts as more kind of masculine, right? So, I mean, again, it's sort of the malleability of all of this stuff, but also kind of the stickiness of these, these gender norms that show up in all kinds of places. And I think, you know, for our kids, like, hopefully, we can bring the same ethos we bring to our own clothing, which is like, what feels good on your bod— including from a sensory standpoint—like, what's comfortable? And then also, like, what delights you and what can you move in, you know, and the clothing that a little kid needs is different, right, that perhaps what my wardrobe looks like. Though, I also think a lot about what can I move in. Because I sure do a lot of crouching and crawling around—more than I did before I was a parent.  **Brooke ** 28:30 [Laughing] Yeah. **Zena ** 28:31 And I think a lot more about how will this outfit hold up to all manner of bodily fluids and other weird liquids, you know, it's really—it's really a factor that I didn't used to think about in my pre parenting life. **Brooke ** 28:43 Yeah, and my—my child was far enough, kind of, from that age, that's not really an issue. And so, you know, you say that I'm like, oh yes, I remember that phase of parenting, where that was one of the considerations. And it's funny to be on the other side of some of these things and realize some of what I forgottenthat used to be of such great concern. I want to back up though with you like three steps, because we were talking about how, when you came into the relationship, you know, it was sort of already established that there was going to be this collective parenting where that quickly developed, whatever, whatever the timeframe was. But, you know, by the time children came along, you all already knew that's how it was going to be. I'm wondering if, in that time or since that time, if you've done a lot of, I don't know, reading or researching or talking to other collective parents, or if you've done mostly kind of figuring it out, you know, with the four of you of how it works, or perhaps a mix of both techniques. But how did you learn how to collective parents, is really what I'm getting at. **Zena ** 29:49 Yesah! Well, and I—I'm definitely learning all the time, and that's one of the things I love about it. Right? You know, I think parenting is such an ongoing learning process, whether you're doing it collectively or not.  **Zena ** 30:01 And I think, for us, there is a really—a really beautiful aspect that is about rootedness and community. And I feel grateful for that. Like, there are other people that we know who were already doing different forms of collective parenting—again, as has been done for generations. But in this case, these are maybe more immediate kind of peers of ours that are parenting kind of similar age kids in different cities, some in Canada, some in the US, that we are in relationship with. And so there absolutely are those kinds of conversations and connections that happen, which I think can feel like a real balm for us in terms of saying, oh yeah, you know, how do you navigate this particular thing? Or, oh, yes, I also have had these types of conversations. Like, it's so great to be able to talk about this with another set of coparents and see how you guys are, you know, dealing with this particular challenge you might be grappling with. Or, oh cool, you have a neat kind of hack, like, tell us what it is we want to know. And then I think, again, because we also have been more open about our family story intentionally, because I think we're mindful that—you know, certainly even thinking of my own experience, I didn't have models for this kind of parenting when I was coming up as a younger person. So as a family, we've made an intentional choice to tell our story in certain contexts. As a way, we hope to be able to open the door for other folks to contemplate what kinds of possibilities they might want to co create and the communities and relationships they're part of.  **Brooke ** 30:01 Absolutely. **Brooke ** 31:25 Yeah! **Zena ** 31:25 And so I think there also is that element where then people will come to us and say, we're just starting out, or we want to do this, can we talk with you? Can we learn from you? And we always try to be in that space of generosity and reciprocity. And absolutely, there's a research-based element, including for me as a writer whose work is historically-informed, like, I'm always really interested to learn about the lineages we come from. I'll never forget, you know, the the story I often think about—which is mind boggling to me when I think about it in terms of era—I read about a lesbian woman, this would have been in the late 70s, who was coparenting a baby. And she was doing it with 10 of her friends.  **Zena ** 32:05 And like in the era before cell phones, and group texts, and email and Google Calendar. Like to coparent a baby with 10 people. What an accomplishment. Right?  **Brooke ** 32:05 Wow.  **Brooke ** 32:15 Yeah.  **Zena ** 32:16 Just logistically alone, it's astonishing.  **Brooke ** 32:18 Right? Yeah, for sure. Do you find that—let me say it this way, how common is that people become parents after they've decided to collectively parent, as opposed to becoming collective parents after they've become... regular's is not the right word. But, you know, after they've become a parent, starting to do collective parenting versus pre planning for that? **Zena ** 32:50 That's a good question. And I can't say I have an easy answer to it, because I would say it probably depends. Like I get the sense that more people are going into these kinds of parenting arrangements, like, intentionally, before there are kids on the scene. And I also think that these kinds of collective parenting relationships and arrangements emerge organically over time as well, right, as relationships change, as people situations change in the context of their family systems. So I would wager it's probably a mix. And I would guess that there might be a bit of an upward trend in terms of seeing folks maybe coming into these types of family formations with intentionality before they have kids.  **Brooke ** 33:33 Yeah, interesting.  **Zena ** 33:34 But that's, you know, that's based on literally no data whatsoever— **Brooke ** 33:37 Oh I know. **Zena ** 33:38 Except—except vibes and what I know about, you know, how family formations are changing in a lot of different ways. **Brooke ** 33:45 Yeah. Well, you certainly talked to a lot more collective parents than I have. So, you know, not that's a representative sample as an economist. But certainly, there's there's some information to be gleaned from your connections there. **Zena ** 34:01 Yeah. And I think you can maybe also think about it in relation to, you know, places where we do see like legal advocacy happening, like, often driven by folks in different kinds of poly family arrangements or, or what might be a different or kind of non normative family arrangement, like, fighting to have those family arrangements and relationships recognized by the courts. So, you know, I think that that is also a place where I have seen shifts, both in the US and Canadian context. And, you know, what that's going to look like over time. Obviously, given the regressive politics we're seeing right now, given rising fascism, and obviously the targeting of trans and queer folks and people across a lot of lines of identity. I don't have a sense of any of those advances are going to be rolled back, but I do look at the work of organizations like the Chosen Family Law Center in the US would be a great example of a place, I think, where they're doing some really interesting advocacy about, you know, how might different kinds of family formations have greater legal recognition, greater state recognition—which does have many forms of utility, right, and all it's complexity. **Brooke ** 35:01 Right. Yeah, yeah, unfortunate, as you had said before, that you know, the state—that we sort of have to get the state involved in some of this because, you know, we don't want them in our relationships. At least I don't want them in mine, much as you said you don't want them in yours. But then, yeah, there's certain rights and privileges that are granted or denied, you know, based on—purely on biology a lot of the time. So there's the work that has to be done to, you know, move that forward. So you were just talking about, you know, our current political climate and the rise of fascism. Do you feel like collective parenting has become more important or more useful because of our current political and social climate that we're in? **Zena ** 35:47 Yeah, as I was thinking about this conversation, I went back to the book "Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice" by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. And in that book Leah quotes their friend, Dory Midnight who says, "More care more of the time." And I love the simple potency of that phrase. And the reason I'm drawing a direct connection to the current social, political, economic climate is that I believe very strongly in the need to grow and deepen
S1E105 - Eric King on Surviving Prison
19-01-2024
S1E105 - Eric King on Surviving Prison
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Eric King talks to Margaret about navigating and surviving prison after spending nine and half years in a federal prison after firebombing a congress person's office during the Ferguson Uprising. Guest Info Eric King (he/him) is an anarchist, a father, a poet, a brutal scrabble player, an adoring Swiftie and an undying anti-fascist.  You can support Eric on IG @supportericking and @rattlingcagesbook as well as at https://supportericking.org/ Eric also co-edited the book Rattling Cages, which can be found at http://rattlingthecages.com/ Host Info Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Eric King on Surviving Prison **Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast where it feels like the end times. And this week—I'm really excited about this week—I get to talk to someone that I wanted to talk to you for a very long time, but I wasn't able to because he was in prison. And that's not a good place to talk to people if you don't know them. But what we're going to talk about this week is how to survive prison with Eric King, the recently released anarchist prisoner who spent way too fucking long in a cage. And so we're gonna talk about how to survive being in a cage because it's a thing that we should all be aware of, even if we try to avoid it. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero etwork of Anarchists Podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.  **Margaret ** 01:41 Okay, we're back. So, Eric, if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I already said, and your pronouns, and then why you know something about surviving prison.  **Eric King ** 01:51 Hello, happy to be here. My name is Eric King. I go by he and him. And I spent just about nine—nine and a half years in federal prison after firebombing a congress person's office in Missouri during the Ferguson uprising. **Margaret ** 02:10 Okay, so, which is I mean, I don't want to... It is good when people act in solidarity, I will just say that. So I think a lot of people are nervous around—I mean, I'll say I'm nervous around incarceration, right. I've only spent two nights total in lockup, and I've never been in general population. And I think it's a kind of a black box. It's sort of a mystery. And I was wondering if you had any advice for people who, whether they're, like currently facing incarceration, or whether they're making decisions based on their ethics that put them at risk of incarceration. I'm wondering if you have, like, and it was a big topic, but like, how do you get ready to go to jail? **Margaret ** 03:01 Okay.  **Eric King ** 03:02 So I wasn't ready. I'm going to tell you that right now. Um, I got picked up on the streets, just the cops rolled up on me with their machine guns and everything like that. And so I wasn't ready one bit. I didn't have a support team ready, I didn't have funds ready. And honestly, even though I had read books and I watched documentaries, I didn't know how to behave in prison at all. Um, so when I showed up, I was—I got myself in a lot of trouble with both other prisoners and guards, because I was doing a lot of reckless shit. Um, and so if I were to tell people to get ready, my first advice would be, like, to understand where you're at. Like, you're in a county jail, most likely.  **Eric King ** 03:48 And depending on what state you're in, like, that's gonna depend on like the politics of that jail. And there's ways to survive in county jails and there's ways to survive and low security prison, medium security prison, maximum security. And you can get yourself ready for that stuff. You can be ready.  **Margaret ** 04:06 Yeah. Okay, so what kind of prisons were you in? **Eric King ** 04:11 So I was at a—I started off in a federal pre trial place. It was a it was one ran by CCA, which was just a nightmare because that's one of the private companies. And then, I'm one of the few people ever in the feds have gone to a low, a medium, a USP, and the supermax—the ADX. So I worked my way up, yeah, I did all four custody levels. And so I've seen like how the survival, like, how you have to move and behave. It's 100% different in each one of those. So it takes time to learn to like it's weird. **Margaret ** 04:49 So what are some of those ways—like, what are some examples of like how you behaved incorrectly when you first found yourself in lockup. **Eric King ** 04:58 Sure. So when I first got to CCA, I'm on full insurrectionist anarchist time. And I'm refusing to play by the politics of that jail. And that meant that I sat and ate with the black bros. I let ,the gay and trans people, I always worked out with them, you can come work out with me. I watched the Mexican TV—when the Sureños and the Paisas are watching the Spanish channels, I sat with them. And those are things that I got away with because I can fight. If I wasn't ready to throw hands I got destroyed. And so I had a bunch of fights. I've fought all the time.  **Margaret ** 05:41 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 05:41 And then eventually the other races talk to me. They're like, bro, look, you're causing problems for all of us. Like, your behavior—it's cool, we appreciate the solidarity, we saw you on the news, respect. But you're gonna get us in a race war because we're letting you do things that like other people aren't allowed. So you got to cut that shit out.  **Margaret ** 06:02 Right.  **Eric King ** 06:03 Um, so I was still able to gamble with other races. And I was still able to run my boxing class. And so, like, the LGBT people could always we're still involved in the boxing class, because that's from every race. But like, once that was over, I wasn't—I couldn't sit with the black dudes anymore. I couldn't watch the Spanish channel anymore. Just simple shit like that, that people in prison would say, like, duh, duh you idiot. But like, I didn't get that early on. **Margaret ** 06:33 That makes sense to me. One of the first friends of mine that I talked to about dealing with jail—a white anarchist who spent a bunch of time in jail, about a year or something, I guess prison more than jail. And one—and yeah, he tells me these stories about how, you know, he did the exact same thing. He went and he sat with—he was like, very consciously, he's like, I'm not hanging out with the white supremacists. You know, right? And he was like, alright, I'm gonna go sit with black folks. And, you know, and he grew up on a primarily black neighborhood, and— **Margaret ** 07:06 And eventually he—eventually he threw this, like birthday party that had everyone come together. But then immediately afterwards, someone tried to kill him.  **Eric King ** 07:06 Same.  **Eric King ** 07:18 [Laughing] **Margaret ** 07:21 And it was because—they were like, they were like, well, we think you're trying to unite everyone, like, under you. You know, we think you're trying to, like, form this, like, you know— **Eric King ** 07:33 What gang are you trying to form? **Margaret ** 07:35 Yeah, exactly. And he ended up being put in solitary, like, ostensibly for his own protection. And, you know, and I think he's spent the rest of his time in prison in solitary as a result of that. And that was like a—okay, so—but that brings up a question that I think that a lot of listeners would have, especially any white listeners, is then, how do you navigate that while still not joining the Nazi gang? And while indicating solidarity with people of other races without—even if you're, like, not trying to disrupt the structure of what's happening inside the jail?  **Eric King ** 08:18 Sure. So the people listening online can't see me. But I have the word "Antifa" tattooed on my face. I made it clear—I made it clear early on, I'm not fucking with these Nazis. I don't care about you dudes. I'm not going to be your friend, I'm not gonna play like I'm your friend. If you come talking around me with that n-word stuff, that race lover stuff, miss me. You can do whatever you want to do, but like, I'm not doing it. And so, to navigate that, you have to be—you have to be willing to fight. Once again, like, you have to show them—and this is important for people, it's important for anyone coming to prison. If you're willing to stand on your beliefs, you can have those beliefs. What they don't respect in any jail, any prison, any custody level, is talk.  **Margaret ** 09:09 Okay. **Eric King ** 09:09 So if you if you show up in jail, and you're like, trans people are equal, don't be mean to them. But then you watch them bully a trans person. You're a bitch now, like, your word means nothing.  **Margaret ** 09:23 Oh, interesting. **Eric King ** 09:24 So you don't get to have an opinion anymore.  **Margaret ** 09:26 Yeah. **Eric King ** 09:26 But if instead, like a Florence Medium for example, we had a person in their name Crazy Pete. That's what—that was what she chose to go by. And some of the wannabe tough guys tried to bulldog her and saying like, oh, you can't— **Margaret ** 09:43 What's bulldoging? **Eric King ** 09:44 Oh, I'm sorry. They tried to— **Margaret ** 09:47 No it's okay. You can use that slang, but you're gonna have to explain it to me.  **Eric King ** 09:50 Okay. Yeah. So they uh—their agenda was to force her out of the unit or to rob her, one of the two. And I said no. Absolutely not. You're not doing this. Ah, my wife and I had already raised money to essentially buy a gay guy out of debt so they wouldn't be sold by the—by some of the other races. And so people already knew like, this is what EK is standing on. **Margaret ** 10:17 Right.  **Eric King ** 10:18 Um, and so when it came time for the Crazy Pete shit, like, you just show up, and you show up with your weapons, and you show up with your hands, and you stand on it and you say this is not happening.  **Margaret ** 10:29 Yeah. **Eric King ** 10:30 We can do whatever you guys want to do. And when you take that stand and they know you're serious, it can defuse the entire situation. Um, but if I just spoke from my little chair, no, don't do it be nice...  **Margaret ** 10:45 Right. **Eric King ** 10:46 Pete would have got fucked up, and I would have got fucked up.  **Margaret ** 10:49 Right.  **Eric King ** 10:50 So that's, that's the first like, I don't want to make prisons seem like it's only violence, but the first way to get people to understand, like, what you're about is to show them what you're about.  **Margaret ** 11:04 Right.  **Eric King ** 11:04 And sometimes that means, like, just telling like some racist dude next to you, like, man cut that shit out. Cut it out. I'm not trying to hear that shit.  **Margaret ** 11:12 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 11:13 Or like, I would not let people say the f-word around me—like the homosexual slur.  **Margaret ** 11:19 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 11:20 You couldn't say it around. If you said around me, I'm calling you out or we're fighting.  **Margaret ** 11:23 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 11:24 And that was, like, these are stances I took. And sometimes you put me in harm's way and sometimes I had to pay the price for that for real.  **Margaret ** 11:32 Right. **Eric King ** 11:32 But a lot of times it just let me live as me as, oh that's Eric, he's fucking weird. But, you know, he's not a punk. That sort of stuff. If that makes sense. **Margaret ** 11:44 No, that—that does make sense. The whole kind of, like, so you need to basically not be weak. You need to be—like you need to like—So. Okay, so— **Eric King ** 11:59 This isn't about winning the fights either just so you know. It's not about, like, being tough. It's about being brave more than anything.  **Margaret ** 12:06 Okay. Okay.  **Eric King ** 12:07 You have to show up on your—on what you believe in. Not other people's, but what you believe in. **Margaret ** 12:14 How much does, for example, being antifascist alienate you from the rest of the white population? Like are you, lik,e eating alone as a result? Like or like— **Eric King ** 12:24 No, you can't eat alone. There is no—so like, in the feds when—if people go to federal prison, like, people very likely to catch RICO charges in the next couple of years. Like it happens.  **Margaret ** 12:33 Right. **Eric King ** 12:34 Um, like that dude whoe just bomdb the abortion clinic in Wisconsin. He's going to the feds. **Margaret ** 12:38 Okay..  **Eric King ** 12:39 Or not the abortion clinic, the anti-abortion clinic. **Margaret ** 12:42 Oh, yeah, that makes okay. Yeah, uh huh. **Eric King ** 12:44 I was like, oh my god.  **Margaret ** 12:45 Yeah, all right. Yeah, **Eric King ** 12:49 But that dude stood on pro-women's rights stuff.  **Margaret ** 12:53 Right.  **Eric King ** 12:54 Um, and so, I'm going to pretend like he's white. So he's gonna go to the feds and he has to eat with the white guys. You either sitting with white guys, or you're gonna get fucked off the yard.  **Margaret ** 13:05 Right. **Eric King ** 13:06 And that means—that means beat up, put in PC, and shipped to somewhere else.  **Margaret ** 13:09 Okay, what's PC?  **Eric King ** 13:10 Oh, PC means protective custody. And you can go in there if you're—if you ask to, or they understand that you're going to get hurt. **Margaret ** 13:19 Okay, so this is what my friend was put in.  **Eric King ** 13:22 Yeah, like your friend. Like they most likely understood this dude's about to get hurt.  **Margaret ** 13:25 Yeah. **Eric King ** 13:26 Let's get him out of there.  **Margaret ** 13:27 Okay.  **Eric King ** 13:28 And so, you're gonna sit with the white guys. And most likely, like the gang dudes will have like their own little—because whites will have their own separate tables, they'll have like five or six tables.  **Margaret ** 13:38 Okay.  **Eric King ** 13:39 And that's where you eat. And in the federal system, you eat and sit with your state. Like where—what you represent. So I'm from Kansas City, Missouri. I sat at the Missouri table. It was us, Kansas, Oklahoma, and sometimes Chicago—it's like a Midwest table, basically.  **Margaret ** 13:55 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 13:56 And the gang guys—[laughing] might as well. So the gang bros, they would say,, like they have they're like, that's the SAC section, or that's the ABT section. SAC is Soldiers of Aryan Culture. ABT is Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.  **Margaret ** 14:13 Okay. **Eric King ** 14:13 Um, and so I don't have to fuck with those guys at all. I don't have to associate with you. But like, if they see me doing something they don't like, like for—I taught the yoga class that Florence and I allowed all racists and sexualities, you're coming to this yoga class.  **Margaret ** 14:31 Right. **Eric King ** 14:31 So sometimes some of the—some of the dudes would come to me and be like, hey, man why do you got this n-word in your class? Or why do you got this gay dude in your class? And then you just have to tell them, like, you're not my fucking boss. Get out my face.  **Margaret ** 14:45 Right. **Eric King ** 14:45 I don't answer to you. I'm not in your gang.  **Margaret ** 14:47 Right. **Eric King ** 14:48 Um, and so sometimes they go to your rep. Each car has a rep.  **Margaret ** 14:55 What's a car? **Eric King ** 14:56 Okay, yeah, my bad. **Margaret ** 14:58 No, it's okay. Yeah, I'm just gonna say it for the audience. **Eric King ** 15:02 I'm from Missouri, so that's called the Missouri car. It's like our group.  **Margaret ** 15:06 Okay **Eric King ** 15:06 You're in that car. **Margaret ** 15:07 Okay, which is separate from a gang.  **Eric King ** 15:10 Yeah. Because we're not trying to make money.  **Margaret ** 15:14 Ah, okay.  **Eric King ** 15:15 Like, if someone attacked a member of my car unprovoked, like, without us knowing about it, I could then be called to have to go and retaliate against that person.  **Margaret ** 15:25 Right. **Eric King ** 15:25 Even though it's not a gang.  **Margaret ** 15:27 Right. **Eric King ** 15:27 You still assaulted our group, and so—it's a group with our money making scheme.  **Margaret ** 15:33 Right, okay.  **Eric King ** 15:34 And so, I—if that gang had a problem with me, they would then have to go to the head of my car, someone who had a lot of respect, been down for a minute, and tell them like, we want EK, to shape up or we want EK off the yard. My car would then decide to either talk to me, fuck me up, or tell the gang did kick rocks. Like leave us alone.  **Margaret ** 15:56 Right.  **Eric King ** 15:57 And so, depending on how that went, depends on how far it goes. But I never got fucked off yard, so. **Margaret ** 16:06 So it worked, but it was a it was a tricky situation to do.  **Eric King ** 16:09 It's so tricky, because  one wrong move—and this is what I hope anyone going to prison in the future always understands—you have to always be respectful, even if you hate someone.  **Margaret ** 16:19 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 16:20 So if somebody with a swastika on his face comes up and tells me to do something, I can't say like, fuck you Nazi bitch—Nazi jerk. **Margaret ** 16:28 That's fine. Yeah.  **Eric King ** 16:29 Okay, but I can't say that to them. I will get stabbed.  **Margaret ** 16:32 Yeah. **Eric King ** 16:33 And not hypothetically, like literally.  **Margaret ** 16:35 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 16:36 So I have to say to them, like, hey, man, I understand, you have your beliefs. I get that. But I'm doing me right now, and I'd appreciate you just let me do my time. Stuff like that. That's how you have to talk, until it's done talking. **Margaret ** 16:49 Okay, and is that kind of how you would like—okay, another anecdote that's not mine. Another one of my friends who spent about half a year in prison for a while and is—he told me that his cellmate was the tattooist for the Nazi gang in the jail.  **Eric King ** 17:06 That sucks. **Margaret ** 17:07 Yeah. And so the Nazi kept being like, hey, you got to join us. And my friend kept being like—the way that my friend handled this, and I'm curious, your take on this. Basically, he was like, he was like, no, I can't. I'm already in a gang. I'm an anarchist.  **Eric King ** 17:23 Oh!  **Margaret ** 17:24 And it—and then the the cellmate didn't really buy it until there was a noise demo outside for my friend. And so then there's all these people with circle A's and fireworks outside. And it was just like—yeah, so now th cellmate's like, oh, I get it. You're already in a gang. They just, it's fine. And then they like stop trying to recruit him at that point and they were able to live in peace, which is an awkward—it seems like the things that we assume about how to interact with people and how to carry ourselves on the outside don't relate to how we have to do it on the inside. Is that kind of— **Eric King ** 18:00 Hell no they don't.  **Margaret ** 18:02 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 18:03 But so your friends situation worked because it was a jail.  **Margaret ** 18:07 Yeah, uh huh. **Eric King ** 18:09 Like in a jail—jails are so different than prison.  **Margaret ** 18:12 Okay. **Eric King ** 18:13 Because it's short term. All custody levels are mixed in there.  **Margaret ** 18:18 Right. **Eric King ** 18:18 There's not going to be as much racial like—the dynamics aren't as aggressive because you're all from the same place. You're all from Kansas City or New York or whatever.  **Margaret ** 18:29 Uh huh. **Eric King ** 18:30 Um, so the—it's not split up like that. So if I was in a jail and some dude told me to join his gang, I'd probably laugh in his face.  **Margaret ** 18:38 Yeah. **Eric King ** 18:39 Like unless he was seriously dangerous, like your friend did the right thing. Just got the attention to, look how I had this over here.  **Margaret ** 18:46 Yeah. **Eric King ** 18:47 Because apparently that dude, that gang dude thought like, that's what you respected. He respected someone that was—that stood on something. Basically, you already stand for something. **Margaret ** 18:55 Right. **Eric King ** 18:56 Um, but also if you—if you go to a lower custody federal prison, like let's say you go to a low—I started out low.  **Margaret ** 19:03 Okay. **Eric King ** 19:03 There's no gang members there. No gang is going to recruit you there.  **Margaret ** 19:07 Right. **Eric King ** 19:07 Those dudes, they can't do anything there. So like, that—you don't have to worry about that in a lower custody level. Some dude tried to press you at a federal low, you could laugh right in their face.  **Margaret ** 19:22 Right.  **Eric King ** 19:23 You soft mother fucker. Get away from me. **Margaret ** 19:25 Because it's not—the lows are not run by gangs as much. Is that the—or at all?  **Eric King ** 19:31 No. Yeah, they're run by sex offenders.  **Margaret ** 19:34 Oh, interesting.  **Eric King ** 19:35 Those security federal prisons, that's where they put the vast—the nonviolent sex offenders, the first time—first time nonviolent offenders, like I started low. I'm a first time offender with a college education. I'm not a threat to them. So even though I have this charge, they don't care. I go to low. Um, and so that's where, like, white collar people, they go to lows. **Margaret ** 19:59 Right.  **Eric King ** 19:59 Um, big time rats in informants go to lows.  **Margaret ** 20:04 Okay. **Eric King ** 20:05 So if you see a gang member there trying to push that line, or some racial dude trying to push that line with you—and push that line means trying to force his agenda on you—you can basically tell him, like, if you want to do that shit, go pop yourself up to a higher custody level.  **Margaret ** 20:19 Right.  **Eric King ** 20:20 If that's where you want to be, go be there, but I like walking outside and playing tennis. So leave me alone.  **Margaret ** 20:26 Right. Okay but then— **Eric King ** 20:27 Lower custody levels are sweet.  **Margaret ** 20:29 Okay, so then this brings up the question, because it seems like one of the other things that one would hope to not do is have what happened to you happen, where you got escalated up. **Eric King ** 20:38 Oh shit. It was crazy! I've never seen nothing like it since I've been in. **Margaret ** 20:41 Was it your behavior? Or was it some decisions that they made around your politics or like what—what caused you to end up escalated? **Eric King ** 20:47 So, and this is something that all activists and radicals, especially white ones, need to worry about. Because like, honestly, like the white guards don't really bother the other races about their politics. They just assume you have bad politics in their eyes.  **Margaret ** 21:00 Right. **Eric King ** 21:00 But so for white guys, they see you as a race traitor.  **Eric King ** 21:04 So when I got to Englewoo I was doing fine, but the cops there would harass me relentlessly. So I'd get called to SIS almost on a daily basis. SIS is like the FBI inside the prison system. Special Investigative Services.  **Margaret ** 21:04 Okay. **Margaret ** 21:21 Okay.  **Eric King ** 21:22 And so they had—if you're an activist, or you have one of our charges, they have to read it approve your mail, they have to live listen to your phone calls, like, they make it a burden.  **Margaret ** 21:31 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 21:31 And so these pigs would call me to their office every other day, like, what do you mean in this email, what do you mean in this email? And then I would have my books confiscated on a seemingly weekly basis, they would just coming to my cell, take all my literature, all my writing materials, keep them for a week until—until I filed to region, and then they'd give them back. Um, and so I got bumped up in custody level because one day I was in the—I had a beef with these guards at visiting because they kept harassing my kids. They kept trying to get my kids by the sex offenders.  **Margaret ** 22:06 Oh, god.  **Eric King ** 22:06 I was like, just stop it. Like, leave us alone. I don't bother you.  **Margaret ** 22:10 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 22:12 And so, well I got an argument was one of them in the bathroom, and you're not gonna believe me when I tell you this, but this officer had the gall to tell me he was gonna have his little boys beat up my daughter's in their school. **Margaret ** 22:23 Damn. **Eric King ** 22:24 I reported it right then. I had one of the other guards go call the lieutenant. The lieutenant remove that guard from visiting. Well, the next day, I had gone to psych because I was so angry with being in prison and they told me, like, write down your anger in a poem. Write it down in writing form.  **Margaret ** 22:26 Right. **Eric King ** 22:26 So I did. And I mailed to my wife. Well, SIS takes that letter and accuses me of threatening staff.  **Margaret ** 22:50 All right. Yep.  **Eric King ** 22:52 So they chained me up and that day drive me to Florence medium and put me right in the SHU. That day. **Margaret ** 22:57 Yeah. And SHU is solitary. That's one I do know.  **Eric King ** 23:00 Yeah. Yeah. Special Housing Unit is what they try to—try to call it in Orwellian speak.  **Margaret ** 23:06 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 23:06 Nothing special about it. **Margaret ** 23:08 Yeah, well, it's—it's certainly not normal to spend all your time alone.  **Eric King ** 23:12 [Laughing] Fair enough.  **Margaret ** 23:13 And not like in a fun hermit way where, like, you're Thoreau and your mom brings you your lunch. **Eric King ** 23:22 [Laughing] Then then I just kept progressively, like—I don't know if you know what happened me at Florence medium to where my politics pissed off food because I—Oh, go ahead. Sorry. **Margaret ** 23:31 No, no, I'm—you should tell the story. I've—I've read a version of it, but you should tell me and the audience what is safe for you to tell? **Margaret ** 23:40 Right.  **Eric King ** 23:40 Yeah, I was—I was politically active as hell on Florence medium. Um, like I told you I ride with Crazy Pete, do my yoga class.  **Eric King ** 23:42 Um, and I made—I had good friends there. There's people that accepted me there for me. I had tons of fights with uh, with the bigots, but that is just what happens. But so the staff there hated me. I would write articles calling them out. I would, I would put it in calling campaigns about their, how they treated vegan meals, how they treated the Muslims, how they treated the gay—the gay folks. So I beefed them all the time. And then one day I—a lieutenant got beat up. And I sent my wife an email laughing about it. Yeah, cuz I know they have to read my email. So it's not— **Margaret ** 24:24 Yeah, it's a bad idea. But I understand— **Eric King ** 24:26 Yeah, yeah. If you go to prison, don't do this. Don't instigate them. They will give you what you want.  **Eric King ** 24:31 They'll show you how real they are. So they call me lieutenant's office, dude throws his big hissy fit, starts calling me a terrorist and all sorts of crazy shit. I laugh in his face because it's so uncomfortable. He pushes me—punches me, and I dog walk him. A dog walking means, it means you beat someone's ass.  **Margaret ** 24:31 Yeah. **Eric King ** 24:52 Um, so after I got punched twice by this cat, I dog walk him. And then the guards proceed to, you know, beat me half to death, strangle me, choke me, and then put me in four point restraints for seven hours. And those are when you are handcuffed on a steel bed, stretched as far as your body can go, left arm at this corner, right arm at that corner, your legs spread doing the same thing. And they leave you there. I was mostly naked, sometimes in my underwear. Um, and sometimes, like, the captain would come in and bring in a plastic shield—like a riot shield—and strangle—he put it over my face and pushed on it. So they'd choke me.  **Margaret ** 24:52 Oh my god. Uh huh.  **Margaret ** 24:52 Alright. **Eric King ** 24:56 And other times he'd come in and just put his hand over my mouth. He'd tell me, like, we're gonna get you fucked up. We're gonna rape you. We're gonna get you raped. **Margaret ** 25:14 Yeah. **Eric King ** 25:15 You wanna be a tough guy.  **Margaret ** 25:26 Yeah. **Eric King ** 25:28 So that's what got me moved up to the USP system from Florence. That's how I went from medium to high. And then when I—they prosecuted me for that. They said, I assaulted him.  **Margaret ** 25:52 Right.  **Eric King ** 25:53 So I had—I took him to trial, I refused to take a plea deal. I took it to trial. And when I won, that's when they moved me up to the supermax, the ADX were El Chapo is and the Unibomber, all those guys. **Margaret ** 26:04 Punish—that—I mean, all of them were just punishment, but that one was like extra punishment. You got found innocent of assaulting a guard so they put you in supermax. Is that pretty much—? **Eric King ** 26:13 So, I don't want to minimize but, like, you know,you—we just talked about noise demos. **Margaret ** 26:18  Yeah. **Eric King ** 26:19 A second ago—your friend, like, you know what they are?  **Margaret ** 26:21 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 26:22 Um, when I was pre trial, they held me in the Englewood SHU for two and a half years. And I was there—and this will happen other activists if you use your voice—they took away my mail, my phone, my email, my visits. I had no communication. I could only write my wife. And people I don't know, I don't know these people, but they didn't always demo New Year's for me one year, and they record it—like it was on live stream. So they had banners and bull horns and fireworks.  **Margaret ** 26:49 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 26:50 And one of them I think busted up a cop car.  **Margaret ** 26:53 All right.  **Eric King ** 26:53 And so they accused me of organizing and Antifa riot. And so I gotta rioting shot. That's one of the most serious shots you can get. **Margaret ** 27:02 Yeah, even though what happened outside the jail and you had no— **Eric King ** 27:04 I had nothing to do with it. **Margaret ** 27:06 Yeah. **Eric King ** 27:06 Um, so that noise demo was listed on my ADX referral—you have to have a referral and it has to—you have to have an interview. And under the thing it said, like, Mr. King planned and organized an Antifa protest and Antifa threats against staff. So that's what happened, like, when Trump became president. [Laughing] Things got real ugly for antifascists.  **Margaret ** 27:27 Yeah. Okay. Well—god, that brings up so many questions. So one of them is, like— **Eric King ** 27:32 What about noise demo.  **Margaret ** 27:35 Yeah, exactly. That's kind of my question is, like, should people—there's probably not a right answer, but it's like, when do we have noise demos? Like, when is it useful to a prisoner and when does it interfere with the prisoner's ability to get by in jail? **Eric King ** 27:53 So before this happened, if you would have asked me, EK, do you want a noise demo and people to show up at a prison and go crazy for you? My answer would have been enthusiastically yes. Because, especially a jail too, like, jails are different. Always. They do not have the same—it's not the same.  **Margaret ** 28:09 Right.  **Eric King ** 28:10 So visibility can keep people alive. That's something that supporters and you know. Like, you letting the jail know that, like, I see what you're doing to my loved one, my friend, my comrade. Ee're watching you. We're recording you... **Margaret ** 28:22 Yeah. **Eric King ** 28:23 That helps. I'm not kidding. That can save someone's life.  **Eric King ** 28:26 In a federal prison, um, I wouldn't recommend doing noise demos at federal prisons anymore, honestly. I don't know—I don't know the—I just think there's better ways to support federal prisoners going—this is gonna sound, you know, stupid and anti-anarchist. But like, we can pressure them using administrators, using politicians, using these people at higher institutions, higher levels of government, because like Cory—Cory Bush, like they were calling the bureau for me. The congressperson from Ferguson?  **Margaret ** 28:26 Yeah. **Margaret ** 29:04 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 29:05 Different congresspeople from Denver, were calling from me saying, like, why are you guys doing this to this dude, what is going on? **Margaret ** 29:13 So—go ahead, go ahead. **Eric King ** 29:14 I was just gonna say, like, we can put pressure without putting boots on our own necks. **Margaret ** 29:20 No, that makes sense to me. And I think that—I think that we do well when we stay tied into the larger movements that we're part of, and when w,e like, when we show—when we ask for solidarity from groups that we've been showing solidarity with, you know, like, like, because like, you were in jail for solidarity action. And so then folks calling and being like, well what the hell are you doing to him? Make sense to me, you know? **Eric King ** 29:47 Yeah. And it worked. Like, that's the only thing that's worked for me. **Margaret ** 29:52 Yeah. Well did you spend the rest of your time in maximum at that point?  **Eric King ** 29:55 So after doing the two and a half years in the SHU for pre trial, they, they sent me to some other prisons to do my ADX referral. Because it's a big like legal referral process. And then when I finally got accepted and approved, they flew me right back to Colorado. So I went from Virginia, all the way back to Colorado, and then I spent the last year and five months at the supermax and ADX, yeah. **Margaret ** 30:23 Okay.  **Eric King ** 30:24 They did not like me there.  **Margaret ** 30:26 Yeah. **Eric King ** 30:27 And those—Nazis. They are Nazis. If you look on their Facebook pages, they are full throttle white power, you know, patriot—we're patriots, they're their cry baby, like, Nazis.  **Margaret ** 30:42 Yeah. **Eric King ** 30:43 It is stunning what they're about.  **Margaret ** 30:46 That doesn't surprise me.  **Eric King ** 30:47 [Laughing] **Margaret ** 30:50 All right. How do you—you spent two and a half years in solitary.  **Eric King ** 30:55 I spent seven and a half years in solitary.  **Margaret ** 30:58 Oh, Jesus. Okay.  **Eric King ** 30:59 Two and a half just on this pretrial. **Margaret ** 31:01  Yeah. **Eric King ** 31:01 It was a part of a five and a half year stretch. **Margaret ** 31:04 So obviously that is a very different thing to survive than general population.  **Eric King ** 31:08 Yes. It's hard.  **Margaret ** 31:10 How do you do it? I obviously since, I spent one night alone in jail, I obviously understand it completely, because I did one night, but you did seven and a half years.  **Eric King ** 31:20 You are the expert. **Margaret ** 31:20 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But how'd you do it? **Eric King ** 31:28 I can break it down. So I didn't realize—when I first came to jail, like when I was in the county, like pretrial the first time, I didn't nine and a half months straight because I fucked up a lieutenant. Because I thought it was, like, serving the revolution. I thought I was like being a good anarchist. And so, once again, SHU in county jail is different. Anyone can survive that. You get visits, you get phone calls, you get food you get sometimes even TV and tablet. But when you get to the feds, or probably the state too, it's different. And when you do long stretches, um, for me, it came in waves were like, I'd be doing really good for like three months, I'd be working out every day, I have a routine. You have to have a routine, do your burpees, do your push ups, do your abs and calisthenics and yoga. Make it—set a time where I'm going to write letters from this time to this time. Like make it, like, if you make a routine, it becomes an important part of your day. And then when you finish doing it, you feel like you accomplished something. Now your day wasn't worthless.  **Margaret ** 32:15 Right. **Eric King ** 32:24 Now you have purpose to your day. But also, like for me, like, I'm not gonna lie, I went through a lot of depression—like depressive periods.  **Margaret ** 32:34 Yeah.  **Eric King ** 32:35 And when that happens, you really have to check in with yourself and you have to be vulnerable with the people that love you. If, like, my wife would write me sometimes I write or some bullshit letter and she'd have to call me out being like, dude, like, you're hurting and you're not talking about it and it's not
S1E104 - This Year in the Apocalypse 2023
12-01-2024
S1E104 - This Year in the Apocalypse 2023
Episode Summary This month on Live Like the World is Dying, we have This Year in the Apocalypse where Margaret and Inmn go over some broad strokes of 2023, from the genocide in Palestine, to anti-trans legislation, to the state of the environment. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: This Year in the Apocalypse: 2023 **Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm one of your hosts, Margaret Killjoy, and the other host is **Inmn ** 00:22 Inmn Neruin. And we're here to talk to you about the dumpster fire that was 2023. **Margaret ** 00:29 Oh, come on, it is generalized far beyond dumpster fire at this point. Dumpster fire is like a nice contained thing. And you can push it in front of a line of cops. And so this is our annual year in review, as compared to our usual month in review, this one is for an entire year. It is for the year 2023. And it is coming to you in 2024, which we think makes sense. But first, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. And the reason that you haven't heard jingles for us on other shows on the network isn't because they don't like us, but because we haven't recorded a jingle in a really long time. And that's on us. And we're terribly sorry. But here's a jingle for a different show. **Margaret ** 01:37 And we're back. Okay, so we have a lot to cover today, because we're covering an entire year. We're not going to get into every single story. If we missed your favorite story, it's because we don't care about it. And you should yell at us on Instagram. [said jokingly like she doesn't mean it] However, a lot of really fucking crazy shit happened in the past year. And I think that 2023 will stand as a...see change for society at large accepting that things are not going back to the way they were. In a lot of ways I think 2023 will stand as important of a year in history as 2020. 2020 obviously brought us COVID. But 2023 brought us: one, an ongoing genocide--I mean, unfortunately those happen quite often--but there's one happening in Palestine right now as we record this that has been...its effects are being felt all throughout the world as people try to reckon with their own governments' complicity in the ongoing genocide. Also, 2023 just destroyed every climate record. And really marked a time when we can no longer pretend like climate change not just isn't coming but isn't here, because climate change is here. And when I first started the show, it was like "Haha, what if everything went as bad as I would say." And actually things are going--well, not worse than I expected--they're going about as I expected but way worse than scientists expected. We'll talk about that later. First, we want to start with some impromptu--we didn't plan enough--in memoriam. In 2023, we lost a lot of really amazing people and we lost more people, of course, then we'll be able to give time for today but we're going to talk about four anarchists who died this year whose memories will live on. And that's one of the beautiful things about being involved in a movement is that the work that you do is felt and reverberates throughout history. I don't have a great summation of how important all of this is because it's heavy. First, on January, 18th 2023 Tortuguita was killed by the Atlanta Police Department. Tortuguita was a Venezuelan eco-anarchist who was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which I am kind of guessing everyone who's listening to this is at least somewhat aware of--we'll talk a little bit more about it later, but not really focus too much on it--and, if so, you probably remember when Tortuguita died, but we just want to remember them again. Next, August died. **Inmn ** 05:07 Yeah. August Golden was a musician, activist, and just fucking rad person who was living in Minneapolis and on August 14th was shot at a punk show in Minneapolis. And, you know, to the best of stories that I've heard, at least, was possibly specifically targeted for having told some creepy fucking dudes to leave the show. And.... **Margaret ** 05:46 That's what I've heard too. **Inmn ** 05:51 And, yeah. I knew August a little bit and--not very well and not in years--but every.... There's just been this really overwhelming outpour of like, like, love and celebration of that person's life since August. And yeah, we'll miss you. And then in December, we lost a pretty prolific anarchist writer. **Margaret ** 06:24 That's right. On December 6th, 2023, Alfredo Bananno died. He was 86 years old. It's still sad when people die in their 80s but it's.... Alfredo Bananno got to do his fucking life. And he's primarily remembered as the [emphasis on "the"] insurrectionary anarchist writer. There are many, many other insurrectionary anarchist writers but in particular, his work "Armed Joy"--and a lot of other works, honestly--have been incredibly influential on anarchism in general. And I really recommend that people, even if you don't identify with insurrectionary anarchism--I don't personally identify as an insurrectionary anarchist, but I love the insurrectionary anarchists tendency as I love all of our tendencies. All of the ones that are actual tendencies, unlike those fake ass ones. I...I really highly recommend reading Bananno's work, even if it's just to challenge your own conceptions, if you're coming from a much more organizationalist perspective. And yeah, he was a Italian anarchist who just fucking did it all and just kept going for a long time. He's been arrested a bunch of times. He spent a year and a half in jail just for publishing "Armed Joy" and if you haven't read it, you should read an anarchist piece--it's short--that got someone to spend a year and a half in jail literally just for writing it. So that is him. Yeah. And then finally, we lost Klee. **Inmn ** 08:06 Yeah, on December 31, or 30th--I've heard different things--Klee Benally joined his ancestors. Klee was a writer and land defender, musician, podcast host, and just overall incredible and amazing person. Klee was about to be doing some book talks for his book, "No Spiritual Surrender," which is out from Detritus [pronounced with a short I sound] Books, I think. **Margaret ** 08:45 [Marget corrects with a long I sound]. Detritus. **Inmn ** 08:47 And this is like how I can't say the word foilage [realizes they said it wrong, corrects] foliage. I can't say foliage. **Margaret ** 08:56 I've never tried. It's never come up in my life **Inmn ** 09:03 Sorry, Gourd. Klee was just like...I met Klee a few times. Especially when I was younger, in Arizona and like I have probably never felt like so challenged by someone and someone's writings in really good and important ways. And like I don't know. Yeah, that's what I have to say. This one hit me particularly hard because this is someone who's part of communities in Arizona that I'm peripheral to and like.... **Margaret ** 09:45 Yeah. I was really caught off guard when he died. He was 48. He was Diné and he did more visible work than anyone I can immediately point to about, not just indigenous anarchism but challenging European anarchism and anarchists who come from the European anarchist background and/or European backgrounds. And I will shout out that Klee, in one sentence, changed my perspective on everything by him challenging me. I was traveling and I was giving a talk, about 10 years ago, about my book "A Country of Ghosts" at Taala Hooghan, the indigenous anarchist infoshop in Flagstaff, Arizona, and Klee listened to my talk and then during the question and answer was like, "You know that this whole continent was destroyed by people who look like you who had utopian ideas, right?" And I don't remember the exact way that he phrased it, but it wasn't polite. No, it was polite, but it wasn't.... It wasn't afraid to be challenging. And it wasn't like handhold-ey it right? It was direct. But it wasn't to like "Fuck you," either. It was, by my read--and maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong--by my read, it was an invitation to be better. And I really appreciated it. And I've read some of Klee's writing and I actually don't know what of Klee's writing was and wasn't anonymous, so I don't know which pieces to talk about as being particularly influential. But we.... I don't know. **Inmn ** 11:39 We hope that everyone just takes a moment to remember, as the year passes, these four wonderful people and the uncountable others, that we've lost this past year. **Margaret ** 11:55 And I will say, I mean, and it's.... There are new people, you know, and we stand on the shoulders--I don't have anything inspirational to say. It just...it influences me a lot. It affects me a lot. But I think that there's.... This is the way the world works. Okay, so Stop Cop City, which Tortuguita died for, continues. And we're not going to talk too much about that. There's plenty of.... They actually do really good PR, and you can find out a lot more about Stop Cop City. But I will just say that if you're only paying attention really peripherally, it's worth noting that the protesters are getting Rico charges and domestic terrorism charges for fucking nothing. And no matter your political allegiance, it is worth paying attention to the criminalization of this kind of dissent. Basically, as everything gets crazier, the authoritarian state is trying to double down on cops and authoritarianism and we shouldn't let them. And I think that in terms of a diversity of tactics, I think Stop Cop City has a lot to teach us, but we also need to stand with them and protect them. Yeah. And then we're gonna talk about the elections. **Inmn ** 13:21 Oh God, the.... Wait, I have a funny thing about the elections. Do you want it now or later? **Margaret ** 13:27 Let's hear it. What do you got? **Inmn ** 13:29 Okay, so in some...there have been these news articles popping up in my algorithm about Ron DeSantis, you know, who's running for president probably, or is? **Margaret ** 13:43 Yeah, he's got nothing. **Inmn ** 13:45 Yeah, who's actively trying to lie about his height? [Margaret laughs] Did you hear about this? [Marget negates] Yes, he claims to.... **Margaret ** 14:00 Is he short? **Inmn ** 14:00 I don't know. Well, I'm short. Whatever. He's not as tall as he says he is. Yeah, he claims to be 5'11". And there's all these people, like shoe makers and stuff, who have been looking at his shoes and being like, "His shoes are weird. I think he's wearing four inch heels." And that it's like built into this weird boot that looks like a normal shoe. **Margaret ** 14:24 That rules. **Inmn ** 14:27 Which would make him 5' 7"or something, which would make him one of the shortest presidents, if he were elected president. **Margaret ** 14:36 There's this awful thing that just studies...when in doubt, the taller man wins an election in this country and has since.... There's like, there's been occasional exceptions to this. I fell down a rabbit hole about this a long time ago. So we're not going to be like, "Ah, I think it's going to be this guy with this sub president." Vice President. That's...you can get that news anywhere. I wanted to talk about the elections, because I want to talk about the fact that we're in an election year and how it relates to crisis. And if you recall, 2020 was a year of crisis around the election, especially very early in 2021. But, you know, it is entirely possible that we will see a repeat of 2020, in which nothing in the end really happens, right? It's entirely possible that nothing in particular will happen. And it is entirely possible--I give it a very low percent chance, I give it a 5% chance--that this will cause a civil war in the United States. However, I would like to say that a 5% chance is a really high chance when you're talking about something like civil war, right? If I were to get in my car right now and drive to the store and I had a 5% chance of dying, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't get in my car. I'd be like, "You know what, I don't need vegetables today. I can wait till the weather's better," right? There's a lot of snow and ice where I'm at right now. And also, if you play Dungeons and Dragons, you know what a 5% chance is like. That a 1 or a 20 on the 20-sided die. So I would just say, in the year of our Lord, 2024, be aware, be careful. I used to think this election was, I was like, "Oh, Trump versus Biden again, we know how that goes. We've seen it before, right?" But Biden has completely torpedoed all of his base, his support from the base by supporting genocide in Palestine. And Trump probably will go to prison if he doesn't win the election. So he's got a lot to lose. And so it could get complicated. And I would just say, take it into account in your planning, take it into account in your decisions about where you want to be this Fall geographically. I'm not going to tell you whether or not to fucking vote. That's between you and your maker. And I don't know. That's what I gotta say about the election. It could be sketchy. **Inmn ** 17:13 Yeah. And yeah, in thinking about how you prepare for such an event, like, I don't know.... I remember during the last election, when--and you know, there was so much other shit going on in the world--but like, more so than the horrors that Trump introduced into the government or into legislation or any of that, remember that this person has a really fanatical base, that killed a lot of people in the last eight years, or like, whatever, you know? **Margaret ** 17:49 And we shouldn't be afraid of that. Right? Or, I mean, we shouldn't make our decisions based on that fear. And like, it is worth remembering that all of the culture war shit is actually a losing proposition for the far-right. And it has not won them a wide electoral base. And more importantly than that, it hasn't won them a wide.... So, a random, average person--I keep saying this and eventually people get mad at me at some point, I'm sure--the average random center-right person you're going to meet in a rural area isn't like, waiting to kill all the gay people. You know? And we shouldn't...we shouldn't assume...well we should...I don't know, whatever. What are all the dumb cliches everyone uses? Every time someone says, "Keep your head on a swivel." I like hate it. It's like the word "Huzzah.” I hate the word huzzah. I shouldn't. There's no reason to. I'm part of cultures that say, "Huzzah," because I'm a nerd. And I am part of leftist gun culture, whether I like really want to admit that or not. And so I'm around people who say "Stay frosty," and, "Keep your head on a swivel," unironically. But I'd rather you just said "Huzzah. " I hate all of it. **Inmn ** 19:12 Well, you know, is trying to fuck with trans people, Margaret? **Margaret ** 19:18 Who is this a good segue? **Inmn ** 19:20 This is a good segue out. I mean, it's not a "good" segue. It's just... **Margaret ** 19:25 It's good as a segue, not a segue of goodness. **Inmn ** 19:30 So, 2023 was a pretty horrifying year for anti-trans and anti-queer legislation. We saw things like the country of Russia can just completely outline like gender-affirming care of any kind to adults or children or youth, except in the case of like "genetic anomalies," which is code for like fucking with intersex people. And then, you know, in other places we saw like England had a lot of anti-trans legislation around, specifically around the youth and gender affirming care for the youth. In the United States, there were 75 anti-queer/trans laws across 23 states stemming from 500 bills that were proposed in the year of 2023. **Margaret ** 20:36 That does mean more than four out of five got shot down. **Inmn ** 20:41 Yeah, it's something like 15%. And I can't do math. Yeah, but yeah, so you know, in the face of, it's a slim amount of them were passed, like, and by slim, I mean.... But yeah, there's so much energy and attention going into this that it's horrifying that there were 500 bills proposed. 