Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret, Miriam, Io, and Inmn talk about hope and how to plan for a future that feels very uncertain right now.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies. Io can be found on Twitter @Bum_lung or on Instagram @Bum.Lung or you can find prints, shirts and stickers that they make on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BumLung.

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.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.

Episode Summary

On This Month in the Apocalypse, Casandra, Miriam, and Inmn talk about everything that happened this past October. They hash out Elon Musks most recent horrors, catch up on floods, super storms, and dam removal. For once water is not devastating. They also go over a study about the surprising effects of protesting on public opinion and give an exciting update on the Stop Cop City movement.

Host Info

Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies.Casandra is just great.

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.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

This podcast is powered by Pinecast. Try Pinecast for free, forever, no credit card required. If you decide to upgrade, use coupon code r-69f62d for 40% off for 4 months, and support Live Like the World is Dying.

Episode Summary

On This Month in the Apocalypse, Margaret, Miriam, and Inmn talk about everything that happened in August, whether it's good, bad, or airhorns. They talk about Mpox vaccines, uranium, indigenous sovereignty, floods, Gaza, book fairs, and, in general, what's been going on in anarchism lately.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies.

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.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode Notes

Episode summary

Margaret and Casandra talk about the importance of learning mediation skills, what mediation is and what different processes look like.

Guest Info

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Links

• Mediate.com
• The Little Book of Conflict Transformation (little books series also has books on different types of mediation and restorative Justice)
• Getting to Yes
• The Promise of Mediation

Transcript

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, Margaret, Kiljoy, and I use 'she' or 'they' pronouns. And today we're going to talk about something that everyone has requested. Just kidding, no one actually bothers request this because they don't know they need it. That's actually not true. People actually haverequested this. We're gonna be talking about conflict mediation, and we're going to be talking about when conflict mediation isn and isn't the way to handle different types of situations. And when we'll be talking to Cassandra about that. And I'm very excited to hear what they have to say. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show in the network.

Margaret 01:40 Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess kind of your background, both professionally and non professionally with what we're gonna be talking about today with conflict mediation.

Casandra 01:52 Yeah, my name is Cassandra, I use 'they' or 'she' pronouns. I'm a volunteer mediator at a community mediation center. I trained in mediation...What year is it right now? I don't know, eight years ago?

Margaret 02:08 It's 2022, right now,

Casandra 02:09 Nine years ago, something like that. And I also worked at my local mediation center, at the beginning of the pandemic, as program coordinator for one of the counties.

Margaret 02:25 So what is conflict mediation? This is when when you don't like someone, you just respond passive aggressively to them and or cancel them, right?

Casandra 02:36 Yep, and block them on Twitter.

Margaret 02:39 That's important.

Casandra 02:42 Conflict mediation is where a third party is called in to be present during discussion about a conflict. So, in its most basic form, that could mean asking a friend who isn't like a stakeholder in a conflict to come sit in while you talk with someone who you have issues with. Through the mediation center, like on a, on an organizational level, we deal with all different sorts of conflicts. So community conflicts, like neighbors disputing property lines. We also do family mediation, parent/teen, stuff, things like that, we do a certain amount of mediation through the court system. So people in my area can opt to do mediation instead of going to like small claims court, which is pretty cool.

Margaret 03:32 So like if you're mad at your neighbor for hitting your car with their bicycle. I don't know that's not a good example. Instead of suing them, you can, like go hash it out with someone.

Casandra 03:49 Yep. Yeah.

Margaret 03:50 How do you then maximize your personal profit?

Casandra 03:54 Well, that's a good question. I mean, the chance if you go before a judge, there's a chance that they'll say, Nope, you don't get this money. Whereas in mediation, you get to talk to the person and explain to them why you need the money, and they explain to you why they can't pay the money, and then you work out a plan, which usually benefits both people.

Margaret 04:14 Well it just doesn't lead very easily to feeling righteous and better than everyone, though. So it seems like a disadvantage.

Casandra 04:21 Yeah, I mean, I think if you want to feel righteous, you should probably just sue someone and okay, and not worry about mediation. Yeah.

Margaret 04:29 So what were you gonna say before, i said weird sarcastic things?

Casandra 04:32 The center where I work, also has this really cool program, where we do restorative justice processes for youth offenders. So, rather than going through the usual punitive process, some juvenile offenders have the option to do restorative justice instead.

Margaret 04:52 Give me an example of like, not a "John did this," but I like what that might look like?

Casandra 04:59 Yeah, Let me think. I have to be vague. So I'm remembering a case where one teenager punched another teenager, like the, I think they were at the movies or something, this was pre-pandemic, and was charged with assault. And so rather than having to go through a punitive process and have that assault charge on their record, they have the option to do this restorative process instead. So that would look like sitting down with the person who was harmed or with a proxy, we use proxies as well, if the victim doesn't want to be present, and talking about the impact of their actions and then coming up with a plan for making amends, which can be really varied. Like it can be, It can be as simple as like, "I will go to therapy." Or it can be direct remediation, like "I will pay you money or do yard work for you," you know, it, people get really creative. But it's a cool option.

Margaret 06:04 Okay. What is the difference between, outside of a legal or court system, what is the difference between conflict mediation and restorative justice? Like, when is one thing appropriate? And when is the other thing appropriate?

Casandra 06:20 Yeah, I think of mediation as a part, like an aspect of larger alternative justice processes. So it's like a tool you can use in alternative justice processes. But alternative justice processes are intended for instances where harm has been caused. So it's not just a you and me on equal footing having a conflict or disagreement, actual harm has been done. Does that make sense?

Margaret 06:46 Yeah, so like, basically, if I'm trying to...if someone within my same social circle sexually assaulted me, and then I don't want to go and sit down have a like samey samey conversation with them about like, how we all have feelings. Instead, I can....instead restorative justice as the more appropriate thing, then specifically, mediation in that circumstance. Is that what you're saying?

Casandra 07:11 Yeah, or probably transformative justice. But yeah.

Margaret 07:15 What's the difference?

Casandra 07:17 Sure. So.

Margaret 07:19 Sorry.

Casandra 07:20 No, that's fine. Restorative justice was developed, I think in the 70s, I want to say, and that's what the mediation center where I work...that's what we use in conjunction with the court system. And it's dealing more with individuals. So, this individual has harmed that individual, and we're going to figure out how to make amends as best as possible between the two of them. Transformative justice, I think, was developed in the 90s. And it's a more systemic approach. So it's acknowledging that people often cause harm. Because of trauma, because of a lack of resources, you know, it acknowledges that we're all a part of these larger systems of oppression. And so through this transformative process, it seeks to heal both people. Often communities are brought in as part of that as well.

Margaret 08:22 Okay. So like, everyone who's involved with the thing shows up, and has a say in it.

Casandra 08:31 Maybe not for all parts. But, you know, the hope is to bring in as many people as possible, because the idea is that, that creates more sustainable change.

Margaret 08:42 So how does one...How does one go about doing this, right? Like to focus maybe more on mediation than restorative and transformative justice? We obviously within our communities come up with like ad hoc means quite often, and we just sort of try weird things all the time. And sometimes those things don't work very well, like passive aggressive notes. Or, you know,

Casandra 09:11 Wash your dishes!

Margaret 09:13 Yeah, totally. Yeah. You know, like, how does one do this? Like, if I'm starting to feel like I'm either having conflict with someone that I'm in community with, or I'm watching a conflict develop within the community that I'm part of? What are some steps to notice that that's happening and work to resolve it?

Casandra 09:35 I feel like that shouldn't be a big question, but because we're so conditioned to be conflict avoidant, not just on an interpersonal level, but like, society, you know, we live in a....part of liberal democracy, part of representative democracy is like creating these abstractions when it comes to conflict and creating institutions to deal with it, instead of even acknowledging that the conflict exists. Now I have to remember what your question was.

Margaret 10:09 So what the fuck do you do when you're like, really pissed off that your roommate won't do the dishes, and is like, snubbing you at parties and this pretending like you don't exist. But they think that it's happening because you borrowed their guitar without asking.

Casandra 10:31 I mean, mediation doesn't have to be a big formal thing, right? Like, you can just ask a mutually trusted friend to be...Well, first of all, you can just talk to them. So, so mediation is just a tool in our toolkit. But there's something about having a third person present, who isn't like a stakeholder in a conflict. And even if they don't say anything, just having a third person present and witnessing is sometimes really helpful. One of my favorite mediators at the center rarely says anything. He just has this presence, he'll sit there with his hands in bold and just like exists, and somehow people are like, Oh, well, shit. Now I have to...

Margaret 11:13 Just like quietly judging you?

Casandra 11:16 No, just like, holding this like, calm space. He's, yeah.

Margaret 11:23 Quietly judging you! Because like, well not in a bad way, right? Because like, yeah, if I'm like, if I feel really, like, justified and you know, like, bah, blah, blah. But then as soon as I realized I'm saying it to a third party, I'm like, "Oh, this might not make sense." Like when I say to a third party? Yeah, yeah, no, okay. Okay.

Casandra 11:41 Yeah. And anyone can do that. Right? Anyone who isn't a stakeholder and who's comfortable being around, conflict can be in that role. Obviously, there's more that you can do to like develop those skills. That's why trainings and mediation centers exist.

Margaret 12:00 Most of the time, I've tried to do this. It's gone very badly when I've been asked to mediate things, but I think that's usually because the people...because I did everything, right, and the people involved id everything wrong. But, it seems like people got really defensive and kind of entrenched in their positions. And it stayed a really like, "No, I'm right. Fuck, you," "No, I'm right. Fuck you," kind of thing? How do you break that up?

Casandra 12:31 Yeah. Have you heard the analogy of like, if you draw a heart on a piece of paper, and place it between two people, and they're like standing on opposite sides of it, and ask them to describe what they see, they're going to describe totally different things, but they're looking at the same image, you know?

Margaret 12:50 Oh, because it's like, not symmetrically positioned between them.

Casandra 12:53 Yes.

Margaret 12:54 Okay.

Casandra 12:55 I think that...Well, first of all, I think it's okay for people to just not agree, tight? Part of getting over our conflict avoidance, as a society, I think is acknowledging that, like, we're not going to agree and that's not only okay, but positive. Like we need to have people around us who we disagree with, in order to like, examine our own opinions and things like that. But, the second thing is that conflict isn't bad or scary. Like, I feel like part of people's fear around not agreeing with someone is that the assumption is that if you and I don't agree, then we can't have any sort of relationship or function. Like we're so conflict avoidant, that if we don't agree, we just simply can't function.

Margaret 13:46 Oh, yeah, totally. And then we just like ice each other out completely.

Casandra 13:49 Yeah, which is really common and unfortunate. And obviously, like, there, I'm gonna disagree with a Nazi, right?

Margaret 13:58 Right.

Casandra 13:59 We're not just going to agree to disagree, but I'm gonna ice them out. But, that doesn't have to be the case for everything.

Margaret 14:06 No, that makes sense. I kind of...I kind of do this thing where I have, like, one set of values that I hold myself to, and one set of values that I hold other people to, you know, so like, I'm trying to come up with a good value to to use this for. I don't want to get...Okay, so like, but if there's if there's something that I believe I shouldn't do, it doesn't necessarily mean...even though kind of in the abstract, I wish no one would do it. Like okay, like lying, right? Like I have a very, very strong sense of never lying to anyone that you're not trying to control or hurt, right? And I, I will, like live or die by this as a person, but I recognize that not everyone I surround myself with holds the same value, and it like rubs me the wrong way. But, I can agree to disagree about it because I recognize that this is a value that is not shared by everyone. Um, and I'm on my own, like, wing nut paladin and kick or whatever. Andk but then yeah, like, there's other values like, you know, "don't be like", I don't know, "don't be fucking, like racist or whatever, like, don't be a fucking Nazi," that or...is that kind of what you're kind of what you're saying, like learning to have different standards for yourself versus other people or I guess that's not just the only way to...how do you how do you personally decide which things you are allowed to disagree about and which things you're not allowed to disagree about?

Casandra 15:39 Oh, I don't feel like I'm in total agreement with anyone, like literally anyone. And that's great. Yes. The world would be really fucking boring. If I was. There's this, there's this essay called "In Defense of...." shoot, am I going to forget it while we're recording? No. In Defense of Arguing.

Margaret 16:05 Okay.

Casandra 16:05 Like an anarchist theory of arguing or something like that. And the author talks about these like larger things, like how social democracy...how the how liberal democracy as a larger structure encourages us to to not be in direct communication, and to avoid conflict.

Margaret 16:24 Well, okay, so, how does this I guess my question is like, okay, we know that Nazis are on the far end of one...you know, like, God gave us Nazis, so that we have enemies. You know, there's this, like pure representation of bad right, that most of society used to agree on and it's no longer the case, but like, we have this pure representation of bad over on one end, and then you have like, you know, "John Barrows, my guitar without asking sometimes, and thinks it's okay, that he does." Or someone is has a different interpretation of some political analysis or, you know, like, like, shit that I might feel really directly personally strongly about, but is at the end of the day, not a big deal. You know, so that...Is the answer, "Everyone's just gonna draw those lines in different places?" That's my instinct is that everyone's going to draw the lines of like, well, I can be in community with someone who I don't know, like, sometimes as a like grouchy libertarian on some issues. Or some other people will be like, "Oh, I can be in community with Marxists," or something, right? And then other people will be like, "No, we've seen where Marxism leads to. So fuck them." So people are going to draw these lines in different places. Is it just, is it just alright, that people are going to draw those lines in different places.

Casandra 17:53 Yes. And that, thank you. Yeah. So it's alright, that people are going to draw this lines in different places. And that reminds me why I brought up that article, which is what...not only is it okay to draw those lines, but having actual dialogue about where we draw those lines and why, and how they might be different from where other people draw those lines is ultimately productive.

Margaret 18:15 That makes sense.

Casandra 18:18 Because that's how we, you know, interrogate our own boundaries, right? And our own ideology.

Margaret 18:26 It was interesting. I was like, this thing is gonna be very, like nuts and bolts episode Are we like talk about like, really specific practices, but...

Casandra 18:32 I mean, we can but...

Margaret 18:33 No, we should do it too, but I, what I really like thinking about this stuff around...Yeah, the how we build diverse communities and how we avoid, you know, I would argue that echo chambers are one of the things that destroys communities of resistance more effectively than even sometimes outside pressure. You know, as soon as everyone starts...go ahead.

Casandra 18:55 Oh, I was just gonna say that like moral homogeneity is also what leads to these like, fundamentalist movements that were opposing, right. .

Margaret 19:04 Yeah. And then yet, like, people were like, well, you know, you can't let 'something something' in because it's a slippery slope. And I'm, I'm on this like, crusade against slippery slope as a useful phrase, because, well, it's a useful phrase, be like, "Hey, that's a slippery slope," should mean like, so be careful when you walk it not like boarded up, none shall enter like, you know, maybe like put handholds along the way to like, help people like navigate complicated ethical terrain.

Casandra 19:31 Cautionary signage.

Margaret 19:32 Yeah, exactly. Like instead of being like, well, everyone who likes the following philosopher who died 100 years before Nazis came about is a Nazi, even though like, you know, both Nazis like this guy and some Nazis hated this guy and some non Nazis hated this guy. I'm actually not trying to defend Evola right now at this time. That's not the path I'm trying to go down right now. Maybe Nietzsche is how I'm trying to...But I don't even want to defend Nietzsche... anyway.

Casandra 20:04 They can both go to the sun as far as I'm concerned.

Margaret 20:08 But like, but you know, where we draw these lines might be different about like, okay, so like, fuck this guy, but is it fuck everyone who is inspired by this guy? And is it fuck everyone who's inspired by people who were inspired by this guy, you know? Because, like how many how many layers removed from something do we still hate it? You know?

Casandra 20:33 Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Margaret 20:37 So nuts and bolts of conflict resolution?

Casandra Johns 20:42 Can I first...

Margaret 20:43 Yeah, please do.

Casandra 20:44 Before we move into specifics. I think the like overarching stuff is really important because every so often I see these pushes in radical spaces to develop more skills around things like transformative justice, but no one talks about conflict resolution, no one talks about mediation, which is wild to me. Like, the reason I trained as a mediator is because I saw it is like one of the building blocks of these larger structures. But it's just not something that seems to be valued or discussed on the left for the most part. And that's baffling to me, considering how much divisiveness we face and how we all seem to agree it's a huge issue. But haven't put in the work to develop the skills to like, deal with it.

Margaret 21:35 So what we're doing is we're jumping straight to the like justice framework, which is, you know, far more, it's not inherently punitive, but like, it's more antagonistic and implies far more heavily that there's like harm that's been done. And it's one directional, right like, which is often the case, I'm not trying to claim that this is not the case quite often, but but we're jumping to that rather than a lot of things that could be headed off way before they get really intense through mediation, or even things that are really intense are still a mediation type thing rather than a transformative justice type thing is that right?

Casandra 22:12 So yeah, even just as abolitionists, if we're talking about divesting from the current system as a whole, people don't just go to court because they've been abused, you know, they go because they're in conflict with someone and want an authority figure to decide who's right and who's wrong. And so that's something we have to replace as well.

Margaret 22:36 Yeah, I know that makes sense.

Casandra 22:36 And ideally without the authority figure. But even like, it doesn't have to be some intense formal, heavy thing. You know, like I've mediated for friends, and it's just been like a very casual conversation. I think that normalizing it, talking about it at all would be great as the left, but then normalizing these practices,

Margaret 23:02 Just normalizing going to your roommate, your housemate, the third person and being like, "Hey, like, we keep arguing about the fact that I want to leave my socks in the living room."

Casandra 23:16 Will you just be present while we chat through this?

Margaret 23:18 Yeah,

Casandra 23:19 Like yeah why not? You know.

Margaret 23:22 Okay. I'm coming up with silly examples, but I'm like, mostly because I'm just not feeling very imaginative off the top my head, but

Casandra 23:28 I've had housemates, I know how it goes.

Margaret 23:31 It starts feeling really personal at a certain point.

Casandra 23:33 It does!

Margaret 23:35 Yeah, and sometimes it's really easy to be really, really angry at this, like, heavier stuff than the larger framework of what's happening.

Casandra 23:46 Yeah, totally. I have a child, I understand that. I'm taking your lack of folding your laundry personally at a certain point.

Margaret 24:01 That's because you're the authority. No, I don't want to get into that that's a different conversation.

Casandra 24:07 Abolish bedtimes?

Margaret 24:12 Yeah, okay. So like, well, actually, I mean, I mean, this would be an appropriate, like mediation would be an appropriate thing to do with, like, between you and between a parent and a child at various points also, or is that?

Casandra 24:26 Yeah, yeah, one of my favorite types of mediation that I do through the center's parent/teen. There are different types of mediation. And the type I was trained in was..is somewhere between what's called facilitative and transformative mediation. So, in some scenarios, we're just hashing through a specific problem. And the people aren't going to have a relationship after that. And then in other scenarios, we're actually trying to shift the relationship to make it healthier, which I prefer. And

Margaret 24:58 Yeah.

Casandra 24:59 The Family mediations tend to go in that direction. But there's a power dynamic, right. And so part of the mediators job is to level out power imbalances, which can be really tricky. But also really cool to watch.

Margaret 25:17 Well that's cool, because I think that critiques of power are necessary, but there's always going to be different types of relationships between people with power imbalances, right? Even when, like two adults are dating, you know, there's going to be power imbalances based on like, different levels of societal privilege, or, you know, heterosexual relationships have a massive power imbalance to start with that they have to deal with...either overcome or like learn to address. So it makes sense to, like...

Casandra 25:46 I think personal history and like communication style cnn create that

Margaret 25:52 In terms of like, if someone has a more aggressive communication style, and another person has like a style that is triggered badly by that style of communication, is that kind of what you're getting at?

Casandra 26:03 Yeah, things like that.

Margaret 26:05 Okay. I remember thinking about how this has to, like, sort of be taught and developed, I remember being at a workshop once at a conference about this issue....Pardon me, as I pull a tick off of my head and cut it with a knife

Margaret 26:23 But ticks aside, you know, the way the way that this needs to be taught was really laid clear to me, I was at this, this workshop, and we're going through and, you know, the person teaching the workshop was teaching about conflict resolution and things and, and a friend of mine, who was a, I believe, a kindergarten teacher, I'm not entirely certain worked with very young kids. And my friend was explaining it was like, "oh, when two kids get in a conflict, like they both want a toy, you know, it's recess, and only one of them gets the toy. And they, they both want it, they get really excited, and they run up and they're like, "Teacher, Teacher, we have a conflict, we have to resolve it."" You know, and it was this really amazing heartwarming story. And, unfortunately, most of the people at the workshop, because they didn't have enough context for what was being told in the story were like, Ah, yes, this is the wisdom of children. You know, we should all just learn from children. And then my friend came up to me later, and was like, that was really frustrating. The kids do that, because we taught them how to,

Margaret 26:23 Oh God!

Casandra 26:29 Yeah, yeah.

Margaret 26:33 And it... And there was a certain amount of like wisdom of children, and that they hadn't specifically developed other bad habits, like, you know, I have a lot of bad conflict habits that I don't love about myself that are ingrained to me for various purposes. But, it seems like we still have to, like...go ahead.

Casandra 27:47 Even that approach, that they were excited to talk about it...like they knew where to turn. They knew where their resources were, and they were excited to resolve it. Like imagine feeling that way about disagreeing with someone. One of my teachers says that every mediation is a success, meaning that regardless of whether or not people come to an agreement, the fact that they've shown up to talk about it shifts something in their relationship. And that is in and of itself a success.

Margaret 28:16 That makes a lot of sense. And then also might lead to kind of my next question, which is like, when? Well, as I had a phrased was like "when conflict resolution fails," you know, but it seems like sometimes you would go and be like,"Oh, we've heard each other out. And we fucking hate each other. or we're fucking mad about this thing."

Casandra 28:39 We've heard...like feeling hurt, being able to say your piece to someone, and knowing that you're in this contained space where they have heard you. And then still not agreeing with them is still a form of resolution, you know, like, we're not going to agree on this. But, I've had the opportunity to, like, say my part. And that's something.

Margaret 29:03 Yeah. No, that makes sense. It's like, asking nicely before you ask meanly, in terms of like, on like, a social change level, right? You know, we're like, "Hey, give us our rights." And they're like, "No, we don't give you your rights." and we're like, "Well, we asked, now, we're not asking anymore." And that. And that's sort of assuming one person is like, right in this mediation whereas theoretically, probably both parties think they're right, but I don't know. Yeah, I feel like sometimes I've been asked to kind of mediate informally, which i don't have nearly the background you do, but I like rambling. And I've kind of ended up leaving with this result with like the, you know, no one's really asking my opinion, necessarily, but I'm like, oh, probably the answer is that they hate each other. That the answer is that like both people feel totally justified and from their own perspective, they are totally justified. And probably this won't be settled and they should stay away from each other.I don't know.

Casandra 29:59 Which like, at least they knew that afterward, you know?

Margaret 30:02 Yeah.

Casandra 30:03 Yeah. I mean, I've had many...or I've been present for.... I've been present for many more mediations than I've actually actively mediated just because of the job I had. Which is awesome, because I get to see the way other people mediate and learn from that. But I've witnessed really shocking mediations where it seems like the people walk in hating each other, and they don't come to an agreement. They're not going to agree. But they... the sense in the room at the end is peace. You know, they're like, "Ah, well, we both know, we're not going to agree and why. And at least we know that."

Margaret 30:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Casandra 30:45 Which is real. Right. Yeah.

Margaret 30:49 No, I like that. Because it's like, it's not trying to...

Casandra 30:53 Kumbaya?

Casandra 30:53 I've already said this but, yeah, they're not trying to solve everything, you know, like some things just don't get solved. But, but at least everyone knows what's happening.

Casandra 31:04 And there's that detachment to, you know, the idea that one person's right and the other is wrong is something that if you're mediating, you can't, that can't be in your brain. It's not your job to decide who's right and who's wrong or to even have an opinion about it. And there's something freeing there, because suddenly, you can see why both people feel they're right, like where the rightness is in, in both stories, which is pretty interesting.

Margaret 31:30 Well does that end up leaving the mediator like, hated by both sides often? Because like, this person, this staying neutral when clearly I'm right?

Casandra 31:31 No, and maybe this is important to talk about, but like part of, especially in a formal setting, when I open to mediation, some of the things I explain include, like confidentiality and mandatory reporting stuff, but I also explain that my role is to be neutral. I'm not going to take aside, I'm not going to make decisions or offer opinions or advice, like, all I'm there to do is to help them communicate productively. Yeah.

Margaret 32:07 And I actually, I would guess, that the average, not...no training mediator of the things that you just said that they might fail at, would be the not offering advice part, right? So it's not like showing up to the council of elders or whatever the people who are going to, like, offer their wisdom down onto you. Instead, it's really just about helping the people involved, develop their own communication as relates to it. So it's not a...you're a no way like a judge or an arbiter. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Casandra 32:39 No, there are. So there are different types of mediation. Arbitration is involved in certain types, but not the type I do and not the type that I think is useful in like, community and interpersonal settings. Yeah, and it is hard sometimes to not give advice.

Margaret 32:59 Yeah, I know when I'm like, I think people might have failed that. I'm like, No, that's probably what I failed at.When I have attempted to mediate things, because I'm like, " Ah! I now, see, because I have all of the information. Now I will clearly explain because I'm so wise." And then I'm like, "Why isn't this working?"

Casandra 33:13 Okay, no, it's it's really hard. And it takes a lot of practice. Honestly, the...when in mediations where I take a more active role, because in some mediations, I don't have to people are...people don't really need much guidance sometimes. But, when they do, I find myself almost like teaching healthy communication skills through example. And there's really not any time for me to think about offering my opinion or something like that. I'm like, so busy trying to help them untangle the communication.

Margaret 33:50 Okay. Which seems like, in a similar way that like facilitating consensus in a large group is absolutely not about your own opinions about what should happen. And basically by being a facilitator in a large group you like, kind of like, get your own voice removed from that particular decision.

Casandra 34:12 Yeah, I see it as a spectrum of skill sets, the like facilitator, the mediator and then whatever we want to call these transformative or alternative justice.

Margaret 34:21 Judge Dredd? No, we have no movie about that. Okay. Okay, so which brings me to this idea like, right, you're like, oh, you know, you're gonna come in assuming neutrality as mediator, not that both sides are equal, but assuming your own neutrality to help foster communication. What about when it is...like, this sounds like it would be really unhealthy if I was forced to do it with an abuser, right? And so I'm under the impression that you would not use this in situations of abuse is that?

Casandra 34:59 Mediation?

Margaret 35:00 Yeah.

Casandra 35:01 Yeah, yeah. And, and maybe before that, it's expected that if a mediator doesn't feel that they can maintain appropriate neutrality, they just don't mediate the case, they pass it to someone else. So that's, you know, people are gonna have strong opinions, and feel triggered by different scenarios. And that's real and fine.

Margaret 35:27 Oh, I meant I meant as a participant, I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't want to be called...am I wrong in thinking that it would, that I wouldn't want to be called into mediation with my abuser, you know?

Casandra 35:42 Well, I mean, the easy answer is no. But both restorative and transformative justice, have mediation type processes, that can be a part of these larger processes.

Margaret 35:59 Okay.

Casandra 36:00 So, and maybe we don't call it mediation, maybe we call it like, a facilitated dialogue or something?

Margaret 36:06 I don't know.

Casandra 36:09 I think it's, it's a tool, right? Like mediation is a tool. And you have to do it differently when there's a vast power imbalance like that, or when harm has been caused. But..

Margaret 36:25 So I guess...how do you judge...How do you judge when to use mediation versus transformative justice? Like, how do you decide when a given thing is the right means?

Casandra 36:42 That's a really big question. Because ideally I don't, right? So I can tell you at the Center, how it works, which is that if the courts contact us and are like, "We have decided that someone harmed another person, therefore this is going to be restorative process." Like that's how we know.

Margaret 37:00 Right.

Casandra 37:01 But in this larger project on the Left of developing these these alternative systems, that's something we have to figure out. And I don't think it can happen without intact communities. Because, I don't think it would be an individual process.

Margaret 37:21 Yeah, okay.

Casandra 37:23 But as a mediator, if I'm in a session...maybe this is a much simpler way to answer it, If I'm in a session, and someone says something about, like, causing physical harm to the other person. That's a like, "Oh, we got to stop this and shift" moment.

Margaret 37:39 Okay. That makes sense. That is kind of one of my questions is like, do you ever like, yeah, escalate up the like, response ladder? It's a terrible way of phrasing it. But yeah,

Casandra 37:53 There are plenty of cases that get called...so that so the Community Mediation Center, it's all free, right? Like anyone can call in with anything and be like, can you help me with this, which means there are plenty of cases that we can't mediate, that we say, "Oh, that's, that's not an appropriate topic for us. But here's some other resources."

Margaret 38:11 And that would be usually cases of like, clear harm having been caused?

Casandra 38:15 Yep. Or like certain types of conflicts, just because of the way the legal system is set up. Like, custody disagreements, we don't do it our center, it's just bureaucratic bullshit. But I think it would be similar in a community setting where different mediators are comfortable mediating different types of cases. And if something comes up within a mediation that either signals that harm has happened or that isn't suitable for that particular mediator, you just stop and find someone else to help.

Margaret 38:49 Okay.

Casandra 38:50 Like, we all have different skill sets, you know,

Margaret 38:52 And what you said about it requires an intact communities to be able to, to effectively do this kind of thing, as a, you know, the more transformative justice element of it. It's kind of interesting to me, right? Because then that's something that... it seems to me that intact communities relies on conflict, resolution, and conflict resolution, and mediation and all of the things we've been talking about. So it's sort of a...

Casandra 39:19 Chicken, egg?

Margaret 39:20 Oh, I was thinking almost of a like, like, building a building, you know, like, a pyramid, a traditional representation of hierarchy. But, in this case, representing bottom up, you know, where like, the strong base of a community is not it's like justice system, but instead it's like, conflict resolution and the ability for diverse opinions to coexist. And there's the general ability for people to coexist, because people implies diverse opinions unless you live in some hellscape. Ideological bubble.

Casandra 39:54 Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

Margaret 39:57 Now, it's interesting because then this answers the question of how do you supplant the justice system? which is an important question.

Casandra 40:05 You support people in developing skill sets like this, which I was thinking about it before this interview and remembering when I was...so I don't get paid to mediate as part of the neutrality, nut the initial 40 hour training, I took cost money, because it's a non profit, very poor mediation center. And you're one of the people who who you gave me like 50 bucks or something.

Margaret 40:32 No.

Casandra 40:32 And you said, you messaged me, you said something to the effect of like, "Oh, I'm giving you money. This is like a skill that I think we need in more radical spaces." And I was like, "Fuck, yeah, this Margaret person seems really cool."

Margaret 40:44 Cool. Yeah, I don't remember that. But, I believe you. I don't remember a lot of things, dear, listener. That's one of my skill sets is that I don't remember things.

Casandra 40:59 That can be a blessing, I suppose.

Margaret 41:02 Sometimes, it's like I, you know, it helps me really live in the present, you know, because it's all just fog in front of me and behind me. I have impressions, impressions of what's ahead and impressions of what came before. No, that's great. I mean, how common are these types of organizations? Like, you have one in your town? Is it? Do I have one in my...well, I don't have one in my town. There's 500 people who live in my town.

Casandra 41:28 I'm only really familiar with my state. So, I'm in Oregon. And we have a network of Community Dialogue Resource Centers [CDRC]. I'm so bad at acronyms. There's a whole network all over Oregon. And each center works, to some extent with the current justice system, depending on where they are in the resources, but they also offer free community mediation, and it's really easy in my state to get training. Like at my center, you can, if you speak Spanish, and are willing to volunteer, as a bilingual mediator, you can get training for free, like it's a pretty accessible thing, but I'm not sure about other states, like the agreement we have with the Justice System to do these restorative processes for youth offenders is pretty unique, apparently, like it's a it's a test...test run, that's been going on for years. But I don't think that's necessarily common.

Margaret 42:31 I mean, it's so basically, a way that some elements of the Justice System are trying to move towards an actual reasonable model away from the incarceration and punitive model is that right?

Casandra 42:43 Yep. Yeah. And it's been because people at these Community Dialogue and Resource Centers have pushed really hard for the state to implement these programs here. But it's also...I mean, mediate.com has really good classes, you can just take on mediation. You can get, I have a whole...I'm looking at it, I realized this is not a video recording, but I have a whole bookshelf full of books on mediation, AK has presses put out...you know, there, there are lots of resources on mediation that are accessible. If people want to explore the skill set.

Margaret 43:22 Would you be able to provide a few of those links for our show notes?

Casandra 43:27 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Margaret 43:29 Thanks. So okay, my last question, I want to I want to take with take you on this journey, where we imagine you know, a society without the state, whether because we win or because we lose, depending on how you know, like, like,

Casandra 43:47 How you want to look at it?

Margaret 43:48 Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, like, this is a, it's not gonna be like some wingnut thing for people, for me to suddenly be like, "What if there was an apocalypse?!" right? Y'all are listening to Live Like The World Is Dying. I kind of want to ask you about the role of, and I know a lot of it's implied, but we talked about, but like, the role of conflict resolution in terms of community preparedness, if you have like thoughts around that? [That] didn't really end with a question mark.

Casandra 44:18 That's fine. That's hard for me to answer because it feels like a given. Like, community preparedness means that we need functional, intact communities, which means we have to have systems that could look all sorts of different ways, right? But we have...

Margaret 44:34 Like passive aggressive notes?

Casandra 44:36 That's one way. But we have to have systems for working through conflict or else we do not have functional communities. And maybe different communities choose to do that in different ways. This is just like one particular tool or skill set that's very adaptable.

Margaret 44:54 So if the state is abstraction of power, right, away from ourselves, basically the existence of the state, the long standing existence, the state is probably a huge part of what leads us to this conflict avoidance that you talk about, like causes these problems, we're so used to relying on the state to handle our conflicts for us by calling armed people who like putting people in cages. And so basically...do you ever have those moments where like, you've been an anarchist for a long time, and then you still end up with these, like, obvious epiphanies that like, seem really obvious when you say them out loud, but still feel like epiphanies? That's what I'm having right now about this, because I'm like, "Oh, this is everything. This is the foundation," which is also what you just said, I'm saying this back to you.

Casandra 45:39 That's why it's so baffling to me that I've searched for years for collectives, groups, any, any individuals, anyone offering these skills in radical spaces, and it's so hard to find. And that's wild to me. It's so wild. And that doesn't, people aren't doing it.

Margaret 46:00 Right.

Casandra 46:01 But it just doesn't seem to be of high value.

Margaret 46:04 I wonder if it's like, because people...because I have seen a lot of groups, and I'm glad there are groups that focus on transformative justice, right, but that's the top of this pyramid of needs...my hierarchy of needs that I've created because I love hierarchy.

Casandra 46:19 Such a good anarchist.

Margaret 46:21 I know. I wonder if it's kind of similar to how like, it's a lot easier to find like armed anarchist organizations that will teach you how to shoot guns and like harder to find ones that'll teach you how to like immediate conflict resolve, like someone angrily comes into your...you know, I and often I'm...the individuals do this, right? Like, there was a time. I don't know if this person listens to this podcast, but a friend of mine was at some anarchist screening at some info shop and some angry guy comes in and starts yelling this and that about I think trans people. And my friend who's trans was just like, "Hey, man, you want to go outside and have a cigarette with me?" And just like, went outside and talked to the guy. And he calmed down and left, and like, and my friend carries, right. But like, it's so much easier to find information about the nuclear option the the, you know, the escalated version than it is to find resources about the "Hey, man wanna step outside with me and have a conversation."

Casandra 47:26 Yeah, those soft skills are really devalued because of the way our society...

Margaret 47:32 What?! What if there was like a word to describe type of...We should call it patriarchy?

Casandra 47:38 I mean, who did people used to go to? Right? Was it like, grandma? Or like, gr... you know, the people, we devalue? e?

Margaret 47:53 Yeah.

Margaret 47:55 Well, I, you know, it's hard. I don't know where to go from, okay like, now we understand the entire basis of an anarchist society, without the state, basically means that we have to learn how to stop putting this not on other people, because obviously, we need other people, we need society to help us do this, but stop putting it on this, like, legalized abstraction that's off in the distance.

Casandra 47:55 Yeah.

Casandra 48:23 So there, I mean, there are interpersonal skills, we all need to develop right around communication? But if we're talking about people actually filling these roles that we need, we have to actually figure out how to support people in developing those skills and like value their skill set.

Margaret 48:40 Yeah. So how do we how do we do that?

Casandra 48:44 Well, you did it for me, I was like, Hey, Internet, I need money for this training. And you were like, "Here's 50 bucks. This is important." I was like, "Thanks!"

Margaret 48:58 Best part is that was probably a couple of years ago when I had substantially less ...and like I've, since I think people who listen to this know that I've since like, started a nonprofit job and like, have more money than I used to.

Casandra 49:09 Oh, this was like 2016.

Margaret 49:11 Yeah, okay. Yeah. Okay. But okay, so like, so people can go and get trainings and people can bring this kind of information to their communities, both by doing it, but also by maybe like spreading the skills that people could be setting up like informal collectives or formal collectives are something to kind of like, work on fostering these types of skills like what else can we do?

Casandra 49:38 Just talking about it more. I mean, I remember who was I...Oh, I guess I can't talk about this on the internet. I was doing seasonal labor that grants one a lot of spare time to talk and the people I was doing this....

Margaret 49:53 Blueberry harvest.

Casandra 49:55 Yes, blueberry harvest. The people that I was doing the seasonal labor with were like, "Hey, what if we listen to Rosenberg's lectures on non violent communication and practice, because we got time to kill." And we were like, "Alright," so we all... I mean, and there's a lot to say about NVC and its flaws, but we agreed to do this as a group and she sat around and practiced arguing using NVC until we got comfortable like, I, it's hard to, it's hard to, like, write us a prescription for people to normalize something like this, right? But the, the solution is that we have to normalize it somehow..

Margaret 50:35 No, that makes sense. Do you have any any final thoughts on conflict resolution or things that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about?

Casandra 50:46 Um, it's really important, we won't function as a society without it whether it's mediation or some some similar skill. I don't know, Google "mediation centers" where you are. Chances are there there's one somewhere in your state, or wherever you're listening from.

Margaret 51:08 Yeah, I think we sometimes try to reinvent the wheel all the time, within radical subcultures. I can't speak to other ones besides the anarchists ones, because it's the one I participate in the most. But, we I think sometimes we like only look to existing anarchists projects as like, the realm of what's possible. And that seems nonsensical.

Casandra 51:29 Yeah, actually, that reminds me...so that the center where I work is not politically affiliated, right. I'm like the youngest person there. It's mostly a bunch of retired folks of various political leanings, which we don't talk about. And there's something to be said, for working in spaces like that, and learning these skills in spaces like that, because we don't live in an anarchist society right now. Which means that we need to be able to navigate conflict with people who aren't anarchists. And so if two people are in conflict, and they aren't anarchists, and I approach them and say, "Hey, I'm an anarchist mediator," then suddenly I'm not neutral or like a useful resource, right?

Margaret 52:16 Right.

Casandra 52:17 So it's not that I think we shouldn't have anarchists mediation collectives. I'm just saying that. I don't think people should shy away from these a-political resources, because they really valuable still.

Margaret 52:31 There's this thing I learned yesterday while doing research for my other podcast that you can check out, it's called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff that comes out every Monday and Wednesday. Okay, and um...

52:41 I know what you're going to say, and yes.

Margaret 52:43 Yeah, well, okay. So like, I learned about this thing where, you know, I have infinite respect for the Jane Collective, right, the people who in the late 60s, early 70s, in Chicago were in this collective that ended up including more than 100 different people; women working as Abortionists illegally before Roe v. Wade. And for some reason that's on a lot of people's minds right now. But then I discovered looking back that in the 1920s and early 30s in Germany...Cassandra's already heard this...there was all of these non politically affiliated organizations of illegal birth control advocates and Abortionists all over Germany. There's more than 200 of these groups, and they were non politically aligned. But it was almost all syndicalists, anarchist syndicalists coming from a specific union, the acronym of which I forget off the top of my head. FAUD actually, I now remember it. And it's like the Free Workers Union of Germany or something. And even though they did a lot of organizing and propaganda as anarchists in the rest of their lives, the abortion clinics, were not an anarchist project, because that wasn't the point of it. And they weren't there to recruit. And they weren't...they were just there because people needed to have access to birth control and abortions. And I could imagine mediation....you know, if I was forming an anarchist mediation collective, if it was like, "We are the anarchists mediation collective," it would maybe be for the anarchists, but if it was like, "We are anarchists doing this mediation collective and we're willing to tell you, we're anarchists, but it is not about anarchism." I don't know is that?

Casandra 54:23 Yeah, totally. I mean, I remember during my first training, going up to one of the directors and asking, I don't remember what question I asked, but it was something about like, "What we're talking about sounds like prison abolition," you know, and like, there's a particular mediation center in my area that is politically affiliated, and I was asking him if I should try volunteering with that center or with one of the non affiliated centers, and he said, "Definitely one of the non affiliated centers because the whole point of this if we're actually abolishing the prison industrial complex is to get everyone to divest from it, which means everyone needs access, which means we don't want to turn them off because we say we're liberals or anarchists or whatever."

Margaret 55:17 Yeah.

Casandra 55:18 I say liberal because he was probably a liberal, but surely, yeah.

Margaret 55:23 Yeah. No, that that makes a lot of sense to me. It's interesting challenges a lot of like, the presuppositions I have about like when it isn't, isn't useful to identify projects politically. But, I think that makes a really strong case. Because, the point has never been, from my point of view to create little weird pure bubbles, cause, as we talked about creating weird pure bubbles is just....they're just going to destroy themselves, much like bubbles, when you blow bubbles, they don't last.

Casandra 55:54 Well and even like if you create this weird pure bubble, what if someone..what if you're in conflict with someone outside that bubble? Is that person going to trust a mediator who is strictly inside that bubble?

Margaret 56:08 No, then we'll just go break their windows, no matter what happened. Even if our friends are the one at fault.

Casandra 56:15 You know, if I get in an argument with my Catholic, Republican, anti-semitic neighbor across the street, even if I might prefer an anarchist mediator, that's not something he's going to agree to, therefore, the mediation won't happen, and therefore it's not productive.

Margaret 56:33 Right. Yeah. And, and even then, like, if you have a mediator who specifically there to be on your side, you don't have a mediator, you have an advocate, I guess.

Casandra 56:42 Which is important. Advocates are really important. But that's different. Different skill set.

Margaret 56:50 Yeah. No, totally. I mean, and then you get into the like, since you can't enter someone into transformative justice, if they don't want to, and if they're not part of a community, you know, sometimes like, I remember there was an instance where to abstract this as far as I possibly can with the story is still making sense, where an anarchist went on a really bad date with a guy who wasn't an anarchist, and then, like 30, people in black bloc, showed up outside his house with megaphones, and scared the everLiving shit out of him. And I think he was a little bit more careful from then on. But...

Casandra 57:28 Different techniques for different scenarios, right?

Margaret 57:31 Exactly. Exactly. Like, not everything should resort to violence or the threat of violence, but also, not everything...I think that is...I think that's one of the things that turns people off from a lot of mediation is that I think that people see it applied at times when sometimes like,"No, maybe just like direct conflict is the actual answer to certain types of problems," you know, but not that not that many of them.

Casandra 57:56 Well in mediation when it's done well, I see the same argument around nonviolent communication, which I think Rosenberg was brilliant, I think that...or is? he like...

Margaret 58:07 I don't know.

Casandra 58:08 Anyway, I don't know, I think the way it's applied often is horrible. But, I see this a similar argument around mediation and NVC and where those tools can be utilized to like tone police or silence people, etc. But mediation, one of the foundations of mediation is that it's a consensual process. Which means that if someone's in a mediation, and is like, "Oh, this doesn't feel good to me anymore. This is like some boundaries been crossed, or I'm not comfortable with the way I'm being asked to communicate," or whatever. They just stop the process. That's it.

Margaret 58:50 Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah, I wish I could have done that with like...I have such negative connotations for NVC, because I feel like the times it just gets use...it's, it's just been like weaponized against me by people who are like, making me cry and then asking why I'm communicating so meanly while I'm crying because of the things that they're saying to me or whatever, you know?

Casandra 59:10 Same, same. When I when I actually read Rosenberg, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's not what he was describing.

Margaret 59:20 Yeah.

Casandra 59:23 Yes, yeah.

Margaret 59:24 And the spirit of the law, the spirit of the idea often gets stripped away and left with the letter of it.

Casandra 59:31 I've also had so many jobs where I've had so many bosses who were like, hippies using NVC to just like gaslight the shit out of you, you know? Like, "Yeah, I hear you feel this way. But I'm still your boss and will fire you." You know?

Margaret 59:52 Yeah. All right. Well, I think we've covered every single thing about mediation and...

Casandra 1:00:01 Ever. Yep. And even can go and mediate now I'm sure.

Margaret 1:00:04 Yeah, totally. Just make sure to stick your own opinions in. Anyone is free to leave at any point all they...they will just be excised from the community. And, passive aggression is the logical response to everything. What else, did we cover everything?

Casandra 1:00:20 Gossip with your friends about everything you hear in a mediation so they can cancel each other.

Margaret 1:00:24 Oh, yep, definitely. And it's really good to not only block people on social media, but then yell at everyone else to block the person on social media. Getting anything? I sarcastically make fun of things that people do in order to defend themselves from really bad things that happen. I understand why people do these things sometimes. It just gets out of hand.

Casandra 1:00:49 Different different tools for different scenarios.

Margaret 1:00:51 Yeah, totally. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on. Is there anything you want to shout out or plug or draw people's attention towards here at the end of the episode?

Casandra 1:01:05 Um, maybe this...I don't know publishing project called Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness.

Margaret 1:01:12 Oh, are you part of a publishing project?

Casandra 1:01:13 Have you heard of that?

Margaret 1:01:15 Is it Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness at Tangledwilderness.org? The publishing collective that you and I are both part of?

Casandra 1:01:24 Yeah, yeah, we could call that out.

Margaret 1:01:27 Yeah, if...this podcast is published by Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness, and we also publish a monthly zine. We're publishing a bunch of books this year. And we're really just...it's a project that's been around in one incarnation or another for about 20 years. But we're like really, kind of kick starting it. No pun intended with the company this year and trying to give it a good push and we have a bunch of stuff coming out.

Casandra 1:01:54 If you like podcasts, now, there's an audio version of each zine each month.

Margaret 1:01:58 Oh, yeah. What's it called?

Casandra 1:02:01 Oh, shit, isn't it's just called Strangers [In a Tangled Wilderness]? This is our job.

Margaret 1:02:10 We're very professional. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Casandra 1:02:18 Thank you.

Margaret 1:02:19 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you should learn how to mediate or don't learn how to mediate and just walk like a wrecking ball through communities and tell everyone what you think. I guess I've already made enough sarcastic jokes this episode. Mediation is really cool. And you should look into it. You can also support this podcast. The main way you can do that is by telling people about it. You can tell people about it on the internet, or in person. Those are the only two spaces that exist I think. But either way you'd be helping us out. You can also support us directly by supporting us on Patreon. Our Patreon is patreon.com/strangersInatangledwilderness, and depending we put up content every month, we have now two podcasts, this one and the podcast Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. We publish a lot of fiction, we will be publishing some poetry's, and role playing game content, also some essays, memoir, history, you name it. And in particular, I'd like to thank Mikki, Nicole, David, Dana, Chelsey, Staro, Jennifer, Elena, Natalie, Kirk, Micaiah, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog. You all are amazing and make all this possible. Strangers...well, this podcast used to be just me. But now it's going to be coming out more regularly, thanks to all the hard work of all the people who work behind the scenes. So thank you for supporting them and thank you people who are behind the scenes for doing that also Anyway, I hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's happening and I will be back soo

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

Episode summary

Guest info and links

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at Tangled Wilderness You can support the show on Patreon.

Referenced Texts:

> Fitzpatrick's Dermatology, 9e > Taylor and Kelly's Dermatology for Skin of Color, 2e > Sanford Guide To Anti-Microbials > UpToDate: > UpToDate – Evidence-based Clinical Decision Support | Wolters Kluwer > Where there is no Doctor:Books and Resources - Hesperian Health GuidesHesperian Health Guides > CDC > American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons >

Transcript

Max on Taking Care of Medical Needs

Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The Wold Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Margaret killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to another medical practitioner. I'm talking to a nurse practitioner named Max, who is going to talk about how to access medical care when medical care doesn't want to give you access to medical care. And we'll be talking about the different ways that people source medications, and we'll be talking about the different diagnostic tools and kind of talk about what you can do to learn how to be your own doctor. Yeah, I hope you enjoy it. This podcast as a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Ba-da-da-dah-dah-da.

Channel Zero Jingle

Margaret 02:18 Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess a little bit of your background as relates to the kind of stuff we're going to be talking about today.

Max 02:27 Sure, my name is Max, I use he/him pronouns. I'm a medical provider, technically, I'm a nurse practitioner with a degree in family health care. I've been working in health care for about 15 years on the, on the East Coast, first doing primary care and working with LGBTQ+ folks, and now mostly doing HIV care in an infectious diseases environment.

Margaret 02:56 Okay, so the reason I wanted to have you on the show is I wanted to talk about, I guess you could say like DIY allopathic health care, or maybe rather like accessing allopathic medical care without access to the allopathic medical system. And, I was wondering if you could kind of give a brief introduction to that, and also explain what allopathy is, for anyone who's listening who's not familiar with that term?

Max 03:21 Sure. Allopathic is the word I think I'm going to use to describe the medical world I work in, I think about it, like how people talk about Western medicine. But I feel like there are so many different contributions to what we think of as Western medicine, from all over the world historically, and currently that it seems kind of like a dumb term. And I sort of reached out to some friends of mine who are in other kinds of health care, outside of this sort of what we think of as like this health care model and was like, "What's the best terminology?" and they're like, "Oh, "allopathic", that's what you should use," you know, and so I think, "all right, that's what I'm going to use for this." And for me, I think a lot about expertise, right? Like someone could learn to work on a bicycle outside of ever having to learn necessarily in a shop or in a school. And they could learn to work on their bicycle super super well, and they could learn to start working on other people's bicycles. And they could go on the internet and they could diagnose problems with bicycles and they could you know, become the person who lives next door who's really really good at fixing everybody's bicycles. And ultimately with experience that person can be an expert in bicycles right? That's that's something we allow people and there's something about allopathic medicine that just doesn't allow for that expertise outside of really rigid model, outside of schooling outside...it it police's its borders. So like, if you want to go and look something up about your own health care on the internet, the things that you find are are terrible, even the things that are supposed to be reliable, like something like Medscape or something like that, you know, it's like every, "Oh, you have a sore throat," you look up sore throat, and it gives you every possible thing that could ever possibly have ever caused a sore throat, including some kind of cancer, right

Margaret 05:16 Yeah like if you look up, yeah.

Max 05:17 Yeah. And if you...but if you look up how to fix a flat, there's not disclaimers about "Oh, you might cut off your tongue while fixing a flat, or run yourself over, or wear a helmet." You know, it's this...it's like, matter of fact, you're allowed to access the information. And I think that there's...it's a big problem when it comes to health care. And...

Margaret 05:29 Well everyone has bicycles, but only some people have bodies.

Max 05:42 No, no one has bodies. No one...

Margaret 05:44 Yeah. But everyone has a bicycle. So it makes sense.

Max 05:47 Everyone has a bicycle. Yeah.

Margaret 05:49 Yeah. Sorry, I cut you off. Please continue.

Max 05:51 No, it's fine. Makes total sense. I, I, I also think too, about a lot of the, you know, I think one of the things I think about in your show is that idea of like, you know, the prepper, and the fallout shelter, or like the little green anarchists like how that's not necessarily like a sustainable model in the, in the tradition, like, because we need each other, right. And I think one of the things that we need about each other is that we need all of each other. And I think this idea of being able to just go and live on the mountaintop and survive on your own is deeply ablest and assumes a lot about bodies and what bodies need and what people need to keep their bodies healthy.

Margaret 06:29 Yeah, and it doesn't take into account that like even able-bodied people aren't always perpetually able-bodied, you know, like, speaking as someone who currently lives alone on a mountaintop...you know, I think about it a lot, right? Like, I'm like, if I fall on the ice, my dog isn't going for help. You know, and like, I could probably only do what I do with access to a cell phone. You know, like, realistically, I mean, sure people successfully live alone for long periods of time, without access to any of that, but people also unsuccessfully live alone without access to other people, too. So I agree with you. I am....Yeah, we do need each other even even, even when you choose to be mostly isolated, which actually come any kind of crisis. I'm not making this about me, I just got really self conscious thinking about the mountain top thing. You know, come any kind of crisis, I immediately don't want to be alone anymore. Like, be...living alone only make sense in the context of the entire, like, social infrastructure that we have set up, you know?

Max 07:34 Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure. And it's like, as soon as you get a little bit hurt, and you're laying on the ground, and you're like, "Why did I do that thing that I just did that got me a little bit hurt?" you're like, "Will I be hurt forever. Will anybody findfind my corpse.

Margaret 07:51 Okay, so, so and then. So, you're someone who does have access to a lot of the, you know, traditional allopathic medical world, right. And and what you're saying is that it's something that people can become more competent as individuals, whether they're, like specializing, or whether they're just like Jack-of-all-trades-ing their, you know, their health care. What does that...what does that look like? What are good places to start, either in the current context, or in a, you know, a crisis context in which we might be detached from social infrastructure? Like, what what should people learn?

Max 08:28 I'm definitely not in the working in any kind of realm of right now, like, emergency, right? So this definitely isn't the like, 'how to, you know, stop somebody from bleeding and excessively' or...

Margaret 08:41 We have that episode, actually, so.

Max 08:43 Exactly, yeah. No, I've listened to it. And it was great. Um, but it's sort of more like, how do we access these things, so that so that people can become experts outside of a traditional model, right? And so I think about things like, like, sort of big three big things as like reliable sources, right? Where can you look up information and actually get information without being told that you're gonna, that you have cancer when you just have a sore throat, right. And, and then you have access to diagnostic tools, and things that help make diagnostics, and things that help sort of lay it out. And then because that's something that you...we use all the time. And then the final thing I think about is, and also in in that realm of tools, is medications, right? Like how do we get medicine? You know, like this, like medicine in pill form, medicine in injectable form, like how do we get those things outside of a doctor model? And then the final thing is just like, what makes someone an expert is experience. But so the big things I'm going to talk about, like are like what I'd like to talk about, I guess is sources, and tools. Tools, and in the sense of tools I think, you know, diagnostics, manuals and things like that, but diagnostic tools and, and medicines. Okay, so

Margaret 10:09 This is exciting, I want to know these things, and then I'm going to ask you about fish antibiotics afterwards.

Max 10:13 And then in the very most fundamental level, I think that everyone in the whole world who...should have a little index card that they keep on their person that says, you know, their name and emergency contact, what they're allergic to, if they have any medical conditions, if they take any medications, you know. It...or make, you know, or make that if you live with someone who's older, if you live with someone who's house bound, if you live with someone who's particularly vulnerable, help them do that, make them for that for them, and just have that on hand. Because that just simplifies every process.

Margaret 10:50 I, I really liked that idea. And then like maybe people who have access to whoever in your neighborhood has a lamination machine, you know, make laminated cards for everyone. No, that makes sense. It's one of the questions I get the most, you know, because the traditional, as you kind of mentioned, the traditional prepper space is very ableist, and very focused on people who are not marginalized by society. And, and so a lot of people are like, well, you know, "I need a thyroid pill every day, or I'll die," or, you know, or "I don't want to go off antidepressants, I'd rather die," or, you know, whatever these things are. And I don't usually have good solid answers. So that was actually why when you reached out, I was so excited to talk to you. So I guess, do you want to start with sources? What are good sources, obviously, WebMD and Wikipedia, but...

Max 11:41 I have a ton as they do about ways of sort of amassing medication, so we'll get to that.

Margaret 11:46 Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah.

Max 11:47 So, sources was like the first thing. If you can get health insurance right now. And I mean that in like...there are sometimes ways to get it. Like if you can access a lower income clinic, or you know, someone who's a social worker, or does case management, they can help you often get, like state assistance health insurance. And like if you're super sick, and you have a complex issue that would might involve...like, if you have a broken bone, or you worried that you might have legit pneumonia, you can absolutely always give fake information at an emergency room. Just be savvy about it...

Margaret 12:24 Right, and obviously only do this....

Max 12:25 And if you have to get hospitalised...

Margaret 12:27 Oh no, obviously, we're talking about fiction in this particular context, as we would never advocate for you to break the law, but yeah.

Max 12:31 Yeah, absolutely fiction. Yeah, absolutely fiction and in...

Margaret 12:33 In a post apocalyptic society that looks exactly like our current society. This is what you could tell.

Max 12:37 Yeah, that's what we're, that's what we're talking about. And the only way to talk, you know, and in said society too, if you end up in a in a hospitalized situation, and you're what they consider to be indigent. They know they can't get blood from a stone. So they'll often sort of retroactively sign people up for medical coverage to cover that. This is all of course, assuming that someone is documented so I don't want to, I don't want to assume that. So that's on the baseline. But, so things that you could do diagnostic wise, right, we can learn and people can learn how to do physical exams. But I'm a big fan of, of, of some sources that people can access, there's this book called "Where There Is No Doctor", and everyone and their mother should ownthis book. You can get free PDFs of it, and tons and tons of languages, tons and tons and tons and tons of languages. And it is an incredibly useful thing. People should just get it for each other for like birthday presents, you know, and it pretty much shows you how to like diagnose and treat a wide variety of illnesses, even with explicit medication instruction. And it's just, it's just a really, really, really, really useful tool. There's also this thing, this online thing that most healthcare people have access to called "Up To Date." And if you know anyone in healthcare, and you know, in an in an in an alternate reality, where people can share things like you know, logins and things like that, you know, someone who might be willing to share that, you can use Up To Date to diagnose and treat everything. And what it is, is it's, it's, it's staffed by medical people who create, you know, pages about different illnesses, about different things that you might encounter, and gives you all the most quote unquote, "up to date" well referenced literature about whatever it is, you know, and they kind of grade like, "Okay, we give this a Grade A, we give this a Grade B" in terms of like, okay, this is a good intervention or not. And you it's, it's, I look at it all day long, and I've been doing healthcare for a long time. Another possible thing that one could do if one was in like a collective of people was you could all go in on it have an Up To Date.

Margaret 15:06 How much does it cost? Or do you need to provide like medical license? Or?

Max 15:09 I've not had to, to sign up for it? I mean, and I think it's, I think it's very worth it. But I think it's also like one of those kinds of things like, you know, a lot of subscription services where somebody's got login. And there's no way to sort of misuse it, you know.

Margaret 15:29 it just, it drives me crazy how like, this exists, and that we can't access it. Like, I mean, obviously, some people can. And that's, that's wonderful. And I'm sure there's reasons or whatever, but it's just, it's very frustrating the idea that, like, we're all stuck with WebMD, you know, whereas like, actual doctors are able to like...it's not that they just magically know, all this information, you know, I mean, I've been going to a friend of mine for years as like my primary medical provider, basically. As soon as he started going to med school, you know, he just started answering everyone's medical questions for the community that he was in. And, you know, yeah, he spends all of his day like reading and stuff like that, and keeping up to date...it is a very clever name...about all this stuff. And it's amazing how much it changes. I don't know. I don't know, I sorry, I just got really frustrated, think about how that that exists, and I can't immediately access it, and I'm stuck, like, using things telling me I'll die of cancer.

Max 16:30 And it's, it's...that's kind of one of the things I mean, like what else? What else? Where else? Is it so difficult maybe to to access, actual legitimate, you know, resources, if you have a friend, like who's in health care, and they're associated with a university or like a major hospital system, there are also sometimes these biomedical libraries online? Well, of course, there are there are biomedical libraries online, sorry. And, you know, you can look up to the very most current research on things papers wise, you know, and that's a fantastic, fantastic resource. If you know anybody with a login, who's...or is...who is a medical student, or even just a student period, most of them have an online acc... online access to really, really good current research. And ways of guiding care. And so that's another great tool. So you can actually be doing, you know, very, very current, you know, well documented smart health care for people, because they're these things exist. These these documents, these research papers, exist, we just, it's the access, right? It's, it's the access like 100%. Let's see....

Margaret 17:56 I mean, it's, it's ivory tower shit, it's like, it's the same as like, whenever I'm trying to research history. There's all kinds of papers written by historians, and they're all locked up behind these academic paywalls. And I basically have to like bug my friends in the academy being like, "Hey, can you pull this paper?" Or like, write the author's directly and be like, "Hey, you're the only person who's written about the blue spectacles worn by the nihilists in 1860s. Russia, can you tell me why they were blue? Can you just give me the paper?" You know, and I don't know. Sorry, as an aside, it just irritates me. I don't like this ivory tower thing.

Max 18:28 It's ridiculous. It's so ridiculous. And you know, but it really, I think, probably a lot of people are only probably a couple of degrees, like, away from someone who might have one of these log-ons...logins. So I think we should just pressure the hell out of our friends and colleagues, and make sure that they you know, distribute...

Margaret 18:48 Yeah.

Max 18:49 equitably, equitably. The...one of the things I really use a lot is like dermatology guides. So if you have a bunch of friends and you want to go in on a little like Biomedical Library, you know, you know if you know someone who ever went to nursing school or anything like that, ask them if they have, you know, things like anatomy books and things like that. But if you can get Derm books, they're great. There's one called "Fitzpatrick's Dermatology". And it's just like the tome, and has, it has tons of color pictures, if you get an outdated one, just know that some of the recommendations in terms of things like antibiotics might be outdated, but...but what the rash is, and what it what it is, you know, is not...it hasn't changed. That book, though, has...centers I think white skin considerably. There's a book called "Taylor And Kelly's Dermatology For Skin Of Color" that's much much better in terms of, obviously, skin of color. It's very, very good book as well. The problem with both of these books is that they're not cheap. So it's totally worth finding old copies. But then again, just remembering that, you know, the "how to treat things" might have changed.

Margaret 20:11 Okay, so the diagnostics are good, but the treatment...

Max 20:15 Yeah, but the "what to do" has changed.

Margaret 20:17 But once you diagnose it, then you can reference Up To Date or whatever to figure out a better....

Max 20:23 Absolutely. And just in terms of rashes, you know, rashes kind of can all look like each other, too. So that's that problem with rashes.

Margaret 20:30 I mean, to be honest, like to just admit to everyone the main thing I've been going to medical care provider for many years, I, you know, i was a squatter, and I live in a van, I live in a cabin was was like, "Hey, what's this rash?"

Max 20:43 What's this rash!

Margaret 20:44 And usually the answer is shower more, and...

Max 20:48 Dirt rash.

Margaret 20:50 Yeah, and like, I think, ended up having to put anti-dandruff shampoo on various parts of my body at various points, and like leave it there for 10 minutes. Anyway, now that you all know more about me, then you need to...dermatology that that makes sense.

Max 21:09 I love getting to tell patients to shower less that sometimes happens with eczema,

Margaret 21:13 Oh, interesting. I haven't had that problem. I'm looking forward to having that problem.

Max 21:24 So there's a thing called the "Sanford Guide To Anti-Microbials". They're little bitty books, if you can get a very, very up to date one, or like, like, current one. Sorry. That's a really useful thing. They're teeny. The CDC website is really, really useful when it comes to all manner of things like travel exposures, bacterial and viral illnesses, their STD stuff is great, their PrEP stuff, which is like a pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, their PrEP guidelines are great and super, super accessible. And that's just free and available, and you just look it up. But just instead of looking at the...look at the "For Providers", you know, always just click on "For Providers." And then I really like the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeon website when it comes to like certain exercises for bones and joints. And then let's see, a lot of schools and universities will just have like"best practice guidelines, which are just the best ways to...like algorithms for diagnosing things. And then there's some, like online videos, there's this place I used to work....They... I used to refer a lot of my patients at this one practice to this place called Excel PT, Physical Therapy, and I love them because they have tons and tons and tons of free physical therapy videos on their website that are really really good. Like they're legitimate physical therapy exercises that people can go through and be put through. And I just really liked them because I feel like, I don't know it's not just a printout. It's...they're actually putting someone's body through the motions. They have them right up there and there's not like 50,000 disclaimers, like you're gonna...I don't know, I really I think they're super, super valuable. And I use them a lot with patients of mine who are uninsured who can't go to physical therapy. So, that's some of my...those are like my manuals, I love manuals anyways, in all manner of things.

Margaret 23:37 Yeah, that's like the...sometimes people come over my house are sort of disappointed because I'm a fiction writer, and most of my shelves are just like...if I see a manual for how to do something at a used bookstore, I'll buy it.

Max 23:47 Oh my gosh, totally. Every time.

Margaret 23:51 I really don't see the world where I'm trapping small game. I just don't see it happening. I've been vegan for 20 some years, but...

Max 23:59 I got this really good. It's like a guide. It's exactly that. I have to remember the name. I'll have to tell you later. We can cut this out of there.

Margaret 24:07 Naw, we should leave that part in.

Max 24:10 It's like a hunter-trapper manual. It's so good.

Margaret 24:14 Good. Will we be able to put in the show notes all of the... wil you be able to send me the list and I could put this in top of the show note, so you don't have to dig through the trans, transcription to find these again. Anyone who's listening they'll be in the top of the show notes.

Max 24:27 Absolutely. I will send you all of my, all of my bits and bobs. And then, I guess after after that comes to me like, diagnostic tools in terms of like physical things in like, you know everybody if you you know [have a] blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter and stethoscope. Right. But you can use...if you get a microscope and you have slides...like a decent student microscope, you can actually diagnose a fair number of things. You know, if you can, you can learn how to Gram stain so you can figure out, you know a lot about bacteria.

Margaret 25:08 What kind of stuff can you successfully diagnose yourself with this kind of thing.

Max 25:12 Like with a microscope, for instance?

Margaret 25:14 Yeah.

Margaret 25:16 You can diagnose like a yeast infection or a fungal infection. If you have a microscope and something called potassium hydroxide, you can like...Trichomoniasis is like an STD. You can absolutely see Tric, like swim on a microscope slide. Um, you can, you know, if you look at a slide and there's like loss of white blood cells, and then also like little 'cock-eyes' , sometimes you can diagnose certain kinds of STDs. And then yeah, with a microscope slide and some some pH paper, you can diagnose bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections and Trichomoniasis for sure. For sure.

Margaret 26:08 That's cool.

Max 26:09 And then, yeah, it's really cool actually. It's fantastic. And it's old school and, you know, people miss things. And sometimes things don't look like how they should but there's tons of information about that online

Margaret 26:22 There's a question and probably, you probably can't,but a friend of mine in med school saw his own chromosomes. And I assume that's more than a microscope.

Max 26:33 Yeah, no. But, you know, a student microscope is going to be kind of more like bigger, bigger cells, things swimming across, you know, little fungal things that are growing. That kind of stuff.

Margaret 26:46 Okay.

Max 26:48 And then if you can get access to urine dipsticks, so which you can actually buy, I think just, I mean, I even I think I looked them up on Amazon, which I shouldn't have. But I did, just to see how easy they were to get, because there are in medical offices. They just have to be kept like in the little...they have to be kept in their little container that they're in because they have to be kept dark. But, those can be used to diagnose, you know, a urinary tract infection. And if there's sort of three things, or if there's little two major things going on on them, you know, if you see something like an increase in the white blood cells that are on the little strip, and you see something called leuk leukocyte, esterase, or leuk esterase, or nitrites on there, those things pretty much are indicative of of a UTI. So if someone has recurrent UTIs, they can actually like pee on a strip and be like, you know, this is this is legit, this just this isn't just me feeling like dehydrated or having coffee, too much coffee bladder or something like that. So it's kind of really useful. Also, if someone just has a ton of glucose on there, that you know, that's like a diabetes diagnosis. So that can be really useful. Having a glucometer is really useful, which tests their blood sugar levels because it can test to see if someone, you know if someone in somebody's community is diabetic, and they get too low or too high, or just in general, if you have someone that's not faring super hot, you can check their their blood glucose levels. The problem with glucometers is they're maddeningly proprietary. So you get them and like there's strips and there's the little finger stick things and they all go with the one has the ones and so it's really obnoxious because it's not like you can super easy cobble together a little glucometer setup.

Margaret 28:44 That's basically to rip off diabetic people.

Max 28:47 Oh, completely. It's just all...it's the dum dum dum dum, dum dum. You know, pregnancy tests. There's home HIV tests. Now we've got COVID test. Apparently, mine's coming from the government. I just finished and I just got it back a negative rapid covid just like two seconds before this. I was feeling kind of rundown. Yeah, I was feeling kind of rundown. So I was like, I should do this before I see my kiddo tomorrow. Yeah. And then now more and more, you can just order lab work for yourself. And I think it's really useful to know what you're going into before doing something like that. And all these things I'm talking about, you know, it should be for really big like, "I think I might have an STD," you know, or like, I think, you know, there's something, something isn't right with this very specific thing. But a lot of these sort of like LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics and things you can actually just go on and order your own tests. It's not cheap, but...

Margaret 29:52 I went and got a bunch from Let's Get Checked. And I'm a little bit squeamish around blood and it was like, "Oh, it's a finger prick and I can handle a finger prick." What they don't tell you is that it's a finger prick and then milk the blood out of your finger.

Max 30:05 Oh, I hate that, the word milking.

Margaret 30:08 Yeah, and I literally couldn't do it. I like, tried. And then I was like making someone help me. And then they were like getting really stressed out because I was kind of freaking out of them. And I couldn't do it. So I have like, a fair amount of expensive tests sitting and waiting for me to figure out how to, and then, you know, I like I talked to them, and they're like, "Oh, you just got to make sure you take a shower first, and that you're all warmed up so that you can like..." and I'm like, "I will not milk blood from my finger." So I have...my squeamishness prevents me from accessing certain amongst these tests.

Max 30:48 Well, some of them, you can order yourself and actually just bring to the lab. And they'll actually do a blood draw for you. So I learned that from...

Margaret 30:57 Okay, okay.

Max 30:58 Yeah. But they're not always, you know, I think the cost is always kind of an issue at the end of the day with some of these things.

Margaret 31:08 Yeah, I like the idea that someone in like, someone in your crew can have a microscope and at least tell you if you have Tric.

Max 31:15 Yeah, for sure. For sure. Especially if you know, the symptoms, and the and the test match up. Yeah, possibly all labs may be able to be ordered. But the thing is, I'm a big fan of like, not going looking for things unless there's an actual... I don't know, unless someone's having a problem in that they feel like it means that something has changed from their baseline to such a degree that it's causing them...like, things aren't going well.

Margaret 31:48 Yeah.

Max 31:48 You know? And if something I always tell people, if something's been there on your body for a long time, and it's unchanged, it's probably not anything. You know, like, it's probably just a... it's probably just your variation on a theme, or it's some kind of weird little cyst that's just always gonna be there. And if if it's causing sort of psychological distress, distress, or something, that's totally fine. Like, we can deal with it. But if it's not changing or getting worse or anything, it's probably nothing. That...nothing worrisome. It might be something but it's not going to be something worrisome.

Margaret 32:23 Yeah.

Max 32:24 Yeah.

Margaret 32:25 You mentioned also in diagnostic tools, like physical exams, like, what are the kinds of physical exams that we should be learning how to administer on ourselves and our friends?

Max 32:35 Well, I think just sort of knowing what your body is like, like know, from the get-go, like not to be totally "to our bodies, ourselves," but I think there's something really good about knowing what's there. You know, and, like self exams are good in terms of people think about, like, you know, chest self exams, testicular self exams, those kinds of things. I think if someone really wants to pursue be... you know, knowing about other people's bodies, you know, knowing knowing what, what to listen for, would you listen at someone's heart and things like that are important things, you know, to know. But I think just having kind of a sense of oneself and like, "Oh, something isn't right. Something really isn't right," is is kind of the most important part when it comes to physical exams.

Margaret 33:25 So just knowing your baseline basically, and knowing...

Max 33:27 Knowing your baseline and knowing when something wildly deviates from your baseline.

Margaret 33:33 Okay. Which of course always says the fun, like aging thing where you're like, Oh, that's a new spot.

Max 33:38 Oh, yeah, totally. Or that hurts so much.

Margaret 33:41 Oh, actually, okay here's a diagnostic question: What should I look for? What should 'one' look for when they look at moles? To try and figure out whether or not they're worrisome?

Max 33:52 Is it? Is it new? Is it irregular? Like very irregular. Not like a nice little round, nice, like continuous border, but does it look raggedy? Right? Is it, is it kind of just like a different pigmentation from your skin color? Or is it like, like really black? Or is it like, going to bleed easy? Is it kind of bumpity all over as opposed to kind of a continuous smooth thing? In my experience, things that are worrisome that turn out to be cancer, things look worrisome. They look really different. Usually. Not always, but usually, you know, you see something and you're like, "What is that?" That's not something that's been on your body before. And again, if it's something that's unchanged, really, mostly it's been there for a long time. It's not doing anything. It's just chillin with you.

Margaret 34:55 So, one of the things I want to ask about, that you talked about briefly before we before we started recording is, is access to medications. Obviously, medications are something that it's, you know, there's there's probably two types of answers to this question or almost two questions. And one of them would be like, "What can you gain access to in a situation where law is no longer a thing?" Versus "What can you gain access to within the existing society?" Like, how can you gain access to different things? And those are maybe related questions, and maybe not, but I'm curious.

Max 35:31 I think they're related. I think I need to preface it, okay. Something that's really important to me is anti-microbial stewardship. And it's, it's up there with, you know, all kinds of stewardship, right, like Earth stewardship, meaning like, we have access to drugs that treat microbes. We have overuse to them as a society, right. And now we have these things called multi-drug-resistant organisms. And the way we prevent more of that is not is by not taking medicine that we don't need. Okay. And by taking medicine, that makes sense for the organism. So that's my only little caveat that I'm putting out there.

Margaret 36:18 No, that's interesting. The way of phrasing it as like, part of stewardship makes a lot of sense. Like, so what's involved in...I mean, like, you know, I remember, was a kid, we'd all be like, "Oh, don't use antimicrobial soap, or you'll make everything worse," you know, and I don't know, that was us being like, proud about being dirty, or whether that was legitimate and, like, like, so what else is involved? I mean, there's also the like, you know, always complete your round of antibiotics, so that you like, actually destroy it versus like, you know, almost killing it having come back worse, but like, what are...

Max 36:53 That's kind of changed a little, they've actually shortend a lot of courses.

Margaret 36:55 Oh, interesting.

Max 36:56 Yeah. You know, it used to be these sort of like long drawn out courses. We just want to make sure that someone's using the right, right drug for the right critter, right. And that we're not just taking medicine because we don't feel good. Because, there's a lot of things that may make people not feel good, that doesn't even have anti whatever's towards it, like anti-microbials. Because it might not be bacterial it might be viral, there might not be anything to do for it. You know, like the vast majority of of those, those two, three weeks, sort of sinusitis, doom, "I'm so sick, and I'm never going to be a well person." That's all viral illnesses, you know, there's not anything we can really do for them. If it's multi-symptom, like that, like runny nose, and yucky eyes, and a cough, and chest, and I mean pre-COVID virus, right? Viruses present a lot similarly to each other. Right. And viral illnesses make us kind of have viral illnesses, which are usually multi-symptom. And a lot of viruses, we just kind of have to suck it up and do the soup and neti pot and be miserable for a while.

Margaret 38:15 Okay.

Max 38:16 But so that, you know, we can target anti-microbials like anti-biotics like specifically to certain to certain things, because we can diagnose them pretty specifically with certain tools, or, you know, we kind of really know that these symptoms always kind of equal "this" or whatever. But it's just something good to keep in mind going into things. I mean, everybody does dumb things. And everybody...sometimes I have definitely...many times I've written prescriptions for things that I wasn't 100% sure of, because I want to make someone well, and we don't have access to all the diagnostics and...

Margaret 38:56 Right. So it's just your best guess or whatever.

Max 38:59 Yeah. But, not everybody should be taking azithromycin if they feel bad, ya know? But so I think that's my only thing going into things. It's just, you know, we should be we should be conscientious of these things. Um, because we only, you know, we have the potential to create total havoc when it comes to critters, right. I mean, yeah. I guess I think about accessing medications or anything. So, where do you get medications in the world, right, if you don't have like a provider or prescriber? So, most medicines, if they're like a tablet form, do not readily expire. So most medication...

Margaret 39:50 I've heard the efficacy drops a little bit.

Max 39:53 Maybe, maybe a little, but it takes a lot for the efficacy to drop, drop, drop. I mean, I guess Have you opened up an old thing of meds and it just looked very, very strange? Maybe...but if it's still there, most of the time, most medications, they just don't have the money to keep studying them out and out and out and out and out expiration wise and they get to the point where they're like, "It's probably not expired..." Certain...like tetracycline, maybe it causes a dangerous situation. So, stay away from old tetracycline and Ranitidine.

Margaret 40:32 And that's an anti-biotic?

Max 40:34 Oh, yeah, so tetracycline is the antibiotic. And that, that could be dangerous if, if it's old, theoretically, but it's not prescribed, like all that anymore. And Ranitidine, which is like a stomach med that's been taken off the market, it's an antacid style medication, it has some cancer causing compounds that could have occurred, that most things like if they're a tablet, they don't expire. Like it's completely reasonable to hoard medication.

Margaret 41:05 Okay, is there a way to get the doctor to give you like, longer prescriptions? Like I've heard that like, sometimes people struggle to be like, I want my ADHD meds more, you know, and people are like, nervous to give larger best perscriptions or whatever.

Max 41:21 That's tricky because they're control...sometimes they're controlled. And I think with controlled meds, providers are super squeamish.

Margaret 41:28 Okay. Okay.

Max 41:29 Which sucks. But, some meds just keeping them you know, just if you have them in your house, and, you know, maybe you didn't take them, as long as it's not liquid medicine or emergency medicine. So, if it's like an epi pen, or insulin, you want those things to stay, obviously, like, you don't want them to be expired.

Margaret 41:52 Okay.

Max 41:53 But you know, but inhalers seem to be okay. And I always just say, if you have like old meds, antibiotics, et cetera, keep them. Someone may need them. Right? Do you have a relative that's passed from this mortal coil or whatever, and you know, you're cleaning out their space? Maybe there's something that they might have that someone needs?

Max 42:18 You know, I shouldn't I mean, this is like that...my pharmacist friend is going to roll over in her not grave, but like, but we're always told not to tell people this, but we're talking about, you know, access, if someone doesn't have access to medicine that they need, you know, how do we get them access to medication. So this is sort of talking about, like, you know, worst case scenario, but, and then I always think about, you know, if someone, if you got a prescription of something, say, and you took it, and it gave you a rash all over, and the doctor said, "Don't take it anymore, you're allergic to it," or you're like, "Oh, I threw up and I never took that, again," save it, because that's almost a full course of the medicine. It's probably the you know...which is fantastic. You know, if you if you were taking something for something like, like for HIV, and you were on anti-retrovirals, and you switched regimens, because you were cured... like wanted to take something new, save your old meds. So, because as long as you're not resistant to your old meds, your previous med regimen still works. And you could go back to it, and you could save yourself, like a couple months of heartache if something went down.