21 of those are on transition-related care for minors. Some of those are outright bans. And some of them have a lot of caveats and addendums. And there's also a lot of effort going into.... I think the Right has realized that outright bans are difficult to get support for in some places. And so there have been a lot of like, instead of having outright bans, making it structurally impossible or improbable that care could be provided, even if it was technically legal. **Margaret ** 21:48 Okay, like what they did to abortion before they overturned Roe v. Wade? **Inmn ** 21:52 Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so there's like.... **Margaret ** 21:55 Your gender-affirming care facility can only have hallways that are 26 inches wide, whereas every other hallway for every non-gender-affirming care place can only have 27 inch wide hallways. That kind of shit. That's what they fucking did with abortion clinics anyway, sorry. **Inmn ** 22:09 Oh, no, yeah, no, that's exactly. It's stuff like that. Like in Missouri, for example, there was a...there was this new ban on gender-affirming care for minors. But people who were already receiving transitional care, like hormones and stuff, were kind of grandfathered in to continue to receive care. But they also passed a legislation that made it so that current or former patients who are minors were allowed to sue their providers for 36 years or something. Which means that a lot of parents are going to be suing their providers either because their parents are like horrifying bigots or because they're trying to get money out of their providers. And so, like, pretty universally, hospitals and stuff that we're providing gender-affirming care for minors who have been grandfathered into continue to receive care, we're like, "We can't continue to provide care because of the liability." And so it's like there's not an outright ban, but they've made it just impossible for people to actually receive care. **Margaret ** 23:31 That's cool. [Said very sarcastically] **Inmn ** 23:33 Yeah, and you know, there were a bunch of similar bills like that in Texas for abortion access and abortion care. 10 of the laws limit classroom instruction, eight of the laws restrict restroom usage. And the rest are related to drag performances, which we all remember was a huge topic, continues to be a huge topic and was like a huge hot-button issue for the far-right over this past year. This is a...this is a newer one. I saw this in the headlines the past couple of days, but Ted Cruz has introduced a new bill to limit funding to workplaces for the purpose of using money to somehow enforce using pronouns or preferred names. Which is ironic because Ted Cruz's legal name, it's not Ted Cruz, it's Raphael so like he has crafted legislation that could be used to affect him, but obviously won't be used to affect him. Yeah, that's a lot of really bad things for queer and trans people like us this past year. **Margaret ** 24:57 Okay, here's a weird one--everyone's gonna get mad at me for this one too--you know, a large institution that is traditionally not on the side of LGBT folks that is standing up about both Palestine and LGBTQ folks this year? **Inmn ** 25:13 Who? [said sheepishly] **Margaret ** 25:15 The Vatican. **Inmn ** 25:18 Wait, really? That is news to me, actually. **Margaret ** 25:20 Yeah, no. on both counts. So the Palestine thing is a little bit more obvious and direct. And you'll see, you know, and we'll talk about this a little bit when we talk about Palestine, but it shouldn't be the main issue. But, you know, I don't know, I was talking to someone the other day where they were someone who doesn't like the Catholic Church, but who was like, it is the largest institution in the world that is speaking up about Palestine because no fucking government is besides like.... Well, some governments are right, and some governments are doing a lot. **Inmn ** 25:53 Sorry, I just want to counter that. There are some governments that are doing a lot and it's really fucking cool. **Margaret ** 25:58 Yeah. No, that's what we're gonna talk about in a bit. But, yeah, the Pope is outspoken about the Palestine issue and not being in favor of what's happening there. But also, there's this thing--this is a complete minor thing that I just find really interesting--all of these right-wing folks who come from evangelical backgrounds, who are like Christian nationalists, were like, "Well, we like authority, fascisty things, right? What kind of looks like that and is super Christian? The Catholic Church. So we're all going to join. We're all going to become trad Catholic. We're all going to stop being evangelical Protestants and start becoming Catholics," right? And then they realize that the Catholic Church is not--the Catholic Church has fucking problems--it's not a racist organization on the level that they want it to be, right? Like it is a fundamentally racially diverse group. And so they're all freaking out. And then also, specifically, the Pope dismissed a conservative U.S. Bishop named Strickland because basically, he was like--I'm not fucking getting into the politics of that shit too much right now--but basically, the church is trying to be like, "Hey, we don't actually hate gay people, even though we kind of aren't like really cool with gay sex. But that's only because we're kind of not cool with any sex because like, we're weird Catholics." And then all of these right-wingers are like, "What? What do you mean? I thought this was about killing everyone," and so then they're all getting kicked out of the Catholic Church. And then they're all freaking out about it. It is the funniest thing for me and for probably no one who's listening is like watching.... You can like go on to Twitter and see all these Trad Caths be like, "I'm starting to think that this is a bad organization for us to have joined." Anyway, there's been all this shit where a lot of religious communities are stepping up their defense of LGBT folks. And I just want to.... Like, the culture war, even in the like terms of large, weird institutions, is a complicated one. That's what I got. It's just fun to read about. **Inmn ** 28:10 Yeah. And it's like...as much as bad, you know, horrifying legislation that's being passed, there's also...there's a ton of resistance. And there's a ton of people who are not trying to see the United States specifically turn into a more polarized bigoted hell-world for queer and trans people, despite the fact that the UN declared a state of emergency in the United States for queer and trans people this past year. **Margaret ** 28:12 Make sense. Christian nationalism as a fucking evil thing that is trying to take over the United States, which is funny, because the United States is already an evil country. Like, we are the--this is my attempt to transition to Palestine--we are the, the Israel to Palestine, like it's just...it just already happened. And continues to happen. But you know, it's like, we got like, 400 years on Israel in terms of being a settler-colonial state doing a bunch of genocide. **Inmn ** 29:25 Yeah, and I don't know. I'll--actually I'm gonna segue into this a little bit later. But yeah, so Israel has been carrying out a genocide in Palestine since October 7th. I mean, they've been carrying out a genocide in Palestine for like over 75 years, but the most recent incarnation of that has been since October 7. I'm not going to go over the broad strokes of it because if you have not heard about this and have not seen a ton of news about it since October then you live in a very different world than the rest of us. Over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th. Two thirds of those are women and children. The current statistic is that a child dies every 10 minutes in Gaza, which is an utterly horrifying statistic. About 4% of the population of the Gaza Strip, which is more than 90,000 people, are now dead, wounded, or missing. This is being considered an extreme mass destabilizing, or sorry, mass disabling and mass destabilizing event. And, you know, I'm not critiquing people who put out infographics at all, like the infographics on Instagram and social media are incredibly informative and there is a lot of focus on the the death tolls and less focus on the amount of people who are...who are now becoming or have become disabled since the start of this most recent wave of genocide. About 70% of civilian infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed. This includes 318 schools, 1,612, industrial facilities, 169 health facilities, including 23 hospitals, 57 clinics, 89 ambulances, 201 mosques, 3 churches, and 169 press offices. The death toll, which is as of a few days ago, I think, is about 28,000. And that includes 12,000 children, 6,100 women, 241 health care workers, and 105 journalists. **Margaret ** 32:15 Which is like more journalists than were killed in like World War II total or something like that. Like some it was just like, astounding, weird... It's not an accident. **Inmn ** 32:28 Yeah. And, you know, this is something that people have been talking about for, you know, a very, very long time at this point is that Israel very specifically targets journalists in their airstrikes. And this is like.... As far as Israel has reported, I think there have been like, I think, like less than 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the conflict since October 7th. And there's a lot of...there's a lot of criticism about these, or there's a lot of talk, about these statistics and these numbers from a lot of sides, the right-wing is saying that these numbers are completely inflated and then, you know, people on--I don't want to say the Left--people who are thinking reasonably about the world see it as being vastly underreported because it is...because of how difficult it is to actually ascertain the amount of damage that's been done. Yeah. So that's really, really horrible. And as some things that have happened, kind of like in the United States at least, there was also this.... I think it's like part of this kind of polarizing culture war that we've all been experiencing for a while at this point, but the US Congress had a bill go into effect that kind of effectively defines anti...redefines anti-semitism as being anything that criticizes the State of Israel. Which is fucking crazy. And it was opposed by two people. Do you want to guess who those two people were? Or like, what their backgrounds were? **Margaret ** 34:29 Palestinian...wait, we only have one Palestinian senator, right? **Inmn ** 34:33 Yeah, it was a Palestinian. Yeah and a libertarian from Kentucky who thought that it was a little...like that the bill too broadly defined anti-semitism and I feel like probably because he was worried about his own anti-semitism coming into conflict, you know? **Margaret ** 34:57 Maybe but libertarian--I don't know this guy. Yeah, libertarians historically...Libertarians recently have gotten worse. But libertarians historically are like--I mean, they're right-wing--but they sit outside of traditional right-left in a lot of ways, you know? **Inmn ** 35:13 Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. I don't know this person's inclinations. **Margaret ** 35:17 I don't know this one guy. **Inmn ** 35:18 Yeah, I hope they're cool but probably are not. So in terms of, you know, out cry there's a lot of it. In the US people have--and all over the world--there have been these mass marches, mass mobilizations, like millions of people showing up for demonstrations, especially in areas around Palestine, which is amazing. In the US, and like, I'm just focusing on a couple things in the US, there's...people have been targeting different Israeli companies and different companies that sell things like arms and technology to Israel and doing things like...there's indigenous water protector blocs who have been going out in boats and blocking ships from being able to leave port and just a lot of really incredible stuff happening. But who kind of, I don't wanna say takes the prize, but like guess who has been showing up in an absolutely ridiculous way? **Margaret ** 36:32 Jews. **Inmn ** 36:33 Jews. Yeah. That is not where I was going. But yes, Jews have been showing up in really incredible ways, especially in fighting this idea that criticizing Israel is anti-semitic or that Israel has anything to do with Judaism or Jewishness. **Margaret ** 36:53 Well, like relates to it, but it relates to it antagonistically half the time. **Inmn ** 36:57 Yeah. But where I was going was the country of Yemen. **Margaret ** 37:02 Oh, yeah. **Inmn ** 37:06 So there are these trade routes that Israel uses through, you know, these like narrow, narrow waterways and Yemen controls one of them and has totally blocked Israeli ships from going through it, and which has a lot to do with shipping oil and just anything. Israel has been blocked from shipping things through the portages that make the most sense and has been forced to sail completely around Africa, which has cost them billions of dollars. Yemen has also, like they've just literally attacked Israeli ships with missiles and shit. So Yemen is...Yemen is showing the fuck up. In terms of like, a lot of like, Western countries, Ireland is really showing up, which is not surprising. **Margaret ** 38:08 Yeah, I was about to say is like, "Why do you sound surprised?" What are you doing? Yeah. **Inmn ** 38:11 Yeah, not surprising at all like in, especially the UN there's all these videos of Irish politicians basically being like, "What the fuck is wrong with everyone?" **Margaret ** 38:25 Yeah. **Inmn ** 38:27 Which is incredible. And South Africa is suing Israel in international court for genocide. Yeah. Which you know, it's interesting to me that like South Africa, a country that has...that was..."affected" is not the right word... **Margaret ** 38:53 Well they know apartheid better than anyone else. **Inmn ** 38:55 Yeah. Yeah. That's what I got about Palestine. Keep showing up. **Margaret ** 39:03 Okay, my--it's hard to put a positive spin on any of this--although things like people stepping the fuck up is that one of the things that's so interesting to me about this is if you told me 20 years ago that the media consensus around Israel would be broken, I would either not believe you or be jumping for joy. Because as long as I've been involved in activism, people have been, you know, on the anarchists-left and whatever have been trying to show up for Palestine in various ways, right, and be in solidarity in various ways, but it has always been wildly a minority position. And because Israel has always successfully used the manipulation of the idea that to be anti-Israel is anti-semitic. And that's finally breaking. And I really want to say that like, I think a lot of that breaking is because of groups like--what is it called--Jewish Voices for Peace? And, like, the work of being clearly on the front line in saying, "Not in our name," and like.... Because that kind of activism, I think, matters more than it often does. Like, usually when I'm like, "Oh, like, 'not our name,' is just kind of some liberal nonsense that people will shout sometimes," right in other contexts. But in this particular context, I find it very useful, because I think breaking the media narrative and the political narrative is necessary for any chance of the American people to put pressure on lawmakers to push for a ceasefire. And or honestly, like, I have never seen such a stark division between all mainstream media outlets and the government, on one side, and everyone in the country on the other side, because I don't think it's leftists who are against the genocide in Palestine, it is like you said, it's anyone who's paying any kind of attention to what's happening. And that is really, really promising to me. That's my...I don't know. The question is whether or not it'll like, work, right? And I don't want to spread cynicism. **Inmn ** 41:34 So yeah, but there are some not so promising things on the world's horizon. **Margaret ** 41:44 Yeah. Oh, is this your climate transition? Yeah. Okay. So the main thing--not the main thing.... I want to talk about all the stuff that we talked about, but I started off by saying 2023 is the year where we can no longer in any way ignore climate change, right? It is the year where it really became clear to a great deal of the world that climate change is not just coming but is here. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of the ways that we know that. 2023 was the hottest year on record across the world. Some of the cities in the United States that experienced their hottest ever year last year include, and these are only some of them, Albany Austin, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Burlington, Vermont, El Paso, Houston, Jackson Key West, Lexington, Little Rock, Miami, Milwaukee, Mobile, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Orlando, Raleigh, Richmond, San Antonio, Tampa, and Worcester. Is it Worcester [pronounced to rhyme with war-chester] The sauce is worchestershire [like war-chester]. I think the town is Worcester [first syllable as similar to "would"-ster. ] Worcester. Yeah, why? Just pick one. Okay, anyway. Well, they won't have to pick one because it's too hot to make their sauce. Phoenix, Arizona became the first major US city to average 100 degrees or higher during a month, with a July average of 102.7. November 17th, was the first time that global temperatures reached two degrees above pre-industrial levels. Overall, we hit 1.46 Celsius above global pre-industrial levels, with 1.5 being the level that the Paris Agreement was supposed to be about avoiding. The UN says that there's a 66% chance that we'll hit 1.5 degrees Celsius in the next four years. Europe is the fastest warming continent, warming twice as fast as anywhere else. I hate to be like well, it's your fault anyway. But I mean, anyway, but whatever. **Inmn ** 43:47 Yeah, yeah. **Margaret ** 43:51 The COP28 summit finally saw country's--like finally in 2023--countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels entirely. They're like, we'll be net zero by 2050, which is hilarious, because we're all gonna be dead by 2050. I hate to say this, but.... I'm gonna talk a little bit about ways that we might be not dead by 2050. But like... That's too late. Okay, anyway, so Florida Keys hit a water temperature of 100 degrees this year. And Arctic ice was at an all time low. The rain forest had a drought. Swiss glaciers were still melting in October. The Mediterranean floods were 50 times more likely than a usual year. And this caught climate scientists off guard. Climate scientists, like at least according to--I'm sure there's climate scientists it did not catch off guard--but even climate scientists tended to have, at least the ones who were talking to the media about these certain types of things, have like a slightly.... There's a lot of scientists, as far as I can tell who are like, "We can't really communicate everything because then we'll just have like worldwide panic," right? I don't like any of this, but I also feel vindicated. I don't feel good about feeling vindicated. But there's this thing where...I have looked at what has been communicated through the media for the past 15 years and been like, "That is wildly optimistic," and like irresponsibly optimistic is how I have felt about it. And I have tended to, even amongst my peers, not be believed about how bad I think that things are going to get. And I've probably talked about this on the show before. And in some ways the show is the reflection of that. And yet, at the end of it all, I'm not a Doomer. I think things are really bad. And they're going to be really bad. But we need to just actually notice that take a real look at what's happening. I want to--I don't know whether the episode will come out before or after this one will, but I just did an interview.... Oh, here's positive news. The anarchist prisoner Eric King, who spent almost 10 years in lockup, finally got out for a direct action that was related to the Ferguson uprisings. [Inmn yays] And, and I just had a conversation with him, that you all may or may not have already heard, and one of the, you know, it was about how to survive prison. And, you know, in some ways, whenever you ask someone how to survive prison, you're kind of looking for the like, hopeful, like, "Oh, I could just keep my head down and read books and stay out of the fights," right? You know, and, a lot of his advice was, "learn how to fight," you know? And like, because we actually just need--I don't want to say we don't need people to hold our hands. We need to hold each other's hands. But what we need to do is soberly face what appears to be happening. And what appears to be happening is the dissolution of the climate that we grew up in. And that climate change is happening faster and with more chaotic effects than we've been told. And all of the methods that we've been told that will work to stop or alleviate climate change are not effective. I want to read some Washington Post headlines. They have a...they actually have a better climate section than any other major newspaper, as far as I can tell. I actually canceled my subscription. I like to subscribe to a lot of the newspapers because I do work and need access to it. I actually finally canceled my New York Times subscription mostly over the Palestine issue because they're just propaganda for Israel. But the Washington Post is better climate reportage anyway. But even in the Washington Post, you can see the media spin. I'm just going to read you some headlines. "Indoor house plants come with a cost to the planet. Here's how to minimize it," or "How soon do you have to buy heat pumps and electric vehicles to avoid climate catastrophe?" "Renewables and electric vehicles are soaring, it's still not enough," "Companies made
S1E103 - Crisis on the Arizona Border
05-01-2024
S1E103 - Crisis on the Arizona Border
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by two humanitarian-aid workers who have been providing care to asylum seekers along the Mexico-Arizona border near Sasabe where Prevention Through Deterrence policies are playing out in realtime as thousands of asylum seekers are left out in the winter desert by Border Patrol. Guest Info Groups like the ones these volunteers work with can be found at nomoredeaths.org/, www.tucsonsamaritans.org, and www.gvs-samaritans.org. Groups in California like borderkindness.org are doing similar work. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Crisis on the Arizona Border **Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today Inmn Neruin and today we're gonna be talking about some pretty horrible things going on in the world which, you know, of course, we never talk about horrible things on this podcast. It's always really good and wonderful things. But yeah, we're going to be talking about a crisis that has been going on on the Arizona border near the town of Sasabe. And it's gonna tie in a lot of things that we've talked about on the show before, especially from the No More Deaths interviews. So, if you haven't listened to the No More Deaths interviews, they're not...it's certainly not required. But if you do not have a...like a broad understanding of the history of border militarization or fucking dumb things that Border Patrol does, it might be helpful to go back and listen to those episodes first. But yeah, but before we get to all of that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here is a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing a simple melody] **Inmn ** 02:54 And we're back. Thanks you all so much for coming on the show today. Would y'all Introduce yourself with your names, pronouns, and I guess a little bit about like what you do in the world that relates to what we're going to be talking about? **Bryce ** 03:24 Yeah, Bryce, he/him. I've been working with various desert aid organizations over the past couple of years, Tucson Samaritans, No More Deaths and some search and rescue search and recovery groups. **Ember ** 03:42 I’m Ember, he/him, and have been working with No More Deaths around Arivaca, Arizona for the last year and a half. **Inmn ** 03:53 Cool. So there's been a lot of stuff happening at the wall recently, which, you know, is what we're here to talk about and, yeah, I don't know, do y'all want to just tell us about what's what's going on at the wall? Ember04:18 Yeah, I'll just preface it by saying, you know, we're very much just speaking as individuals who've been involved with wall stuff around Sasabe, Arizona, which is about an hour south of Tucson and we'll talk more about it but to just step back, this is a crisis that's happening all over the border and we're really going to be speaking primarily to the situation that's been unfolding around Sasabe in the last months and weeks and not speaking on behalf of No More Deaths or any other groups. **Inmn ** 04:58 Cool. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like a huge, huge, huge, sprawling crisis of horrible things. Bryce05:07 But yeah, so I think there's been a lot more media about what's happening in Jacumba or in Lukesville, where hundreds or thousands of people have been coming through the wall, not a port of entry, to seek asylum, and have been left out there in sort of makeshift camps for days or weeks at a time waiting to be apprehended by Border Patrol. And something similar has been happening east of Sasabe, which is this tiny, tiny, tiny little town, as Ember said, about an hour south of Tucson. For the past couple years, people have been doing a similar thing of coming through gaps in the border wall to seek asylum because they're blocked from presenting themselves at ports of entry. So over the past couple of years, it's mostly been like the Tucson Samaritans and Green Valley Samaritans that have been helping these people out, because pretty much the situation was that if you don't call Border Patrol to come apprehend them then Border Patrol will just never come. It's a super remote area of the desert. There's a road that goes along the border wall that you can easily drive to get to these people, but Border Patrol just won't do it because it's not really worth their time. And so at times, there would be people stuck out there for like three or four days. I ran into one group that had written SOS in rocks and had built a fire just trying to get Border Patrol's attention. And this is like two years ago before any of this was even in the news. And just...it's kind of just slowly escalated until the beginning of November. A lot of violence broke out south of Sasabe on the Mexican side. And it's just.... Between that and just other dynamics happening, it just shifted things so that we suddenly started seeing just hundreds of people there on the border wall seeking asylum. And where usually there were gaps closer to Sasabe where they could present so that Border Patrol could just show up in buses or vans and pick people up, now people were showing up much further east in more remote areas that are much more difficult to get to because of Biden's new border wall construction that blocked off access to some of these closer areas. So now the situation quickly became that Border Patrol would take a very long time to pick anybody up. And because of the high volume of people, they're now 20 kilometers, or 30 kilometers away from the actual port of entry. People are having to hike are left overnight just in the middle of nowhere, just building fires or doing whatever they can to survive the night. And, yeah, it's been about a couple of months of that now. Ember08:20 I'm going to just reiterate that, you know, a big call of a lot of groups is to open ports of entry because this is stemming from the point that people can't claim asylum at a port of entry, people are being forced to use this bullshit CBP app and wait for insane amounts of time, if ever, to be allowed to present for asylum. And so as we kind of hear the mainstream propaganda about what's going on, there's very little emphasis on the fact that the reason people are coming through gaps in the wall in really remote areas is fundamentally because they can't claim asylum at a port of entry and because the gaps are being closed nearby and that's just really important to ground it because there's just so much misinformation about that. **Inmn ** 09:10 For folks who don't know, why can't people claim...apply for asylum at a port of entry? Bryce09:17 I think there's a lot of confusion and misinformation about this. A lot of people I think thought that that was going to change when Title 42 was repealed or thinking it had something to do with the MPP, the Remain in Mexico Policy, but this actually was, it was a separate policy decision that at first got some media exposure. It started with metering back in like 2017 or something--sometimes during--where they would where they would just let in a certain amount of people and then CBP agents would actually block people before they got to the port of entry and say "We can't take any more people. You have to show us your passport," all this stuff. And then that turned into during COVID, "We're just not going to take anybody." And then now with Biden, it has continued, where if you don't have a CBP One app, CBP agents will just turn you away at the port of entry. And there's been a lot of legal stuff about it. Like, I think in San Diego there were a couple big court cases where they said, "You can't continue doing this," but the Biden administration has come out saying, like, "We don't actually turn people away at the port of entry. We don't do turn-backs." But clearly on the ground, that is what's happening. And so I think people think of it as like that there's some big law that needs to be changed or that, you know, people are trying to do something sketchy by coming between ports of entry, or at the port of entry, or that there is a legal pathway through the CBP One app and people just aren't doing it. But really, the CBP One app forces people.... It's essentially the remain in Mexico Policy but without the Remain in Mexico Policy. And then if people try to present themselves at the port of entry, which they should be allowed to do, they're just turned away. And there's not some...there's not some big thing causing this to happen. It's just pure policy that could be changed very, very soon if they actually had the desire to do it. **Inmn ** 10:29 Yeah. So it's like with this app, people are being asked to download an app to apply for asylum through and then they just wait for a notification? Bryce11:48 Yeah. And then once the.... This should all be.... Nobody should take my word for this because I'm not like a fucking asylum lawyer or something. This is just from talking to people, my understanding of it. So definitely don't.... Don't take it too seriously. But from what I understand, people are...people download the app and once they get the notification that they have an appointment then they have to get to the port of entry where that appointment is within 24 hours or something. And then just get to it. But there's no like.... The people will wait, you know, a couple months, six months, a year, and they just are sort of in limbo until they get their appointment. **Inmn ** 12:35 Golly, it sounds like.... This sounds like a sick joke of like people like.... Wait, I'm not even gonna make the comparison. This sounds like a sick fucking joke. But um...and so this has been happening for quite some time. But very recently, things kind of got a lot worse in Arizona, or like around Sasabe. Bryce13:05 Yeah, I mean, and it definitely seems like a big part of it is...whatever fighting between rival factions of the cartel south of the border. It's hard to really say exactly, but at the same time, that.... People started coming in higher numbers in the last two months. People also started coming through the San Miguel gate on the Tohono O'odham Nation in even higher numbers than here. And over there, there's not nearly as much.... Border Patrol was promising to, you know, set up structures and give water and all that stuff, but in the end, there's just really not a lot of support over there like, you know, what we have here. There's been a lot of community committee support and donations coming in, which has been great, but over at San Miguel, there's not even that which is already inadequate. **Inmn ** 14:08 Yeah, yeah. And maybe this is sort of me asking a question that I've had about all of this: I've heard that the town of Sasabe is like.... I've heard it referred to as a ghost town right now? Bryce14:27 Yeah, I mean, I think there's like 20 residents left or something like that. I have...a couple of friends of mine went down there recently to visit a friend who's still living there and she runs a migrant outreach center in the town, which hasn't really had people in it, but it's doing fine. The garden is still going. [Inmn "Hell yeahs"] I do know people are definitely interested in coming back if and when things calm down. **Inmn ** 15:00 Do...I guess do you want to talk about what y'all have been experiencing in kind of like the last week, I guess? Ember15:08 Yeah, I mean, pretty much as Bryce was saying, there's been folks responding to this, primarily the Samaritans as a formal group from Tucson and Green Valley, who have been responding to this for much longer. But folks involved with No More Deaths really got involved more significantly about a month ago because of the massive increase in the numbers of people out there and people being pushed further out into the desert. And that response has grown quite a bit. It kind of started with a few people from No More Deaths who were getting involved and then has exponentially increased in the last week. It was a situation that was really, really challenging in terms of the amount of resources and supplies needed for stuff. Like, basically hundreds of people, primarily a lot of children and babies and families and elders, stuck out in the increasingly becoming winter temperatures with completely inadequate supplies, most people who expected to be picked up immediately and we're instead waiting for up to three or four days in the winter conditions in very remote areas of the desert. The border wall outside of this area goes just right through very, very mountainous terrain. And so the border wall, you know, there's a road on the border wall, but it's basically, as you get far out, just being completely out in the middle of the desert. It's an insane road. It just goes straight up and down mountains. And so people are stuck out there for, at times, up to multiple days and may have been waiting on the other side for some days before they crossed. And so a lot of the original response as our group started to get involved was just primarily supply distro and medical care and medical triage. And I mean, just to give a context of how many people were out there, I think we originally had an emergency request for $10,000 and we used that money in about a week. **Inmn ** 17:41 Oh my god. Ember17:42 So that's primarily for food, water, blankets, you know, over the counter meds, and gas for the trucks, and things like that. Things really came to a head. I mean, it was a very untenable situation or unsustainable situation in terms of people going out there regularly and being like, "People are going to die out here. This is a really fucked up situation." People tried to pressure and call Border Patrol to pick people up, which they were slow to do. So sometimes they would do it regularly. Sometimes they would take a lot longer. But last Friday, there was a massive rainstorm. And we had...those of us who had been involved in organizing support around it had already started to put out larger calls for support, realizing this was way out of the depths of just what our group could respond to. And so we were putting out larger calls for support from the Tucson community, from Arivaca, which is a town about 15 miles from Sasabe, and we were preparing a little bit for the rain in terms of...the day before we set up some tarp structures at some of the places people were waiting. But what happened on Friday, I think really expanded the calls to mobilize and got way more people involved. And yeah, I'll leave it to Bryce if you want to talk a little bit about what happened on Friday. Bryce19:25 Sure. Yeah. I mean, I guess some other context would be that, increasingly, we had to do a lot of advocacy for emergency situations because, like Ember said, it was really just, you know, kids, infants, people that were not prepared to be out, you know, 30 mile...30 kilometers from a road, coming just with the clothes on their backs or maybe a little day pack or something but really kind of expecting to be picked up by Border Patrol immediately. And there's a lot of people that had started out with very serious medical conditions even. There's at least a few cases that I was personally involved in of people coming to the United States specifically to seek medical care for their children. So, it'd be like a kid with kidney disease or, you know, needing some kind of medicine daily that hadn't had it for multiple days are really serious things, you know, or some woman who is nine months pregnant and having medical issues. I mean, really serious things where somebody should just not be out in the middle of the desert. And the kind of advocacy we had to do for on 911 [calls] was just really obscene. Like, we call 911, say, there's somebody out here with some particular medical emergency, they'd ask the nationality of the person, whether they were entering the United States illegally, things like that, and then transfer us to Border Patrol. And Border Patrol would either drop the call or say, "Okay, we're sending somebody." and then we sit there for six hours and, of course, nobody comes. There were times when Border Patrol would actually come out. They'd check out like two or three 911 calls, say, "Okay, this person is not going to die today," and then leave. And then we eventually were able to convince some ambulances to occasionally come out for very, very serious cases. But even then, they started getting upset with us for, quote-unquote, "Crying wolf." And just the amount of advocacy that we had to do even to get that response was just...I mean, it was...it would just be hours of calling everybody we knew with connections to be able to get an ambulance down there. And then, even then, we would get threatened with arrest by Border Patrol for transporting people to the highway to rendezvous with an ambulance, even with permission of the ambulance. And so when the rainstorm came, it was this sort of perfect storm where we had a system in place where we were sort of prepared to medivac the most serious patients out of there and just sort of keep everybody else alive until Border Patrol came to pick people up because.... And then we would advocate for, "Okay, these people really need to be taken first. You need to take these people first." Which in itself is a really compromising position to be in just because we're acting as an intermediary between people and their physical safety and the asylum process. It's like this weird.... Like, we're not the government, but we're fulfilling this weird government role. And, yeah, it's a very weird thing. But when the rain storm happened, we were not prepared for the reality of Border Patrol just not showing up at all. They had been pretty consistently, even if we don't see them all day, they eventually show up at like five or six, especially if we call a million times and advocate and call 911, and all that. And so, the roads were muddy, but we were doing it in our janky little trucks, we were driving back and forth just fine. And somewhere around like two or three, it started...we started to realize that just nobody was coming. And they were.... Like, I don't know why, after everything we've all been through, that anybody would have had any faith in Border Patrol to avoid, to want to avoid a mass casualty incident. But here they were, seemingly, just like willingly causing one. Just to give an example of what the scene looked like, we showed up, things were already pretty bad. Like people were in good spirits, just because, you know, they've been traveling so long, they're glad to finally be there. And having a good sense of humor about things is kind of the only way to survive something horrible like that. People were still kind of in that space when we showed up. We handed out food and water. Most people, even though we had built some really rudimentary tarps structures, people generally opted to just keep walking because they didn't want to just be stuck out there in the cold and rain. And every time we drove back and forth along the wall, we just noticed people getting increasingly more desperate as they realized that they're just stuck out in the middle of the desert in this rain. And to the point where there was just no way to properly triage. There would just be.... We were just sort of bouncing.... Or, instead of actually helping people out, we were just bouncing around from emergency to emergency Yeah, we would be on our way to an emergency and then just see somebody laying in a puddle of water, just in agonizing pain--because even, you know, somebody gets a muscle cramp and can't stand anymore and then they're just laying in the cold and rain. And they don't have warm gear, they don't have anything waterproof. They're just laying there and it becomes a medical emergency just because they're stuck out in the elements in this rainstorm. And so we'd be on our way to some medical emergency and have to drop two people off to go deal with another one and then just hope that another of our trucks would come back to get people. And yeah, we started just having to treat it as--I mean, Ember could speak more to the medical stuff as an EMT--but there were...we had nurses with us and other medical people who essentially just started treating the triage as if it was...as if it was going to be a mass casualty incident. Ember25:55 Yeah, I mean, Friday set historic rainfall records. In Tucson, there was an inch of rain. And there was probably almost that much where we were and we're talking about, you know, winter desert rain. So you know, 4000', almost 4000', elevation, like freezing...almost freezing temperatures and dumping, dumping rain, including large amounts of thunder and lightning. And with the lightning, keep in mind that everybody who's there is against this 30' metal border wall. And so, just a really, really scary situation. And it very quickly became obvious, as Bryce said, that we were...it was going to be way overwhelming for the capacity of the amount of people who are out there to respond to. It kind of started in the morning, there were a few Samaritans', a group out of Tucson and Green Valley, a few Samaritans' vehicles out there and then a few No More Deaths trucks came out. But one of the first things we did when we really understood the scope of the situation was just put out a massive call for more support, which was really inspiring to see really come out that night. But obviously, it takes time for people to mobilize. So we really tried, those of us who were on the ground there really realized, "Okay, this really has the potential to be a really horrific mass casualty situation." And I want to say, I have no illusions about Border Patrol, no illusions about the State giving a shit about people seeking asylum dying in the desert, but I was surprised, based on my experiences in the few weeks prior, I was genuinely surprised that Border Patrol completely refused to come out at all. And once that became clear, I think our plans really changed, because those of us who were responding that day, our plans for the rain were really to try to build, you know, to have some some shelters but fundamentally to keep people okay until they can get picked up by Border Patrol and brought to an actual place to be warm and dry. And as it became clear that Border Patrol was absolutely not going to come that day--and we had Border Patrol liaisons on the phone with them--and they were being pretty explicit about, "Yeah, we can't come. It's raining." Obviously, they can. They have trucks way better than our trucks. And they chose not to at all. And once that became clear, I think our mission really changed quite drastically too, to where, "Okay, we need to get as many people to these shelters and we need to build more shelters, but, fundamentally, we need to get people off the wall, just from a medical perspective." I mean, I was rolling out in the morning with my friend who's a nurse who has been in a lot of disaster contexts and situations and he was like, "Holy shit, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen." **Bryce ** 29:01 I think he said, "This is [emphasis on "is"] the worst thing I've seen." Ember29:03 He said, "This is the worst thing I've seen," and equated it to when he was in Haiti after the earthquake. It was where I think those of us out there were.... Once we realized the extent of the situation and thought that we are going to see a lot of children die today. A lot. You know? It was--and I will preface this by saying that, as we know of, nobody did die that day. And I think that was because of generally just choices of people responding on the ground, people taking care of each other who were out there on the wall, and pure luck of breaks in the rain are the reasons for that. I think it was a situation that could have.... A lot of people absolutely could have and would have died. But, you know, before the rain storm, there had been a lot of conversations about, you know, "Should we be driving people to the substation?" which is, you know, where people can be processed by Border Patrol--that has a certain capacity limit--in the town of Sasabe. And there were a lot of these conversations about the legal risks of that and the potential dangers to people seeking asylum because, to keep in mind, like most people, when we've been out there for the time any of us had been out of the wall, most people wanted rides to the substation. That was, you know, a big thing people wanted and needed. That's where they were trying to get to. And there were all these conversations about the potential dangers of that legal risk. And what we encountered on Friday in the rainstorm was a situation where there was simply no choice. I mean, we were able to have some janky makeshift shelters at two camps along the wall that people, some people, did stay in, and we're trying to treat and warm and dry and triage those people, but there were about 150 people--there was over 300 people out in the wall that day and there was about 150 people who were walking past the last camp the 12 to 15 miles between the camp. And by camp, I mean a very shitty janky tarp structure setup. I don't mean a real camp. But there are about 150 people walking between the town of Sasabe that like 12 to 15 miles from the camp. Those people were out in the rain with no protection whatsoever. And so after we did some triage and made sure that, you know, the people further back on the wall were at one of these makeshift camps, we made the decision--that was not even really a choice--but just fundamentally that like people are going to die if we don't drive everyone to the substation. So we made a choice to evacuate everyone on the road in multiple caravans of trucks and shuttles to the substation while calling Border Patrol, telling them what we were doing, making it clear that it wasn't really a choice, that people people are going to die if they don't get to get to the station. And we weren't really sure how they would react to that. They, Border Patrol, did process everybody that was brought to the station. They got buses down from Tucson. And at the same time, they were being pretty hostile with volunteers that were evacuating people there, including a lot of threats of arrest, that people would be arrested and to "Not be doing this." But no volunteers were arrested. And everybody who was evacuated to the substation was processed within the next chunk of hours. And so, yeah, that kind of changes the whole dynamic in a sense. And the other thing that changed the dynamic is just this massive call for mobilization and support. So a lot of people from Tucson and Arivaca came down to support that evening and we were really in a triage situation all day and night of evacuating the most vulnerable and medically unwell people to the Border Patrol station and trying to do our best to make the makeshift camps slightly safer. But fundamentally, they were extremely inadequate shelters for people in the conditions that we were in. **Inmn ** 33:34 Dang, yeah, that sounds harrowing and just fucking terrible. I I don't have a real emotional response to it because it's just...it's just fucked. But I don't know, it's like this thing where it feels like things we've talked about on the show before with Sophie and Parker from No More Deaths talking to us about Border Patrol's kind of...their tendency to create a humanitarian crisis that they then refuse to respond to. But they, at the same time, you know, they claim to...like, they claim all the time to rescue people from the desert. Or, like, framing themselves as these humanitarian actors when they're the ones who are creating these crises and then completely not responding to them or like.... I don't know, like, hearing more confirmation of discrimination of medical dispatchers and stuff to respond to calls or to pass that off to Border Patrol who then just doesn't respond. I don't know. It's just terrible. And it's like... Like Border Patrol's perfectly capable of responding to these crises, right? **Bryce ** 35:24 Oh, totally and even in this case with the same.... Because eventually they do get everybody. So if they just...they're basically making the choice, in addition to like border wall, asylum, all that stuff, even with the current situation as it is, they're making the choice to leave people out there versus if they just went and got everybody. They say their issue is capacity for processing people. But why not have them wait in Sasabe or near the station or somewhere where they're not in the middle of the desert? They could just go get everybody, bring them to the station, and have them wait where an ambulance can arrive, where people can easily show up and give them help, where they're not just.... I mean, there's vigilantes along the wall, there's like gun battles. For many days, we were hearing automatic gunfire just south of where people were waiting for asylum. Like it's very much even outside of the danger of the desert itself. It is not a good place to be waiting. These people are freaking terrified. But the benefit of them being there for Border Patrol is that they're totally invisible. So they're just sort of hiding what...a thing that should be happening in public view in front of the Border Patrol station, in the middle of the desert where there's just extreme danger. If they wanted to, they could bring everybody to a safer place. It would be bad for PR, because then we'd have a bunch of news articles about like, "All these people are like being kept in an open air detention facility," or whatever. But they're essentially doing the same thing. But because it's far enough away from the public eye and from their own facilities, it just becomes invisible in a way, the same as, you know, Border Patrol's nonsense that they get up to with other kinds of people crossing the border with Prevention Through Deterrence, all of that policy; the suffering really is the point. I think they're hoping that people will tell stories back home that they, "Showed up and things were really bad and we almost died and there was this rainstorm," or whatever, "Don't do it this way." And the same way that their narratives kind of push things on the quote-unquote "smugglers" as being these predatory people that--which they are--but as being like, "It's them that's doing this. They're the ones that are causing this," and just really outsourcing any blame of anything on to on to other people. **Inmn ** 38:05 This situation makes me wonder if Border Patrol is making this conscious choice to, where with open air detention facilities they're--in Arizona at least--are just like, "Oh, we don't want to deal with that." or, "We don't want to deal with the PR. We just don't want to deal with it so we're gonna do this other thing to push people further out or to really invisiblize it," like you're talking about? I mean, that seems like a very Border Patrol thing to do. Which is horrible to laugh about but.... I guess you talked a little bit about Border Patrol's responses to what's going on, or to interventions that people are taking, and I'm just wondering if there's any more, anything more to say about how Border Patrol is reacting to how people are intervening in the situation? **Ember ** 39:09 There's been significant threats of arrest to people as we've continued to evacuate people to the substation, and to people that are just walking to the makeshift camps. There have been continual threats of arrest. Some volunteers had their IDs taken and said they were coming back for them to arrest them. Fundamentally, we feel extremely strongly that, obviously, we would be doing it even if it wasn't legal because it's the right thing to do, because we're not going to...we're going to do what we can to keep people from dying. But fundamentally, we feel very strongly that it is completely legal what we're doing and we will not back down from threats from Border Patrol and have been pretty explicit with them about that, **Bryce ** 40:00 Yeah. Also, after one of those threats of arrest, they did go up to the further camp, which usually is a lot of women and children, and they picked up just a few people. They could have picked up way more. They just picked up a few people and said, "Wait in three lines. We're coming back for the rest." The people all--it was, I think, like, maybe 100 people or so--they all waited in lines. Border Patrol left and then just never came back. And so people ended up standing in lines for hours, thinking that they were going to miss their place in line or mess up if they left the lines. And [it was] just this really cruel display of--and this is right after we got some media attention for the thing that happened during the rain, so maybe [Border Patrol was] punishing them for what we were up to or, you know, who knows how those people think? But that was one thing that we saw. Another thing is, we've actually been caught by Border Patrol while transporting people. And they stopped and essentially thanked us. So there's, in addition to threats of arrest, we've also gotten that, because, I mean, if you're a Border Patrol agent, and you have an...you believe your own bullshit about like, "You're a humanitarian," and all these things, or whatever, then by those standards, hypothetically, we were actually doing your job and you should be thankful for what we're up to by moving people. And this one agent that we've run into a few different times has definitely had that attitude, which is.... Yeah, I don't know whether.... I don't even know how to think about that. But it's made it so that it's given us a little bit more confidence in what we're doing, but also has set up a weird thought of like, "Oh shit. At what point are they going to stop picking people up because they think we're gonna do it? At what point are we really just unpaid fucking Border Patrol agents?" And so I think there's a big.... And even just our role in the camps and all this stuff, like, how much of what we're actually doing to save lives is playing into the wants and needs of the Border Patrol? And so trying to figure out ways to--we have been talking a lot internally about ways to ways to push back on that and sort of change tactics of what we're doing in order to...in order to pressure them to be doing the right thing, rather than this unsustainable thing in which we're clothing, feeding, housing, and triaging hundreds of people a day, which is just like wildly unsustainable. **Inmn ** 43:01 I mean, it seems like this thing that's become very wildly unsustainable. And I know that y'all have recently put out this big call for like, what? For like things needing to be different? Pr like, just like broader kind of community support? Just wondering if y'all wanted to talk about that a little bit? **Ember ** 43:28 Yeah. The calls for support really started to come out of, you know, conversations after a few weeks of folks in our group responding really heavily to the situation and realizing that we needed way more support. And also, I mean, for one, supportive people autonomously responding to the situation outside of our organization, and also more like visiblization what's going on because it was very invisible. There's a few news stories about things going on in other parts of the Borderlands, similar situations, or even worse situations, but really not the attention that the extent of the situation demanded. So those calls for support went out before the rain, but the rain day really amplified it. A lot of people from larger networks in the area came out that night. And it led to huge...way more numbers of people getting involved. And part of it is us really trying to encourage a non--outside of our organization--an autonomous response from more people regionally to the situation that can obviously look a lot of different ways and I don't think any of us presume to know what the best strategy or way to go about this is, but that, you know, making it more visible and having more people being involved is is an important and good thing. And I will add to that, this is obviously a situation going on throughout the Borderlands. But I think we're in a unique position because of where we are, because of our proximity to Tucson because of networks of mutual aid and support that exists in these areas, because of the proliferation of aid groups that exist in these areas, and just generally, yeah, large networks of individuals that are down to support with something like this. I think there's a potential for us to really build a lot of mobilization and support here that hopefully can also help spread and support other places where people are trying to respond to the crisis in their areas, some of which, as Bryce was talking about are, are significantly worse than what's happening here. But it obviously also breeds enormous questions about like, what are we actually doing? What is our role here? And, yeah, and what are we doing? And I don't think, you know, anyone presumes to know the answers to all questions. **Inmn ** 46:06 Yeah, I think in terms of what the role of aid groups is.... Just just wanting to bring up this like, kind of weird, maybe complexity of like, I don't know, it sounds, it sounds really, it sounds really weird to have to put yourself in the position of helping people get to Border Patrol or like helping people get to situations that are a potential open air detention facility or a detention facility that's as hellish as it is out in the desert. But like, I don't know, that.... It seems like a real...it seems a real mindfuck. And I don't know, this isn't really a question, just a thought. **Bryce ** 46:58 It's fucked up. **Inmn ** 47:01 Yeah. Yeah. I was...we talked a little off air about this, but so there has been a little bit of media attention and I know that y'all have not been exactly happy about the media, like what large media sources are saying about what's happening? I was wondering if y'all wanted to talk about what kind of media myths or narratives you see going
S1E102 - "Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners" with Matthew Dougal
29-12-2023
S1E102 - "Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners" with Matthew Dougal
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, we have a short story about prepping called "Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners" by Matthew Dougal. It's a parody about two right-wing preppers who are faced with a collapse in society. After the story, there's an interview with the author about prepping mentalities and writing. This episode was reposted from the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast. The story can be read at tangledwilderness.org. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery Reader The Reader is Bea Flowers. If you would like to hear Bea narrate other things, or would like to get them to read things for you check them out at https://voicebea.wixsite.com/website Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Theme music The theme song was written and performed by Margaret Killjoy. You can find her at http://birdsbeforethestorm.net or on twitter @magpiekilljoy Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: “Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners” with Matthew Dougal **Inmn ** 00:16  Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I’m your host today, Inmn Neruin, and today we have something a little different. I host another podcast called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness where every month we take a zine that Strangers puts out and turn it into an audio feature and do an interview with the author. We had a two-part feature called Blood, Soil, and Frozen TV Dinners by Matthew Dougal, and it is a short story about prepping from a very strange perspective, that of two right-wing preppers facing a mysterious collapse of society. This short story is a parody and I promise that the two main pov characters are not the heroes of the tale. It’s a fun story and I do an interview with Matthew afterward about prepping mentalities, fiction, and other neat stuff. If you like this episode, check out my other podcast that this is featured from. I did not re-record the outro, so you’ll get a little taste of Margaret playing the piano, because she wrote the theme music for the Strangers podcast. You’ll also get to hear our wonderful reader, Bea Flowers narrate the story. Follow along with the transcript or at Tangledwilderness.org where you can read all of our featured zines for free. But before all of that, we are a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here’s a jingle from another show on that network.  [sings a simple melody] **Bea ** 02:49 “Blood, Soil, & Frozen TV Dinners” by Matthew Dougal. Read by Bea Flowers. Published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.  Katie sat, wide-eyed, beneath the kitchen table and hugged her knees to her chest. She was shaking, vibrating visibly. Tanner put his finger to his lips and prayed that her silent tears would remain just that. There was no time to stop and calm her down. Not again. He moved slowly around the kitchen, fumbling through cupboards and pulling out pre-wrapped packages of food. Always be prepared. Tanner had practiced this before things went dark, but it was different doing it for real. His hands hadn’t been so shaky, back then.  A noise, on the porch. His body froze before his mind registered the sound. Tanner dropped into a crouch and crossed the room to the window, willing every cell in his body to radiate confidence toward his baby girl. His hand found the Glock 17 at his belt and he brought it up in front of him, the familiar feel of the grip reassuring. He took a breath, steadied himself, and raised his eyes to the level of the windowsill. The muscles in his thighs steeled and he remained, unblinking, utterly still, staring out into the darkness.  After thirty or forty nerve-twanging seconds, Tanner drew breath and relaxed. His quads were burning, and they thanked him as he straightened. He could hear the specter of his ex-wife in his head, telling him to lose some weight, exercise more… Well she’d left, and that was 135 pounds gone right there. She’d probably say that was a good start.   An unbearably loud ringing pierced the silence and sent him diving to the floor, landing awkwardly on his gun and sounding a crash through the kitchen. A keening whine came from under the table, Katie shaken from her silence.  The doorbell.  Feeling foolish, Tanner twisted over his shoulder and hissed at his daughter to be quiet. Still prone, he crawled toward the hallway in the most reassuring manner he could manage and pointed his Glock at the front door.  Footsteps outside, then a shadow appeared at the window. Tanner’s heart pounded in his ears—more violent pulses of silence than sound—and his vision blurred as panic flooded his body. He’d heard the early reports of armed groups in the streets, some sort of fighting downtown, but he hadn’t really believed they would come here. His legs were weak, and he silently thanked God that he was already on the floor. The shape at the window didn’t move, frozen in the gloom, silhouetted by flickering light coming from the street. As Tanner’s head cleared he tried to take stock of what was happening.  The apparition was vaguely man-shaped but shorter and slighter, an ethereal grace evident even in its stillness. A voice called out, muffled through the door, the guttural singsong completely at odds with the sleek form at the window. Tanner couldn’t understand everything, but he thought he caught the words “little girl.” A second shape mounted the porch alongside the first, similarly short but squat and stocky, and grunted something to its companion in an alien tongue. Fluorescent light flooded the yard and the voices momentarily disappeared beneath the growl of an angry engine. Tanner’s breath caught. His trembling finger hovered over the trigger and he willed the barrel to still its swaying dance. Two shots exploded outside—loud shots, from a much bigger gun than his. The creatures spun to face this new threat, their chatter rising in pitch and speed. They sounded panicked.  “yalla! hawula' alnaas majnoon.” Tanner sensed his opportunity. He was forgotten. All those hours of training kicked in and muscle memory took over as he rose to one knee, took a two-handed grip, and unleashed a furious hail of fire at his front door.  “Keep your filthy hands off my daughter!” He fired until he felt the Glock stop kicking, the magazine spent. As the cacophony faded he realized he was screaming.  “Tanner! It’s me, Blake. Stop shooting goddammit, they’re gone.”  “Blake?” Tanner mechanically reloaded his gun. “Why…” His throat was raw, his voice barely audible even to him. He swallowed, fighting to control his breath, and cleared his throat. “What are you doing here?”  “Come to see if you were okay. Figured you and the kid might need a hand.”  A stocky, heavily muscled figure wearing fatigues and a plate carrier stepped up to the porch, visible through the splintered ruins that had been the front door. A halogen glow lanced through the holes, like the brilliant aura of some kind of avenging eagle.  “When this shit spread across the river from the city we locked down. It was touch-and-go for a while, but things quieted down eventually. When they did, I came straight over. Good thing I got here when I did. The quick little fuckers ran for it, but I think you hit one of ‘em.”  The figure stopped, pulled down the red, white and blue bandana covering its mouth, and spat. Tanner had never been more relieved to see his buddy’s foul-mouthed face. Or his M1A SOCOM 16 rifle.  “We’re alright.” Tanner’s voice was exhausted, his body shivering as the adrenaline fled. “Thank God I was prepared. Still, it’s good to see you.”  “Prepared, shit.” His buddy grinned. “I been telling you for years to get something heavy duty.” Blake kicked the splintered remains of the door and his grin faded. “You can’t stay here. Those things’ll be back. Grab your girl and jump in the truck. Let’s head to mine, she’ll be safe there.” The grin returned.“Prepared, shit.”  An hour later they were sitting in “the Hole,” as Blake affectionately called it. The Hole was both name and description, although it perhaps undersold the amount of effort that had gone into its construction. Attached to the garage by a short, downward-sloping corridor, The Hole was a full-blown bunker that spread underneath almost the entirety of Blake’s backyard. Tanner was sitting in the main chamber eating Top Ramen, chicken flavor.  They had made the half-mile journey in silence—lights down on the Tacoma, Tanner jumpy, Blake grim, Katie in a state of shock. The streets had looked completely foreign, the usual calming glow of LEDs replaced by the orange flicker of scattered flames. The familiar hum of traffic had been gone. Instead, gunfire had cracked in the distance.  Blake’s wife Lauren had buzzed them inside after Blake confirmed his identity via video feed—three times: at the gate, the door, and the entrance to the Hole. The security was impressive. Lauren had ushered them inside, AR-15 at the ready. “This is prepared,” Blake was saying, as Katie stared blankly at her untouched ramen. “Old owners, they had this backyard full of fruit trees, vegetables, fuckin’ kale and kohlrabi. What good is that gonna do, I said, you gonna hide in the pumpkin patch with a slingshot? Idiots.  “Anyhow me and Lauren, we wanted to be ready, so I been building this the last two years. Ain’t no one knows about it, not even the contractors…” Blake sliced a finger across his throat, then laughed, “I’m joking, but they were from one of them Mexican countries. Had no idea what they were building. Good workers, though, came here the right way. And I did the security all myself.”  Tanner laughed too, but at what he didn’t quite know. “You took this all real serious.”  “Yessir. You never really believed, but we did. Earl Swanson was right, this here’s been a long time coming. It’s just like he said, and we listened. And here we are, while you was laying on the floor waving round that little waterpistol of yours.”  Tanner had listened too, but apparently not well enough. There was only so much time he could watch an angry man on TV shouting about the state of the nation, no matter how prophetic he was turning out to be. Tanner tried to put up a strong front and flex his knowledge. He had listened, dammit.  “Is this it, then? The invasion? Earl said they’ve been preparing it for years, brainwashing people. Recruiting sympathizers and traitors…”  “It’s worse than that. The invasion started way back, we just didn’t notice. Well, most of us didn’t. Earl did. He tried to warn us, that the aliens’d started infiltrating, landing in remote parts of the country, blending in, looking just like us…” Blake spat. “Well, not quite like us. But close e-fucking-nough, hiding out and biding their time.” “And now it’s out in the open…” Tanner looked from his friend’s face to his daughter’s, scared and staring, and trailed off. He may have been listening, but he sure as hell didn’t understand.  “What’s happening?” Tanner asked. “We’ve been laying low at home, locked down and trying to wait out whatever this is. We haven’t heard a thing since the power cut out three days back.”  He could feel a surge of emotion building, pent-up adrenaline and stress and fear and loneliness rolling over him in a wave as they were released. His stoicism wobbled.  “We’re… Katie’s scared and confused, and tired and sick of hiding and we’re all alone! What is all this? What’s happening?” Tanner realized he was shouting and stopped, taking a deep breath and lowering his voice. “Blake, man, what the hell is going on?” Blake never flinched, just ran his tongue over his teeth in thought while he watched Tanner’s outburst through hooded eyes. “Naw, we don’t know nothing for sure. Swanson’s been off-air for two days, since just after shit started going down. Said he was right, that it sure as shit seemed like those aliens he’d been warning us about were making a move, and the whole fuckin’ lot of us did nothing. Well, seems like it blew up in our face. Last thing he said was he’s heading somewhere safe to keep broadcasting, and he’d let us know when he found out more,” Blake paused, sucked his teeth, “We’ve had the TV and radio on non-stop since then, since we fired the generator up. Nothing.”  Lauren lent forward. “There was something, couple days back…”  “Nothing useful,” Blake cut in. He spat. “Same old fuckin’ commie stations, same old crap. They took over the channels, emergency broadcasting. Said there was a ‘protest.’ Stay inside, all under control, daddy government’s here, blah blah,” he laughed “Hell of a protest. More like an insurrection. Doublespeak bullshit.”  “So what’s the plan? We hide out? Lay low? Wait for the military?”  “The troops ain’t coming, chief.” Blake grimaced, “Alien tentacles go deep. Probably strolling around in general’s stars by now, the politicians just handing over the keys. This President’ll have us kissing their feet before dinner.  “Nah, if we wanna fight back we can’t rely on that fuckin’ bunch of secretaries and scribes. We hole up here, wait for instructions.” He laughed again, “Huh, hole up in the Hole. That’s funny.”  That grin was starting to get on Tanner’s nerves. “Instructions from who? How long is that gonna take? Who’s gonna fight back against… this?” “I know some people, from back in the old days. Good people. There’s still patriots out there who won’t give up this country without a fight.”   Tanner still bristled with questions, but he was starting to feel relieved. There were people in charge, and they had a plan. That was something he could work with. “What if it takes weeks? Months? Do we have food for that long?” Blake settled further into his chair, grinned that cocky grin. “I do, don’t know about you.” Before the words were even out of his mouth he was already raising his palms, “Chill out, I’m joking. I’ll put it on your tab. You’re a lawyer, I know you’re good for it. Show him, babe.”  Lauren got up and went over to a large yellow flag hanging on the concrete wall, pulling it aside to reveal a long, narrow room that ended abruptly at a large steel door. She flicked on the light.  “Dry storage,” she said, gesturing at the shelves lining both walls. Packets of ramen, boxes of cereal, rows of whiskey, and gleaming stacks of cans stared down at Tanner. “And cold storage,” Lauren continued as she stepped over to the door, kicking aside two enormous tubs of supplements and pulling it open to reveal a walk-in freezer. Tanner followed her inside as she happily chatted away, showing everything off like a house-proud hen.  “We’ve got everything we need. Steaks, hotdogs, chili, hamburgers, mac and cheese, chicken parmesan, mashed potatoes--whatever you want. There’s a well, too, over the other side, we had that dug last summer. Tastes a bit funny, but it won’t hurt you.” Tanner was hardly listening. He had never seen anything like it, never imagined anything on this scale. Blake really had taken preparing for the end of the world seriously. The freezer room was filled, wall to wall, with a treasure trove of gourmet excess; thousands upon thousands of frozen TV dinners.  Tanner stared at his microwaved salmon filet, fries drooping from his fork. Out of habit he was eating in front of the TV with Katie, though the display hadn’t changed in… however many days it had been. Just the red, white and blue logo, a tile flipping between ads for pillows, brain pills, and frozen food, and the same scrolling red banner:  Breaking: The United States of America is under attack. Stand by for updates.  Katie was poking at her food silently, barely eating. Still no appetite. Tanner had told her they were safe, told her he wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her, told her a hundred times in different ways that she was his precious little girl and he would make sure she was okay. It had made no difference. She had just looked up at him with big, frightened eyes that pulled at Tanner’s heart. The only time she had spoken in the past 24 hours was to ask why he had tried to shoot people. Of course she didn’t understand. Maybe he should ask Lauren to talk to her.  The TV display glitched, blipped, flicked to static and then to black. Tanner shoveled the fries into his mouth and rubbed his eyes. He’d been staring at a blank TV for too long. He chewed and stretched, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to straighten out his aching back.  Earl Swanson was on TV. Tanner blinked a few times to make sure he was seeing straight. Swanson’s shirt was wrinkled, his hair a mess and his signature bowtie slightly crooked, but his face wore that familiar expression of righteously indignant bewilderment. It was him.  “Blake. Blake, get in here!”  Swanson was in what looked like a large living room rather than his usual studio. Bookshelves and a TV cabinet were visible behind him. There were shadows under his eyes and his wrinkles were clearly visible without his usual TV makeup, but his eyes were as sharp as ever. There was a strength to them, piercing the screen, full of faith and fire. It felt like he was in the room. He looked like he’d been in a fight, and won. He was back.  “Good evening America, and welcome to Earl Swanson Tonight.” “Blake!” Blake stuck his head through the door.  “What? I’m working out, give me a…. No shit.” Blake stepped into the room. He was topless, breathing heavily. His stomach was shiny with sweat, pooling and running down the chiseled channels between his well-defined muscles before disappearing behind the low-riding waistband of his camo pants. Tanner realized he was staring and felt his cheeks flush as he snapped his eyes back to his friend’s.  “Blake, it’s--” “Shut up, I’m trying to listen.” The rebuke slapped Tanner back to the present and back to the TV. He surreptitiously sat a little straighter and sucked in his gut, trying to ignore the heat rising in his face. “...cities up and down the west coast. From Seattle to San Diego, the alien invaders and the traitors from among our own citizens have taken control, sowing chaos and destruction. Order has broken down, and anarchy rules in the streets. Yet we hear nothing but silence from the White House. The elites in Washington won’t do anything about this -- they encouraged it. They caused it! “No, it is up to patriotic Americans to stop this existential threat. It is up to us, to you and me and the other patriots out there. If you value the American way of life, if you respect the principles that built the greatest nation ever imagined, if you care about your family and the future of your children, then the time has come to stand up. Your country needs you.  “I have been warning about this day on this very program for years. If you have been listening, you will be prepared for this betrayal. You know what to do. Find other true Americans who are ready to fight for our civilization and our culture. Defend our Western values against this attack by anarchists and aliens who wish to destroy us. They tried to take our guns from us, to disarm us, and failed -- now is the time to use them. Seek out the prepared, the militias, the heroes. Fight back. Show them that we will not allow it. “I will be moving to an undisclosed safe location so I can keep you informed. You know your job. I am doing my part, will you do yours?” Swanson sat erect and defiant, no less commanding for his disheveled appearance. His willpower flowed from the screen in waves, washing over the watchers. It was compelling. It was urgent. It was the only option.  The screen went black.  Swanson’s gaze bored into Tanner long after the TV went dark, burning with righteous fire, lip curling with fury. The heat in Tanner’s cheeks sharpened, focused, began to spread into his chest and throughout his body. There was only one thought in his mind. “We gotta go.” It took him a second to realize that Blake had spoken the words out loud.  “We do. But where? I don’t know anyone like that.” “You know me, and I know people. Don’t worry about that. We gotta go to Baker City. I talked to one of my buddies from the marines this morning, he’s headed to join one of the militias out east. They might not be big, but they’re hard. They’re something.” Tanner looked at Blake blankly, unable to quite comprehend what he was being told. Days of no news, no action, now everything all at once.  “But what’s in Baker City? Don’t you know anyone here? This is where we live, where we have the Hole, where we have a safe base.”  Blake was clearly agitated, shifting from foot to foot.  “It’s not safe. Weren’t you listening? It’s fallen. The military ain’t doing jack, like I fuckin’ told you they wouldn’t.” Blake stopped bouncing and steadied himself. “But my buddy said the boys in Baker held out. It was bloody, but they held strong. If we can get there in a hurry, we can join a caravan heading for Boise.”  “Baker… Boise? What the… Boise?! Surely it’s safer in Texas, or… or…”  “Texas? And how far away is that? Look, I don’t know nothing about nothing, but I know I ain’t looking for safer. All I know is I got buddies in Baker, and they say Boise, and they are the fuckin’ resistance. We got our orders, soldier. “The west had been invaded. Destroyed. Gone. You heard Swanson, same as me. Grids are down, water’s down, TV’s down--mostly, anyway. Sky’s half full of fire and smoke, gangs roaming the streets, traitors and aliens taking or breaking whatever they can get their thieving hands on.” Tears came to Blake’s eyes.  “It’s a fucking mess out there, buddy. Anarchy. They’ve burned the lot.” It was a lot to chew on. Tanner put a piece of salmon in his mouth.  “I’m not gonna let some filthy aliens take my home, fuck my wife, invade my country, and steal the god damn US of A! The fight is right there, and I’m gonna fight it. Are you?”  Tanner’s brain was spinning, but his blood was still hot from Swanson’s speech. Blake’s fire, delivered standing there half-naked like a Steven Seagal action figure, was rousing something inside him. His country needed him, and he felt the call in his bones. He put down his fork. He swallowed. He rose.  “Of course I’ll fight. I’ll put a bullet in every alien who steps foot on American soil. I’ll put every collaborator in the dirt.” He saw himself, next to Blake, riding shotgun as they made a fighting escape through the streets. He saw a heroic journey to Baker City, filled with danger and righteous violence. He saw a triumphant return, at the head of an army, cleansing his city with purifying flame. And he saw Katie, small and fragile and beautiful. Perfect, and terrified. The flame wavered.  “But I’m fighting for her,” Tanner gestured, “I got my little girl, and I’m not so red-hot on riding out guns blazing to meet these savages with her hanging off my arm. She’s the future of this country, and that’s a future we have to protect.”  To Tanner’s surprise, Blake took a half step back.  “Shit. I know, man. Katie and Lauren, the innocent and the pure. I’m thinking of them, too.” He dropped his shoulders, but held Tanner’s gaze. “But it’s not safe for them here neither. We’re on our own, and all hell has broken loose up top. We fight for them, and they are the reason we have to fight.” Tanner paused, then nodded. He reached out and placed his hand on his friend's shoulder, fingers gripping the sweaty skin.  “Let’s go pack the truck.”  As the sun set and twilight brought a low fog creeping across the city, they piled into the Tacoma with as many frozen dinners as they could carry.  Tanner rode in back. Lauren was up front, AR at the ready, while Blake drove, M1A by his side and his Glock taped to the dash. Katie was at Tanner’s side, curled up below the window and hidden from view, and Tanner watched over her with his own Glock and a borrowed Remington 870. They were all a little jumpy. He and Lauren had wanted to maintain a shoot-on-sight policy. Blake had been more cautious. According to Swanson, there would be plenty of people collaborating with the aliens. Lights out, engine low, and hopefully they could slip right on by.  No one knew what to expect—Tanner suspected they were all terrified. He certainly was. Even Blake had swapped out his flag bandana for a more understated camo print. He had stashed the red, white and blue fabric in the bed of the truck with the rest of their gear.     They pulled out into streets Tanner knew, but didn’t. He had driven them every day, on the way to work, to Katie’s school, to church, to the mall. The streets were as familiar as a cold Coke, yet now, in some important way, they were… different. As they left the Hole and drove through the suburb he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but once Blake reached the main street and turned past the bars and shops and take-out joints, it hit him.  The streets were dead. The cars were gone. The steady flow of traffic, of people living their lives, had stopped. The parking lot in front of the drug store was empty; so was the one behind the bar. The convenience store, normally ticking over with a steady stream of customers buying cigarettes and beer, was dark behind its windows. Unintelligible graffiti in some alien script covered the ads for energy drinks, an expression of mindless violence across someone’s hard work.  A light rain had started, misting around them and adding to the dreariness. A billboard loomed overhead, the lights that illuminated the Colgate-bright smiles of the models now permanently dark. Tanner was glad—the gloom obscured the flame-scarred destruction streaking the toothpaste company’s perfect white message. “Disgusting,” Blake spat. He looked like he wanted to say more but pulled up short, shocked at the sudden sound of his own voice. His eyes focused back on the road and he fell into uneasy silence. The truck continued its crawl down the deserted street, barely clocking 20 miles an hour. Even at that speed, the low growl of the engine seemed unbearably loud as it reverberated among the carcasses of commerce and ricocheted down abandoned side streets.  They kept driving, and nothing kept happening. It was torturous. Every minute of unbroken inactivity twisted the crank on the tension in the car, until the unceasing hum of the engine began to seep into Tanner’s brain. Every muscle in his arms and legs, primed and waiting and ready to spring, began to tremble, and his eyes focused and unfocused on nothing at all.  His frantic heartbeat messed with his breathing, a powerful panicked thud that matched the rumble of the pistons.  Overall, he was relieved when the road curved and they entered a strip of restaurants to see signs of life among the debris littered across the street in the distance.  It wasn’t immediately clear through the gloom what was happening. Blake slowed the truck, now rolling along at barely more than walking pace, and they crept closer. The scene was illuminated by the flickering light of small fires and backlit by a pair of enormous floodlights, creating a glowing aura in the surrounding mist. Images began to resolve, ghostly figures flitting in and out of view and the harsh geometric shapes—not of debris, but of hastily manufactured barricades—throwing long shadows that lanced through the air around them as they approached.  All eyes were fixed on the barricades as they pulled within shouting distance, and Tanner nearly pissed himself when someone knocked on his window. He yelped, Blake swore, and Lauren’s weapon x-rayed Tanner’s head and pointed at the intruder. Tanner followed her lead and jerked his gun up to aim in the general direction of the window and for ten, twenty heartbeats nothing moved. Then another knock, and Blake hissed at them: “Put those things away you idiots, we’re the good guys here. Whatever side that guy is on, so are we.”  Tanner slowly lowered the gun, then the window.  “Hey folks, no cars through here.” The man was clad head to toe in black—black jeans, black hoodie, black gloves, black bandana covering his face, black curly hair running with rainwater. No wonder they hadn’t seen him. The stranger spotted their guns.  “Oh, nothing like that,” he added, catching the nervous energy in the truck, “You’re a bit late to the party. No trouble ‘round here, this area’s been cleaned out for days.” He chuckled, sending a shiver through Tanner.  “Some folks messed up the cop shop a while back, it was a bit of a fight. Streets were all blocked up anyway, so we set up a little kitchen here. Been feeding some folks. Symbolic, like, new world in the ruin of the old and all that.” The smile fell from his face as he took in the scene in the truck.  “Everything alright? Is she okay?”  He gestured at Katie, curled up and quivering silently beside Tanner. Tanner opened his mouth to respond, but Blake was quicker. “Sure, probably just spooked by that fucking mask. Look, we don’t mean to bother you people. Just heading east, trying to cross the river. We’ll go around you and your little kitchen.”  If the man took issue with Blake’s tone, it didn’t show.  “Bridge is a no-go, I’m afraid. Pigs blew the cables as they pulled out, some of it collapsed. It’s way too unstable to cross.” He scratched at his temple. “What d’you want out that way, anyway? There’s dangerous people out there, not exactly safe for… families.”  “We’re heading for, uh, Hood River,” Tanner spoke up, “Taking supplies out to the girl’s grandparents.”  “Indians,” Blake chimed in, “they need the help.” He winked at Tanner.  The stranger turned to Blake and met his eyes, holding his gaze for an unnerving moment. Then he seemed to resolve some internal discussion, relaxing his shoulders. “Well, you might be able to get across up St. Johns, last I heard the bridge was still intact. There’s some folks in the park up there, you can ask them.”  “St. Johns? That’s the wrong fucking way!”  “A bridge is a bridge. It’s that or swim, champ.” “Can you at least call the, uh, your boss? Tell him you checked us out, ask if we can get across?”  The man smiled, but something hardened behind his eyes.  “My boss? Sure, sure. Look, I think it’s time you moved on. Head on up there and tell ‘em what you told me, they’ll let you out. There’s a bunch of poor Indians waiting for their dinner.”  There was something strange about the way the man said “Indians,” but he patted the hood of the truck and turned away, waving them down a side street away from the barricade. As Blake slowly drove off, Tanner collapsed back into his seat and quickly rolled up the window. His underarms were cold with sweat, and he relaxed muscles he hadn’t known were clenched.  Blake took the turn the stranger indicated, muttering that if he heard anyone say “folks” again he would hit them. Tanner stared out the window at the “little kitchen” as they passed. There must have been a couple hundred people, milling around a dozen or so small fires. They were all loosely centered around a large tent directly in front of the scorched skeleton of the precinct. Laughter and music drifted through the open window, and Tanner closed it. He didn’t think he could see any aliens, but it was difficult to tell in the dark.  “Collaborators. Must be a ration station or something,” he muttered, mostly to himself.  Lauren heard him. “No, this has been going on much longer than that, it just wasn’t so out in the open. Swanson warned us about it. He said they lure hungry people in with food.”  “Yeah,” cut in Blake, “this is how they recruit ‘em. Set up a kitchen, give ‘em food, homeless and crackheads and queers, mostly. Drugs too, probably, and spewing their propaganda. That guy was probably one of the junkies. Sure as shit looked like it, you see the way he stared at me?”  Tanner shuddered. A junkie. He had an overwhelming urge to wash his hands. He remembered the way the man had talked about the police station, his manic laugh in the face of such violence, and glanced back at the quickly fading light. And saw a small figure, tottering at the edge of the firelight. A child.  “Disgusting,” he said out loud.  “Yeah, disgusting. It’s like Earl said,” Blake continued, “they been feeding people right under our fucking noses.”  They drove on toward the bridge. The streets were more cluttered here, both with people and the remnants of the riots, and they could only manage a slow pace as they picked their way through the destruction. Blake had to swerve to the wrong side of the road to avoid a group of people carrying trash bags, picking through the rubble.  “Looking for something to eat,” he grunted, and locked the doors.  Signs of violence were everywhere. Tanner’s chest tightened as they drove past the law firm where he had started his career—the job that had brought him to the city after he finished college, working for his father’s best friend and learning his profession. Inside the shattered windows it was nothing but a shell, the desks overturned and the computers gone. No one would be working there any more.  The destruction was completely random. Violence for its own sake. Beside the firm was a pawn shop, covered in graffiti and looted. Next to that, a Vietnamese restaurant, completely unharmed except for ‘Delicious, 5 stars’ sprayed on the pavement outside. Across the road was an untouched convenience store and a bookshop with its doors wide open, light flooding out and people crowding the entrance. A donut shop and an Apple store destroyed, a mechanic and a bar looking like they had simply closed for the night. There was absolutely no pattern or reason to it.  They saw a Fred Meyers with every window broken, the front door jammed open with a twisted shopping cart. A movement caught Tanner’s eye and he saw someone leaving from a side door, carrying a huge bag of stolen food. He hoped Blake didn’t see—he might do something stupid, and Tanner didn’t want to stop. It wasn’t safe.  They made it a few more blocks when Lauren gasped and grabbed Blake’s arm, making him brake. She gestured across the intersection to a KFC. Half the building had collapsed in what must have been an enormous fire; the half that still stood had been savagely attacked. She pointed to the entrance with a shaking finger. Someone—or something—had toppled the giant bucket sign and sent it crashing through the ceiling of the kitchen. Above the door, someone had scrawled a message in red spray paint:  FUCK YOU SANDERS OUR SECRET SPICES NOW There were more barricades set up near the bridge. Where the others had been makeshift, marking a boundary, these were more serious. They were to stop people getting through. Blake slowed before they got too close to the blockade, which they could now see was lined by shapes that very much suggested people. On both sides of the road the land fell away into darkness, sloping down to become a park that ran beneath the bridge.  The park itself, a rare green space normally dotted with dog walkers and children, was transformed. The once-quiet lawns were a mass of tents and makeshift structures, stages and bars and sound systems, the proud trees now decked out with effigies and lights. Fires burned everywhere, and the distant space was carpeted with a swarming mass of humanity, undulating to a throbbing cacophony of noise.  “This doesn’t look good,” said Blake. He pulled over, a hundred yards or so short of the bridge.  “That guy said they would let us through,” said Tanner, “if we stick to our story.”  “He was a junkie,” scoffed Lauren.  “But he thought we were working with them,” said Tanner, “he had no reason to lie to us.”  “I guess it’s worth a try. Anyway, they ain’t gonna try anything against this much firepower.” Blake grunted. “Too late to change our minds now. They’ve seen us.”  He nodded at the barricade, where two shapes had detached from the mass. They moved toward the Tacoma, and Blake responded by flicking the lights to high beam and heading to meet them. As Blake swung back out into the road the beams cut through the darkness to illuminate the figures, throwing wild shadows from the two shapes until the truck steadied course and they coalesced into recognisable forms. One was a large man, white, with a nose ring and a loosely-tied blond ponytail. He was wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a large rifle. The other—Tanner’s throat caught—the other looked like one of the aliens.  “Shit,” said Blake, as the headlights picked out at least half a dozen more shapes along the barricade, several with big guns visible. “Fuck.” He stopped the truck and rolled down the window, then cursed again and threw open the door.  “I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna sit here and be pulled over like some criminal. Tanner, you’re with me—let’s go meet them man to man.” Tanner scrabbled for the door handle and chased after Blake, half-skipping to catch up. They pulled up a few paces before colliding with the approaching party. The blond man stepped forward.  “How’s it going, dude?” he said.  “We need to get to Hood River,” said Blake, “we’re trying—” “Yeah, we heard.” The man cut him off. “Bridge is closed to traffic, unfortunately. You wanna cross, you’ll have to walk.”  Blake bristled. “Are you joking? We need to bring all this stuff. It’s… important,” he objected. “You can’t just keep people here!”  “We could,” said the blond man, calmly. He sounded confident in his assertion. Looking at the line of men—and women, Tanner realized—standing along the barricade, he agreed.  “But we’re not,” the man continued. “You can go wherever you want. Take your shit, cross the bridge. Some folks have organized buses up the river, they’ll take you. But the truck stays.”  “But that’s my fucking truck!” Blake squealed. The man’s
S1E101 - Leah on Disability and Preparedness
22-12-2023
S1E101 - Leah on Disability and Preparedness
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Leah talk about disability, preparedness, finding community, and covid. Guest Info Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (They/She) is a writer and structural engineer of disability and transformative justice work. Leah can be found at brownstargirl.org, on Instagram @leahlakshmiwrites, or on Bluesky @thellpsx.bsky.social Their book The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs can be found: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-future-is-disabled-prophecies-love-notes-and-mourning-songs-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/18247280 Their book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice can be found: https://bookshop.org/p/books/care-work-dreaming-disability-justice-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/16603798 Host Info Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Leah on Disability and Preparedness Resources Mentioned: StaceyTaughtUs Syllabus, by Alice Wong and Leah: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2020/05/23/staceytaughtus-syllabus-work-by-stacey-milbern-park/ NoBody Is Disposable Coalition: https://nobodyisdisposable.org/ Power To Live Coalition: https://www.powertolivecoalition.org/ Disability Visibility Project article about Power to Live : https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2019/10/26/call-for-stories-powertolive/ Power to Live survival skillshare doc: http://tinyurl.com/dissurvival Long winter crip survival guide for pandemic year 4/forever by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Tina “constant tt” Zavitsanos https://www.tinyurl.com/longwintersurvival Pod Mapping for Mutual Aid by Rebel Sydney Rose Fayola Black: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-QfMn1DE6ymhKZMpXN1LQvD6Sy_HSnnCK6gTO7ZLFrE/mobilebasic?fbclid=IwAR0ehOJdo-vYmJUrXsKCpQlCODEdQelzL9AE5UDXQ1bMgnHh2oAnqFs2B3k Half Assed Disabled Prepper Tips for Preparing for a Coronavirus Quarantine. (By Leah) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rIdpKgXeBHbmM3KpB5NfjEBue8YN1MbXhQ7zTOLmSyo/edit Sins Invalid Disability Justice is Climate Justice: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/news-1/2022/7/7/disability-justice-is-climate-justice Skin Tooth and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People (A disability justice primer): https://www.sinsinvalid.org/disability-justice-primer DJ Curriculum by Sins: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/curriculum Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies: https://disasterstrategies.org/ Live Like the World is Dying: Leah on Disability & Preparedness **Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And I always tell you that I'm excited about episodes, but I'm really excited about this episode. It put me in a better mood than when I started the day that I get to record this episode. Because today, we're going to be talking about disability and preparedness. We're gonna be talking about Covid abandonment. And we're gonna be talking about a lot of the questions that... a lot of the questions that people write us to talk about that they have about preparedness and I think that we can cover a lot of those. Not me, but our guest. But first before the guest, a jingle from another show on the network. Oh, the network is called Channel Zero Network. It is a network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle. [sings a simple melody] **Margaret ** 01:08 Okay, and we're back. So, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess just a little bit about how you got involved in thinking about and dealing with disability and preparedness. **Leah ** 02:00 Sure. Hi, my name is Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. She and They pronouns. Right now I live in Pocomtuc and Nipmuc territories in Western Massachusetts. And that is a great question. I will also just plug myself briefly and be like I'm a disability justice and transformative justice old sea-hag, aging punk of color who has written or co-edited ten books and done a lot of shit. Okay, so when I was sitting on the toilet thinking about "What do I want to tell Margaret when we get on the show?", I was actually thinking that my disability and my preparedness routes are kind of one in the same because... So I'm 48 [years old] now and I got sick when I was 21-22. So like back in 96-97. And, it was the initial episode that I got sick with chronic fatigue, ME, and fibromyalgia. And I was just super fucking ill and on the floor and was living in Toronto as somebody who was not from Canada. And, you know, I was just sick as hell, like crawling to the bathroom, like sleeping 18 hours a day. The whole nine. And I'd been really really deeply involved in anarchist of color and prison abolitionist and antifascist organizing and lots of stuff. I had a community, but it was 1997, so most of my community was just like, "What you're sick? Why didn't you make it to the meeting? We have to write all the prisoners with the [untranslatable]." And I was just like, "I just.... Okay, great." Like it was a really different time. There was no GoFundMe, mutual aid, Meal Train, someone brought me some soup. Like, know you, we weren't really doing that. And people really did not have a consciousness around, "You can be a 22 year old brown, nonbinary femme and be really, really sick and be disabled." So something I think a lot, and I've said before, is that disabled people are really used to the concept that no one is going to save us and we are really not surprised when state systems abandoned us because we live in that all the time. And so I was just like this little 22 year old sicko weirdo who'd read my Octavia Butler--and, in fact, that was part of the reason why I was like, "Toronto, great, there's gonna be more water and less heat." Okay, wasn't totally right about that. But, you know, I mean, I really had to save myself and I kind of was like, "Alright, I don't have..." Like, I'm working off the...I'm working under the table. I have hardly any money. I'm gonna make my own herbal medicine. I'm gonna grow a lot of what I eat from my backyard. I'm going to store water. I'm going to run a credit card scam and get a lot of dried goods and live off of those for like a year. [Margaret Hell Yeahs] Yeah, stuff like that. I feel like from there, over the last, you know, 26 years like it's....like, that's the route. The route was, you know, similar to a lot of people, I think of my generation, we were like on the cusp of looking at the current crises of like hot fascist war, hot eugenics war, hot climate crisis, and being like, "It's coming," and I started being like, "Yeah, like don't...don't think that it's all going to work out okay and that somebody else is going to fix it for you." So, I would say that's where my initial route--and then do you want to jump in? Or can I jump ahead like 20 years or something? **Margaret ** 05:10 Honestly, you could jump ahead 20 years later. I'm gonna come back and make you talk more about Octavia Butler. But we'll do that later. **Leah ** 05:16 Let's talk more about Octavia Butler because I have a lot of stuff about Octavia Butler and how she thought of--and I think sometimes misused--like nowadays [this is probably not the word but it's untranslatable] and also about disability. [Margaret "Oooohs" curiously] I know. We can get to that. Okay, so that's one route. And then, you know, I mean, I was always kind of like a little weirdo, where it's like, yeah, I grow most of my own food--or as much as I can--and it's not a fun green hobby. It's like, I'm broke as fuck and I need to grow a lot vegetables that fucking, you know, I can mulch and that can stay growing into December, you know? I stashed stuff. Something I also think a lot, is that as disabled people--and we talked about this a little bit when we're emailing--I think we're always prepping whether we call it that or not. Like most disabled folks I know just do shit. Like if you get a prescription and you have extra, you store it, you know? Like, if you can get a double dose, you put that aside. And then maybe you have it for yourself. Or, there's so many disabled mutual aid networks I've been a part of where someone's--I mean, before Facebook clamped down, this is really common on a lot of Facebook disabled groups--someone would be like, "Yo, does anyone have an extra five pills of such and such?" and I've seen total strangers for 15 years of disability justice be like, "Yep, what's your address? I do. I'm gonna mail it to you. I have my old pain meds. I've got this. I've got that." But, um, yeah, like doing the jumping forward that I promised you, so for people who don't know, disability justice as a movement was founded around 2005 by a group, a small group of disabled Black, Asian, and poor and working class, white disabled folks, who were all pretty, you know, gay, trans, and radical. And they were like, "We want to bring a revolutionary intersectional out of our own lives and experiences and issues. We want to create a disability movement that's for us and by us that's not just white, single issue, often cis, often male, often straight." Like, we want to talk about the fact that 50% of bipoc folks who were killed by the cops are also disabled, deaf, neurodivergent, etc... just to give one example. So, you know, that was '05 in Oakland, you know, Patti Burn, LeRoy Moore, Stacy Milbern, Ely Claire, Sebastian Margaret, Stacey Milbern Park, you know, the six. And I was living in Toronto and I moved to Oakland in '07 and I was kind of around for some of the beginnings of it. There's two stories I want to bring in. One actually predates my move. It was right when I was getting ready to leave Toronto, I got invited to go to this reading by a bunch of queer--I think all white--disabled radical folks. And I was just like, "Oh?" And I did the whole, like, "Am I really disabled enough?" and then it was like, "Oh, it's gonna be really depressing." And then it was really awesome. And I was like, "Whoa, disability community. Life saving." But it was kind of one of my moments of being brought into the disability community because there was this writer who was there who, their reading series was actually a choose your own adventure where there's four disabled, queer, and trans folks who are having a sex party and the zombie apocalypse happens. And then they have to figure out how to survive it without abandoning each other. And it was all like, "Okay, you all get to the van, but then there's no ramp. What do you do? Oh! You get this accessible ramp, but it smells like perfume and somebody has NCS. What do you do? And I was just sitting there with my mouth open--and it was also interwoven with like, 'Yeah, and then somebody's fucking somebody else with like, you know, a dildo strapped to their prosthetic,'" and I was like, wow, I fucking love disability. Like, sign me up. But I gotta say briefly, that was one of my first examples of like, you know, there's a really important phrase in Disability Justice, which is, "No one left behind, " right? Like, that's one of the core organizing principles. And that was kind of.... Before I even heard that phrase, I was like, "Fuck like this is..."--because I'd been around antiauthoritarian, quasi prepper, like "shit's gonna happen, we have to get ready." But I was always kind of quiet in the corner closeting my disability being like, "Well, shit, like, what if I don't have my meds? Or what if I'm too.... What if I can't run away from, you know, the Nazis or the zombies because I have a limp and I walk with a cane? Like, what if?" And that was my first example of this cross disability fantasy space of like, "We're going to escape together and we're not going to let anyone get eaten and it's going to mean really being creative about access stuff." Okay so jump ahead to, right, then I moved to Oakland and then I ran into actual Disability Justice community through Sins Invalid, which is an incredibly important foundational Disability Justice group, and through a lot of friendships I started making with other QTBIPOC disabled folks and my really, really good friend Stacy Park Milbern, who, people should totally know her work. She's incredible. She was one of the best movement organizers that the movement has ever seen. And we met online. And she was living in Fort Bragg, North Carolina with her family on the base because her family's military. And she was a queer southern, working-class, Korean and white, you know, physically disabled organizer from when she was really young. And then she was like, "Okay, I love my family, but I'm literally hiding my gay books in the wall because my mom's Pentecostal." So, yeah, and she's like--I literally realized she tells the story a lot--she's like, "Yeah, like, I realized I hadn't really left the house for a couple months and like, this is gonna be it," and she's like, "I was literally watching Oprah. And Oprah said, 'No one's coming to save you.'" And she was like, okay. She's 21 years old. And then through online, disabled, queer of color community there was this--or she organized--this initiative called To the Other Side of Dreaming where she moved crosscountry with Mia Mingus, who's another queer Korean organizer who was a friend of hers, ad moved to the Bay Area. And so that was around 2010-2011. And then in 2011, what happens but the Fukushima nuclear accident, right, disaster? And we're all on the West Coast--and it's completely ridiculous bullshit, looking back on it now--but all of these Bay Area folks were like, "Oh my God! Radiation!" And some people pointed out, "Look, you know, we're not.... There's...it's a big ocean. The people who really have to worry are in Japan and areas around it, so whatever?" But it was one of those times where we were like, fuck, this is a really big nuclear accident and we are sort of close and it's making us think about disaster. And I remember just going to fucking Berkeley Bowl, which is this big, fancy, organic supermarket and people had bought out all of the burdock all the fucking seaweed. And I was like, "Oh, my God, these people." But out of that, Stacy started having conver--and I and other people who were in our organizing network of disabled, majority BIPOC--were like, "What are we going to as disabled BIPOC if there is an earthquake, fascism, like another big disaster? And Stacy said, really bluntly, she's like, "You know," and she was a power wheelchair user. She used a ventilator. You know, she's like, "Yeah, I am supported by electricity and battery dependent access equipment." And she's like, "Well, I'm going to be really honest, my plan has always been, if something happens, I'm just going to lay down in my bed and die, because I don't think that any emergency services are going to come save me and the power is going to run out in 48 hours. And then we were like, "Okay, that's super real. What if, through our amazing collective access stuff we're doing, we could figure out something else?" And we had this meeting at Arismendy bakery, which for folks who know, is like a worker owned co-op chain, Our friend Remedios worked there. It's wheelchair accessible. We met there after hours. And it was just like, 12-15 of us who started just sitting there and being like, "What are the resources we have? What are the needs we have? And we made this map, which I still have, which I think I shared with you, which is just like, "Apocalypse, South Berkeley/Oakland Map 2011," where we were like, "Okay, you know, when the power goes down, the communication goes down. We're gonna meet at this one traffic circle because people who are wheelchair users can roll up. And we're gonna bury note paper in a mason jar with pens and we're gonna leave notes for each other. But we're also going to agree to meet there the day after at noon." And I was like, okay, my collective house, the first floor is wheelchair accessible. We have solar, we have a landline. And we have a lot of space. So like, let's meet there. And then someone was like, "We've got the one accessible van. And we know, it's only supposed to fit 4 people, but we can fit like 12 in there." And we started.... Like, I just think about that a lot because it's, I think it was a really important moment where it was important...the stuff that we did like that--you know, the actual strategies and the resources we started talking about--but it was also that it was the first time in my life that I was like, "Okay, we're not--not only are we not going to just die alone in our beds, I'm also not going to be the one person who survives. Like, I can actually survive with, and because of, other people. And we're all disabled BIPOC with a couple of disabled white folks. And we can actually collectively strategize around that. And this will be my last leap forward, because I see that you're like, "I want to ask you stuff." So, you know, eight years go by, and in that time we all do an incredible amount of Disability Justice organizing and strategizing. And, you know, in 2019.... And a lot of it started to be around climate disaster on the West Coast. Like, I moved to Seattle in 2015. The wildfires started being really bad a year or two later. A lot of us were involved in mask distributions, just spreading information about smoke safety and survival. And then 2019 was the infamous year where the wildfires came back and Pacific Gas and Electric, in all of its fucking glory, which is the main--for people who don't know--it's the main utility electrical company in Northern California. They announced two days before wildfires were going to really impact the Bay, they were like, "Oh, so we've decided that our strategy is going to be that we're just going to shut down all the power in Northern California. **Margaret ** 14:52 No one uses that. [Sardonically] **Leah ** 14:53 No one uses that. And they're like, "Oh, if you have a medical need, call this number, and we'll make sure to leave it on at your house." and Stacey was, "Okay." She had just bought her house, the Disability Justice Culture Club in East Oakland, you know, which was her house but also a community center, de facto community center, that housed a lot of disabled folks of color. And she was like, "I was on the fucking phone for eight hours. Like, I never got through." And she and some comrades started this campaign called Power to Live where they were like.... It started out as, "Okay, we can't save everybody, but we're not going to just lay down and die. What do we do?" So it started out as like, okay, let's identify who has housing that still has power. There's some people in Richmond, there's some people in this neighborhood, but then it also developed into this thing where it was just this amazing crowdsource survivalist resource where it was everything from, she's like, "Here's a number. Here's an email. If you need something, text us, call us, email us. We have a team of eight people. We'll figure it out. If you have something to offer, do it too." And then some of it was that people were sharing everything from generator information, to generator shares, to people in different areas-- like I was in Seattle and we were like, "Okay, we will mail you generators and air purifiers, because it's obviously all sold out in the Bay, but we can get it here and get it to you." The thing that always stands out to me is people being like, "Oh, yeah, here's how you can use dry ice and clay pots to keep your insulin cold if refrigeration goes down." And there's a lot more I could say about that action and how amazing it was. But for me, when I think about the through line, I'm like, that moment in 2011, when we all got together, and were like, "What do we do?" we were prepping for what we couldn't fully predict, you know, the exact manifestation of eight years later. We're there and we're like, "Okay, there's wildfires, there's smoke, there's no fucking power, and we've not only built our organizing base, we built our relationships with each other so that we can actually trust each other and more or less know how to work together when this shit actually is hitting the fan to create something that's really life giving. Okay, I'll shut up. That was a lot. **Margaret ** 16:52 Now I have so many questions about all of it. **Leah ** 16:53 Yeah, ask me all the questions. **Margaret ** 16:55 Because there's a couple...there's a couple of questions and/or feedback that we get with Live Like, the World is Dying a lot. And some of them are very specifically disability related, and you covered most of them, but I want to highlight some of them. Like a lot of people write and are like, "Well, I rely on the following thing that is provided by civilization. So my plan is to lay down and die." Right? This is a--and I know you've kind of answered it--but I.... I want to ask more. Okay, I'll go through all the things. Okay. So to talk more about what "No One Left Behind," means? And then the other thing that really stands out to me is that, you know, when we were talking, when we were talking about what we were going to talk about on this on this episode, I was saying, okay, we can talk about, you know, making sure that preparedness is inclusive and open and includes disabled folks, or whatever, and you pointed out, really usefully, the, the necessity to reframe it. And I think that the story you just gave is a really beautiful example of this, where it's less about, like, "Hey, make sure to pay attention to the people who need canes," you know, or whatever, right? Like, you know, "make sure you keep track of folks based on disability." And more than like the thing you just described, is the thing that we're always trying to push, which is that you need to make a list of all the resources and needs within your community and then figure out how to meet those needs and instead of assuming that we can't meet those needs, figuring out how to actually do it. And so I love that it's actually like.... It's actually disability justice movements that we should be learning from, I mean, or participating in, depending on our level of ability, or whatever, but I just find that I find both of those things really interesting. And so I wonder if you have more that you want to say about alternatives to laying down and dying, and specifically, to tie into the other thing that I get asked the most or that I get the common feedback is--because we talk a lot about the importance of community for preparedness on this show--a lot of people don't feel like they have community and a lot of people write to be like, "I don't have any friends," or "I don't know any other people like me," or, you know. And so, I guess that's my main question is how do.... [Trails off] Yeah, how do? **Leah ** 19:22 So how do you make community when you don't have community? Alternatives to lying down and dying? And was there a third one in there? **Margaret ** 19:28 I was just highlighting how cool it is that y'all sat there and made a list of resources and needs, which is exactly what.... Instead of deciding things are impossible, just being like, "Well, let's just start doing them." You know? **Leah ** 19:40 And I think.... Okay, so I'll start there. Like I think that like.... You know, Corbit O'Toole, who's like a, you know, Disability Rights Movement veteran and like older Irish, disabled dyke, you know, in Crip Camp, the movie, she's like, "Disabled people live all the time with the knowledge that the society wants thinks we're better off dead," right? Like one...back in the day, you know, there's a--I think they're still active--one of the big Disability Rights direct action organizations was called Not Dead Yet, right? [Margaret Hell Yeahs] I think this is the thing is like I think that sometimes abled people or neurotypical people are not used to sitting down and making the list. And I think that even if disabled people aren't preppers, we're used to being like, "Okay, what do I need? Fuck, I need somebody to help me do my dishes. Oh, I can't bend over. I need to figure out what is the access tool that will allow me to pick up something from the floor when my that goes out? Like, if my attendant doesn't show up, can I have a..." You know, like, my friends always like, "Yeah, I've got a yogurt container by the bed in case my attendant doesn't show up so I can not piss the bed. I can lean over and piss in the yogurt container." Like there's a--and I think that.... God, I mean, there's been so many times over the years where I've done or been a part of doing like Disability Justice 101 and me and Stacy would always talk about crip wisdom and crip innovation and people will just look blank like "What are you talking about? You guys are just a bunch of sad orphans at the telethon." It's not just about making the list, it's also about how disabled disability forces you to be innovative. Like, Stacy would always share this story where she's like, "Yeah," like, she's like "Crip innovation is everything from," she's like, "I save a lot of time sometimes by pretending I can't talk when people come over and want to pray over me. You know, I just act like a mute and they fucking leave and they go on with their life," and she's like, "You know, I realized one day, if I took my sneakers off, I could ramp a step if it's just two steps. I could just put them there and I could roll up." Or I mean, there's a million examples.... Or like, because I think it's about prepping and about making the lists and it's also about whatever you prep for, there's always going to be the X Factor of "Oh, we didn't fucking expect that." And I think that's where a lot of prep falls apart is people have their "Dream Bunker." They're like, "Oh, okay, I know exactly what the threats are going to be." And then of course, it doesn't fucking happen that way. I really hope I can swear on your show. **Margaret ** 21:46 You can. Don't worry. **Leah ** 21:47 Great. So, I mean, one example I could give is I'm remembering at, you know, a Sins show when we were in rehearsal, where everyone drove over from Oakland in Patty's wheelchair accessible van, and then the ramp broken wouldn't unfold. So we just were like, alright, who do we know who has welding equipment? Who do we know has lumber? Like, I think we ended up going to a bike repair shop and then they had tools. And then we're like, okay, we'll just bring the rehearsal into the van and do it that way. Like, you have to be innovative. And that's a muscle that I think society doesn't teach you to flex and that often, I think that even people who.... I think there can be a lot of eugenics in prep, you know, whether people are overtly fascist or not, there's a real belief of like, "Oh, only the strong and smart," --which looks a certain way-- "survive," and that "We should use rational thinking to make it all work out." And I think a lot of crip intelligence or wisdom is actually knowing that shit can go sideways 48 different ways and you have to adapt. And you have to just kind of be like, "Well, let's try this." So I think that's one thing. And I think, you know, one thing I'll say is, yeah, just speaking to kind of the reframing we were talking about, I think it's less like, "Oh, remember the people with canes," but, I mean, that's good, but also knowing that we're already doing it and that abled people actually have a shit ton to learn from us. But also, I mean, something.... I mean, the title of my last book is "The Future is Disabled," and it comes from something--it's not unique thinking to me--it's something that a lot of disabled people have been thinking and saying throughout the pandemic is that we were already at like a 30% disabled world minimum and we're pretty close--we're probably at majority disabled right now. Because what, 2% of the world didn't get Covid? Like, how many people have Long Covid? How many people have complex PTSD? We're all sick, crazy, and, you know, needing access equipment. Disability is not out there. It's in here. Like there's no such thing as doing prep that's like, "Oh, only the three Uber Mensch are gonna survive." Like fuck that. And that actually--I mean, sorry, this might be a side note, but a lot of people have probably seen The Last of Us. And I'm just gonna SPOILER ALERT it. You know that famous episode three of those two gay bear preppers in love? Yeah, I loved a lot about it. I was so pissed at the ending, which I'm just going to spoil. So you know, the more artsy, non-prep guy....[interrupted] **Margaret ** 21:47 Yeah, they don't survive. **Leah ** 22:47 Well, no, but like, not only did they not survive but one of them gets chronically ill. And I was just like, grinding my teeth because it's like, "Oh, he's in a wheelchair. Oh, his hand tremors." And then they end up deciding to both kill themselves rather than do anything else. And I was so furious at it because I was like, these are two people who are so innovative. They have figured out all kinds of problem solving. They have an entire small city for themselves. And it's all like, "Oh, no, he can't get up the stairs." And I'm like, really? There was no accessible ranch house you couldn't of fucking moved to? **Margaret ** 24:38 Or like build a bedroom on the fucking ground floor. **Leah ** 24:40 Or youcouldn't get meds? You couldn't? I mean, when his hand was shaking, it was like, "Oh, it's so sad. He's being fed." I'm like, there's tons.... First of all, it doesn't suck to be fed. A lot of things that seem like a fate worse than death are not when you're in them. And also, there's like all kinds of adaptive utensils that they could have fucking raided from medical supply if he wants to feed himself. Or I'm sorry, there's no cans of Ensure? They absolutely have power. They couldn't have made smoothies? Like, what the fuck is this? But beyond that--and I think that a lot of people who have talked about that episode did, I think, have some good analysis of it where, you know, the whole way they set up their prep was they were like, "Oh, it's just the two of us," and the one super prepper guy was like, "I don't even want friends to come over." And the other guy was like, "Hey, actually, we need to make alliances because there's things they have that we don't. And we also need more than just the two of us because I love you, but I'm gonna kill you." And I think that's something to think about is really moving away from the idea that just your little you know, the utopic queer rural community that so many fucking city queers fantasize about or, you know, lover are going to be enough, because it's not. So that actually leads me to, "I don't have community. Where the fuck do I get it?" And I'm like, yeah, that's super real. Right? And I think it's something I actually wrote about in "The Future is Disabled" is that I have people be like--when I write about different crip communities, just even when I talk about stuff on Facebook.... Like my friend, Graham Bach, it's going to be his second year death anniversary in like two weeks, and he was like, you know, white, psychiatric survivor, super poor, amazing sweetheart of a human being, he died.... I mean, he died in his, you know, rent to your income apartment because he was really afraid to go to the hospital and he had cardiac stuff going on. And he was an anarchist, he was amazing, kind, complicated human being. And, I was writing about, like.... I'm going to tell the story and there's a couple things I want to pull out of it. So I was writing about meeting Graham when I was in my early 20s through radical Mad people community, and somebody was reading it and was like "That sounds so great." And I was like, "Yeah, it wasn't utopic. Like, I had to yell back at Graham because he would scream at me and I'd be like, "Shut the fuck up!" Like, there was so many fights. There was so much racism. There were so many older white cis dudes who had electroshock who were jerky or gross, you know? And I guess that was the thing is, I was like, they're like, "Well, how did you find each other?" And I was like, it wasn't perfect. Also, it was very analog working class. Like my friend Lilith Finkler, who is an amazing Moroccan, Jewish, working-class queer femme psych survivor, she would just go to the donut shop where everybody poor hung out and would talk to everybody who wass there who wass crazy who no one wanted to talk to and be like, "Hey, do you want to come hang out at this meeting at the fucking legal clinic? We have a room. We have a snack plate. I'll give you tokens. Let's organize." So I think that's the first thing is that it's not--and I don't mean this in a finger-wagging way--it's not automatic. And also, one of the really big ways that community is often ableist, and that a lot of us get cut out from it, is that a lot of us who need it the most are not particularly easy to love in ableist neurotypical worldview. It's like we're cranky, we're wounded, we're in a bad mood, we're weird. So a lot of the time, I think it's thinking about, first of all, what's one step, one move you can take towards it. Like, can you make one fucking acquaintance and build it. And really think about what it would mean to build some kind of relationship. I think the other thing that I really want to highlight is that a lot of the communities that I see that keep each other alive, that I'm lucky to have been a part of making and being supported by in disabled community, they're not static and they're not perfect. Like, I have networks with people who piss me the fuck off and who, you know, I've sent 20 bucks to people who I'm just like, "I really don't like you, but I can see that you really don't have food," you know, and we're not going to be friends and we're not going to like each other, but I don't want you to die. And that's not...I mean, it's bigger.... There's also people who I'm like, "Okay, you're my ex-abuser. I'm not gonna give you $5. Someone else can give you $5. **Margaret ** 28:42 There's this person who puts a lot of their effort into talking shit on me on the internet and I...they're also broke and have a lot of chronic health issues and I send them money every month. And every now and then I'm like, could this like...could you stop talking shit now? **Leah ** 29:03 I think this is the thing sometimes is like, hey, how about this is the deal, like maybe just say "Thank you," or maybe just talk shit even like 20% less? Because you know, I'm really doing we keep us safe here. I just really want a "thank you." **Margaret ** 29:16 I don't want you to die. Like, I don't want you to starve to death, but I really wish you would be a little bit more open minded to people having different opinions on yours. **Leah ** 29:26 Oh yeah, nuance, right? Yeah, it'd be fucking nice. **Margaret ** 29:29 God forbid. Anyway. **Leah ** 29:31 No, it's good. I guess my TLDR would be to start where you are and start with "what's one thing you can do? What's one person you can reach out to?" And I think, you know, I don't know if this is true for everyone who reaches out to you and it's like, "Well, I don't have anybody," but I think that social media and online connectivity is a real double-edged sword because for some of us who are isolated, it can create both online communities that can sometimes become in-real-life community and, either way, can be sources of some community or support. But I think.... I mean, you know, I'm a Generation X'er and I've just seen social media get more and more chokehold and just turn into fucking the panopticon meets a mall, you know? [Margaret laughs] And I think it's hard because 12 years ago I was part of really early online disabled spaces, which were great because so many people were like, "Well, I'm so isolated in my small town or in my city," or "I can't leave bed, but this is great. I'm meeting with other people and we're building these connections and it's actually more accessible for
S1E99 - No More Deaths on The "Disappeared" Report & Border Militarization Pt. II
08-12-2023
S1E99 - No More Deaths on The "Disappeared" Report & Border Militarization Pt. II