Margaret 42:18 Yeah.

Margaret 43:34 Okay. So theoretically. This is okay...Wait, no, I don't want to give terrible medical advice on this show. Nevermind.

Max 43:44 I'm not trying to either. That's, why I'm like..."ahhhh!"

Margaret 43:48 Because I'm like, well, how could someone get a backstock of you know, someone who's HIV positive and wants to have access to their medication, despite disruptions in supply chains, and whatever. I dunno people can figure that out themselves.

Max 43:59 You know, I think about this all the time, I think about this all the time, do you have a friend that would be willing to get meds prescribed for them? Even if they you know, do you have a friend with insurance that would be willing to, to say that they had X, Y and Z in the low stakes way? I mean, it starts to become high stakes if controlled substances are involved. Right? That's when things become dangerous for everyone involved. And you know, could be...

Max 44:02 And that would be stuff like painkillers, Ritalin. I forget the name of the larger...SSRIs.

Max 44:39 Not SSRIs.

Margaret 44:41 Oh really, okay.

Max 44:42 But benzodiazepines...

Margaret 44:45 Oh, that's what I was thinking of, benzos. I dont' take medication.

Max 44:48 Yeah, I think that you know, you have to you have to go and and, you know, get special scripts for and things. Those are the things that they...

Margaret 44:56 The stuff with street value, basically. The stuff that's fun to take.

Max 44:58 Exactly. Those are the things sprays thick eyebrows. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, and there's a lot of surveillance of, you know, but if if if you're someone who needs thyroid medication to live, you know, and you have someone, you know, if you have access to other ways of getting your same medication, you know, that's not a medicine that's necessarily going to raise eyebrows or some of the medications can be very expensive. Sometimes, you know, people can ask their providers to give them 90 day supplies of things. I...you know, I think we try to do that all the time. And I think a lot of people who do have chronic health conditions are very savvy about pre planning.

Margaret 45:47 Okay.

Max 45:47 When it comes to medications, otherwise, you can't go anywhere.

Margaret 45:50 Yeah. So so what else? How else does one access medications?

Max 45:56 I think I talked about partners like if you if you have a partner or a friend who has health insurance, and you don't. And then if you know, anyone who's traveling to countries with pharmacies that don't require prescriptions. So there's a you know, handfuls of countries where one can just go into a pharmacy and just purchase medication.

Margaret 46:15 And is this something that's like, like, what's the legality of taking like, let's not let's, let's pretend like we're not taking other controlled substances, let's talk thyroid pills or whatever, right? If I, if I go to a country where I can just get thyroid pills over the counter, I actually don't know whether you can get thyroid pills over the counter or whether they require Medicare? Is this a good example?

Max 46:34 It's a great example. Okay, let's talk about levothyroxine. Can you go in to a pharmacy in some countries and just buy it? Yes. Do you have someone in your life that needs it desperately? Maybe? Go and get it.

Margaret 46:46 What? What's the law about bringing it back into the country, something that requires a medication [perscription] in another country, and in this country?

Max 46:54 So I can't speak specifically to any law, but it's not something that I've ever heard of penalized.

Margaret 46:59 Okay.

Max 47:00 Because again, it's not, it does...There's not a control piece there.

Max 47:04 Okay. And again, we're not telling anyone to break any laws, and people should make their own decisions. And if it turns out that this stuff is illegal, that would also map to being morally wrong, because obviously, the laws of our society are just and worth valuing.

Margaret 47:04 Right.

Max 47:04 It's not a scam. It's not a, you know, I think if you set up like a capitalist, Super Buyers Club kind of concept thing where, you know, you're bringing levothyroxine back into the United States and selling it for I don't know, I would be like, you're pretty savvy, but you know, that I don't think it would be...I mean, otherwise, I think if you're just bringing back amounts, that makes sense for like, a person, a single person to use, I don't think there would be any surveillance of that at all.

Max 47:50 Especially when it comes to people's health.

Margaret 47:52 Yeah, totally.

Max 47:54 And you know, some countries, some countries have it more restrictive than we do like, right, like so in Ireland, like, if you go to Ireland bring birth control to Ireland. People can't get birth control, you know, i was staying in the, I was staying in the Netherlands with some friends years ago, and they had a kid who had pretty severe allergies, like, you know, and you can't buy over-the-counter Benadryl in in the Netherlands at least when I was visiting. So we would just always bring Benadryl to the Netherlands, especially children's Benadryl.

Margaret 48:29 Yeah. Yeah, that's funny. Cuz that's like, what I mean, people give that for anxiety when they don't want to give benzos you know, I don't know about Benadryl, specifically, but things in that catergory.

Max 48:45 Like hydroxyine and things. Yeah, for sure. It's just wild, though, what is and isn't sort of acceptable, over the counter and not over the counter and all that in, in different places that you visit and, and we should just, you know, be be trucking things around, because these aren't things that are they're not, they're not controlled medications. They're not, you know, medications that are necessarily going to get someone in trouble,

Margaret 48:48 Right. So what about um, it's funny because like, the classic example in a prepper mindset is that preppers are very concerned about the health of their fish. And they're very concerned about their fish getting diseases. And since they're so worried about their fish, they stockpile fish anti-biotics for their fish. And with the possible use, if absolutely worse, came to worse of taking them as humans, because theoretically like veterinary medicine isn't as controlled. But obviously this then gets into like current horse medicine craze with ivermectin,

Max 49:10 Oh, ivermectin.

Margaret 49:16 Or even ketamine. I mean, you know, we're talking about like, the Right takes ivermectin and the Left takes ketamine where everyone wants horse drugs. Like, how useful is like, how useful are things like fish antibiotics, or even like other veterinary medicines for cross species application in an apocalypse? And that's not why you bought them. It just happens to be the apocalypse and you happen to have them?

Max 50:21 Well, I mean, so ivermectin has its uses, right? Like we use it in people to treat like, I don't know, like, Strongyloidiasis. Like it's an anti parasitic, so it has its uses. I think it's sometimes about the preparation of things. Like is something, if you're giving it to your fish? Like, what how would you make it? I think it would be about figuring out how to make it so that it was in people. People form. In terms of dosage.

Margaret 50:57 Right.

Max 50:58 Right, and figuring out that kind of thing. And I think it depends on the antibiotic.

Margaret 51:03 Okay.

Max 51:04 Yeah.

Margaret 51:04 So some of them will actually only be applicable to fish, whereas some of them might actually be applicable across species?

Max 51:10 I think most of them should be applicable cross species, if it's something that is a drug that both species use.

Margaret 51:18 Okay.

Max 51:19 Like, so if I don't know what fish antibiotics are available? I wish I did. Because it I could say, "Oh, this, this amoxicillin could absolutely be used for fish and people. You know, I mean, I think it's more just about like, how do you figure out... because, you know, it's probably with the fish, it's probably like some kind of, like, drops that you put in the water? Or? Because, it can't imagine how you would give your fish their antibiotics.

Margaret 51:44 I'm a bad prepper I should know this stuff. But I don't actually know a ton about bunkers, or fish antibiotics, or buying gold.

Margaret 51:47 Is it flakes? Is it in flakes? Yeah.

Max 51:54 But I mean, I think yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, we're going to have to find ways to access these things. You know, I think the big deal is going to be like, how are we going to eventually manufacture things that we... because we are going to need antibiotics, we are going to need anti-parasitics, and all these sorts of things.

Margaret 52:15 Well, my general mindset around that, you know, people have asked me this a long time, people might ask it more about like, "How in an anarchist society, would you X, Y and Z," right? Like people will be like, well, "I need..." I'm just gonna use thyroid medication forever as my example just because like years ago, like 10 years ago, a friend of mine asked me this question directly, you know, and they were like, "Well, I need a thyroid pill every day. Or I'll die? How would an anarchist society make it?" And my answer has always been, or I don't know, however, we do it now, right? Because like, people and physical infrastructure will likely still exist in various ways through various types of crises. And the things that are more disrupted are the, the mechanisms of control and the organizational mechanisms that, you know, distribute these things, or even pay the people to make them, right, that kind of stuff could be disrupted. But by and large, you're still going to have people who know how to make antibiotics, and you're still gonna have, you know, the...the supply chain might get disrupted, which is a problem, right? But then even then, it's like, you know, well, there's people who know how to grow grain in the West and Midwest. And there's people who know how to load it onto trains, there's people who know how to drive those trains to the coasts to feed people, and we probably won't lose that. But we might lose the system that tells everyone to do those things. And I don't know whether it's a cheap out, but...

Max 53:40 it's obviously like anarchists and BioPharm. Like, it's not like we're like in this universe, like where it's just, you know...there's all kinds of folks. I just sort of think about it, like, in terms of times of times have like interim times times of like crisis. How do we make sure that people have access to things? Which I think were gonna have to work on.

Margaret 54:02 Yeah, no, that makes sense. Because, it's like, there is a difference between talking about disaster and talking about like an anarchist society or whatever.

Max 54:09 Yeah.

Margaret 54:10 Okay. So one of the things that you mentioned, kind of related to this, but in an actual like, apocalypse scenario, right every...I'm no longer being euphemistic. Although, of course, I was never been euphemistic. But, I'll be euphemistic if i includes zombies in this in this disaster, but whenever you watch a zombie movie, they like raid the pharmacy, right?

Max 54:29 Which is such a good idea.

Margaret 54:31 Yeah. So what would you raid like if you're in the apocalypse and like you are trying to set up your I guess, like clinic or you're trying to take care of people, while there's like nuclear fallout and zombies and, I don't know, roving militias, but different than the current roving militias, what are you looking for?

Max 54:52 When a...you know in an apocalypse situation? I think about this so much I've had so many fun conversations with my peers. It's actually wonderful to work in an infectious diseases practice and ask everybody what they would bring, because it was one of the biggest, like conversations, like arguments that came up about anti-microbials, antibiotics that was just amazing. I don't think I would be thinking in terms of setting up a clinic, I think it would be very much in terms of like, "What can't I get?" and I would try to get broad spectrum antibiotics. So if I had to name them, I would get doxycycline, and levofloxacin, and or ciprofloxacin, and or a medication called amoxicillin. amoxicillin, amoxicillin clavulanate, because I can't talk today, I would get albuterol. And mostly, that's for selfish reasons, because I'm a little asthmatic. And also, because asthma. I would try to get prednisone, epinephrine, like epi pens, and some...anything for like pain and fever. Those would be like, really, really high up there on my list. But I would, if I had to have pick a single antibiotic, I would choose doxycycline, all the way, which is part of my big arguments with all my coworkers. But you know, everybody has their things.

Margaret 56:26 They're not big doxy, they're not big doxy-fans?

Max 56:29 All of them. Everyone is. They would all have it on their list, but everybody had it on different sections of their list.

Margaret 56:36 Yeah, it was an interesting conversation. And then I think if, if things were a little more mellow, and had a little more time in there, I would start to grab stuff that was like, sort of more meaningful for just long term existence. Right? And I think about this in terms of my, my friends and my people and stuff, but um, you know, like queer folks and, and, and PAW's [Post Acute Withdrawl] folks and stuff, but, so I think, alright, I would, you know, maybe grab...let me see, do I have my list up even?

Margaret 56:36 Okay.

Margaret 57:13 In your bug-out bag is the like...you keep a laminated, like if you hit the store, this is what you get list.

Max 57:23 Yeah, exactly...if you have 10 more minutes in the store you know...

Margaret 57:27 If you brought the large bag put in....

Max 57:30 So like insulin, you know, requires refrigeration. But if you could get any kind of grab 70/30 cause you can keep the largest number of people, probably. I would grab testosterone and estradiol. Probably morphine, because it's really useful in a lot of different situations, and in cardiac situations. And then if I had to choose like two HIV meds, I would choose Biktarvy and Prezista, or probably Biktarvy and Prezcobix, cause that combination of medicine covers for a huge number of resistant HIV strains. And also, it's just, I would just have it and be like, "Here, let's keep people around for longer."

Margaret 58:16 Yeah.

Max 58:17 I don't know. Those are sort of, that's sort of my short list. I...honestly, if I was if I was raiding, a pharmacy, and...I would just grab everything that I could get my hand on. Seriously, because it all would come in handy at some point, you know, especially if it was antibiotic.

Margaret 58:36 Yeah.

Max 58:37 Or like something for giardiasis , that would also be something I would probably get on there.

Margaret 58:42 I had giardia once, it was not my favorite thing that's ever happened to me.

Max 58:45 It's not the...it's...I had it too. It's not fun.

Margaret 58:48 Yeah. Which is why I'm such a big like filter water person. Because I definitely got it from unfiltered water at a big gathering once.

Max 58:56 I got it from swimming in, from swimming in the river by my old house.

Margaret 59:02 See, that's better because that's like a reasonable thing to do. Whereas, I should have known better, you know?

Max 59:07 It wasn't...it was not that reasonable. Believe me it's a filthy river.

Margaret 59:11 I'm Sorry.

Max 59:13 It's okay, it was a blast, but i was like "Ooooh,"

Margaret 59:18 No pun intended?

Max 59:20 Yeah, that's true, too.

Margaret 59:24 Okay, but what...it seems like okay, you raid the pharmacy, it would just set up shop in the pharmacy. Just get like, you know, all your friends with rifles, defend the pharmacy and become a pharmacist.

Max 59:35 That's true. I would be a terrible pharmacist. I have no precision in anything I do.

Margaret 59:41 Yeah, okay.

Max 59:42 I would bring in my pharmacist friends.

Margaret 59:45 Okay. So you'd be the doctor at the pharmacy?

Max 59:48 No, I don't know what I would do. If I didn't...I don't know, healthcare is like it's a job. But I like doing it also. I don't know, I'm sort of thinking about your friend who, who we're talking to, in the interview about working during COVID....

Margaret 1:00:11 Are you having feels about the working during COVID?

Max 1:00:15 Big time. It's been a wild thing. Everyone's sad.

Margaret 1:00:22 Yeah,

Max 1:00:23 Yeah. But no, it's just more just sort of like, would I do health care if it wasn't my job? And I think I would, but I think I would do it in a totally different capacity.

Margaret 1:00:37 How would you do differently if in a, in an anti-work environment where you didn't have to?

Max 1:00:43 I would walk in the woods with people and talk about their health in a totally different way.

Margaret 1:00:48 Yeah.

Max 1:00:49 Yeah. You know, and, or visit them in their homes. And I would have a ton of time. And I would like get to know what they were doing in their lives in a way that I can't in like tiny little weird rooms, with a limited amount of time and that kind of thing.

Margaret 1:01:12 I even just think about one time someone was doing some alternative healing with me, actually helped. I used have a chronic injury in my chest. And it's, it certainly wasn't the thing that cured it, but it helped. But as they're doing this thing, they're like, playing soft ambient music and like, you know, like, talking softly to me, and like, the lights are dim, and it's a very calm environment. And I'm like, "Why can't the dentist be this way?" You know? Like, why do you gotta go to the dentist, and it's not like, I don't know, like, someone's rubbing your feet and like telling you, everything's gonna be fine. You know?

Max 1:01:55 I can't go to the dentist until...unless I'm like, high out of my mind on some kind of benzodiazepine. Like I can't, I have to literally kind of create like a, like a non remembering experience every time I go to the dentist. So like, I go to the dentist, and I'm like, "Do whatever you want." And then three years later, I go back and have the same experience.

Margaret 1:02:24 Yeah.

Max 1:02:25 Which is probably a self fulfilling prophecy of dentistry.

Margaret 1:02:28 Yeah.

Max 1:02:29 Yeah, but then it's always like a tooth removal.

Margaret 1:02:32 With what you're talking about, about, you know, all the medical care providers being so tired. And obviously, this thing that I'm talking about doesn't solve like, COVID, right? But what you're talking about about wanting to help people become...gain expertise and control over their own bodies, it seems like that would help, you know, because it's like, like with the bike repair example, right? Like, I don't know, when I wrote a bike all the time, like I could, I could swap out the handlebars, I could tighten the brakes, I could patch a tire. Or I could patch a tube. But, I couldn't. But, I couldn't align the spokes. I could have learned to align the spokes, but like I, I didn't, you know, and I certainly wasn't building bikes. And every time I look at the derailleur, my head would break. And like, and so there's, there's always going to be a role for bike shops, even if everyone's good at bikes. And...

Max 1:03:31 Right.

Margaret 1:03:32 And so having, you know, crews of people who are specialized in allopathy, as the thing they do, the thing that they're most interested in, will always make sense. But like, just having more people able to do more of it on our own seems like it really just helps everyone. It doesn't help the people who want to make a ton of money off of things, or have a ton of control over how people live and what they do, you know.

Max 1:04:01 Yeah, I think that's totally real. I think it will also alleviate things on patients. I think that when people know themselves and can come to their provider, with a sense of what's going on with their bodies and navigate the system in a way that feels a little bit more, I hate to be corny, but like empowered. Like, I think that's super legitimate. I think that one of the ways that healthcare just screws people over constantly, is that no one knows how to deal with it. They don't know what to ask for. They just they are in a little room and all of a sudden someone comes in tells them a bunch of stuff they're supposed to do gives them some papers and shews them out.

Margaret 1:04:42 Yeah.

Max 1:04:43 And it's there's nothing in there that that creates a relationship. There's nothing in there that creates...I don't know. I don't know. I think that people being in charge of their own bodies is is awesome.

Margaret 1:05:00 Yeah, and it's, it's something that like, I had this realization about school, as well as like doctors or whatever. Like, at some point, especially with like higher education, if you go to college, it doesn't make any sense to me that the teachers like, are in charge of you. Because they're, they're literally people that you're hiring to teach you. Like, you're giving them money, and they're teaching you and that's cool. That's great. But they, they act like, "Oh, well, if you miss class, then you're in trouble." It's like, what trouble? Like, why? Why would this institution have any leverage over you?And

Margaret 1:05:39 And that's kind of how I feel about the medical world is that like, it always helps me, and I'm actually almost lucky in that I've been, well, now I have regular insurance, but I was sort of underinsured for most of my adult life. And so I relied heavily on public health and clinics. And I actually found that people on public health they are way more tired, but they're also working there because they like care. And so they're like frazzled and annoyed, but they also like, fundamentally care more often, I also am more likely to end up at like LGBTQ clinics and things like that. And that also helps me. But it...the main thing that helps me is that I kind of remember I'm like, in there, and I'm like, the doctor is not in charge of me. Like, either I'm paying or the state is paying or whatever for service. It's like, it's like going to the bike repair shop, you know, like, you're like, if I go into the bike repair shop, and they just yell at me about how I'm riding my bike. I'm like, I mean, you could tell me that if I ride this bike this way, it's gonna get destroyed. And that makes sense. But you can't tell me I can't ride my bike that way. Like, I don't know.

Max 1:05:39 Always true

Max 1:06:46 Yeah. But like going on that metaphor, right, like, same thing, like, how many times have people gone to the bike shop and been treated shitty, and then left out feeling like, super demoralized? And like, they can't ride their bike?

Margaret 1:07:02 Yeah, totally.

Max 1:07:03 And Like I think about that too, like, there's so much of that. I don't know, it's that it's that it's the realm of expertise. And like, you know, it's like, once, once someone is like, in this certain space, they get to have all the power and authority. And I always tell people, like, if you're the doctor, and you don't like what's going on, just leave.

Margaret 1:07:25 Yeah.

Max 1:07:26 Just leave, like, unless you like, are in a bad way and are really, really, really sick. Like, if you're there to get get access to things or something and you're not being treated well just get out of there if things are not going well.

Margaret 1:07:41 Yeah.

Max 1:07:42 Because that's going to end up being a squirrely relationship. And there's some really bad doctors, there's some really bad nurse practitioners, there's some really bad everybody, but like, there's, you know, there's people that are unkind and not not good, and are just going to tell you what they think, is the matter with you before they've even met you.

Margaret 1:08:01 Yeah, and, and, just like this, like sense of that, people thinking that they have power over you, because we have these institutions that sort of claim it, but it's like, you're, you're in charge of yourself. Like, I mean, there's, there's institutions that exist to try and stop you from being in charge of yourself, you know, like, there's a certain things that we could do that would then have other people throw us in prison or whatever, right? But like, that doesn't mean we're not in charge of ourselves. It just...Well, it does, but, you know, on this, like pure theoretical level, we can still choose how we act even if there's consequences. But, but at the end of the day, it's like, if you're going to the doctor, I don't know, you're, again, not always in all situations and all kinds of things, but it's like, I don't know, I I get really annoyed whenever I go to doctors, and they don't treat me like that. That I'm like, fortunately, I guess also, since I'm usually going as public clinics are kind of trying to get me out. So they're not like really trying to force me to do one thing or another, I don't know.

Max 1:09:02 My hope would be that if someone had a health care provider they would guide the ship, and their health care provider, who had access to the resources, and and the access to the you know, things like being able to do the prescribing, and the ordering of the diagnostics, and the access to the expertise in the sense of, of time and, and education, and things would be like, "Alright, you guide the ship. And I'll tell you where the icebergs are," kind of concept.

Margaret 1:09:36 Yeah.

Max 1:09:36 You know, like that would be you know, and if you want to hit one just freakin tell me.

Margaret 1:09:42 Yeah, or what port you want to go to.

Max 1:09:44 Yeah, what port you want to go to. Or, or who else you want to hire onto your ship, whatever. I mean, we but but but that it would be a relationship that would be very much completely patient guided And, and that the patient would be the person who has all the say, even if it's something that, like me as a provider I don't necessarily agree with.

Margaret 1:10:11 Yeah.

Max 1:10:11 You know?

Margaret 1:10:13 Well, I like to sort of tie it back into preparedness and all of that. Mostly just my favorite image of the whole conversation as the image, we're talking about what you would do, if you were a medical care provider without the existing messed up system that you have to interface with, with, like, going on walks in the woods with people and talking about them with like, what's wrong and how they're feeling. And, you know, that's like, the kind of almost optimism I don't see about like, I mean, obviously collapse is largely bad and bad stuff happens and disasters are really rough, you know. But I, on some level, like that's like maybe something I kind of look forward to, is the sense of like, when your medical care provider comes over to your house, and, you know, and like, and our ability to reimagine structures. It's like the one optimism. I'm trying to end on this, like, positive note.

Margaret 1:11:10 Yeah, it's cool.

Max 1:11:10 Totally, I think of it the I saw this David Attenborough thing, where they're like in Chernobyl, they like visited Chernobyl recently. And it just is the most beautiful thing, because it's just trees growing out of.... like, it's the city just with a forest in it. It's just it's a, it's a forested, abandoned space, right?

Max 1:11:13 And all these amazing buildings, and then there's so many different animals that they haven't seen, like, there's just like wild horses and wolves moving through it. And I don't know, that sort of helps me when I think about collapse in it helps me to think about it in a positive way.

Margaret 1:11:55 Yeah.

Max 1:11:55 I'm just like, "Oh, yeah. The wild horses wandering through the school buildings in Chernobyl."

Margaret 1:12:00 Yeah. Well, do you have any, like, kind of last thoughts about community or individual preparedness and accessing allopathy, or any of the stuff that we've been talking about?

Max 1:12:13 I think that there's a lot more like rad health care providers out there. And you probably know, some of them, I don't, I tend to be kind of cut off from people. But if you know, I think talk to people, you know, who are in health care about the access to resources they have, because I think sometimes people in health care don't even realize, like what we have, that people are outside of health care half, that we can just plug people into. And, you know, educate people about so that we can everybody can be a healthcare provider.

Margaret 1:12:49 Yeah.

Max 1:12:50 Because I think it's totally possible. Like, I would way rather that than doctors.

Margaret 1:12:59 I mean, I like it, because it's work that's been done in herbalism, and other like naturopathic fields for very long time. And, and I'm fully in favor of that. But I'm also just really excited to see sort of allopathy like, jumping on board with that also, you know, like, spreading that information and letting it become more of a somewhere between like a some, like, synthesis between like folk practice and like scientific practice, you know? I don't know.

Max 1:13:31 Well, my sort of hope is that eventually, it doesn't have to be this weird thing where we have, you know, allopathic medicine that refers to other kinds of medicine as like complementary and all this. It's so offensive to me, it's like what we're going to eventually come to some holopathic medical model, which will be really, really amazing.

Margaret 1:13:50 That would rule.

Max 1:13:52 Yeah.

Margaret 1:13:53 All right. Well, is there anything that you'd like to shout out? Either something that you do or something that people who are listening that you hope that they learn about or get involved in?

Max 1:14:02 No, I just all the harm reduction people out there that are still doing awesome drug work, I really appreciate them. And I think it's been really hard for people during COVID.

Margaret 1:14:13 Yeah.

Max 1:14:14 Anybody who's doing health care work or taking care of people, just, you're doing good, good work. That's all.

Margaret 1:14:27 Thanks.

Max 1:14:29 Thank you.

Margaret 1:14:34 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or enjoy this show in general, please consider telling people about it. The primary way that people hear about the show is through word of mouth or through word of internet mouth. And if you can feed the algorithms that shouldn't run the world that would do everyone a service. So, if you like, and comment, and subscribe, and don't think comment is actually one of your options, I'm just used to hearing what people say on YouTube. But, if you rate and review and you do all of the various things, and you post about it to social media, all that's shit's so good unfortunately. Unfortunately, it does a lot of things, but make machines tell other people this is content that they might enjoy. But, it is content that they might enjoy. I hope. You can also support this show a little bit more directly by supporting on Patreon, our publisher, which is Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. I used to have a personal Patreon that supported the show. But, we've transitioned that over to Strangers In A Tangled Wilderness. And, if you are one of our supporters, thank you so much for making that transition with us. There's going to be so much good content that's going to be coming out this year, with your help, and basically it's no longer about me. And, that's really exciting. Honestly, it's a bit of a relief. And so you can support us there, and you get access to content that will go to you before it goes to everyone else. And then if you back us at $10 a month, you'll get a zine mailed to you every month anywhere in the world. And, if you support us at $20 or more, we'll say your name right now. So in particular, I would like to thank Nicole and David and Dana Chelsea, Staro, Jennifer, Eleanor, Natalie Kirk, Hugh, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog. Thank you so much. And I will talk at you, and by you I mean this microphone in a closet. Soon. Be well.