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined again by Sophie and Parker from No More Deaths for part two of their talk about the militarization of the US-Mexico border, search and rescue, 911 discrimination, and medical collaboration with Border Patrol. Guest Info The Disappeared report can be found at www.thedisappearedreport.org. No More Deaths can be found at nomoredeaths.org, on Instagram @nomoredeaths_nomasmuertes, or on Twitter @nomoredeaths. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: No More Deaths on the “Disappeared” Report & Border Militarization Pt. II **Inmn ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Inmn and today we have part two of an interview with two folks from the abuse doc working group in No More Deaths or No Más Muertes. And we're just going to pick up right in the middle of where we left off and talk a lot about search and rescue and the newest report from No More Deaths, "Separate & Deadly," which is mostly about 911 dispatch discrimination and medical discrimination and collaboration with Border Patrol. If you haven't listened to part one, probably not entirely necessary but it lays a lot of important groundwork and context for what we're going to be talking about today. So go back and give part one a listen. But before we get to that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. [Singing the words like a melody] **Inmn ** 02:14 Yeah, so it's kind of wild to me that like, you know, Border Patrol, has these like non-responses? And it's like, it seems like those nonresponses are on purpose, but they have every piece of technology at their disposal and like every system and like...they just have everything. And yet they purposefully don't help find people. **Sophie ** 02:50 Yeah, that was something we really chronicled in part three looking at their budget and just the way in which Border Patrol is absolutely a militarized enforcement agency first and foremost and 99% of their budget and personnel are dedicated to an enforcement mission, you know, that they're kind of the search and rescue...border patrol search and rescue--so-called--wing of Border Patrol is miniscule compared in terms of staffing, and funding and so on and it's really, you know, there to propagandize and, you know, they do take part in some of this, of course, but really looking at the way in which they are geared towards enforcement first and foremost. And we have, you know, cases of agents being asked to search for someone in south Texas and a higher up saying, "I'm not going to pull agents off of the checkpoint to go search for a person in distress," you know, so seeing those priorities play out in real time on a given case. So yeah, they have all this, you know, powerful equipment and resources, but those are really dedicated to carrying out their enforcement mission, which then compromises you know, their status as a first responder. **Inmn ** 04:18 Yeah. And it's like they have that like--god, what is it called--the BORSTAR helicopter that they pull out for photo shoots or something? **Parker ** 04:27 Yeah, there's a lot of emphasis on, you know, their high-tech capabilities of rescue. And one thing that I can't remember if Sophie mentioned is what we found in the report, you know, when we were looking at these diminished responses and how brief some of their efforts are, is they essentially won't do a search. You know, really in any case, they'll do rescues that are pinpointed where they have exact coordinates. But a lot of the time, what their response will look like is going to the coordinates and if the person isn't right there they call off the search. So what we think of is like a search where like you have a whole, you know, maybe team of people combing an area, you're doing some investigation from like the information that you do have to try and, you know, guess where someone might be, and putting in like resources to look for someone where you don't have their exact location but you have some information to go on. We're not seeing those types of responses at all. So yeah, then what you see instead is these PR events where they're like, "Look, we could rescue someone off the side of a cliff," you know, but that's not translating to actual meaningful responses for the, you know, the situations that they're actually being confronted with. And we definitely have a lot of cases of, you know, Border Patrol saying, you know, "Our helicopters busy right now." So helicopters are used for enforcement. You know, in the "Chase & Scatter" report, we really looked at that, at Border Patrol flying helicopters very low over people who are migrating to scatter them, intimidate them, kick up a lot of dust. It's very intimidating and frightening for people to have a helicopter fly really low over them. And then we're seeing these situations where they won't respond. They won't pull their helicopter from an enforcement mission to go search for somebody who's lost. **Sophie ** 06:02 And then this like, really perverse scenario in which someone who's been chased and become lost because of the helicopter scattering them then is supposed to look to the same helicopter that put them in harm's way to come and rescue them. I mean, it's incredible, the notion that Border Patrol could function to respond to the search and rescue crisis in the borderlands. **Inmn ** 06:26 Yeah, and it's like, to put it in weird contrast, we did an episode on search and rescue specifically in a National Park, you know, from this person who does like search and rescue there. And they're like--maybe I'm remembering this wrong and someone's gonna be upset about that--but they're like, "Yeah, we get a call. And then like, within an hour, we're out and looking for people and like, usually find them very quickly." You know? And it's like this.... It's this other national agency with so fewer resources at their disposal. And they're like.... Yeah, it's like search and rescue isn't easy, but they're like, yeah, we find people pretty quickly because we're professionals. **Sophie ** 07:25 Right. We did some interviews with Pima County Search and Rescue, which we'll talk about more, but talking with them, you know, they go out to deploy for hikers loss in the Catalinas, you know, citizens or tourists. And when they were asked, you know, what is your success rate? They're like, "Oh, you mean in like finding someone before they've died? Like, preventing loss of life?" And we're like, "No, in finding them at all." You know? And it was a confusing question, right? And they're like, "Almost 100%. Like, what are you talking about? We're not going to just not find someone." **Parker ** 08:00 They're basically just like, "Yeah, we don't call off searches without finding someone." **Sophie ** 08:04 Yeah, And that they really focused on preventing loss of life, like what you're saying, getting there rapidly. And to them, a failure is finding the person in death. But what we're seeing is this failure to even mobilize or locate someone ever at all on the border. **Inmn ** 08:21 Yeah, and what resources or community.... Like what do community search and rescue efforts look like? In comparison, what resources do people have available? **Parker ** 08:37 Yeah, I mean, it varies in different areas. But here in Pima County, which is, you know, the area we've looked at--and Pima County is, you know, most of the area that we work and do our humanitarian aid and in southern Arizona--the sheriff's department is in charge of search and rescue. They have a lot of resources at their disposal. They have a volunteer search and rescue team that when we were researching I think we saw that they had 150 volunteers. Some recent reports that have come out in response to our report say that they have 200 to 300 volunteers. So maybe that's increased. But they have this volunteer organization that works directly under the sheriff's and they're trained. Yeah, they go out and they respond to loss hikers. The sheriff's department, you know, they have helicopters, they have drones, and infrared cameras that they'll use. They also have volunteer canine teams that can go out--and especially if it's suspected that someone may have died already--the canine teams can go help locate them. They have a mounted contingent, they have a search and rescue contingent on horseback. So they have, in addition to their own search and rescue deputies, which I believe at the time that we were researching they had eight deputies in the sheriff's department that were the search and rescue coordinators who would then activate this team of hundreds of volunteers that go out to search. And like Sophie said, when, you know, we asked about their success rate, they're like, "We just...We find everybody," you know? Like that's what they do. And like you were saying with the rapid response, you know, we did-- and I guess we're getting a little bit into the next report now--but we listened to 911 calls that they're responding to from lost hikers, people who are calling and speaking English and presumed to be citizens and they usually have someone responding to the area before they're even off their first phone call. You know, you see they have dispatchers collecting the information and then they've already sent somebody immediately to the location that the call is coming from. **Inmn ** 10:39 Okay, well, it's funny, we've been recording for a while now and it all feels in preparation for talking about the thing that we're here to talk about, which is the new report, which I want to introduce the new part o "Disappeared," "Separate & Deadly." **Parker ** 11:05 Yeah, so "Separate & Deadly" is a report that kind of directly came out of the research that we were doing for "Left To Die." I left it I really just focusing on Border Patrol and their lack of response and contrasting that with, you know, they're sort of PR of putting themselves out there as rescuers. But in doing that research, we started to also learn more about the county and the way that the county is handling 911 calls that they receive as that first point of contact before they transfer it to Border Patrol. And that research, you know, kind of was happening simultaneously with doing the research into Border Patrol's response. We actually at that time had heard that the ACLU was, you know, considering pursuing a 14th amendment discrimination lawsuit against the Pima County Sheriff's Department for transferring calls to Border Patrol on the basis of people's presumed citizenship status. And they, in considering pursuing that, had received a few audio recordings of 911 calls and shared those with us. So then we put in our own records request and requested 911 calls that they received and transferred to Border Patrol within a two year period. It's from summer 2016 to summer 2018, we put in that records request and I think we were quite surprised by the volume of calls we got back. So that's when we got over 2000 recordings of 911 calls that were being received by the Pima County Sheriff's Department, their 911 system, before being transferred to Border Patrol. So we received those calls and we decided to listen to them and create data and document what we were hearing in those calls. And so that ended up feeling like it really was its own report, you know? Like we wanted a report that focused on Border Patrol. And then we wanted to really look at the local county and their complicity in their discriminatory response to people who are lost in the desert. So that's what this report came out of. It's been several years in the making. We wanted to, you know, release it as a follow up to "Left To Die," but really just focused on the county itself and its lack of response. **Sophie ** 13:12 Yeah, and there's kind of this story told about border counties in the context of Prevention Through Deterrence that, you know, Prevention Through Deterrence is this federal policy and it's, you know, unduly burdening counties to respond to the emergencies that it's creating. And these counties are all, you know, under-resourced and flailing to handle these emergencies and that, you know, that's true in some counties on the border. Like if you look at Brooks County in South Texas, for example, it's, you know, one of the poorest counties in the country. But when you look at Pima County, which is so critical, you know, there's like 50% of all recovered remains on the border in Pima County, we see this other story that we've been talking about that there are robust search and rescue resources, you know, available in this county. And yet when you look at the emergency response system, what we see is this segregated system in which 911 dispatchers, when they're receiving a call from someone they perceive to be undocumented and crossing the border, which they determine based on a number of different informal factors, they forego doing a missing persons intake as they would. They have historically foregone even assigning that call a case number. They forgo forwarding that call and any information with it to Pima County Search and Rescue and instead they just quickly transfer the call to a Border Patrol line and quickly hang up. So what we are seeing and what the ACLU is concerned with and now we've partnered with Center for Constitutional Rights to look at this is a segregated system and in which your perceived identity as having citizenship status or not determines whether you'll receive County Emergency Services for search rescue response as robust or this really diminished, lesser Border Patrol response that we know based on part three results in these high rates of death and disappearance. So, kind of looking at the big picture of this, we just saw this really deadly form of discrimination, which, you know, gets into, on the one hand, the way in which counties, like Parker is saying, are complicit in carrying out Prevention Through Deterrence, that they actually have this active role, not just this passive role in carrying out and exacerbating the harms of this federal policy, on the one hand, and that's sort of an important lever for thinking about how to challenge what's happening on the border, locally. And then on the other hand, there's this kind of larger constitutional issue, 14th amendment equal protections issue, regarding what does it mean when something separate and unequal and there's all these Supreme Court cases, right, that have looked into that in terms of race, like Brown versus Board of Education, and seeing that those interpretations haven't yet really been applied to cases of segregation based on citizenship status that are really in direct conflict with the mandates of the county that they have. Like, if you look at their protocol and their mandate it's to protect the life of all people in their jurisdiction, right? There's no language distinguishing citizenship status, and there's actually anti-discrimination policies embedded in county protocols that we're seeing being really flagrantly defied and the practice of having dispatchers just bump these calls to Border Patrol and away from local resources because of the identity of the caller. **Inmn ** 16:52 What were y'all encountering through going through these call records? **Parker ** 16:57 Yeah, I mean, I think we went into listening to these calls not knowing exactly what we would find and, you know, sort of vaguely thinking that we would find some evidence of Border Patrol not responding. But listening to these calls, what we found is that people are just being incredibly rapidly transferred to Border Patrol and then the call is, you know, ended with no record of what happened after that. There's not really documentation of any of the outcomes of these calls. And we also just saw a lot of mishandling by the dispatchers. So what you hear basically is somebody calls and they say something in Spanish, sometimes, you know, people are transferred so quickly. It's like, really, like they call and they say, "Habla Español?" and dispatch says, you know, "Hold on," and then transfers on to Border Patrol. So a lot of discrimination on the basis of people calling and speaking Spanish as well as they're call plotting somewhere in like the remote wilderness of the Borderlands. So we saw that in a lot of cases, dispatch did not speak Spanish, so they weren't able to communicate at all with the caller. We found that in 68%, of the calls we listened to dispatch didn't have enough Spanish to be able to communicate with the caller in distress, which means that they're missing really important information. Like you do have callers who are calling and they're starting...they're describing their medical condition, they're describing their location, and dispatch, you know, is not able to communicate with them, which in a region where you have a humanitarian crisis, essentially, from a population that speaks Spanish, they're really not equipped to respond to this humanitarian crisis or to carry out their jobs of being emergency responders if you don't have Spanish speakers, working for the county. And then we found, you know, there were no intakes being performed. So in 99% of the calls, almost every call we listen to, dispatch did not conduct any intake. Meaning they didn't ask any information about the caller's name, their location, description, medical condition, do they have food or water? What do they see? You know, anything like that. And we did request 911 calls, like I said, from presumed citizens, lost hikers, things like that and in those cases, it is routine that they ask these sorts of questions. And the search and rescue deputies themselves have said, you know, "Every caller, we asked them the crucial questions because if their phone dies, something like that, then we've collected information that we can potentially base a search off. And that's not happening in any of these cases. So there's no information. So after the call is transferred to Border Patrol, you know, if that person's phone dies, they're not found by Border Patrol, there's no information collected at all. We also found that in 50% of cases that we analyzed there's no notice given to the caller at all that they're going to be transferred. So they're just saying like, you know, "One moment." and then they transfer it to Border Patrol. There's no explanation of what's happening. So that person who's calling who's potentially in like a life threatening emergency, they just hear a dial tone, you know, and then maybe the phone starts ringing. And so a lot of people, you know, seem to think that they've been hung up on or the call has been lost, which might lead color callers to, you know, hang up in order to not waste cell phone battery. Yeah, so that was in 50% of cases, there was no notice given. And then in another 13%, notice is given only in English even when the caller clearly doesn't speak English. So yeah, they're essentially, we're just seeing these like really truncated responses where people are immediately profiled on the basis of the language they're speaking. And then just immediately transferred, **Inmn ** 20:37 Those calls are being traced, right? And so they have the ability to, like, really hone in on someone's location if they receive a call from them just via cell phone technology? **Parker ** 20:50 Yeah, so the dispatchers, the 911 system, like they do have access to cell phone tracing technology. And Border Patrol is relying on these GPS coordinates that are obtained by the dispatchers. But it's kind of a faulty system. The accuracy can really vary, especially when people are calling from remote areas with not very strong cell phone service. So when they call, dispatch gets either phase one coordinates, or phase two. And what that means is phase one coordinates means that the call is only connecting to one cellphone tower. And so their exact location can't be triangulated. So they just get the coordinates of the cell phone tower, and sometimes a general distance of thousands of meters, you know, how close that person is to the cell phone tower. But those are very inaccurate coordinates. And then if they're able to get phase coordinates, that means that they're connecting to two different towers and it can be triangulated and they get a much more pinpointed rescue. So they do convey these coordinates to Border Patrol, which is the primary thing that they base their search off of. Like I said, Border Patrol will often only do a rescue if they have exact coordinates. So the accuracy of the coordinates is, you know, a huge deal. It's a matter of life and death for people whether they're able to get phase one or phase two coordinates. And unfortunately, a lot of the calls are phase one coordinates because there's such remote areas and there's not a lot of cell phone towers out in the desert. So what we're finding is that Border Patrol often won't search in these phase one cases and will only search for phase two coordinates. And dispatch actually, you know, they can sometimes re-ping, you know, a call that they're getting and eventually find phase two coordinates. So there are a handful of calls we heard where dispatch said, "I'm going to stay on the line while you talk to them and try and get better coordinates." And after a couple of minutes of trying, they might suddenly get phase two coordinates. So that is a huge difference that means this person might be rescued where they would not have been otherwise. But we're finding that in most calls, dispatch is not doing that. They're certainly not doing it as a matter of policy. It's at the discretion of the dispatcher. And most of the time, they're not doing it and they're hanging up immediately after they transfer the call to Border Patrol, even though it can make a huge difference in that person's rescue response and could potentially save their life. If they spend a few extra minutes trying to get better coordinates, **Inmn ** 23:05 Have y'all been able to figure out if that is a matter of protocol or is it just that the person on the line just doesn't care? **Parker ** 23:13 You know, we do have these examples of cases in which the person does choose to do it. It doesn't appear to be a matter of protocol. It's just, you know, they get a lot of these calls, and they're very, you know, bureaucratized about it, very routine. And a lot of the time, I think it doesn't really occur to them to stay and try and get better coordinates. **Sophie ** 23:31 With what Parker is talking about, where we're seeing a real pattern of Border Patrol being unwilling to mobilize a search, right, like when there aren't exact coordinates of the person, when it's not a straight rescue, it makes that intake process even more important, right? So like a phase one call where you have 5000 meters of accuracy pinging off a single cellphone tower, well then in order to mount a search, what you really need is the narrative of the person, right, regarding exactly what they know about where they are, what they can see, what they've passed along the way, information about their medical condition, how far they are likely to be able to move or travel, you know? Do they have a lower extremity injury that's preventing them from walking? How much water do they have left? Can they make a call back? All the information becomes so crucial if they're only able to extract based on coordinates. And then I also want to add that we have cases in which even though phase two coordinates are being derived from the caller, there's apparently no response from Border Patrol. So we had this case in March of 2018 in which a caller who's crossing the border calls 911 in Pima County 11 times in 10 hours. He's lost and alone and keeps calling because no one is coming and his call is transferred to Border Patrol every single time and his call has phase two coordinates within five meters of accuracy of his location and you can hear his medical condition diminishing with each call. And eventually he stops calling. And we have no record of an outcome. So there's nothing with the phase two coordinates we can see that guarantees or mandates, you know, that says that Border Patrol is going to deploy. So within all of this, there's like trends of what seems to work better, but there's nothing really there as a true safety net to ensure response for someone calling 911 in distress. **Inmn ** 25:37 That is heartbreaking in so many ways. In that like, yeah, it's not negligence, it's complete disregard for what's happening. Like, I don't know, I think that's why I kind of like ask questions about the dispatchers where I'm like, are they aware of what they're doing? Are they so entrenched in bureaucracy? Do they think Border Patrol is going to do something about it? Or like? And I'm like, what do they...what do these people think the outcomes of these situations are? And like with Border Patrol, it's like, it's clearly disregard, because if you know where someone is and you just don't go.... **Sophie ** 26:36 I mean, I think the powers of normalization are so strong in the border crisis, like looking at Pima County, they're receiving 1500 distress calls a year from people crossing the border, four to five calls a day. So dispatchers are fielding these calls all the time and automatically forwarding, automatically forwarding and that does something right? That creates normalization around disappearance within the culture of dispatch in a county. And we do see, you know, occasionally, bad actors, like dispatchers who are particularly abusive or hateful. We see on occasion, good actors, dispatchers who are clearly very concerned about the person and taking some extra measures. But it's all still really constrained within this protocol that they're not the ones actually facilitating a response, that they're counting on Border Patrol to act. And because our data was, you know, derived for part three and from 2016 to 2018, we decided to do a records request, just a sampling of more recent calls, from June 2022, from last last summer, just to see, you know, is dispatch still doing this? And I was personally, you know, after we listened to--because we spent hours and hours listening to these 911 calls--you know, and it's incredibly heartbreaking and discouraging. And I think I was hopeful that something had gotten better since 2018. And it was so jarring to see, you know, listening to the 2022 calls, like the same protocol being carried out. Someone calls, speaks Spanish, the dispatcher says, "Está perdido? Are you lost?" and if the person says "Si", the call is immediately forwarded and they hang up. And the rate of deriving phase two coordinates is still, you know, very partial. And in those calls, out of those 65 cases that we got notes on, 17 of those cases, the caller was never located. And so what we're also seeing in these calls is that even when there's clear indication, and even reporting from Border Patrol, that they're not responding to a person in distress. The county doesn't deploy. So it was really hard to listen to these calls where if someone's in such distress and they get forwarded and then you see the outcome that they were never located, right, and the county has done nothing, even though they have full knowledge that there's a person missing in the county and Border Patrol isn't looking for them. **Parker ** 29:28 Yeah, and what we see a lot in this case is this exactly what Sophie was saying earlier where, you know, we know from listening to the audio recordings that dispatch is not collecting information from callers and then we look at the case notes later and they say, "Well, you know, Border Patrol didn't find them and we don't have any information. So we can't search." So just sort of this reinforcing loop where they, you know, they hand off responsibility to Border Patrol and then when Border Patrol doesn't search, they don't take up that search and they have not followed any of the normal protocols that they would have at intake for someone that they intended to search for like someone calling speaking English or a presumed citizen, you know. And so then they can just sort of wash their hands and say, "Well, we don't have any information. So we can't search." **Inmn ** 30:09 Yeah. And like Border Patrol is not...if they're like transferred, Border Patrol isn't conducting a separate intake to get information that the dispatcher failed to get? **Parker ** 30:26 Yeah, in the few calls, where we do have recordings of, you know, those cases where dispatch stayed on the line a little longer to try and get coordinates or for some reason we have a recording, you know, Border Patrol does seem to be doing those intakes that Pima County would normally be doing for someone they intend to search, but it doesn't seem from any of the files we've seen that there's any sort of that information sharing between Border Patrol and the county. The county is, you know, typically they hang up before Border Patrol does that intake and they don't have any of that information on which they can base a search. **Sophie ** 30:56 Yeah, sometimes we hear those conversations and like...what Parker's talking about is true, that we do sometimes hear the start of an intake, but we also hear Border Patrol telling someone who's in distress, has no water, perhaps injured, that they need to walk to a road before Border Patrol is going to go look for them. "We'll tell them to go walk for an hour and call me back." [Border Patrol] This kind of handling, we had a case from 2022, from that batch of calls, where a caller is...the call is picked up by dispatch, the caller is frantic saying "My phone's about to die. I'm soaking wet and cold. I'm lost." And dispatch transfers the caller to Border Patrol and the person is trying to say like, "I'm near antennas," like trying to give locational information. They've transferred to Border Patrol and he's like trying desperately to talk and Border Patrol tells him in Spanish to, "Shut up." And like, so we're hearing like, you know, hostility from Border Patrol towards reporting parties. And that was a call that only generated phase one coordinates within 5000 meters, which is like three mile radius around the cellphone tower, and the case file that we got on that said that Border Patrol never located that person and that the county took no further action on that case. So we also hear like obstruction and abuse in some of those calls with Border Patrol when we do get, you know, audio recording because the dispatcher chose to stay on the line. Yeah. **Inmn ** 31:58 And like, you know, looking through the report, there's some other standout quotations, whether it's from dispatchers being like, "Actually, we're not going to deal with that," or like a Border Patrol agent who says like....god, what is it, "They're gonna stay lost," or something? **Sophie ** 32:31 Mm hmm. **Inmn ** 32:31 Yeah, that was the case with phase one coordinates. **Inmn ** 33:04 Like, on the recording, the Border Patrol agent just like says that? Is like, like, "Well, they're gonna stay..." like, Oh, my God. **Parker ** 33:13 Yeah, dispatch gives them the coordinates and then the distance with the coordinates and the Border Patrol agent says, "This guy is gonna stay lost." **Sophie ** 33:22 Yeah, I mean, you get the sense, even though this is public record, you know, anyone should be able to request these recordings, you can feel the kind of culture of impunity around Border Patrol. The agents clearly aren't speaking in a way where they expect to be checked up on, you know. So we're hearing those conversations and it's something.... Yeah, it's just this assumption of lack of oversight and impunity that's really embedded in the culture of the agency and its relationship with the public. **Inmn ** 33:53 Yeah. And maybe to clarify, these calls that y'all are listening to or like requesting, these are like, the dispatch calls? Like, if dispatch hangs up, is that where the recording ends? Like, y'all aren't hearing the Border Patrol...like, once they're transferred, you're not hearing anything else? **Sophie ** 34:15 Right. To get the Border Patrol end, you would have to have a successful FOIA, you know, which could take years and generally doesn't render those kinds of recordings easily. **Parker ** 34:27 Yeah, we submitted a FOIA request in 2818 or something and are still waiting on documents. And we're working with a law firm who's litigating it and we still, you know, have like, just started to get some documents. And that's, you know, that's beyond the capacity for most people. **Inmn ** 34:44 Yeah, to get these like recordings of Border Patrol calls with people? Yeah, okay. Um, so there's kind of like another side to...there's another component to this report too, which is, I believe y'all call it "compromised care," or "EMS collaboration with border enforcement." I was wondering if y'all could talk a little bit about that? **Parker ** 35:16 Yeah. Do you want to start with that one, Sophie? **Sophie ** 35:18 Yeah, I mean, I think that's a part of the report that pulls on aid worker testimony more heavily. It was really inspired by experiences of our volunteers--I mean, including Parker and I--working in the field and encountering people in distress who needed, you know, emergency evacuation to the hospital, and seeing the kind of infiltration of border patrol into the emergency medical response system, you know, every step of the way. So compromised care is less about search and rescue cases and more looking at the way in which Border Patrol infiltrates and inhibits EMS. So, I think Parker and I both have stories connected to this, but I was...in one situation I was out in the desert to put out water on Christmas with other volunteers and we encountered this woman Lupe in distress who had a collapsed lung. She had been attacked in the desert and left under a blanket and she was in respiratory distress. And she had been there for, you know, overnight, like a long time since that abandonment piece, right? And no one had been down that remote road until we happened to choose to go to a water drop out there that day. And we called, you know, talked to her.... And even though she was in such distress, it actually took a while to get her consent to call 911 because she was crossing because her son was chronically ill. She needed to make money to pay for his medical procedure, and, you know, was desperate to make it. And eventually, she did consent to calling 911. And we, you know, let them know we're in this vehicle on this road heading to the local fire station. And when we arrived, there was this armada of Border Patrol, like 10 agents, multiple trucks, surrounding the fire station essentially and in and around the ambulance. And when they were taking her from our vehicle, you know, into the ambulance before realizing they needed to call for her to be, you know, helicoptered to the emergency room because it was so desperate, the agents were getting in the way of medical workers to try to get her ID to start processing her on her criminal migration violation, you know, while she's like receiving care. And we followed her case, and she was...she had been, you know, assaulted in the desert and was handcuffed to her hospital bed. She had a Border Patrol agent stationed in the room with her the whole time she was there. You know, which is incredibly intimidating for someone who's a survivor of assault or anyone. And eventually, I mean, her case was interesting because she eventually qualified for a U-Visa, a protected status, because she had been the victim of a crime in the United States. And we saw sort of the interplay between the county that was treating her as the victim of a crime and Border Patrol that was treating her as a criminal. So that was a really stark example. And we saw, you know, every time that we've evacuated someone to the fire station to get to the emergency room, Border Patrol follows the ambulance. You know, they're really kind of embedded every step of the way, which is a deterrent to calling 911 in the first place and also can really inhibit care. Parker, I don't know if you wanted to talk about cases you've seen? **Parker ** 39:05 Yeah, one that really stands out to me is I was volunteering at our humanitarian-aid station one time and a man came in who had been bitten by a rattlesnake. He came in and told us that he had just been bitten. So myself and another volunteer, you know, immediately wanted to call 911, but similarly, you know, for a long time was saying that he didn't want us to call 911, he didn't want to go to a hospital, that he thought he was fine because of course he knew that if we did call 911 and and ambulance came, that would result in him being deported. This is a man who had lived in Tucson for years before being deported. And his family was there. His young daughter was there. And she had actually recently had an accident. So he was, you know, very urgently trying to get back to his family and didn't want to be deported. And eventually he started to show symptoms and we said "Look, we like have to call 911. Like, we're really afraid that you might die." He agreed and was brought to the hospital. A volunteer was able to visit him in the hospital. And yeah, Border Patrol was.... He ended up being evacuated by helicopter. Border Patrol was waiting to start processing him as he was prepared to do Lifeflight to the hospital in Tucson. You know, as soon as we started driving up, to like drive him to where we were meeting the helicopter, he saw the Border Patrol vehicle and was like, "I don't want to go," you know. So it was really...you know, there's a huge deterrence to people to–even when they're like in a life critical situation to call 911, because they know Border Patrol is waiting for them. They know they're going to be deported. You know, he ended up being brought to the hospital. They
S1E98 - No More Deaths on The "Disappeared" Report & Border Militarization Pt. I
01-12-2023
S1E98 - No More Deaths on The "Disappeared" Report & Border Militarization Pt. I
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn is joined by Sophie and Parker from No More Deaths to talk about the militarization of the US-Mexico border and the most recent installment of the "Disappeared" report series "Separate & Deadly." Guest Info The Disappeared report can be found at www.thedisappearedreport.org. No More Deaths can be found at nomoredeaths.org, on Instagram @nomoredeaths_nomasmuertes, or on Twitter @nomoredeaths. Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript No More Death on The “Disappeared” Reports & Border Militarization Pt. I **Inmn ** 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcasts for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inmn, and today we have some folks coming on that I've really wanted to get on the podcast for a while because I think that the work that they do is just really incredible and I want more people to know about it. So we have two folks from No More Deaths, or No Mas Muertes, coming on. And No More Deaths is a humanitarian aid group whose goal is to, you know, prevent death and suffering in the borderlands. And they work primarily in southern Arizona in response to rampant border militarization. And I'm really excited that they have this new report coming out in their series of reports called the "Disappeared" series. And their new report, "Separate & Deadly", just came out. And we'll have links in the show notes to where to find it to read the whole thing. And I'm really excited to have folks from, specifically, the abuse doc, or abuse documentation, working group, coming on because I think a lot of focus gets put on the physical doing, the putting out water, and all of that, and that stuff is really important, you know, obviously, but I also think it's great to really highlight the work that a lot of people have been doing to document the reason and the need and the reactions from Border Patrol and other governmental bodies in response to this humanitarian aid. And so yeah, I don't know, I'm really excited to highlight this particular aspect of that work. But before we get to that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on that network. Doo doo doo. **Inmn ** 03:19 And we're back. Thanks, y'all so much for coming on the show today to talk about this thing. Could y'all introduce yourselves with your name, pronouns, and I guess what your role is with No More Deaths and this report? **Parker ** 03:37 Yeah, I can go first. My name is Parker. I use she/her pronouns. I have been involved with No More Deaths since about 2015. I came down and started volunteering in the desert. Moved to Tucson a little bit after that. So I've been involved with desert aid and then also involved with the abuse documentation working group producing the Disappeared report that we're going to talk about. Sophie and I were co-coordinators for several years working on that project and then have both been involved as volunteers. **Sophie ** 04:10 Hi, my name is Sophie and I use she/they pronouns. And I've been a volunteer with No More Deaths since 2011, volunteering with desert aid and also with community-based search and rescue and I'm a co-author for the Disappeared report series and co-coordinated with Parker on this report. **Inmn ** 04:29 Cool. And for folks who don't know, what is No More Deaths? What does No More Deaths do? **Parker ** 04:49 No More Deaths is a humanitarian aid organization whose mission is to end death and suffering in the borderlands. No More Deaths was formed in 2004 in response to rising deaths of people crossing the border. There's a number of different working groups and projects under the No More Deaths umbrella. So Sophie and I have been a part of the abuse documentation working group, documenting the kinds of things we're seeing in the course of the work. There's desert aid. They do water drops, where we bring out water and food and leave them on migrant trails in the remote borderlands. We maintain a humanitarian aid camp where people can come and get food and water and respite. We do a community-based search and rescue project where there's a hotline and we get reports of people who have gone missing while crossing the border and can send out volunteers to do search and rescue. We also do some support in Northern Mexico for post-deportation or pre-departure support. Yeah, so there's a lot of different projects under this umbrella but all for humanitarian aid trying to provide support for people who are crossing the border in southern Arizona. **Inmn ** 05:59 Cool. Yeah, y'all do so many different things. And I've been wanting to get someone from the group to come talk about stuff for a while now. I used to volunteer with y'all and I reference border-aid stuff on the podcast a lot. So I'm just really stoked to have you all here to talk about this. And the new report was a great opportunity to wrangle some folks into coming on. I was wondering, though, if y'all could share a little bit about like the...I guess the context of the border and, specifically, border militarization and Border Patrol's role in that to kind of build a little foundation for what we're going to talk about today. **Sophie ** 06:51 Yeah, so, when talking about the militarization of the US-Mexico border, usually, we're kind of looking at a time period of the last 30 years or so starting in 1994--which certainly wasn't the start of border militarization--but was a signal year in terms of the enforcement strategy on the border really shifting gears. So in 1994--many people remember that year because it was the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which had really huge consequences for migration. We know that NAFTA contained neoliberal economic reforms that took away tariffs and barriers to trade and lead things like US subsidized corn to flood the market in Mexico which drove down prices and then spiked this labor-driven migration of people who had historically been able to make ends meet through farming heritage corn and no longer could compete. So we know that NAFTA sparked this labor-division migration. We know that's not the first time that US policy has sparked migrations across the border. But what was different in 1994 was at the same time the US Border Patrol came together to come up with a policing strategy of how they were going to control the border given this expected rise in labor-driven migration from south to north. And so Border Patrol met with security heads from the Department of Defense, who are versed in conducting regime change and low intensity conflict doctrine throughout Latin America in the 80s. And they produced a new strategy for how they're going to police the 2000 mile southern border. The strategy that they came up with is called Prevention Through Deterrence, which is kind of a technical and clunky title for a really nefarious strategy. So the theory was that the southern border couldn't be sealed off entirely despite all the rhetoric we see about, you know, border walls, sealing the southern border. The Border Patrol observed that the border couldn't actually be sealed from migration, but that the flow of migration across the border could be controlled. And so Border Patrol sought to concentrate enforcement resources--so, personnel, vehicles, infrastructure like walls, surveillance technology--in and around ports of entry in urban areas along the border where migration had historically flowed as a mechanism that would then push people attempting across the southern border without official permission out into remote areas along the border between ports of entry between cities. so especially huge expanses of desert along the border. And the strategy document--which is public, you can look at it online--specifically says that the strategy intends to push people out into remote areas where they can find themselves in mortal danger as a consequence of being exposed to the elements without access to food, water, or rescue. And the belief was that by pushing people into these remote areas, a certain number of people would not make it. They would be deterred, either having to turn back or they would perish and that this would then dissuade others from attempting the journey. It would prevent rising levels of migration. This was the theory, Prevention Through Deterrence, that by making the border as deadly, as costly as possible to cross, that this would deter others...it would prevent others from attempting the journey. And so what happens is that Border Patrol puts up walls, installs surveillance technology in and around ports of entry in places like El Paso/Juarez, in places like Nogales, in places like San Diego/Tijuana, all at the end of the 1990s. And indeed, this shifts patterns of migration, undocumented migration, out into these really remote regions of the desert, where people are having to undertake multi-day journeys on foot through really rugged geography. And immediately we start to see hundreds of remains, human remains, recovered from remote areas of the border by 2000, 2001, and 2002 as a result of this policy, people who are dying from things like exposure to the elements or whose death cause is actually not able to be determined because their remains have decomposed so much before they've been located because they're perishing in such remote areas. So this humanitarian crisis opens up on the border in the early 2000s. And this is what humanitarian groups like No More Deaths and others start attempting to respond to. And this is still the policy that we see on the southern border. Of course, it's been bolstered by things like the 2006 Secure Fence Act, which really increased the number of Border Patrol agents on the line dramatically and allowed agents to start to patrol remote areas and rural communities in addition to being stationed in cities, to push people out into the desert, and also extended funding for walls. We also have seen more recent walls go up under the Trump administration. And now Biden's also funding that, But this is still the strategy under which Border Patrol is policing the southern border. And, again, this was never a strategy to close the border but to try to control the rate of crossing by making it as deadly or dangerous as possible. And so the thing about Prevention Through Deterrence is that it's been incredibly successful in pushing people out into remote areas where they find themselves in mortal danger, that that, indeed, was a prediction that that did come to pass. We know that the remains of at least 10,000 people have been recovered from the southern border. And experts estimate that the true number of deaths are probably three to ten times higher than that number, because so many people are perishing in such remote areas that their remains are never found or if they're found they're never identifiable. So we call this a crisis of death and disappearance on the border due to that phenomenon. But we also know that Prevention Through Deterrence has been a real failure in terms of preventing undocumented crossing on the southern border. This policy has coincided with a lot of measures to cut off legal paths of entry, shrink asylum programs, refugee programs, and further criminalize migration. And as a consequence, more and more populations are being caught up into this system. And more and more families are moving to the US permanently rather than risk multiple crossings to migrate seasonally for work or things like that. So this is the same system under which a lot of people fleeing conditions in the Northern Triangle as a consequence of US policy in the hemisphere, they're being caught up in this system of migration too. And we know that there's at least 13 million people now residing in the US who don't have documentation or full status or protection or rights as a consequence of this. So this is really the context in which humanitarian groups are trying to respond by providing food, water, and even improvised emergency medical services in these remote areas. And it's also a context in which, in terms of abuse documentation, there's a real need for witnessing and documentation of what's happening on the ground out in the back country where Border Patrol agents are operating daily with no witnesses and virtual impunity. So this was really kind of the context that gave rise to the abuse documentation project in general and these reports more specifically, **Inmn ** 15:38 Cool.... Or I mean, you know, not "cool," but thank you for walking us through that. I've heard a lot...you know, over the years, I've heard a lot of...been to a lot of trainings where there's like a border militarization context and I don't know that I've ever heard it put so succinctly and neatly. So that's...that is incredible. And, yeah, it's funny, because when I was putting together notes for the show today, I had like a little note, like, "Oh, make sure to talk about the Deterrence Through Death strategy." And then I was like, "Wait, is that what it's called?" And then I couldn't remember if that's like, what it was officially called, or not. And then, yeah...remembering that it was maybe not called that-- **Parker ** 16:33 No, that's just what it is. **Inmn ** 16:34 Yeah. That's just what it is. Okay, well, could y'all, I guess, maybe with that foundation, what is the abuse doc working group then do? And like how did the "Disappeared" report series come to be? **Parker ** 16:52 Yeah, the abuse documentation working group, it's been, you know, around through a number of different projects with different volunteers leading them. A lot of the earlier reports that No More Deaths was putting out were focused on detention. So we put out a report called "Culture of Cruelty" that really focused on really inhumane conditions, abusive conditions, within Border Patrol custody--so short term Border Patrol custody before people are deported or turned over to ICE--and focusing on things such as denial of food and water, denial of medical care, psychological abuse.... Just yeah, really horrible conditions, people being held longer than they're legally supposed to without being given phone calls and things like that. So that report primarily was done through interviews with people who had been deported and just kind of arose out of the conversations people were having with people through our support work at shelters there and hearing the conditions that they were being held under. So "Culture of Cruelty" was one of our earlier reports. We put out "Shakedown," which focuses on Border Patrol's, seizing up people's belongings when people are in Border Patrol custody without returning it. And both of those reports really focused on advocacy and trying to, you know, push for policy changes in response to these patterns that we were documenting. And I think people sort of had the experience of, you know, providing really clear documentation and then seeing that Border Patrol is still just denying the same things that, you know, we're showing proof of and not seeing the changes that they wanted to see come out of those reports. The "Disappeared" series, I think was a shift, organizationally, in wanting to really document what's happening in these remote borderlands areas and really push our messaging to call for the abolition of Border Patrol and really just say what we wanted to say politically and document things that there was really no documentation of at that time. So the "Disappeared" report series, it's focusing on the actions of Border Patrol in remote borderlands areas where there's, you know, there's no transparency whatsoever about what's happening, because there has been this intentional push to push migration into wilderness areas and really focusing on Prevention Through Deterrence but also the way that the day-to-day actions of Border Patrol agents are consistent with this logic of increasing the risk of death to people who are migrating in the ways that that logic is carried out on the ground. And it was a collaborative project. So the "Disappeared" report series started as a collaboration between No More Deaths and another organization called La Coalición de Derechos Humanos, who has been really vocal against militarization from the very beginning. At the time Derechos Humanos, they were operating a missing migrant crisis line, similar to what No More Deaths operates now, so they were receiving this huge volume of calls from family members reporting their loved ones who were missing. And No More Deaths started to collaborate with them with doing search and rescue in the field when they received a call where there was a viable possibility that that person was still alive and could be rescued. So that collaboration led to the "Disappeared" report series. And, yeah, so we've put out, this is the fourth installment of the "Disappeared" report series. **Inmn ** 20:32 So what have the other parts of the "Disappeared" reports explored? **Parker ** 20:37 Um, yeah, so the first report focuses on deadly apprehension methods, particularly on the practice of Chase and Scatter in the wilderness. So this is documenting a practice that, you know, we see and hear about every day in the course of this work, where Border Patrol chases groups of migrating people causing them to scatter and become separated from each other in the remote wilderness, often not detaining a lot of the people who have become separated. And this is really the beginning of a cycle of death and disappearance because when people are scattered in the wilderness like this, they can become injured in the chase, they become separated from their group, which may include family members that they were traveling with, separated from a guide, they become lost and disoriented, you know, people are crossing in this area that have no familiarity with the landscape. So a lot of the time when we encounter people who are, you know, in a life threatening situation, it's because they've been chased and scattered by Border Patrol. And so they're now lost and alone in the wilderness. People lose their belongings in the chase, lose their food, water. And so this is something that, you know, with the hotline where we receive calls from family members, a lot of the time they're saying, you know, "My loved one was chased by Border Patrol. They don't know where they are. They're separated from their group. They need to be rescued." This is so routine Border Patrol really doesn't see it as an abuse. They see it as the way that they are enforcing the border. But it is an extremely dangerous enforcement practice. **Sophie ** 22:10 In the practice of chase and scatter that we examined in part one, we looked at surveys conducted in Nogales as well as the Derechos hotline cases and found that chase and scatter by Border Patrol agents is incredibly common, as Parker was saying, that we found that 40% of people who had been chased by Border Patrol became injured or even killed through the process of that chase. 40% of people who had been chased and scattered became lost. And 35% of the emergency cases that we looked at that involved chase and scatter ended in the disappearance of the person who came into distress after that enforcement context. So it's really a way in which Border Patrol's daily activities are reinforcing the strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence on the ground by sending helicopters and vehicles and agents on foot and dogs after people in remote areas who run in every direction often late at night when Border Patrol agents have night vision goggles. And, you know, we looked at the way in which they've actually documented this activity themselves on the Cops-style reality show, Border Wars, that has many scenes of chase and scatter. So we looked at some of that in which Border Patrol is actually documenting their own crimes and using it as propaganda for the agency. **Inmn ** 23:55 I didn't know that that TV show existed. That's...yeah...that's absurd. **Sophie ** 24:02 I don't recommend it. But it was helpful in kind of...you know, we're interested in the way in which these agencies are providing evidence of their own abuses. **Inmn ** 24:20 Yeah, and I like for.... I guess, for the chase and scatter protocol, like, you know, not that I would prefer that people get apprehended, but why.... I guess, why do the chase and scatter thing instead of apprehending people, which seems to be what Border Patrol like tells the public they're trying to do versus like what they actually do. **Sophie ** 24:48 I mean, I think that chase and scatter is part of a more general pattern where we're seeing migrating people being treated as enemy combatants, enemies of the state, against whom it's somehow appropriate to deploy all the weapons of war. And I think watching Border Wars, you really do see this as war games to an extent. And I think that, you know, the other piece of that, beyond just wanting to, you know, use the kind of military-style equipment that they're given--and we're talking about this, by the way, in the context of like, we're on US soil where this is happening. This is like anywhere from the border line all the way to 100 miles within the US interior is the terrain in which Border Patrol is operating. And when you look at death maps, you can see recovered remains kind of scattered far into the US interior. But really, you know, from Border Patrol's perspective, whether they apprehend a person or they scatter them so that they become lost, disoriented, and in harm's way, either of those outcomes reinforce the strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence, right? On the one hand, you have increased apprehensions as a way to, you know, in their minds, deter others from attempting the journey. And on the other, you have injury and death as a way to build up that deterrent. Again, we see that that deterrence ultimately doesn't work when measured against the conditions that people are leaving or fleeing from in order to cross the border. But both outcomes absolutely serve the overall strategy of Prevention Through Deterrence. And I think it's just another way in which we see people's lives, who are crossing the border, being treated as disposable and not deserving of the kinds of protections afforded to us, right, that it's not important to them whether they apprehend everyone, whether people become lost, and those people are not even counted. So I think that that sort of a deeper structural violence at play in these scenarios. **Parker ** 26:56 Was gonna say the same thing. I think there's sort of just like an institutionalized lack of concern for the outcomes that people face, especially because the outcome of someone potentially dying is baked into the strategy. I remember one of our co-authors talking about when they released the "Chase and Scatter" report, talking to a Border Patrol agent, who I think at the time was the head of they're Missing Migrant Initiative, just saying, you know, "Oh, yeah, I never even thought about what happened to people after we chased them." So, you know, they scatter a group, they arrest a couple people, they call it a day. They don't think about it, and if that person is lost and alone and doesn't have water, well, that's consistent with their enforcement anyways. **Sophie ** 27:37 Right. And the border is just a kind of erratic and contradictory zone where on the one hand, the US-Mexico border zone is one of the most heavily surveilled places on Earth, right, in which enforcement can consolidate in these moments and become incredibly violent. You can be, you know, killed by a heavily armed agent with all these weapons of war, treated as this enemy combatant, on the one hand. On the other hand, you can die of exposure and dehydration and, you know, being in an area where you don't see another person for days at a time. So there's sort of these two forces of, you know, militarism and direct violence, on the one hand, these kinds of really violent kind of events, and then on the other, the forces of abandonment, right, where there's no one to help you. And these things work together. Which is sort of difficult to grasp when you're in that zone, right? If you're circulating in the border zone--and I mean, all of us know this from volunteering--you can see no one the whole day and then suddenly come up upon a heavily armed agent who wants to point their AK47 at you. You know, both of these kinds of forces of indirect violence, of abandonment, and direct violence exist in this geography. **Inmn ** 28:56 Yeah. I know this is maybe a little outside the scope of what we're going to talk about today but I was wondering if y'all could briefly just talk a little bit about the legal systems that people are facing when they are apprehended? Like what is the process of like being...going from like being apprehended to being deported look like? **Parker ** 29:22 Yeah, well, so people are, when they're detained in the field, they're held in short term Border Patrol custody, where, you know, like I was mentioning before, we've documented all kinds of abuses that people face in custody. I remember early on in Trump's presidency, there was this really high-profile news story about a seven year old who died in Border Patrol custody, who, you know, hadn't received water or medical care. And I remember us, you know, just calling attention to the fact that we've been documenting that same pattern for, you know, like over a decade. So people are held in Border Patrol custody, which is supposed to not be any longer than three days maximum. It's supposed to be shorter. Some people at that point are rapidly deported. And then we also saw, you know, these last few years, under Title 42 people being just rapidly deported immediately upon being detained in the field without any sort of legal process. And then other times, you know, people are held in ICE custody or they're held in detention centers. And then there's also Operation Streamline where people are--some people--are given criminal charges. And then they are, you know, fed into our regular criminal justice system. But they have, you know, it's this total farce of justice where they call it Operation Streamline and they'll bring 70 people a day and just charge them all at once. And that's for Criminal Entry or Re-entry. And people just have to, essentially, plead guilty to the lower charge of Criminal Entry instead of Re-entry so that they can face six months instead of two years. So we're also just feeding people into our prison system as well as into the ICE detention system. **Inmn ** 31:02 And do charges like that preclude someone from being able to apply for asylum or other kind legal processes for documented immigration. **Parker ** 31:16 Yeah, I imagine they do. I don't think it's really my or Sophie's wheelhouse, the legal immigration system. I do know that, you know, theoretically, people who are detained by Border Patrol could request asylum, but there's a lot of documentation of Border Patrol, you know, not asking or ignoring people when they do say that they want to make an asylum claim after detaining people in the desert. **Inmn ** 31:35 Yeah, yeah. Um, I guess to shift a little bit more into the current report, I was wondering if y'all could talk a little bit about, I guess, like the third report "Left to Die" as a prelude to what we're going to talk about today? **Sophie ** 32:00 Should we talk about Part Two really quick before? **Inmn ** 32:05 Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's Part Two. Sorry, we skipped Part Two. Yeah, what happened? What happened in Part Two? **Parker ** 32:11 Part Two documented interference with humanitarian aid. So pretty early on, when No More Deaths started to do water drops, we started to find that our water drops would sometimes be vandalized or destroyed. People would stab water gallons, dump them out. We put out cans of beans. People would dump those out or stab them so that they rot. And we anecdotally believed that Border Patrol was responsible for at least some amount of this destruction, just from seeing them near the drops and then finding them vandalized or just the drops being out in areas where Border Patrol is the only other person out there. But to document this, we started to put out game cameras on a lot of the drops that were regularly vandalized and trying to capture footage, which is pretty difficult. The game cameras, like they turn on anytime, you know, the wind blows and the grass moves. So a lot of the time we would come and find the battery dead, but the drop had been vandalized, but we didn't get any footage. But over the years, we did collect footage. And we got several instances of Border Patrol on camera destroying these water drops, stabbing them with knives, things like that. So we wanted to document this pattern in that report. So in addition to that footage, we did an analysis of all of the logs that we keep from every water drop that we go to, where we mark instances of vandalization and just kind of looked at the scope of it, if there were any patterns and where it was happening and when it was happening. And Sophie, do you have some of those findings handy? **Sophie ** 33:47 So just for context, the main part of No More Deaths' work over the years has been mapping migration trails. People undertake anywhere from three days to over a week of a journey through the deserts through really labyrinthian topography, especially in southern Arizona. It's high desert. So it's really mountainous with a system of canyons and there's just thousands of trail systems that have been created over time in the back country that are routes that people are taking across into the United States. So we've located, you know, certain areas of high concentration where we'll place drops of water and food and other supplies, like Parker was mentioning, to try to mitigate death and suffering in those areas. So we looked at the records that were kept by No More Deaths volunteers over three years in which over 30,000 gallons of water were left in the backcountry. And within that we were seeing that 86% of the water that we put out does get used, that this is a really important harm reduction measure to support life in the backcountry as people are on their journey. But we also found that at least 3,586 gallons of water, so over 3000 gallons of water, had been vandalized or destroyed in at least 415 different destruction events. And as Parker was mentioning, you know, really early on we got footage of Border Patrol destroying water. There's kind of an infamous video that we put out of a Border Patrol agent kicking gallons of water that had been put out at a water drop. We got more footage and, you know, have a lot of anecdotal evidence reinforcing this. And that report also then looked at Border Patrol action on humanitarian aid stations, attempts to repress or prosecute volunteers with non-governmental organizations like No More Deaths and others doing this kind of harm reduction work. And so that report looked at a series of attempted prosecutions. There were cases in which volunteers are given littering tickets for putting out water on migration trails as if water is somehow trash in the desert among other cases. I don't know if Parker wants to speak to that more directly. But we're looking at kind of that as, you know, both the destruction of water and the charging...the attempted criminalization of volunteers trying to prevent loss of life as kind of a repressive campaign that Border Patrol is leading against humanitarians coincident with the agency really trying to up its PR and branding as itself, somehow, a humanitarian actor on the border. So this report was being written at the same time that Border Patrol is doing things like publishing the number of border deaths, according to them, versus the number of "rescues" that they apparently conducted. And we'll get more into it in part three, but really trying to say...make these claims that overall, somehow, they're humanitarian actors in this gauntlet of their own making. So that was sort of some of the spirit behind that report was to provide evidence, direct evidence, to the contrary. **Parker ** 37:31 Yeah, I guess just to the interference with humanitarian aid, the interference with volunteer humanitarian aid, one thing that we do focus on in that report too is the raids of our humanitarian aid camp. So I mentioned we maintain a constant presence in the desert at our humanitarian aid camp. And Border Patrol has a history of conducting raids at this camp. So coming and surrounding it, providing a lot of like intimidation, as well as a few times when they have entered the camp and arrested people who were there receiving care. So really just like creating this atmosphere of intimidation, specifically at a humanitarian aid camp. And in one of those raids, they mentioned that they had tracked people for 18 miles until they got to the camp, at which point they surrounded the camp for multiple days until they came in and arrested people. So directly interfering with the provision of humanitarian aid. The charging of volunteers, actually, a note about the timing of that is that this report actually came out before a lot of criminal charges were filed against our volunteers. And in fact, the day that this report came out and the day that we released this footage of Border Patrol destroying water gallons, Scott Warren, one of our volunteers, was arrested six hours later that same day, **Inmn ** 38:45 Which spawned like a multi-year legal battle, right? **Parker ** 38:50 It did result in him being acquitted by a jury. **Sophie ** 38:55 Yes, Scott Warren was charged with multiple felonies, felony harboring and smuggling, for volunteering at a No More Deaths aid station in the area of Ajo, Arizona, where he provided first aid and care to patients who had sought help at that aid station. Right. And that, you know, was a huge court process. There were multiple trials. The first one ended in a hung jury and the second one he was acquitted on all charges. But there is a lot of discussion in court as to, you know, to what extent was his arrest retaliation for the releasing of our second report. There was evidence that Border Patrol agents had knowledge of the report that morning. So we really saw that as retaliatory. But at the same time, his acquittal then provided, you know, important case law within the district to provide a certain, you know, measure of protection for providing humanitarian care to people in the borderlands. So it was really important ,kind of, instruction to us regarding the legality of our work, the kind of defense that can be waged in support of volunteers. So ultimately, it was a victory that really kind of reinforced the foundations of our work in that way. There was a huge effort, huge struggle for Scott personally and, you know, really aimed to have a chilling effect on the work in the desert overall. **Inmn ** 40:27 Yeah, that trial was...that trial was crazy. Like, I don't know, I went to the...like, I attended a couple of days of the court process and I just remember listening to the prosecutor try to make absolutely absurd claims in court, that drinking water might be harmful to someone as like a reason for why humanitarian aid organizations shouldn't leave water in the desert for people. And I was like, this is like a highly paid criminal prosecutor who's trying to argue, and like get doctors to agree with, the absurd claim that drinking water might be harmful to someone who's experiencing dehydration. And I'm just like...this is a farce. **Sophie ** 41:24 Some of them were so bizarre. Well, and the smuggling charge was only based on him being seen, not heard, outside of the aid station, seen pointing to the mountains while talking to the patients. And because he was pointing north, that was considered an act of smuggling, which I thought was incredible. And there was this really powerful moment where Scott did take the stand and said "I was saying, 'There's one highway going through this huge expanse of incredibly deadly desert. And so don't walk towards those mountains because there's no help if you come into harm's way to the east. To the west, it's another 20 miles before you'll hit another major road. If you're in trouble, find the highway, right?'" So given, you know, knowing that these two patients were planning to reenter the back country and trying to give, you know, life saving information was considered to be an act of smuggling. And then I also remember the prosecutor in his closing arguments on the last day, putting up a picture that had been taken of volunteers with the patients after they'd recovered to a certain degree, where they were smiling and claiming that these patients were basically on vacation in the United States, who had gone through, you know, life or death, kind of, harrowing circumstances traveling through one of the most deadly corridors along the whole border. And they were so lucky to be alive by the time they reached Ajo. And somehow, the prosecutor wanted the jury to believe that they were just hamming it up and having a great time on vacation. And it was incredible at that trial to sit in on and relieving to see that those arguments didn't really hold water in the end. **Inmn ** 43:23 Yeah, and...but also, I don't know, it's frightening to see what the legal system can bring charges to bear on someone where they have absolutely no evidence and that it can then take multiple years and obscene amounts of community resources to defend these charges. I don't know. It's...which I don't know, is maybe maybe purposeful by them. I don't know. Just...this is also a little bit outside of the scope, but I feel like people are a little...or might be a little curious...if.... Like, under the law, like what...for people who live in the borderlands, if someone comes to your door what aid can you offer people without legal complications? **Sophie ** 44:25 Yeah. **Inmn ** 44:28 Or, I guess, like, what does the law define as aiding and abetting or smuggling or human trafficking, right, as we've seen people get charged with? **Sophie ** 44:38 I mean, I'll say that I'm not a lawyer. Parker is on the way to becoming one. But I can say
S1E97 - Eleanor Goldfield on "To the Trees" & Forest Defense
24-11-2023
S1E97 - Eleanor Goldfield on "To the Trees" & Forest Defense
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Eleanor Goldfield comes on to talk about her film, "To the Trees," a documentary that highlights forest defense tactics in Northern California. The film is meant to call into question our current relationships to nature, how we might reframe them, and why that reframing is vital to our survival and having a livable future. Guest Info Eleanor Goldfield (she/her) is a filmmaker and journalist who works to highlight different movement and struggles. You can find her work and her film "To the Trees" at tothetreesfilm.com and artkillingapathy.com. Eleanor can also be found on Twitter @RadicalEleanor and Instagram @RadicalEleanor Host Info Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Eleanor on "To the Trees" & Forest Defense **Inmn ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Inmn Neruin, and I use they/them pronouns. Today we are talking to a filmmaker about a really beautiful film called To the Trees. And I'm really excited for you all to hear this conversation. We're going to talk a lot about logging and forest defense and just kind of like the extraction industry in general, and then just about some, you know, cultural or psychological paradigms that we have around resource extraction. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here is a jingle from another show on that network.  **Inmn ** 01:40 And we're back. Hi, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Could you introduce yourself with your name, pronouns, and a little bit about your background, and what you're here to talk about today?  **Eleanor ** 01:55 Sure, thanks so much for having me. My name is Eleanor Goldfield. She/her. I'm a queer creative, radical filmmaker, and journalist. And I've been doing frontline--I hesitate to say activism--I've been doing frontline actions and journalism since 2010 together. And before that I'd been doing organizing and community organizing since about 2003, before the second Iraq War. And I'm here today to talk about my latest offering in the film domain, which is called, "To the Trees," and it's about forest defense tactics in so-called Northern California and also about our relationship to nature and the necessary shift that that must take for us to have a livable future. **Inmn ** 02:50 Cool, um--I mean, not cool that a film like this needs to get made but cool that a film like this now exists and can teach people a lot of really awesome things. I highly encourage everyone to go out and watch the movie. It's really wonderful. It's really beautiful. But could you kind of give us just like a recap of the movie. **Eleanor ** 03:17 Sure. Yeah, and the films available at ToTheTreesfilm.com. And all of my work is also available at ArtKillingApathy.com. So kind of a general overview of the film is that I went out there to do.... This is kind of how I work. I ask folks if they need any support--and I'm ground support, by the way, because I don't do heights. Although, I did climb a redwood when I was out there, which was a terrifying experience. And I'm never doing it again. **Inmn ** 03:49 They're so big,  **Eleanor ** 03:51 They're ginormous. And that was my first...that was the first tree I decided to climb because...yeah, whatever. And it took me 45 minutes. And it's 200 feet up in the air, and I was terrified. And it took me like 15 minutes to get up the courage just to step off the platform. And the tree sitter, they were like, "You just step up," and I'm like, "What do you just step up? I'm gonna die," and they're like, "No, you're not. You're gonna be fine. I swear" and I'm like, "Oh God, this is so terrifying." And they're like, "Yeah, maybe you are ground support." **Inmn ** 04:20 Ground support is crucial. **Eleanor ** 04:23 It is crucial. Yes. And it's very much.... That's very much me. I was built to like just be grounded, I think. So I went out there basically saying, "I would love to help you all and do support and also, if it's cool with you, I'll bring a camera and I'd love to just hear some of your stories." And so folks were cool with that. And so there I go, traipsing into the woods. And it's a beautiful tree village. And the redwood forests, if folks have never seen them, I mean it's like Narnia. You know the forest floor is Like this plush, you know, soft and welcoming space. And then you look up and it's like the trees are so tall that you can barely see the crowns. It's just kind of like this green haze above you. And so I just started talking to folks and talked to a couple of tree sitters. I also spoke with somebody who does more of the judicial side of things, like trying to get forest...or like logging companies in court and how that kind of works with tree sitters. And then I also spoke to an indigenous woman, Marnie Atkins, who is a member of the Wiyot tribe, spoke to her a lot about perspectives on what's going on in these forests and the paradigms that are different between her people and the colonizers who came. And so it's kind of a.... [trails off] I call it at the end, I have this, I have this slide that says, "To the trees: It's a dedication, a call to action, a promise, and a militant apology." And I wanted folks to feel that, that it's an offering and it's also an invitation, not just to act in whatever ways we can but also to question the way that we think about these beautiful places, whether they be the redwood forests or whether they be the the ecosystems that are outside your front door. **Inmn ** 06:42 Yeah, yeah. And it's.... I feel funny that this is one of my first questions, but it was one of the pieces of the film that kind of really got me--it's like always knowing that Capitalism uses things for really silly things--but learning that the main use of redwood trees is to just turn them into kind of crappy decks. Is that right? **Eleanor ** 07:12 Yeah, yeah, it's based on market forces. The best use of a redwood tree is decking. And not only that, but redwoods can be 2000 years old. And of course, if you were to chop down a 2000 year old tree--which by the way, there's no law against it in California or anywhere else in the in the United States--if you were to do that, yes, that deck would last a while--it wouldn't last 2000 years--it would last a while. But the way that they cut down trees at the rate--because of course, no one's gonna wait 2000 years--they cut down these trees in their infancy. So the strong heartwood of the tree has not had a chance to develop. And so you're cutting down these trees, you know, destroying any future that they might have to rebuild an ecosystem, and you're turning them into a deck that is not even going to last like a decade because it's just not made of wood that has had a chance to mature. And so you're literally destroying burgeoning ecosystems for the sake of a deck that is going to last less than, you know, the length of a Britney Spears' single. It's just...it's ridiculous. **Inmn ** 08:35 Yeah, yeah, I feel like that's one of the harder things that I struggle with when really thinking about industrial Capitalism is just the...it's like the cost of what it...like what it costs to do to the planet versus what is gotten from that. And it's not even like, oh, you're gonna get something that's like, "We cut down this tree and it's gonna last this family multi-generations," you know, it's like a piece of shit that's gonna rot and fall apart in a decade.  **Eleanor ** 09:12 And that's the whole, you know, that's one of the primary issues with Capitalism is that it treats things that are finite, like trees and clean air and clean water, as if they're infinite. And it treats things that are infinite, like ones and zeros on a computer, as if they're finite. Like, "Oh, we don't have the money." And, I mean, it's like--I can't remember who it was-- maybe it was Alan Watts, who said, "That's kind of like saying, 'You don't have enough inches to build a house.'" Like that doesn't make any sense. Like of course you have more money because you just make it up. It's all a fairy tale. Whereas the things that we can't just make up like a 2000 year old tree or a clean river, you treat as entirely disposable, and that is one of the primary issues with the paradigm of Capitalism and thereby colonialism, which was the battering ram of Capitalism. **Inmn ** 10:08 Yeah. Yeah. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what are the life cycles or growth cycles or logging cycles like in places that are being [testing words] harvested? Destroyed? Whichever word.  **Eleanor ** 10:34 Yeah, that's that euphemism, right? "Oh, we're just harvesting." No! So, basically, there are several different cycles that can be used. I think one of the shortest ones for redwoods is 45 or 50 years. So if you clear-cut and then you--and redwoods are actually one of the few trees that can sprout, like from a stump. Like it's self...I can't remember what it's called. Self-sprouting or something? And so you have to wait 45 or 50 years. Now, whether they always do that or not, is up for debate, especially depending on what they're hoping to get from the products. But it's 45 or 50 years. Some will say, "Oh, we're gonna leave this plot for 100 years," or whatever. And again, whether that's done or not, is up for debate. And it's also difficult because industrial logging has only been around since like, you know, 120 years or so. So when we talk about the amount of time you really need to grow these forests, it's like we're going back to a time before this was even a conversation because you couldn't possibly tear down the forests that quickly. And so we're in this kind of odd liminal space where people are talking about, "Oh, we're gonna have to let this grow again for 100 years," but 100 years ago this wasn't even a contemplation. And so the cycles are based on, again, like the market forces. LIke, okay, well, at 45 or 50 years these trees will be ready to be harvested and then can be used to do whatever we want with them, you know? Truck them off to the sawmill. And that, again, is it.... Well, I could go off into so many different tangents, but I'll pause. **Inmn ** 12:36 I do.... We love tangents. We love rants. So this wasn't surprising to me, but I've spent like a little bit of time in the coal fields of West Virginia, and it seems like there's this kind of similar thing in logging where there's a strong guidance to preserve the cardboard frame of what things look like from a road or something, you know, so it's like the devastation appears a lot less impactful. I am curious what kind of lengths or strategies logging companies go to--or the State goes to--to make it seem like nothing all that bad is happening? **Eleanor ** 13:25 Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny you brought up West Virginia because my first documentary was actually about West Virginia. And I talked a lot about the coal fields. And I actually did a flight above them because you can't--I mean, to your point--you can't see it from the roads. And you can really only see the vast devastation if you're up in a plane. Or if you have a drone or something like that. So in California, they call it the 'visual impact' or commonly called 'the beauty screen.' And it's this idea that, particularly Inmnorthern California--because Northern California, unlike West Virginia, which is very proud of its coal, Northern California doesn't want you to think it's proud of logging--it wants you to think that it's super proud of the trees, which is really twisted. **Inmn ** 14:21 Yeah. Yeah. **Eleanor ** 14:22 It's like being a serial killer and then being like, "I have a human rights organization." So they will.... Right before you get to a lot of these THPs, that's timber harvest plans, you're driving through, for instance, the Avenue of the Giants, which is part of a redwood forest, Redwood National Forest, and it's gorgeous, right? And you would never think that just a few miles up in the hills there are these vast bald spots. And so they want to ensure that that stays the case, right? So you just keep driving and you keep driving up the one on one and you just see trees and then the Pacific Ocean is over here and you're like, "Oh my god, California is amazing!"  **Inmn ** 15:06 "We love trees!" **Eleanor ** 15:07 Right. But it's being destroyed. And you can't see that. And it's very important that you can't see that because the companies that own this land--because most of it is privately owned logging land--and the companies have this like...one of the guys in the film says, "This eco groovy PR campaign and this facade." And they want you to think that everything is done respectfully and sustainably when, of course, you can't clear-cut sustainably. So they want to make sure that you can't see it because that would fly in the face of their 'eco groovy facade.' And part of that is also that they have a certification, which is called FSC, Forest Stewardship Council certification. Which if you've ever been to a Home Depot or Lowe's, oftentimes FSC wood will be more expensive because the idea is that it's sustainable. And so you get to feel good about yourself, you know, like, "Oh, sweet, this isn't from a clear-cut," but it is. And the Forest Stewardship Council, even if it started with honorable aims, is a complete...it's just a rubber stamp for the logging industry. And there's been a long list of horribleness, including stealing indigenous land, clear-cutting old growth forests, and you know, and yet they have that little FSC stamp. So people think, consumers think, that this is done sustainably. But of course, it's not. And so this is all part of that greenwashing campaign, whether it be the 'beauty screen' or the FSC stamp, it's all part of that push to ensure that the consumer remains in the dark and thinks that, particularly, Northern California is sustainably harvesting their, in quotes, 'harvesting' these trees and ensuring that they will be around forever. **Inmn ** 17:09 Golly, yeah. And I imagine people also...like the consumer on the end of like...they, you know, they go into Home Depot, or they're hiring a contractor to build their crappy deck, I'm sure they're really ecstatic that they have this...are getting this redwood deck. Like, I feel like it's just the name, you know, "Redwood," it sounds so majestic. It sounds so like, "Wow, this is gonna last me a really long time."  Is that kind of like part of it too, do you think?  **Eleanor ** 17:44 Yeah, I think it sounds.... You know, I was in bands for years, and people used to talk about the wood that went into their instruments like, "Oh, it's mahogany neck." and someone's like, "Oh! It's a mahogany neck." **Inmn ** 17:57 It's an electric guitar...like it doesn't matter. **Eleanor ** 18:01 And sure, I mean,as a former audio tech, I can be like, okay, I've heard the difference in acoustic guitars where you're like, "Okay. That. Yes." But it is also pretty.... I mean, mahogany is not endangered in that sense. But still, it's pretty twisted to be like, "Yeah, the best way to use this tree is to turn it into an instrument or a deck or whatever. It's that like, again, in Capitalism, nothing has inherent value in and of itself. Nobody's like, "Oh, wow, an oak tree! That's super cool!" Everyone's like, "Hmm, what can I do with that?" It's like, maybe you could just leave it the fuck alone. I don't know, Maybe that could be a thing? But nothing in Capitalism has inherent value in and of itself. So it always has to be twisted and contorted into something. And that carries with it a certain status, right? Like, oh, if you have this deck made out of redwood or if you have that guitar made out of mahogany, it becomes a status symbol. And so that is also part of like the poisoning that is Capitalism, psychologically, I feel.  **Inmn ** 19:06 Golly, I wish--I know, this is a recurring theme on the show--but if only our lives were more like those of hobbits. I mean, they just have a Party Tree, and that's a community resource. And they're like, "We need a party tree. It needs to be like 3000 years old and that's a party tree." If it's not 3000 years old. It's not a Party Tree. Or, yeah, the forest on the edge of town that everyone's like too afraid to go into. **Eleanor ** 19:40 Yeah, well, and this is actually something that I think is funny, too, that we have so many stories, whether that be through, you know, Lord of the Rings, or like when I was growing up, I partially grew up in Sweden, and there's so many stories still today about the Forest and its power. And I feel like that's also an interesting relationship that we have with the forest is that we are a little bit afraid of it. And that also...that also pushes us into this relationship where, okay, well, I'm gonna conquer my fears, right? As opposed to the stories--and there are these stories even in European cultures--that talk about the beauty of the forest and what the forest gives us. But that's also an interesting dynamic between a lot of Indigenous stories that I've heard where, yes, there might be like some being that lives in the forest that you don't want to interact with. But a lot of it is also about how, "Oh my gosh, look at all of the beauty and the life that we get from the forest," as opposed to, "Woods are terrifying. Don't mess with them at all. Just don't go there." It's like, but that's also going to dictate how you feel about cutting down a bunch of trees. **Inmn ** 21:04 Yeah, it's wild that fear of the forest means we have to destroy the forest. It's a bad mentality. As much as I love a story about the Dark Forest, you know, and wish that that was like a more sustainable option, growing a more deep connection to the forest is probably a more sustainable way to go about things. Did you ever see Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind?  **Eleanor ** 21:33 Yes, I did.   **Inmn ** 21:34 Yeah. Incredible movie about a toxic forest that will fucking kill everyone who comes into it. Because it eventually was like, "No humans. You can't. No, I can't take anymore. Here's poison." **Eleanor ** 21:50 Don't blame it really.  **Inmn ** 21:52 Yeah, and it's like, "No, I need several thousand years to recuperate from the harm that you've done and eventually I'll be a forest you can come in again." **Eleanor ** 22:04 Right. Right. Well, and I think... We talk about that in mutual aid spaces, or in organizing spaces, like, okay, if harm has been caused and there needs to be time to recover then possibly we can get to the point where we can be in community together with that person who did the harm.... It's like, we do that as humans. And it's necessary, right? And that is exactly what ecosystems need too. Like, the idea of--this is also how we fuck it up in terms of the Capitalist mentality--the idea of like, "Oh, we're going to leave that to grow for another 45 years before we cut it down again," that's not allowing a relationship to recuperate, right? That is, once again, treating something in that violent way, like the violence of ownership versus stewardship, right? Like, ownership is a violent relationship--I mean, just look at slavery--but stewardship suggests a respect. And I think there's also space for fear there, too, right? I think that, you know, when I was a kid walking through woods, I would feel a little...maybe a little scared, but I would also feel safe, like, "Oh, I'm safe within the woods." So I think we can carry both of those at once. And I think that sometimes when you have a deep respect for something, there might be a moment where you're like, "Oh, that's, that's creepy." But there's also this feeling of like, "I'm safe here." And I think that, you know, I think that carrying multiple truths at the same time and multiple thoughts is just beneficial. But yeah, I think that the idea of allowing places to recover is super important, while also recognizing that we have a role in that. And that's something that Marnie talks about in--and actually one of the tree sitters as well--talks about in the film is this idea that the relationship we need to have with nature is not removing ourselves from nature. And I always think of...I spoke with somebody who does work in Africa with the Maasai, and she was saying that the Maasai were removed from their ancestral lands in order to create a conservation park. But what happened with the ecosystem when they were removed is the ecosystem started to fall apart, because the Maasai were an integral--and had been for 1000s of years--an integral part of that ecosystem. And so it belies that notion that we are somehow outside of ecosystems. No, we are super reliant on them. And I think that kind of that kind of thinking is also super important to remember that like, you know, Indigenous peoples have used, for instance, wildfires, as a way to steward the land, because they're not the wildfires that we see today. They were wildfires that were able to replenish the soil and the land, get rid of invasives, and things like that. So the idea that humans are a part of these ecosystems, and that we have to learn those ways of being and rid ourselves of the notion that we can somehow be outside of, and other than, the ecosystems. **Inmn ** 25:29 I mean, it's like, it's.... I feel like, it's the same thing with most struggles out in the world is we have the tendency to want to remove ourselves from those things. And it is usually detrimental to those causes for us to think of ourselves as outside of everything--which, you know, obviously, there's struggles that we should send our specific voices around and that we should...like certain people should like not make about themselves--but like, for the most part, we are entrenched in all of in all of the thing. And we have to be an active part of them to fix them. **Eleanor ** 26:13 Totally. And I think that, you know, the idea of like, we should always be a part of these struggles, and not make them about ourselves, right, like the struggle to defend redwoods is not about us. It's just that in our own space, we can have these conversations about what it means for us humans to be in the struggle, just like I think, you know, right now, I've been in conversation with several fellow Jews about what's going on right now and what what we're dealing with as Jews. That is not something that I want to put out into the world like up on, you know, I don't want to spend a lot of time on it because it takes the focus away from Palestine. But within our Jewish community, I think it's an important conversation to have. So it's like...It's that...It's that way of being in the struggle. And then if you--just like I think white people need to have conversations with each other about what it means to...like what does Black Lives Matter really mean? And what does dismantling racism really mean? Don't do that at a Black Lives Matter protest, okay. That is not the time, but in our own space and time. So I think, again, you can hold both of those, and I think it's important to.  **Inmn ** 27:29 Yeah, golly, to go tangent for a second on that, like, I don't know, I read this article yesterday, I think, about this.... It was an interview with this Palestinian man who was talking about being asked about antisemitism and like his response to it was like, Israel is.... Israel as a State. Israel displaced Jews living as Arabs in Palestine. Like, Israel is bad for Jewishness and Jewish people.  **Eleanor ** 28:15 Yes, thank you.  **Inmn ** 28:16 And this is like all part of this, like colonizing myth, and any colonizing myth, is to create these others to create a "side," or whatever. I don't know. **Eleanor ** 28:29 Yeah, that's so true. Israel is the greatest threat to Jews in the world right now, I think. **Inmn ** 28:37 Um, too.... Not that I don't want to talk about this stuff more but to veer back towards the movie, I am curious about the collaboration between different...like attacking the problem from different angles. And in the movie, there's kind of this triple-pronged approach that is presented as there's people on the ground doing stuff in the trees, there's people doing legal work, there's indigenous people doing stewardship, and then there's people coming in to make movies about it. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how, like, all of these things interact and like help each other. **Eleanor ** 29:32 Sure. So, it was actually Tom Wheeler, who works at Epic in California, who said that we exist in an ecosystem with each other, which I liked. And he was talking about how--and he works on the legal side--and he was talking about why the tree sitters are important. And I really appreciated that because I think a lot of times we get, you know, the classic saying that like, "When anarchists meet, we meet in a circle. And that's also how I do firing ranges." And unfortunately, like it's true--not just with anarchists, it's just that my anarchist friend happened to say that. I think it's everybody on the left, regardless of what...if you have a title for your preferred angle. But I think it so often is the case that it's like, "No, my tactic is the most important. If you don't want to do my tactic then you're wrong and you're an asshole and you're standing in the way," and it's like, but not everybody can do the thing that you're doing. Like, I can't climb--I mean, I can climb a tree, but I won't, there's like, you know, the floor is lava or some shit--and not a lot of people have the ability to get up into the woods, to take that space and time. And a lot of people don't have the expertise to do legal battles. You know, we need a lot of good lawyers out there. I think the Lakota Law Project taught us that. Look what's happening in Atlanta. Like. you need good lawyers. So I think instead of getting on people's cases, about tactics, I think it's really important that we recognize that whatever your passion is, whatever your expertise or your drive is, there is a place and a need for that in our movements and in whatever struggle. And so I really appreciated that about the folks that I spoke with, is that they all were complementary and understanding of the other people in the struggle and understood that the goal was the same, was to protect these spaces and protect them out of this feeling of love for these spaces. And I think that's the other thing that's really important is that nobody was doing this for the, you know, the Instagram likes or because they thought it...because it paid the most money or because anything like...they were literally like, "Because I love these spaces," either because I have a strong ancestral connection to them or because I've just fallen in love with them from being around them. And so I think that that's the other thing and that this diversity of tactics is necessary when confronting something so vast and so disgusting as colonialism and Capitalism. We have to do whatever we can. And these folks are doing whatever they can. And Pat, one of the tree sitters, actually talks about this too in the film, like, sit wherever you can, do whatever you can in the ecosystem that you know, in the ecosystem that you love. Like, it doesn't have to be in a redwood. Cool if it is, but we don't have to choose the most superlative ecosystem or the most superlative place to do this. All ecosystems are worthy and Inmneed of our collaboration and protection. And again, in whatever ways we can. **Inmn ** 32:57 Yeah, yeah. It's really disheartening to watch spaces kind of rip themselves apart in being upset that everyone is not doing the tactic that they want. And that is something that I've always really appreciated about, especially, forest defense campaigns or like other kinds of extraction industry defenses--I can't think of words right now--is just the recognition that we need a lot of different kinds of people to do this work. And, you know, I feel like maybe part of that is people maybe having gone and done things and then gotten in a lot of legal trouble and being like, "Oh, fuck, we need lawyers," and then like, realizing like, "Oh, lawyers are really cool!" But, yeah, that's something I just really appreciate about those campaigns. Um, yeah, I don't know, maybe this is a funny question. Say I'm some random person--or not random--just I'm a person listening to this podcast who's been like curious about forest defense and doesn't really know where to start or how to get into that. Like, I want to.... I've never done forest defense and I want to go get involved in a forest defense campaign, either one that's near me or one that's, maybe, far away. Do you have any advice for someone like that? **Eleanor ** 34:48 Sure. I mean, I think just start digging into folks who have the knowledge that you're interested in. So like Inmnorthern California, there's the tree sitters union, I think they're on Instagram @thetreesittersunion. There's also, like down around where I am, close to Appalachia, there's Appalachians Against Pipelines. Greenpeace does a lot of like trainings, like climbing trainings and things like that. And those are also spaces where you might be able to meet folks that are like minded. But honestly, like in terms of getting started on a campaign, like.... You know, in the film, again, they just say, just, you know, I" walked up...we walked up and we saw that there was a chainsaw at the bottom of this tree And were like, 'Oh, I guess we'll sit in this tree.'" I think people feel like there has to be this, you know, there has to be the war room where you got all the plans and you got the poster board and you got paper clips and all that. But you don't! Like yes, plan is good so you have water and shit, but it doesn't have to be this really elaborate. campaign to start with. And earlier this year, I was in Germany because I was doing a tour of my film about West Virginia coal in the coal regions of Germany. And I went to this tree village that is absolutely gorgeous. And folks were still living there, even though the campaign had kind of moved on, and I was asking them, like, "Okay, so what's the story here?" And it was the same thing. It was like, "Well, we just didn't want them to cut down this forest." I mean, it really is that simple. Like, I think, again, there is this...there's kind of this mystique to the idea of frontline defense. And, yes, it can build to something where you've got several tree villages or you have, you know, a resistance camp blocking a pipeline that's also like a food forest. Like, sure it can become that. But you don't need to start with that. You just need to start with yourself and some comrades, and this, again, this feeling of love for this place that is threatened. And again, like looking for organizations or like minded folks--and the ones that I mentioned are good places to start--but there are definitely others that I don't know of personally. **Inmn ** 37:14 Yeah. I'm having...I guess having witnessed campaigns in a lot of different places, I'm curious about this. Are there any kind of differences that you noticed between forest defense campaigns here in the United States, or like Turtle Island, versus in Europe, or any kind of like other places that you've been? Either in terms of repression, tactics, or just like how people organize? **Eleanor ** 37:52 So, I'd say in terms of the repression tactics, I mean, people in Europe--I can only speak to, currently, Germany and Sweden--but people were very shocked and disgusted at what happened to Tortuguita and what happened down in Atlanta in terms of facing terrorism charges and Rico charges. But there is also, I mean, in Germany, earlier this year, the cops brutally beat people who were trying to save a small town, Lützerath, from being destroyed for an open coal pit mine. So in terms of the direct pushback, the violence, they're not getting shot, but they are getting the shit beat out of them. And so there's absolutely that understanding that, you know, fascism is on the rise across the globe. And neither Europe nor the United States have to look very far in their history, or their present really,to find ways of emulating the fascist state that they are moving towards. And so, in terms of repression, I think it's mostly like the legal battles that are the main difference between the US and Europe. And I think in terms of organizing, I do see a lot of similarities, basically, because it's the same story. It's people who were like, "Actually, you know what, no, you can't fucking do that. I'm not gonna let you ruin this." And I do find a little bit of the same problems in terms of organizing. Like, for instance, Inmnorthern Sweden--which a lot of people don't know that Sweden, Finland, and Norway have indigenous peoples that were then colonized--so the Sami are the indigenous people of the far-north and their ancestral lands blanket across what is now Norway, Finland, Sweden, and parts of Russia. And that's also where a lot of forests are. And it's up in the Arctic Circle. And there's a lot of still culturally important practices, like reindeer herding, that happen there that are being disrupted by deforestation and mining. You know, like Sweden announced recently that, "Oh, we found lithium in the north." Oh, great!  **Inmn ** 40:24 Oh no. Leave it there! **Eleanor ** 40:26 Yeah, exactly. Don't tell Elon Musk. So, yeah, there's a push to protect these spaces but also this difficulty of like, okay, how do we, as non-indigenous people in Sweden make these inroads. And the Sami are historically very reticent of working with Swedes--I don't blame them--or Norwegians or what have you, because of what's happened in the past. And I noticed that here, too, right. It's difficult sometimes for people who are not indigenous to make those connections in indigenous communities. And so I see a lot of that struggle as well. But at the same time, again, when you are coming at it from this place of, "Well, I too want to protect this out of love. And not because I'm looking for some kind of accolade or whatever," that I think that you can make those connections and you can make that struggle collaborative, as long as you're coming at it from that space. And, so I do see that happening in places outside of the US and I think it's rad. **Inmn ** 41:43 Hell yeah. That's really great. Golly, this is a really weird question, but, you know, my brain's always on a tangent. Are there any forest defense influencers? Is this a thing in the internet and the internet world? I'm imagining the person who's just there for, you know, Instagram likes, or something, and I'm like, is that real? **Eleanor ** 42:10 So like, not like the straight up forest defenders, but there's definitely like the Sierra Club type that are like.... You know, so, again, it's like this kind of gray area--I'm a big fan of recognizing nuance--it's like this nuanced space where the person cares and doesn't want to see it destroyed but also wants to virtue signal to people that they care. And that gets all gummed up in the whole Capitalist shit show. So yeah, it's a gummy area. **Inmn ** 42:48 Yeah, and this is--golly, whatever, I love funny questions--so I'm curious about this from, you know, I've had my own experiences with different with different organizations, but is there any kind of  tension or like problems that you do see between on the ground direct action campaigns versus these larger NGO or like nonprofit structures like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not asking for a shit post about these groups or anything, just some of the nuances or complications that can come up?  **Eleanor ** 43:38 Yeah, I mean, again, Capitalism fucks everything up. There were a couple of organizations that I reached out to when I was in California, and they were first happy to talk to me, but then when they realized that I was there supporting and speaking to tree sitters, who are, by definition, breaking the law, because it's private timber land, did not want to speak to me anymore. And I think that's very clearly--like whether they personally wanted to or not is not the point--but as an organization, I think they realized, "Oh, well, our donors are, I don't know, some rich asshole over here. And if we do that, if we engage with people who are very overtly breaking the law, then that's not good for our bottom line. And we need our bottom line in order to keep protecting the forest.: So in their mind, they were doing that so that they could continue to protect the forest. But of course, this creates that splintering that is so useful for the system. In reality, they should be working with the tree sitters. Like, you have the ability to work together to protect these spaces but because you have to make sure that you get the foundation money or these rich donors or whatever, you can't. And so I absolutely see that and I think that's also a global problem because a lot of this does cost money, you know? Like, rope is not cheap. Just making sure that people have supplies and food and things. Like shit costs money. And it's not like tree sitters get paid. So it is difficult, but I tend to--I shouldn't say...I don't want to be prejudiced ahead of time, but I've I find that I often am--be prejudiced against a big organization that says, "We are protecting the forest." It's like, are you? Or are you doing like forest walks and shit--which is cool--and like picking up trash. But that is not the same thing as standing between a chainsaw and a tree. And that's not to say that like, "I'm more radical than you." It's just a necessary context, I think, for understanding, again, this ecosystem that we're a part
S1E96 - Elizabeth on Small Scale Farming
17-11-2023
S1E96 - Elizabeth on Small Scale Farming
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Elizabeth talks with Brooke about running a small scale farm, including what goes into feeding over 700 families year-round, the importance of community accessible farm space, how climate change continues to mess things up, and how taking care of the soil really matters. Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Elizabeth on small scale farming **Brooke ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Brooke Jackson. And today we're going to be talking with Elizabeth Miller, a farmer, about her work in having an organic farm and some really cool stuff that she does that's worth all of us learning how to do a bit of. But before we get into that, we'd like to give a shout out to another one of the podcasts on the Channel Zero Network. So here's a little jingle from one of our friends. Doo doo doo doo, doo doo. [Singing a simple melody] **Brooke ** 01:29 And we're back. So as I mentioned in the intro, I have with me today, Elizabeth Miller, a wonderful lady who owns a farm. And Elizabeth, I'll hand it off to you to tell us a little bit more about yourself. **Elizabeth ** 01:46 Thanks for having me. I'd love to talk about farming and my community. I've been running Minto Island Growers for about 16 years here in South Salem. My husband Chris and I started the farm way back when. We were passionate about environmental science and community food systems when we met in college, and I grew up working on our family farm and it was the kid who always wanted to come back and work with plants. And when Chris and I formed our partnership we were ready to come back here, in 2008, after working at a farm in California and really building a community based organic farm. And I can delve more into what that means to me. But one of our primary works that we do on our farm is centered around our CSA program, which is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture that's practiced in lots of different ways all over the world, really. Every farm does a little bit differently but you have a subscription based weekly produce box. And we do a main season and a winter season for that. And I can, again, talk more about that if that's of interest. And we have a farm stand where we also do lots of food: woodfired pizza and berry milkshakes and salads, things that we hope reflect all the beautiful abundance and diversity that you can grow and eat here in Oregon. And it's also just a wonderful community hub for families to come and gather and join and connect with nature and really connect with the earth. That's what I firmly believe food can do for us and feed our souls and bodies in all the really most profound ways. We do organic plant starts and we do mint propagation and we used to do native plant work that were projects that I grew up doing, but we don't do any of that anymore. And that's a short summary. And I'll stop talking so we can get into more detail. **Brooke ** 03:46 No worries, thank you. Now listeners, you're listening to this and you may be wondering why we're having a farmer come on and talk and we've definitely talked a lot about gardening, at home gardening, growing your own garden. We've talked a little bit about community gardens. And what intrigues me about what Elizabeth's doing and what I think is useful to us is that she and her farm operate on a fairly small footprint. They grow an incredible diversity of food. And it's a fairly small staff. And when I think about the future and climate change problems that we're having and the number of food chains, food supply insecurities that we have, I'm concerned a lot about how we grow food to feed a community. And I feel like what Elizabeth does with her farm does feed a large community and there may be parts of that that are replicable for the rest of us. So if we find ourselves in a time in which our supply chains have broken down or we can work together to develop a farm, there's a lot of insights from what she does that would help create those kinds of things and replicate them in other places, because she's not a large scale industrial farmer and is not mono-cropping. And really does, like I was saying, a lot on a small footprint with a small staff. So. Elizabeth, would you tell us a little bit more about some of the specifics of the farm like how much land do you farm? How much food do you produce? How many different crops? What's your staff size? Some of those kinds of things to fill in the details of what I was just saying, **Elizabeth ** 05:46 Sure, happy to. We lease about 29 acres. A lot of that encompasses non-production areas where we grow our plant starts and have our washing station and a commercial kitchen that supports the food cart. So in any given season, we are probably cultivating between 8 to 12 acres of land and that also includes lots of fallow fields that are either not in the rotation that year or hopefully are being cover cropped to add more nutrients and organic matter to the soil and to just practice good rotation. And one of the most amazing things about growing in the Pacific Northwest is the huge amount of diversity that you can grow here in this temperate climate, even with climate change. And that's going to stay true even within a climate change context. And I feel like having a diverse...a business model based on a high level of diversity can provide a lot of resilience within, you know, socio-political changes, climate change, context environmental extremes, you know, that.... Even though diversity is challenging, because it means you have to have a greater skill set per crop. And the complexity, the number of successions, and the complexity with the number of crops makes it difficult to run as lean and efficient and profitable of a business, it still provides a lot of resilience and it's really what our business model is based on. So we grow, you know, about 30 to 40 different crops and within that, over 100 different varieties. You know, just with pepper, eggplant, and tomato alone there's probably 30 to 40 varieties there, which is a little bit insane, but it's also incredibly exciting because there's so much diversity out there. And as a farmer, you know, it's just...it keeps...it's just exciting to delve into the world of diversity within varieties. And we do that both for fun, to expose our customers and our eaters and for ourselves to more options and things you don't get in the store. That's one of the fun things about gardening at home or working on or buying from a small farm is just getting access to more interesting varieties. We do that also because there's a lot of great plant breeding that goes on and can--depending on what the breeders are focusing on--there can be more resilience within a variety. That's especially true with the hybrid brassicas. So, you know, we love the seed saving. We love open pollinated varieties and heirloom varieties. But as farmers who rely on growing food for our economic living, we do buy hybrid seeds--nothing GMO, of course, because we're certified organic and we wouldn't do that anyway. But we do see it with certain crops like the hybrid brassicas--like the heading brassicas, like broccoli, cabbages, etc--having options with hybrids is really important for just vigor and yield and consistency. And even with tomatoes, we love growing the beautiful diversity of all the open pollinated heirloom tomatoes but, you know, now that we've been farming for over 16 years, we're seeing diseases we hadn't seen before, especially with the extreme.... Well, we had already seen late blight in our tomatoes, but I'm sure that it would have been.... Our very, very wet spring we had last year, we saw a bigger increase in fungal and bacterial diseases and we've seen resistance to those things in different varieties. So that's been an interesting thing we've observed in the last couple years. So yeah, our CSA model, it's changed a little bit over the years but essentially we do 22 weeks of a main season. And then we do about 7 weeks of a winter season. And our main season is June through the end of October and winter being November through February. And we could easily do a year round CSA in terms of what we're able to grow. It's those bridge months, we call them, from like February March, April, May are challenging but we have farmer friends who are really successfully do a year round CSAs because you can grow so much diversity here, especially if you utilize covered spaces really strategically, like hoop houses or even lower tech stuff like caterpillar tunnels--which are also important in a climate change context, even more so than then they have been in the past. So we do a combination for our CSA program of pack [unsure of spelling] shares, where we decide what goes in those shares. and we do two different share sizes to make it more...give more options to the community. And those get delivered to drop sites still relatively, you know, the farthest.... We used to go to Portland and then we realized at a point that we could fulfill all of our CSA shares here in the community. And so we decided to just deliver into the Salem area, which is so much better for many, many reasons. So the farthest we go out is Kaiser. But many of our drop sites are really pretty close to the farm. A few are five minutes away. Some are 10 minutes away. And that's because we really do cater to our local Salem community. And we are so proud of the relationships we've been able to build with our community over time, which I can talk more about because it's really its own thing to discuss. And then we do a market-style option, which again, different farms define this and do this in different ways. But for us it means setting up our produce at our farm stand two nights a week from four to seven. And we have a combination of fixed and choice items. And so the fixed items allow us to just have a little more reliable crop plan and make sure that we're still getting that good level of diversity out to our customers. People have to try to eat bok choy at least once a year, not five times a year, but once a year. It justifies us growing it too, which is good, you know. You want that diversity. It's good for our bodies. It's good for the soil. It's good in many, many ways. And then they get their choice items which they get to choose amongst. And like we've found that market-style option to just be incredibly popular, both for our customers and for us as a farm. It gives us so much more flexibility. It allows us to.... It justify us growing more specialty crops too because we can pick those really small amounts of like a specialty crop fully and put it out for market-style choice and we know that it'll all get taken and chosen versus like not being sure that that would all get enjoyed in our packed boxes, because we want to make sure that folks are really enjoying their CSAs. One of the big pieces...the most consistent piece of feedback we've gotten over the years, and many other CSA farms we hear this too, is that folks aren't able to fully utilize everything that's in their share. And they're usually joining a CSA because they value that local produce so much. And so trying to find ways to fit different people's needs within the CSA, you know, do the combo and fix and choice and also not...still grow specialty items but not have to grow huge quantities of it, you know. We've really fine tuned our model quite a bit over the years in the options that we've created. And then the winter season's every other week with a bigger break in the winter. And that's a combination of storage crops, but a lot of crops still coming from the field, which is really one of the things I love to talk about when I do tours is talking about just the amount you can still eat fresh from the fields where your nutrient density is still so high because things are fresh. You know, you lose a lot of your nutrients when things are picked and sit on the store shelves or, you know. They can be...not all frozen things are bad, you know. You can capture nutrients with certain types of processing techniques. But if it's not being processed in a certain way and it's just fresh, sitting on the shelf, you can lose a lot of your nutrient density that way. So the winter CSA is a really fun eating because it's still very, very diverse. And a lot of it's still really fresh. And there's some folks that just do that CSA. They might be really avid home gardeners, but they either don't have the scale or the storage capacity but they still want to eat a seasonal diversity and eat local and fresh. And so they'll come to our farm just for the winter CSA which is really neat. Yeah. **Brooke ** 14:13 And you do garden, or excuse me, "garden..." you do farm year round basically. It's not that you're...you're not working throughout those months when there isn't the CSA, right? Your farmers are still quite busy. **Elizabeth ** 14:29 That's very true. And yeah, you had asked to talk about our staff. So we-- **Brooke ** 14:34 Yeah, hold on, let me back up before you get into the numbers just because I want to review. Okay, so you're operating on eight or nine acres a year generally. And you're growing how many different crops, not including sub varieties? **Elizabeth ** 14:48 I'd say 30 to 40. I haven't encountered the actual list in a few years, but it's definitely between 30 and maybe 45. **Brooke ** 14:58 30 to 45 crops. 8 or 9 acres. You're sort of actively actually farming and yielding stuff from May/June through winter. **Elizabeth ** 15:10 Well, with our covered spaces, honestly, it's almost February now. February or March through.... We had a really big success last year in growing a much greater amount of food fresh from the soil but in the covered spaces with the addition of the caterpillar tunnels. We were harvesting quite a bit starting in early March. **Brooke ** 15:32 You didn't say numbers on the CSA, but I just happen to know that it's about 250 families that sign up that get that weekly produce box through the summer. Plus, you still have a farmstand that people come and buy fresh at. Plus, you have wholesale. Do you know how much food you produce? Like I don't.... You know, I know sometimes I hear about tons of this or that, but.... **Elizabeth ** 15:54 You know, I don't know the statistics and I really should. We keep them all in our harvest spreadsheets for our own record keeping and for Oregon Tilth for the organic certification. And I should know some of those stats because it'd be really.... What I really should know is per acre and by crop, you know, per bed-foot yield. But it's changing. I mean.... I have two really talented.... Shoutout to my two head farmers, my harvest manager, Arabella, and my field manager, Justin, are in their fifth and sixth year of farming on our particular farm, which is important to say because you have to really learn how to farm a particular farm. You can be a talented grower, but knowing a particular farm's soil, experiencing multiple seasons of variations, both in disease, pests, cropping patterns, weather patterns, learning that level, you know, you have to know a lot about many different crops. It's a huge breadth of knowledge that you need. And so you only really get that depth by farming many seasons. So they're just at the peak of their game in their trajectory this year. And so many crops statistics that they have reported have been double or more. I mean, just.... And it was a quote, unquote, "normal year," you know, with no big climate extremes. No, you know, heat dome. No raining for the first three months of spring so that, you know, the soil tilth was so much better than last year, for instance, where we had one of the coldest, wettest springs on record. And we saw the effects on crop health, and especially disease, but just crop health generally because of the tilth of the soil. The roots...the plants just were never as healthy, especially the one-time plantings that you would have to establish in the beginning of the year when we were so pressed to get things in the ground. So this year has just been so incredibly positive and more bountiful than normally even so. It's really turning my head of what's possible growing wise, you know, because there's so much variation within a crop year-to-year. And you know that with a large level of diversity, you're never going to grow each crop perfectly. There's always going to be something that's going to have a challenge or be better than expected or have some unusual circumstance. That's the challenge but also the wonderful curiosity of farming is you're always learning something new because soil systems and ecological systems are so complex. So I should...I'll get some of those steps under my belt for the next time I have a conversation like this. **Brooke ** 18:39 Well and that diversity, you know, another example of why that diversity is so important is that you're going to have some kind of crop failure or problem going on, right? Okay, so the CSA feeds something like 750 families. So if you had to take a guesstimate with, you know, Saturday markets and farmstand and wholesale, what do you think.... Like how many additional families worth of produce do you suppose that you put out? **Elizabeth ** 19:12 Oh, gosh, I mean, I'd say there's, you know, probably 700 to.... I don't know if we should say 1000 family units that come through the farm. You know, some people come to just have a milkshake with their kids and play on the playground, which is wonderful. My single biggest driving factor in starting the farm was that I wanted to continue a deep, and deeply important to me, and long family tradition of working within natural resources in Oregon. But most importantly, I wanted to keep the soil productive and in agricultural production so that it could be farmed for a few generations because we will need that soil and once.... If you can't afford to keep land in agricultural production and it's developed, you can never really go back from that. And two, was to give people the same opportunity to connect with the land that I had, you know? My family happens to own it. But of course the white people took all the land from the Native Americans and have abused it in many different ways over the years. And thankfully, the family tradition I was raised in, generationally it shifted, of course, because we've learned so much more about how to treat the land well. But there was always a history, like when my family was in timber. And that's where my family got its start was, you know, getting to take advantage, in some sense, of Earth's, you know, capital that it had grown for hundreds of years. And that's given me, in some way, the opportunity to have. But there was always an ethic of conservation and stewardship within my family's relationship to the land or to the natural resource that they were able to have the privilege to get to interact with. And I believe firmly that I'm so passionate about the Earth because I had the opportunity to connect with it. And so many people just don't have the exposure. They don't have the opportunity to either be out in nature or to have a garden. And of course, many people, you know, encounter that and experience it and find inspiration on their own. But it's hard...it can be hard to find that connection and that care for the earth and that perspective if you don't have the opportunity to interact with nature and with the soil. And food is such a fundamental way that we can all do that. And it connects us all. We all have to eat. So I just felt that our farm at Minto needed to be a community farm. People needed access to it. They needed to be able to connect to it and we needed to be able to connect to each other through that mechanism of growing and eating food. So that's always been a driving principle of our farm and our business. **Brooke ** 22:08 Yeah, and I'll say, you know, as an indigenous woman, how proud of you I am and how grateful I am for your ongoing.... You know, and you don't shy away from the awareness of the privilege that you have and where it came from and then the commitment that you have and have had towards land preservation and restoration and the way you take care of this piece of land. Yes, it is a business. But I think you would do things that would help the land and hurt the business because of your priority structure. Not that you would generally have to make that choice. But like if that's...if it came down to a decision between the two, I know that you're always going to take care of the land and make sure that it's healthy and strong and sustainable for generations. And that's really important culturally to me. So I'm, I'm grateful for that and to be a part of it. **Elizabeth ** 23:05 And thank you for that comment. I have so much learning to do. But I am so thankful for my family and especially my father for giving me that opportunity. He's my greatest hero and we share the same passion for plants and for soil and really the idea of stewardship that we just happen to be lucky to be able to have this relationship and that it's, you know, really.... I really wanted to examine what the idea of ownership is.... It's never made sense to me that we have the ability to own land, you know, and so there's so much more soul searching and seeking of...questioning of what that means. But I definitely see it as there's a huge responsibility when you do have the opportunity to try to do the best you can. And I'm thankful that my dad's been able to learn from me too. He still thinks we're crazy with all the amount of work that we put in. But he also understands. He sees how responsive the community has been to it. Because I believed...I knew that the community would come for this because it's just so fundamental. It's so fundamental to our wellness to be connected to the earth and to each other and to do it through food. It's like you can't really argue with it. And I am not.... This is not a discovery I'm making. This discovery has been fundamental to how we've interacted as a species since we've been evolving, you know? So um, yeah, so back.... I didn't really get to talk about the team that that makes it all happen because I-- **Brooke ** 24:53 Yeah, you must have a massive staff to produce this much food and be working this long and year round and so much land that you're doing. It must take an army to get that out, right? **Elizabeth ** 25:06 Yes, I simultaneously feel that it's huge and tiny and huge. And you know, my conception of it, my concept of it, expands and contracts depending on how I'm looking at things. But I just want to say that the people who choose to work on organic...small organic farms--or any farm really--are just some of the best people around there. They're in it because they're passionate about plants and soil and feeding their community. They're not in it because they're trying to make a bunch of money and they're sacrificing. Agriculture is often a lower paid profession. And there are very few farms, unless they're in a nonprofit structure or have figured some things out that I'm really trying to figure out, but there's usually not a benefit package to support, you know, these worker populations. And so it's just, it's a labor of love, the people that choose to do this work, and I am so humbled and proud to work with them every day. So we have a team of year-round managers. That's about four or five. And then we have a seasonal staff that expands quite a bit and quite a bit more so even this year to about between 20 and 30. But that encompasses all the farmstand staff and food cart and our perennial crew. And I haven't yet spoken about the fact that we grow blueberries and strawberries and we also have a neat tea project. Camellia sinensis is the tea plant and all the types of teas, black, green, oolong, ect... come from that one plant. And my dad has a real innovative approach to plants and agriculture, always has, so he, with a partner, in the late 80s planted tea, and so I've gotten to try to move that project forward. And so we have managers that kind of head each part of that farm. We have a CSA manager. We have a CSA logistics person. We have a field manager. We have a perennial manager. We have a farmstead manager, a food cart manager. And often those folks will take on many other roles too on the farm or have done other.... So, it's a small but mighty team. And since we do farm year round, that core managerial staff is often working in the winter still, which is wonderful but also challenging because they work so hard during the main season that then to continue to work when it gets so much colder and wetter and muddier and everything is hard and you can't necessarily warm up and recharge your body during the day, it's.... I'm at a crossroads with our business where I'm really trying to build longer term sustainability. And we've been doing this for 16 years, so that's quite a long time and some big lessons learned and there's still a lot of resilience needed in our business model to keep going. And our managers are really the heart of the farm. I can't physically do all the work as a mother of two younger kids. My husband, Chris, now works as a mint breeder and he still is able to work from the farm but for a totally different company. And he really supports my ability to keep farming because the economics are really challenging with small farms. So I'm just trying to think very creatively with the newer perspectives I have of how people can do this work year round, long term, and what they really want to do during the winter. I think it's an incredible niche for other folks that are interested in this as a business model. There are some beet firms that only do winter farming because so many fewer farms there do it and you can do so much. But I'm thinking of different options and different models for our farm, but that's probably a level of detail we don't need to go into today but it's.... Yeah, I'm really looking at our business model from all angles to try to build in long term resilience, just in terms of the model. Yeah. **Brooke ** 29:24 Well, I might love to have you back sometime and talk about some specific things like winter farming or maybe.... I would love to do a whole thing on potatoes and I don't know if you want to come back for that but.... **Elizabeth ** 29:35 Well, I might stop throwing them so I don't know if you want me to. Not fully. Not fully. But if there's one crop I know we lose money on its potatoes. **Brooke ** 29:47 Wow. Okay, that's really interesting because potatoes are-- **Elizabeth ** 29:49 I'm not sure. My numbers will tell me this year but.... Yeah, we