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Episode Notes

Episode summary

Guest info and links . The guest Jason Sauer can be found on twitter @jasonrsauer. He is involved with another podcast, Future Cities, that you can find wherever you listen to podcasts.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support this show on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript Margaret Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or their pronouns. And this week I'm talking to Jason about what is involved in building resilient cities, like not just resilient homesteads or whatever, but like what—what are the actual sort of engineering steps that cities can and usually aren't taking to mitigate the effects of climate change? And we talk a lot more about other things besides and his take on how climate change is going and what we might do about it or not do about it. And I think you'll get a lot out of it. I really enjoyed this conversation. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Hi, could you introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then a little bit of your background in what we're going to be talking about today? Jason Sure, so my name is Jason Sauer, pronouns he/him, although I'm not picky, and I—my background is in—it's like, somewhere between climate change and, like, adaptation research is how I would describe it. So most of my work is focused on adapting cities to extreme weather events, either in the present day context, or looking at the future of the climate for the region. And figuring out how—what we need to change and how best to change it in order to keep places livable. Margaret And I'm so excited to ask you about all that stuff. Because so much of what people talk about preparedness or even, like, mitigation kind of forgets this level of scale. Either people talk about, like, saving the world, like stopping climate change, which I do in the past. Or people talk about, like, how to, you know, either you have your, like, bunker mentality people who are like, oh I'm just gonna hold up the food, or you have even the people who are like, you know, well, me and my 10 friends on the farm are going to somehow ride it all out. And I think that there isn't enough that talks about this level that you're talking about on this sort of, like, community or city-wide level. And so, I guess, I think my main question is like, what do you resilient cities look like? How do we build resilient cities? Jason So, I mean, good question. It's somewhat like a temporal issue, like thinking about, are we looking for resilient cities for now, given the present conditions, which we're still not great at managing? Are we looking at it for like 20 years in the future? Are we looking at it, you know, in the more deep, uncertain—or deeply uncertain—like, you know, by 2080 2100, whatever, or even beyond, although I've never really heard anyone seriously engage anything sort of growth beyond like 2080. I don't know why that's the limit, but that is the limit. So I actually had to pull up the academic definition of resilience. That's probably that I think it's probably the most accurate version of what myself and my colleagues are kind of looking at. And since this is behind a paywall anyway, I figured it might be kind of interesting to even bring up what the academic definition is, in this context. And so this comes from a paper by one of my colleagues here at Arizona State University where I'm a PhD candidate, hopefully soon a doctor but we'll see. So one of my colleagues Sarah Miro and two other authors, Joshua Newell and Melissa Stoltz, wrote this paper on defining urban resilience in particular. So resilience in the city in urban context. And so, the specific definition they use is, like, urban resilience refers to the ability of an urban system and all its constituents socio-ecological and socio-technical networks across temporal and spatial scales to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity. There's a lot of, I don't know, generations of resilience thinking that have kind of impact into that sort of definition. But it's kind of just looking at making cities—or making it so that the people in cities and the systems in cities, once impacted by like an extreme weather event or from climate change, can respond appropriately in terms of, like, the type of response and then also, like, the amount of time it takes for that response to sort of happen. And then also to allow for sort of this concept of, like, transformative change of, like, you can build a city that is relatively resilient now, but it's not necessarily going to be resilient in the future. So you need to, when you're building these systems, allow for the possibility of the thinking to change or for climate change, you know, the effects to become more fully realized and be like, okay, so we did not plan for the sort of contingency, we need to be able to adapt to that, basically. And so every city, it looks different, you know. So I live here in Phoenix, Arizona. Most of my research isn't focused here but, I mean, this is a desert city. And we are kind of juggling the dual problems of extreme heat in the summer and, of course, like major water limitations, which are increasingly becoming a problem. And so resilience here is largely focused on basically counteracting, like, the, the extreme heats that we're facing. I mean, it gets up to like 120 degrees a couple days, a year, sometimes, and what does it—actually, I can give some quick stats on that. Margaret Yeah. Jason I think we are currently over 100 days a year where we have have a maximum temperature of above 100 degrees, and then by, like, 2050, 2060, something like that, it's gonna be 180 days a year of over 100 degrees. Which is like, I mean, we're already at 100 now, so I guess it's not like that on the thinkable. But, you know, it's really tough to imagine, like, what that's going to be like. And then of course, like, you know, average temperature is going to rise, but then also potentially the extreme temperatures are going to rise. So the city is really concerned about keeping this place viable in many different respects, given our current extreme heat, but then also the projections of extreme future heat. And so, like, you know, for example, I think the city of Phoenix is planning on increasing its tree canopy cover, you know, to like, provide increased shade, particularly in like critical areas, by which I mean, like, public transportation network—so like, you know, there's not a whole lot of structures for shade out here. And so, you know, like, a job of someone like me working in resilience would be, like, okay, so you want to increase shade, like, here's where you need to do it. And that's along like public transportation networks, things like that, where people are relatively exposed to, like, this extreme heat and sunlight during the worst months. And you can either do that through like built structures, or you can do it through tree shade. And if the city of Phoenix wants to pursue tree shade, then they also need to balance that with their, like, water needs. So more trees means more water. And so then you start getting into this discussion about, like, well, which trees provide the most shade and the least amount of water? You know, this is the sort of, like, nuanced discussion that the city and people in the academy are kind of having about this sort of issue. Margaret This is kind of an aside, but if you read The Water Knife, this novel about Phoenix? Jason It's on my shelf. Yeah, the author, what is it, Paolo Bacigalupi, I think? Margaret I don't know how to pronounce his last name, unfortunately. Yeah. So I— what was his previous one? He had this one that was like— The Wind Up Girl. Jason Yes. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, that was a dodge of saying no, I haven't read it. It's on my shelf. I haven't actually looked at it. Margaret Okay, well, there's a book in it that it references all the time. It's about Phoenix becoming unlivable due to heat. And I mean, it's also about like assassins and like water mafias and stuff, right? But it's, it's about a society collapsing because of lack of water. And the people who go around and basically, like, enforce water law and things like that. But there's a book in it that everyone references called Cadillac Desert. Jason Yes, yeah. Okay. Margaret So I don't know anything about this book. But all of the characters in this other book are obsessed with this book, Cadillac Desert, basically being like, this is the writing on the wall. This is how we all should have known that Phoenix needs to be abandoned. Jason Yeah. Margaret But your job is to make sure that people don't have to abandon Phoenix. Well, I'm—yeah, I mean, I have I have more complicated feelings on that, you know, like, there's a term in like resilience and resiliency like adjacent fields called "managed retreats." And that's like also just an accepted term in a lot of, like, disaster management and so forth. Like, I think it's mostly surrounding. I mean, I think, I don't remember exactly where the origins are. But I used to see it mostly applied to like flooding from, like, rivers that are getting, like, extremely flooded because of weird precipitation, and because of processes of development and urbanization or whatever. But you just have, like, these homes that are too close to the rivers that are like behaving pretty erratically or flooding more often than the city, you know, wants to provide aid for. And so they're just like, we got to move these people back away from the river. But I mean, it's also something that's happening in coastal areas like Miami, where you have people trying to move a little farther back onto higher elevation. But in a place like Phoenix where you just, it's hot everywhere, you know. Like, there's parts of the city that are hotter than others, and we have some controls over it. But yeah, I mean, it's tough to really figure out what the long-term plan is here. And water being, you know, correctly identified in those books as being such a major limiting factor here. I mean, what are we—what's the long-term plan? Like, I've read strategies that include canal systems from like the Mississippi, you know. Like this—which would be a scale of engineering and water delivery, that would just be, you know, enormous. We already get water from the southern Colorado River, which we shouldn't be getting water from, in terms of its natural flow. But, you know, we're doing that anyway. Right. Jason Yeah. So I guess, short-term I'm certainly focused on that. But, you know, I'm sort of agnostic as to whether or not it's going to keep people here or keep things viable. But it's just like, well, what are the problems that we have? What can we do about, you know, this situation, given our current limitations and so forth, and trying to square the circle, basically. Margaret My own, um, before I lived—I moved to a house in the mountains. But before that, I was living in a cabin in the woods. And one of the main reasons that we all moved off of the property that we were living on is that we are next to this creek. And it was 100-year floodplain. And it became a five times a year floodplain. We'd have engineers come out and they'd be like, well, it's not supposed to do this. And then we'd be like, what do we do? And they're like, well, it's just gonna get worse. Climate change is just going to make it worse. And, basically, I mean, I had one of the only houses that was physically safe from it up on the up on the hill but then, like, you know, my driveway, and, you know, my access in and out would be waist-deep and water sometimes, and all kinds of stuff coming down the creek that turns into this massive river several times a year. That's not supposed to. So I the managed retreat, that's what, you know, 10 of us just did so. Yeah, I mean, it can happen at the individual scale, it can happen at like the city planning scale, you know, there's there's a bunch of different ways. "Coerced retreat," you know, maybe another description. I don't know that that exists in like the literature but, you know, like, there's good argumentation for moving because it's physically becoming too difficult to live in this area. Yeah, I mean, to be clear, I'm not from Phoenix, I'm originally from, like, the—I'm from a suburb of Kansas City, Johnson County, which is like a, you know, wealthy, middle class neighborhood. So I'm, you know, not even from this area, I came here for graduate school. And I mostly came here for graduate school because there was an opportunity to work abroad in southern Chile. So, you know, my relationship with Phoenix is like, yeah, I don't know what you're gonna do here. I certainly wouldn't have chosen to be here under normal circumstances, I've come to like it, you know, in some ways, and can certainly, you know, empathize with my neighbors and so forth down here. But my stance on Phoenix is a little more complicated because just like, yeah, you've got some problems. And I don't know what to tell you about 120 degree weather and, like, the number of 100 degree days that are increasing, and you're—this place has already like an engineering, like, it's only possible because of extreme hydrological engineering. And now there's no additional water sources to pull from so, you know, what are you—what are you really trying to do here? Yeah, no, there's like a—there's like moral questions. I don't quite know how to untangle about like, you know, I'm not trying to judge anyone, but I don't think I would move to Phoenix. I don't think I would move to a city that probably certainly shouldn't exist at the scale that it's at currently. But I, you know, I understand that—but that's—then you get into this idea of, like, why everyone has different reasons to be different places. And it's really easy to be like, oh, you can't go do that. And you're like, well, I'm from here, or this is where the school is that I need to go access or, you know, there's a million reasons why someone may need to go somewhere, so. Yeah, I mean, the majority of people moving here is probably just because real estate in California got too expensive and cost of living in Phoenix which is also like a right to work state, you know, so there's cheap and unprotected labor here. You know, there's a lot of less noble reasons or less understandable reasons for, like, why the city is growing. And you look at how like water usage is, you know—currently, what water usage looks like here on the grounds. And there's definitely, you know, like, some movements toward like, get all the grass out of your lawn, like, plant species—it's called xeroscaping here, where you actually just like plant cacti and brittle bush and, you know, various species that are actually native to the region, or do really well with very little or no water input and can handle the heat. But, I mean, there's pools, and fountains, and golf courses, and all these other things where you're like, yeah, I mean, I don't know how long this is gonna go. And there's a lot of people who live here because they can golf, like, year round. So, you know, is that the worst thing to get rid of? No. So resiliency means get rid of the golf course. Well, you know, this—if I say yes to that I can guarantee I won't get a job here. Okay. Okay, so—but to move away from from heat stuff, some of your work has been around flooding, right, which obviously is an interest of mine, for some strange reason. It's absolutely part of why I picked a house on the top of the hill. Like, I bought a house on top of a mountain, because I'm like, no, I'm good. This is where—Maybe, I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of other problems like wind or something that I just—and there's like no soil here, it's all rock. There's a reason it was cheap, you know. But so, some of your work, let's see, you talk about how you use natural landscape features to make cities more resilient to flooding. I'm really interested in that, like, what does that look like? How do—like, what are the practical steps that communities and cities are taking to protect themselves from climate change? Jason Yeah. And I'm glad that you kind of divided that into two potential sources for that. There's, you know, like individual preparation, and then there's like city-wide, you know, or city-sponsored preparation. And so there's been a movement in the, like, engineering and urban planning spheres toward what's known as green infrastructure. And there's a bunch of different terms for it. But green infrastructure is basically, like, either designed, adapted, or incorporated natural landscape features, or natural-esque landscape features that can do many of the same jobs that more traditional, like, constructed infrastructure would do. Plus, it looks nice and provides habitat and potentially has all these other sort of, like, co-benefits to it that, you know—like, the LA canal is kind of like a good example of a traditional infrastructure sort of approach toward dealing with flooding issues. And so it's this huge canal where you can dump all this water, and it moves water through the system really quickly. But of course, it's like this giant chunk of concrete that's dry most of the year and, number one, it's not aesthetically that attractive. Number two, it's also like a major source of heat, you kind of get all this concrete in urban areas and it absorbs sunlight during the day, admits it at night, and contributes to, I mean, high heat during the day, but especially heats a major issue in cities across the country because of night temperatures in particular have increased. And it's basically because you have all this, you know, concrete infrastructure that's free radiating the heat, you know, for hours and hours and hours. So nights just become like more uncomfortable, and there's a lot of morbidity and mortality stuff associated with that. But then, like here in Phoenix, and there's a funny example, there's this area called Indian Bend Wash. And so something like Scottsdale to Tempe was having like major flooding issues, particularly during the monsoon season. Yeah, we get monsoons out here that come up from like the Sea of Cortez or the Gulf of Mexico. And so during the summer months, which is when we get the majority of our rainfall, it just comes in these like huge sheets and these, like, you know, burst events of extreme precipitation that totally overwhelm the ability of, like, soils to allow for infiltration and for the, like, drainage system at the city to deal with it. And so they were like, we got to put this water somewhere and it's kind of got to be a zone that can regularly flood or whatever. And the Scottsdale-ites, you know, who have some amount of wealth and therefore power in the city were just like, no, we're not going to build a canal like LA. It's really ugly and unattractive. And so designers came back with this idea called Indian Bend Wash which is this sort of multi-use, like, greenway, I think is how it be described. So it's like in parts it's like a golf course, but then in other parts it's just, like, straight up a park. And, like, place where you can take your dogs, do picnics or whatever. And then just, you know, for a couple of weeks out of the year, it's flooded. That's just how it is. And but at least it's like multi-use The community really likes it. And it's green, you know, which is nice in a sort of desert city. I'm holding any judgment on green versus not green out here, of course, but yeah. Margaret So it's gonna keep it watered when it's not monsoon season. Jason Yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly. And so that's kind of an example of more of an engineered or sort of created green infrastructure practice, but at least it provides aesthetic, you know, aspects to it that the sort of other infrastructure doesn't. I primarily work on like wetlands and other things that are—there's like a whole bunch of other structures designed to deal with flooding that also potentially increase, like, biodiversity in cities, that can remove pollutants through natural processes, provide habitats, and things like that. So the majority of my research is actually focused on wetlands in particular, and I was looking at this city in southern Chile that has just—they had an earthquake in 1960. It's the greatest magnitude earthquake ever recorded. The city is called Valdivia, if anyone wants to look it up. And so like portions of the city just sunk, like, several meters, I think like 10 meters in some portions. And so just—and, like, they're on the coast, they get like 98 inches of rain per year. They're at like the confluence of these like three rivers. So those things just filled up with water and became this wetland system. And so instead of just like paving over the wetlands and pretending like everything was going to be normal forever after that, once they rebuild, they just decided to keep the wetlands around in most cases. There's been some wetland loss, but not a whole lot. And it actually serves as a natural drainage system for the city. So a lot of just, like, the urban areas, and the suburban areas drain into these wetlands. And the wetlands have definitely been affected by it. And we're still studying, like, the effects of doing something like that to a wetland system. But they certainly provide a lot more biodiversity and kind of keep this sort of endangered habitat, a wetlands, alive in the city. So I've studied the utility of constructed and natural wetlands and modified wetlands toward increasing flood resilience and cities, basically. Margaret And it works. Jason Yeah, yeah. They're wetlands work incredibly well. I mean, probably in part because they're not engineered. So like, if you have a city that's, like, thinking about building a wetland or something like that, then they have a budget, and they—and the budget is going to require some, like, design constraints and stuff like that. But these like natural wetlands are just, you know, whatever size they were naturally. And they themselves, like, just don't really flood under even like 100-year return period storm event, which is just like a storm that's so large that you only get one of them, like, once every 100 years or something like that. And they work great. And the wetlands are like part of the urban identity as well. Like they support a lot of charismatic species, like swans and these like particular kinds of birds. Theoretically they support otters, but I've never seen an otter like that far into the city. Maybe they exist. I don't know. But, yeah, so they do all these things that like traditional infrastructure that we, you know, started doing since, like, the 1940s, just doesn't do well at all. Margaret I mean, it's funny because it's like, there's a move within scientific fictions—I have to think about everything point of view of fiction—but there's like a movement within science fiction right now to move towards, like, solar punk, and towards these ideas of—I guess, I would say that, like, in many ways, science fiction got everything backwards and wrong, right? It was imagined these, like, positive societies where we, like, control everything. Jason Yeah. Margaret But it sounds like from what you're saying, and from everything else I've, like, read across things, the secret is to instead, like, integrate the things that we make into the natural systems, rather than, like, go out and like recreate all of the systems ourselves. Jason Yeah. Margaret But then it does lead to the logical conclusion that the best way to be resilient against climate change is to not have already destroyed everything. Jason Yeah, and cities definitely struggle with that. Margaret Yeah. Because most have already destroyed everything. Jason Yeah, I mean, particularly with wetlands too. I—the estimate keeps changing, so forgive me, you know, I think it's like safe to say we've destroyed like 70% of wetlands in the US since, like, the mid-1800s. And those are industrial processes, those are agricultural processes, which are all, you know, ultimately, you know, issues of urbanization, and meeting urban needs and so forth—in a lot of cases, not necessarily all of them. But yeah, I mean, so like, you're telling like a city, hey, just have some wetlands, you know. Like, historically it's like, you mean the thing that they drained in order to, like, build the city in the first place? Like, that's? And it's just kind of silly being like, well, step one is don't do everything you've done for the past, like, 150 years and you're gonna be spending a lot of money reversing that, actually. Margaret Yeah. Jason Yeah, there's a concept in infrastructure called, like, safe to fail. And I don't want to, like, get too much into it, because I don't have the definition on hand for me, but it's basically the idea of, like, this sort of, like command to control concept of like infrastructure and, like, perfect knowledge and so forth, just doesn't work. It's not true in the present day, there's always, like, you know, freak storm events and things like that. But it's certainly not going to be true in the future where the climate is changing and models are so uncertain about it. So the best thing you can do is allow for a lot of flexibility with your design, and to figure out, you know, like, areas where, like, this sort of like quote/unquote failure, or like flooding in particular, like with Indian Bend Wash, is totally acceptable. Like society's just like, yeah, you can't use that area a couple of times a week, but like, no one's really being impacted by it in any sort of, like, major way. You're just, like, yeah, that's just, that's just how it goes. Margaret So is there, like, because this—this concept really excites me, right, because like a lot of my, you know, political understanding, a lot of my understanding philosophically and all these other ways, is based on this idea that, like, trying to have absolute control as a losing game, and probably one that we should just admit we're losing, and instead find ways to, like—I'm going to use words that have scientific meaningss that I'm not using correctly—more chaotically. Like, accept that all of this natural, organic, or chaotic processes are going to happen, and take those into account in our engineering, like, in how we build cities and things like that. For me, this also applies, like, socially. Like recognizing that we can never have a system of complete control of people, and instead—so it's not, like, let everyone go do whatever they want, therefore. But instead this, like, way of engineering, or structuring things, that takes that into account is, like, something that I'm very excited about. So I'm really excited about this the safe to fail concept, then. Jason Yeah, it's something that's definitely taking hold in engineering, and actually seems to be getting through to a lot of design people. So engineers—or at least in the world of academia—certainly get the idea of it. And you can get—you can convince cities also to adopt it, but it's sometimes an uphill struggle. And then also you just have, like, competing construction interests, like maybe there's been a design firm or something like that, that hasn't adopted it, but like gets the majority of contracts in a city or something like that, that they've already got a relationship with. So there's like some amount of inertia on that point. But it certainly has hold within academia and research, and my experience working with some cities has been, they're certainly open to it and thinking about it more. Because they're certainly paying a lot for disaster relief and disaster, like, repairs and so forth every year, and they're, frankly, you know, like desperate to lower that part of their budget. So, you know. Margaret Yeah. So besides planting trees for heat and increasing wetlands for flooding, what are other simple steps? "These five simple tricks to make your city immune to climate change!" Like, what else are people doing or thinking about to respond to crisis? Jason So like, I'm trying to think of how to answer this question. So there's—like, I could go into, like, other engineering structures and so forth that we're kind of using to do a lot of this sort of management, like, more locally and through like natural systems—like bioswales, I don't don't know if you've ever heard of it. Margaret So a swale is like a thing that moves water in a field, right? Jason Yeah. And so, like, a bioswale, like an urban area it's just, like, so you have water that's on the street or whatever, and then you just kind of like divert it to the side area, basically, that's usually like soil and some plants and maybe there's a tree in there too. And the soils and the plants and so forth filter the nutrients out of that storm water before it hits—by nutrients I mean pollutants too—I come from a background where everything is like a nutrient, not necessarily like a pollutants—but I mean, stuff like nitrogen— Margaret That's kind of awesome. Jason Yeah, I mean, yeah, I can maybe go into that in a second. But like, so you have all these things that are flowing off of yards and off streets. And if you try to treat that before it gets to the water system, or like the canals, or whatever that you're using to evacuate water from the city, that's a lot of stuff to have to filter out. And so, but if you build these things kind of around the city, these like bioswales, they do a lot of the filtering, like, on site. And so, you know, over time, they sequester a lot of like nitrogen, phosphorus, organic carbons, whatever, heavy metals too also can get filtered out of that. And then, you know, like, I don't know, I don't know what the repair system is like for that. But I mean, you just swap those soils out eventually, like, because bacteria and so forth can treat some of that locally. And plants can also, you know, use some of that locally, too. But then you just have like soils or something like that, that you're kind of like swapping out because maybe they're too heavy in metal support the plant life or something like that. But that ends up being like a cheaper and sort of, like, more innovative solution then, you know, send it all to a central processing plant, and then spend all this money like filtering out through chemical and mechanical processes. Yeah. And then also, you get some like green stuff in your neighborhood. In terms of, like, things that individuals are doing, a lot of it is just, like, swapping out—I mean, like, here in Phoenix, I talked about the sort of xeroscaping process by which people are replacing, like their grass lawns, you know, which they were used to in the, you know, like, northern Michigan or something like that, you know, wherever they move to escape the cold that was, you know, the reason they left in the first place, but they still want some of, like, the feel of where they lived, they'll plant grass or whatever. And then, you know, there are now—there's movements across the city, at least in the less extremely wealthy places to do this sort of xeroscaping process where you take out your lawns and replace it with, like, either like gravel or something like that and then plants, like, naturally come up through that, or I mean, just literally leave it as the normal dirt surface here—that promotes like, infiltration locally as well, dirt ends up being, you know, or at least the natural soil here—I should use proper terms—ends up, you know, allowing a lot of infiltration that would otherwise just like go to runoff or things like that, basically, are what people are kind of doing locally. And but, I mean, a lot of these issues, like flooding in particular, is—it's like a city-wide sort of issue. And a lot of it just has to be treated kind of in a centralized way because there's, they own most of the substances—I mean, you know, there's buildings and roofs and stuff like that, that cause runoff, and, you know, houses are on top of soil. And so, because they're on top of soil, they're blocking infiltration that would naturally happen in the region. So homes are contributors to flooding in cities, but, you know, there's not much you can do about that. Margaret Are there like ways to, like, encourage infiltration into the soil? Like, I'm imagining little like, little holes you dig, like, almost like that holes or something to, like, allow more percolation or something? Jason You know, I've never actually thought about, like, local retention, you know, like, if we just built divots in everyone's like front yard for, like, you know, like a small pond that's dry most of the year, I wonder how much that would actually do it. I don't think I've ever seen a study that's even considered that. That would be interesting as like a thought experiments. And I'm sure, you know, like a modeling experiment. Margaret Well, thank me in the acknowledgments when this study— Jason Yeah yeah. Green roofs are kind of another way that this stuff is being retained and dealt with locally. And that also has impacts on, like, the amount of heat that your home absorbs from the sun. And so that's, you know, if you own your house, or if you have like a tenants association with enough power to, like, pressure your building owner to install these sorts of things, those are certainly things that will benefit the flood risk in your city and also potentially deal with heat too. But the majority of places that are contributing to, like, extreme heat and flooding, it's like parking lots, roads, all this sort of like hard infrastructure that businesses and development practices and cities themselves have to kind of manage. So the pressure ends up being with them in a lot of ways. Margaret I mean, that makes sense. Like, that's like one of—I feel like the current sort of generation of, like, people maybe under 40 or so, like, one of the things we're railing against—I say as someone who's barely under 40—is this idea that we were told we could stop climate change by like changing our lightbulbs while, you know, while being forced into car culture and while watching the US military, like, pollute more than anyone and, you know. So it—I get excited about individuals—they're not even like solutions, right—but like individual approaches to like mitigate certain effects? Jason Yeah. Margaret But I think you're right that, like, the larger infrastructure is something that needs to be controlled in a way that actually is useful for mitigating climate change. Jason Yeah, I mean, I'm with you. I've also—we're probably same generation—so I, like, I just grew up with the whole idea and, like, the, like, the needs for, like, personal lifestyle change and so forth, in order to effect these sorts of, like, change. And of course, you know, like, I've been doing this for, you know, since I was like 17 or 18. And so I've got a lot of years into this sort of individual, like, behavioral change and, you know, emissions are up, like, what do you—what else am I supposed to do at this point, you know. I ride my bike most places but, like, there's got to be this sort of, like, systematic sort of change to it. And like, I say that but I'm also—so I'm also a vegan and so, like, my— Margaret Me too. Jason Oh, cool. My general thought with it is just like, I know it's not a systemic change, but like, the amount of suffering that I'm causing through my actions is less, you know, as a result of it. And ultimately that is important to me, at least for, like, living with myself, you know. Margaret Yeah, totally. Jason Like, maybe it's not having this sort of large structural change. But also, you know, theoretically I'm, you know, some extremely small decimal point of less meat consumption in the US. And that, you know, that's— Margaret Which affects water. It's not just an animal issue. Jason Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's many, many, many reasons to go vegan for—but I mean, it's the same thing with, like, carbon emissions and so forth too, where I still, even though I'm like, it's a systemic thing. I'm like, well, yes. But, I mean, if I get in my car and drive, that's carbon that's in the atmosphere. And it's going to be there, you know, as part of the collective problem to eventually have to deal with in the future. And so, like, I still feel like I got to do something, in spite of the fact that I don't—I in no way think that I'm solving the problem. Margaret No, that's such an interesting perspective towards it. Like, I think about it a lot of, like—like, I drive a giant pickup truck, and I defend it out of, well, I used to live in a cabin built myself, and, you know, I live really rurally. And like, I use my giant pickup truck for giant pickup truck stuff all the time, right? But I also get 14 miles to the gallon. And like, that doesn't feel good, right? And I mean, I would love to have an all-electric one. But you know, I also have, like, you know, don't love coal or all these other things, right? But it does, it seems like it's less about, like, beating up on people to, like, make individual changes as much as, like, maybe like everyone kind of looking at their own circumstances and saying, like, what can they pull off? Like, if you're in a good place where you can just mostly ride a bike, mostly ride a bike. If you're, like, in a place where like—like, I don't know, I spend all my time thinking about, like, whether I'm going to start DIY turning plastic into diesel fuel. Because because it can be done and recycling seems to be fake right now since COVID hit. It was always a little bit fake, but like, it seems extra fake right now. And I'm like, well that's sucks. I still want to recycle, even though I know it doesn't save the world, you know. So I guess it takes both. Jason I'm totally with you. And recycling was like another huge blow, like, you know, it was just like, I trusted that the system was like doing this well. And then, you know, probably along with a lot of people in the last like, two years or whatever there's been, you know, more writing and probably documentaries about it. And you're just like, come on, like, that was, that was the thing that I was like really good at and I made a point to, like, rinse my stuff out. And it's just a lie. You know? Like, it's in the clothes, it's getting in through, you know, like, my washing machine and my dryer, like, decomposing the plastics out of there. You know, it's just like, okay, if it's not—if it's not a systemic change, when, or how is it going to happen? You know, like, I was doing the thing that I was supposed to do, and it's still, you know. Yeah. Margaret I mean, that brings us back to the resiliency stuff, right? Because like there's—we're not going to win. Like, I mean, we should keep trying to stop the worst effects of climate change. And like, there's probably a difference—we're probably facing a tipping point between like, you know, life on earth and no life on earth at some point. Well, okay, actually—that is actually one of my main questions for you. It's actually how I first ran across you is I basically asked the internet being like, who can I ask about climate change? Like, I mean, obviously, everyone's thinking about it right now. But who can I ask who thinks about it in ways that are useful for this show in this audience? And I know you don't specifically—you're not like whole thing is not studying climate change and its effects in a grand scale. But I think you have more of a sense of the grand scale of climate change than, say, I do, or most people who are listening to this might. So, the fuck is about to happen? What's the—even if it's not your research, like what are people say? Like what? You know, is it, like—there's a version of the world that, like—I've always been a little bit doom and gloom—I see a version of the world by like 2045 where we're living underground and growing food in controlled environments because the earth is uninhabitable. And I don't think that that's, like, the thing that's going to happen. But that's like at one end, right? Then there's the, like, oh, well, just there's gonna be, you know, some coastal cities are in trouble and we'll have a little bit more hurricanes and flooding than we used to, but overall, the, you know, everything will keep on going on. Like, what do you think is about to happen? Or what do people think is gonna happen? Jason Yeah, I mean, the—so I mean, just to be clear about this, so, you know, of course, these are my views and certainly not the views of Arizona State University or any of my, like, colleagues or whatever. Because, I mean, there's a lot of variation, even within the community that, you know, does climate change studies, or that works with climate change data. And what I was going to be clear about was that I am someone who works with climate data, I'm not like a climate change expert. I don't know all the models that get used for atmospheric circulation, or oceanic circulation, or whatever. So I'm the person who like looks at the data and then, like, looks at the city, and tries to, you know, figure out what can we do to match the goals of the city with the reality of potentially what we're going to be facing. And so, I mean, but even then, you know, I'm probably less gloom and doom than I think some people that I've run into who are more lay on the subject, like, but there's so many caveats to say with this one. So my life personally, you know, like, if things probably are going to get weird in terms of how the climates going to look, and how we end up having to respond or whatever, but I perhaps, you know, incorrectly feel like I'm going to be somewhat more insulated from the effects than some other individuals or whatever, you know. Like, have money? Then you can throw it out the problem and it won't necessarily, like, fix it, but it will make your life potentially a little more comfortable than it would be for people with less money. And that's how the—that's how it works. You know, like, that's just how the country and capitalism and so forth have worked. So, like, it's really the marginalized communities that are gonna, you know, really be facing the brunt of it. So I mean, like, Phoenix is a perfect example of this where, like, extreme heat, you know, who is it a problem for? And what are we defining as problem? So in a future where we're getting like 180 days a year where it's like over 100 degrees, the majority of people in the city have AC and the majority of deaths from extreme heat and dehydration and so forth, are usually from marginalized communities, particularly homeless people. And so, like, what a city is going to look like when it's over 100 degrees for 180 days a year for, like, the homeless population is absolutely devastating. And it's already hard enough to live here. Like, the relative dryness of everything, like, you're constantly drinking water and, like, Arizona is not a kind place if you don't have—I mean, it's not kind in general, like, if you don't have money, like, and it's, I don't know, this sort of conservative ideology here, it just really promotes, I don't know, like absolute amounts of—like, if you're having a problem then you're kind of the person who has to get you out of it, or like the immediate people around you are responsible for getting you out of it. And there's not necessarily this sort of, like, societal connection. So—sorry, this is a long way of saying, like, I don't know. It's gonna be weird for a lot of people. But in terms of, like, my faith and our ability to manage it is maybe the better question, because I don't think there's gonna be, you know, in some places with, like, ocean level rise and extreme heat or whatever, it's just going to be unlivable and unsustainable for some populations of people. But like, say you're living in a place that doesn't face one of the imminent, like, climate threats, like sea level rise or whatever that's just going to physically displace you, there's a lot to manage in terms of agriculture, in terms of people's daily lives, you know. Like, if we're pushing public transportation as a way to, like, cut emissions and so forth, then here in a place like Phoenix, where it's this hot all the time, then you also need to pair that with, you know, measures to make public transportation more usable and more accessible. So a lot of my answer is just, like, how much faith do I have in the systems to get us there, as opposed to like, is the planet just going to become like poisonous and ruinous, and, you know, unlivable? Because I don't necessarily think that's what's gonna happen. I'm more just like, well, you know, is the city going to step up? Is the country going to step up? Is, you know, as an international collective, is that going to step up? Or whatever, in order to make things more manageable. And I think my answer pre-COVID would have been different than than post-COVID where— Margaret I'm guessing you're more cynical now? Jason Oh, my God. Yes. Yeah. I mean, it's so cynical that, you know, me complaining about this administration. My parents are like, I didn't know you'd like Trump. And I'm like, I don't like Trump. I'm just this disappointed with like the Biden administration handling of it. Like, it's one of those things where I'm like, well, okay, like, these were the adults in the room. And like the best and brightest, this is what like the meritocratic neoliberal system has produced as, like, the people who should be running the disaster response, and who spent the Trump administration, you know, dunking on social media and whatever, and on television, and through all media accessible, and then just step up to the plate and it's like, what, what are you doing? Like, you're not even consistent with—I mean, like, it's just incredible. Like, I'm now just, like, I'm not listening to anything the CDC says ever again. Like, it's—I'm just so amazed that the CDC was, like, turned into the propaganda wing for the administration in power, you know, like, what does the administration want to do? It wants to reopen schools, it wants to get people back in the workplace, and the CDC is gonna say whatever the hell it is that's gonna, like, be necessary to get people in there. And it's not going to be scientifically informed. So like, you know— Margaret So what's the point of having this institution if it's not scientifically informed? Jason Yeah, that's—those are the professionals. Those are the public health officials, and like Fauci is being like, we got to consider the economic impact of having a 10-day quarantine. And it's like, that's not your job, that's somebody else's job on the economy side to, like, combat what you're saying about it. And so, like, you know, I can just imagine a climate person in the same position as like—you know, Miami is flooding and, like, New York City's getting battered by hurricanes or whatever—and being like, just like, you know, climate change is not a big deal and it's, like, personal responsibility, and so forth. And if you adopt—if you get your electric cars and change your personal lives and so forth, it's not going to be that bad or whatever. And, you know, it's just not. It's going to require sort of coordination and so forth. And I would say there's a lot of good research happening, and there's plenty of good stuff, you know, from academia, and from scientists and so forth coming out about, like, strategies, it's just like, are we going to pick them up? Are we actually going to follow through with them? Is there going to be money, you know, to actually, to do any of this? Margaret Have you seen—it's as pop culture thing—have you seen? Don't Look Up on Netflix? Jason It's on my list! I really want to. Margaret Well, one of the things that happens in it is you have this—because people have always used—well, you know, I mean, like Watchmen use this, a bunch of other things have used this—like, we'd all come together if we were facing this apocalyptic threat from outside, you know? Jason Yeah. Margaret That would be what finally brings everyone together is banding together for our own mutual interest or whatever, right? And then like—and what climate change and COVID show is that that's just not something we can count on reliably. And I think there would be ways to shift public discourse in ways that do have it. I mean, you have some countries where the vaccination rate is substantially higher without necessarily having, like, a higher, like, enforcement or whatever of it. To my understanding, I could be wrong with this. And yeah, I don't know, it just the sense of like, at the beginning of COVID it really felt like, oh, we're all coming together, and like, you know, mutual aid organizations are everywhere, and then instead all the sudden people decided to just become Nazis and then run around and, like, yell at everyone and—I don't know, and then it all just disintegrated from there. And then, yeah, watching the Democrats fail at the one thing that theoretically they were going to do. I mean, the main thing that they were going to do is, like, not be literal fascists, and I guess they successfully accomplished that. But the other thing that they were supposed to do is be, like, the adults in the room. Yeah, like you're talking about. Because like Trump and his are like petulant crying children and—actually, no offense to children—children have much better excuses. Jason I've known less spiteful children, certainly. Margaret Yeah. No, I don't know it. I don't know. Okay. Jason Yeah. So I haven't seen the movie. Sorry. I was gonna comment on. Yeah. And like—but I mean, I know what it's about. I read like the criticism, I follow David Sirota on Twitter, and have certainly read a lot of criticism. And I've certainly seen a lot of stuff about the presentation of the material. And like, maybe the metaphor being a little heavy-handed or whatever. But-and like maybe, yeah, it's not, it's literally like a meteor about to hit earth or comet or whatever. And, you know, it's the news being like, well, whatever, it's a bunch of different institutions coming together to tell you that it's not something you really need to worry about, or, you know, like, mobilize over, I guess, I haven't seen it, again. Margaret It's not a complex movie. You basically got it. Jason Yeah. And so, I mean, I can—certainly I won't claim, like, I'm above aesthetics of a film or whatever, a good film, you know, should accomplish that. But it's one of, like, the most wide-reaching climate change parables, you know, currently in existence. And I have to say, from what I've heard about a lot of it, it's certainly not too far off from what we're experiencing. And like, in a pre-COVID world, maybe it would have like, felt a little heavy-handed or something like that. But I, you know, I get the gist of it. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what we're doing. Like, what do you—like, you know, they're not even telling us to turn the fountains off or like, you know, or anything like that around here into Phoenix, and we're literally in the middle of establishing water shortage measures. Like agriculture, out, you're done here in Phoenix. I think we are—we just upgraded this— Margaret No one needs that stuff. Jason Yeah, exactly. We don't need this local stuff. That's now Mexico is problem. Also, we're not delivering water to Mexico anymore. So, you know, like, there's so many things, we're just like, okay, so you're not handling this at all. And we're not supposed to be concerned about it, for some reason Margaret To go back to something you brought up at the very beginning. You know, you're talking about how climate change models don't really go past 2080 right now. Or like, you know, it's talking about what's going to happen best 2080. And you're like, I have no idea why. And I have two answers to that, and one is more cynical than the other. And one, the—I mean, the most cynical one is, like, that's because like, who knows if humanity is going to be around after 2080, certainly in a meaningful way. And then, but the other is, like, the just the, you know, everyone who's thinking about it assumes there'll be dead by 2080, even naturally. So why would we care about, like, what our children have to deal with, you know? Jason Yeah. Margaret Like, I was born in the early 80s. So I assume I'll be dead by around 2080. If I'm lucky. So, who cares about after that? I mean—actually, it's funny, one of the most cynical things my dad says on a regular basis—my dad has four kids and none of us have kids—and he's like, he actually does care about climate change—but he's like, I don't care about climate change. I don't have any skin in the game. I don't have any grandchildren. Family line's over whatever. Jason Yeah, exactly. Like, you're literally telling this to your children, being like, I'm not here. Margaret I'm gonna be dead before it's a problem. I'm like, I'm not. Actually, you're not either. Jason Yeah. Yeah, I mean, number one, he gave up already on living forever. And that's, you know, just—I'm not, I don't think I'm ever gonna do that. So, you know, I've got skin in the game, you know, as long as the planets around. Margaret Yeah, fair enough. Jason Yeah, I mean, that's literally the reason that people give on some of this investment stuff into, like, green infrastructure into, you know, dealing with climate change. It's just like, I mean, sure, that's like a theoretical thing that we, like, could have to deal with it. But like number one, I'm not even going to be here. And number two, you know, whatever goes in the other reasoning. But it's not an uncommon thing for someone to be like, mortality, I'm dead, like, what do you want me to do? So, yeah. And like, part of it is, you know, just the limits of modeling. Like, they're uncertain even as, like, 10 years ahead. And so you kind of like increase the amount of uncertainty, like, as you expand that time out. But like, honestly, I just think it's so horrifying to, like, look at it, and we're just like, okay, well, we used to think that population was going to peak, you know, by like, 2040 or 2060. I forget, like, what the actual peak date was going to be. And then like, you know, suddenly the models are just like, yeah, we don't really see a stop to that. And so it's like, okay, so we've got a changing climate, and we have a population that's going to keep increasing indefinitely, and no one's got a plan for like resource usage, for anything along those lines. And, you know, to be clear, this is not me being like, overpopulation is a problem. It's more like we need to plan, you know, like, there's not—we're not doing a good job with the number of people we have on the planet currently and, you know, management or not, people and our, you know, resource usage put major pressures on systems. And because I, you know, mostly think in terms of ecology and, like, natural systems, even though I'm in an urban area, I'm always thinking about, like, you know, regardless—I could do a million things in a given day—I'm already a vegan, I already tried to ride my bike as much as I can, I try to do all these things, but like, I'm still impacting the environments. And, you know, like, at the end of the day, me being here is impacting natural systems. And so now I'm always thinking about, like, biodiversity loss and the things that we're, you know, also contributing to just in, you know, even though I'm a relatively low hum of activity, compared to some people, but, you know, we got to really be thinking about that, because otherwise, you know, it's not going to resolve itself. It's not just going to be like, oh, it turned out to not be a problem. Margaret Right? Well, that's what I feel like some people are sitting around waiting for the, you know—I think it might almost help for them to realize that scientists at this point, engineers at this point, are less thinking, how do we stop climate change and instead how do we mitigate its effects? You know, I mean, I guess people thinking about how to, like, stop the worsening of it, right? But it's like, you know, people who are waiting around for this sort of magic bullet of, like, cold fusion power mixed with carbon capture or whatever, mixed with Mars colonization or, you know, whatever various things, like— Jason We'll mine comets. Greenly. Margaret Yeah, totally. Yeah. Jason Yeah, no. There's just a lot of things that need to be wrangled. And we need to actually, like, do planning for it. And, like, I—as someone who's done a lot of stuff in my personal life to really try to manage some of this stuff, I mean, I work on—I'm a systems thinker and I work on this as, like, a system whole. And it's like, I mean, what—how are we going to get people to, like, change behavior. Advertising, things like that? I mean, that'll get some people, but then, you know, like, it'll get perverted and politicized and whatever. So this sort of individual approach to dealing with everything is not going to be the case. And, I mean, the term "transformation" was in that definition of resilience, and I think a lot of transformation just needs to happen. And, you know, like, I'm anticapitalist and so, you know, my version of transformation is like, you know, what's a major problem for resiliency for a lot of people? It's money and not having enough of it, or not having a society that values them because they don't have enough of it. So we need to get rid of that. Because all these studies that talk about, like, who are the most vulnerable populations, all this stuff is tied to poverty. It's in poverty directly, or it's all tied to poverty. And so if I'm talking to a city person about, like, well, you know, what you can do is like add some wetlands to your city or whatever, you also have to, like, realize that's not going to be everything. Like, you've—there's going to be flooding, there's gonna be some amount of, like, unmanageability unpredictability to these systems. And the best way that you can deal with a lot of this is just deal with, like, inequality and this, you know, insane system of creating classes and things like that, and reinforcing them in subtle and less subtle ways. And until you deal with that, you know, you're—it's totally incomplete. The picture that you're, I don't know, the picture that you're seeing and that you're actually engaging with, like, you cannot leave out a lot of these issues of inequality in the way we consume things and everything. Margaret No, I really like that way of tying class and all of that into this as, like, all part of it. I don't know. One of the things that I think about, one of my better friends and engineer, whenever I talked to her about these issues, one of the things that always comes up is that I think about like—like when you talk about the concrete canal in Los Angeles, which of course makes for dramatic movie sets—I had no idea what that thing was, it's just in every movie and eventually figured it out it's a canal. But it's just bad engineering if you don't take into account all of the context that the thing that you're creating sits within. And so like, that's always been like my argument against a lot of the, like, quick fix technological stuff coming from engineers—and I say this as a lay person—but I'm like, it's just badly engineered. It does not work. It solves an immediate problem, but it doesn't work in the larger context. So it doesn't work. And the stuff that you're talking about, about like—so a resilient city is one that's, like, interfaced with nature, interfaced into its local context, and not just like assuming that the style of building that you use in the north is the style of building you should use in the south, and the style of greenery you have in Michigan should be what you have in Phoenix. But then also one that fights inequality, and that's how you build a resilient city. I like that. Jason Yeah, no. And that's a critical message that I've, like, tried to put into like book chapters and so forth, where it's like, look, we have a good idea of, like, what causes, you know, people to be vulnerable to climate change, and to extreme weather events. It's the same thing that's made them vulnerable for the last, you know, like, you know, since the 1800s, and like, you know, the major rise of capitalism and industry and so forth. Like, you have all these engineering and tech solutions to things, but, you know, at the end of the day—I mean, so I also do surveys and stuff like that, about flooding and communities too. And so I have some idea of how people are actually adapting and preparing to this sort of stuff. And, you know, it's a n- brainer. You get a wealthy person who has like flooding in their house, like, yeah, I paid a guy to pump it all out. And then I had, you know, my walls redone or whatever to deal with the flood damage. I replaced all the furniture that got damaged by the flood. Then you have like a person who doesn't even own the home that they live in, they're like a renter on top of it, and they could be facing eviction, you know, during the, the flood repairs, if it gets repaired, you know. And, like, it's—there are so many things where it's like, okay, so this person's like a temporary refugee within their own city because, you know, their home flooded, and there's like renovations or whatever. And that's not going to be solved, you know, necessarily by a tech solution. You might get statistically less flooding, either in terms of like depth or frequency. But like, it's gonna happen, like, there's just failures in these systems and people living, you know, hand to mouth, they're not going to be able to recover in the same way as, you know, wealthier people are, or people who have—who live in like a city or in a social governance system that actually cares about helping people recover, like, on an individual basis. Like, you just can't ignore that. I mean, certainly install more wetlands. I'm not going to tell you not to do that, but... Margaret Right, totally. It's like, it's good to ride your bike, it's good to eat less meat, it's good to you know, and increasing biodiversity is a very valuable thing. Like, it's a more valuable thing than riding a bike. But like, what, um—okay, well we're coming up on time. And I'm wondering if you have any final rousing thoughts or something that you wish I had asked, or any final thoughts. Uh, yeah, I mean, it's really tough, because I don't want to just be like, the problems are systemic, and the system sucks. It's not doing its job. So there's nothing you can do about it up until it happens. Jason Yeah. I mean, like, there's really good work at the community level, and, you know, tenant organizations and so forth, that have kind of like, pushed toward organizing and improving their own resiliency. And so I always, you know, try to remember those sorts of movements. And the fact that, like, academia is pretty responsive to that. Like, if nothing else, like the the push for novelty in academia, like, has kind of been like, oh, well, this is like another form of resilience. It's like understudied or whatever. And so it gets, like, proper attention and study and appreciation in academia. And then like, you know, the pipeline from there as we talk to city officials or whatever who we're partnered with, and then get them thinking about this sort of stuff. But it's like, it's kind of, it's not a definite sort of thing. It's like a tenuous relationship. It's not successful all the time. But like, it is cool that it exists sometimes and in some places, you know, like, there's work that I've done where I, you know, I can go point to an individual wetland that I'm personally responsible for, like, telling the city something about and they're like, I guess we got to protect it then. It's like, wow, cool. And, you know, I can go back and it will still be there, but it was already, like, getting zoned for housing and so forth. So like, stuff does happen, and there is good work on it. And you should do these sorts of, like, personal measures toward, like, reducing carbon footprint and all of that. But like, I don't know, I think you described it as, like, climate nihilism in a in a previous podcast episode, I think with a restoration ecologist maybe. Margaret That part's not true. Yeah, that sounds right. I have a terrible memory. But that sounds right. Jason Where, you know, it's kind of about a, you know, nihilism is a bad thing in that you're just like, everything's fucked, or whatever. But like, for me, it kind of takes the form of just, like, accepting that stuff is going to change and figuring out, like, what you can do about it in the immediate term, you know. Like, if we're able to stop climate change to some degree, great, awesome. And I'm trying to do what I can to support that effort. But I think also it felt really good to kind of let go of that expectation, because that allowed me to think about, we can actually do a lot of stuff, you know, societally, individually, to make things more livable, even if climate change didn't, you know, isn't real, you know, for that matter, or, you know, didn't happen in the way we see it or to the degree that we were seeing it. There's, there's a lot you can do that we are capable of doing. It's, you know, a matter of creating the will and having the imagination to actually do it. And that's, you know, that's how I go back to work every day and look at climate projections and so forth. And like, oof, looks pretty difficult out there. But, you know, there's stuff you can do. Margaret Yeah. Okay, well, is there a way that people can either—can engage with your work, or follow you on the internet, or how would you like people to engage with you if they like what you're saying? Jason Hire me. That's the number one thing I would like them to do. Because I'm graduating this semester, theoretically, so please hire me. But otherwise, so my Twitter handle is @jasonrsauer, that's S-A-U-E-R, you know, on Twitter. And that's the only social media I've got going for me right now. Otherwise—oh, I'm sorry, I also have a—alright, so my research network runs a podcast as well called Future Cities. Margaret Oh cool. Jason Where we talk with professionals and other researchers about urban resilience and so forth, and do deeper dives into particular subjects like green gentrification and, you know, engineering, resilience, and so forth. So they can certainly check that if they want to. It's pretty nerdy stuff. Margaret Okay. Well, thank you so much. Jason Yeah, thank you. I really had a lot of fun. Margaret Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation, you should tell people about it. You should tell people about it on the internet, or in person. I say the same thing every week. I try to come up with new ways to say the same thing every week. Isn't that fun? It's fun for everyone. It's fun for you. It's fun for me. Hurray. But it really does mean a lot for the show when you tell people about it, it's pretty much the only way that people hear about it. And you can also support the show by supporting our publisher, which is Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is supportable at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. There's not a lot of stuff behind a paywall, but if you pay a certain amount a month, you'll get a mailed print zine every month. And either way, you're helping support a whole bunch of different read projects that are going to be coming out this year. I'm really excited to show you all what we'll be doing. And in particular, I would like to thank Nicole and David, Dana, Chelsea, Starro, Jennifer, Eleanor, Natalie, Kirk, Hugh, Nora, Sam, Chris, and Hoss the dog for your support. You make this show possible. And so just everyone for listening because if no one listened, I probably wouldn't do the show, which is maybe terrible. Maybe I should be willing to scream into a void. But I'm not. I prefer talking to an audience. Even though I'm actually just talking to a microphone in a closet. It's somehow the same, or different? I don't know. I hope you're doing well and I hope you continue to do well.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

Yellow Peril Tactical can be found on Instagram @yellow_peril_tactical, Twitter @YPTActual, and Patreon @yellow_peril_tactical. You can listen to their podcast The Tiger Bloc Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

Margaret 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 use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to 3 people from Yellow Peril Tactical. Yellow Peril Tactical is a group of Asian I guess firearms enthusiasts? That's probably not the proper way to say it. They'll explain themselves a little bit better in a moment. But they are a group of people who organize different shooting clubs and different tactical training. as well as putting out a lot of content online. They're actually one of the more interesting sources of non-right-wing gun stuff on the internet. And so I was very excited to sit down and talk to them about what is involved in starting your own firearms club and what is involved in organizing as marginalized people. And I also talk to him about guns, you'll be shocked to know, so there'll be some geeking out about guns. But a lot of it is about how to organize stuff and make things happen. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Da-da da-daaaaaa.

Jingle 1 Hello! If you are listening, then you are here on purpose. This is Twin Trouble, the podcast about fighting the system and staying rebellious while incarcerated. The show takes the form of a recorded phone call between my twin brother, currently locked up in a federal transfer overflow jail in Grady County, and myself in the “free” world of Chicago. Why are we talking about prison abolition?

Jingle 2 The reason I wanted to do this whole prison thing is they keep people’s voices down. They want to shield the public from the day-to-day experiences of the [inaudible] who are incarcerated are going through. I’m not gonna take this sitting down or bent over, I’m standing up and I’m gonna continue to speak my mind about what’s going on. So I would hope [inaudible] the podcast we could get [inaudible], we could set it up

Margaret Okay, if you all could introduce yourself with I guess your name, your pronouns, and then I guess what brings you to Yellow Peril Tactical.

Snow Hi I'm Snow, she/they pronouns, I was invited to Yellow Peril Tactical by John Chinaman and another contributor. And I had been following their/our work for a little bit. And the posts that I actually have in mind is the one with the squid sauce and the handgun. And that just really, like, I felt so seen just by that one picture. And I just really felt like—I don’t know, it was a very pivotal moment for me and a moment where I really felt like a sense of community around meeting other fellow leftist Asian folks who are also into firearms and self-defense, community defense, and also shared like an intention to get better for themselves, for their community, and I think just the camaraderie, so to speak, among the other YPT tigers (dare I say) has been really nice actually. We shoot the shit a lot but we also have a lot of, like, encouragement towards each other and give each other advice as well as folks that reach out to us. So that's kind of what keeps me in it. It's a fun time so far.