could do a deep dive on potatoes, even later in the episode if we have time, but.... People love potatoes, though. So that's a thing. There's like.... You want to grow what people love and you know they'll use. And they're nutritious. And they store. And they're so versatile in the kitchen. But.... **Brooke ** 30:12 Nutrient dense. **Elizabeth ** 30:16 Yep. But we've had such a difficult time growing them consistently well. Last year, we doubled our yield from the previous year, and grew them better than we ever had. And then this year, it's kind of back down to, "Ehh?" normal yields. We're like, well, did we learn anything? What were the factors, you know. Sometimes there's trajectories in crops and trends and you're like, okay, I'm steadily getting better at this. I'm learning things that I'm applying to a consistently better outcome. Potatoes are not one of those crops. There just seems to still be so much uncertainty and variation in the end yields. And to me, you know, I like to think about what is really unique about a locally grown vegetable. And often there is something really special, whether it be a variety or the fact that it doesn't store well or it's super delicious, or it's more perishable, or, you know, many, many things. Potatoes, in my mind, unless it's a really interesting variety and it's a new potato, to me, potatoes are almost.... There's not that many distinguishing features that make a fresh, locally grown potato that different in comparison to everything else we grow. To me, it's more of a commodity type thing. Same with onions, but I love growing alliums and I will never stop growing them. But I could deep dive into those specific crops if we wanted to. **Brooke ** 31:43 Yeah, I think I'll save that for probably another one. But that is really interesting to know. And some of our audience members are going to have some strong feelings about not growing potatoes. And I understand that. And we've done episodes around.... Well, I don't know if we did it. I know Margaret, who's one of our other hosts who originally started the podcast, has certainly done a deeper dive on potatoes on one of her other podcasts. Anyway, sorry. If you said it, I guess I missed it, you talked about your management team but then like the harvest staff you have kind of at the height of your season, how many folks do you have? **Elizabeth ** 32:25 Yeah, I'd say six to eight. I mean, you know, on a...Tuesday is our biggest harvest day, and there's probably, you know, six to eight people out there. Some of the managers come in to do half days, but you know, on a Wednesday, that's the second biggest day of our CSA, we'll have four or five in the morning and then three in the afternoon. So it really...it really varies. **Brooke ** 32:50 So less than one person per acre? Not that that's how.... That's not a great measure. But, you know, if you're growing eight or nine acres, you have-- **Elizabeth ** 32:59 It's difficult to talk about the stats because you're growing...you have to do.... There's so many steps that go into the full execution of a crop. You know, onions, for instance, your crop planning in November. You're starting the seeds very, very early, actually. We used to do it in February. Now it's March. Because they're relatively slow growing and you have to grow quite a bit. You know, one onion plant is an onion versus a potato plant grows multiple potatoes. Same with a kale plant. You know, so lots and lots of seedlings, many, many flats. And then they are in the greenhouse for a long time. Then they get transplanted out and they grow all season long. They don't get harvested for storage until.... Of course we're taking spring or fresh onions out of the field starting in maybe July, but the bulk of the allium harvest isn't until August/September. And then they're stored all winter. So the labor that's spread across that whole.... You know, it's almost.... I mean, we have onions year round so sometimes an onion will be a seedling or in storage for almost an entire year. So it's difficult to fully, accurately allocate your labor across an acre or crop just because-- **Brooke ** 34:15 Sure. Yeah, **Elizabeth ** 34:16 You know, but yeah, in peak season from June through September, I would say that there's six to eight people on average that are full time growing those crops. Growing, harvesting, delivering, etc...processing, delivery, ect... **Brooke ** 34:36 And that's what it takes to grow enough food to feed more than 250 families a weekly box of produce, six to eight folks. **Elizabeth ** 34:43 It probably could be quite a bit more. I believe, you know, with better farming techniques and, you know, I don't know if we want to go into no-till philosophy and practices on this episode, but from the learning we've been doing about some of these no-till farms that have been in operation for quite a long time. Singing Frog is one in California that's pointed to a lot because they've been farming for so long. The yields that they're getting per acre, it's almost like double or triple or even quadruple sometimes what even the best, you know, organic producers are saying they're getting. So I believe on our footprint we could be growing a much higher density of food per bed foot or per acre than we even are now, but it's very labor intensive. It's a very.... Which I think is good and challenging economically. But it's good that there is the opportunity for people to grow food for a living as their job. It's extremely enriching and gratifying on many levels. I think the economics are the hardest part. And I believe farmers should be making as much as doctors are making. I mean, maybe, yeah. Ehh, maybe not a specialist surgeon, you know, but you know what I mean? It's a very undervalued profession, especially for the crew position versus a managerial position. It's incredibly important and incredibly difficult. And food prices in our country, and across the world, it's just the way that we perceive food value is challenging. And affordability is incredibly challenging too. But there's just many things that should change in our food system to value, you know, to value food better. Not necessarily that it should cost more money for people, but the way that that work and that product is valued, there's a lot of improvement that could be made in that and you know, we could talk all about government subsidies and policy and all that another time. But I believe there's a lot.... I believe the federal government should be subsidizing small to medium diversified organic farms, not just large scale commodity farms growing GMO soy for a stupid faux green biofuel, you know? I mean, there's just so much wrong with our agricultural policy. But, again, another episode in the making maybe? **Brooke ** 35:06 Yeah, there's so much to get into there. And that's interesting. So you've had 16 years of learning and growing and it's a nonstop process, it sounds like. Partly with just because some crops are fickle and because of climate change. So, I want to rewind for a second all the way back to 16 years ago when you and Chris first started and compare, you know, what your staff size looked like, how much of the land you were farming, what kind of yield you were getting in those first few years as you were learning and developing. **Elizabeth ** 38:04 Again, I don't have those statistics. They're all anecdotal at this point. The big context for when Chris and I started the farm was that we were both more steeped in native plant and restoration work. Chris did, you know, he did Environmental Science at Colorado College and I was on that track as well but switched to more social sciences and music and.... But, you know, that's what I grew up primarily working with on our farm. We had a native plants nursery, and my dad did forestry research. And you can still see some of the cottonwoods, the native and the hybrid cottonwoods on the farm, which are an interesting thing that isn't active really anymore. But you know, those woody perennials and their kind of environmental uses, you know, from both just standard restoration to bio energy and phytoremediation, like toxic metals and wastewater clean up. And Chris and I were really interested in green roofs and urban use of plants, you know, and that.... So when we started the farm, we were passionate about food systems and we started a small CSA. We started with five people, five shares. And LifeSource was actually our first sale of Romaine. I still have the receipt framed. We sold them some romaine. And we're not currently selling to them right now. But we have sold them quite a bit in the past. And Marion Polk Food Share is currently our large wholesale account. But yeah, we started with five members, one who is still an active member of our CSA, which I love. And we actually had a largely Latino crew. Pedro and Maria were husband and wife. Pedro used to work with my dad doing the hybrid poplar harvest. And Maria and her sisters and her nieces were our core crew for quite a long time. And they are amazing people who I miss on the farm. And that's another whole topic, of just agricultural labor and how that's changed so much. But it's interesting to think back to that because that's a very different population of people. And they are such skilled agricultural workers. And I miss so many aspects of that on the farm. And currently most of our worker population are young students. It's a lot of Willamette students, other students, people who are transitioning to other professions, people who are going into horticulture, you know, who are plant and science based people all mostly in their early 20s or 30s. It's.... How to do this work into your 40s, 50s, and 60s, and 70s is a whole nother thing that I'm thinking about quite a bit now as I'm entering my early 40s. But yeah, very different demographics of people who were working on the farm. And Chris and I were doing so many native, woody plant-based projects at that time. We were in mint propagation, and that was both really positive because we were really passionate about that work and it's really interesting work, and Chris had been working at a living roof ecological restoration company down in California before he moved up to Oregon. And it also spreads really, really thin across the farm and across many projects. And it didn't...we didn't have the.... Now, in hindsight, I realize it. Doing too many things just doesn't allow you to really focus in and hone your skills and get your discipline, especially with the economics, in your key project areas. And so we grew our CSA model and the direct-to-farm model really quickly. I think we said, "Yes," to everything. Like "Yes, we'll do the Wednesday farmers market. We'll do the Salem public market, we'll do the Salem Saturday market. We'll do the Tuesday OHSU farmers market and then oh, while we're up at the Tuesday OHSU market, they want to do wholesale for their institutional bid at OHSU, and they need a new CSA farm for all of their drop sites. And I thought, well, what an opportunity. They're one of the largest employers in Oregon there. They have an in-house nutritionist who is incredible, who's still there and still passionate about food systems, and what an amazing opportunity. And it was. I mean, I don't know.... It felt to me at the time it was, but really, it just, I think, spread us too far and wide and thin. And so that's one of the biggest hindsight reflections I have at this point of just.... And I encourage anyone who's interested in this type of farming model is t to make this model successful, to actually not burnout with an injury, to burnout psychologically, like my husband, Chris did, and physically doing this work, to not get into debt, you know, to have a good business plan, and to be disciplined about your numbers, you just have to plan well, and you have to be diligent about your expansion. And I think we just...we had so much enthusiasm and so much demand for our products, so we just grew really fast
S1E95 - Sam and Amadeo on Sheep, Wolves, and Climate Change
03-11-2023
S1E95 - Sam and Amadeo on Sheep, Wolves, and Climate Change
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks with Sam and Amadeo about their experiences shepherding in the Swiss Alps. They talk about the problems that shepherds are facing in Switzerland with wolves, climate change, city mentalities, and right-wing propaganda. Host Info Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: Sam and Amadeo on Sheep, Wolves, and Climate Change **Margaret ** 00:16 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy and this is an episode about sheep...and sheep farming. Shepherding, I believe we might want to call it, in the Alps. I'm really excited about it. We've been planning this episode for a while, because we are going to be talking to two sheep farmers in the Alps about climate change and about the return of wolves and about ecology and about why the right-wing picks all the wrong talking points and a bunch of other stuff. But first, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.  **Margaret ** 01:52 Okay, we're back. So if y'all could introduce yourselves with your name...your names, your pronouns, and I guess just a little bit about your background with shepherding. **Sam ** 02:05 All right, Hi, I'm Sam, my pronouns she/her and we are in Vienna right now. And yeah, I'm an artist and also a bit of a writer, filmmaker. I do a lot of that kind of stuff. Lately I have been working a lot with metal and smithing And yeah, I went with Amadeo on a sheep farm and Alps in Valais in Switzerland. And we want to tell you a bit about our experience. **Amadeo ** 02:38 Yeah, my name is Amadeo. He/him. I'm 38. Actually, I started to work as a teacher now. I teach biology and some other stuff, politics, and so on. And yeah, This was my third year...third summer, not third year, third season to work as a shepherd but the first time with sheep, actually. Before that I worked with cows and milking and so on. Yeah, and for me it was also the first time with sheep and the first time in this area of Switzerland. I'm Austrian. But the payment in Austria is really bad so we went to Switzerland. So we are also the working migrants. Or what do you call it in English? **Margaret ** 03:31 Migrant workers, I guess.  **Amadeo ** 03:34 Yes.  **Margaret ** 03:36 Okay, so what brought you all to sheep farming or to farming in general as like the thing to go do with your summers for work?  **Amadeo ** 03:47 Should I?  **Sam ** 03:48 Yeah, you can. **Amadeo ** 03:50 So, I had this experience in 2020 and 21, I think, and I really liked it in a way. It was very hard work back then, but I learned a lot. And we met after that, actually, and decided we would like to go together. And then we just hit up the internet and looked for work and places to go and then we found this place that sounded pretty ideal for us because it was sheep farming and no milking, which is nice. I didn't want to do the milking job and do cheesemaking and so on again, I wanted to stay outside mostly, like the whole day under the sky and not in the staple. And yeah, we found this place where you don't need your own dogs, which is nice. We were working with blacknose sheep, they're called. It's like a breed that is only bred in this area. Or not only but traditionally there. And yeah, we tried to get the job and we got it. **Sam ** 05:08 I guess we also got in because Amadeo also already had a lot of experience. And yeah, they were looking for two people there and without dogs. And yeah, I also got...I was really lucky that I was with Amadeo because, you know, like some very daily stuff, he already was prepared for this job. Like, you need a lot of some equipment and know what to take. And yeah, I was really.... **Amadeo ** 05:36 The thing was that, of course, the owners of the sheep, they want someone who has some experience because it happens often that you think, "Oh, it's nice. It's in the mountains. It's beautiful." And then people after two weeks, three weeks, they say, "No way. I can't work here. It's way too hard." I mean, it's like pretty hard work. It's outside all day. With rain, with snow sometimes. And you work from sunup to sundown every day, seven days a week. And many people underestimate it because there's like, I don't know, this idea drawn of what it's like to work in the mountains and it's always beautiful. And it is. But it's also very hard work, actually. **Margaret ** 06:22 It seems really hard. It wouldn't immediately occur to me that I could just go run out and become a shepherd like tomorrow. But I have two questions. And they're related. And one is, what does an average day look like for a shepherd in an Alpine Valley? And the second question that's related is, do you get a shepherd's crook? **Sam ** 06:42 Yeah, well, the day starts with sunrise. Around five was when the summer started. We got there in mid of June. I stayed till mid of September. Amadeo had to leave a bit earlier. And the day ends with sunset. And yeah, you bring the sheep back into the night pen. You say, "pen," huh? Like a space where there is electricity on. Pen? [Said with air of not being sure if it's the correct word] **Amadeo ** 07:15 Do you know what that is? Or, did we get the right word?  **Margaret ** 07:17 Like an animal pen? Or is it a barn? **Amadeo ** 07:19 Yeah, it's like it has no roof. It's not a barn. It has no roof. It's just a fence. An area fenced. A fenced in area with strong electricity because of the wolves. **Margaret ** 07:35 Oh, yeah. Okay, it has an electric fence. Yeah, **Sam ** 07:37 yeah, exactly. And yeah, we would move every two weeks to a new pasture with the sheep. And there were 12 farmers or sheepherders. They're not all farmers. They also have another life. Most of them have another job. They work as bus drivers in heavy industry. And yeah, they also are doing a lot of work. So they're working with us there. We were there most of the time alone, but they come on weekends. They bring us food. They set up the pastures, lines, the fences too. Yeah. And so then we stay out with the sheep all day, any weather. And yeah, also, when we moved the pasture, they came for help because it's hard to change the pasture. You sometimes have to cross a river. And.... **Margaret ** 08:29 Wait, how do you cross the river? Do you just like drive them through the river? **Amadeo ** 08:33 Yes.  **Margaret ** 08:35 Like , "Go swim!"  **Amadeo ** 08:38 It was not such. It was more like a stream than the river. A river sounds bigger than it was.  **Sam ** 08:48 It was like this, like we always make a plan in the evening. Even a drawing. We were five people planning this. And then it always ends up in pretty much chaos and completely different. And in the end they were screaming, "Sam! Go! Go!" And I was like, I even had shoes on and the first sheep I was pulling, just one sheep, with all my strength through the river. And then all the sheep follow. **Margaret ** 09:14 Okay, okay. I have friends who keep sheep but in the city. And they just keep like six of them or something. And it's just a very different thing than like a free ranging sheep. And so it's hard for me to conceptualize.  **Amadeo ** 09:30 We had 400. **Margaret ** 09:32 Yeah, that's more than six. I'm good at numbers. That's amazing. Okay, cool. **Sam ** 09:38 So part of the daily routine is also to do the basic medical care. So we were introduced to that. Sometimes they have claw problems. [Claws are sheep toes] **Amadeo ** 09:38 Problems with the claws.  **Sam ** 09:39 Problems with claws. So this was a regular thing. And sometimes using antibiotics against.... **Amadeo ** 09:58 Yeah, and we had to clean the pen every day, which was like three to four hours of work for one of us. Like shoveling shit. **Margaret ** 10:09 Yeah, okay. But you didn't answer the second question. Did you have a shepherd's crook? Do you know what that is? [Laughing] **Amadeo ** 10:17 Not a real one. We had like umbrellas. Big ones that were very useful against the sun. And so preparedness thing number one, if you stay in the high alpine areas, the altitude of the higher pastures were 2500 meters [8,200ft], you need something to cover you against the sun and against the rain. So big umbrellas were pretty handy. **Sam ** 10:46 And also the sheep have horns so it's easier to catch them. You have to learn this also, but you throw yourself on the sheep and then you tackle them down. I got really good at this. And also the blacknose sheep in the valleys, they have very long hair. And, I mean, it's breeding, right? They do it for breeding, the sheepherders. So the wool, it doesn't get any money. It's nothing. It's not worth anything anymore. But for the beauty contests that the sheep go to it's really important. It's a tradition. And they let it grow.... **Amadeo ** 11:26 They have very long face hair so some of them are basically blind. Most of them have like, how do you say something that rings? What is it? A bell? Yes.  **Sam ** 11:39 Yeah, but they get lost because they don't see anything and our job was also to make them hair ties and to tie the hair. And also the sheepherders would come to do this because we could not do this for 400 sheep. Yeah, so that was also part of the job, Yeah, it adds up. There are some different tasks. And yeah, since we would move with the sheep, maybe also that.  So also the moving is part of. You're always packing your stuff. You need to think, okay, how much food we need to...how much will we eat and how much do we need to take to the next hut. So organizing this is part of it. And then we had a small hut that was flied in with a helicopter. It was... **Amadeo ** 12:12 Flown in. Flown with the helicopters for the most remote places where we would stay with the sheep because otherwise you would have to walk a long way, like 45 minutes to the cabin every day. So they brought in a tiny hut for one person, actually.  **Margaret ** 12:47 For you all?  **Amadeo ** 12:49 Yeah, yeah. Flown with the helicopter so we could stay next to the sheep.  **Sam ** 12:55 But it was so small. Like one was sleeping on the floor, the other on this little bed. And also you always need to organize this hut when you come with very wet clothes. You have no space in there. We had a little solar panel. So this was doing.... We had a fridge at least. Very high tech. I guess 20 years before, we would not have a fridge. And some light even in the cabin and a stove. A wood stove. It got crazy hot because it's so small and yeah. So organizing this hut was also not so easy. And we were lucky because there was a lot of water in this valley. Like it's full of water. And so we would get water from the... **Amadeo ** 13:43 From the springs around.  Wells? How you say? **Margaret ** 13:48 Well, I mean, a well is a hole dug in the ground and then a spring is usually a natural spring or it's like a pipe stuck in the side of a hill that the water comes out of. **Amadeo ** 13:57 Yeah, it was a natural spring. No pipe, though. Just some moss and it was nice. **Margaret ** 14:04 And so you can just go straight from that or do you have to filter it? **Amadeo ** 14:08 It depends. We had, at some points, we could just drink it from there. We didn't filter it. At the cabins we had covered springs, wells. Or springs? So we could...it was okay. But the open ones, we had to take care of where the sheep were. If the sheep can go around then it's not so good. It was better if it was higher up where they wouldn't go. **Sam ** 14:42 Yeah also good that there were a lot of springs so the sheep would get water. They need to drink. And sometimes there were pastures where they could only drink one time in the day, so they also learn when they have to drink in the morning because we had really hot days also where these blacknose sheep with all the wool, they really get hot. And yeah, then also we learned how the sheep walk in every pasture. They have the same kind of routine that follows the sun also. And you kind of learn their ways. And also maybe when it's time to act to get the sheep back, I mean, without a dog. Yeah, you need to learn this also, I guess, when it's time. **Amadeo ** 15:33 I always said, if you want to move against their will, you are the dog, you have to run around like crazy. They have their rhythm and they have their ways, you know? **Margaret ** 15:46 So, did you all use dogs? Like also? Or is it sometimes dogs, sometimes no dogs? **Amadeo ** 15:54 No, we had none. The thing is that this kind of race [breed of sheep] is very used to people and they're not moving that far. So you can walk with them. It's okay. It's just the problem is you can have two kinds of dogs, right? You can have dogs to protect against wolves, for example. Then they live with the sheep. They're inside of the flock all the time. But it's a problem with hikers and so on. Because they attack everyone that comes near, right? **Margaret ** 16:33 This explains a little bit about my dog.  **Amadeo ** 16:36 Yeah, and so you can really have them there because it's also like a recreational area. This area, like a lot of people go hiking there and so on. So you can't have dangerous dogs. And the other thing would be like dogs that help you move the flock.  **Margaret ** 17:01 Herding dogs?  **Amadeo ** 17:02 We didn't really need it, right? Because we would have not.... I mean, it was big areas but still we would stay in one area for two weeks and then we would move on to the next area. So you didn't really need dogs to guard them the whole day. **Sam ** 17:23 But it's really a calm.... The blacknose sheep are really really calm sheep. We learned this also because like certain sheep breeds, you say, right, they run way more. They run all day. And you really need dogs there. Yeah, so we.... **Amadeo ** 17:40 But with the blacknose, no, they are kind of calm. Yes. And they have a long...during the day they have a long break time.  **Sam ** 17:48 Resting time.   **Amadeo ** 17:49 Yeah, because if it's getting hot up there, the sun is very strong. It can be like, I don't know.... Like I mean the degrees don't get up that much like in the flat areas but the sun, how you say...the sun rays are really strong. **Margaret ** 18:11 Yeah, because when you're at a higher altitude there's less atmosphere to protect you, right? I know what I mean. But I don't know the words for it. **Amadeo ** 18:22 Yeah, the sheep have some...if it's a hot day, they rest for four hours during midday. They try to find, you know, shady spots and just rest. And so at that time, you can also rest. If it's rainy, you can't rest because then they are moving too. Yeah. **Margaret ** 18:48 It makes me...the no dog thing, I'm like.... My dog was bred to have a million different jobs. My dog is just a complete mutt of a lot of different working breeds. And so Rintrah, my dog, is never quite sure whether he's supposed to be herding, or chasing, or retrieving things. He just wants to do all of it all the time. And one of the proudest things I've ever had, my proudest dog mom moment, was staying with my friend who has goats and sheep and one of the baby goats just got out of the pen and was running around the yard. And so Rintrah just herded it into a corner and then like calmly barked to inform us that he had trapped the goat. And I was just like, no one taught you how to do that. He wasn't a year old. He just was like , "This is what I do." And so like, I imagine how happy my dog would be as a sheepdog, a herding dog, which isn't necessarily true because he has adhd. This is a complete tangent. I just like talking about my dog. But you all, one of the reasons I want to talk to you, you talked about how a lot of this ties into preparedness and how it feels you've learned a lot about preparedness that you're like taking into the rest of your life by having done this work. I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about that. As a complete, look how expertly I tangented...pivoted from one topic to another. **Sam ** 20:11 Yeah, yeah, actually your podcast was really a bit with us in this time. It was cool, the topic of preparedness. And yeah, for me in this way, thinking about preparedness, what's also weighed in with this work was to get somehow familiar again with the conditions of doing this work, of ways of living in this open environment, of existing there with the sheep and in this non-human environment. And also, maybe, in this threatened environment that somehow you would.... And also the organization structures, how this work is possible, that it needs a lot of people and it needs a lot of people who do this. I mean, there's the farmers or sheepherders, they do this because they love this work. Because they have done this all the time. It's tradition. And yeah, that they somehow save something. **Amadeo ** 21:17 I mean, to talk about the practical side, if you stay outside the whole day, every day, seven days a week, you learn a lot of what you really need and what you don't need. I think that was big. Yeah, it was like very valuable to me to see what I really need. And I remember listening to your podcast, and you talk a lot about being prepared in a way, like having podcasts on your phone, for example. Because if you have to stay with sheep for 10 hours a day, you need to...you had a lot of time to think. And I loved having a good book because I could read and then think for hours about it and have like, I think, yeah, more time than in the city where you are distracted from one topic to another. So this really is good to have more, I don't know, space in my head. This was a good thing. And yeah, I think looking at, how you say, like, being outside in nature everyday and witnessing all these little changes from day-to-day. This was very, very, very special. And I think I learned so much about life and also about survival because all the animals and the plants there, they are...like, they have to survive in a very harsh environment with very short growing period, for example. I mean, lots of snow during.... Winter lasts, I don't know, for 10 months, or like, let's see, nine maybe? You know what I mean? Like when we came mid June, there was still snow. And in August before we...the end was the 16th, I think, of September, but we had to leave the higher pastures at the end of August because it was starting to snow heavily. And yeah, it's like very different too.  **Sam ** 23:30 But still to also learn about the fears and the sheepherder have. And also, yeah, it's an environment that's threatened and that will change through climate change for sure. Like it is changing. And I thought also on some days that it gets hotter and hotter every summer. And also last year, the grass was really dry. So the sheep would get this disease called, in German, Lipinkin [cannot translate], which is little bit like herpes. Yeah. And yeah, they had to be treated, every sheep, and give some.... **Amadeo ** 24:05 Some cream. But do that for 400 sheep, man. **Margaret ** 24:11 Yeah, that sounds like it would take a while.  **Sam ** 24:14 Medication for 400 sheep. So yeah, they have struggles they face. And then the wolf, of course, is a new topic. And yeah, they have to deal with a lot of stuff. Yeah. **Margaret ** 24:27 Well, let's talk about wolves. Let's talk about--you all mentioned beforehand when we were getting ready to talk about how wolves have maybe either been reintroduced or are coming back in that area to a certain degree and how that threatens this way of life but like not as much as climate change does and how it all ties into the right-wing and I kinda wanna to hear about it. **Amadeo ** 24:51 Yeah, since a few years, since I was like.... 2020 was really when I was first introduced to this life, to these people in Switzerland. First of all, I came from the city and I didn't know that it's such a big topic already. Because in Austria, we have a few wolves. But not to mention, you know, maybe a dozen. But I learned that in Switzerland since the last, I don't know, 20 years, from a dozen they now have, I think, 250. Around 250. And, like, I don't know, 25 packs or something, or something like this. Which doesn't sound so much, but it's like...it's not such a big country. And they are a lot in these areas. For example, in Valais where we stayed, we knew that the nearest wolves are just two kilometers away. And they have offspring. So for them, they need meat and so on. And I mean, the sheep are puffy, you know. It's like, go get them. **Sam ** 26:01 Also, on the other side of the mountain, actually, there was another shepherd with a, I think, also around 400.... Fuck, I don't know exactly how many sheep. And there the wolf came. And he killed, I think, seven sheeps. And also one of his dogs was attacked. So it was really close. And also the fear that we might face an attack was also really with us. And also there was a guy who takes care of the area.  **Amadeo ** 26:34 A ranger.  **Sam ** 26:35 Yeah, and he came and told us, "Hey, you really have to watch out. They're really close." So yeah.  **Amadeo ** 26:42 But the thing is, the crazy thing for me is that, of course, this threatens, in a way, people that are used to putting their cattle, putting their sheep just in a meadow and leaving them, you know. Have a look once a week or something. Of course now with the wolves, it's not possible because a wolf would kill many. They start to, you know, get into like.... If they can they kill 10 and then just take one, you know. They just.... If they [sheep] don't run away and they don't run far, you know, 100 years of, I don't know, living with humans and being petted and so on, they don't have--you know what I mean? They don't have it in them anymore to really run. Because normally, if a wolf attacks a  deer, for example, the pack can't find any deer for another week or something because they're all alert. They're alert as soon as there is an encounter. With the sheep, it's not so much. So now it's a problem, of course, but there would be solutions. You just, you need to adjust. You need to change the way it works. Yeah, you need protection. You need people to look after the sheep and so on. And for many areas, this is really hard. Because if you have an alpine pasture that is very remote, steep hills everywhere, you know, it's so hard to really fence it off or something. It's not possible. So I can understand it for the farmers. It's hard. And when we talked with them about it, they were always like, "We have to kill the wolf," you know? And it's now protected. It's under national protection. You cannot just shoot them. Even if they kill some of your sheep, you can't. And there was a big--in Switzerland you have more, how you say, basic democracy. So many of the laws are decided by a vote of everyone. So there was a big vote about if the protection status of the wolves should be loosened in a way. Not that you can just hunt them but loosen in a way that you can, I don't know, shoot some if they're attacking cattle or.... **Margaret ** 29:11 Can you shoot them if they attack you? **Amadeo ** 29:13 No, we had no gun. I mean, they won't attack  humans but... **Margaret ** 29:20 I'm an American, so I'm like....Okay, so like, I think about this a lot. Okay. I'm really...the wolf thing is so interesting to me for a thousand reasons. And one is that the destruction of wolves is such a emblem of civilization. It is such an emblem of the conquest of nature, right? And you have, for example, the no wolves in Ireland thing. You know? And that the British were very into killing all the wolves in Ireland and part of that even.... Like, so you even have the Irish rebels who would be to a certain degree, would be like, "Oh, we are the wolves. Like we are the people that they're trying to conquer," because it's like they are the unconquered, you know, wild folk, or whatever fucking bullshit colonial thing that gets thrown at them, you know? But at the same time, it's like.... So I'm kind of rooting for the wolves here with what you're describing, right? I like sheep. I don't specifically want the sheep to die. And where I live, we have coyotes, right. And we don't really have wolves where I live, but we have coyotes. And they kill, you know, they kill livestock. And they also kill dogs, right? And I have a dog. And I very actively want my dog to not be killed by coyotes. And apparently coyotes will do this thing where they'll befriend a dog, and be like, "yeah, totally, come hang out with us," and then kill and eat that dog, right? And so I have a neighbor who oversees about 400 acres. And he's from France. And he carries around a handgun. And he's so confused by this. He's like, "I came to America and now I have to carry around a handgun." But he carries around a handgun in case he's attacked by coyotes. Right? And it's like, interesting to me because it's like.... The urge to be like, "Oh, we should kill all the wolves so we can happily raise our sheep in peace," like fuck that, right? That, to me, is like the example of a negative form of peace, where you have conquered and like flattened everything. Sorry, it's a little bit of a rant, but I'm going somewhere with it. I promise. And then, but at the same time, there's this balance, right? Like, I'm not going to let a coyote kill my dog. Or if I was around wolves, I wouldn't let the wolves kill me, right? I mean, whatever I...as much as I can control that, you know? The coyotes are kind of on the other side of the hill. So I don't carry a gun around my property. But that would be a thing that I would need to consider in certain circumstances. So, it's just really interesting to me that, like, I get why the sheep farmers are like, "Oh, we got to get rid of all these wolves." But I'm also like, "Whatever. Fuck you. Let the wolves be." But then I'm also like, it's complicated. And I get why you have to defend the sheep. But I don't know. Anyway, that's where I'm going with it. I guess I wasn't going anywhere with it after all. **Sam ** 32:15 Yeah, no, I think it's a really complex situation. Yeah, there is not an easy answer to like kill the wolf or.... Yeah, I'm also pro Wolf. And there needs to be a different solution. And yeah, like to see what the sheepherders really face, what kind of struggles they face with this was really interesting. And also, I think the problem is that it's super instrumentalized [wonders if that's the right word]...instrumentalized by right-wing people politically.  **Margaret ** 32:55 Weaponized? [Offering a different word] **Amadeo ** 32:58 Yeah. In a way. I mean, the thing is, it also turned in Switzerland, for example, into a city versus countryside. Because at the vote, most people from the cities would vote for the wolf for what keeps the protection. But many people in the countryside, with also more like conservative political beliefs--and the conservative parties--said, "No, no, no, we have to change that because it threatens our way of living around in the remote areas in the countryside. And so this is somehow so stupid because.... **Sam ** 33:37 Yeah, that's also covering certain other threats, right, like climate change. They don't talk about climate change. The only thing they speak about is the wolf and the wolves. And yeah, that's really.... So it's somehow a weird thing that it's so taken over by this discourse, which is, yeah.... **Amadeo ** 33:57 Yeah, you can shoot climate change. That's the thing. It's easy to say, "Oh, it's all the wolf. We have to kill the wolf. And then we get rid of this problem." But on the other hand, climate change.... [interrupted] **Margaret ** 34:11 I can think of some ways to solve climate change with guns, but.... Anyway.... **Amadeo ** 34:16 I mean, I got so sad up there because it's so special. I mean, this area was a natural reserve too. And it has golden eagles. It has vultures, it has marmots, it has like.... **Sam ** 34:35 A lot of marmots. Everywhere. [Laughing] **Amadeo ** 34:38 And some protected bogs, some plants that are really like really rare, like at the brink of extinction. And I know, I stood there and I saw this, I don't know, this beauty and I know in 50 years from now it will be gone. Probably. It's very, very likely. Because.... I mean, some species can move.... Like, seen on a global level, they move north because it's getting warm. But on the on fucking mountain, there is an end. There is no moving more up. Because at 4000 meters or something, it's....stops, you know? Like there's nothing there. And all the farmers there, for example, if you ask them, they see these changes. They witness it. They say, "Yes, it's so much different than it was when I was a kid." And the glaciers, for example, in Switzerland--I read about it--there were since the 70s, 800 glaciers are gone. And there is still 1400 glaciers in Switzerland. And they say 2100 [year], they will be probably most of them, like 95%, will be gone. And it's so sad. But still, if you say something like, "Climate change," even those farmers there, that witness it every fucking day, they say like, "Well, you know, I don't know if you can call it that." It's ridiculous. And it's because the discourse, the political discourse, is framed by conservatives mostly. And they say, "Your problem is the wolf. We can shoot the wolf." So.... [Margaret starts talking and apologizes] No, no, it's, I'm, I'm done with ranting. **Margaret ** 36:40 No, this is so interesting for a thousand reasons. And one of them is that we always.... It goes back hundreds of years that leftists will be like, "Oh, the countryside are all right-wing. Fuck them." And this is not true, right? This is like.... The most interesting leftist revolutions have generally involved also the rural folks, right? I mean, like, famously, the fucking Russian Revolution was all rural people. And to be fair, Marx was.... I think he owned up to getting that wrong, because he was one of the people who started this myth that "The peasant is not the revolutionary subject, only the proletarian worker in the city is," right? "And the peasants are always reactionary." And I think he owned up to, when he looked at Russia, he was like, "Oh, I got that one wrong. Okay, cool." You know. It's true if we let it be true, because you have this thing where.... I think it is actually a flaw that we have to be careful with in democracy--and majority rule in general--is if people in the cities make the rules for the people in the countryside, and they don't understand the people in the countryside and they don't understand their way of life. And so it's like, really easy--even though I'm still on the wolf's side--I see it as complicated. Whereas it's like really easy to live in a city and be like, "Whatever. Fuck it," you know, because it's not their livelihood, or dog that is being threatened, right? And so I feel like, to me, it's this thing where we can't cede that ground to the right-wing, you know? And I really, I think it's cool that you all.... And that's one reason I want to talk to you about it is that there's like all of these.... It doesn't have to be this inherently conservative space to be in the countryside, to be in a rural area. And then the other thing that I was thinking about with what you're talking about, about mountains and how things retreat, is that mountains are so interesting to me because they're always where people run to, right? And you look at.... I mean, you look at Switzerland as a country and as the history of the country is people fleeing there in order to--well, I don't know enough about how Switzerland was formed--but in World War II, every time I'm like reading about Dutch revolutionaries, or whatever, they're like, "Fuck!" and they all run over to Switzerland and climb up the glaciers with their bare hands, or whatever the fuck. I don't know. I clearly know what I'm talking about. And in the United States, you have. where I live in Appalachia, that is the place that people would retreat to. That is the place where people losing wars against the conquest of the United States would go to. And it is. It's that weird thing where you're always free in the mountains, but there's only so far you can run. And that's just so heartbreaking to think about, you know? There's only so far up the mountain that these plants can migrate. On the other hand, I have a feeling that's what we're all going to be living. We're all gonna be in Antarctica. Antarctica bloomed this year, I think. I think we're being on Antarctica and on the mountains. So...  **Sam ** 39:39 Yeah, but it's interesting how it's idolized and romanticized. I mean, we had like...and how extreme, actually, the weather really changes. I really didn't know. I had never lived for three months so high up. And yeah, but also, they're so romanticized. There's this huge hype around survivalist shows, at the moment on TV, which is also really interesting and comes with this. And on the opposite for me the...Yeah, the question was how does being there in the Alps, what does this really change with me and what does it do to experience this? And yeah....  **Amadeo ** 40:20 Yeah, what does it do?  **Margaret ** 40:23 We're asking.   **Sam ** 40:23 It's still settling in. And it's about reconnecting and really realizing what it takes to do this work. And I have a lot of respect.... Also, to be in a very patriarchal space where the shepherds were only older men. Yeah, they have their ways of acting. They have their ways of being. And for me, this was really difficult. Yeah. And still, somehow to not say, "Hey, I won't enter this space," but to go there and.... Yeah, also see what community they have, you know. Yeah, to also go beyond this, I think, that they have their tradition and they have to face this, but yeah, it was also.... [Interrupted] **Amadeo ** 41:11 Maybe you can maybe explain a little bit this, I don't know, this group of people we worked for, because it was actually pretty interesting because it's a conservative area, but they were very working class and very, very nice to us. I think. They treated us really respectfully. And I know, in my other place where I worked as a shepherd, it wasn't like that. I was treated, actually, a little bad. And that's...I don't know. **Sam ** 41:45 Yeah. And to see how they are with the animals. I mean, for them, that's...they are their life. And it's this encounter.  **Amadeo ** 41:50 They love them. **Sam ** 41:51 And for us, to get to know every sheep personally, it's really interesting what connection you get. You watch them all the time. You learn, hey, they are totally different. They have totally different characters.  **Margaret ** 42:09 Yeah. Okay, my question to you is how do you, when you're working with people who are seeing this climate change happen, how do you--but but can't acknowledge it--do you have any insight or thoughts about how to connect with people about that, about how to talk to people, you know, who want to focus on the wolf instead of the bigger wolf, the climate wolf? What's the name of that wolf that's gonna eat the sun and Germanic paganism? Wow, how do I not remember that.  Anyway, whatever, at the start of Ragnarok. Someone's gonna get really mad at me for not knowing this. Fenrir! **Amadeo ** 42:51 I think we had some very good discussions at times. Right? With the guys.... Sorry? [Margaret interrupting] **Margaret ** 43:01 No, no, no, I was just...I remembered the name of the wolf that eats the sun and starts Ragnarok. It's Fenrir. Anyway, or Fenris? Oh, God, no people gonna get mad at me. Anyway, please continue. Tell you something.  **Amadeo ** 43:13 I think also, even though some of them were a little bit panicky about wolves, and so on, I think the system with the night pens and with having shepherds like us, since a few years, to look after the sheep, day and night, basically, it works pretty well. I mean, they told us they have one to five, maybe, sheep per year that are getting killed by the wolf. But that's okay. I mean, they're realistic about it, right? And when we talked about climate change, of course, it was--I mean, for me, it's not much different--I mean, they acknowledged that things are changing. They didn't use the, I don't know, scientific vocabulary or whatever. And they acknowledged in a way--or some of them at least--that there are new problems that we have to face. For example, it's too dry, and so on. Water issues.  Dying out of certain plants, animals in certain areas, and so on. They all see this. More avalanches in the winter. All of this. But, I mean, they were a little helpless. And I mean, we are also often a little helpless, because it's getting individualized. How should you react? Not drive a car? Great. I mean, we have to, you know, rise up and change all of the economy, you know, and this is hard to do. **Sam ** 44:53 But I guess, I mean, I also came there with my artistic background and as an artist and I also was filming a lot--more some of the sheeps but also us--and I think for me to show as someone coming there with a city background, but also with our backgrounds as biologists and artists, and showing how this encounter happens maybe from us as city people with also another perspective in encountering this world. I think I find this really interesting. Also showing some part of this being not exactly in this. I think that's an interesting perspective, also, for other people to see. And yeah, I'm probably cutting a bit of a movie out of this. And I think it can.... Yeah, it's good to go to this place and to show our perspective.  **Amadeo ** 45:53 I mean, I'm so grateful for what these people taught us, right, and that we were accepted and we did this job. And I think we did a good job. But also they trust us, right? **Sam ** 46:06 And what the sheep teach
S1E94 - This Month in the Apocalypse: October, 2023
27-10-2023
S1E94 - This Month in the Apocalypse: October, 2023
Episode Summary This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke and Inmn talk about revenge, strikes, bad decisions about water, the economy, interesting victories around water, and funny things about tanks. Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Live Like the World is Dying: This Month in the Apocalypse: October **Brooke ** 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. This is your monthly installment of This Month in the Apocalypse, where we talk about the shitty news from around the world. **Inmn ** 00:28 But also some cool stuff. and some funny stuff. **Brooke ** 00:32 And some funny stuff. I am one of your hosts today, Brooke, and with me is.... **Inmn ** 00:40 I'm Inmn and my brain is in a horrifying state today, which only comes from researching heavily about, unfortunately, mostly bad things that happened but also some cool things that happened in the last month. **Brooke ** 00:58 Alright, let's talk about those. But first, let's give a shout out to one of the other podcasts on the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts to which we also belong. But here's some words from some of our friends. Doot doot doo duh doo doo dooo. [Singing the sounds like a simple melody] **Brooke ** 01:54 And we're back. Welcome back. So many fun things to talk about. I'm sorry you've also had to spend the morning reviewing all sorts of terrible events in the world. **Inmn ** 02:30 You know, I ran into a friend last night and they made a joke, they were like, "Oh, what have you been up to?" And I was like, "Oh, I dunno, mostly just work, you know, doing podcasts and things." And they're like, "Oh, yeah, you've you've really like professionalized doom scrolling. [Both laughing] **Brooke ** 02:54 Yeah, that sounds about right. Sounds about right. **Inmn ** 02:59 Yeah, I don't know if I felt good about that or not, but.... **Brooke ** 03:04 It's complicated, right? Like, I don't want that to be my job. But also, I guess it's nice that somebody does it. **Inmn ** 03:11 Yeah. And I just want to shout out for like a lot of people who have sent us messages fairly recently about enjoying these segments, which I think we were on the fence about them for a little while, I think, about whether we liked them or whether they felt useful or whether they just like inspired dread and despair and a lot of.... Thanks everyone who's reached out to be like, "No, no, I really like these segments, and they do the opposite of despair." So thank you, everyone. **Brooke ** 03:46 Yeah, I've got something that's the opposite of despair. **Inmn ** 03:49 Oh, really? What is the opposite of despair? **Brooke ** 03:53 Revenge travel. **Inmn ** 03:55 Oh? **Brooke ** 03:56 Do you know what this is? **Inmn ** 03:58 No, I have no idea what you're... **Brooke ** 04:00 Okay. So if I say the phrase to you, revenge travel, what do you assume? Like what would you guess that I'm talking about? **Inmn ** 04:08 Um, I think what my assumption is--I feel like it is related to remote work. Is it related to remote work? **Brooke ** 04:18 No, it's not. **Inmn ** 04:20 Okay. I have no idea what it is then. **Brooke ** 04:23 Okay. I saw it in the headline. And then of course, it was wonderful clickbait and I had to click on it. And I assumed it meant traveling to get revenge on somebody. Either like taking a trip to spite them or like, going somewhere to exact revenge. I don't know. Like, I've never heard this phrase before. But apparently, it's travel that people have done since covid because they weren't able to travel during the worst of the pandemic. **Inmn ** 04:23 Okay, I see. **Brooke ** 04:27 I know, it's way less exciting. And like the article that I read about it mentioned revenge travel multiple times but it never specifically explains it. I had to like glean that from the rest of the text of the article. So it's not the fun thing that you think it is but maybe we should make it a fun thing. Revenge travel. **Inmn ** 05:15 Oh, okay, so now that you say that, the thing that it reminds me of is--which I'm totally guilty of--have you heard of bedtime revenge procrastination? I think that's what it's called. **Brooke ** 05:31 I can guess what you mean, but I have not heard of it. **Inmn ** 05:36 Bedtime revenge procrastination is when you stay up late even though you have to wake up very early because.... It's due to a sense of lack of control over the autonomy of your time. It's called bedtime revenge, meaning that you're revenging yourself upon time, but the cost is still your time and energy because, you know, you get less sleep. **Brooke ** 06:08 I psychologically understand that, you know, resting control thing, but at the same time I'm a person who really needs my full night of sleep consistently or else I quickly deteriorate and also become a horrible human being so I also can't imagine doing that to myself. Because that sounds awful. **Inmn ** 06:27 Yeah, I did it to myself for like the entirety of high school because I had an absolutely unreasonable schedule. Like, I got on average five to four hours of sleep a night for like the entirety of highschool. **Brooke ** 06:46 Wow, I feel bad for young Inmn. **Inmn ** 06:49 Me too. **Brooke ** 06:50 Sorry, you did that to yourself. Okay, well let me finish saying this about revenge travel. It's nothing major, mostly the headline's hilarious and the phrase. But there was a huge boom in travel and 2022 as covid restrictions eased and people were able to travel again. So, they were taking their, I guess, revenge against covid, maybe, is what they were taking revenge on? Or just revenge on not being able to travel. Anyway. And that continued to get into 2023. But the boom seems to have slowed and we're kind of back to more normal pre pandemic levels, especially places that do surveys of consumer demand to figure out, you know, people's intentions to travel and their plans for it. And people are sort of back to normal, i.e. pre pandemic levels of intention to travel, so. **Inmn ** 07:39 Okay, golly, can I do a little mini rant about that? I'm replacing Margaret's rants today. **Brooke ** 07:50 Okay, good. What would this episode be without a rant or two? **Inmn ** 07:57 It's just like the.... I don't know, like I remember after, you know, like the summer in the northern hemisphere after mass vaccination occurred and people feeling like they could move around, travel, and do a lot more in what felt like a safer way to do that. And I don't think--this isn't targeted revenge travel as much as it's targeted at a lot of people's mentalities throughout COVID were like being upset at like things the government or being upset at like society for making them like be cooped up in their houses or whatever, or making them have these like lower modes of travel. And it felt really weird to hear it from a lot of people, like people who were like, really angry about it. And it's like, I get it, it was hard, and it sucked for a lot of people but like, I don't know.... I remember when lock down started that I was like--you know, I'm never thrilled for a government imposed lockdown--but what I was thrilled for, I was like, people just have the chance to like--or, you know, some people--just have the chance to chill a little bit and have some space from their lives. But like, I'm not upset that we were doing the right thing by slowing down. You know? **Brooke ** 09:39 I feel like in that first couple of weeks too, you know, there was at least a couple of weeks that pretty much everyone stopped doing everything and we all got to slow down for a minute. And there was something special in that time before all of the, you know, rage and conflict and conspiracies and everything blew up. But there was a brief moment, I think, for pretty much everyone. Maybe a little bit horrible but also special. **Inmn ** 10:00 Yeah. And, you know, obviously it's way more complicated than that, but I'm like, I'm never upset that like, yeah, it was a hard year and a half and it continues to be really hard for so many people and I'm thrilled to have been doing the right thing. **Brooke ** 10:25 Yeah, for sure. No, I hear you. **Inmn ** 10:28 Anyways, you know, who doesn't do the right thing? **Brooke ** 10:32 Oh, boy. Do you want a list? Should I? Or should I just do a whole rant here on? Maybe you should just tell me. There's too many options. **Inmn ** 10:43 Okay, so, hypothetical situation, you're faced with a problem. So here in Arizona, **Brooke ** 10:51 Who you gonna call? **Inmn ** 10:55 Here in Arizona, there are weirdly not that many regulations around groundwater usage and stuff. **Brooke ** 11:04 That's wild to me. **Inmn ** 11:05 It really is wild. But, if you lived in a town that had halted new construction, new development, but you really wanted to build a mega city, what would you do? **Brooke ** 11:24 Oh god, I'm a billionaire, aren't I? Aren't I? I'm a billionaire in this scenario. **Inmn ** 11:30 In this scenario, no, you are actually not a billionaire. Although, there's a weirdly similar thing happening with a billionaire. **Brooke ** 11:39 Okay, well, then I would do the right thing if I'm not corrupted by having way too much money. **Inmn ** 11:45 Okay, would you but would you consider building a 1000 mile pipeline to the Missouri River? **Brooke ** 11:53 Oh, fuck. No, because? No, no. [Laughing] **Inmn ** 12:00 Or would you... **Brooke ** 12:01 Water is sacred. It should not be forced to travel like that. That's wrong. **Inmn ** 12:08 Okay, so your other alternative is to build a 200 mile pipeline? **Brooke ** 12:13 Nope. **Inmn ** 12:14 To the Gulf of California. **Brooke ** 12:16 Nope. It's also not.... The water's not supposed to travel that far. We go to the water. The water is not supposed to be made to come to us. That's how it works. **Inmn ** 12:28 I’m waiting for a Qanon person to comment, What about rivers?" [An uncomfortable silence].... Anyways, so the town is... **Brooke ** 12:31 I'm just going to sigh in anger and sadness for a while. I'm gonna mute myself and just sigh for an hour while you explain. [Audibly sighs] **Inmn ** 12:50 Okay, so this is where normally a rant about the city of Phoenix would occur. But this is a rant about a city that is literally adjacent to Phoenix, which some would argue is actually a part of Phoenix, but is really hell bent on not being a part of Phoenix because they want to be their own mega city. And this is the city of Buckeye, Arizona. And Buckeye, it's basically a suburb of Phoenix and they hope.... Their population's like, I think it's like 170,000 right now. And they aspire to grow the population to over 1.5 million, which is about what the population of Phoenix is. **Brooke ** 13:43 I was gonna say, that's a lot of people. **Inmn ** 13:47 Yeah. Yeah. And it seems to be just because the local politicians and city council, or whatever, want to be like big deals. Like they just want... **Brooke ** 14:01 I'm sorry, if your city is called Buckeye, I think there's not hope for you. You need to start by rebranding the name of your city if you want just a chance in hell. But Buckeye, Arizona, I think is never going to be No, just the name, just that's it. It falls flat on its face on the name. **Inmn ** 14:20 Yeah, but they, for some reason, want to grow their city. I think it seems to be wrapped up in like those local politicians wanting to be big deals. **Brooke ** 14:29 Capitalism and ego. **Inmn ** 14:31 Yeah, but they can't. They're.... So the state has kind of halted construction, like new construction, or new development, in those areas because the groundwater use has hit a limit. And this comes after some developments in Phoenix were halted because of a lack of water security. So, there's very little regulation about groundwater in Arizona, but there is this thing where water has to be guaranteed for 100 years in order to build a new house, for example. So like if a new housing development is going up then water has to be guaranteed to be at that house for 100 years. **Brooke ** 15:17 That sounds great, but I have a lot of follow up questions for Phoenix and Arizona and how that actually maths out. But do go on. **Inmn ** 15:24 Yeah, yeah. I mean, how it maths out is that, you know, Phoenix heavily relies on the Colorado River for water usage. And the city of Phoenix--which to put in proportion to what the city of Buckeye is aspiring to do--is the city of Phoenix uses about 2 billion gallons of water a day. Like a new fun thing--because the more that we talk about water on the show, the more I'm like trying to visualize what water looks like--what do you think 2 billion gallons of water looks like? **Brooke ** 15:25 I'm trying to imagine some body of water that I am familiar with in order to conceptualize that and I'm wondering how big Crater Lake is because that's maybe.... Wait, wait, well, wait while I inefficiently Google things. Okay, that's way too much water. Okay. Tell me. I can't. **Inmn ** 16:37 It is one inch on Lake Mead. One inch of water is 2 billion gallons of water. **Brooke ** 16:43 Okay, I don't have a good reference for how big Lake Mead is but I hear you. **Inmn ** 16:47 Yeah, you know, that lake that everyone references when we're talking about water scarcity in the West is the constant depletion of Lake Mead. It's weird how that has become the gauge, it's like our gauge for fear and disparity is what the water levels in Lake Mead are. But do you want to know a fun thing about Lake Mead? **Brooke ** 17:13 I do. **Inmn ** 17:14 Um, Lake Mead, the water has.... There was like this crazy low point in 2022. And this is actually a fun thing, but the lake has risen 23 feet since that low point in 2022. **Brooke ** 17:29 I mean that's normal, right, because of the season that we're in? **Inmn ** 17:33 Yeah, yeah. And after like, you know, a recent pretty dry spell this summer, in August, due to record snowfall, I guess the previous winter, the lake rose 13 inches in seven days. Which, is like, you know, 27 billion gallons of water sounds like a lot. **Brooke ** 17:58 Yeah, that sounds a lot. Like a lot, a lot. **Inmn ** 18:03 But to like put that.... 27 billion. **Brooke ** 18:07 Like a foot and stuff? No, two billion is one inch? Is that right? **Inmn ** 18:13 Yeah, two billion's one inch. **Brooke ** 18:14 And 13 inches, a foot. A footish? **Inmn ** 18:17 Yeah, right. A footish. Which is only like seven days of water for the city of Phoenix. **Brooke ** 18:24 [Laughing] Okay, I'm like a foot of water in the lake is a lot. And then yeah, you say.... Just kidding! Do go on. **Inmn ** 18:38 No, yeah. Sorry. The city of Buckeye story is jumping all over the place. But in one of the more weird moves that they're considering is they want to build a pipeline from Puerto Penasco in Mexico to Phoenix, which it's about a 200 mile pipeline that would be built. And it would go right through the Organ Pipe National Cactus Monument. **Brooke ** 19:12 No big deal. National monuments, no big deal. **Inmn ** 19:20 But this is being heavily pushed for not just by the city of Buckeye but by a contractor company called IDE, which is an Israeli company, who thinks it's a really great idea to build this 200 mile pipeline between Puerto Penasco and the city of Buckeye. And it's part of this like growing, seemingly growing, trend of instead of like, instead of dealing with water resources on a, you know, a local level, or any kind of resource, on a local level, we're in this age of industrialization of like, "Well, they have this other resource 1000 miles away or whatever, what if we move to that resource so that we can sustain this absolutely unreasonable population growth in...." And not like a natural population growth. Like the city of Buckeye is like, "We want to grow the population." This is not what the city's naturally doing, you know? **Brooke ** 20:29 So they're bringing in water to support and.... You know, sorry, I want to go off on a whole side tangent because I have many questions about Buckeye, but I'm going to stop and we can talk about it another time. Sorry, I'm just so curious. **Inmn ** 20:44 But yeah, so some of the bigger problems with the pipeline are that it would.... They don't have a plan for dealing with...the desalination plants, they don't have a plan for dealing with the salty material that they remove from the water, except to dump it back into the Gulf of California. **Brooke ** 21:09 Oh, my God. **Inmn ** 21:11 You know, people in Mexico are not stoked about this because it will destroy ecological centers in the Gulf of California. Oh, okay. I remember the other bit. So IDE, the Israeli company that's building...who wants to build the pipeline, they also build desalination plants in Gaza. **Brooke ** 21:32 And that's where the money is. **Inmn ** 21:38 And yeah, it's just...it's a very strange idea. They want to put it through the Organ Pipe National Monument, which, like, there's a lot of pushback because that's a national monument. It's this federally protected wildlife area. And there's a lot of pushback from an environmental perspective. Do you know what else is in the Organ Pipe National Monument? **Brooke ** 22:05 Besides the cacti? **Inmn ** 22:07 Yeah. **Brooke ** 22:08 Let's see. Are there birds? Flowers? **Inmn ** 22:10 What is a great thing to have near a federally protected wildlife area? **Brooke ** 22:18 Oh, wildlife