Margaret What was the post?

Snow It was one of our earliest posts and it was, like, this pretty well-known, like, bottle of squid sauce. I use it all the time. And it's a handgun propped up by a chopstick and I just, like, I saw that and was just, like, what the fuck like this is me.

Margaret Cool.

Camilla  I'm Camilla. I use she/her pronouns. I found out about YPT through the internet/someone told me about it. About a year and a half ago almost I started taking up firearms as a training and self-defense tool, and started getting really into community defense, and have just been using it as something to get me out of the house and into the woods for the past year. I've been getting into doing the beginners/intermediate people teaching other beginners thing. And actually the first time I ever heard that was on your show, so I heard that and I was like, yeah, that's totally what I'm about to start doing, that's wild, that's cool that other people are talking about it. So thank you for that and I'll pass it to John.

Margaret That's cool.

John  Hey y'all, I'm a John Chinaman, he/him pronounce. I am actually one of the original Yellow Peril people. But I'll say before, like, that doesn't fucking matter. Like, it doesn't matter when you join. It holds no specialness being one of the original people. But I only say that to just explain that I was—I was around the beginning. And basically what happened was me and some people that I shoot with in real life, we heard about this guy. His name is Austin Tong. And he was a Fordham student and he got in trouble by his university because he had posed on Instagram with a firearm. And, well we were like, that's bad. And then we checked his Instagram and it was all just like pro-NRA bullshit, pro-Donald Trump bullshit, I own a gun because, you know, I'm afraid of anti-Asian violence. Oh, me too. But, I mean, oh damn, I wonder who's trying to stoke all that anti-Asian violence, you know. Think about it there. And so we were just pissed off. We were just pissed off. And we were just, like, we’d like toyed around this before. We were like, hey, when you go start that Yellow Peril Instagram account. And so I was in like—I was in a freaking parking lot I just started it. And I was like, ah shit, like, we actually have to like post things. Shit. I don't want to reiterate too much what Snow and Camilla said, but honestly one of the most special parts about this has been honestly learning about more of my own heritage. Like, talking to other people, you know, obviously—obviously I’m a firearm enthusiast, but really talking to other people who are going through or have gone through similar things as me and learning about, like, what it means to be Asian American in these United States, so-called United States, and the grappling with that has honestly been the most special part for someone who didn't actually kind of grow up with that community.

Margaret Yeah. Could one of you all explain a little bit more—just kind of an overview of what Yellow Peril Tactical is to our listeners?

Snow Yeah, I can do that. We are a collection—collective of leftist east and southeast Asians that do a lot of firearms education. But we also do political education, the occasional shit post, which the internet seems to really like. It seems like the memes, actually, that we put the least amount of effort in get the most likes. It's kind of wild, like we'll just throw something together and it'll just get like a thousand likes and just makes no sense but, you know, it's cool. We also do fundraisers. I think last year we raised like $5600, something around there, to various fundraisers. We also post a lot of infographics geared towards new shooters, like we've done a couple like how to shop for a firearm like a handgun and a rifle, and like we did a glock guide recently. And we also do we peer pressure people into posting their groups and splits because we like seeing people get better, including ourselves. And we recently started doing like a drill of the month thing just to kind of give new shooters something to go on when they're at the range instead of just mag-dumping with their friends. So yeah, we do all sorts of shit. But that's kind of like the main hustle.

John  And it's definitely geared towards, like, newer shooters, people who are newer to firearms. Second everything that Snow said, it's very easy to just go to the range and be like, okay, cool, what do I do? Like just shoot a bunch of rounds into a microwave or something, and then you're like, oh no, this like a skill. You can build and learn from others and teach others as well.

Margaret But shooting a microwave sounds really fun though.

Snow I have been to a range area—like a public land—and there was like this random thing in the middle and I got a closer look at it, somewhere about a fucking TV. Like a flat screen. And it was just like in pieces. Like the screen was shattered and then like the frame was all fucked up and, like, whatever layers in between those two was just, like, perforated, and it was just so confusing to me because I'm just like, why? Who brings a TV out to the range and just shoots at it. That's so bizarre.

Margarte I mean it sounds like it would be a perfect like 90s anti-capitalist video, you know?

Snow Instead of Office Space where it's like a printer, it's just a fucking TV.

Margaret Yeah. Kill your television. Okay, so there's a bunch of stuff I want to ask you about and some of it is a little bit more like theoretical, and I kind of want to ask you a bit about your experiences. But I think I want to start a little bit with some of the practical stuff. Like you all are—I mean, one of the things that I find so interesting about you all is that you're one of the best resources for new shooters on the left—or probably just new shooters in general—to gain firearms information that is, like, practical instead of, I don't know, shrouded. You all have this whole thing where you attack Red Fudds all the time and I want to ask you about that and a little bit. But one of the things I want to ask you about is what are some of these basic drills that new people can—or possibly intermediate people, but especially new people—can be doing. Like, what are groups and splits, for example?

Camilla  To start off, groups and splits is essentially taking metrics and applying it to how you're training. So that involves having a timer of some sort. You can do it the hard way, or you can go in with a bunch of friends to get a shot timer. And you essentially put up a fresh target, you have your shot timer, you press the button—usually have a delay set, at least that's how I prefer to do it—it goes beep, and then it from that beep onward it's counting the amount of time between your shots. And the groups part is how far away your rounds are hitting on the target, and the splits is the amount of time in between your shots. Usually you pay most attention to the first shot and the last shot, but it totally depends on what the drill is. When it comes to drills, there's a lot of different things you can do. It entirely depends on where you're at in your journey. If it's your first day shooting, the drills are going to look really different than if you're going to the range to work on your draw from concealment or something in an ongoing kind of practice way.

John  One of the things we talk about a lot is that, when you're at the range, like, not going to lie, like, shooting is expensive. Ammunition is expensive, guns are expensive, right? So when you're at the range with live ammunition, it's good to show up with a plan. You may not stick to it, but show up for a skill like you want to work on. Whether that's, like, getting rounds on target fast from your holster, from concealment or whatever, or being able to hit fast follow-up shots, or being able to transition between targets quickly. There's a lot you can do at your house in dry fire— for those who don't know, dry fire is making sure your gun is unloaded, pointing in a safe direction, and practicing it. Just pulling the trigger. And you can do a lot of that at home and when you're on the range, you know, practicing the stuff that you can't do at home. You need live ammunition for, like, recoil management. One of the things that we did our December—someone correct me if I'm wrong here—drill of the month was like putting four rounds on a 3x5 index card. Actually quite difficult. January—I see Snow nodding at me because, actually and Camilla too because we've all been having trouble with this. Literally draw—put two rounds on a 3x5 index card, rehoster, draw, put two more rounds on. And it is very very hard. It took me a week to do this by the way.

Snow It is unforgiving. Yeah. 

John  It is extremely unforgiving. I finally did it today. 

Margaret What kind of range is that?

John  Five yards. Really not that far. Um I but there's.

Margaret  I mean, I don't think I could do it, like...

Camilla It's one of those things where it's like, it just sounds, like, very doable—well, because it is. But when you're there and you're timing yourself and someone's filming you. 

Snow All your friends are watching. 

Camilla Yeah, you just kind of like revert to your worst fucking version of yourself, you know. You're just, all your training goes out, you're at your most, like primal, like nerves. Just yeah.

Margaret One of the things I actually really appreciate about the content you all put up is I feel like you encourage people to post not just their like coolest sexiest stuff, you know, like I think it was even today that you all posted, like, I failed at the thing I was trying to do. And it was like someone like sitting there sad, you know. And like, you know, and I actually think that that's an important part of making people feel welcome into a sport like this because it's so buried in machismo and it's not just—in my experience it's not just about the gender or the gender presentation of the people that you’re shooting with, but it's stuff like that. It's the, like, making sure you can do like the coolest thing and then only posting your like super coolest—also one of the reasons I appreciate it is that, frankly across the board when I watched watch right-wing or left-wing or centrist whatever, like, guntube people, they always look like they think they're really badass looking. And it never looks like smooth or good. And I'm always like, huh, okay. It's all like slow motion with dramatic music and stuff as they, like, kind of like jiggle with this thing and there's lots of—I don't know, this is completely meaningless to anyone who doesn't spend all their time watching dumb videos about new calibers and shit. But so that's something I really appreciate about you all is the way that you break down some of that machismo just by actually being honest about what the journey looks like. That's not really a question. Sorry.

Snow No,  I'm glad that you brought that up because, like, we teach like 101s to folks in the area and something that I always incorporate into when I'm teaching is just, like, telling folks, one, marksmanship is like not the goal of the 101 class. And when I first started shooting, I was fucking horrible. Awful. And I probably say it like two to three times within like the first hour. And I do it in a way to be like, yeah, like a lot of people aren't fucking good. Most people aren't good at shooting for a very long time, even if they've been shooting for years. But I think bringing that, like, honesty and like humility means a lot to folks because like guns are intimidating. And like, it's already hard enough to learn a new skill let alone one that’s fucking firearms and.

Margaret Yeah.

Camilla Yeah, and it's intimidating because, like, we're presented with this message in this worldview—or at least I was growing up in liberalism—that the only legitimate and skilled people with firearms are law enforcement and military and that those skills, like, reside squarely in their domain. And I think like the demystification process of, like, going out to the range, having someone show you who feels like from your community—like your friend, your family member, chosen or otherwise, or your comrade—like having them really like spend some time with you and, like, show and put some care into how the stuff is presented really just kind of, like, cuts through a lot of the misogyny and like the militaristic machismo culture like y'all were talking about. And shooting guns isn't actually that hard, it's just there's so much mental shit attached to it. It's really hard to shoot with, like, you know, whatever hair’s breadth precision. But I don't know if there's—I don't know if that's real, to be honest. Like I know there's people that drill that and—but like 99% of the people out there are relying on a veneer of, like, machismo to really get the point across. But yeah. It's all bullshit. Just need to find people that are willing to like sit down with you. And I think maybe that's one of the goals of our page and our collective is just, like, to be a virtual friend or something.

John  We answer all of those to DMs. Every—basically every single one gets answered. And just so listeners who, like, don't know a lot about guns know, like, if you're going to the range like once a month with some buddies and, like, trying to just, you know, just do your best—like I'm not even saying you have to be good—just like do your best. Put rounds on target. See if you can learn from your mistakes. You're already shooting more than the law enforcement officer on the beat. Like you're already doing more than those people, like not even joking.

Margaret I've had vets who have been part of different shooting groups who I've been around—I used to live somewhere with access to a shooting range—and the vets didn't know better than other people. I don't know how to say this politely. And also the number of times I had to insist that, yes, actually people should wear ear protection. And it's always vets who are like, we don't need ear protection or whatever. Okay, so one of my questions—we talked a little bit about the like misogyny and bravado, but I'd love to talk about guns in the United States traditionally white supremacist—or at least primarily white space. Gun culture—and obviously you all are an intervention into that. And I'd like to kind of ask you more about ways in which racial dynamics come up and how you all handle them and what especially listeners of color or, you know, people can take away from what you all have learned.

Snow Yeah, I could take the first stab at that. I think growing up that was definitely my understanding of it, that it's mostly white cis dudes that go shooting and go hunting and posts unsolicited pictures of their hunts on social media—and I get to look at them. And, you know, I grew up in like an anti-gun household, like my parents are Vietnamese refugees and so their relationship to guns and war is just that it's bad, right? Like they endured a lot of trauma. Like my mom hid under a table until like the 90s whenever she even heard like a helicopter fly over the house. And this is when she was living in the states. Like, they got here in the 80s, right. And so that's how deep like that warfare trauma was for my family and, you know, my mom side the family lives in East Bay California, and so, you know, they are familiar with guns. And I knew that, but I never really interacted with it because it was, like, it's my male cousins, you know, and so getting into it more in the last like year and a half has been like a wholly new endeavor in a lot of ways. Being a part of YPT makes that a lot easier and more navigable. But overall, like, the majority of the people I see at the range like whether or not I know them were still, like, white people. And a lot of chuds. And it's intimidating, not just because of them being men, but also because they're like politically opposed to people like me—that look like me—taking the means necessary to, like, defend ourselves in our community. And it motivates me in a lot of ways to be the best that I can be, but ultimately, like, it doesn't take away that, like, stress that I feel, like the anxiety I feel around who else has guns. But I find that the more folks—like-minded folks that I've met shooting and going to range days, like, we need more—well maybe not we need—but like, there ought to be more BIPOC folks and femme/nonbinary-presenting people, identifying people in these spaces if they want to be. And from the conversations that I have, like, they want to be there. Like we have so many people reaching out to us via DMs or like, how do I get involved in a group, like do you know anybody in this area. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don't, but we've seen a trend of like more and more people, like, reaching out and asking for those kinds of resources. And I think given, you know—especially since 2017 after Charlottesville, like it's becoming much much more apparent how brazen a lot of these armed right-wing militias are going to be. I think January 6th 2021 was a lot—a wake up call for a lot of people. I was horrified but not surprised. I was a bit entertained to be honest. I was like, he he he. But at the same time I was just like, you know, we warned y'all. We have been saying this and y'all think we're not based in reality when we say these things, but yet here we are. And, you know, Asian people—I've mentioned this on like one of our previous podcasts, but just like, my aunt and grandma were mugged a couple summers ago. And, like, my aunt was knocked unconscious and like spent a couple days in the hospital. And this was like during the wave of like anti-Asian hate crimes, and then actually like kind of validated my, like, inner stress and anxiety of, like, this kind of thing. And that I think it's a far-fetched reality to think that like hate will go away as long as we just keep organizing. The right is always going to be there. Fascism is always going to be there.

Margaret Mhmm. 

Snow And the only way we can endure is by being resilient and continuously adapting. And so firearms and firearms education, for myself and others, is like one of the tangible ways that I feel like I can move towards that resiliency. I just talked a lot. But yeah.

Margaret No no, that's all really useful.

John  I mean, I’ll say it, like I got my first gun—I think it was like 20? I think it was 2018. I mean it wasn't very good or practicing a lot., but that's when I got mine. So it was in the wake of Charlottesville and seeing some of that stuff happen, and I want to second what Snow said about finding a group, finding a crew not only to keep you like sort of motivated—it's obviously more fun when you do with others than I suppose just like going to the ridge and just blasting around by yourself. But in some cases it can honestly be—it can honestly be related to your own physical safety—and I hate saying this, especially if there's people out there who are new to firearms or thinking about getting into firearms—but I mean, like me and people I shoot with, like we'll go to ranges and we'll see like 3% militia there. You know what I mean? Like see like dudes who—and they're all dudes obviously, like people who given the chance, if they knew what we believed or even, yeah, some people's, you know, racial makeup or, you know, or sexuality, like people could get hurt. Like, you know, one time people started pulling tags like at a like at a range once where I as at. Like having people to not only keep you motivated but to help keep you safe is honestly very important in a space where it's a lot of armed reactionary white dudes. I gotta let this dog out. Sorry.

Margaret Yeah, where I live currently I'm back undercover, like I'm back in the closet essentially in a lot of the and situations I find myself in just because I'm now in a sort of deeper rural situation than I was previously. And it, you know I have the like—well I have white privilege and then I have, like, the capacity to put on—well, no one ever reads me a straight no matter how hard I try. But I, you know, I can put up enough of a front that people can ignore my bangs and my braid or something like that and it's a—sometimes just a matter of safety. But that's something I can do because I'm white. I don't know. I have no grand statement out of that, actually.

Camilla Yeah, and I mean it's because it's different for everyone. Everyone negotiation of like arming up and what that means and the things that that confronts you with is really different. But it's—I don't want to say always, but a lot of the time it's really intense and you're kind of like navigating your own, like, mortality. I don't want to be too philosophical and heavy about it. But like, yeah, you don't want to downplay the fact that you have like a machine on you, or that you're training with it at the very least, or owning it, that is designed expressly for killing. And there's no way to dilute that, and it's dangerous too. So yeah, I don't know about other folks but I have a really fragmented consciousness around it. I can't forget that I have these things, especially if they're on your person, but you also can't be thinking about it constantly, at least in a way that gets your nervous system going into fight/flight/freeze. Yeah, a level of normalization and, like, taking it kind of slow and maybe figuring out what sort of increments you can dip your toes and your ankles and your calves and your quads, you know, like you don't jump in, you don't cannonball into like having a gun, hopefully. I mean sometimes there's like intense situations, right? But you navigate those as they come up. But yeah, otherwise you like to have bite-size chunks. Otherwise it can be like too much and you maybe overlook something, and doing it with a crew—doing it with at least one other person means that someone is watching your back and bringing things to your attention that we sometimes overlook.

Margaret Well, that actually leads me to one of the main questions I have for you all, you know, similar to you all saying in your DMs you constantly have people asking basically, how do I get started? And I think that's actually one of the biggest questions facing the anti-authoritarian left in general right now is like, literally, like people want to join us and don't know how, and especially right now in these times of like pretty intense isolation, people don't know how. And so I'm hoping that you all will just magically solve this in the next short bit of time by answering the following question, which is: how do people—how can people get started—how can people start their own shooting groups? Like, how do you—not necessarily like how do you find a crew, but maybe how do you, like, make the crew a crew. How do you—how do you get going?

Camilla Well you’ve got a complete Prestige and Call of Duty first. That's the first step. I'm sorry.

Snow Oh my God. 

Margaret That’s actually a reference that goes over my head. I'm aware that there's a video game called Call of Duty but I don't know what Prestigge is.

Camilla It was like an answer antithetical to the one that I want to give.

Margaret I picked up that part but now I'm curious, what is Prestige and Call of Duty.

Snow Yeah, tell us Camilla.

Camilla Ah, Prestige mode is when you max out on your level—I think it's like 55 or something—and then you go through again and you just keep doing it. That's like the almost violent level of, like, never ending-ness of these types of like games where you're just, like, you're just putting a different patina on your gun and spending 8 hours to get there, you know? Yeah, stupid reference aside, let's see I'd say that there's no cut and dry way to get there, but there is a way for pretty much every single person to get there. So I don't have like a road map necessarily, but maybe me and Snow can tag team this because I don't know if my brain alone is up for the task of, like, responding to this and it's a very important question. I did it by just watching Youtube, honestly. That's me being a millennial. Just watching Youtube trying to find some like good introductory, like, safety videos. And videos about philosophy of keeping a gun—not like deep like treatises on owning guns, that's not what I mean. I mean like philosophy as in how do you—how do you do this rightly, you know? How do you protect yourself, protect everyone around you, not expose, anyone to danger? What are all the things to think about in your life? And then there's like political things. I would say some of those things are like, are you dealing with like multiple voices in your head saying like you don't need a gun, like, because those types of voices are generally like the liberal in your head gaslighting you and, like, downplaying the realness of your life. So I would say that, you know, that's a thing to reckon with. That's a thing I've reckoned with personally. And you just kind of, like, have to do it out of love sometimes. That's where I'm going to leave this thought for right now and I'll pass it off to someone else.

Snow So yeah I think that’s—I mean, that's a good start to the answer. I think, like, to add on, it’s just like, what are your goals? Like what is it that you intend to do with these firearms? Hopefully it's self-defense and community defense. And starting out with just one friend, you know, that constitutes a shooting group. But I think, you know, I was going to say SRA. but I've heard very mixed reviews about so those locals. I think some are good. Um, but I can’t—

Margaret SRA is the socialist rifle association? 

Snow Yes, thank you. My bad.

Margaret No, it's all good.

Snow And maybe starting there, you could also always send us a DM on YPT. But, you know, I think with all the different leftist gun-stograms that have popped up over the last like year, like it might be worth a start like seeing if any of them, you know, kind of look like they live in your area. Or if not, just like asking them for advice. Because most of the people that are on leftist gun-stagram—I want to say most, not all—are pretty nice. Um, and pretty humble. And I think it's really hard when, like, you live in an area where there's not a lot of like identifiable leftists. And so that can be very hard. Or if you live in an area where guns are hard to access, like that brings a whole other set of obstacles that you have to go through in order to acquire fire arms or the knowledge. But. you know, like Camilla said, like Youtube is a really good place to start. Our page is a really good place to start. If you're aware of even just, like, any mutual aid groups in your area that just do like self-defense classes, like hand-to-hand self-defense kind of stuff might be a good place to start. Like, zine fests. You never know who's going to be at the zine fest. Could be some cool people there. So I think it's just like trying to find community first might be a good idea, especially among leftists. You know, out in the Pacific Northwest we have quite a few zine fests and you never know what you're going to find.

John Starting with people in the community, like, that's legit.  Like I know—and they're not in my area—but there is a group of Food Not Bombs people that we know that basically just doubles as a shooting group. They feed homeless people and they're doing a ton of great work, and they double as a shooting group. It's pretty freaking awesome. They do a ton of self-defense stuff as well. I know you mentioned SRA, Socialist Rifle Association earlier. Seems like it's very heavily chapter-dependent. Some chapters are just like—just balling out, like just wonderful people, like lots of resources, people who are very skilled, eager to teach, lots of new people who are eager to learn. Some chapters seem to exist only on paper. It’s always worth reaching out if there's one in your area, to reach out and see, like, what they do and who's around, basically.

Snow There's also—that reminded me of like Arm Your Friends, they’re are relatively new Ongram and they're a great place to start also.

Margaret Okay.

Camilla There’s—like, having trouble with this kind of like implies that there's a challenge or a barrier, right, to like getting into this. I think some of those common barriers that we hear about/have encountered ourselves are: your friends are libs, or your friends, like, don't just agree with your decision and your analysis conclusion that, like, hey I want to be armed now,—regardless of what the reason is, regardless of what the goals are, like if you have lib friends, they're going to push back on that probably. And that is something you can, you know, work in those relationships around or you can try to develop some new relationships. And I think, like, the latter is really like the best way to go about getting some people to shoot with on like a quicker timeline, because you don't know where your friends are gonna move. Do you even want to be learning in the context of like more liberal folks who aren't necessarily like ready politically, etc. to to start shooting? So like ways to do that are DMing people and like trying to set a meetup time, like the old fashioned like hit people up cold or, you know, kind of just like plumbing your social connections and trying to figure out like who knows who and, you know, it can be hard and intimidating as fuck to reach out to people because people are like, are you an op? You must be an op. And there's a lot of that parannoia and that's very real and that's not going to go anywhere. But the more you can, like, create like authentic genuine connection with people who are already doing this or have voiced being interested in it, the better time you're going to have so just look for those moments and opportunities I guess.

John I went shooting today with someone I met at DSA of all places. Like people always trash DSA or whatever, yeah—

Margaret Democratic Socialist America? 

John Democratic Socialists of American, people as trash them like, oh yeah, they’re are a bunch of libs, blah blah blah. Dude's a really good shooter, eager to like share knowledge and whatnot, like you just meet people.

Margaret I think that we have these assumptions about how people, like when you live in an echo chamber—I lived in an echo chamber for a very long time. Now I don't live in an echo chamber because I live—the echo chamber’s me and my dog. So I'm not trying to bash that, but when we live in these echo chambers we can start thinking to ourselves like, ah, DSA is all liberals, or all liberals hate guns, or in, you know, all of these things. That don't really hold up necessarily to closer analysis, and also things are changing dramatically and quickly, you know. A lot of people who were liberals a few years ago aren't anymore. Shout out to the more than one liberal financial building accounts that I know—like, the people who, like, tell you what to do with money—that are now like going anarchist because of the times and because of just actually more availability of an understanding of—I mean these are clearly people who understand capitalism, right? And it used to be they were all about helping poor people navigate capitalism, to to work through it, to come out ahead. And now they're a little bit more, like, actually this whole system—Anyway, so I guess I’m—I would say I'm not surprised by, you know, finding comrades in all kinds of places. And I know my own experience is that—it's kind of actually not necessarily the best thing. I'm usually the most experienced firearms person around when I'm shooting, just literally because I'm at the low end of intermediate but I work with new people a lot. And that's actually has worked really well for me, it's just a lot of people coming forward and just being like—I mean some of it is like, yo, I'm kind of sick of all these dudes who are like trying to teach me it. Like more than once people have been, like, my boyfriend really wants to go shooting and I want to go shooting. but honestly I don't want to learn from him, you know. And like that's actually the thing I would say to like someone who's considering learning to shoot, like maybe don't learn from your significant other, especially if there's like kind of a traditional gender relationship going on in your relationship, you know? Anyway, that's a tangent but… Okay, well now that we've solved that and everyone will feel perfectly free to start doing this, which is great, I’ve been trying to solve this for a long time. I want to talk about the kinds of people you don't want to go shooting with, and I want to talk about the Mosin Nagantvwhich is the best rifle ever made, and the 1911, the best handgun ever made. And I want to talk to you all about why you agree that we should look for the firearms that wars a hundred years ago instead of the firearms that are currently in use by militaries, and how we should value aesthetics over function. Is that correct? That's ya’lls line with Yellow Peril Tactical, right?

Camilla Yeah, I could tell you've been—you've been studying up on our Instagram bio—

Johns Go ahead Camilla.

Camilla 1911 is a Colt 45 handgun that chuds’ll often cite—

Margaret What’s a thud in this context?

Camilla A chud in this context is a tending toward violent, like, right wing conservative authoritarian person, very broadly speaking. 

Margaret Okay.

Camilla They often say that two world wars! It won two world wars! So that’s, like, that's the joke of the 1911. The history behind that weapon is interesting and horrific, as is the interest—as is the history behind, like, literally every gun that was involved in conflict. But have an interesting story. The reason I chimed in so quickly is because I have an uncle who has been a cop—has been a retired cop for almost my whole life because, so he's like pretty old, but he still every day carries. He, like, his thing is like carrying a 1911 in his fanny pack. And like, you know, I grew up with this person, like, almost my entire life. So finally I'm like, hey, what's up uncle. Like, I'm into guns now, like, what's up. Let's talk. And so the next time I see him he takes me outside into the backyard where we can have like a second of privacy, and he's like, yeah, let me show this thing to you—Really quick, flagging. Flagging is when someone swings the muzzle of the gun across your body or holds it on you unintentionally, usually. So then you say, hey, you flagged me. It means someone pointed a gun at you which means that they're violating one of the most basic, like, safety principles of like having firearms—So he he flags me multiple times with it and I'm just, like, astounded because like it confirms everything that I think I know about police officers, which is that they're incompetent and aren't good at shooting and aren't safe. But it was just, like, such a rich moment for me. And I said something both times and he just kind of, like, waved it off and was like, it's a sick gun though, right? I mean, like he's in his eighties so he's not saying “sick,” but that was his equivalent. And yeah, that's maybe all you need to know about people who really love 1911s. I mean, like, collectors and stuff, there's exceptions to everything that I'm saying, that's like a generalization. And the Mosin is a Russian rifle that someone else can talk about right.

John The 1911, right, like it's a classic, yeah, but it should be left as a classic. It holds 7 rounds of .45 which is a slow round, it's not really as good as 9mm which, if you're not into guns, like every—guns you think of generally like shoot nine millimeters. It’s not as good. They have a tendency to jam. They're not very good. But yes, old heads like them. But again, I agree with Margaret here, if you're gonna get an old gun you have to get a gun that was designed in 1891 by Sergey Mosin that symbolizes an authoritarian Stalinist regime, because that's what makes it good. The optics make it good.

Margaret [Laughing]

John Not, you know, it doesn't matter if it's bolt action and fires extremely slow and only holds five shots, because back in the 40s some conscripts carried it once upon a time and killed some fascists with it and that's why it's still relevant in 2022. You heard it here first.

Margaret The reason I love everyone being obsessed with Mosin-Nagants is that, before I really knew much about guns and my friends would take me shooting, my friend took me shooting actually on the Pacific Northwest—and we were shooting one of his guns which is a Mosin-Nagant—and it fired without the trigger being touched. Twice. 

Snow Oh.

Margaret And because we've practiced all of the other rules of firearm safety, nothing bad happened. The gun was always pointed down range and so when it went off on its own, it did so down range so I've never really trusted Mosin-Nagants.

John Margaret, who doesn't love surprises? We all love surprises.

Snow You know, maybe this is too soon, but Alec Baldwin sure doesn't like surprises, you know?

Camilla Oh my goodness. 

John Oh my god. Oh, rim shot.

Camilla But in all seriousness, if you have a Mosin, I'm pretty agnostic about whether you hold onto it or get rid of It. Don't shoot someone or yourself with it, please? They're like kind of affectionately and pejoratively referred to as Garbage Rods. And that's kind of like what their value is. Obviously they're bullets. It's a gun. You could really fuck someone up with it. Yeah, if you want to talk about good firearms to get into here and now, we can talk briefly about that because that might be helpful for some people. But it's definitely going to be a more modern thing where you can like pull the trigger more than once without having to like, you know, pull a bolt back.

John I think we should talk about that, Camilla, but it's probably worth saying that or a while there you would see it online all the time—still do—someone being like, you know, ready to bash the fash, right? And it's a firearm designed in 1891 that was just a a crap-tier rifle back in 1891. And you're like, why—you know, you can get—you know, you can get other stuff. And maybe it made sense when that firearm was $100 in a crate in your local sporting goods store. But, you know, we regularly post links to AR rifles that are like $430–440. Like good quality, like, Soviet military surplus. Like, the Mosin was a 5 shot bolt action rifle, so you have to like cycle a bolt—work a bolt back and forth to shoot it. Or the SKS rifle, a firearm that was obsolete 2 years after was introduced, holds 10, incredibly heavy. Like, those guns are now going for $500–700, so you can get a better gun for cheaper. And yet still we see to this day people proudly posting pictures of Soviet Military surplus, you know, “We’re ready. We're ready, boys.” Like, you know, but let's get into more what Camilla said because that was just depressing.

Snow I mean, just to like wrap it up though. Like I think just to clarify for folks that like aren't super gun nerds like we all are is that—to pull out further what John was saying—is just, like, a lot of people out there are saying these kinds of dare I say antiquated firearms are not up to like the performance that more modern guns are. And so for them to say it's “just as good” is actually quite reckless and dangerous. And so that's why we're so against it as being your, like, primary firearm, right? Like I have a lever-action. Is that my primary carbine? Fuck no. But it is it one of my favorite guns? Yes. So it's just like, you know, like we say, mission drives gear and.

John Like, you don't have to have that many guns.  Like I have a shotgun which I use for hunting, and then a carbine, and a handgun, right? Like no one's saying you got to get a crapload of guns, and like maybe buying one of those guns back in the day, yeah, it made sense when it was a $100. But now that you can get better stuff for cheaper—for cheaper!—there's no reason you should buy one with your hard-earned money. And advocating that new firearm owners go buy those is frankly—is reckless—is negligent reckless, honestly.

Margaret I mean, I want one. But I want one in the context that bolt action is my favorite action to shoot.

Snow It's fun.

Margaret My current favorite rifle is my dad's 1972 .22 mag bolt action rifle that's meant for shooting groundhogs, and it's my favorite gun. And it annoys me because .22 magnum is the same price as, like, large—same price as a center fire ammunition. But it’s, like, not particularly more effective than .22 LR, which is the cheapest ammunition. But it’s my favorite gun and so I completely feel you on the lever action. And I would totally have a Mosin-Nagant. I like history and there's like something like kind of—I mean, it's funny because I spend most of my time—my waking hours trying to figure out how to be mean to authoritarian communism. That's like, you know, what drives my life. But I still kind of am like, ah, that's cool gun. I don't know. So—but the thing I wanted to point out really quickly for yeah—saying—I wanted to kind of geek out about guns with you all because I don't get a chance too much in my day-to-day life. But I think it was you all who brought to my attention this term Red Fudd. And would one of you be able to briefly explain what a Red Fudd is and what a Fudd is so to sort of tie up this before we talk about good guns.

Camilla Ah, it's a reference to Elmer Fudd, I believe. Red meaning communist, Fudd—affectionately, of course—Fudd is Elmer Fudd. So like, the caricature is someone who believes and is a proponent of what we call Fuddlore which is the comment—you know, it's like summed up in comments like, “the SKS is just as good as the AK47” or “SKS is just as good as an AR15” from wherever. Give me some, give me some other ones.

John I guarantee you that — guarantee you that everyone in here has heard the Fuddlore that on the news when Joe Biden said all you need is two shotgun blasts. If someone's coming to your house just fire in the air. They'll run away. Yeah, that's massive Fuddlore. Do not fire your gun into the air aimlessly and hoping the other person will run away, like—

Margaret It’s also a crime. Warning shots are completely illegal. The president is telling you to do something that is a crime. 

John I don't want to opine on any every jurisdiction. But yeah, usually you don't do that.

Camilla Yeah, it's not going to save you either.

John Camilla's colt story, right? It's like, “Why would you want to buy one of them plastic glocks. I got one of these all-metal Colt 45, Two world wars.” Fuddlore

Camilla Yeah, like racking the shotgun being the defense enough to save you from someone breaking in your home trying to harm you. That's another Fuddlore piece. Yeah, I mean, so there's like—there's Fudds that are like more authoritarian right, and then there's just like Red Fudds. So you make a distinction sometimes. But when you want to talk about Fuddlore, you don't need to make the distinction.

Margaret Okay, so if someone listening to this is like, I don't know how this particular episode will convince people that they need to get a gun, but let's say it did. And people want to get involved in shooting for self and community defense purposes. What would be good introductory firearms?

Snow Glock 19, you know. It’s—you know, there's three categories of handguns, right? There's full size, compact, and subcompact. Typically you see most people, like, conceal carry subcompact and compacts. But for smaller-framed people, even a Glock 19 can be hard to conceal. But generally speaking, if you only want to buy one handgun, a Glock 19 is like what we'd recommend—or at least what I'd recommend. 

Margaret That's a that's like an in-between size?

Snow Yeah, and it holds 15 rounds stock, but you can buy extendos that—that's slang for extended magazine, or “stendo” even for shorter slang—and that could hold up to like 30 rounds if you want to be ridiculous at the range. But that's a very common handgun. It's also usually standard issue for a lot of law enforcement. So there's just like a lot of aftermarket parts that you can buy to add on to the Glock 19 if you want, But it's also just, like, very common to have it. Even for smaller-handed folks like myself can handle it fairly well for the most most part. I think I've known a couple people that have had trouble handling it, but I mean that's the handgun that I would recommend. Anyone else? Camilla, John? Free handguns?

John I have one handgun. It's a Glock 19. Like, I second everything, what Snow said, and it has a lot of magazines out there because your gun doesn't work if it doesn't have magazines. So, for example, CZ—I don't know what stands for, some Czech manufacturer technology, like to call it. During the pandemic you, like, couldn't get CZ mags because like they had all dried out, like, they were nowhere to be found. You still get Glock mags though. So. Camilla?

Camilla Yeah, I'm big into Glocks too. I don't know if anyone was like holding out hope that we'd say something different, but I would say categorically polymer—meaning plastic—striker fired—as opposed to hammer operated—handgun. Like, so polymer striker fired guns are the easiest to use. They're reliable. If you get one from a brand like Glock, you're going to have a lot of parts everywhere. If you get it in a common caliber like 9mm, there's going to be ammo everywhere when there's not a general ammo shortage. That's a different story though. But yeah, I don't know, that's what was important to me on top of the reliability, on top of like the usability for me and my body. Which, ultimately, that's what this is all about, right? It's a tool. So you don't want to get a screwdriver or a saw that sucks to use, you want to get one that molds to your body and that you can like use exactly how you want to use it. And I think the same goes for a gun. You can hold guns at gun stores. That can really suck though. I mean, not a fun, like, situation when someone you don't know hands you a gun and expects you to act in a way that you might not understand yet. So I'd say if you know anyone that has one that you know is—or that you have some level of trust is going to be safe with it, or if you've had some conversations already, then you can ask them if you can like hold it. Or, you know, if the priority isn't buying the gun but just kind of, like, trying to figure out which one you ultimately, like, someday maybe soon want to buy, then maybe just start doing some research and try to figure out like what size you're going for, what your application is. What's your goal. Yeah.

Margaret I'm going to make a suggestion other than Glock just to be conflictual, and I do this on ya’lls Instagram all the time and you all are very polite and don't argue with me and just ignore it. Which is that I really like—it's still a polymer frame striker fired 9mm handgun—but I really like the M&P series from Smith and Wesson. And frankly I like them because I think they're prettier. I think Glocks are ugly, and I don't like that because I'm vain. 

Camilla They are prettier.

Margaret And one of my favorite experiences—and this actually has nothing to do with the quality of Glock, I think it has to do with the hand grip—but I was shooting once with someone who was just being really really dismissive of my M&P and was just singing the praises of Glocks, and then his Glock kept misfiring and my M&P didn't misfire during that, and so I was very vindicated and was winning people over. And so this is the kind of thing that you can look forward to doing is having meaningless opinions about minutiae. And that's the main reason to get involved with gun culture is to have large disagreements about minutia, at least that's the main thing I would argue.

John I mean no, you're right Margaret. The whole point of gun culture is to pick a brand and then saddle yourself and hitch your wagon to that brand for the rest of your life until your're dying days. I mean, you know, that's it. Why else get into guns, you know?

Snow That that's why I got into it, personally. I’ll just, you heard it here first folks.

Camilla This is my nightmare.

Snow Yeah.

John For the record, we do like the M&P, especially the 2.0, Margaret great. That's why we don't argue with you and, yeah, so.

Margaret Good. Thanks. Especially now that the the Shield Plus is double stack now, and so you can get a reasonable number of bullets into a semi—a subcompact, and that's why my concealed carry gun is a Shield Plus.

John It’s probably worth mentioning, just very quickly, like a lot of us like Glocks. But ultimately what Camilla said is really what hits the heart of it. I mean, you're really looking for something polymer striker fired in 9mm. So striker as opposed to hammer. You get the most bang for your buck. That was terrible. I didn't even mean to do that. 

Margaret You’re fired.

John You get the most like value ad per dollar up to around, like, probably like 600 or so dollars. And then after that you're really having diminishing returns there. I mean we had a post that people actually got really mad at us for about a Soviet surplus gun called the Makarov. And we told people to buy a Hi-Point instead, which is $150 polymer striker fired 9mm and it'll shoot quality defensive ammunition, unlike some sort of crappy Soviet surplus weapon. And you're probably going to get hate mail now, Margaret, for publishing this opinion.

Camilla And if you want to get a rifle, get an AR platform or an AK platform. We can go into more depth if you if we have time right now, but don't don't get old, needlessly specific guns from history unless you already have guns that accomplish all your core needs.

Snow Also, like, don't buy a Scar as your first rifle. 

Margaret Oh, what’s a Scar?

Snow Ah, it's a french—it’s funny, when I was first getting into firearms, the French abbreviation is FN, and I'm like, what the fuck is that? Fucking Nice? And so now whenever I see it I'm like “fucking nice.” 

John Fabric national.

01:01:09.89 Snow But it's a fucking like $5000 starting rifle that looks cool, shoots well, eats through optics, but it's kind of like—it's like quite the undertaking if you're new to shooting rifles. And, like Camilla said, you know, AR or AKs—like AsK used to be popular in the way—oh well, “used to be,” excuse me—they still are popular. They used to be more affordable compared to like AR platforms. Now, not so much. You know, they range in like the $900 plus now, whereas before you get a quality AK for like $500 give or take. But I think for folks that are new to rifles, like, ARs tend to be more modular, meaning that you can add more easily different accessories on your carbine. So you can add a flashlight, an optic, a little, you know self open charm maybe. But you can just have more rail options for the AR and it's much easier to just, like, do it yourself versus, like, the AK which has a different structure. So it's a little bit harder. Like some come with like a side mount. Sometimes you have to install that yourself. And so it's just more steps and oftentimes you need like gunsmithing tools to get that kind of stuff done. And so that can be a barrier for folks. So I mean, the AK looks fucking cool, you know. I have one. What can I say. But like, it just depends. Like AK reloads look cooler, you know, because you got that bolt that's just—that click is just so good. But it's a lot harder sometimes to add on stuff, especially if you want to keep the wood furniture that looks just like so good. But it's a compromise to either have the aesthetics of the wood furniture or getting, like, a rail installed.

John One of the YPT homies ended up having to take an angle grinder to I think a handguard so would fit on his AK because it was the wrong type of AK. ARs, like, just get parts, put them on. If you like angle grinding stuff, yeah, knock yourself out. I don’t—I’m not handy like that. Also, yeah, second what Snow said about the Scar. It's nice. It is not $5000 nice. Nope.

Margaret Well clearly this would never apply to guns, because of course there's different laws about the transfer of guns and you by and large can't buy people guns legally, and so—but there's always the kind of, like, once you hit the level of diminishing returns of a survival tool, I find that it's better, rather than getting the like super fancy version of the thing, is to just get another one and give it to someone else. Because I'd rather the person walking next to me having a good enough first aid kit instead of me having like the super best one, you know. And again, obviously this gets very complicated with guns. But there are parts that are not the gun that you can buy for people and might be worth spending money on instead, you know. Okay, well we've been talking for a while and I guess like I kind of have one final ambiguous question that you can kind of reframe however, you would like, and I—it's a little bit of a, like, “why guns?” What does community defense look like to you? What is the—what are you going for here. Sell me on it. Or talk about something completely different. Do a final thoughts thing. Totally up to you.

Snow And I could take a stab at it. This is, yeah, another thing that I've mentioned in some of our previous podcasts. But essentially, like, I could be a rainbow belt in unnamed martial arts, but ultimately, like, if some 6’7” motherfucker wants to harm me like, you know, I'm kind of fucked. And so in some ways like it's an equalizer, right? And that's not to say that, like. my firearm is my first line of defense. Of course I'm going to do all of the verbal de-escalation, prioritize escape, whip out my pepper spray, you know. But ultimately, like, it's something that I feel like I would need for my own safety. And also community safety, like, we've seen chuds, right-wingers, what have you, like, attack people just like marching in the streets, exercising their first amendment rights. And we've seen them pull guns on people, right? We've seen them murder people. And it's just kind of like, if they got them, like, I think it behooves us to also consider getting them, right. Because, as cliche as it says, like, you don't bring a knife to a gunfight, right? Like, if they see that you have one, they're going to think twice. And if they don't think twice, then you have at least the means to defend yourself and whoever else that you're with. And I think the time or the argument for, like, “Well we just need to get rid of guns” is like fucking so done. Like, it's too late for that. We're so far removed from that reality that to say that is just, like, it's just—I mean, it’s just that, it's not based in reality. Like, that's the life that we live in. And it’s like, you know, did Vietnamese people during the American war in Vietnam, like, have a strong opinion on guns? No. But did they also pick up guns? Yes. Right? Like, at that point in time it wasn't about a matter of opinion, it was about a matter of survival. And that is kind of—that is how I see it is that it’s, you know, I'm not here to philosophize, you know, all day long. It’s, you know, understanding and being aware of the situation and like the climate around me and taking the means that I feel like I need to defend myself and those I love.

Camilla I think about it and have like rationalized it to people in my life to help them understand that I'm not necessarily out here training for today or tomorrow. I have, like, an informed realist kind of like perspective on what might lie ahead, and so I'm kind of like trying to get myself to somewhere other than behind the eight ball when it comes time to use those skills. I don't necessarily walk around thinking about the imminence of, like, collapse, civil conflict. But I do want to be prepared for that like when/if it happens. I know it’s, like, a very blunt way of talking about it. But it's very real, right? And it becomes a thing where it's just like, there's such an overwhelming amount of people on like the authoritarian right that have access to these tools and know how to use them, and I just want to help, like, hyper-local communities near me, and wherever else listeners might be, and people who aren't even listeners, to like—whatever, I want people to be able to defend themselves, and that's fundamentally what it's about for me.

John For me, I want to second everything Camilla and Snow said. I actually like it when they speak before me because they are more eloquent than me and say things that I wanted to say. Just to add on to that: for me, why do I want to own a firearm? It's the utter failure of the state. And I'm not even sure it's correct to call it a failure, because it never, like—the state is—the state never protects people like us, right? The state exists for the benefit of the ownership class, white men, and it doesn’t—it's not a failure to protect us. It never was designed to do that in the first place. So when you're talking about community defense, Snow’s right. You don't bring a knife to a gunfight. You get the best tools for the job. I hope I never have to use a firearm in self-defense. Community defense to me, like, you know, I'm not even say—no one's got to go—I’m not saying that anyone's got to go Antifa super soldier and, you know, go march around out there. Although some people do that. But community defense to me can be as simple as, you know, giving someone like pepper spray, right? Which is an extremely effective deterrent. Go on our Instagram, see us blasting one of our homies in the face with it. It—I almost puked and I was, like, I was there. I almost puked. You know, it can be just teaching someone who is interested in guns like how to, you know, how to use a gun. Like, you know, maybe they want to get into guns and like learn how to use them themselves, or worst case scenario, at least they know you know gun safety. But you can't rely on a government or the state to protect you, and in many cases you can rely on them to probably harm you. So you just gotta do it, you just gotta do yourself, rely on yourself and the people in your community, and the people that you trust, and your friends.

Margaret Yeah, and—to interject my own answer to question I asked you—like, just thinking from what you are talking about, one of the things that I think about a lot is that, like, because people—you know, I think sometimes people don't arm up because they're like, well, I would lose a gun fight. And right—well, like, maybe—like, probably—like, you don't really win gun fights, you survive them. And for me a lot of it is just about like—people say like, oh, not being a statistic, right? Because, like, I don't want to get murdered like sometimes people look at me like they want to murder me when they realize I'm a man or whatever, you know. After they're, like, they're checking me out in the dress or whatever. And I don't want to get murdered, but I also just like don't want to passively get murdered. Like, for me, I don't know if this resonates but, like, it's not that I think I'll win. It's that I get to, like, shoot them also. Like, it becomes fair. And so then I'm like, all right, well I fucking lost. Okay. Like, I mean, I don't want to lose. I don't even want to play, I don't want fight, but… I don't know.

Camilla No, I think that's super valid. I think that's very real. Like—and I don't know—especially for us trans folks, like, it's a different thing for me politically. It's just like, it's resistance to like a type of genocide—genocidal conditions that exist in our country towards gender deviance. So—and sexuality. But like, I’m thinking specifically about, like, the obvious violence that's directed towards trans people. And yeah, fuck yeah, if that continues being the case, I'm going to carry something to defend myself with the same lethal means that will be used against me if someone just, you know, whimsically decides they want to—which kind of feels like it's the score out there sometimes.

Margaret Yeah.

Camilla Yeah. I don't know about y'all, but that's kind of my thing.

John Snow, you made this point I think on a previous podcast. It was just like, did y'all learn nothing from summer 2020? Did ya’ll learn nothing from that whole experience? Joe Biden gets elected and we're like, all right, cool. It’s all good, yo. The same people that were talking about ACAB or whatever. It’s like, well you can't be ACAB and be gun control. Like, who do you think is going to take your guns? Who do you think is going to do that, you know. You can’t. I think you made that point, Snow, and it's correct.

Snow Yeah and I think too it’s just, like, I'm not fucking going down without a fight. Like it’s, you know, I've fucking come too far. You know? Lincoln Park is playing in my head right now. And it's like, I have so much to fight for, not just for myself but for my loved ones and my community. And like, it's that drive and like will to live that I've, , had to cultivate for some time. It's not something that has come naturally to me. And I've, like, struggled with my mental health a lot. And so to finally get where I'm at, I'm like, you're not fucking taking that away from me. And if like you're gonna fucking come up on me like that, like, it's gonna be a problem for you and me. And I really like what you said Margaret around, like, you don't when gun fights, you survive, right? And like, I am fucking trying to survive out here, you know, just a ho trying to make it out here. And like, I want that to be a choice that I don't have to defend all the time. You know? 

Margaret Yeah.

Snow I feel like I have to like have a like dissertation for a PhD on like why deserve to live and I'm just tired of it. Like, I'm tired of it.

Margaret Oh my god, that's such a fucking good point. Like I finally just, like, my like stock line is, like, self-defense is a right. The current most effective form of self-defense in modern society against lethal force is a striker fired 9mm semiautomatic handgun.

John I'm dying. I’m dying over here Margaret, sorry. 

Camilla Amen.

John A-fucking-men.

Margaret And then, you know, on a community level, it’s a semiautomatic rifle—or carbine, which is a shorter rifle, for people who don't keep up with—I don't actually remember where the barrel lengths change between the definitions. But okay, well, you know, there's so much more that I want to talk to you all about and I'd love to have you all on again, but it's definitely running long and then, I guess I wonder if you have any, like, final thoughts about any of the stuff we've been talking about.

[Jeopardy music]

John I got something. I don't know, maybe this is like too big or something, but I don't know. Like, I think the people in Yellow Peril, they know me as like just a sort doomer person. And I am like, that's completely true. But honestly, like, one of the funnest things and one of the most, like, empowering things is like when I'm out there like with my friends and I’m, like, shooting. And a lot of times, like, I fucking suck. Doesn't matter. Like, it's fun, and I I feel better about life. I mean, it sounds cheesy, but it's true.

Margaret All right. Well, where can people find you? I know you're not really online or anything like that but—you know, it's funny, people—I get in trouble for my dry sense of sarcasm a lot, and it's been really kicking in really hard the past couple months. But where can people find you online or find out more about what you do?

Snow We are on a few platforms. Our main platform is Instagram @yellow_peril_tactical and we're also on the Twitter, regrettably. But our Twitter is @yptactual. And if you ever want to send us an email. We're at yellow.peril.tactical@protonmail.com, and we also have a website but we don't really do anything with the website. I think it's just yellowperiltactical.com. But that's where to find us send us a DM.

John We got it because we didn't want anyone else taking the website.

Snow True Domain wars.

John And if you're on Instagram, keep typing it in because we're sort of like shadow banned. You have to typing it in, like, yellow_peril_tac and then it usually shows up.

Margaret And you all have a podcast. What's it called? How can people find that?

Snow So yeah, our podcast is Yellow Peril Tactical Tiger Bloc podcast, and we're on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And you can also find us on Patreon. I say Paaaatreon because I want to be British sometimes. But we’re on Patreon, give us a follow. It's just to help us cover our costs. We don't make any profits off of it. But this is something we do in our free time. And John Chinaman, what's our Patreon.

John Ah, you can find it, the best way to find it is actually like going to like our Instagram or Twitter and looking in the Linktree and just click on it. It's there.

Margaret Okay, and it looks like yawls Patreon is patreon.com/yellow_peril_tactical. 

Margaret Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it. Tell them on the internet or tell them about it in person while wearing a mask, or not wearing a mask depending on your risk analysis and how well you know the person. You should tell people about the show if you liked it—which you probably didn't hate it because you made it this far, and you can also do all of the internet things as well. You can subscribe and rate and review and do all of those things that make machines tell other people to listen to this podcast. You can also support this podcast by supporting Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness, our publisher, on Patreon which is patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. And we are publishers of radical culture. We’ll be putting out zines, and podcasts, and pop culture reviews, and fiction, and poetry even maybe, and a whole bunch of other stuff, and you all are going to help make it happen. Well, some of you all are. The people who support us on Patreon are making it happen, and I'm very excited. There's nothing more amazing than watching a project be able to come forth and do so much stuff. Because Strangers in a Tangle Wilderness has been around for almost twenty years but it's been on and off, and watching it get reinvented anew like a phoenix from the flames. Yeah, I'm going to leave in that terrible metaphor and you can help and you can help by supporting us on Patreon. And in particular I would love to thank Hoss and Chris, Sam, Nora, Hugh, Kirk, Natalie, Eleanor, Jennifer, Starro, Chelsea, Dana, David, and Nicole for making this possible. And well, that's all for me, and I hope you're doing as well as as you can in everything that's happening.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support this show and others on Patreon at patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Margaret 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 also welcome back to the show. It's been several months since I put out the last episode and you'll be shocked to know that's because a bunch of stuff happened in my life which is, you know, everything to do with everything that's going on in the world. Um, maybe most importantly I moved and I now live on-grid in Appalachia instead of off-grid and Appalachia, and I'm very happy for the transition. It's pretty cool to have enough electricity to make this show. And also have an oven that works. I really like having an oven. And I also got a puppy, and I got a puppy who is rescued, so I've not—I spent several months where instead of sleeping or getting anything done, I had a puppy. I still have the puppy but now I get to sleep because the puppy is like five months old. So that's where I've been. And, yeah, welcome back to the show. This week I'll be talking with Summer who is my friend who is an ICU nurse in a rural area in in rural Oregon, which is not the most lefty area, and we're going to be talking about pretty much the—the politics of vaccination and some of what they've dealt with during the pandemic. And I think you'll enjoy it. And this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh da duh da da daaaaa.

Jingle 1 The Final Straw is a weekly anarchist radio show. It’s fucking awesome, and you’re never gonna hear me say fucking awesome on our show because we’re FCC regulated.

Jingle 2 There’s a black part of my heart that just flutters when you talk like that.

Jingle 1 [Inaudible] talk than more yelling.

Jingle 3 It’s a weird sort of like nice thing, in a way, that also can get kind of frightening at times.

Jingle 1 Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org

Margaret Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with like your name, your pronouns, and then I guess a little bit about what it is that you do that is the reason I invited you to talk on the show today.

Summer My name’s Summer. I'm a nurse, I live in Rural Oregon. I use they/them pronouns and I've been working in an ICU and have experienced now working in a Covid ICU—full Covid ICU. And I come from a background of radical politics and we're here today to talk about some of that.

Margaret Yeah I guess I wanted to have you on because I've seen some of your social media posts about the hate that you've gotten at the—at the ICU that you work at and I know there's a lot of conversation right now about what do we do about the unvaccinated people who end up in hospital, and you know, combined with the—there's a lot of like news stories about, you know, the ungratitude of the unvaccinated folks and things like that. And I guess I just wanted to talk to you to get more of a firsthand idea of what it's like working at an ICU during Covid in a pandemic. I already set the Covid part.

Summer Sure, um, so to give a little context: like I said, I live in a rural area of Organ. It's predominantly conservative, a lot of libertarian bent, um, included in the state of Jefferson—if you're familiar with that as a concept. And we experienced a huge Covid surge in our ICUs August through October of this last fall—or summer into fall. Maybe even into November really. And so rural area with low vaccination rates. Like I said, a lot of libertarian politics. And during that surge we were experiencing some of the worst numbers in the country in terms of infection rates and it hit our hospital pretty hard. We serve, uh, like very wide rural area. We’re, um, the highest level trauma center within hundreds of miles. And so we get people from a really wide region of the state and even from Northern California. And our ICU just got flooded with very, very sick Covid patients. It's a fifteen-bed ICU and as soon as that filled up, you know, it really impacted the entire hospital system. And it ended up that our ICU and our step down unit were both full of critically ill Covid patients during that time frame, and we ended up having the National Guard and FEMA nurses present at the hospital to just help it continue to function and help it serve the Covid patients and the rest of the patients in the hospital who needed care. So that's the larger context of what was going on. And then more specifically in my experience, you know, the politics around the pandemic not only impacted, like, who's getting vaccinated and who's not and the numbers and how they grew so rapidly, but really, they impact and trust in the medical system. And there's already a lot of reasons for a lot of different demographics and populations to have distrust in the medical system. But right now we're experiencing that kind of expanding into different demographics and different populations. And the things that I think you're referring to that I've experienced was, you know, there was a day during our surge where the national news actually came into our ICU to report on what was happening in this rural area. And, you know, at that time the vast majority of patients we were seeing were unvaccinated. And that very same day there was a protest outside the hospital against the state vaccine mandate that had not been enacted but was upcoming, that would require all health care workers to be vaccinated, um, barring a religious exemption. So we left a shift where the national news was present, high Intensity, we lost like 3 patients that day in our small ICU I think, um, to walk out of the hospital to hundreds of people across the street protesting the vaccine mandate. And then, you know, of course mixed in there are antivaxxers are—you know, generally antivaxxers— more far-right folks mixed in. It was a pretty tough day, a pretty emotional day for a lot of us walking out from some really intense cases in the ICU to a public that is completely undermining your lived reality, you know, just on the other side of these doors, right? And I think that that's, you know, that's a thing that's been seen at different areas across the country, that tension that's escalated between healthcare and the public. And I think there's so many things that we can say about that. But really, I—you know, this question of like vaxx versus antivaxx, um, it's something I've thought out about quite a lot, obviously. And I actually had a friend somewhat recently who, um—a mutual friend I believe—asked me whether I still have compassion for unvaccinated patients. You know, going off of his experience of having healthcare worker friends who are kind of just totally disillusioned around vaccination rates and taking care of these patients who didn't take what seems like the obvious step to take care of themselves.

Margaret Yeah.

Summer And the answer to that is like, yes, I definitely still do have compassion for these people, and um I can understand not—I can understand the frustration. I'm still frustrated, right. It’s still easy to get really angry. But for me it's the same as any other patients that I treat, whether it's an OD, or a DUI, or people coming in with exacerbations of chronic illness. It's not really my job to judge why someone's in the hospital. It's not my job to moralize their suffering. And if you're in a Covid ICU, that is like a hellhole of suffering, let me tell you. These people are suffering in a major way and experiencing a huge trauma. Not just the patients, but families as well.

Margaret Right.

Summer I also, you know, have to contextualize it in this much larger situation where we have a government that is, like, face planting, a public healthcare system that is face planting on managing a global pandemic in our country, and this huge amount of misinformation that's out, both about, you know, a vaccine, but also about a virus and what that is, and about a pandemic and what that is, and what it takes to protect yourself from one another. And so I have a lot of compassion for people who, their world is just a different reality. It's a reality where the facts don't line up, right?

Margaret Yeah.

Summer And a lot of us experience that now, right? Like, what is reality? Sometimes you can't even have a conversation with someone about facts, about what's real and what's not, and I experience that a lot talking to family members in healthcare at this point.

Margaret Yeah. I mean, it's interesting comparing it—kind of, like, subtly comparing it to harm reduction, right? I feel like that was actually one of the most, you know, that was like the way of putting it that really got to me, like, when you just set that just now is because I—yeah, I do think of the like, well obviously these people are making decisions that I don't, right? Um, and yet that's a decision we've made at least in terms of the opioid crisis to just not have any judgment towards, and it's kind of interesting. Also because when you talk about the suffering that people are facing, right? Like, it comes up every now and then that someone who is kind of terrible dies, right?

Summer Right.

Margaret And then, in some ways, especially if they have a lot of like political power or whatever, everyone talking shit on that person who's died. Whatever, I don't I don't care. But on some level there's a certain amount of, like, well can't ask accountability of the dead. You know, like, um, like say—so for example, someone dies doing something very like heroic and good that we all agree is a good thing, but they have a long history of doing bad things. There's kind of a like, well, but they can't do anything about that now, right? There's no way for us to ask for them to do anything about that. And so, maybe even the people who survive who aren't vaccinated who end up in the hospital—I mean I guess what we're kind of saying is, like, get vaccinated or face the consequences. And they were like, “consequences, please.” And then they face the consequences. So on some level—

Summer Yeah.

Margaret —like what more can you ask? They’re suffering, you know.

10:20.19 Summer Yeah. But even in in my regards, some people don't really understand—many people don't really understand the consequences. Not only have many people not really seen what an ICU is, what a ventilator is, what someone's body looks like after weeks on a ventilator. Um, but in their version of reality, the truth that they've been presented, this whole thing isn't real for some of these people. And I'm not exaggerating. Like I have met—I have talked to family members at the bedside of their loved one who has an 80–90% chance of dying—because those were the rates we were seeing in our ICU during that surge—80–90% of our intubated patients were dying of Covid—who says, “I just didn't know. I just didn't think this was real. I didn't think this could happen.”

Margaret Yeah.

11:14.96 Summer “If you were going to get a vaccine, which one would you get.” Like, those are conversations I've had with people, you know, and it's—that's what really for me is so heart-wrenching is, like, the dawning of knowledge upon these people in the worst way possible. Like, that shouldn't be the way people have to understand the truth is by watching their family member die because of what they've all believed. Um, and I mean, I've witnessed that regret from family members for sure, and I—this isn't to, you know, I'm not like a flawless person or something. I also get super fucking frustrated and I've had family members yell at me on the phone about Ivermectin, um, when I'm like, that's not—there's no evidence to support that as a treatment in severe Covid cases. Like that's, like, become this, like, this sentence I've repeated so many times. And it's—that's super challenging when you're working with a team around the clock that is like monitoring literally everything that this person's body is doing, from like every milliliter of urine they’re producing, to all their blood work, to the pressure that's programmed into the ventilator to keep their lungs open, and then you walk out of the room and there's a family member on the phone yelling at you about how, well there's no evidence to support vaccination, and you're staring at their loved one unvaccinated on a ventilator. You know, it's like this this dissonance.

Margaret Yeah.

Summer Um, like I—it's like you're reaching across a span that's really great in those instances, you know, because you don't have a common understanding of what the world is right now.

Margaret Right. It's funny because I kept waiting, you know, like hearing stories about that—obviously I don't experience them—but hearing those stories, I keep kind of waiting for it to, like, break through and for people to be like, oh okay, like, my cousin died and now all of my other cousins are getting vaccinated and I'm going to and, you know what, I'm going to actually tell my friends at the bar that we should get vaccinated, especially if we keep hanging out at a bar. And like, I kept like waiting for that to happen. And at this point I've completely given up on that ever happening because of—

Summer Well it does—it does happen sometimes. And I'm not trying to be, like, a blasting ray of hope, because it doesn't happen a lot, too. You know, but I have seen—like I have cared for a patient who was on a ventilator for over 60 days and then you know, was brought—like he's, the patient's awake now and can talk and whatnot. And any team member, any—whether it's a physical therapist or a nurse or anyone who walks in the room, the patient immediately now asks, “do you have the vaccine.” And because of the experience that this person has had, they’ve completely changed their mind about vaccination, of course. And at our at our hospital you have to be vaccinated to work there at this point, so it's kind of a like moot question, but I do see people turn around in a really big way. But it's just so unfortunate that they have to have what to me looks like one of the worst experiences I could possibly imagine in order to come to terms with the reality that we're living under, you know?

Margaret Yeah

Summer And I get it, you know? I get the root of where people are coming from is distrust of the government, distrust of the media, distrust of healthcare. Like, uh, relatable? Like yeah, I get that. I also don't trust those things, you know?

Maraget Right.

Summer And, you know, depending on what background you come from, you have even more reason. not to distrust those things, especially healthcare. And so I can't, you know, stand on my moral high ground and pretend that I get it and I'm right and they're wrong and I'm smart and they're dumb, you know. Like that doesn't really get us anywhere when the actual reality that I'm faced with is a person in front of me who is deeply suffering, who we're going to try our best to take care of.

Margaret Yeah. I, you know, I'm sure you get this daily and maybe it's annoying, but it's like, I can't imagine being able to do what you do, you know, and then, like, maintain enough, um—yeah, okay, like how do you maintain enough faith in humanity to go to work? Is that too blunt of a question?

Summer You know, I go to work. I don't know if I maintain faith in humanity.

Margaret Ah, okay.

Summer But I keep going back somehow. And it's been Hard. It's been really fucking hard. And if anyone's listening and you are close to anyone who's working in healthcare, especially if they're working and an ICU, like, I can't emphasize enough just taking care of your friends, and even just asking, hey man, shit sounds rough. How are you doing? Like, that goes a long way, you know? And yeah, how do I keep doing it? Honestly it's like—and I guess this ties into some of the topics you kind of mentioned talking about today—um, it's the team that I work with that really does make a big difference. And, you know, going into nursing as like a queer person with this radical background, I felt really alienated from my co-workers. I kind of had this, like, mindset that I was like an alien walking into a foreign land and I didn't want anyone to know I was an alien, you know. And I still feel that like every day of my life everywhere I go but—

Margaret This is unrelatable. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Summer Yeah, you have no idea what I mean. Um, but over time I've developed relationships with people who I probably would never have five years ago, and, um, the type of solidarity that I experienced in the workplace might not be like #radical or something, or #anarchy, but um, those bonds are really important and really powerful, and I know that my co-workers would show up for one another in so many big ways, you know, like, it's not called mutual aid there, but it sure as fuck is. The way that I've seen people show up for one another, especially in these crises. And, yeah, it's—that bleeds into so many other things about nursing and mental health and the crisis that's happening in nursing right now.

Margaret I mean, we could talk about that. I'm curious about that.

Summer Yeah, I think that you know some people are kind of—who aren't in healthcare are kind of aware of what's happening, but I think a large number of people aren't really aware of—

Margaret Which is that everyone's rushing to join the field because you all are well-respectcted, well-paid, and taken care of? Loved by society?

Summer Yeah—and yeah, not facing these like ruptures of, like, what is real on a daily basis.

Margaret Yeah, that’s right.

Summer Yeah, exactly it's going great.

Margaret It’s utopian.

Summer Become a nurse, everyone. Um, no, but there is a—there's a huge crisis happening right now in nursing and there already was this like nursing shortage, right? Like when I was in nursing school they would talk about the nursing shortage. And really what it was was, like, a lot of nurses were retiring at retirement age, and what I see as the biggest barrier wasn't that no one wanted to be a nurse, it's that—it's twofold. It's like we have an aging population with complex chronic health conditions, so more patients, right? And then we have people who want to be nurses, but we have educational institutions that are trying to make as money as much money as possible, and limiting the number of people who can access degrees in nursing. And we maybe don't have enough educators. Maybe, you know, probably a lot of stuff that I don't know about or not qualified to talk about. But and that was already the baseline when I entered the field of nursing, and then you lay on top of that this huge pandemic that is just totally changed everything, changed what nursing looks like. And like, side note, also a lot of healthcare workers have died of Covid. And it's not like an extreme number, but I think the number from the World Health Organization last October was between like 80- and 180,000. I believe that's worldwide. So—and I don't know what percentage of those are nurses—but like, you know, that does play a role, fear of that probably plays a role, and then it's extreme burnout and trauma. Like, you know, I mentioned earlier that during these surges—and probably these numbers differ from hospital to hospital—80–90% of our patients who were put on ventilators for Covid were dying. And, you know, we're pretty used to dealing with people dying in the ICU. It's kind of, like, what we do is try to prevent people from dying. But inevitably people die. Um, but when you have 80–90% of the people that you're taking care of dying no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, no matter what interventions you try, it is demoralizing to say the least. You know it's awful.

Margaret Yeah.

Summer It's truly awful. Um, and it's like an already high-stress job that then you add that on top of, you add the public discourse on top of that, you add the politics, you add the family's yelling at you about whatever treatment they heard about from Joe Rogan or, you know, whatever. It just creates this stress level that's, I think, unprecedented and really difficult to manage. Um, and there's that narrative of, like, the public not caring about nurses, or the public not understanding what they're going through, but even bigger is like policies that reflect a lack of care for human life in this country, which, you know, our job as nurses is to preserve human life. And then we're faced with the government, healthcare—or public health policies that don't value human life. So there's like that dissonance going on.

Margaret You talking about the, like, the way the CDC keeps changing, like, what's being valued or whatever?

Summer Yeah, I mean just all of it. The way that, um, both presidents who have been elected or serving—or whatever the fuck you call what they do during this pandemic. The way that it's been managed, the way the way capitalism manages this pandemic does not reflect a care for human life, right? It reflects the care for capital. And that just—when your job is to preserve human life and you see all these policies coming down that you're like, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck? Like, this doesn't line up with what we're supposed to do. Like, this doesn't line up at all. And then you have, you know, places that lack appropriate PPE for nurses, like, these policies that don't reflect I care for healthcare workers. It is, like, the whole picture is a big labor crisis, because people of course are going to be like, the fuck am I doing here when I could do x, y, z thing, right? And, like—

Margaret You should try podcasting. You don't have to leave the house.

Summer I know, I’m thinking about it actually.

Margaret Okay, cool.

Summer And I am lucky in a lot of ways. Like, I live on the West Coast, I am unionized, my pay proportionally is a lot greater than some parts of the country, like some parts would rule south where nurses are getting paid garbage, right? And don't have a lot of the protections that I do. And, I mean, I can keep listing all these things. Like you mentioned the CDC, like, growing lack of trust in the CDC as an institution, as a healthcare worker, because they just say garbage that is not evidence-based. They tell you you're supposed to, like, work your job based on policies that have no evidence behind it. There's just—everything's starting to feel more and more arbitrary, right. Um, and it's gotten to a point where, like, I hear my coworkers in the break room talking about the different psych meds that they're trying. Or like, the different anti-anxiety pills that they're trying, and the different dosages that they're trying, just to manage, like, their job. Now, off course, that's not everyone. I'm not trying to be like overly-dramatic. But it's definitely a trend. And then the—you know, the other side of that is, like, you have people just leaving the field entirely. But you have a shit ton of people who are going to be travel nurses and, like—a travel nurse, for people who don't know, it's an RN who can pick up a contract. Hospitals around the country do this, and have done it since before the pandemic. You pick up a contract for a certain number of weeks for a certain pay. You work that contract, you move on. Um, people do this for short periods of time, for long periods of time, but during the pandemic it's been totally amplified, because you started having these crisis contracts, some of which were funded by the government, to send nurses to places that were really impacted by the pandemic and lacking staff. And you had these huge, huge incentives—like huge pay bonuses—for working in these extreme conditions. And at first you saw that, you know, in places like New York and whatnot with big surges. But now pretty much everywhere is hurting for nurses, and they will hire travel nurses for up to, you know, 4 or 5 times what staff nurses are making at that same institution. So you work under these conditions for long enough, your management tells you for long enough that they can't do—they can't give you PPE or they can't give you a retention bonus, or they just can't, they can't, they can't. Of course eventually people are going to be like, well fuck this place, I'm going to go make 4 times as much 2 hours away or next state over. And so it's turning into a situation where we have more and more travel nurses in hospitals, and less and less staff nurses. And like, that in itself doesn't sound that problematic until you think about, like, what's the difference between a nurse who's been at the same institution for 10 years and one who's been there for 3 days. It's like a commitment to that institution in a certain sense, right? At least a commitment to the community that they're serving in maybe some way, and knowledge of the way things work there because every hospital is going to be a little different. So it does, you know, in some senses pose a safety concern. Um, and in some cases people who are getting travel contracts are maybe not necessarily qualified to work in the positions that they're getting hired to. And I've seen that happen before. People are chasing the money, and I don't blame them right? So anyway, that's like a lot of talk. The whole crisis. But it really is becoming a crisis. At our hospital I see people who I don't think of as, like, labor organize-y or, like, radical by any means, who would describe themselves as moderate talking about this stuff in terms that are getting more and more pressured. And I see people who are talking about leaving who I would have never imagined would leave. And we have management telling us, we can't pay you more because we have to pay all these travel nurses. Well, if you paid us more we might stay and not become travel nurses, right?

Margaret Can I just become a travel nurse and stay here? Actually, do people do that?

Summer Yeah, um, no, they try to prevent you from doing that.

Margaret Oh, okay.

Summer But I have people that I work with who even took travel gigs north like 2 hours, and so they're still living where we live, they just drive 2 hours to work and make 4 times as much.

Margaret Yeah, yeah. One of the things you were talking about earlier, you know, watching the nurses like trust the CDC and the government stuff less and less. And it ties into that thing that you were talking about earlier about how a lot of people have good reasons not to trust the government, and so that's like something that we can all—I think anyone who's thought through most things would have reason to distrust the government, right? Any analysis of history, almost regardless of your background, but obviously some backgrounds more than others. There's good reasons to not trust the government.

Summer I can think of like 5 reasons not to trust.

Margaret Like a little list?

Summer Top 5 reasons not to trust them.

Margaret Yeah, totally. No, this is good. You’re going to be a good podcaster. Better than me. But the thing that works—that it comes down to for me—and it helps that I know people like you. I know medical professionals. You know, my joke for a long time is that the way to get health care in this country is to date a doctor and then stay friends with him. Um, because that's how I had my health care for a very long time, is that my ex is a doctor now. Um you date one boy, you pick the right one. Anyway. Um, and yeah. But the thing is this like—okay, so I don't trust the government. What I trust is people. And so, like, people are like, well why do you trust the government telling you what's good for your health? And I'm like, no, I trust my friends who are doctors. And it's not even like I trust doctors as a category at large, because I also understand why people are nervous around that. And it is this position of privilege where I am around people who have made those choices or have access to those choices to become medical professionals. But it's like, no, I trust you, like I trust you—it's just interesting to me. I don't know like how to—this is my solution. This is how we get, um, you know, all the nurses just go to the people and you'd be like, look hey, don't listen to the government, listen to me. I don't know.

Summer A flawless plan.

Margaret Maybe, everyone to listening, trust us! What could go wrong? Trust the voices and the headphones. Unlike Joe Rogan, don't trust Joe Rogan.

Summer Yeah, don’t trust that voice in your headphone. Yeah I really get it. Why not to trust institutions, why not to trust, uh, what feels like big government saying, now do this to your body. You know, it’s the good thing to do. But, and before the vaccine came out, you know, I had my own, I'll be honest, I had my own hesitations about whether or not I would get it. But the moment that it was made accessible to me I was at work and I got an email that said, hey, you can make appointment. I picked up the phone immediately and made an appointment. I kind of surprised myself with how, like, my response to it. Like how ready I was to get the vaccine. It was pretty early on, it was last December, um, but part of what really changed it for me is kind of what you're talking about. Like not thinking about it as, like, the government made a vaccine or, you know, Pfizer made a vaccine, but thinking about the individual people who worked on producing that vaccine and, like, you know, we've all met science nerds, right? That's like, they're passionate about their nerd-dom around science and I was just imagining people like in these labs working their fucking tails off to produce something. And, you know, whether they do it for money, or glory, or fame, or out of, like, a care for people, who knows? But, I don't know, for some reason that comforted me, thinking about people like pouring their hearts and their minds into this project. But, I mean, that kind of like brings us back to talking about vaccines, right?

Margaret Which vaccine did you get?

Summer Um and I have Pfizer. Yeah. Does that mean—is this like a horoscope reading? Does that mean something about me?

Margaret Yeah, probably. We need to come up with that.

Summer My sun and moon are and Pfizer. Um I just—I've been thinking a lot about this like vaxxed versus unvaxxed thing. And especially in the Biden administration, and how so many liberals—probably more or less well-meaning liberals—thought that, like, Joe Biden was going to turn us around in terms of the pandemic. And what we've seen is, like, definitely not. We have not turned this thing around, you know? Like not even close. By no means have we turned it around.

Margaret Well, I mean, you know, there's like a million people a day getting Covid. Oh yeah, nope. I see what you mean.

Summer Yeah, yeah. And ultimately it's like, I just take issue with this really neoliberal response where this control of a global pandemic is being placed on the actions of the individual, right? Whether or not the individual makes the like “good” or “moral” choice to get vaccinated, and ultimately to me it feels like this fascist tendency. Like we've, like, identified an internal enemy which is the unvaccinated, right? And like those are the people responsible for all of this, for the economy failing for—like what does that narrative sound like, you know? And like this is all to say, like, yeah, I'm provaxx. I'm vaxxed. Like, I think it's a good Idea. You should probably get vaccinated. But I don't, you know, we're talking about like a global issue here and whether or not your neighbor’s vaccinated, ultimately like there's bigger fucking questions of like why there's been such a failure in public health to manage this pandemic. There are countries where this isn't the reality, you know?

Margaret Yeah.

Summer Their numbers right now are like in the dozens, maybe the hundreds. Like, that could have been our reality if this had been managed differently on a policy level, and I'm not even like a fucking policy nerd, you know? I'm just like, wow y' all did bad. Like this has not worked out. And the hyper-focus on the, like, choice of the individual, just like it does with green capitalism, it pulls our attention away from these larger structural issues and institutional responses to the pandemic. Like, are we really—like, don't question Joe Biden, question your neighbor, you know. Don't be mad at like the CDC, be mad at like the guy out on the street. Like, it's just a really ineffectual way to manage this. And it also—like the narrative around, like, well if only they'd get vaccinated. It's just like writing off the deaths of these people as inevitable and as, like, not worth our care, or our time, or our thought. And I don't think—I mean, maybe I can think of some people who like “deserve” to die of Covid, but I don't think the vast majority of people who are dying deserve it by any means, you know.

Margaret Right.

Summer And um—and we're at a point too where like even vaccinated people are getting sick, so it becomes, like, this really big question, right?

Margaret Yeah, and I guess—I guess it's like people are putting their faith—even if they're not putting their faith in government, they're putting their faith in like Fox News or whoever it is who's, you know, telling them not to get vaccinated.

Summer Right, yeah.

Margaret Instead of putting their faith in themselves and their own decision making. Yeah, no, that's interesting. You know, okay, so like one of the reasons that, like, you know, green capitalism—it's like the—well, if you'd only change your light bulbs to LEDs a little bit earlier, we wouldn't have climate change, everyone knows that. If you, Summer, hadn't changed—had changed your light bulbs, still hold you responsible for this. And, you know, and so it's like we all see how that's bullshit, and I can see how that that makes sense about this. But it is interesting because some of the—some of the ways it seems like that countries are handling it successfully do challenge some of my anti-authoritarianism on some level.

Summer Yeah.

Margaret And so it would be less about giving your neighbor the choice, and in some ways it is about like vaccine mandates. It's like, well, if you want to keep working at this thing that you do, you need a vaccine. And I actually don't have—like people ask me a fair amount as, like, a sort of public-facing anarchist or something, people be like, well what is the, you know, anti-authoritarian response about vaccines and stuff. And for me, it's like fairly easy. It's like, well, I don't want to get sick and I don't want to get other people sick, so obviously I take the thing that's available to me that can minimize my chances of that and, you know. But if you're talking about on a policy level, like what does that look like? What does that mean?

Summer Yeah, I don't—honestly, I don't know. It's something I've thought about a lot too because I don't want to come across as, like, everyone should do what they want, because I obviously don't feel that way. Like, that's not limiting—that's what we're doing and it's not limiting suffering. It's not preventing people from dying. It's not preventing people who are medically fragile and don't deserve this from dying, you know? Not that—I don't want to come across that way at all and, like, have you have you read Climate Leviathan”

Margaret I have not, but I once listened to a podcast where they discuss the basic concept. So I basically have read it.

Summer Well, it just it creates this like interesting…w hat would you call it… like, this categorization of different ways that governments could respond to the ongoing climate crisis, right. And there's like climate Mao, which is kind of—resembles like the way a country like China might respond to the climate—or is responding to the climate crisis. And I've been thinking about that in terms of, like, the pandemic.

Margaret So using, like, top-down authoritarian control.

Summer Yeah, yeah. But like left-wing authoritarian, I guess. And in China the way that they're dealing with pandemic right now from some of the stories I've read is, like, people who have tried to travel there and you test positive and you are forcibly put into isolation, you know.

Margaret Right.

Summer You know, you're given treatment and you don't really have a choice. Is that good? Ugh, you know, doesn't make me feel good. And then you have a country like ours which is more of, like, neoliberal, that, you know, we're seeing what that response looks like. Like, freedom to the individual and then like what fuck happens then? It's a shit show in its own way, and all the policies are geared towards, you know, maximizing capital instead of valuing humans or human life.