that needs special protection? **Inmn ** 22:22 A bombing range. **Brooke ** 22:23 Oh, shit! I see. You were being sarcastic. Here, silly me. I was trying to guess the real answer. **Inmn ** 22:35 Yeah, It is a bombing range. **Brooke ** 22:38 Of course. Of course it is. Yes. That's what Arizona's for is blowing shit up. **Inmn ** 22:44 Yeah, blowing shit up. And.... **Brooke ** 22:49 I just saw Oppenheimer, sorry. **Inmn ** 22:51 Okay. It only gets worse because the other thing that goes on in the Organ National Monument is that it's like a heavily trafficked corridor for migration between the US and Mexico for, you know, for animals and for people. And it is also one of the most deadly corridors along the US Mexico border for undocumented migrants coming from Mexico, South America, Central America, like up through Mexico and the US Mexico border. And so it represents this strange thing where the government, or people, or like whoever, they have large problems with things like a pipeline going through somewhere, but they have--and Organ Pipe National Monument as like an agency--has no problem with ramping border militarization or a bombing range that's like right next door. So. **Brooke ** 24:00 Man, I will never make sense of people's priorities. **Inmn ** 24:05 Anyways, that is a very long rant on city of Buckeye, **Brooke ** 24:10 That's more attention than Buckeye deserves, ever. But here we are. **Inmn ** 24:17 What else is happening in the southwest? There's some stuff that happened in Vegas. **Brooke ** 24:23 That's right. There's some looming...there's a looming strike in the hospitality industry in Vegas. I don't know how well known this is amongst people but Vegas has a very strong union for various hospitality workers. It might be multiple unions. Forgive me for not knowing exactly. But your housekeeping workers, your bartenders, your food servers, all of those service industries that are so central to the hospitality industry, which is central to the economy of Vegas, and a lot of Nevada, have very strong unions there that do a great job representing them and getting them fair wages and those kinds of things. So one of the major contracts expired in June of this year, 2023, so negotiations for new contracts started back in April. They did not reach an agreement in June. So they extended the contract deadline to September and that has now expired, and they are still negotiating. But the union has voted to authorize a strike if necessary. The union is asking for higher wages, more safety protections, and stronger recall rights, meaning rights to return to their work. So on the issue of safety for the union's, abuse of hospitality workers is on the rise in the US and particularly in Vegas. And I like to think that all of our listeners are the kind of folks who have had a service industry job at some point in their lives and would never ever throw something at a housekeeper. **Inmn ** 26:10 Oh, God. **Brooke ** 26:11 But, you know, just in case it needs to be said, If your room is really dirty and you're upset about it, don't throw things at the housekeeper who's just trying to clean. It's not...it's not a great way to go. **Inmn ** 26:23 Yeah, don't do that. **Brooke ** 26:27 Yeah, there's increasing reports of housekeepers getting yelled at, having things thrown at them, being threatened with abuse. Because there are--it's a complicated thing--so this also ties into the recall rights that they're asking for. Hotel workers, hospitality workers, saw significant decline in the number of people doing those jobs during the pandemic, partly because there was significantly less travel and then also restrictions on how many people you could book on a floor or in a hotel, or etc, etc, etc. So, hotels, you know, laid off a lot of their workers. And then, like many other places, have had a hard time rehiring. So they're not back up to the staffing levels that they used to be. So there's fewer people spread around, you know, a wider workload. And then part of that, the reason for the lack of rehiring, was because they didn't have recall rights. So, there was no reason for people to assume that they would be able to go back to their jobs or get their jobs back. So they, you know, left...stayed or left the industry or what have you. So, there's fewer workers to do the work, especially cleaning work. And then also, consumers are demanding less frequent cleanings for the most part in their hotel rooms. I don't know about you, when you travel, or the last time you went to a hotel, I am the kind of person that does not want housekeeping at all during my stay, whether it's one day or five days. I put out my Do Not Disturb sign. And I guess that's true of about 40% of hotel guests, they choose not to have housekeeping. The downside of that is that when housekeeping does come in after someone's left, the rooms are usually messier than they would be if they had a daily cleaning so housekeeping asked to do a deeper clean and they don't necessarily have--because they're short staffed, and it's a deeper play than they would plan for--they don't have the time to really turn over the room as thoroughly as they should. That difficult contrast between trying to get all the rooms at least a little bit versus doing a few rooms and doing them well and then not having some rooms. Yeah. So that's the other thing, if you're a person like me out there in the world and and you're staying at a hotel and you don't like to have housekeeping, do try and do them the kindness of whatever bits of cleanup you can on the way out so it's faster for them to turn over the room. Anyway, so they are continuing negotiations, but the union has...the union workers have authorized a strike or intermittent work stoppages if needed, and, you know, we fully support them doing that if that's what they need to do. Yeah, yeah, they would not be the only ones that have done that even in the last year or even super recently. Kaiser Permanente, you may have heard about this, had a three day walkout at all of their locations, appointments canceled. That kind of thing. So the Kaiser Permanente Health care workers went on strike and they've reached a tentative deal. And also somewhat recently, but a little bit longer ago, was the Writer's Union in Hollywood went on strike. And they were on strike for quite a bit. But they are back to work, having gotten a lot of what they wanted. The United Auto Workers Union is in negotiations for contracts with the major....sorry, with the major car manufacturers in the US. They have had some work stoppages throughout the negotiation process and may have a full stoppage or full strike at some point as well. So, yeah, lots of worker strikes going on, or have gone on and have been successful, in recent times and we support those workers, not only in their right to strike, but also in treating them well when we are traveling. And encouraging others to do the same. **Inmn ** 31:03 This kind of relates to my mini rant earlier about, like, you know, things shutting down or being less available, which is like, one of the really cool things that I saw out of the Writers' Guild strike was people whose like, you know,--whether it was talk show hosts, or like, whoever, who were like, during the strike, and then like, after the strike, are like, "Yeah, it was hard to not do the show for however long, but like, what is far worse and much harder, is that these very simple demands were not met before the strike or on day one of the strike." And like, I don't know, just like...it's like shifting this mentality from like, I'm sad that the new season of Stranger Things is on hiatus with that these strikes are very important and these people's lives matter and them getting the things that make them able to continue doing their work and surviving is like, incredibly important. And that's more important than my desire to see a fucking TV show, you know? **Brooke ** 32:24 Yeah, and it was really great to see, you know, a lot of actors and so forth, who weren't necessarily striking but were standing in support of, you know, their fellow Hollywood workers going on strike and getting their demands met. It was really cool. **Inmn ** 32:41 Yeah. Is there some other stuff that got shut down recently? **Brooke ** 32:46 No, the government talked about it, like they do. **Inmn ** 32:51 They always talk about it. **Brooke ** 32:54 Yeah, and we talked about this last month, and we said, hey, if it happens, we will follow up and talk more. At the last minute a continuing resolution was passed right before the deadline of when the government would have shut down. And I'm being overdramatic, because it's fucking every single time, basically, with very few exceptions. The downside of the continuing resolution form of passing a budget is that it's basically like buying them another 30 days, or however long the continuing resolution was for. So they still haven't passed a budget. They've just agreed to continue operating based on the old budget for a limited period of time. And I think their next deadline, I want to say, is mid November or so. The whole situation is complicated a little bit by the fact that they outed...the Republicans outed their speaker of the house. They don't have one. But they did pass this continuing resolution without having a speaker. So it is possible, it's just that they're dealing with the other chaos of trying to elect a new speaker and they have, at least, their fourth person that they put up for a vote, is up for vote. So they're focusing on that a lot rather than dealing with the budget issues they need to deal with. So I still, you know, I continue to say the same thing that I have said about this, which is that the government shutdown is very unlikely. If it does, it's likely very short. And even if it is very short, it probably won't affect very much because they have plans and programs set up to automate a lot of their stuff for at least a short period of time. It's only a major problem if there's a longer term shutdown like we saw back in 2019, which is very unlikely. And if it happens, we'll talk about it. **Inmn ** 34:48 Yay, talking about stuff. **Brooke ** 34:52 So that's about them not shutting down. I hear you have some good news, though, that we can talk about. **Inmn ** 35:00 I do have some good news. But I kind of have like a question about the economy for you while we're like on the subject, **Brooke ** 35:11 Give it to me, baby, you know I love talking about economics. **Inmn ** 35:14 I read this article this week about this growing trend, which is not surprising to me because it's like seeing...because it's something that a lot of us are just seeing in the world, but--or experiencing ourselves, depending on where you live. But there seems to be this big growing trend in large cities, especially like, you know, the Bay area where there's been a huge, huge housing crisis for a very long time, which is driven by the tech industry being horrifying. Um, but I read this article recently talking about this thing where it has reached such a crisis that cities like Santa Barbara, and like some cities in Oregon, have opened up parking lots that are there for people who live in their cars. And it's catering to like a very specific like demographic of people, which is like people who make too much money to apply for government assistance, like housing assistance, food assistance, anything like that, or even Medicaid or Medicare--I always forget which is which--but they do not make enough money to afford rent. And it's this growing thing in the economy where like, like.... And these are people who make like $72,000 a year at government or state jobs who can no longer afford to live somewhere. And so they have to live in their car. And that is, yeah.... That's less of a question and more of a what's going on? What's going on? **Brooke ** 37:20 Yeah, that level of problem where someone is making that much and still can't afford is definitely more specific to larger cities and places where housing costs are significantly higher. And housing is expensive everywhere right now. It's out of control. But you do have some places like the Bay Area, LA, parts of Seattle, where it is just ridiculously inflated. So yeah, making $70,000 a year is definitely way too much money to be getting any kind of assistance. You're well above the poverty line, even in your allegedly high income area, but it's nowhere near enough to afford a housing payment for how much houses cost right now. And I think there's always been some amount of people that live in that strange margin place of above the poverty line, can get little or no assistance but below what it takes to afford where they're living. That's not an entirely new phenomenon. But it's definitely much larger than it used to be. You know, because we've seen this astronomical increase in the house of pricing...in the price of housing. And inflation, overall, has increased the price of a lot of other things as well making it harder to afford all aspects of life and living. **Inmn ** 38:47 Yeah, and, you know, it's like this.... It's the thing where it's horrible to me that it's something that people are paying attention to now that it's something that is affecting middle class people. Where it's like this, you know, this has been a lot of people's like realities for, you know, decades and decades, is living in this nebulous zone of like, for whatever reasons, not qualifying for government assistance or for qualifying for government assistance but that assistance not being enough to actually change anyone's life or get them housing or things like that. And that's more what interested me about the article, was like less than that this is like a newer growing thing and more that it's something that is starting to shift up the wage scales and stuff, from something that has always affected lower income people and is now starting to affect people who like would have not considered themselves low income before. **Brooke ** 40:01 Yeah, the poverty line, what the government defines as being, you know, what they call the poverty line and then they use that to measure, you know, how far above or below it you are and then different services say you qualify based on your income relative to that position, that poverty line does not change rapidly. The government does not make big changes to that. They make very small changes to that. But meanwhile, we've seen in the last few years very rapid changes to the cost of living. And it costs so much more for so many basic things right now but that has not been accurately reflected in a higher poverty line, particularly with houses. **Inmn ** 40:42 And wages. But yeah, I don't know. I feel like my hope for articles like this are more hoping that it like increases the amount of empathy and compassion that like more people have for other houseless populations. Which it sucks that it takes.... It sucks that that's what it takes for people to have empathy, but we live in a hell world. **Brooke ** 41:18 Yeah, we do. **Inmn ** 41:19 But you know, sometimes in this hell world that we live in, cool things can happen too. **Brooke ** 41:27 Are there wins sometimes? **Inmn ** 41:28 There are wins sometimes. **Brooke ** 41:31 Like union workers winning and also...other things winning. What are they? Give me hope. **Inmn ** 41:36 Hope. So this was a fun thing that I came across this month. And this has been less like this month and more like a thing that's been happening for over two years. So in 2021, in O'ahu, in Hawaii, there was a fuel leak from, you know, naval bases. **Brooke ** 42:02 Wait, I was there in 2021. **Inmn ** 42:05 Oh, yeah. Well, depending on where you were 93,000 people had jet fuel laced water introduced into their homes and their water drinking supplies. **Brooke ** 42:22 I feel like I would have known that when I was on my little vacation there, if that was when I was there. But damn. **Inmn ** 42:28 Yeah, the symptoms for ingesting it were people having migraines and nausea and vomiting. And while for a lot of people, those were short term symptoms, for like huge amounts of the people who were affected by it, a year and a half to two years later people are still experiencing symptoms and complications from having ingested jet fuel laced water. And some of those symptoms include severe anxiety and depression. **Brooke ** 43:08 Maybe I did ingest some. Wait, I already had those symptoms, but they're worse. Okay, go on. **Inmn ** 43:14 Yeah. And this sounds like it's grim, but there was recently a victory, which is that this initiative led by, I think it was like the Sierra Club and O'ahu Water Protectors have been waging this battle against the US military to drain these fuel reservoirs, which it's like miles of tunnels underneath O'ahu that are like filled with jet fuel, you know? So it's like the possibility of leaks are just astronomical. Like, it's so easy for it to...for that shit to leak. **Brooke ** 43:55 I'm gonna guess they were rapidly built in World War II or something like that as well. **Inmn ** 43:59 Yes, they are World War II era jet fuel tanks. That after like an extreme period of inactivity are finally being drained. And this this was a quotation from someone from the O'ahu Water Protectors, who said, "We got here not because the US Navy woke up one day and said, 'Oh, we're gonna do the right thing,' we got here because of the collective voices of the people who are calling for a shutdown." Which is like, you know, time and time again, the thing that we find in these situations, is like if there's an environmental catastrophe that is also a human catastrophe, it's like...it's not...the government isn't like, "That's bad. We should do something." It takes like it takes thousands of people for two years like screaming and yelling at people and fighting for a change. And this is like...you might think too, that people exposed to jet fuel laced water who are having like pretty severe reactions to those things, that the local government might offer--or the US military--might offer some kind of help with that immediately, you know? **Brooke ** 45:27 No, come on now. **Inmn ** 45:29 It took a year and a half for the Navy to set up a clinic to treat people who had been exposed to these chemicals. And, you know, it is 100 million gallons of petroleum. **Brooke ** 45:47 Holy shit, **Inmn ** 45:50 That is sitting in these tanks. That wasn't the size of the leak, but like.... And like, yeah, two years later residents are having their water in their houses tested. Because a lot of people's houses weren't flushed, the system wasn't flushed. It was never really dealt with. And so like two years later there's these low but persistent traces of these chemicals in people's water. But hopefully, that is.... At least the larger threat of another leak is hopefully not going to happen because of this victory from indigenous water protectors in O'ahu to like, get the fuel tanks drained. And unfortunately, you know, they're not just like.... I'm happy for O'ahu, but they're just moving the fuel to Singapore, the Philippines, and San Diego. So. **Brooke ** 46:51 So, yeah, it's just gonna spill somewhere else. I mean, what do you do though? Is there a safe way to dispose of it? Probably not. Use it up, create more carbon emissions? I mean, yeah, lose-lose. Lose, lose, lose. Pour it down a volcano? What could go wrong? Pour jet fuel into a volcano, I'm sure that'll be fine. I do. I just want to say I never trust the federal government when it comes to drinking water and people. I just don't. That's one of those important things that we, you know, as we live like the world is dying here, that we all have to prepare for and plan for on our own and collectively. Do not ever trust the government to keep your water supply safe and consistent. It's just not going to happen. **Inmn ** 47:47 Nope. Yeah, we protect us. It turns out. **Brooke ** 47:53 Turns out. Alright, other water things: El Nino. So this is funny to me--I'll tell the shortest version of the story that I possibly can--when I was growing up, there were heavy rains in 1996, in the town that I--well, not just the town but this whole occupied Kalapuya territory that I live in, suffered from extreme rainfall. It's the Pacific Northwest, so we have a lot of rain anyway, so when I tell you there was extreme rainfall, that
S1E93 - Last Born in the Wilderness on Anarchist Public Health
20-10-2023
S1E93 - Last Born in the Wilderness on Anarchist Public Health
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Patrick talk a lot about covid, public health, the role of anarchism in public health, and the weirdly similar origins of the names of two projects. Guest Info Patrick (he/him) can be found hosting the Last Born in the Wilderness podcast. You can find it at www.lastborninthewilderness.com or wherever you get podcasts. You an also find Patrick on Instagram @patterns.of.behavior or on Twitter @LastBornPodcast Host Info Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Last Born in the Wilderness on Anarchist Public Health **Margaret ** 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today, Margaret Killjoy. I say it that way because there's other hosts now and I'm very excited about that. But sometimes, apparently, we have the same voice. And so people think that we are each other, but we're not. We're different people. And you can tell because my name is Margaret Killjoy and Inmn's name is not Margaret Killjoy. It is instead, Inmn. But that's not what we're talking about. What we're gonna talk about today ... Well, we're gonna talk about a lot of stuff today. I'm really excited about it. We're gonna be talking with the host of a podcast you should probably be listening to if you're not already called Last Born in the Wilderness. And it's like the [laughing] smarter thinking version of this show. And so we're gonna talk about that. And first, here's a jingle from another show on the network, which is ... the network is Channel Zero Network, which is a network of anarchists podcasts, and here's a jingle. Buh buh bah buh buh bah [singing like a simple melody] **Margaret ** 02:09 Okay, we're back. Okay. So if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of maybe introduce this other podcast, this project that you do. **Patrick ** 02:18 Yeah. Thanks for having me on. My name is Patrick Farnsworth. Pronouns are he/him. I'm the host of Last Born in the Wilderness. It's a podcast I've been hosting for quite a long time now and I ... I don't know how to describe it. Someone described it once as a podcast about death and dying, which sounds rather bleak. It's an interesting way to describe it. I mean, it's, uh, you know ... I certainly come from a radical leftist and anarchist, or as someone else has said about me, "anarchistic adjacent perspective." I'm talking about collapse. I'm talking about the implications of global climate change, climate disruption, the so-called sixth mass extinction anthropocene, like these kind of big, heady, huge global subjects around, you know, extinction and mass extinction events and so on. And I kind of also explore the history of settler colonialism and issues around whiteness, or I should say, white supremacy. I talk about a whole bunch of stuff. And I think the point of it is to really get at the question of: what are the roots of these kinds of broader biosphere crises that we're in the midst of? Why is it that human beings, or the dominant culture of human beings that we are part of, producing a mass extinction event? And what does that portend? What does that lead to? What can we expect to happen in the coming decades? And kind of wrestling with really deep ... "Deep." [said with an introspective laugh] I mean "deep" in the sense emotionally and spiritually with the question of what does extinction mean for our species? And how do we grapple with that? It's a big question. So yeah, that's more or less what the podcast is kind of addressing. **Margaret ** 04:03 Yeah, no. Okay, wait, so with extinction, do you run into this thing .... Okay, well, no, first I'm gonna ask about your name, then we're gonna come back to extinction. Where did you get this sick name? It's such a sick name. It's obviously ... As someone who is part of a project called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and then has a show called Live Like the World is Dying, I'm clearly a fan of this slightly long and poetic style of naming. But Last Born in the Wilderness is a sick name. I'm curious about its background. **Patrick ** 04:28 Sure. I mean, the name itself came--it's a funny origin story really--when I came up with the name, I was homesick and I didn't know what to call this thing. I didn't even know what I wanted to make. But I was thinking about what my father would call me because I'm the youngest of this large Mormon family. No longer LDS but grew up in this LDS family, LDS environment. He would call me his "last born in the wilderness" because being kind of ... he's kind of a lovely but very quirky man who would have these very strange nicknames for his kids, including me being the youngest, being the, quote, "last born the wilderness," meaning he was paraphrasing from the Book of Mormon. There's a verse in the Book of Mormon about this family going through the wilderness and something about being the "last born in this wilderness of mine afflictions." Like it's really dramatic kind of bleak Mormon scripture stuff and it's weird. So, I don't know, I guess I thought of my dad, I thought of that, I thought of my history, I thought of ... it sounded like it could have multiple meanings. And it does because as I did the podcast more and more I started to really think about the other layers of it, of, "Okay, are we the last generation?"  Like is this the end of this idea of wilderness. Wilderness itself is kind of an interesting idea. And the kind of colonialist notion, the dualism of civilization versus wilderness, and that in and of itself is a problematic idea. Like, there's a lot of layers to it that I've discovered, which is actually what I love about really cool names or titles of things is when you name something and you realize over time that it actually has other meanings that kind of come up, and you're like, "Oh, that actually means this as well. I did not know that." So that's where it comes from. **Margaret ** 06:13 Okay, I really like that for a thousand reasons. One of the things you talked about ...  I've been reading more and more stuff that's critical of the idea of "wilderness," right? Because you're creating an artificial distinction between humans and everything else, right? As if, like ... I mean, we're not capable of doing things that are not natural because we're literally, natural beings, right?  **Patrick ** 06:33 Yeah, exactly.  **Margaret ** 06:35 And the idea of untouched wilderness as this very colonial concept where it's like, actually, a lot of forests are managed by people and we're .... And it gets humans off the hook if we treat ourselves like we're bad, like, inherently, right?  **Patrick ** 06:51 Yeah.  **Margaret ** 06:51 Because like, "Ahhh, well, we're human, so of course we clear cut." And we're like, "Well, that's not true. A lot of people lived here for a very long time and didn't clear cut everything," right?  **Patrick ** 07:02 They didn't. No.  **Margaret ** 07:03 Okay. And then the other reason I like it, it's kind of the same background as Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness.  **Patrick ** 07:09 Oh, really.  **Margaret ** 07:10 I was once, when I was a weird "look at me, I'm so strange, oogle kid" running around and pulling books out of the trash, I dumpstered the Christian Science holy book. I don't know what it's called. And I just started cutting it up to make new assemblages of words and things, right? And one of the pieces that I cut out of it and then put on this piece of art I was making just said "strangers in the tangled wilderness." And I really liked it. And so I named my first zine I ever made like 20 some years ago--well not the first zine--but the first zine that I called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness because that's how I felt is like this wander, right? And then but since then I've learned, I think, I'm not an expert on Christian Science, although I can claim, my great grandmother was raised that way and then she was like, "This sucks," and then she just became an agnostic atheist pagan person. She was cool. It was like 100 years ago. She applied to college and she got so mad that they asked her what her religion is and she wrote "Sun worshiper," on the thing, which is complicated. But for a woman in the 1910s, I'm fucking into it. Anyway, the next line in it is "strangers in a tangled wilderness, wanders from the parent mind." And so it's using wilderness as a negative conception, I believe, in the traditional thing. And so yeah, it's like this interesting thing where Christianity ... Like, okay, so this "last born in the wilderness" seems to be implying this negative conception of wilderness. Which is this very negative version of Christianity producing such a thing. I don't know. That's what I've got. **Patrick ** 08:46 Yeah, I think the wilderness in scripture and Christian literature, or whatever, it's very much this .... Like, if you're wandering the wilderness, you're not in a good place. You've kind of either been banished or God is leaving you alone, giving you distance to figure your shit out for a while. Like, there's good things and bad things with that. But I think that the wilderness can .... Yeah, there is this implication in it of it being symbolic, or whatever, of it being not the best place to be in. You're not in paradise, that's for sure. You're not in the Promised Land, that's for sure. You're maybe on the way there, but you're not there. Yeah. And certainly, in that passage, if I remember, it's like, "In the wilderness of mine afflictions." Like, it's very, it's not ... you know, it's not a good place to be. But they were on their way to the Promised Land, I guess, in that scripture. So ... **Margaret ** 09:42 Okay, so you're like the last one before we reach paradise or whatever?  **Patrick ** 09:46 I guess. I don't know **Margaret ** 09:47 Like you're the last people who have a concept of wilderness and everyone else is going to live underground growing their food in very controlled environments because everything's hard. **Patrick ** 09:55 I guess so. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I think that certainly the world as we know it, the world that you and I were born into, is like kind of no longer here and we've entered into a new earth, which is not one that is hospitable to human, or much of the more than human life, unfortunately and it's gonna get progressively more and inhospitable. So, being the last born is really ... it's not a ... it's all of us. It's not like ....  You're not the last man on the Earth, or whatever, or the last person on the Earth. You're one of a generation, or several generations, that really remembers what it was like before the climate was completely chaotic and everything was on fire and everyone was coughing in your face with a plague. You know, that was a nice time. Remember that? That was cool. And now we're in this new place, or this seemingly novel place for us at least, of, kind of, amplifying crises. And it's .... Yeah, so anyway, sorry, that's rather bleak. But it's a little bit of what I talk about, I guess, or bring up in the podcast. The overarching sense.  **Margaret ** 11:04 No, no. Okay. Well, let's talk about coughing in people's faces with the plague. [Laughing] One of the topics that we wanted to talk about was kind of a little bit of where we're at with Covid. And not just a like, "Hey, there's a new wave coming. And there's new ... or here." And there's also like, you know, "Time for your yearly booster," and there's the non MRA [struggles with the letters] **Patrick ** 11:27 Non MRNA.  **Margaret ** 11:28 Yeah, thank you. Vaccines that just got approved and like all this other stuff. But, more about, I want to kind of ask you about what you've learned through your work about the fact that we are living in this place where community care has been left to individuals and smaller organizations, by and large, with some larger institutions trying to do good, while the, at least, federal level care and things like that have largely abandoned us to fend for ourselves. **Patrick ** 12:00 Yeah. You know, it's weird. This has been a disillusioning period, I think. Pandemic has been really rough for a lot of reasons. And I think I've talked about it a lot through a variety of lenses. I think there's a baseline of trust that's been lost among myself and a lot of other people. Like, I feel like to kind of continuing to keep up precautions and to avoid catching Covid is really a difficult thing at this time. And it's weird because there's been a normalization on such a broad level. And there's people on the left who really have given up and don't really care about it anymore. And seemingly, it sort of seems like we've kind of turned a corner. It feels like culturally, socially where it's kind of unacceptable to continue to care about it in this way. But I think if you are a leftist, in the broadest sense, not just a radical anarchist, or whatever, you really need to kind of get the facts straight about what Covid is and how it's still impacting people. How many people are becoming effectively disabled as a result of Covid infections? And then normalizing it is really fucked up. It's eugenicist, frankly. It's ableist. It's wrong. And I was just thinking, I don't know if I want to call .... I don't want to .... I don't know. I was thinking recently about how my partner and I moved up to Canada. Actually, we're in Victoria, BC right now, the city that is called Victoria, on Vancouver Island. There was an anarchist bookfair here. No mask requirements at this fair. And I think at other book fairs around, I don't know if around BC or just in the US in particular, masks were a requirement, like respirators were required. It's just a basic thing I think we need to kind of do now as leftists or anarchists is just to have, if we're gonna have a public event, these types of things just need to be kind of there. Like we just have to do them. Because there's a lot of people who are immunocompromised or disabled that just can't show up because this is not a safe, "safe," these [unhearable word] words, but like literally, it'll harm their bodies. **Margaret ** 14:09 Yeah, it's like full of spikes that are shooting out of the ceiling. You know, it's not... **Patrick ** 14:14 Yeah, exactly. So I think just the act of community care on that level--I mean, you don't have to be an anarchist to do this of course--but I think particularly for anarchists that are supposedly about communal acts of care and mutual aid, like this is a really basic one, a pretty easy one. It's interesting how it's not-- you know for anarchists, there's no like ... I don't know if there's a global anarchist Federation that has doled out some kind of guidelines. That would never make sense. But it's interesting how in every place around North America there's different kinds of cultural temperaments, or certain attitudes, around certain things and particularly around Covid. It's interesting how in Canada, how maybe anarchists in Canada don't maybe care as much about it. I don't know. I guess I can't speak for them, but it's an interesting thing to experience the ways in which the normalization of Covid has affected different regions. And it's ... Yeah, so anyway, I just wanted to kind of bring that up because we are still in the midst of this thing. I can get into reasons why it's still a problem, why it is still a threat to people's health, but it shouldn't be. I don't know. I just think it's really imperative that anarchists kind of get with the program if they haven't already. **Margaret ** 15:26 Yeah, and like, I've been fairly proud of the fact that overall I've found anarchists and punks and different sorts of subcultural folks and political folks to be more on top of it than the average person or place, but not .... I haven't been blown away either, you know? And we have had .... Most of the book fairs that I've been aware of or gone to, or whatever, this year have had some kind of masking requirement. Sometimes it's a rigid requirement. Sometimes it's like, here's the masks at the door, and someone's going to kind of be like, "You should really wear one of these," but not like kick you out without a mask. Like, I .... Shout out to the anarchist space called Firestorm in Asheville, North Carolina that during COVID, they actually moved into a new building, and part of why they picked the building, as far as I can tell, is that it used to be an auto shop so the doors open all the way, like one wall is open. And they still have a mask requirement inside of the store because they're like, "Well, they're still a pandemic. So you should wear a mask. This isn't complicated," you know? And like .... Okay, have you ever seen the TV show The 100? **Patrick ** 16:42 I think I've heard of it. **Margaret ** 16:45 I watched the first two or three seasons a while ago. And I .... But there's this thing that I think about all the time. It was not a particularly important TV show to me. But there's one thing that seemed kind of hackneyed at the time where basically almost no one can live on the Earth because there was a pandemic. And a lot of people live in space. And then some people come back down from space. And then there's people who have "lost their minds" and "lost civilization" who, you know, have adapted. And then there's these people who live inside a mountain. And they're like, "Oh, we can't go outside the mountain except with, you know, full suits that protect ...." I forget the word for this, like the chemical suits or whatever.  **Patrick ** 17:23 Like hazmat suits or something like that.  **Margaret ** 17:25 So yeah, you can't go outside without a hazmat suit and a gas mask. And like, you know, when you come back in you have to go through decontamination and all this stuff. And I remember watching it and being like, you just sort of take it for granted. You're like, yeah, you know, if there was a thing in the air that killed people or made people disabled, people would like, take it seriously, you know? And then now I'm like, "Man, that was a utopian piece of fiction right there." Like, within the first week someone would be like 'Fake news. There's nothing in the air outside," and then the whole mountain would have been destroyed.  **Patrick ** 18:00 Speaking of like pop culture .... Like, sometimes it is. I watched that film Contagion a while ago. It came out before Covid. It's like what, a Stevens Soderbergh film? Whatever, it doesn't matter. It came out. And it was like "What would happen if a really, really dangerous, very contagious virus just started spreading? Like, what would the agencies do? What would the CDC do? What would global world governments do?" Whatever. And, you know, it was fairly .... It tried to be realistic while also being kind of dramatic. And it was a really nasty virus. Everybody is locked down, quarantine, blah, blah, blah. They make a vaccine, they do a lottery, people get it at the end, and it's over. Like, that's the end of the movie. Everybody gets the vaccine. Everybody gets the vaccine, everybody's happy to get the vaccine. And no, you know, I mean, yeah, certainly .... Covid is in this weird, I feel like it's in this weird space. And I've said this before on an interview with somebody, this epidemiologist, I was saying it's this weird space where it's like, it's obviously really, really bad to get it, but it's also like a lot of people get it and it doesn't seem to affect them that much. They kind of feel like, "Oh, it's kind of like the cold or kind of like a flu." It isn't, though. I mean, looking at the actual virus and how it affects the body, it is not like those viruses. So it's very different. But the fact is, is that, you know, percentage wise, you know, most people get it, they don't die from it. So what's the big deal? So, I think it's in this weird space where it's a very contagious, very nasty virus, but it doesn't have the mortality rate of like Ebola or something so people aren't going to take it seriously. So, it's weird. It's a weird thing. And we're, you know, almost four years into this thing. So, people are obviously quite weary. We've been talking about it. So yeah, it's hard. **Margaret ** 19:53 No, totally. And like, I mean, it's funny because it's like I also get the ... I get why people are over it and have to live their lives. And I think I talked about this in a recent episode, I can't remember. I was talking to someone about it. I no longer have real conversations. I only have podcast conversations. It was like, okay, we can't not have live music as part of our human experience of the world, or whatever, right? But to me it's all about looking at these cost-benefit analyses. And by and large, with exceptions, like if someone's doing hard manual labor all day I can see why wearing a mask is particularly hard, or like, you know, there's complicating factors. But, overall, it's just not a fucking big deal. Like to--Covid is--but to wear a mask-- **Patrick ** 20:38 Yeah.  **Margaret ** 20:39 --for, I think, most people in most situations, And I think the main reason people don't wear masks is because of the social aspect of it. Because they are afraid of being the only person wearing a mask. And I just like ask us to not act out of fear. I ask us to do what's right. Or I think we are asked by being alive. I think that we are asked to be ... to do what is right, not what is popular, or whatever, right? And, so that's what's so disappointing to me about it. And I mean, this is part of why everyone gets so mad at people who .... Because I also try not to be like .... You don't really like gain a lot when you tell people like, "What the fuck? What's wrong with you? You can't do that." It's not a very effective strategy, you know? And so I do think it's like, overall, I really appreciate a lot of the phrasing that I've seen about being like, "Hey, even if you stop masking, here's like a good reason to start again."  And like, you know, there's no harm in just mea culping and just starting to mask again, **Patrick ** 21:46  Yeah, no, for sure. And I don't know, there's a lot of other things going on too. When you .... It really is fascinating to be like .... You obviously want to be like, you want to encourage this level of care and I think what's sort of hard is there is a real lack of public .... Like, good public health messaging has been terrible. So, it's an interesting dynamic. I feel like anarchists are people who are more on the ground organizing at grassroots levels. At a grassroot level, you are trying to fill a void, which is the government doesn't really want to fucking deal with this shit. They just don't want to deal with it. They have, they've learned enough. And they know that they can move on warm, more or less. And so they're not going to do anything about it anymore. And so you have to take care of yourself, The rich are taking care of themselves. They have all the tools, They know exactly how to run a Covid-safe event. They've been doing it for a while now. And they have really good like .... In the way that you would pay for security or catering at an event, they pay for Covid Safety coordinators. Yeah, they're really good at it. And if they're doing that, and they understand this, then we should be doing it for ourselves because we as the poors, we need to take care of each other, take care of ourselves and learn basic information that unfortunately a lot of people don't have. And actually .... I understand that by doing my podcasts or doing this kind of work that I am able to delve into some of these subjects more closely. So, I might know a little more about Covid than the average person. And honestly, the more I learn about it, the more I don't want to get it and the more I would encourage people to avoid reinfection more than anything. If you've had it before, you don't want to get it again. There's so many intersecting issues here. I guess I just, I just really want to emphasize community care is the most important thing right now in regards to this. Need to really get on top of that, if we haven't already. And a lot of people are. It's amazing, actually, how many people are doing it, like mask blocks. There's all kinds of people organizing around this subject. And they don't have any particular, seemingly political ideology that's animating it. It's just they're doing it because it's right.  **Margaret ** 23:57 Yeah, totally. One of the things you were saying about realizing like the government has abandoned us, so the government has moved on and things like that. It's one of these ... at the beginning of Covid, it actually kind of challenged, in some ways, it challenged a lot of my own anarchist thoughts, right? Because I try not to assume I'm right. I try not to look at a problem and say "What's the anarchist solution?" I try to look at a problem and say, "What's the solution?" I have a bias that lends itself towards non state, non capitalist solutions. But I try to earnestly look at every problem and say, "What is the best solution?" and so far in my life the answer is usually nonstate, anti capitalist, anti oppression, right? Well, and some of those things are also moral, you know. But at the beginning of Covid, you start being like, "Well, shit, someone needs to .... This needs to be organized on a massive scale, right?" And then, now what we actually saw instead gave me the opposite, whereas at the beginning of Covid mutual aid groups popped up everywhere, you know, and mutual aid groups like stepped into the void of what was not being met. Because people were locked down, they were like, not able to meet a bunch of other needs, and a lot of them, in the US, at least, we have, you know, we got stimulus money or whatever. And it wasn't enough for most people. And, but I think that it becomes really clear that you look a year on and as soon as Covid  is over, you're like, "Oh, you're running some cold math about dead people in the economy, or disabled people in the economy, and you are deciding that getting people back to work makes the country more money even though a bunch of people will die or become disabled as a result," you know? And so it's like one of those things, to me, it just lays bare the reality of government, that governments exists to make this kind of cold calculation, not take care of people. **Patrick ** 25:57 Yeah, no, I think at the beginning there was a lot of ambiguity. We didn't know what this would really be. So obviously lock downs--or what we would call lock downs but really just kind of stay-at-home orders--or just tell people, like, "Please just avoid social gatherings for a while." And then the masks came into the picture and things like this, that was implemented just because there was, you know, there was a lot of ambiguity. We didn't know everything we know now. And once the, kind of, the cold calculus really came in, and there's a lot of other things too, but really when that came in and it was like, "This is hurting the economy. This isn't gonna work. You know, we have to really focus on jobs over, you know, everything else, over our lives. So, yeah, let's just get back to work." And I don't know. But I think it is kind of an interesting thing, though, because the anti-mask thing is very much an aesthetic choice. It's not as much a practical, irrational thing, because we could have jobs and all this stuff running exactly as before but people are wearing high quality respirators. Sure, we could have all kinds of things implemented. It would take an investment. From a cold capitalist perspective, it's rational to put an air filtration, it's rational to have people wear respirators, and yet from .... I don't know what it is, but just the idea of actually providing public health infrastructurally on that level is just not possible at this point for some reason. It's just not feasible. I was thinking about the kind of origins of public health, as it were, and like John Sn--I think his name was John Snow in England--he kind of figured out where the cholera outbreaks were coming from. And that really helped kickstart this movement to, you know, kind of figure out how to provide clean water for people on a massive social scale, on the scale of a city, right? It took a long time and a lot of deaths for something to finally change. And now we just take for granted that when you turn on a faucet in most places around, say, North America, you're gonna find you're gonna have clean water. Like it's pretty not always the case, certainly, but, you know, it's kind of taken for granted that that's almost like a right that we have. But clean air has not really entered into that same, that level of feeling like an entitlement that we have as human beings for a quality of life issue, that this is important. So, I don't know, it's interesting to witness how this has been playing out and also sort of an anarchist, or whatever, thinking about it from that level of like, if we want to move away from States and governments, how would an anarchist society deal with this issue? How would non-Statist, anti-Statists deal with this? And it's interesting. I don't know yet. I haven't really figured that out. And, I was kind of thinking because you do a history podcast as well. And I'm wondering if there was anything you came across as, you know, kind of radical leftist movements that were like, "How do we apply the values of public health and health care from a maybe communal collectivist sense that does not rely on the institution of states and bureaucracies? Like, I don't know, I wonder about this because we're trying to just fill the gap of what the State isn't doing. It's almost reactionary, right? What would it look like to be proactive in that sense? I don't know. I don't have an answer to that. I just think it's interesting. **Margaret ** 29:26 Okay, no, that's interesting. From a history point of view, there's a piece that I read right near the beginning of pandemic--that I haven't read in a while and I don't remember as well--this Italian anarchist, Malatesta, wrote a piece called like something like "Anarchists and the Cholera Outbreak," and it was about anarchist public health responses to a late 19th century health crisis. But I also know that anarchists have been doing a ton of stuff on public health since the beginning. I think that like .... I mean, you can look at like ... it's anarchists who, at least in the US, pushed birth control and pushed information about sexually transmitted diseases and like sexual health. And it's like, people are like, "Oh, yes, early feminists," and I'm like, "Yeah, they were early feminist anarchists." I mean, there's some exceptions to that. And then of course, you have bad examples where Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, was, like, a "complicated figure" who embraced non-racialized eugenics. And that is bad. But it is spun to mean that she was different, that she believed in something different than what she actually believed. And, but it's still bad. And she started off as an anarchist. She, actually, by the time she was really doing the eugenics because a lot of like--a lot of eugenics, you kind of need the State for, right, especially like the evilest parts of it or the like who gets to decide who has babies are whatever, right, and all that shit. But Margaret Sanger was an anarchist when she first started doing a lot of the birth control stuff. Emma Goldman got arrested a ton of times. The person who's at the longest in jail in US history for advocating birth control was this guy--I just did an episode about this, I don't normally have all these facts in front of me--was this guy named Ben Reitman, who was mostly an anarchist. He spent most of his life fucking around with the anarchist scene. But the anarchists scene didn't like him because he was super horny and he kept cheating on Emma Goldman, which is impressive because they were in an open relationship. Yeah, but he still managed to sort of piss her off with how many people we slept with, even though it was supposedly okay. He spent the longest of anyone in history, in US history, in jail for advocating birth control. And he was also a ... he was a hobo doctor. He was a doctor who went to medical school, became a physician, specifically so that he could treat STIs in the poorer classes and people who didn't have access to public health. And so a lot ... As far as I can tell, I see this thing, this pattern happen a lot where things come from the bottom up and then the top is like, "Okay, cool, we got that." And you can see this benevolently where you're like, "Oh, it comes from the bottom up and then the State comes in and takes charge and everything's okay." And, and there's some advantages that have come up through that, but overall, I think it is to the detriment of these systems. And I think that... I don't know, I guess I'm like, I think that decentralized networks that have some forms of centralized information sharing, are very capable of doing these sorts of things. Also, sorry, I'll stop spitting out anarchist history in a minute.But the legalization of abortion, the first Western European country... Soviet Russia was the first country to legalize--I could be wrong about this--was one of the first countries, if not the first country, to legalize abortion in Europe. But then Stalin was like, "Just kidding. You must make babies," because he's a bastard. Then Federica Montseny, the woman Minister of Health in revolutionary Spain, who was an anarchist--which is really complicated and there was a lot of arguing at the time about whether Federica Monseigneur and some of her peers should have joined the coalition government--she legalized abortion. And so it's like, funny. So even the State idea of public health came from an anarchist who was part of the State, you know? **Patrick ** 33:30 I don't know, I think that it's this thing where when we're thrust into these big crises, like a pandemic, we start to really... we do have to reevaluate our ideological stances a little bit like. Because for me, you know--I think this is something we talked about when you were on my podcast like three years ago, or whatever--something about, like, it's not our position to tell people how to do things. Like, if it's another country and other people they're going to figure out how to solve their problems in their own way. And, you know, I think a lot of revolutionary movements do lead to certain types of, obviously, State kind of action or States.... It's directed towards the State or the State itself's kind of response to it in a way that is actually beneficial to the people. But that's not because the State is good. It's just under enormous amounts of pressure. It's just.... It's complicated. I don't think it's one thing and I think that it's a good thing that the government was able to mass produce or help mass produce vaccines, but I also think it was really fucked up that it was then decided that that was the end of the pandemic because everybody was vaccinated. It's kind of this... It's this thing. It's not one thing. It's very complicated. But I do think overwhelmingly, absolutely, if public health is being administered on this sort of ground level where the feedback between the actual public and the sort of people administering public health, if that feedback loop is shorter, where you're able to actually hear what people are saying and you can actually see what's going on in the ground, there's an actual connection and it's done democratically and collectively then you actually can administer public health in a way that is going to help people and not being imposed on people. Right? So yeah, I think there's been, for me, a lot of questions and lessons learned from this pandemic up to this point. So, and also, I don't know, I just throw this in there, they're not necessary anarchist, but like the Black Panthers and the Young Lords, you know, they were very much about health care and administering health care on a community level and did forward a lot of things that even today...like I think it was something like the Young Lords were really pushing for patients having access to their own... like that the doctors had to explain to them what....Is that right?  **Margaret ** 35:44 Yeah, they introduced the Patient's Bill of Health that has since been used internationally. **Patrick ** 35:51 So you know, and they were radical, you know, they took over hospitals, they occupied, you know, they did a lot. So, yeah. Anyway, I just, I think in regards to the pandemic, right now, whatever major breakthroughs that we're gonna have in regards to dealing with cleaning the air or, you know, actually making sure that people have access to resources and information, it's gonna have to come from the ground level, in pressure from the ground level because it ain't good right now. It really isn't. **Margaret ** 36:22 No, and that, I really liked that. I think that's a really good point. And when I think about it, the Young Lords are the perfect example of this. And they're, you know, yeah, they were Marxist Leninists, but they were doing something from the bottom up and forced the city of New York City to take action. Like, for example, in the neighborhood that they lived in--they moved all over the place, but they first started in, I want to say, the Upper East Side in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Manhattan--and no trash was coming. No trash pickup was happening there, partly because of some racism of some white labor unions and the trash union and partly due to just systemic poverty and other forms of racism. It wasn't all just the trash workers problem...fault. But, you know, they just started dragging trash in the middle of the street and setting it on fire. And they did it in the parts of their neighborhood that rich people have to drive through. They did it in the through fares. And it worked. Trash
S1E91 - Elizabeth on Preparedness as a Family
06-10-2023
S1E91 - Elizabeth on Preparedness as a Family
Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Elizabeth talks to Margaret about coming into preparedness as an urban PTA mom, building family preparedness, teaching kids about disasters, and flipping the prepping narrative to focus on building inclusive communities and resiliency. Guest Info Elizabeth Doerr (she/her) is a writer and parent. You can find her work at https://www.elizabethdoerr.com or her newsletter on Substack at https://crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com or on Instagram @crammingfortheapocalypse or on Twitter @ElizabethDoerr Host Info Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Elizabeth Doerr on Family Preparedness **Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host this week, Margaret Killjoy. And this week, I have Elizabeth Doerr on to talk about her journey into preparedness. And, I think y'all are gonna get a lot out of this conversation. I'm really excited to have it. I first talked to--I guess I'll get to that later during the actual interview. But first, here's a jingle from another show on the network Channel Zero Network, which is a network of anarchist podcasts. So here's another one. Dah dah duh dah duh dah [singing the words like a simple melody] **Margaret ** 01:31 Okay, and we're back. Okay. So if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then maybe like, how you got started on your preparedness journey?  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 01:40 Sure. Um, Hi there, my name is Elizabeth Doerr, and my pronouns are she/her. And, I got started on my preparedness journey mainly because we moved to Portland, Oregon in 2016 where there is going to be a huge earthquake that can devastate the city. And, then subsequently had my son and became--and had already been concerned about climate change, but then that fear of climate change really kind of ratcheted up a lot more with having a kid. And so, over the last few years, I've really been trying to do more to prepare, not just for the earthquake but really for climate change in general, and trying to figure out what that means just in terms of society, in terms of the way we can--not just in personal action--but how we can really just change the entire system altogether. And, so that has turned into a Substack called Cramming for the Apocalypse, which is also going to be a book eventually, as well. But, for the last year, it's been in newsletter form.  **Margaret ** 02:54 Do you ever have this thing where you're like, "But you have to hurry up and make it a book because what if the apocalypse happens before you get the book out?" **Elizabeth Doerr ** 03:01 Well, it's funny because my agent was kind of...she's like, "It's an evergreen topic." But she's like, "It always feels so urgent. I want to get it out as soon as possible." But then also at the same time it's like ... yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. I do have that pretty much every day. But, also it takes forever to write a book. So it's...yeah. But, it's amazing even just in traditional publishing how long it takes to get a book out into the world, and it's like, "Well, in three years, what could the world be like?" So, yeah.  **Margaret ** 03:34 I think about this all the time. I actually--because of the 2016 election and stuff--I, for a while, stopped writing books and started focusing more on music because everything felt so immediate in crisis that I was like, "I don't have time to finish this book, take a year for my agent to find a publisher, take a year for them to publish it, take a year for people to read it and care about it." Like, I just need to make music that people hear tomorrow because, otherwise, what am I doing? And then it turns out, we had more than three years, so it's fine. [Laughing] **Elizabeth Doerr ** 04:10 And I love that. I wish I had that skill and ability because that would be so...And I actually think that with like, I wish I was a really good artist too because friends who are excellent at, you know, drawing and art--or at least visual art, that is--I'm jealous because it's like, that's something you can see now. I mean, you can do with writing too but it's just a little more visceral immediately. But yes, totally.  **Margaret ** 04:37 No, that makes sense. Okay, so one of the reasons I wanted to have you on, one, is that you were working on an article that we might talk about later, and reached out to me, but one of the things that I'm really excited to talk to you about and that I think that people might get a lot out of hearing from is you're like...you are not the stereotypical prepper in the traditional sense, and you're also not necessarily the stereotypical, like, what people might imagine when they imagine the leftist prepper, right? Which might look more like me. I don't know. I don't know what people have in their minds. And, you know, when I asked you how to how to describe this, you were like, "Well, you're a white middle aged urban mom who has progressive values, who is learning...is getting more and more interested in anarchism and more radical values beyond that, but you exist within the mainstream culture. And then also you're a PTA mom, for example," right? I'm really excited to talk to you about all this shit. It's like, this is the stuff that like...like people who like...I really love that you found--Well, I guess I want to ask you more about how you found your way into radical politics from this, like you mentioned that like your study of preparedness has like led you to being like, "Oh, what if we, what if we need to structure society differently?" Like, what has that journey been like for you? **Elizabeth Doerr ** 05:53 Yeah, I mean, I guess the question is how far back to go? I mean, so I, you know, it really...I mean, I'll give you a little bit of a snapshot kind of like before this whole journey, but I, you know, it started as, I was a Peace Corps volunteer after I graduated from college. And, so I lived in Malawi, in southeastern Africa. And I had gotten in with a very, like traditional, like, I guess, liberal views about what international development being good for, you know, developing countries and then came out of it with a vast nastily different perspective, that actually, you know, that's a part of imperialism and we're doing harm. And it's, you know, it's just a, you know, it's just a holdover from colonialism, and that I still, you know, a belief that I still hold. But I had a really hard time, I guess, articulating what that was until I went to graduate school for International Education Policy at University of Maryland. And it's pretty radical...I didn't know this going into it, but it was like the perfect program for me, because the way they viewed international development was very much aligned with the kind of critiques that I had. **Margaret ** 07:06 Oh cool. was,  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 07:07 Yeah, so like it was more...I would say they took a more like, Democratic Socialist view of it.  I don't think that they had[unhearable] .... That's my perspective that, you know, we needed more community based solutions happening and that kind of stuff. And so that really started that on that path, and I worked in higher education, working in social justice education. And at that time, had really--and still I think I have some of these...you know, that's when I kind of started calling myself a Democratic socialist  and probably, you know, in theory would call myself that now, although it's a little blurrier. But yeah, and so, you know, so and then it's, you know, I think becoming a parent actually radicalized me even more, because, you know, I just, especially with what's going on in the US about how our school choice system really perpetuates segregation, racial segregation. And I really didn't want to be a part of that. And, but it's also like, you know, especially like being in my role as a PTA, like a middle aged PTA mom, with my kid going to public school system, it's like a conversation about, you know, "Which school should I send my kid to?" as being kind of this constant, yet nobody points out how racist it is. And so that's a big part of it. And then, these are all values that have really been a part of me in most of my adulthood.  So it really was, as I embarked on this whole process, like anti racism, social justice, you know, these kinds of radical values, were always going to be a part of this project, that Cramming For the Apocalypse art project. I think I wasn't completely prepared for all of the things that I was going to learn, which I love. Like, it was really new to me. You know, I don't think I ever really questioned the kind of, quote "definition" that everybody, you know, every mainstream person in society from left to right deems anarchists, as, you know, being a kind of chaotic force, whereas as I was diving into this project, I was like, I started to realize that, one, that we have the definition completely all wrong.  **Margaret ** 07:07 Yeah.  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 07:09 I'd say the majority of people in society still get it wrong. Even just hearing it in, you know, from quotes on the news, I get kind of triggered. [Margaret laughs] And then also knowing that I was like, "Oh, well, there are aspects to this that I really think could be the solution, and especially the solution to things like climate change, or at least get to, one, averting climate change but also in just recreating a completely different society that can thrive in that post apocalyptic environment. And I, do you want me to talk a little bit more about my kind of like--you know, because as we were talking about this, I have this kind of like...I live in mainstream society. I'm very much a PTA mom. So like, I think that I hold this interesting role because I, you know, I'm very active in our PTA. I mean, we are a PTA that's pretty social justice oriented, very diverse. My kid goes to a school with majority kids of color, which can be unusual in Portland, Oregon. But then also, I don't know, like, I like, you know, I like to do things that the average white American middle-aged mom is like, "I like to go to drinks with my friends..." **Margaret ** 11:00 Do you like to eat brunch? So that's the only cliche I can come up with. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 11:06 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, yes. Yes. I love brunch. **Margaret ** 11:10 I'm sure it's great. Yeah. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 11:14 Although, with a kid, it does make it a little bit more challenging to do like Sunday morning, Saturday morning things that are not soccer related. Yeah. Soccer mom. There, that's another cliche.  **Margaret ** 11:27 I could have led with that. Yeah. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 11:29 Yeah, I know. I didn't even think about that. I should have. But anyway, I think that what's been kind of cool about it is that it makes me relatable in that way to people who might be questioning, you know, who exist in this mainstream environment, but also I'm also really vocal. I'm a very loud person. And I don't have much to hide. And so I'm like.... So a lot of people know my values. And so, you know, I've had friends who will text me being like, "Okay, how do I approach this situation? How I approach that situation?" and that kind of stuff. And so I think that that...and that's actually why I think this book and this newsletter can be really useful in that, like, you know, people who might be really questioning what's happening in the world, really worried, but they can see themselves in me and my journey and know that it doesn't have to look one way and that you can do these really weird things. Like, weird to like this environment to me, like learning how to hunt when I haven't ever seen a gun in real life. **Margaret ** 12:37 Yeah. So, no, okay. So this is like...there's so much here that I'm really excited about. But okay, so to start with your newsletter, Cramming For the Apocalypse, you just hit a year of it, right?  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 12:52 Yeah, yeah.  **Margaret ** 12:54 Okay, so what are some of the--besides the sort of political angle--what are some of the directions that it took you that you didn't expect? Or like, what are some of the things that you've learned by writing about preparedness from your perspective for the past year? **Elizabeth Doerr ** 13:07 Oh, gosh, yeah. I feel like I should have better formed thoughts on this. **Margaret ** 13:13 It's okay. Whenever anyone asks me, like, "So, what books do you like?" I'm like, "I've never heard of a book."  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 13:19 God, I know.  **Margaret ** 13:19 "What's a book?" **Elizabeth Doerr ** 13:23 I know. Well, you know, I think that.... Okay, well, I can say that...let me just say that I started the newsletter because I had been working on the book project, still trying to get it out to publishers--I have an agent now, which is exciting--but I really...I was doing so much and I wanted to just get the journey out there in some way. I needed to be writing about it. And so I...and it's been...I mean, I.... What has been really interesting to me is that.... I mean, my idea of what a prepper is has changed. I mean, I think I had preconceived--I mean, a lot of mainstream media and all of us in society probably have a preconceived notion of a doomsday prepper--and, you know, I had already pushed past that a little bit by the time I started the newsletter, because that's the whole reason...I mean, that was the whole reason of doing this book is really kind of flipping the narrative of what a prepper is or could be, but I still think that, I realized how much I had to learn about what that even means. And, you know, I mean, we could talk about this too, the story that that I interviewed you for, for The Progressive. That kind of shows a little bit of where I kind of have come through with this is that, you know, I think that we...you know, prepper exists.... The term "prepper" exists in a variety of different ways that just might not be called "prepper." I mean, I think that the idea--or prepp-ing--you know, talking about mutual aid and even, you know.... And even you, I think, really helped me see this too even more, is that we have a lot more in common with those kind of on the right wing who are prepping than we might think. And, you know, there's a way to find common ground. There's a way. You don't have to....  **Margaret ** 15:28 Depending on where they're coming at it from, you know, but yeah. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 15:31 I mean, I would say not everybody. Like in the political realm, that, I think, is maybe not where we're going to be finding common area, but I do think that the values of: you just want to have...you want to protect your family, you want to be safe, you want to have community. Everyone wants community most. And so, how can we find common ground about that? And I think that's something I've been really trying to come around about is like not to be too judgmental off the bat when that, you know, when somebody expresses these views that might shock me at first, but I mean it's still tricky when you get down the political realm and the humanity of all humans. **Margaret ** 16:16 Yeah, exactly. It's like, when someone's being bigoted, that's different than when they think that different laws should apply to rural people about gun ownership than or, like, you know? Like, there's different takes on different things, you know? **Elizabeth Doerr ** 16:33 Exactly. Like, yeah, I'm not gonna be debating the humanity of other people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, I think that's one big one. You know, and this is like, I feel like this kind of gives away some of my book, but it's alright, people can still read it. But the idea of it is that it's, you know--and I don't think this is a secret--but it's less about the skills than--because, you know, I started this because I wanted to learn how to do things like grow food and, I don't know, fix things in my house, just practically speaking, because my husband and I are always joking about how I'm going to die in the zombie apocalypse because I don't know how to fix anything. And, um, but, you know, what I've also discovered is that it's not just the things you're learning how to do, it's the people that are around you and the community that you're building, and the collective gifts that everybody has, and that we all have something to contribute. Which, of course, is something that can help you survive an apocalypse, but it also is just a better way to live in community and that maybe we can strive for that now and not wait until the world is over. **Margaret ** 18:00 Yeah, yeah. No, that's what... I feel like when we do anything right, like anything for the future right, it also makes our present better, you know? And I've been enjoying getting better at cooking and growing food and stuff, right? You know, and it's like, if all I care about is making sure I don't starve to death in the apocalypse, I can just keep buying dried rice in buckets, you know?  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 18:29 Totally.  **Margaret ** 18:30 But I'm like...no, it's really nice to like...I finally made bread for the first time a couple months ago. And now like every week or two I make a couple loaves of bread and it just feels amazing. You know? I haven't figured out how to make it so that it freezes well, because my favorite store bought bread, when you like freeze it and then you toast it, it's really amazing. I really like that. If I was gluten free, I'd be in trouble. But okay, but to go back to what you're saying, one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot while I talk to people for this show, and also the history podcast that I run, I think a lot about how stuff gets done. And it's organizing. Nothing gets done unless someone organizes and makes it happen. And so,  like even just like oh, okay, you might not know how to fix a toilet, but you know how to run a PTA meeting.-- [Both laughing] I don't know fuck all about PTAs. But like you operate in a volunteer organizational situation on a regular basis and that's an incredibly useful skill, you know? **Elizabeth Doerr ** 19:31 Yeah, totally. Yeah. No, I mean, that's.... You're right. And I think that that's something that I've also like played out, or is going to play out in the book as well, is that is my superpower is bringing people together. It's also like, I mean, I can't even tell you since my son was born how many Facebook groups I've created based on certain shared interests or whatever. I mean, some have continued, some have not, but, even, I'm a co-founder of an organization for moms who write and so we're having a retreat pretty soon. And so it's like things like that, any small thing people have this idea to rally around and I think that that is something that I've especially appreciated in the last year in that like I do.... You know, I don't have to bring my terrible gardening. Although, they have gotten better. It is working. And I have grown way more tomatoes this year than I did last year. **Margaret ** 20:33 [Laughing] I was gonna guess tomatoes. It's the easiest.... **Elizabeth Doerr ** 20:40 Well, last year was a failure. I decided to grow--I mean, I know this is a tangent--but it was a funny thing. But I grew only heirloom tomatoes. And I mean, they don't...they don't.... Like, they grow so slowly. So I did not get tomatoes until almost November. It was like late October. **Margaret ** 21:03 Which means that there's no sun on them because you live in cloud land. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 21:07 Well, yes, but last year was like a crazy.... **Margaret ** 21:11 Oh, that's right, the rains didn't come till really late.  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 21:14 But I got 15 tomatoes that were just okay. But this year, I grew different kinds and I have had abundance. So I've learned my lesson. That lesson at least. Yeah. So I do think that I bring...I bring different kinds of....  I think that another value is that soft skills and hard skills are equally as valuable and we need to honor those as well. And that's kind of the evolution of how I see the book going is that it starts with the hard skills, but then it really gets into the soft skills. And then also, you know, re-envisioning society, how do we do that? **Margaret ** 21:16 Yeah. Okay, but are you gonna do the opening chapter where it's gonna be, when you finally go out and hunt, right, and it's gonna be like, the blood and the thrill and the not sure how you feel about it, and then the like, grizzled, you know, anarchist lady who's handed you the rifle. Like, it's gonna be a really good opening chapter. If you do this.  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 22:16 Yeah, that's gonna be a good one. I don't know if it'll be the opening chapter. But it will definitely be in there. I have to bring some blood in there. I haven't done the hunting yet. Which part of...  **Margaret ** 22:25 I don't hunt yet. Yeah.  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 22:26 Yeah, well, and part of the reason is that the hunting season is so short that I keep missing it. And I'm like, okay, I'll wait until I have the book deal. Then, I can hunt. **Margaret ** 22:38 Yeah, okay. Well, like, so one of the things that you're talking about like building the mom's who write thing--and in some ways that seems unrelated to preparedness--but one of the things that--and I'm kind of curious...this will be a different question that I'll ask later about what kind of questions you get from people--but one of the main things that I get from people is people being like, "But I don't have friends," or "I don't have community," or like, you know... And I actually think a lot of the preparedness that focuses around you and your family and build your bunker and blah, blah, blah, sometimes it comes from a reasonable place where it comes from a place where it's like, "I don't.... I am alienated by our capitalist society and I don't know how to interact with other people." And so, I mean, it's funny, because when I lurk on center or right wing preparedness spaces, all of these people are building community with each other. But, they're building a community about how as soon as everything goes bad, every man for himself and like, "No, you can't come over to my house. You're gonna be a, you know, mooch off of all my stuff," or whatever, you know. And I'm like, y'all were so close. You're like building community. But when I think about having a moms who write retreat, you know, you're talking about people who are alienated by their position in society--and, you know, moms have a very specific role within capitalist society that alienates you-- **Elizabeth Doerr ** 24:02 Yeah.  **Margaret ** 24:03 --and getting together to build this thing. And it's like, the communities that I find that are the strongest and most interesting to me aren't necessarily politically focused communities but instead, communities that are focused on something else that then have a shared political vision--or even if it's not a like ideologically labeled one--overall, you can have kind of a like, "Well, we build a community where we take care of people and where we, you know, hate the fact that there's murder buoys in the rivers on the southern border." And, you know, without it being about that.... I don't have a question. Yeah. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 24:38 Yeah. I think I got what you were.... Yeah, well, and just to put a little plug in, we're called Scribente Maternum, which is the writer moms group. And we.... Yeah, I think it's worth actually noting when we formed our group we had--my friends who I co-created this with, Carla Duprey, who's in Baltimore, and Rachel Burkeshearer, who's in Minneapolis, we had known each other before, but it really started because of the pandemic. And a lot of that like alienation as mothers because so many of us, you know, took on the extra child care roles left, you know, when schools closed and when daycares and childcare closed. And, you know, we.... I mean, all of society really lost a lot of like women and moms from the workforce because of that. And so, we were like, you know, we so started these as virtual retreats and now we're doing it in person because it's safer to do so. But yeah, you know, and that has been so transformative and valuable. And last year, during our inaugural retreat in Baltimore we knew it was gonna be great, but it was like--I don't think we realized how much this community of people was craving this. And it was transformative. Like, it really felt like just... We all needed to be in a space that acknowledged those really important identities that we had. And I should note, too, that we have kind of--I guess it's like political--but we've been very focused on ensuring inclusivity, too. And so like, we say, "moms," but it's kind of, you know, it's an inclusive... You know, it's inclusive of, you know, gender and also of role. Like sometimes aunts take mom's roles. And there are some people who can't become moms, you know. And so it's just like.... And that also was part of the ethos that we bring to it. But it really...like sometimes you just need somebody to create it. And sometimes you didn't know that you need it until it's there. And you're like, "Oh, my God, where has this been my whole life?" And I don't know if I would have created it by myself. I created it because there were two other, two friends of mine, who also saw this need, and we were like, "We can do this. We can do this together." And I think that that.... But yeah, to find that.... I mean, I think it really is--I mean, and I'm an extrovert so it's really just more natural for me to be in these spaces, but being married to an Uber introvert, I know the need for anybody, regardless of the community that they have around them, to have that connection with other people. And so sometimes you just need somebody to kind of create it and also find you. And that.... I mean, that's hard, because it's kind of out of your control a little bit. But like I do think that that.... I mean, I guess maybe it's an advocacy for like, if you are the kind of person that is good at creating these communities, do it, and find the people who need to be found. I don't know. **Margaret ** 28:12 No, that all makes so much sense to me. And it's funny because it even ties into...there's this sort of anarchist cliche, "The secret is to really begin." And it's an impetus to direct action. It's an impetus, if you have a problem, figure out what needs to be done and start doing it. And I like that this is a...I mean, this is a life skill. It's not just a go get involved in the following conflict kind of thing. You know, it's.... And yeah, I guess that is, like that kind of almost answers the question when people are like, "Well, how do you build community?" And the answer is, like, well you find people based on like, a similar level of interest, or whatever, like, a specific interest. And then you do in person things together and you organize making that happen. And one of the things that I've found, if you're the kind of person who goes to events and you don't know how to talk to people at events, like if you're an introvert and you are going to these events, if you get involved in the organizing, now you have a reason why you're there and now you are talking to people, you know? Instead of fly-on-the-wall, you can just go and be part of it. And even if it's like, if you go to a thing and you volunteer--a lot of the activist type things I'll go to have like a kitchen, right--And you know, everyone gets fed. And like, if you don't know how to cook, just go prep cook or even just go wash dishes and then by volunteering into this organization, or even if it's a temporary organization, this thing that is existing is a really good way to meet people. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 29:38 Yeah. Oh, I think that's such a really good recommendation. I think that that's something I've struggled with, like you know, being an extrovert, like seeing it from the side of introverts. It's less awkward when you've volunteered for the kitchen or... And also that relates to the climate activist and writer, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, she has this venn diagram of climate action that I think about a lot where it's like, "What needs to be done and what gifts do I have that make me feel good?" And like, it's such a simple thing, but it really is profound because you don't have to legislate at the policy level, or you don't have to do certain things that feel really out of your realm of comfort, but you can do things that are something that makes you happy and you're good at and also needs to be done. Like I'm a writer. That's my form of climate action is this book and this journey that I'm on, that I'm really good at sharing things about myself. And so this is the climate action that I've chosen. I mean, I do other things, too. I work with climate justice organizations here as well. But like, it doesn't have to be one thing. And I think that that's the same thing with finding community and also finding your place and community is that it doesn't...you don't have to be the leader. You don't have to be...or the fly on the wall even. You can find your place in that. **Margaret ** 31:15 Yeah. Okay. It reminds me of a different Portland writer who I care a lot about, Ursula Le Guin, the science fiction writer that used to live there.   **Elizabeth Doerr ** 31:23 I love Ursula Le Guin. **Margaret ** 31:25  I interviewed her when I was 26, or something like that, and it changed the way I think about a ton of stuff because I interviewed her about anarchism and fiction. And I was trying to find my place as a writer. I was moving more and more into being a writer after having been just like a direct action, protest organizer, and squatter, and all these things for years. And, and what she said was basically, she was like, "I like hanging out with people who let me do what I'm good at, which is being a writer." But then she also talked about how she was like, "Don't get me wrong, I still will stuff envelopes for Planned Parenthood and go to every peace March that I can," you know? And it was like, oh, that's the perfect...you're like, I feel like you have your like organizational level skills, or like your main thing you bring, and then there's like grunt work, and you're not excused from the grunt work because you're like... Like, the really amazing musician still has to like wash his own dishes, you know?  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 31:27 Yeah, exactly.  **Margaret ** 31:30 But maybe the really amazing musician focuses on being a really amazing musician and doesn't figure out how to structurally develop the dishwashing system, you know?  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 32:37 Yeah, like, totally.  **Margaret ** 32:40 Yeah, no, no, I just, I really liked that. It's been a really useful thing for me as I've tried to figure out like... **Elizabeth Doerr ** 32:47 I love that. I love Ursula Le Guin. And actually her book, "The Dispossessed" was really, I think, what transformed my ideas of anarchism the most because it's the most coherent and clear and comprehensive description of an anarchist society that, you know, you can find anywhere that really gets you to actually understand what that is. But also on a personal level with Ursula Le Guin, I had...I wrote...I read a book and I interviewed the author of--actually her biographer--It's called "The Baby On the Fire Escape" by Julie Phillips. And so Julie does a really beautiful job of talking about the motherhood and the identity of various authors. But Ursula Le Guin was pretty fleshed out because she's also her biographer, which is pretty cool. But she, but what was real...but like, kind of, I think what I relate to Ursula Le Guin is that she was like, you know, a soccer mom of her era.  **Margaret ** 33:50 Yeah.  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 33:51 And like, she really had this similar identity that I feel like I have now but like, was really radical in her beliefs and expressing it in the way that she was doing it. And so I feel really like connected to her in that and also I live in Portland. I don't know.  **Margaret ** 34:07 Yeah, no, she's really.... We really, we really lost something when she passed and like...  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 34:16 I'm so jealous that you got to interview her. That's so cool. **Margaret ** 34:20 Yeah no, and honestly one of the reasons I'm so grateful to her is that by giving me attention, she helped my career substantially, literally just by being like, "Oh, yeah, no, this person seems cool." You know, and talking to me, and we did a talk together at Powell's a million years ago. And it completely changed the course of my life. And I really will be forever grateful. And I like to think about that a lot when I'm like...just like small acts of kindness that change people's lives and like.... No, I think...I love the way she writes about anarchism. I love that she talks about the marriage of responsibility and freedom and how they go, you know. And then one of my other...it's been a couple years since I read "The Dispossessed," but I just like, I think about this a lot. One of my favorite parts of "The Dispossessed" is the love story, because it's a love story about why monogamy is totally chill in a polyamorous world. And basically, this refusal to have these two forces be antagonistic to each other. And instead be like, "No, like, free love includes choosing to be like in this..." And so like, I only once watched her interact with her husband but it was just so beautiful to me. There was a point where--uh, now I'm just, whenever, I think about this all the time--there was a point where, you know, someone was coming up and being like, you know, "Oh, let me get the microphone set up." And she was like, "We're not doing anything until my husband has a comfortable place to sit." And then so they like, switched all their priorities to make sure he has a comfortable place to sit. And then she was like, "Okay, great. Now, what did you need for me?" **Elizabeth Doerr ** 36:02 Oh, my gosh, I love her. I love that. That's a really good point. It's something I remember thinking about when I was reading it, but I don't know if I really processed it because there is so much to process in that book. I need to--I mean, it hasn't been that long since I read it, but I want to just go back and read it again because I, you know...I don't think I knew what I was getting into when I started reading it. And then we're like, yeah. **Margaret ** 36:29 Well, she didn't know what she was getting into when she started writing it. It was like the thing that kind of made her more into an anarchist, was writing that book.  **Elizabeth Doerr ** 36:35 I love that.  **Margaret ** 36:36 So **Elizabeth Doerr ** 36:37 Well, and also same. Me. What made me more of an anarchist was reading the book. So there we go.  **Margaret ** 36:44 Okay, wait. So, to back up one step, you're talking about, like, for example, your role as an extrovert--and I know that we are going to have all these other things talk about but I want to talk about this building community thing and ways of including people because this is one of the things that comes up so much. I think I pointed that out. And like one of the smallest things that I've seen people do, there's like a culture.... I go to a couple different types of gatherings with very different types of people. And one of them is science fiction conventions, and specifically the ones for like writers and stuff, and there's this culture that's been developed where if you're standing around in a circle of people talking, and there's someone kind of just hovering at the back who's like doesn't know whether or not they can come in and join, you open the circle up. And it doesn't matter if anyone there knows them. They are now part of that circle. And like, obviously, then sometimes people get really annoying and they talk too much and whatever. But like, it's a culture of introverts. And so they've developed these like habits about how to take care of it. And the reason that I wanted to bring this up and ask you about it is that I'm kind of curious, how do we anti-gatekeep? How do we invite people in? Because one of the things that you've talked about is by being in the position you're in, you're able to talk to people about ideas. And so I actually, I guess, I'll ask this about specifically preparedness to kind of bring things back to what we're supposed to be talking about. How do you work to help people feel welcome in preparedness communities? Or like preparedness...concepts or something? **Elizabeth Doerr ** 38:20 Yeah, well, it's hard because I don't know if I really have a ton of experience in that because I feel like I'm still pretty new in the preparedness circle, which I think is part of what makes me kind of accessible in that area. And so what gave me my--I mean, I'm still, you know, even though I'm an extrovert I get really nervous going into spaces that I'm not originally a part of. And so, you know, anyone from introvert to extrovert is going to feel out of place in new scenarios. **Margaret ** 38:59 I thought you all just have these superpowers. Extroverts have the power to talk to people. **Elizabeth Doerr ** 39:05 No, no, no, but I get nervous too. And sometimes to a fault. But at the same time, I'm.... But what I do is like, I think.... Gosh, I don't know if I can answer that as far as preparedness goes, but I can tell you how we do it in other things. And then maybe I'll get back to the preparedness part. But yeah, so I mean, this is a thing with our writer moms retreats. I mean, one of the things that we really have been grappling with--I mean, because it's a retreat and it kind of falls into that wellness industry category, which
S1E90 - This Month in the Apocalypse: Sept. 2023
29-09-2023
S1E90 - This Month in the Apocalypse: Sept. 2023
Episode Summary This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Inmn, and Margaret talk about food insecurity, genocide in Armenia, a storm in Libya, battles for abortion care access, the government shut down, the state of water, and how everything can tie back to Lord of the Rings. Host Info Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript This Month in the Apocalypse: September, 2023 **Inmn ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying [Brooke cheers] and this is our extra fun This Month in the Apocalypse section in which we talk about, unfortunately, most of the horrible things that happened in the last month. I'm one of your hosts today, Inmn, and I have with me some other folks.  **Margaret ** 00:36 Hi. **Brooke ** 00:36 The indomitable you. **Margaret ** 00:40 Brooke is Brooke. I'm...I'm Out-mn [like Inmn, but out] Margaret, **Brooke ** 00:45 I'll be Margaret, you be Out-mn. **Margaret ** 00:49 The inverse of Inmn. [Brooke laughing] Or, I'll be Margaret. And then Inmn can be Brooke. **Inmn ** 01:02 I don't know nearly enough about math to be Brooke, but I will try. **Margaret ** 01:07 Okay, we'll just switch each other's scripts and so that we each read what the other has researched. And y'all can go  with my shitty notes. **Inmn ** 01:17 Yeah, right. You know, that sounds great. But before we get to all of that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here is a jingle from another show on that network. Bah doo boop doo [Singing the words like a simple melody] **Inmn ** 02:21 And we're back. And, to start off the show, we have harped a lot on how horrible of a place Phoenix, Arizona is a lot this year.  **Brooke ** 02:38 Oh, I've definitely talked shit too, so...it's at least an "us" and not necessarily a "we."  **Margaret ** 02:42 I really appreciate you making this a "we" instead of me just talking shit on it. **Inmn ** 02:48 Yeah, no, I mean, it's the place, famously, where propane tanks explode because it's too hot and people fall on the ground and get burned. And, where they're trying to build some giant super future city that Bill Gates wants to trap us all in...or something. But a listener got a hold of me and told me about the history of the name, Phoenix, because it got brought up on the show. And, what he had to tell me about it was that Phoenix is named so because it was built from the ashes of a Hohokam civilization that was literally burned to the ground by white settlers. [Brooke boos] And they wanted to inspiringly build a city in its ashes. [laughing in a horrified way] So yeah, the surprising but not too surprising history of Phoenix.  **Margaret ** 03:58 It's more like the spell Animate Dead where you bring someone back to life but as a mindless zombie who serves you instead of their original purpose.  **Inmn ** 04:04 Yeah, totally. Yeah.  **Margaret ** 04:08 Brooke, what were you gonna say? Sorry.  **Brooke ** 04:09 Oh, just that I think that, as an indigenous person, we should go ahead and re-Phoenix, Phoenix. [Everyone laughs] It's time.  **Margaret ** 04:18 This is just a terrible transitional state that I was in before... **Brooke ** 04:21 I mean if it rises from the ashes, let's burn that motherfucker down and give it back to its proper people. **Inmn ** 04:29 It might do that on its own. The way the city is running it, it might...that might happen regardless of intention. **Brooke ** 04:38 Excellent. I'm glad to help, though. I will help the city towards that goal. **Inmn ** 04:44 Yeah. But, in a hopeful note for Arizona, I did find out that other cities in Arizona, not Phoenix, do weirdly have a pretty robust aquifer system. Like the city of Tucson, for example, only relies on the Colorado River for like 5% of its water, and otherwise, it's all aquifer driven and there's a lot of cool programs in place for--this is me defending that Arizona is a fine place to live. **Margaret ** 05:18 I know. And I'm going to talk about groundwater later [Laughing] and how aquifers are all drying up all over the country. **Brooke ** 05:24 Thank God, because I was going to insert some shit about there right now. So, I'll leave that for you, Margaret. **Inmn ** 05:28 Great. Well, to start us off today aside from Arizona... **Brooke ** 05:36 Phoenix getting burned down. **Inmn ** 05:36 ...Aside from Phoenix getting burned down. There are some bad things happening in the world. I know this is a shock to all of our listeners who came here for a list of joyful things about the apocalypse, right? But, so there's a new wave of activity in the Armenian Genocide from Azerbaijan. And, what's been happening is that on September 19th, Azerbaijan   launched a full assault on Nagorno-Karabakh targeting mostly civilian infrastructure. There have been--you know, this was as of September 19th--200 casualties so far. But, there are 120,000 people who are completely cut off from any kind of external supplies or aid. Nagorno-Karabakh, it's been contested for a really long time. It's been the subject of a lot of past conflicts. And, both sides have--there's been a, you know, an unsteady..."peace" isn't the right word, but, you know, non-attacking-each-other time. And both sides are kind of accusing each other of a military buildup. And while there's a lot of physical evidence that shows Azerbaijan amassing troops and building military infrastructure, the same cannot be said of Armenia, who has--there's a local defense army in that area. Because, the area is sort of technically part of Azerbaijan, but is controlled by an ethnically Armenian population. And, so, part of this big military buildup is that there was this blockade put on, essentially, the only route in and out of this area, was just put on full military blockade. And there was a big humanitarian response to it because they're like, "You're cutting off 120,000 people from all external like food, and medical, and, you know, any kind of supplies, and, in some instances, water. And, there was this big mass starvation happening in this area. And, humanitarian aid convoys that were trying to go into the area were literally being shelled by Azerbaijan. Which eventually culminated in this full assault on September 19th. And, as it stands right now, there's...literally 120,000 people have gotten into their cars and are attempting to leave the area since the... **Brooke ** 05:37 That's a lot of people  **Inmn ** 05:38 Yeah, yeah.  **Margaret ** 05:41 There was a ceasefire or something, right?  **Inmn ** 05:44 There was a ceasefire, which called for the unconditional surrender of the defense army. So, it's now a completely civilian population. And, there has been a call for the reintegration of the Armenian population, which locally is being viewed as a death sentence to pretty much everyone. Because, in the past, reintegration attempts by Azerbaijan have resulted in things like mass torture and rape of civilians and POWs.  **Brooke ** 09:22 Wow.  **Inmn ** 09:23 Yeah. And, to complicate things even more, there's like a...You know, it's in the world view right now. And people are like...Like, other countries are like, "Oh, should we do something?" And weirdly, Russia has been the peacekeeping mediator between the two. **Brooke ** 09:43 What?  **Margaret ** 09:44 So, it's not good. They're not doing good things.  **Inmn ** 09:47 No, they're not doing good things. And, a lot of people suspect them of playing this double game because Russia has publicly supported Armenia in a lot of the disputes, but they are the main arms supplier to Azerbaijan. So, there's obviously a lot of strange conflict. They're essentially...the world at large is viewing them as playing one side against the other. So... **Margaret ** 10:19 So, I don't know as much about this part. I've only been learning about some of this stuff recently. But, Russia, in general, has its own kind of equivalent of NATO, like its power-block type thing. But, Armenia is basically being slowly, kind of, shunted out of it or given less and less say in it, is the impression that I'm under. And, so there's a lot of tension of how Armenia is a little bit more looking to the west or whatever in a way that Russia isn't stoked about. That's the--I'm not 100% certain about this--that's the understanding I've been kind of learning. **Inmn ** 10:58 Yeah, yeah. And so, kind of, one of the big pressing issues right now is what is going to happen to this mostly ethnically Armenian population that is...Like there's a 70 mile line of cars trying to flee the area. And like, yeah, yeah, obviously... **Brooke ** 11:22 Where are they headed towards? **Margaret ** 11:25 Armenia. **Inmn ** 11:26 Yeah. **Margaret ** 11:27 They're in the border region.  **Brooke ** 11:29 Going into Armenia? Not going out of Armenia?  **Margaret ** 11:31 Yeah. No, into. Because, what it is, is there is a border area and that border area, most of it is now controlled by Azerbaijan and was taken, I believe, during the conflict a couple of years ago. However, several of the cities, or several of the population centers, are primarily Armenian even though they're now technically part of Azerbaijan because of this conflict, right? And so they need to get the fuck out because they're going to be genocided. And, they're very aware of the fact that they are going to be genocided. And a lot of the rhetoric that is coming up is genocidal. And, Armenians are being like fairly blunt that, like, "If the world doesn't do something right now, we're going to die." Like, hundreds of thousands of people are going to fucking die. **Inmn ** 12:22 Yeah.  **Brooke ** 12:23 Wow.  **Inmn ** 12:24 Yeah, it's...it's really bad. Yeah, but yeah, that's all I have on that. Brooke, I have heard that there's also some pretty bad things happening in India and Libya? **Brooke ** 12:41 Yeah, well, I can tell you about India, anyway. Well, we talk a lot about, of course, climate events going on. And there's been a lot of stuff that we've talked about this summer with various climate catastrophes, wildness, unusual behavior. And I think it's pretty well known that we're in an El Nino situation right now. One of the countries that has been affected by climate catastrophe this year is India, especially in the northern regions where they do a lot of growing of food. And they have had really unpredictable rainfalls. In some places there's been severe flooding, and other places, there's been less rain than usual, which overall is leading to a lot of problems with a lot of crops. So, some of the food staples in India have seen significant increases in prices. Tomatoes and onions are things popularly used in Indian cooking, and they've seen a five to six times increase in the price for them. [Margaret goes "phew!"] Yeah, yeah, massive increases. And then, and this is then also related to war in Ukraine and wheat and grain prices. The chicken feed has gone up significantly, and chicken is a pretty common meat in a lot of dishes. But, then the chicken has become too expensive--to buy chicken. And to have chickens and feed them and butcher your own chickens has also become too expensive. So, that big source of protein is kind of off the menu in a lot of places too. So, some families are eating, you know, just mashed up vegetables is their whole meal for the day. Other places, they're making just--it's not naan but it's breads that are...roti. Roti breads. They just make some roti bread in the morning and that's all the family has to eat for the day is just bread. A lot of lower income families get a wheat subsidy from the government. They get so many pounds of wheat every month. But, it's not enough to last through the whole month. And of course they're not able to get enough wheat from other sources to even keep up with the levels of demand that people have in the country. So, inflation is making it much harder to buy goods. And, it's due to the climate catastrophe. And in fact, India has gone so far as to ban some exports like rice and sugar. Yeah, they've banned exports on those, which, of course, all of the places that might turn to rice as a grain source when wheat runs out then can't get the rice that they would usually get. Not that they're interchangeable, but, you know? And, in fact, India is looking at importing some things that it historically never has to import, like tomatoes from Nepal. They're looking at having to import those. So, yeah, you know, it's already a very impoverished country. So, India is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, having some trouble with the food staples there. And, not gonna get, you know, better anytime soon because, of course, they're crops that you harvest and that you store. So, rice, you know, being a big one, they're pulling in a smaller rice harvest. There's not enough to go around right now. And then everything that they would usually put in a long term storage, they don't have enough for that. So, there's going to be even more food insecurity down the road, unless they're able to find ways to import some of that and do it in a way that they can afford to do. **Brooke ** 16:58 One more component of that whole foods situation--it's not like the food supply-but speaking of Ukraine, is that India imports fuel from Ukraine. And I can't remember the kind. But, they haven't been able to get as much fuel as they usually would, and so people that use that for cooking, don't have don't have the ability to do as much cooking because they can't afford it or they can't get the fuel that they need in order to cook. **Margaret ** 17:37 It's funny because one of the things I'm sort of hoping we can start doing with a lot of things--obviously, we can do it with all things--is to sort of talk about how to mitigate these problems or how to help with these problems, you know? And there's like two different parts of it. And one is like, you know--and I don't have the research and I'm just like thinking about a way to try and do this--but it's, you know, we don't have a way to necessarily impact food prices in India and so then it's like, "Oh, well, there's the things that we can do here." And then it's like, well, overall, not entirely, but, overall, the average person in America is a lot more privileged. But then it's like...just things like how tomatoes and other crops are also being threatened a lot in the United States right now, and we're probably going to see food prices on a lot of these staple crops, like vegetables and things, go up--not to the same degree, not five or 6...you know, 500%, or whatever, in one year. And it's interesting because there's some of these things that are easier to grow at home, as compared to staple crops. Like, large copper hydrates, corn, wheat, rice, can be grown at home, but very...it's way more complicated. And, you're also very unlikely to have a climate where you can grow all three of those things instead of just one of those things. **Brooke ** 18:54 Yeah, in my heart, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, the solution to this is, you know, everybody should plant a garden." But, that's such a privileged thing to say, to assume that they have space, resources, good soil, you know, with a thousand things that actually tries to do that. **Margaret ** 19:12 Yeah. Yeah. Well... **Brooke ** 19:15 But, if you can garden, you should learn how to do something, plant something. **Margaret ** 19:22 No, I mean, even as a as a prepper, sometimes when something goes wrong for one of my friends, I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna get the thing that helps me if that goes wrong for me." I mean, I try and help them out first, right? But, you know, driving with someone and the muffler or the whole tailpipe detaches from their car, and they're like, "Oh, I need this metal strapping instead of, you know, I had like P-cord or something, right?" And now I have metal strapping in my car because why not? It's tiny and cheap and light, right? And that's not...this doesn't apply on a global level. I'm sorry everyone who's listening who's like, "Shut the fuck up." You're right. Okay, so we decided what we're gonna do is we're gonna do like foreign--foreign... [questions the phrasing] Whatever, international shit before we do shit that's like a little bit more...the shit that we already...the shit that's closer to home. So, the other big thing that I have from this year...from this month--Jesus Christ, it's been...this year...it's just not even.... [Pauses to rest] In Libya, the...Okay, there was a storm called Storm Daniel. And, it was the deadliest storm in the Mediterranean in recorded history. And, it happened on September 11th. Way higher count of dead people than anything--well, then the famous thing that happened on September 11th in United States. I don't know as much about the coup that happened on September 11th years ago. But, Storm Daniel, it's like...it's not a tropical storm because of like, it's not from the sparkling Champagne region of France or whatever...[Brooke laughs, getting the joke] Like...You know what I'm saying? [Affirmative noises] Like, in order for it to be a tropical storm it has to exist in this very specific way. But, it's like...it's a tropical storm, like in terms of its impact. Like, it's a sparkling nightmare. And, you know, so it's legally distinct. But, it hit a ton of Mediterranean countries, and it fucked a lot of things up. And, it most notoriously killed a fuck ton of people in Libya because there were these two aging dams outside of the city of Derna that broke on September 11th. The death toll is anywhere from 4,000 to 11,000 people with 9,000 people that are still missing, even though it's been several weeks. I believe that that 11,000 number includes those missing people. That's the best guess I can get. And, just basically a third of the city fucking washed out to sea. I'm being slightly hyperbolic. A third of the city was damaged and a fuck ton of it washed out into the sea. And...Yeah, the morgues were overfilled. Bodies were laid out in the main square on sidewalks. Eight people, eight officials have been arrested already over this, which is funny because it's better than what the United States would do, you know? And, we're all like, "Oh, look at these terrible, idiotic countries," or whatever. Like, no, they...So far, as of yesterday, as of recording, they've arrested eight people. **Inmn ** 22:32 Like on...because of...because of like what? Like preparation? **Margaret ** 22:36 Because they didn't fix the damn thing. Yeah, sorry. There are these two dams that for decades scientists...The dams were built in the 70's by, I want to say, a Turkish contractor. No, I'm not sure. A contractor from a different country. And, they've been showing signs of aging and they've just been unmaintained for like 50 years. And, in 2012-2013 $2 million was appropriated, like sent to fix them, but Libya has not been an incredibly stable place, and that money did not fix them. And so, yeah. Everyone was like...Scientists were sitting there being like, "There's a crack in this dam that's over the town. We should do something," and everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, totally." [In a tone suggesting they won't fix it] And, you know, I mean, that's, government for you? Like, like, you know? But, on the other hand...Whatever. Glad that people are at least trying to take it seriously. **Inmn ** 23:45 Sorry. Do you have more on that? **Margaret ** 23:47 No, no, let's talk about things in the Western world. **Inmn ** 23:50 Oh, yeah, I'm first. We'll start with the bad, unfortunately. So, the newest battleground for abortion access in Texas is that Texas is...There's this group of lawmakers who, you know, it's the same people who authored the Heartbeat Bill, who are trying to...Instead of making large state or national laws to target abortion, they're trying to target abortion on a very small level--which will have a huge and devastating impact--by building this network of what they call like "Sanctuary for the Unborn" cities. [Margaret scoffs] Yeah, no, it sounds pretty bad. And, so what they're doing is they're going to small towns, especially in West Texas, to try to get those towns to pass local ordinances that would create criminal penalties for traveling through those cities to access abortion care in states where abortion is still legal, like New Mexico. And, this is particularly impactful in West Texas because a lot of--there's a handful of new abortion clinics that have sprung up on the border of New Mexico and Texas specifically to serve people going from West Texas to New Mexico to access abortion care. And, two cities have passed the ordinances so far with as many as 51 cities who are thinking about it. And, the one currently in the news right now is Llano, Texas, which sits at an intersection of six different highways, including a pretty major highway, highway 87, which is a road that a lot of people who are going from Austin to New Mexico might use. And then there's a bunch of cities along I27 that have ordinances brewing for...similar ordinances. And, largely, though, what's interesting about this is that although two cities have passed this so far, there's a lot of conservative apprehension about passing these laws.  **Brooke ** 23:53 Really? **Inmn ** 24:23 And, this comes from...I think this comes from the intersection of like...these are probably more libertarian-minded people who think that it is an overreach for the government to create penalties based on travel, because they're worried about other ways that travel could be limited and for other reasons that travel could be limited. So, it's libertarians and conservatives who are not like...who are probably antiabortion, who probably support abortion bans, but they think that this kind of larger infrastructural travel thing goes way too far. So, there is a lot of conservative pushback from it, which is interesting. **Margaret ** 28:53 Okay, about abortion. Obviously, the State should not use--well, the State shouldn't exist--but, the State shouldn't use the Church or religious teachings in order to determine health care. I think that's a fairly understandable thing. However, if you, the listener, are religious in a Christian variety or if you want to argue with these people, this whole concept of being against abortion as a Christian is pretty fucking newfangled, is one of the things. The Church, the Catholic Church--which is a minority religion in the United States and is not a like primarily powerful force in the United States political sphere--the Catholic Church has only been against abortion since 1869. For almost all of the church's existence, abortion was only a problem during the third trimester after the Quickening, the Ensoulment, right, is what people want to argue about is like when a human gets a soul or whatever. And, until the late 19th century, the Ensoulment happened...people would argue either like...Most Jewish religious teaching, I believe, is that the Ensoulment--that's...I don't know if they use the word "Ensoulment''--but, the first breath of life, right? "You get your soul when your fucking born," is a very common traditional teaching. Also...Or, you get it at the Quickening, which is the fucking...like 24 weeks into pregnancy. And so, this whole idea of life beginning at conception is god damn new. All the people that the Catholics venerate didn't fucking believe that shit. And then, more than that, evangelicals, who are the main people pushing antiabortion shit, they didn't get into the shit until the 1970s. And they were like...basically were like, "Oh, how else can we be shitty?" And they were like, "Oh, we can be shitty by hating women. And so we're gonna fucking all of a sudden decide that we're against the following type of health care." I don't have as much of the facts about that in front of me, about exactly how that went, but basically, they joined...It used to be only the Catholics who were the people running around being shitty about abortion. And, I don't know. I, for some reason, I think that this matters...Like, just even in terms of like when you're talking about...Because people act like it's this like, "Well, I'm a Christian and therefore 2000 years of hating abortion," like that's just not the fucking case. **Inmn ** 31:17 Yeah, and even there was this one person in Llano, who was quoted as saying like--it was like a council person--who was like...she was like, "Yeah, I'm personally not in favor of abortion. But, I remember giving a friend, like picking up a friend from an abortion clinic in high school and like I didn't support it, but I picked them up. And, under this new law, I would be a criminal." So, what is interesting about this overstep to me is that it offers some ground for people to talk about things in a way that might not have been in the forefront before where like...Which is interesting. It's like the more that the government, or, you know, crazy far-right conservatives, overreach, it does have the potential to create these funny little fissures with, you know, just normal everyday people who are like, "Well, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Wait a second. I was against abortion, but this is looking more like Fascism." And, I think that is creating fissures, which is interesting. But... **Margaret ** 32:37 No, and it's good. That side should have fissures and we should make them...we should embiggen those fissures. There's a different word here.  **Brooke ** 32:46 I love it. **Inmn ** 32:51 But, yeah, that's mostly it for Texas. In a related note, Idaho recently became the first state to impose criminal penalties on people who help a minor leave the state for an abortion without parental consent, just as another wave of the war against abortion access. **Brooke ** 33:14 You know, this wasn't on my talking list, but, if I may, speaking of Idaho and abortion, I was reading about a lot of OB-GYN providers who are leaving Idaho in noticeable numbers, especially people who are specialists in like NICU care [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] or early birth tiny baby death problem kind of things, those sort of high-level baby specialists, because they feel so at risk in Idaho that if something happens to a baby in their care, that they could be criminalized for it. I mean, they're taking jobs in other states and fleeing in such numbers that it's recognizable. And, there's some places that have--hospitals--in rural areas that have shut down their maternity wards. **Margaret ** 34:06 It's just so awful. **Inmn ** 34:09 Well, if state-by-state Christian nationalism bothered you, do I have some bad news, because recently it was unveiled that this horrifying thing called Project 2025, and it is a thousand page, essentially, playbook for conservative lawmakers to dismantle the federal government as it stands. And... **Margaret ** 34:40 Why do they always try to do the cool stuff? [Laughs at the dry joke] **Inmn ** 34:42 I know. I know. And, most of what they're looking at doing is completely dismantling the EPA and a lot of similar jobs that pertain to environmental regulation. But... **Margaret ** 34:54 Yeah, the stuff that we want to have keep happening once we have an organizational system instead of a government Yeah, I'm sure they're gonna keep the fucking cops and Border Patrol. Fuckers. Yeah. **Inmn ** 35:06 Yeah, it's pretty disconcerting. It's like trying...People view it as trying to pave the way for whatever the...whoever the next Republican president is to essentially become, you know a dictator in a more literal sense.  **Brooke ** 35:27 Well, the federal government is trying to fuck itself currently.  **Inmn ** 35:30 Oh, yeah?  **Brooke ** 35:31 If I can transition into that. Because, we are facing another federal government shutdown risk. [Makes an enthusiastic noise] **Margaret ** 35:42 Once again, they're gonna shut down the wrong parts of it, aren't they? **Brooke ** 35:44 Oh, yeah. Uh huh. They're gonna keep essential services, which is apparently not shit like OSHA, and Food and Drug inspections, and air traffic control. Those are not essential services. [Margaret laughing] **Margaret ** 35:58 I'm sure it's the goddamn Border Patrol and making sure poor people pay taxes and rich people don't. **Brooke ** 36:05 Yeah, shit like that. We talked about it one other time, government shutdowns on the show together, and in that context, it was talking about the debt ceiling, the government's self imposed limit on how much money they can borrow. And so, they were at risk of having to shut down because they weren't in agreement about being able to borrow more money. Well, this is the...now, we're facing the most beloved refuse-to-agree-on-a-budget federal government shutdown and fucking every time they have to redo the budget, it's always in the news, "Oh, it's gonna be a federal government shutdown!" And, sometimes it's more serious than others. So it's super hard to take it seriously. It hasn't really happened very many times that there's been a government shutdown. There was one that was back in like 2018-2019 that was 35 days or there abouts. And that one.... **Margaret ** 37:00 Which is the longest one in history?  **Brooke ** 37:02 Exactly. And that one was actually long enough to have an impact that mattered. If they have one right now, it's, you know, they probably won't have one there. And, if they do, it's going to be one of these stupid two or three day kind of things. It's really, really unlikely, because they just don't have the circumstances to have that long one happen again. If it did happen, and it goes on for a long time, then you get a lot of backups in the federal government. You have subsidy programs that won't send out payments, like SNAP benefits and Social Security benefits and housing assistance and financial aid for students. But again, it has to be a shutdown that's closer to a month long, because they're set up to do all of those payments, you know, for the next month. So, if they shut shut down today, October is all set to go and would automatically do its thing, and then November would be fucked if they stayed shut down. So, most likely not going to happen. If it does happen, probably a minimal one and longer interruptions. I guess if it happens and we're looking at a long one, we can talk about it some more and I can tell you all about what's actually going to go on and all the fucked-up-ed-ness. But, if you're seeing it in the news, it's just because this is the thing that the news likes to pick up right now and talk about this time of year. Yeah, don't stress out about it. Like, they fucking take the exact same article from the previous year and and, you know, move the paragraphs around. **Margaret ** 38:27 Well, it's like...it's like...Okay, it's like Covid. It's like...When Covid was first coming up, it was gonna be like another bird flu where we were like, "Oh, no, this thing that won't actually materially affect us that's just a news cycle panic thing." And then it's like every now and then it's a Covid, you know? And, eventually, it might be a Black Death and we're fucked, right? But, most of the time, when there's like...Like I still...Like, even as I was skimming there was some like, "new superbug" in such-and-such place and I'm like, "I'm not worried," right? Like, it's either...It's either gonna be real bad or it's not. But, there's a new one of those to worry about every fucking month. And, so, that makes sense about government shutdown being that it could be real fucking bad, but it usually isn't. Yeah. **Brooke ** 39:19 The worst that it's ever been still wasn't really that bad. I think things got really fucked up for, you know, about a month after they got back online. And then there were some other things that had delays, you know, applications and shit that they didn't process and then had like a backlog of and whatever. But, the biggest thing that could be an impact, that could, even if it's a short one, could be air travel, because the TSA doesn't get paid. And the last time they had a long one, the TSA agents were like, "No, we're not gonna stay here and work for free." And, they fucked off and went and drove Uber. And whatever. **Margaret ** 39:53 Yeah, I mean, there was a whole constitutional amendment about how you can't make people work without giving them money unless they're in prison. **Brooke ** 39:53 The government begged them and they're like, "Please, please. We know you'll...We'll figure it out. Please do it for free? You'll get back pay!"  **Margaret ** 40:08 And they're like "Nah, we fought a war over this." **Brooke ** 40:09 People are like, "I don't need back pay. I need money now." **Margaret ** 40:11 Yeah, if the economy wasn't trashed it wouldn't be a big deal. Everyone's paycheck-to-paycheck, even the fucking middle class, so what the fuck are you gonna do? **Inmn ** 40:22 Yeah. Which is...This is a whole thing. But, um, did you know that billionaires are putting a huge amount of energy and time into trying to figure out how to keep security forces loyal to them when money doesn't exist anymore? **Margaret ** 40:38 I think we've talked about this, haven't we?  **Inmn ** 40:39 I think a little bit. We've touched on it.  **Margaret ** 40:41 Maybe I just talk about it all the time. It just comes up at every dinner. **Inmn ** 40:47 Yeah, yeah. It's wild. It is a huge thing on billionaires minds right now is not getting killed by everyone when the...when civilization collapses. **Margaret ** 40:59 Yeah, specifically, how to get to their security...Yeah, how to get their security guards to like...In their doomsday shelter where they're like, "How will I still be in charge of my doomsday shelter when there's no outside world?" Like, well, you won't. You'll be dead and everyone will be glad. **Brooke ** 41:14 This is why I say "Start early and eat the rich." I've got a solution for India. **Margaret ** 41:21 Also, it's vegan to eat the rich because...Because veganism is a relationship to power, right? And so it's not actually...It's like you can't be speciesist against humans, right? So, you are not oppressing oppressed animals if you eat billionaires. **Brooke ** 41:41 Thank you. I feel even better about that. **Margaret ** 41:45 It might not be vegetarian, but it is vegan. [everyone laughing] **Inmn ** 41:50 Brooke, do you have any other things to tell us? [Nervously laughing] **Margaret ** 41:56 Before it goes over to me? [Laughing] **Brooke ** 41:58 My one other thing to say to you is "Don't talk to cops." Okay, go on. **Margaret ** 42:02 Okay, let's see. I got some bad stuff, some good stuff. Well, in good news, it was the hottest August on record all across the world.  So, get your bathing suits ready, including in the other hemisphere where it was supposed to have been Winter, but it wasn't. Everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, hottest August. I mean, it's fucking August." Like, no, you motherfucker, it's Winter somewhere when it's August.  **Brooke ** 42:28 Margaret, do you know it's September though? Like just checking. **Margaret ** 42:34 I'll take your word for it. The leaves are turning where I live. Okay, so there's like, we had the hottest August, we had the hottest July, and we had the hottest June. We also had five months in a row of the hottest global surface sea temperatures, like each month it hits a new record that is hotter than the one previously. Overall, our August was 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit, like 1.25 Celsius, I think, over the 20th century average.  **Brooke ** 43:03 We did it!  **Margaret ** 43:04 Yeah, exactly. But, don't worry, all of this rising sea temperature actually will make tropical storms, and sparkling storms, rarer. This surprised me. It'll make them rarer. But, it'll make them more powerful. So hurricanes, more common. But, tropical storms and sparkling storms, less common because a higher percentage of them will destroy things in their wake. **Brooke ** 43:33 Okay, but on net because there's less of the other kind, we should just average out to be fine, right? That's what I hear you saying, one's worse, ones...not. **Margaret ** 43:37 Yes, absolutely. It's a good time to get a yacht. And I know who has yachts. They are people who you can eat, ethically. And, if you want to get to the ocean to get some yachts, you can go down the Mississippi River. Except, did y'all hear that? It's not in the fucking national news at all. Did you hear that New Orleans is having a water crisis?  **Brooke ** 43:40 No, I didn't hear about that.  **Margaret ** 43:44 They're gonna have to be shipping in millions of gallons of water to New Orleans for people to drink. Because--and this is not certain. This is looming. This is today's news, like past couple days news. All of the drought that has been happening this year has the Mississippi so fucking low that there's basically backwash from the sea coming up into it. And, so all of the saltwater is going to fuck up southern Louisiana's plumbing, right? And, also fuck up--and you can't, you can't boil advisory saltwater. Off the top of my head, if you are stuck with saltwater, your best bet for desalination is building a solar still or some other kinds of still. Be very careful. If you purchase a still. You can buy them on Amazon. Most of the things you can do with stills are incredibly illegal and will get the ATF paying attention to you. However, I don't know, if I was in New Orleans right now, I'd probably buy a fucking still. Just in case. Because, you can distill water and then the brackish water stays in the bottle. Whatever. Anyway,