Margaret Right.

Summer And then there would be like a right-wing authoritarian response, which I don't know what kind of example to give for that. But then there's the, like, what is the response that you're talking about? What do we come up with that's like an antiauthoritarian leftist response to a global pandemic, and I don't know, really. But I do know that, like, things that come to mind are like, we talk a lot about informed consent in medicine and I don't think that people have the right education and right information to make informed decisions around a lot of this. That's like a huge issue, right? Like, our education system, our public health system, our media and the way that—you know, back to what we were talking about earlier, the way that like there's this split in reality, the reality that people are experiencing. Like, people are not making informed choices about their health when they choose not to vaccinate—often. Sometimes they are, but often they aren't, right. Because they don't have access to all the information—or not being given all the information in unbiased manner. So that's one of the things I think about. And then, like, global vaccine equity is huge, right? Because we can't pretend this is just a national issue, like that's absurd, viruses do not, like, acknowledge borders. Like, why we treat this as if it's, like, in an enclosed space ,right, that is called the United States when, um, the border is, like—yeah, it has like very real and fucked up implications in the world. But it's also a concept, right? And like, we need to acknowledge this as a global problem, or else, you know, we're going to keep getting these variants, we're going to keep getting more waves of Covid. So, yeah, I don't really have like a solid answer of, like, how do we deal with this in an antiauthoritarian way. But there's things we can do better, that's for sure.

Margaret I had this like huge moment of, somewhere between disappointment and fear, like I think there was, like, a news story that broke about, like, Russia, like, hacked some of the people researching a vaccine and stole their research or whatever. And everyone's like, oh, damn you Russia. And I'm like, wait, what? It wasn't freely available? Like, you like to imagine that when there's a global pandemic all of the smart people who specifically study that get together and say, like, okay, what's the best plan? And then they all figure it out together and we can have our Star Trek moment where we realize we’re all going to fucking die unless we do it, right? And something about, like, climate change and carbon emissions and stuff, I see how that like screws the economy—I'm completely in favor of this approach to climate change, mind you—but like I could see the argument for it's really more complex than that and it has all these implications. But I just like can't see a defense of intellectual property for vaccines and for medical care. You know, I just, I cannot fathom— especially, even from a self-interest point of view of like as you said, the, you know, vaccine does not respect borders. And so, like, I'm glad I have my like third shot—my booster shot—but it like kind of irritates me that there's, you know, plenty of people who've never had access to it at all, you know, elsewhere in the world.

Summer Mhmm.

Margaret I mean, I think that would be part of anti-authoritarianism, right? Is that you have this like, well obviously we don't respect these like borders or capitalism enough to say that, like, you all can, you know, hide the intellectual property of how we take care of ourselves. But it does get into interesting questions around, like, when you when you bring up informed consent, right. Because you're like, okay, well—I'm almost afraid to get into these kinds of—it's such a murky territory. But it's like, okay, if you have a community of people where they're like, oh, we all agree we're not vaccinated and it might fucking kill us and whatever, you know? But in some ways the consent—like, do I consent to allowing people who have not chose to be vaccinated get near me, you know? Like, what direction does the consent go? Like, I don't know the answer to that, but part of me thinks that the, you know, in the same way that we use informed consent with sex around STIs, right? And like, it's not to say that someone who has STIs like shouldn't have sex, it's just that you just need to have an informed, consensual sex. And like all sex, you know, because it's not like it's like a binary where some people have STIs and some people don't. I’m not trying to like, you know—people don't always know and then there's all these things that people have that—this is why it's so messy. And like, so, I'm not trying to be like, oh, if you want to hang out in Plague Village in Plague Town you can, right? I don't know, it gets—it's really complex and I just—like, I actually almost appreciate but mostly begrudge how much all of this challenges, I think not just like my ideological position, but like all the ideological positions that anyone who's actually thinking clearly comes into this with. If you came into the pandemic with a clear ideological position and it hasn't been challenged at all by the pandemic or climate change, I think you're lying to yourself.

Summer Yeah, or you’ve just like—maybe if you're a capitalist you're still just like, yay capitalism, you know.

Margaret I'm going to Mars, fuck all you!

Summer Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean there is a lot of nuance and I think it's made a lot of us pretty uncomfortable, right, to be like, should the government tell us not to leave our houses? Like maybe, is that a—maybe that's a good idea? That can't be a good idea. You know, like, it is really uncomfortable.

Margaret Yeah.

Summer And it's uncomfortable to be an anarchist or an anti-authoritarian and be like, well, the government should definitely just give me money to stay home. Because then it's like, oh, like—well, you know what—I don't have to explain it. But like, I think there is a lot of discomfort. There's a lot of weird ground here and like, it's—I think that, ultimately, it's just hard to imagine a widespread anti-authoritarian response to something when we live under capital and we live under this extreme—in this extreme situation, in extreme circumstances where we have very little control over something That's so widespread and overarching.

Margaret I think that is the answer.

Summer Yeah. That's not just you like no control, right? Like, we do have some control over our day-to-day lives, over what risks we're willing to accept, how we share information and resources and all that. Yeah, but some of it just feels very, oh yeah, so icky.

Margaret Yeah I mean but it also gets to the level of, like, well, for example, something someone could do is stay being a nurse in the ICU. You know? I'm not trying to convince you to stay your job, you do whatever you want. But like, you know, I feel like that is a—you know, because so much of the response—or like, all the mutual aid organizations that popped up, you know, is like, in some ways that is our response. Because we don't control society, but we do control ourselves and we do control, you know, collectively control smaller organizations and things. Which might be too Pat of an answer.

Summer I'm sure I'm sure there's like people more creative or smarter or something than I am who have a really great response to, like, what could that look like. But if—I know in my life for me right now it's just become—like my circle's gotten smaller in a lot of ways and I just try my best to take really good care of the people that are closest to me, you know. When my friends get sick with Covid I, like, bring them food, and I bring them care boxes and whatnot. And that seems kind of like mundane or simple. But for me, coming from my like ICU nursing position, that's kind of the best I can do. And help people understand what's going on, too, people who I'm close to who are like, wait, what the fuck does this—wait, what's happening with this thing? Like, not that I'm an authority, but I do have some room to speak from here. So.

Margaret Well, is that no okay question to ask you? This will probably come out maybe a week from when we record it, so maybe everything will have changed. But like, what the fuck is happening right now? Is that something I can ask you>

Summer Oh god. You mean with like Omicron, or?

Margaret Yeah, and like, you know, there's a lot of discussion right now about, like, do we throw our hands up in the air and say, everyone's going to get it anyway?

Summer Oh god.

Margaret You know, both like in terms of, like, what kind of response is like appropriate—or even like what response like you take in your personal life, or like the people around you take in your personal lives that you respect, you know?—Whose choices around it you respect. Everyone listening do exactly what Summer is about to say and don’t think for yourself.

Summer Oh my god. Everyone who's listening, do not do as I say. But I think I have a couple of responses to that in terms of, like, what's going on right now with Omicron and, you know, we're seeing a ton of breakthrough infections. We probably all know people who are getting Covid right now. Do we just, yeah, throw our hands up in, like, let nihilism take over and let everyone get sick? No, that is a horrible strategy for managing a pandemic. That's a terrible—

Margaret Oh, interesting.

49:57.48 Summer A terrible strategy and, you know, it does kind of bring me back to policy because so much of Biden's campaign or whatever, the dialogue around it has been about vaccination. And vaccination, yes, that's a tool. But that's not—I guess what I'm thinking of is there was like a statement that Biden made at some point that was like, we have such a great vaccine program and rollout and we’re, rah rah, we're doing the best. It's just those damn unvaccinated people. And it's like, if we have this many unvaccinated people, is our vaccine campaign really that good? No, it's not. It's not good. It's not going well, you know, we could do better.

Margaret We’re doing great in the war except for the enemy that keeps winning.

Summer Exactly. Yeah, it's like, what the hell? And I, you know, I think that like just throwing our hands up and saying, well everyone's going to get sick, it just fucking sucks because I think people are riding on this notion that, like, well, Omicron seems to confer less severe disease. Which, yeah, that's great, right? But if more people are getting infected—we're playing a statistics game, right? If more people are getting infected, then a smaller percentage can still be a bigger number of people who have severe disease, you know what I'm saying? And in like a place that's, like, where I live, where our resources aren't extensive in terms of like ICU medicine, our ICU is 15 beds. It only takes 15 people with severe Covid for us to be completely overwhelmed in a hospital that's already completely overwhelmed, in a hospital system that's overwhelmed, in a health care system that's overwhelmed. And so even if people—even in another situation where the people coming into the hospital don't have severe disease, they just have bad enough disease to come to the hospital, you're still dealing with a healthcare system that is, like, teetering—and I mean it, like really teetering. So everyone getting sick is not a great solution. I think that like, I can't tell anyone—

Margaret But what if we do it all at once?

Summer I can't tell anyone what to do, but in terms of what I do in my life is like, you know, I've all along assessed what risk feels appropriate for me and it's a harm reduction thing, right? It's like, we can't expect people to make the decisions that we would make for ourselves. We can give them the best information possible and the resources and hope for the best, you know, hope for the best outcomes. And I'm not going into indoor dining. I have friends that I see, a lot of them are nurses. I do a lot of outdoor activities so I'm able to see people outdoors a lot. I'm still having some dinners with friends, but I live—I also live in a rural area where, like, transmission isn't quite the same as it is in like big cities, right? So probably some people would take issue with some of the activities I participate in. But that's why I'm saying, like, not everyone should do what I do. But, I don't know, you just, you really need to think about the impact, right? Like, it's not not a big deal if you get sick, and I'm saying that with this assumption that whoever’s hearing this has, like, a level of health and immune function that I do, and a lot of people don't, you know. Like I think we, like—“we” being, you know, maybe me—not trying to make assumptions about you—but a lot of us think, oh, this this isn't conferring severe disease, and we're not thinking about our friends, our community members who are really compromised at baseline, who are disabled at baseline, who are chronically ill at baseline, and who maybe aren't “useful” to capitalism at baseline. So it's easy to write off their illness and their deaths as insignificant. It's only affecting people who have chronic illness, you know, like we hear this narrative a lot. Like, 40% of Americans have chronic illnesses. 40%!

Margaret Oh, that’s a high number, yeah.

Summer Yeah, and not all of those are gonna, you know, make it so you get severe Covid. But I’ve treated patients who their, you know, their chronic illness was hypertension. That's what they came in with, and they're intubated now, you know. And I'm not saying this to like fear-monger but just to, like, there isn't some “other” that is the chronically ill that is the immunocompromised, like, people all around us have these things that they’re managing at baseline. So all of us getting sick: bad plan, was the summary of what I just said.

Margaret Yeah, yeah. Well no, it's—I mean, it's interesting because it talks about the—when you're talking about, like, okay because people hear, okay, Omicron is less likely to cause severe illness. But as you pointed out, more people are still ending up, you know, we're still seeing a spike in severe illness like hospitalizations and death right now as a result of it. And it is—I think it's because, on an individual level, every individual is safer getting Omicron than Delta, potentially, right?

Summer Yeah, potentially yeah.

Margaret And so, any individual, especially probably those who kind of had in the back of their heads like, well, I'm healthy, I'll probably survive, you know, anyway, going on. Then hear this like reassurance. But yeah, we don't—we don't tend to think of ourselves at scale. We tend to think of ourselves as us, or at least I do way more than I would like to, you know?

Summer Yeah.

Margaret No, it's interesting. [Laughs] “Interesting.” What a wonderful word for what we're dealing with. Okay, well we're—we're kind of—we're coming up near an hour, but I guess I wanted to ask, do you have any final thoughts about Covid pandemic, you know, why people should go become nurses, or not become nurses, or anything to impart upon our listeners?

Summer Um, I guess one thought that I have is, you know, I know a lot of us come from communities like DIY communities or communities that really value that ethic, and I also value that. But I just, like, want to remind people that, who are treating symptoms at home if they do get Covid or whatever they're treating at home, that if you're going to, you know, use herbal, or nontraditional, or traditional remedies to treat things like this, you just also have to have—you have to be judicious, you know. A lot of us have laughed a lot about people using Ivermectin or something like that. But I've treated a patient who was treating Covid at home with tonic water and homeopathic remedies, and I think it's easy to scoff at that, but like, one person's tonic water and homeopathic remedies is another person's, like, tinctures, right?

Margaret Right.

Summer Like these just are coming from different cultural backgrounds and situations. And that's not me writing off herbalism by any means, I just want to remind people that, like, in any situation, whether it's first aid, whether it's—we're talking about Covid. There's a point at which we can't DIY anymore, you know. And I just want to like throw that out there because, um, it’s unfortunate, right, that we have to rely on institutions, but they're there for a reason. The ICU is there for a reason, and we can't DIY the ICU. So um, yeah, and just to have compassion for people who are trying those other remedies that seem absurd to you, because your remedies seem absurd to somebody else, you know.

Margaret Yeah. Well, join us next week when we talk about how to set up a DIY ICU. No, no, no, that makes so much sense. And one of the things that I feel like I've learned a lot by talking to people for this show is kind of this, um, like, the institutions that run society are bad, but society is good—or like, the concept of having a society is good. Like DIY is great, but not everything should fall on you, or even the do it ourselves. Like, you know, we actually do need to learn to expand the “ourselves” in do it ourselves. And like, I don't know, I think one of the things that gave me the most hope that you said during all of this is talking about coming into the hospital system, you know, as a, like a queer weirdo, and then being like, oh, I'm not going to get along with anyone, and then like having these deep connections with people outside your usual bubble. I think that that's, like, so important and one of the things that gives me hope is that, you know, there's actually this like—these larger structures that are still just made of people that we can all work together and figure things out.

Summer And, I mean, a lot of those people— I get why we should be skeptical of anyone in a lab coat or whatnot. But a lot of those people really do fucking care, and they really want to do their best even if they fuck up sometimes. So, I'm not trying to be like, woohoo, trust all nurses. But like, some of us are, you know, we're doing all right.

Margaret Yeah. Okay, well do you have any either, like, personal or like any projects that you want to shout out to draw attention to while you have the moment?

Summer I wish I did. I was for a while working on a project around here called Rogue Harm Reduction providing Narcan and STI testing for free, and Narcan training and whatnot. I haven't worked on that project in a while. I got pretty burned out at work, as you can imagine, so I took a step back. But that's a project I'll shout out to, you can look them up on social media. They're great people doing great stuff.

Margaret So they do still exist and people can go support them?

Summer Yeah. Margaret Awesome, well thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it. It's the main way that people hear about it is word of mouth or, I guess mostly word of internet mouth at the moment. And, you know, you can feed all the algorithms that run the world that probably shouldn't by commenting, and posting about it to all the social medias, and doing all of those things—they have kind of a vastly disproportionate effect compared to what you might think. Every comment and every thumbs up and every subscription and all of that means that more people will run across this content. And if you want to support the show more directly, you can do so by supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which is the publishing collective that publishes this show which I'm part of. And you can do that by going to patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. I used to be supported by a personal Patreon, but owing to various things in my life, specifically that I have a nonprofit job now, I no longer am supported by that I'm supported by my nonprofit job. So instead the Patreon supports a bunch of different people who are making all kinds of awesome content and I'm very excited for people to check out Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and all the stuff that we're going to be doing in 2022? Yes, that's the year it is. It’s a new year. I'm still not very good at that. And I want to thank all the people who support the show, but in particular I want to thank Nicole and James and David and Justine [inaudible], Sean, Hugh, Dana, Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, and Nora for making this show possible. All right, that’s it and I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on, and take care of yourself and take care of each other.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

Margaret talks to Casandra about canning, drying, and other means by which to preserve food.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

Margaret 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 this episode we're going to be talking about food preservation and specifically canning and dried food storage and some other things. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh daaaaa.

Jingle One two, one two. Tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth Black radical podcast for the people. Our hosts, hip hop anarchist Sima Lee, the RBG and sex educator and crochet artists KLC, share their reflections on Maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trapped liberation, and everyday ratchet. They deliver fresh commentary with the queer, transgender, non-conforming, fierce, funny, Southern guls, anti-imperialist, anti-oppression approach. Poly ad and bullshit. Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero National, Buzzsprout, SoundCloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.

Margaret Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then maybe a little bit about your experience with prepping, like, I don't know, if you like work for any prepping podcasts that people might like, if you want to shout them out, but also your experience a little bit about what we're going to be talking about today.

Casandra Yeah, my name is Casandra and I use they or she pronouns. Um, I don't know, I've always been interested in foraging and gardening and preserving food and I happen to work for this really cool prepping podcast called Live Like the World is Dying.

Margaret Casandra is our transcriptionist and we've been talking—I've been bugging them more and more about food preservation. And finally I was like, can I just have you on the podcast? And then you have to listen to the sound of your own voice as you transcribe it. And they said yes, which was nice of them. So okay, so most of your experience in terms of food preservation is canning, is that right?

Salem Speaker 2 Yeah, that's—I think the two things that I do most are drying and canning, but I also do some fermenting and, like, salt preserving.

Margaret Cool. Okay, well, let's talk about all of it. Do you want to talk about the different methods of food preservation and which ones are appropriate for which foods and what you like the most?

Casandra Yes, I think there, there are two things that I think about when I'm deciding how to preserve something and one is, drying, for instance, is good for like really long-term storage. But—and it's also good because the food is lightweight, right? So it's very portable. But in my day to day life, I'm much more likely to use like canned food. So ease of use is another consideration when I'm deciding how to preserve something. And different food is best preserved in different ways. And that's something we can talk about when we get into canning especially a little bit later. Like acidity, how juicy something is, those things all come into play.

Margaret Okay. Why preserve food? I mean, like, obviously, you could just go to the supermarket and buy the food instead of canning it or preserving in other ways. Like, I mean, that sort of—that part's sort of a joke. But what is it that appeals to you about DIY preservation of food, like what got you into it?

Casandra Um, I live in the Pacific Northwest, and there are certain times of year where food is really abundant and accessible. And it just at a certain point seems silly to me to not take advantage of that if I could. You know, so if I have access to, you know, dozens of pounds of green beans once a year, why not can it instead of going out and buying it in the winter?

Margaret Okay, so what are the methods of preserving food? You've mentioned some of them, but is it possible that we could get a list of just, like, what—there's canning, salting, pickling, drying, what am I missing? Smoking? Curing? Is that what you would call that?

Casandra Yeah, I guess smoking and curing could—smoking is like a form of curing I think. Freezing. What else? Did we say fermenting already?

Margaret No, we haven't put that one yet.

Casandra Fermenting.

Margaret Okay, should we just go through them and talk about why each one's great?

Casandra Yes, yeah, we can definitely do that. It's hard to like, it's hard to talk about them all at once because they're all so different so...

Margaret Yeah.

Casandra Yeah.

Margaret Well, so if possible, I mean, like—one of the things I'm really curious about is that, like, when you look at green beans, you're like, okay, green beans belong in a can. And then when you look at something else, you're like, oh, that belongs fermented. You know, hops, obviously. But what, um—is it just the different methods just work for different foods, if you like are working with meats you're mostly interested in curing them or freezing them or something? Like, how does all this work? How do you how do you decide?

Casandra I decide based on what I like to eat most. So like, which preservation method I'm most likely to use because I'm not interested in wasting food. And then also just like, which is the most accessible to me. So for something like green beans, I don't know, I guess you could dry them, but I don't think that would taste particularly. good. So I want to preserve them in a way that tastes really good that I'm actually likely to use throughout the year. And then also space, I think space is a huge issue. So my pantry is only so large so there are certain things that it makes more sense for me to dry like nuts, right? I'm not going to can walnuts, though I suppose you could. I'm just going to dry them and store them in a bin.

Margaret Does it just take up less space because there's like fewer individual jars taking up space.

Casandra Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. Definitely.

Margaret Okay. What, um, what's like the easiest to get into and/or what's cheapest?

Casandra Probably drying? Drying probably or salt curing because, you know, all you need to salt preserve something is salt.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra Um, but the drying as well. You know, you can sun dry or you can, like, create some trays for yourself and some airflow, you don't need a particular tool to dry something effectively.

Margaret Okay, what, uh—you said that drying tends to make things last longest. Like, what's the kind of like, scale there? Okay, so like, because you were saying how, okay, so you're saying how it's hard to talk about all of them at once because each one has like all these different pros and cons. So I'm trying to, like get you to talk about the pros and cons of different ones. But so like, what's the, like, you know, hierarchy of how long food can last. Like I know, for example, in my own limited research into this, I'm like, oh, I can store dried beans, dried rice, etc., for like, 30 years, right? But I'm under the impression that canning has a shorter shelf life than that. And in my head, of course, like it would be, like, freezing, there's a long shelf life as long as you have electricity, and then like cured food, it's like maybe not as lonh. But this might be my, like, my my weird, like, obviously, like, storing meat isn't as good or something. You know, my own non-meat-eating bias which I will attempt to not bring into this particular episode of the show because everyone's gonna make up their own minds about what they want to eat. But so what, um, so if drying last longest, what last least long and what—where is everything else in the middle?

Casandra Um, yes. I don't even know if drying last longest, honestly, because you hear about like, fermented or cured eggs that are found that are, you know, hundreds of years old and stuff—or like kimchi, like jars of kimchi that are still good after hundreds of years. So.

Margaret Oh lord, okay.

Casandra Yeah, yeah, so, you know, fermenting can be very long lived as well. But, but yeah, drying, as long as the thing stays dry and like bugs and mice don't get to it, as long as it's properly sealed, that's probably the longest—longest-term. And then the shortest—what would be the shortest? I think it's probably either canned or frozen. Like, food can be frozen for a long time—sorry—food can't be frozen for a long time but, like, it starts to taste like freezer at a certain point. So that's like my least favorite method, personally.

Margaret What does that mean? Is that, like, I've heard that like if you store things in the freezer for a long time it starts to like take on the taste of everything around it. Or is there like a specific, like, just as the cell walls burst of frozenness and whatever—I don't know anything about the science of any of this.

Casandra I don't know about the science of freezing. I'm not sure. I just know that, like, you know, if I lose a bag of green beans in the back of the freezer, a year and a half later the green beans don't really taste like green beans anymore. They kind of tastes like freezer.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra Which is gross. I don't want freezer beans. I'm also very anti-freezer just because we had—we had a, I guess a climate event here in February that knocked out power at my house for about 10 days. And so everything in the fridge in the freezer was compromised. And it sucked, and I lost a lot of food, and it was very stressful. But all of my canned goods and all of my dry goods were perfectly fine.

Margaret That's a really important point.

Casandra Yeah.

Margaret I know that's, like, classic prepper style is to have the deep freeze in your garage full of, like, you know, ideally some deer or something like that. But it always seems like it just requires so much electricity to maintain.

Casandra Yeah, and if, yeah. It's also—I mean, I think when we're talking about preparing for disasters, there's the preparing in place versus preparing to move. Um, and so something like freezing makes sense for preparing in place, but—and canning as well. But if you're preparing to move, then something like dried or cured makes more sense.

Margaret Yeah.

Casandra But even with freezing, like, when our power was out, I didn't thaw out frozen food and try to cook it over my wood stove, you know. It was much easier for me to just like open a can of soup that I had canned from the year before and warm it up. So even if I'm thinking about preparing in place, things like canning make more sense to me.

Margaret Yeah. No, such a—being in place versus going—I don't really have anything deep to say about that, I just, I think about that a lot. And there's a reason that all the, like, food you put in your, like, go bag is usually, you know, dried backpacker meals where you add water or whatever, you know.

Casandra Yeah. Which is good, in an emergency, but it's not super sustainable. So yeah.

Margaret Yeah. At the beginning of the COVID crisis when I was, like, alone all the time and I didn't know what's happening so I just didn't go into town and I just, like, ate through my—ate through my own food stores. You know, I definitely was very reliant on canned goods, canned soups in particular. And then also, like, when I lived out of a backpack and traveled I did rely on cans then but I relied on cans, like, you know, I don't like carry two or three or something like cans of chili or something. This wasn't a DIY canning. This was, you know, Amy's chili.

Casandra Right. And that's the other thing too is, like, Amy's chili in a tin can is—it's heavier than dried food, but it's sturdy. But I'm not gonna, like, put glass jars of food in a go bag, right?

Margaret Yeah.

Casandra That would be catastrophe waiting to happen.

Margaret Yeah, I learned the hard way that, like, several times I tried, when I lived out of a backpack I always like want it to travel with, like, this jar of almond butter, but it was glass. Or for a while I decided I was gonna be that asshole who lived out of a backpack and had a brandy snifter. And when I say for a while I mean, like, 24 hours?

Casandra 'Til it broke?

Margaret Yeah. The jar of almond butter didn't last as long as that, and that was a little bit more of a desperate thing, because when I dropped it I was like, that's all the calories that I have on me.

Casandra Oh, God. Yeah.

Margaret And I genuinely don't remember—I remember looking at it and staring at it and being like, do I pull out shards of glass? Or do I just not eat? Oh, yeah, I'm just I don't remember which one I picked.

Casandra Oh no.

Margaret I'm alive so I probably picked not eating the almond butter. Okay, so that's a good point. So is it possible to can and non-glass jars? Like okay, my head like canning requires mason jars. Which people buy in bulk. And they're, like, not crazy cheap, but I haven't looked in a long time.

Casandra I know that historically people have used tin cans, but maybe this is a conversation we could get into right now. But, like, modern food safety guidelines, everything I've read is glass jars. But the good news is, once you purchase the jar, this isn't—this isn't prepping like, you know, storing something away for 30 years and like stocking in bulk. This is, like, something that you do yearly and you're rotating through your food so you're reusing your supplies.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra Yeah.

Margaret Which actually, probably—and now I'm just purely conjecturing—is like a better way to do any kind of prepping anyways, like, it's like reminding yourself that it's very rarely for the long haul. It's usually for situations like what you had happen where, you know, you lost power for 10 days.

Casandra I mean even just part of your daily life. Like I'm—the main purpose of me doing things like canning and saving dry food is to eat throughout the year, not to prepare for disaster. But, you know, when there is a disaster I'm already prepared so, because it's just part of my daily life.

Margaret Well and I guess that's like the yearly cycle that I mean, I grew up completely alienated from, you know, I ate the same things every season of the year. But that's not really the way that humanity evolved.

Casandra Yeah. I mean, the nice thing about preserving food is that you don't have to eat the same things because you've preserved them for a different season. But it is cyclical, because, like, right now it's green bean season. So my weekends are canning green beans or tomatoes. And in a few months, it'll be nut season, so that's what I'm focusing on. But it gives me what I need for the rest of the year.

Margaret Okay, so I'm going to try and make this a pun but it's not going to work very well. Let's get into the nuts and bolts—but there's no bolts and food—of this. And let's talk about canning. Let's talk about, like, how do you get started canning? What is canning? Like, you know, I mean, if—clearly it's not just the can of Amy's chili, it's something else.

Casandra Yeah, so canning is preserving food in a glass jar, in liquid. And you're doing that by using heat and pressure to cook the food inside of it. Like, you're raising it to a particular temperature to destroy microbes and bacteria and things like that. And then it's also creating a vacuum seal. And that's what makes it shelf-stable.

Margaret Okay. How do you do it?

Casandra Hooray for shelf-stable food. There are different ways. So um, let's see. I think maybe I want to give my food safety spiel first before—

Margaret Yeah. Okay, cool.

Casandra So, yeah, so I worked in the food industry for a long time and I feel really comfortable with food safety. But I think that it's wise, if someone doesn't feel comfortable with food safety to, you know, do some research or learn from someone or take a class or something because botulism is fatal. However, canning is really safe if it's done properly. And so as long as you understand what properly mean, you're gonna be fine. And then the anecdote I like to give is that—Let's see—my my grandpa's mom—when I was learning to cat I was really nervous about food safety. And my grandpa was, like, don't worry about it because his mom used to can everything they ate in a two-tiered steam canter, which is just, like, outlandish. And she would do it on a wood stove, like, manually regulating the heat. And she would can everything from like meat to vegetables to fruit, which we'll learn in a second why that's absolutely insane. And, you know, she had 18 kids and none of them died of botulism. So—

Margaret That's—I mean, by that number, one of them would have died of botulism. Even if someone—anyway, yeah.

Casandra So I'm not saying like not to be safe, but just to know that, like, statistically you'll be okay, especially if you do what you're supposed to do. So.

Margaret Okay, so take the warning seriously, is what your—

Casandra Yeah, I think it was important for me to hear that like, no, really, you're gonna be okay. Because if you look at like the USDA website, or the like national—what's it called?—National Center for Home Food Preservation website. I swear, it's like every other paragraph, they're trying to scare you about botulism. Anyway, it feels like every other paragraph they're trying to warn you about botulism. And it feels really, like, anxiety-inducing. So it's something to be aware of but not to be afraid of, if that makes sense.

Margaret What is botulism actually, do you know?

Casandra Um, let's see. I think it's it's a bacteria that produces a toxin that is fatal. And the reason it's so scary is because most food spoilage you can see or smell, but botulism, you can't.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra Um, and it can even be fatal just with, like, skin contact.

Margaret Oh, wow.

Casandra Yeah, so it's it's very scary, but it—I don't know. I don't want to terrify people.

Margaret Well, how do you not make it?

Casandra Right.

Margaret I was reading something that's like has something to do with, like, whether or not there's oxygen or something?

Casandra Yep, yep. So it—botulism grows in an anaerobic environment, which means no oxygen. I think that's correct. I—so I learned from my grandma. That's the other part of the disclaimer. So the science is not something that I know a ton of out, which is fine. But the point is that if you follow proper, like, sterilization and follow recipes that are approved, you'll be fine. So you asked like three times what canning is and how to do it. So maybe—

Margaret Yeah yeah yeah.

Casandra Okay, so there are two different—there are three different types of canners. And they're used are different acidities. So the acidity of a food is important because the microorganisms in acidic food are killed at a lower temperature than non-acidic food. So for acidic food—and that means, like, fruits, pickled things that have like a vinegar brine—those are canned in a water bath canner or a steam canner. And then non-acidic foods like vegetables, meats, things like that are canned in a pressure canner because it helps them get to higher heat.

Margaret Where do tomatoes fall in, are they acidic are they—

Casandra So tomatoes are tricky because you—they're right on the edge of acidic and non-acidic. So if you add an acid to them, like lemon juice or citric acid, you can can them as if they're acidic, but if you don't, you have to put them in a pressure canner. And for a long time, whoever regulates canning shit, said that steam canning was not safe.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra But recently—I think it was Wisconsin University—some school in Wisconsin did a study and found that it is safe, which is great because I prefer it to waterbath canning, and it's how I learned to can.

Margaret And it also, I mean was this, was the test subjects just all 18 of your great grandmother's children, or? Because I think that's a large enough sample size.

Casandra I think so too. They also used the wood stove. No, so the difference between water bath canning and steam canning is water bath canning, you're just taking a big ass pot, and you're submerging your jars and water, and that's what creates the heat and the pressure and the vacuum seal. But it's really unwieldly because you're having to, like, deal with a big ass pot of boiling water. So steam canning is creating the same effect, but just with steam, so the amount of water you need is much smaller. So that's how I learned and that's what I prefer. It's very quick. And then pressure canning takes a special tool called a pressure canner.

Margaret You can't just put it in a pressure cooker.

Casandra No, but you can use your pressure canner for pressure cooking, if that makes sense.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra But pressure canners have—there are two different types, and don't ask me to explain the difference in detail because I won't be able to—but there's a weighted gauge canner and a dial gauge canner. And I believe what I use is a dial gauge. So it has this special gauge on top that tells you how much pressure you're creating within the canner.

Margaret So is the basic idea that all this food goes into a jar, the lid goes on the jar, and then you're trying to create enough pressure and heat to both cook the food and seal it? How does it seal it? Like is it, like, creating like a pressure difference inside and outside? That's like sucking the lid down onto it, or?

Casandra Yeah, yeah, that's my understanding. And it gets sciency especially with pressure canning because altitude impacts—

Margaret Of course it does.

Casandra Impacts the pressure in canning time. But that's why it's—so that's one of the benefits of following—let's talk about this actually, this will be useful. So, what makes a good canning recipe? Because it's important to follow good canning recipes. And they'll include things like how to make sure your food is acidic enough. They'll included chart based on altitude telling you what pressure you need, and also how long to can things. They'll tell you how and whether that changes depending on your jar size. So they'll outline everything like that in the recipe. So it's not, like, an equation you have to figure out every time you can a thing—unless you're changing altitude constantly, which would be, I don't know, adventurous.

Margaret Would you say it would be jarring?

Casandra Yes. Yes, it would be jarring. Yeah, once you know your altitude, it's very easy. And they're, like, companies like Bell jars put out entire books full of charts and recipes and things like that.

Margaret Okay, is there something special about like—like, I've never canned anything, but at various points I've looked at how to do basically everything. And I remember when I was looking at canning and a long time ago, I think I got shy—I think I got scared away by the botulism thing, honestly. And it was like something about, like, if you use the spatula—you use like a rubber spatula when you put the food in the jar, and if you don't do it right then you like murder everyone you know.

Casandra Yeah, so there are some basic safety considerations. So maybe let's, like, pretend we're canning something.

Margaret Okay. Is it green beans?

Casandra Yeah, let's can some green beans and we'll walk through the steps. So. So we're just canning plain green beans, which means that they're not acidic. So we're doing them in a pressure canner. So first you prep your food. So if we're prepping green beans, that means I'm snapping all the ends off. And I'm washing them and I'm, you know, I'm making sure none of them are, like, moldy or anything like that. And then I'm getting a pot going to prep my jars and my lids. The thing about jars is that they're glass. And the thing about glass is that if you put a hot thing into a cold glass thing, the glass thing will shatter, right?

Margaret Yeah. Which is why you don't drink coffee out of mason jars. Well, people do, but why?

Casandra But then they make the ones with the handles as if you're supposed to, you know?

Margaret Yeah, that's a good point.

Casandra Yeah, that's sketchy. Anyway, so sterilizing your jars and heating them up is sort of all done in the same step, you just toss everything in a big pot and put water in it, and you boil it for 10 minutes.

Margaret Okay, and that's not the pressure canner, that's just a pot of water on the stove.

Casandra Yep. And, you know, if you were to read like a canning website or something, they—people have all different methods for heating up and sterilizing their jars. I just think that that's like the quickest and the thing that I do because then they're both warm and sterile. So we're doing green beans. So, let's see, what I'm going to do next is take the jars out of the sterilized water. And I'm going to pack them full of these green beans. So we're putting all of our green beans in a jar, and we're doing something called raw packing, which means that the green beans are raw when I put them in the jar as opposed to cooked. And differrent recipes will tell you, you know what you should be doing. And then I pour warm liquid over them—in this case, it's just water—because if there are air gaps in the jar, that means that there's a chance air will get trapped, which you know, botulism and spoilage and things like that. But it also means there's a chance that the jars won't seal properly.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra Recipes, use something called headspace. So your recipe will specify how much headspace to leave in a jar. And that means the space between the top of your food and liquid and the top of the jar. And so they've timed their recipe based on the headspace. So if the recipe says 1/2in headspace but I leave, you know, an inch and a half, it probably won't seal because it's not in the canner long enough to like vacuum all have that air out. Does that make sense?

Margaret Yeah. And then you murder everyone, you know?

Casandra Hopefully they just won't seal and you try again. Botulism comes after the jar has sealed, and that's when things go poorly. Yeah, so anyway, so we've got our beans and our liquid in a jar. We wipe the rims of the jar because that's where the seal happens. So we want to make sure there's nothing like impeding that.

Margaret Okay. Oh, like a little piece of dirt or something that would keep it from—or like a green bean stem.

Casandra Yes, exactly. For things that are, like, chunkier, that's when your spatula technique comes in because you want to make sure there's there aren't any air pockets. Then you put your lids and your rings on. And then everything's really hot, so you make sure you use gloves and appropriate tools and load everything into your pressure canner with, I don't know, I think it's an inch of water. It depends on your canner. And then you seal it up and you start your canning.

Margaret Are those, like, electric systems or they like stovetop,

Casandra Stovetop, I've never seen an electric one, but I wouldn't be shocked if that existed.

Margaret No I just didn't—I've never seen one of these things, so I struggle to visualize it. Okay, so it's in the pressure canner and we start, and then you leave it for some length of time that is specified in the recipe?

Casandra Yep, yep. And, you know, different canners come with specific instructions to make sure that your weight is correct and your pressure is correct and things like that. So I won't, like, try to detail that out because it depends on the tool you're using. But assuming your weight and your pressure are correct, then you just set your timer once it's up to pressure and leave it in.

Margaret Okay. Is this, like, are they usually like around an hour, or is this like three days? Or what's—

Casandra It depends on the food and how acidic it is. So something like meat takes, let's see, like the the bone broth recipe I use—the canning recipe—takes like an hour and a half in the pressure. But something like tomato sauce takes 15 minutes.

Margaret Oh, because it's so acidic?

Casandra Yep.

Margaret Okay. Cool.

Casandra You know, that means that, like, on tomato day, I can get through a bunch of batches but on broth canning day I can't, so.

Margaret Yeah. What about tomato bone broth canning? Nevermind. Okay.

Casandra The lesson is not to—not to combine recipes.

Margaret See, I think that this is, like—you know, I've never been like a baker. I've technically baked things, but I'm not very good at following directions specifically. My mom isn't any good at this either. I hope my mom isn't—I have no idea if my mom's listening to the podcast. You know, it's like, I'll start a recipe and then somewhere along the way, maybe halfway, three quarters of the way through, I'm just going to do something different. I don't know why. And so I've always been a terrible baker. So maybe canning isn't the food preservation method that I'm specifically going to get into.

Casandra I'm in the same way though.

Margaret Okay. Okay.

Casandra And here's the thing. So like, with—there are so many fancy canning recipes. Like bourbon peach preserves, and—you know, like, people get ridiculously fancy. And those are never the recipes I use because I would be tempted to experiment. So when I—personally when I'm canning, I'm just canning, like, the most basic ingredients so that—like plain, just in water, I don't even use salt. So when it's time for me to cook later in the year, I can experiment because I haven't, you know, I haven't, like, made all of my beans into different like fancy bean recipes already. They're just plain beans. I don't know if that makes sense, but...

Margaret No, no, no, that makes sense. Okay, I think you've sold me on canning—this is—I mean, clearly our job is to sell me on each of these things, one after the other. Okay, so canning is good for something that you're going to cycle through at home. And so that's something that you grow or get access to at one time of year, so you can have access to it at another time of year. And you said you can also, like, can soups—is like the next level up of like the classic bachelor thing where you make a whole bunch of soup on Sunday and put it in the freezer and then just, like, eat that soup all week.

Casandra I mean, I do that. So I—soup is why I can, because my kid loves soup and that's just like what we eat during the winter. So I'll get off work and forget to have planned anything. So I'll just open a jar of broth and a jar of stew meat and a jar of potato—you know, I just throw it all into a pot. But that's like seven quarts of food into a single pot, so I think I'm doing both.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra So we have soup for a week, but it's from pre-canned food.

Margaret There's—I really wish I was on my puns and jokes better today. But somewhere there's a soup for our family joke.

Casandra I'm sure there is.

Margaret Hopefully someone will just tell it to me later on Twitter in a way that is either very charming or very annoying.

Casandra You'll have to send it to me.

Margaret Okay, so that kind of covers canning. Now everyone who's listened is capable of making up their own recipes and so let's move on from there to—what's next? What do you like the most after canning?

Casandra Drying.

Margaret Drying. Okay.

Casandra What do you want to know about drying, Margaret?

Margaret Well, I mean, okay, so like, I feel like there's two parts to it. And maybe I'm totally wrong about this, but there's both the, like, drying of the food and then the storing of the dried food. Does that seem like?

Casandra And then the preparing of the dried food.

Margaret Oh, yeah, no cooking is totally beyond anything.

Casandra It's not like a can where you can just open it and heat it up.

Margaret Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I mean, it's like—oh, so that means I should probably just make canned beans. I've always felt like a terrible prepper because I'm, like, I have all these like dried beans. Then I'm like, I hate soaking beans. I definitely just eat canned beans.

Casandra See, that's why I do both. So I get my, like, 50 pound bags of black beans, right? And I keep them in five gallon buckets. But then I rotate through them. So I will can large batches of them. So I'm only having to think about soaking them once, right? And then the cans and then I buy more dry beans to replace the ones I used, and then I have cans. Does that make sense?

Margaret Yeah. So you can soaked beans, not dried beans, right?

Casandra Yeah, well, they're dried and then you soak them so—and it's actually, going through the soaking process and then pressure cooking, essentially, makes them more digestible. So, I don't know. It's my favorite.

Margaret Okay. Yeah. Cuz like, it's like, one of the reasons I've given—it's really, I mean, people have probably noticed that I haven't done a lot of episodes about food. And it's not because I, like, think that like this other stuff is cooler. It's because, like, food growing, preservation, and preparation, like, intimidate the hell out of me. And, you know, I'm convinced that I can't grow anything because—I said this in like one of the last episodes—because I tried to plant a pine tree when I was a kid and I failed or whatever, you know. And I'm really excited to get to talk about this, basically, even though it's very embarrassing that I'm, like, in my mind I'm like, oh, yeah, when you soak beans overnight they always—you soak them forever and they always end up still just a little bit, a little bit crunchy.

Casandra Because you still have to cook them.

Margaret Well, yeah. But—ah, and then the pressure cooker being the way to—okay.

Casandra But we were talking about drying food.

Margaret Yes. Right. Okay, so yeah, so okay. So there's three different parts to it, there's the drying of the food, the storing of the dried food, and the the preparation of the dried food. Let's not too much get into the preparation of the dried food today. But let's talk about the, like, the drying and the storing. And I'm really sad about this storing because it's the only thing that I've, like, done any of at all and done some research about. So.

Casandra You probably know much more than me about the storage, but—

Margaret Only in that I took a lot of notes like last week.

Casandra Oh Good!

Margaret But okay, how do you dry food?

Casandra Um, so I use just a really cheap food dehydrator, like the cheapest one I could find on Amazon. There are really fancy dehydrators you can get. You don't have to buy a dehydrator at all, you can just, you know, set things out on trays and rotate them and, like, put a fan near them so there's airflow.

Margaret When you say set things out, you mean like in the sun?

Casandra Um, I guess if you want it sun dried, but I—in general, if I'm preserving food, I try to keep it out of sunlight.

Margaret Okay, that makes sense.

Casandra That's maybe—we didn't talk about canning and how long things are shelf stable, but generally, if food is exposed to sunlight, it affects its shelf stability. So.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra Um, but yeah, airflow is the—temperature and airflow are the major factors for drying food. So, especially if something's very juicy, you want it to be lower temperature with lots of airflow because if the outside of it dries before the inside, it's bad news. I guess it can cause mold for whatever's on the inside if it doesn't fully dry, but if it does fully dry, it means that like, say you're drying cranberries or something, they're rockhard instead of that, like, nice, tender, dryness. I can speak. So yeah, most of hydrators will come with like settings for different types of food. And you can look those up online as well. Like which foods need more heat, which foods want less heat.

Margaret How much does humidity affect this? Like I—where I live it's basically I live inside a cloud. All of the South is just a cloud for all of the summer and so, like, I can't even dry clothes on the line unless they're in the direct sunlight. So I assume I would have to use—I would have to use one of these, like, what are they, electric? The ones that you're talking about?

Casandra Yeah, I imagine so. I live in a not humid place. So I haven't had to think about that. Also storage, I imagine that you probably have more trouble with food storage.

Margaret I do.

Casandra Yeah. But, you know, then there are things that apparently great if you have a higher humidity, like—what I'm sure you're super interested in—salt curing meat is, apparently a higher humidity is better so—

Margaret Oh, really?

Casandra There's that.

Margaret I wonder what I can salt cure.

Casandra Right?

Margaret Just slabs of seitan. It sounds terrible. Okay.

Casandra The things that that I mostly dry are nuts and seeds because I grow a lot of sunflowers and also I live in the Pacific Northwest. So it's, like, filbert and walnut territory, acorn territory.

Margaret Do you have to prepare—the only one of these things I know anything about is acorns. And I know that you have to do a lot of work to get the tannins out of acorns. You do that before you drive them in this case?

Casandra You know, I've actually heard—and I'm planning to try this this year—but I've heard that it's actually quicker to get the tannins out if you dry them first because then, when you introduce water to flush the tannins out, it can, like, fully saturate the nut meat.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra Does that make sense? So you're getting rid of all the moisture first, and then when you introduce fresh water to the nuts, it can penetrate into the like flesh.

Margaret Okay. Because yeah, it takes forever to flush acorns.

Casandra It does. If you—I mean, you have a stream, so that would be much, much less time intensive. For folks who don't know, acorns are delicious, but only if they're not full of tannins.

Margaret Which is like, what, a natural preservative or something that's in them that, in order to human edible, you have to get rid of.

Casandra Yeah, I mean, there are tannins and lots of food. It's the thing that makes sour food sour or like astringent food astringent, but, you know, the amount that's in the average acorn can give you a tummy ache.

Margaret Okay, so is this, like, is this one of the ways that you would—because I assume basically all the nuts I eat in my life are, like, dried nuts, right? Because I'm not going around eating fresh nuts. So this is like one of the main ways, if you wanted to make the nuts that you grow taste like the nuts people are used to eating, you would dry them first in this way, right?

Casandra Like acorns or just?

Margaret Oh sorry. I was going back to like, you know, the other nuts?

Casandra Yeah, yeah.

Margaret Cashews. I don't know. You didn't say cashews, I was just thinking about cashews. Because I like cashews.

Casandra I think cashews are actually way different. Have you seen a cashew plant?

Margaret All of the nuts look really weird in the wild. I struggle to understand them. This is the most embarrassing episode I'll ever put out. It's just like, I'm this crazy person who lives in the woods. And I don't know anything about plants.

Casandra Because cashew is part of a fruit, right? It's not, like, in a hard shell like a walnut. Anyway. Let's not talk about cashews.

Margaret Let's not talk about cashews. I'll pretend like I know what filberts are and talk about them.

Casandra A filter is just—I think it's actually a different species than a hazelnut, but it's what we call hazelnuts here.

Margaret Okay, cool.

Casandra So like filberts and walnuts, things that have a hard shell that you crack the shell open, and then—you can eat it fresh. It's delicious, fresh. But if you want to store it, you just dry it.

Margaret Okay.

Casandra And some nuts you dry in the shell like walnuts, but some you don't have to.

Margaret Okay. And so drying is like a little bit simpler. It's like—

Casandra Yeah.

Margaret If you're drying walnuts, you look at the article that says "this is how you dry walnuts," and you put them in your dryer and you dry them.

Casandra I mean, I don't even put nuts in a dryer, because they're already so dry.

Margaret You just leave them out.

Casandra Yeah, I just—like, I put a blanket on the floor in front of my fireplace in the winter and just have a, like, mound of nuts that I—

Margaret Cool.

Casandra Like, rotate. So, but if you're doing something that's, like, quicker to spoil, I guess, like fruit or vegetables, than a dehydrator might be the solution for you.

Margaret Okay, how long—like, what are some of the advantages of drying food? I mean, obviously, like, certain foods, like nuts and things, like that's like almost, like, the way that you you store them, right? But it's like, I don't know a ton about, like, dried fruits—I suppose I know fruits a bit—but like dried vegetables, and, you know, is this, uh, like, how long do they last? Like, what is good about this method?

Casandra I think it's good because it's smaller so it's easier to store, right? It's also lighter. So that goes back to our conversation about, you know, preparing to be on the move as opposed to being stationary. For things that are snackable it's nice to have snacks, so like dried fruits, dried seeds, things like that. Um, I—there are a few vegetables that I routinely dry because I routinely use them. Garlic is one. I guess alliums. Can we call the allium family of vegetable? Garlic and onions are two of them because I don't really can them. You could ferment them, especially fermented garlic is really popular, I just don't do it. Um, but, like, the number of times I've gone to make soup in the winter and not had garlic or onions is embarrassing. But if I have them dried, I can just toss in a handful and it's delicious.

Margaret Okay, but like, so if you dry—how long does dried fruit last? How long do dried vegetables last? Like, is it, like, good enough to last you—kike most of these food preservation methods are sort of, like, meant to kind of get you until—set you up so that the next time—until the next harvest of the same thing. Is that kind of the general idea, like, so that you have this thing that lasts, like, hopefully almost a year, or?

Casandra Oh, they can last—I mean, I have like dried onions, dried plums in my pantry that have been there for two years and are perfectly good. The thing about, like, everything other than canning, is that if something goes bad, you can see it or smell it. So it's good until it, you know, it's good until you can see or smell that it isn't good anymore. And that depends on, you know, how you've stored it. Do you put—is it in direct sunlight? Is it totally dry? Is it in a hot place? A cool place? Things like that. But it lasts a long time. That's a really vague answer. I think you were looking for something more specific.

Margaret I mean, it's fine. We don't have to have, like, a chart—an audio chart of, like, you know, column A, the fruit, column B, how long it lasts with each different method. Okay, that's how you would organize the data anyway.

Casandra It seems like there should be more to it, right? Like, there should be more to talk about with dried food. But it's so simple. You just—

Margaret Yeah.

Casandra But storage you wanted to talk about and I feel like you probably know more about storage can I do.

Margaret Well, only because, like, I came into this with this "I don't know how to make food" thing, right? And, you know, I just remember a couple years ago a food scientist friend of mine was like—this was maybe like four or five years ago—was like, hey, I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but the supply chain on food is looking a little bit precarious this year, or whatever. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna just start having some, like, five gallon buckets of like beans and rice around. And that was probably what started me on the journey that you're all along for with me today. And so I just would go and buy, you know, basically prepper food, right? Ideally, the ones with like the least markup or whatever, but just, you know, five gallon buckets or huge cans of stuff that's like freeze dried or whatever and it's like meant to last 30 to 50 years on a shelf. And so I was doing that. And—but then I realized as I started to kind of, like, scale this, and more people are asking me for my recommendation. And I don't want to just be like, oh, go to Amazon, because that's the main place to buy Augason Farm stuff, you know—ans go for this company I don't know anything about. And instead realized, was like, well, there has to be a way to just, like, put rice in a five gallon bucket. It's like not quite as easy as that. You can do that and that'll last for a fairly long time, again, depending on your conditions, especially humidity and sunlight, as you mentioned, and oxygen is actually one of the biggest ways that, like, long shelf life foods go bad. And so the thing I've been researching, and I'll probably make a YouTube video about in the next week or so, is how to store dried goods for like long term storage, which is less the like—I feel like, in my head, there's like two tiers of food storage. And there's the more important one, which is what you're talking about and the, like, the things that you can cycle through and to get you through any given interruption. And then there's the sort of deep storage stuff where, I don't know, I don't see a reason for most people not to have, like, a month or two of food sitting in five gallon buckets in their basement, you know, that just sit there and you can pass them on to your kids. And—who will be like, really? Why are you giving this to me? But—actually, that's very optimistic to think that they won't immediately understand the need for such things.

Casandra Right.

Margaret And I like to imagine that will be around for 30 to 50 years from now. That seems optimistic, but I like it. So long term food storage, you can make beans and rice and many other things last 30-50 years. And the main way going at the moment—there's a lot of different ways to do it—but basically it's like the main way that people are doing right now and in prepper world, and it's mostly, I think pioneered by the Mormons. A lot of the information you can get about this—and if you live in Utah, apparently there're these stores will they'll just sell you really cheap beans and rice, and some of them are open to people who aren't in the church. But you basically, you put them into mylar bags, which are plastic bags with like an aluminum layer—which isn't technically the definition of mylar but, like, when you say mylar bag, it's what you mean—and you heat seal the bags. You put in the dried food, and then you put in oxygen absorbers. I always thought you put in desiccant because I think that humidity all of the time. The instruments that I built last year, some of them aren't even playable right now because the warping because the stupid humidity. I don't understand how a mountain dulcimer was invented in Appalachia and has such a thin soundboard. Anyway. So, but you don't put in desiccants necessarily—actually, in general, you don't. It actually seems to be contraindicated. But instead you put in oxygen absorbers that are sized to the size of bag, and you got to do it kind of quick, because obviously when you open up the oxygen absorber starts absorbing oxygen. And what it is is like little iron fillings that are absorbing that are oxidizing and making rust, I think, and they're in little sealed packets that air can go in, but rust pellets can't come out. You drop it in, you heat seal the bag, you can either get like a little flash sealer for like 25 bucks, or you can use a household iron, or you can use a hair—you know, it's like, I have a feeling that people making these things don't actually do this because I've seen people say straightening iron or curling iron. But um, you can seal it with heat. And then it is sealed. And then that doesn't keep like animals and stuff out, so then you put it in a bucket. So really, long story short, you take a mylar bag, at least five mil thick—mil is not millimeter, it's, I don't know, .001 or something, I don't remember. Millionth of an inch or 1,000th of an inch or something. You put in the oxygen absorber, you heat seal it, you put it in the bucket, and you're good. And it seems kind of simple. And it's a lot cheaper per five gallon bucket of beans and rice then going and getting the pre made stuff.

Casandra Yeah.

Margaret But being able to do it with stuff that you dry yourself—again, like, different things are gonna last different lengths of time. And oh, and you can only do this with stuff that's, like, less than 10% water content. You know, it has to be like way more dried. So you can't just like put in your, like, dried fruit and stuff. It's like almost all like rice and beans and oats and other things. And then there's like weird stuff where like brown rice is actually harder to preserve than white rice because brown rice has, like—which is much better, of course, in general—has more stuff, like more oils in it that can go bad. That's what I've learned, but you should correct me if that's what you're about to do.

Casandra No, no, I was just gonna say I've heard of people—or I've seen something called dry canning. I haven't actually tried it. But it's something similar, except you're using jars and you're using an oven to, yeah, create a seal—a hot seal on the jars. And it's supposed to make dried food last longer. I've never personally understood the purpose of things like that just because I rotate. So it's just like a part of my life and routine. But yeah.

Margaret Just having some deep storage, you know, like—but okay, this actually makes me—why are mason jars clear? Because isn't sunlight the enemy of, like, all food preservation?

Casandra Yeah, I guess so I honestly—I have no idea. They make fancy, like, tinted jars, but they're much more expensive. I imagine it's just because it's more expensive to make tinted glass. But like traditionally you're not keeping your jars on a shelf in direct sunlight. You're keeping them, like, in your basement or your root cellar or something like that.

Margaret Okay, so we've been talking almost an hour, and obviously there's still several methods of food preservation left, but maybe we won't go into the details about any of the other ones—unless, is, like, is there like one more that you want to like quick like shout out? Like hey, look how great salting is, or pickling, or, I don't know.

Casandra Yeah. I mean, fermenting and pickling is amazing. And that's, like, an episode in and of itself. And I think that it's really like trendy right now, so probably accessible for people to find information on. And then salt preserving and sugar—I can't eat sugar, so I don't do sugar preserving. But those two methods are surprisingly simple. And I'm just beginning to experiment with salt preserving, but I love it. So, I dunno. Check it out.

Margaret Is it just like you take the thing and you pack it in salt and then you're like, it's good.

Casandra Kinda, yeah. Kinda, yeah.

Margaret That's cool.

Casandra I mean, there's more to it than that, but basically.

Margaret Okay, well, I don't know. You've sold me on far more food preservation instead of just looking at it from this, like—you know, as much as I want to like try and sell you on deep storage, I think that that's like the far and away least useful aspect and like the one that ties most into, like, the bunker mentality that I supposedly shit talk all the time. You know, and so this, like, this—these methods of cycling through appeal quite a bit to me. Is there any—are there any like last thoughts on food preservation or anything else about any of this that you want to you want to bring up?

Casandra Just that once you start digging into it, you'll probably be shocked by how many things you can can from, you know, butter to water. So.

Margaret Wait, really?

Casandra To whole chickens. So it's pretty flexible and pretty fun once you get the basic down. Canned water.

Margaret I'm laughing about the canned chicken because I'm imagining, like, the chicken like coming out and running away when you opening up the can 15 years later. Alright, well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. And also, you know, thanks for helping make the show accessible. And, I don't know, I really appreciate that, and I appreciate all the work that you've done with that.

Casandra You're welcome. I'm dreading transcribing this, but I will do it. So.

Margaret I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got out of this as much as I did. I didn't know anything. I mean, well I didn't know anything compared to what I now know. And I'm excited to eat green beans, I mean, prepare green beans. No, I'm mostly just excited to eat green beans. I really like green beans. I'm really glad that was the example food we used. If you liked this episode or this podcast, you should tell people about it and tell people about it on the internet. Well, tell about it in real life. But if you tell people about it on the internet, all the like weird algorithms will like make other people know about it if you like, and comment, and subscribe, and do all the stuff. And you can also support me directly on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And there's a bunch of like zines and other things up there. And they're behind a paywall, but if you live off of less money than we make off of the Patreon, then you should just message us and—or me, I guess, on any social media platform, and I will give you access to all the content for free because the main point is to put out content and I really just appreciate everyone's support helps me do that. And in particular, I want to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana, Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, the Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, and Nora. And also I would be remiss not to tell you that I have a book available for pre-order. AK Press is republishing a new edition of my book, A Country of Ghosts, which is an anarchist utopian book. And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have like a vague idea of what I'm talking about when I talk about anarchy like that. But if you don't, or if you do, you might like this book, A Country of Ghosts. And if you hate the government and capitalism, you might like it. And if you hate the government but like capitalism, or if you like capitalism but hate the government, then I would challenge you to read this book anyway, because you might learn that both of those are very interrelated things and you're kind of only doing it halfway and you have to destroy the Ring of Power and it must be—don't be a Boromir. You should throw the Ring of Power into the—into the fires of Mount Doom. Anyway, you should tell me about the fun foods that you all prepare, because I will be jealous. Or I'll start canning my own foods and I'll talk to you all soon.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

Margaret continues talking to Simon, a restoration ecologist who works in the Pacific Northwest, about confronting climate crisis with reforestation.

Simon can be found on twitter @plant_warlock.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

1:00:55

Margaret   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 use she or they pronouns. And this episode I'm actually recording immediately after the previous episode with Simon because, as soon as we got off the call, we talked about all of these other things that are worth talking about. And there's just so much to all of this that we thought it might be worth doing a second episode about. You might be hearing this—I don't know when you're gonna hear this as compared to the other part. But anyway, Live Like the World is Dying as a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh daaaaa do.

Jingle   What's up y'all, I'm Pearson, host of Coffee with Comrades. Coffee with Comrades is rooted in militant joy. Our hope is to cultivate a warm and inviting atmosphere, like walking into your favorite coffee shop to sit down with some of your close friends and share a heart-to-heart conversation. New episodes premiere your every Tuesday, so be sure to smash that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. We are proud to be a part of the Channel Zero Network.

Margaret   Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns. And then just a real brief overview for people who didn't listen to the first interview we just did with you about the kind of work you do and what your specialization is.

Simon   Yeah, thanks for having me on again. My name is Simon Apostle. I'm a restoration ecologist. And I've been working in Oregon and Washington, kind of across the Pacific Northwest, for the last 10 or so years. And most of my work has focused on reforestation, but also just general natural resource management and ecological restoration.

Margaret   So we were talking about—you have ideas about what people who have access to some, you know, maybe homestead-style, size of land or land project or even, like, maybe even smaller scale than that—about what people can do besides just reforestation, what is involved in restoration, and using that to mitigate whether climate change or other problems ecologically?

Simon   Yeah, so one of the things that, in our field, we've been looking at quite a bit is how do certain keystone organisms really affect the landscapes. And one of the biggest ones—not just in size, they get pretty large though—is the North American Beaver. Which and this is true across North America. And beaver are a critical component of ecosystems. And they do that by doing what we know they do, by building dams, and altering hydrology in a way that creates habitat, it creates diversity, it retains water in a landscape by damming streams up and creating new channels and all of these things. And so reintroduction of beavers, or by mimicking the processes that beavers create, you can do a lot for the land and also potentially make it work better for you. Because you know, as we face climate change, water retention is kind of one of our biggest issues.

Margaret   So you're telling people that they should build dams and cut trees? 

Simon   That's exactly right. Yeah. If you want to think like a beaver, you should build a dam. If you want to use it for hydroelectric purposes, you can do that. And then, yeah, of course, cut down trees. No, it's a really interesting parallel, right? Because beavers kind of act like us, you know, and they do all these things that we know are—especially in the Pacific Northwest—know are bad. We know that the dams, the hydroelectric dams, are a massive problem for salmon and for other organisms, and disrupting natural water flows and creating barriers and, of course, cutting down trees is the thing we all know is we don't do well. But beaver do things in a way that that they, you know, ecosystem around them has adapted to do and interact with. So a beaver dam—first of all, the scale is different, right, it's not going to be across the Columbia River, it's across a stream, a low gradient side channel, something like that. And a beaver dam is porous, it has water cascading over it, a fish can jump over it. It is complex, you know, there's a pond behind it and there's wetlands on the margins and there's channels flowing around it that they may not have gotten to damming yet. And that complexity is critical, right? Like, it's the taking of a simple stream channel and making it into something really complicated and with little niches for all these different organisms. And it can work for humans too, you know, by recharging groundwater, by retaining water on a landscape for longer you get aquifer recharge, you get, you know, trees surrounding that area, maybe growing a little bit better, all of these things that are directly valuable to us.

Margaret   So that's the kind of, like, microclimate stuff of making your area—you're, like, so wells will go dry, slower and things like that.

Simon   Absolutely. I mean, water retention in landscapes is so important. You know, as we, like, face climate change, right, it's—and some of that is affected by by climate change directly just through evaporation, but also as you get precipitation changing from snow to rainfall, you know, through a larger portion of the year in a lot of systems, that means that the water's not coming down as a trickle of snowmelt throughout the year, it's coming down, you know, in a single rain of that. And there's none left in the summer. And beaver are one of the organisms that can help counteract that by retaining that water in the smaller streams and then letting it out as a slower trickle.

Margaret   It's so wild that that—that something at that small of a scale has an impact. I feel like that's like something that I often forget about because, as much as I'm like, oh, I like bottom-up organizations and blah, blah, blah. I'm like always sometimes forget that something as simple as like blocking a creek can have an impact.

Simon   Yeah, and it's the aggregate effect, right, too. It's all of—its every little side channel. And especially if we talk about in a temperate region, like the the Northeast in the US or the Northwest, where you have lots and lots of little creeks. And historically there were probably beaver populations on every single one of those that, of course, were all trapped out, you know, as European trappers moved into those landscapes.

Margaret   What—This is it is a question I feel like I should have learned in middle school or something. But why do beavers build dams? Like what's in it for them?

Simon   Yeah, so I mean, it's a really good question, right? For them, I think—and actually, this is like, a really interesting evolutionary question because old world beavers, a European, like super similar species. I don't even know how different they are genetically, and I'm sure a little bit, but they don't build dams, they just burrow into into dens on the bank as far as I'm aware. 

Margaret   Huh. 

Simon   But beavers build dams largely to create more habitat for themselves. They're safe from predators underwater. The entrances to their lodges are underwater. So they'll build their big lodge and then they'll swim underwater to an entrance and then inside the lodge it'll be back up in the air so that they're safe. They also like to eat willows and willows like to grow in wetlands. And so you flat out an area that was a canyon, you create more sediment deposits, you flood into the flat areas, you're going to grow more of these kind of fast growing hardwoods that they like to eat. So it's about creating more habitat for themselves, you know, in a way you can think about them as, like, they're creating their shelter and they're also, like, farming, the things that they like to eat by flooding.

Margaret   No, no, only humans do that. That's cool. That's—yeah, I'm like, now I'm like, I wonder if we should have beaver where I—you know, I live on this this creek and, you know, there's willows around and things like that. Yeah, no, okay. And so you're saying—so what is the water retention do in terms of mitigating the effects of climate change and things like that?

Simon   Yeah. Yeah. So, like we talked about, just holding that water in the landscape, letting it permeate into the soil, but also slowing that release through the creek just as it is beneficial to so many organisms, right? Because it allows water flow through a longer period of the year. You know, a big flush of water, a big flood, can be a lot less useful than a steady trickle in a lot of cases.

Margaret   Can I selfishly ask you about reforesting willows and, like, is that a useful—you know, I guess as I was saying, I live on a creek that floods. And we've talked about, you know, people talk about willows being very good plants for, you know, sucking up water or whatever, but we don't believe it changes the way that water flows across the land or anything like that. But it might help, like, reinforce banks or—because most of your work is riparian specifically, right? What is—what are you doing when you reforest in a riparian area? And how can I selfishly do that myself?

Simon   That's gonna depend on the situation, right, but a lot of what we're doing when we focus on riparian areas is because they're important to so many species, right. And so they're rare and critical. And so the benefits that you have by reforesting of riparian area, you have shade over the stream, you know, you're cooling the water temperature which reduces evaporation, it helps the organisms within the stream. In terms of planting willows, I mean, the one of the best things about willows is that they're one of the easiest things to plant and grow, right. They're adapted to break off in flooding. So you have twigs and stems and branches will just break off, and any single one of those can land on a bank of mud and sprout and turn into a new tree. So they have this vegetative adaptation that's a hormone that allows them to root from any given node, you know, and a node being a part of the plant that can turn into a leaf or a branch, or in the case of a willow or root, even if it was, you know, a branch from the top of the tree. And anyone who's you know, propagated cuttings and stuff knows that some plants have that hormone, and particularly willows do. And you can stick a willow branch in your cuttings of some other tree or shrub and they'll root more easily. So a lot of times what we'll do in riparian areas just harvest willow cuttings, either locally if there's a good source, or bring them in from somewhere nearby, or, you know, from a nursery, and just plant those basically stick straight in the ground. It looks super weird because it just looks like we planted a bunch of two or three foot sticks on the ground. Super dense, in most areas in North America you would have—might be planting 2000 stems an acre of willows and kind of related riparian shrubs. And, you know, if conditions are right, you will get a pretty dense willow stand within a few years.

Margaret   Do you then go—let's say for some, you had a homestead and there was a dense stand of willows. Do you then go and, like, thin it out so that there's, you know, so each tree—like I know that when dealing with, like, you know, a monoculture of young pines, sometimes you have to thin it out in order to make them grow healthier?

Simon   Yeah, that's gonna depend, you know where you are, but but probably not. They you know, their life cycle is such that they are going to live a much shorter period of time, and they grow in these big, thick, dense stands that all grow up at once because there was some big flood that brought in a bunch of new, clean sediment and wiped out all the old ones. And then the new branches and seeds landed and you grow a thick forest. And they'll kind of self thin. And actually that's—those standing dead trees and fallen dead trees or habitat features in themselves. You know, woodpeckers like them, salamanders like the logs on the ground, so do turtles, you know, things like that. So, generally speaking, no, I mean, we'll do things like we control to reduce competition when they're young. But their growth cycle is such that they're a big disturbance, and then they grow, and then everything gets wiped out in a stand, and then they grow again in most systems.

Margaret   I guess to go back to what you were talking about earlier, you said you wanted to talk about bringing back beaver. How to—what does that look like? How do people do that?

Simon   Yeah, I mean, and sometimes it's as simple as, you know, you have county highway departments and things that you know, beaver like to build dams, and they like to build dams in a roadside ditch next to a highway. So these county highway departments will trap and kill the beaver. And so if you can work with them to say, no, trap and release it. And in some cases, some counties will actually say—you can say, hey, we'd be okay with you releasing them on our property instead of killing them. And they may be, they may do that for you. The other way to do it is kind of—and it depends on, if they're there, to build it and they will come. So you plant willows on a stream, you know, eventually they might find it if they're nearby. They roam pretty far. The other thing that you can do is, even if you don't have beavers, is to start to kind of connect those processes that beavers create by basically building your own dams that are functionally similar to a beaver dam. And beavers will often find those too and start to build and add to them. 

Margaret   That's cool. 

Simon   We actually, we have a whole technical term. They're called BDAs, which just means Beaver Dam Analogue. But it's a really cool sort of growing niche in my field because it's—they're low tech, right. It's, you're putting a bunch of posts in the river and piling a bunch of brush behind them so water kind of dams up but also flows through. Snd anyone can do it. You know, you don't need an engineering degree, you don't need a forestry degree, you can just kind of do it.

Margaret   Aren't like riparian areas, creeks and things like that, like, fairly heavily controlled, like, can't you get in some trouble for messing with a creeks flow.

Simon   Yeah, I mean, if you're doing something that's, you know—yes, in the United States, and there's stronger rules depending on the state that you're in. There's wetlands and waters rules that have to do with the Clean Water Act. A lot of these were just kind of greatly diminished by the Trump administration. So you're safer there on a lot of the ephemeral streams, and it's going to depend on your state. But generally speaking, I mean, I'm not a lawyer. But, you know, if you're doing a restoration activity on—we're talking a small stream, a small ephemeral stream on a piece of ground that you own, these kinds of activities are fine. You're really talking about, okay, am I bringing in fill, am I bringing in equipment, am I, you know, dumping dirt, am I building a permanent dam that really is, like, easily identifiable as like an irrigation dam or something like that? That's where you need to get into the permitting world.

Margaret   And now I'm just trying to figure out whether I can do micro hydro on a beaver dam. Like without actually blocking it.

Simon   That you would probably technically need a permit for in the world we live in, but I won't...

Margaret   Appreciate it. Neither should any of you. I've not actually—I looked into a fair amount of micro hydro, and it's just not—even though I have running water on our property, it's not the right move for us. Which is a shame because micro hydro where you don't actually block the creek—I'm sure it has ecological impacts. But it doesn't block the creek. I don't know.

Simon   Now there's been studies about, you know, replacing the Columbia River dams with things like that. It's, like, they're less micro, I'm sure, because of the scale, but you know, things that just basically sit on the side of the river instead of blocking the whole thing. 

Margaret   Seems so—now I wonder why we didn't do that in the first place.

Simon   How was—I think you'd probably get more power if you dam the whole river. And yeah, different time, I guess. Yeah. I thought, you know, it'd be interesting to kind of like, think about, just because your initial question kind of got me thinking about, like, how do we make for us work for us. And, you know, that can touch on, like, you know, how Indigenous groups interacted with the forest in places that I know, things like that, but like, what are, you know, kind of what are some of like the other human benefits to forests.

Margaret   So we're still kind of having this conversation about reforestation, and the advantages of it, and besides just water retention, and besides, you know, the cooling effect and things like that, what are—why reforestation? Like, tell me tell me more about what's cool about reforestation.

Simon   Yeah, well I think one of the things that we're kind of slowly realizing is, like, all of the side benefits that the forests provide us. And not—we've already talked about, you know, cooling effects and shading and things like that. But, you know, there can also be like a fair amount of food production from a diverse forest. There's been a really interesting set of research that was done in coastal British Columbia, where they found these pockets of forests where you didn't have a closed canopy, you had this kind of diverse patchwork, and near historic coast Salish village sites we had these—or still have these essentially what have been called food forests. So this kind of diverse array of fruiting species like crab apples and cranberries and huckleberries and things like that, that now we know were managed by people. So it's something that we would kind of recognize as something somewhere between like a European conception of agriculture, and then just a natural, quote/unquote natural forest with no human impacts, which of course, there were. But regardless, you know, there's ways to kind of create something that's diverse and works for plants and animals, while also working for you. And I think food production is one of those. And creating diversity in a stand is one of the ways to do that. So instead of thinking about, we have this stand of trees, and we want it all to be as old as possible. Well, what if there's a little clearing over here, you know, which would—could mimic a natural process. You'd have windfall, you know, knocking a few trees over. And then one of the things that come up in that clearing, might be some of those early seral plants, some of them are fruiting, some of them are useful for other purposes, or, you know, and so you can manage that stand, that clearing, in ways that that work for people. You know, it's like, reframing how we think about agriculture, and also how we think about forestry. We think about forestry as producing lumber, and we think about agriculture is producing things that we, you know, and they don't mix. They're just different things. But of course, you know, they're all just plants.

Margaret   Yeah, maybe—we would probably need to have an entirely different economic system in order to take advantage of, you know, decentralized food production like that—which, obviously, I'm in favor of a completely different economic system. So that sounds good to me. So this is the kind of stuff that's mostly useful for people who are working—who have access to, like, a land project and things like that. Is this information that people can use to, you know, influence county decisions about how to do things? Like how much control are people able to exert either within the existing system or outside of it on reforestation?

Simon   Yeah. One of the biggest issues is the lack of control that people who don't have a sort of like legal and economic stake in these things, you know, indirectly have, in some cases, you know, you talk about a federal agency planning a project, and they're going to say, oh, we're doing community involvement, we're going to talk to our neighbors. Well, their neighbors might be, you know, a farmer, who may even be a local farmer, but owns, you know, a significant amount of land and is not really representative of maybe your rural communities actual income and wealth distribution. Or their neighbor may even be an industrial timber company. 

Margaret   Right. 

Simon   But a lot of these projects have, you know, if they're federally funded, they have public comment periods. They have all these things that are written into law that are supposed to allow for community engagement, and sometimes are not so easily accessible. But you can get together with some people and watch out for things like, there's going to be a forest thinning project and we want input on this, we want to say, hey, you need to consider, you know, our use, like, our group wants to do mushroom foraging in this area, and we're concerned that you're going to disturb this. Or, we want you to think about how your project design affects that, you know, things of that nature. Yeah, and a lot of times nobody really comments on these projects. So a little bit of public comment, a little bit of input, can actually really sway land managers decisions. I know when I'm in that situation, you know, hearing from five people that are all saying the same thing, is a big group of people, because usually no one says anything. So I think you can have a difference—make a difference. And that's going to depend on the sort of willingness and adaptability of people in positions of power, like with all things. But usually these things just kind of get ignored. So.

Margaret   Yeah, one of the things—one of the talking points when I did more forest defense out west—one of the main talking points would be—and, you know, most of us weren't, we didn't really care about what what was good for the economy. We cared about what was good for, you know, the values that we held about biodiversity and things like that. But one of the things we would talk about is that you actually literally make more—like it does more for the local economy by and large to leave the National Forest alone and not run the National Forest timber sale program. And, again, is at least as far as I understood it at the time, and that like most of the timber sale program was like run at a loss because they're basically subsidizing all of the costs of these timber companies to come in and clear cut, you know, quote/unquote, our forests within a colonial system, whatever that means. But these public lands—you know, I didn't realize when I was a kid that the national forests were—huge chunks of them are regular clear cut, and they're on some ways like managed just like another timber farm. And there is a little bit more say that people are able to have. And one of the things that I liked about, you know, working with groups like Earth First was that we were very every tool in the toolbox and that absolutely included public comment periods and showing up to, you know, city council meetings in these small towns and things like that. And working with people who are from the small towns, usually. You know, basically, we would come into support local organizing. And then also, you know, direct action and blocking people from logging. It doesn't always work, right? But it works more times than I expected, to basically come in and say, you know, the tree sit doesn't sit on every tree that they're going to cut. The tree sit sits on where they want to build a road, right? And you block access long enough either to make it just so expensive that it stops being worth it for them, or, more likely, it's part of a larger strategy where you're also, like, suing them in the courts. Like often they do this thing where they can—they're allowed to clear cut—you're suing them to say you can't clear cut, and then they're allowed to if there's no injunction. They can do so while the, you know, while court is happening. So they can be like, well, doesn't matter now, we already did it. And so sometimes you're just literally stopping them while you make a larger change, which now that I think about it feels like a larger metaphor for how so much of this is about preserving what we can while we try to make these larger changes, while we try to change the economic systems that we live under and things like that.

Simon   Yeah, no, that's definitely true. And I think just being a stick in the mud sometimes just being loud in as many ways as you can think, can be really beneficial. One issue, kind of jumping on, like, federal logging thing that that is a problem is that you can have kind of greenwashing of timber sales sometimes. You know, you look at, like, post-fire salvage logging that is really not ecologically justified, right? You know, well we need to clear out the trees because then we'll have room for the nutrients to grow. It's like, well, no, you know, fire's natural and actually standing dead trees are an entirely separate and unique habitat type. And they're an important thing to protect, you know. And, similarly, we need to thin forests because we've repressed fire for so long, and we need to make them—we need to reintroduce fire to the landscape. But sometimes, you know, these projects kind of—there will be people who insert themselves in them with ulterior motives, right. So it'd be—no longer becomes about—it's ecologically justified, we're thinning out the young trees to save. For the other ones it's like, well, actually, maybe we should take some of the big ones too, you know. There's probably too many of them, you know. It's like—so just being active, and paying attention to when those things are happening, you can make a pretty big difference over a pretty large chunk of ground. You know, one of the issues that we have here is that I think I mentioned last time is how much of our forests are privately owned though, right? And more and more that ownership is not only private, you know, quote/unquote, but owned by investment firms and entities that not only want to extract profit, but they want to extract profit quickly. So they've reduced the length of time between harvest from something like 80 years,—and you know, 80 year old forest has a lot of habitat value, or a 50 year old forest does—to now being maybe 50, or sometimes even 30. You know, 30 year old trees, which basically just looks like a plantation, you know. And they'll harvest and then they sell the land again. And it's just this ongoing cycle of making sure that the quarterly returns are up so the stock prices are up. And, you know, that's something that really needs to be actively fought in my region.

Margaret   Yeah. And then I'm under the impression that you can only have these cycles where you remove all the biomass every 30 or 80 years—you can only do that so many times before you end up with no biomass left and get desertification. Is that the case?

Simon   Yeah, I mean, there's certainly—we've undergone massive changes to soil structure in ways that we don't understand in forests in the Pacific Northwest. And, definitely, it's that loss of biomass. And there's certain types of biomass that only big trees can really provide. There's like that something called like brown cubicle rot, which isn't a very romantic name, but—there's other terms for it—but basically it's like, if you've ever been in the Pacific Northwest and you'd seem like a big nurse log on the ground, which is we call like a tree that's fallen on the ground and it has other trees and plants growing out of it. It's providing an entirely unique set of soil conditions. And you crumble that apart and it's got these, like, cavities and square pieces, and it's often very brown or bright orange. And that type of biomass in the soil is just, it's just a completely different entity than the bare mineral soil. And certainly you start to reduce the health of the trees that grow when you keep removing that biomass. And, of course, it provides carbon storage too. So, you know, last year in Oregon in 2020—this year, we had record-breaking heat waves, and last year, we had record-breaking wildfires on the west side of the Cascades, which, you know, you're familiar with Oregon, of course. But for people that aren't, that's, like, the wet side, right? That's when people think about Oregon and big trees and things like that, that's kind of what they're envisioning. But we had these fires raging through the west side. And they ended up burning like 2% of the land area of the state in one month. And a lot of those burns were on these these private tree farms with these young trees that are just matchsticks, they're stressed by drought because they don't have the organic matter in the soil to retain moisture. And they just, they burned completely, a lot of these areas, you know, 100%, true mortality. So there's—you can't do it forever. But but they, you know, they don't care that you can't do it forever.

Margaret   Which I guess is like—is yet another example of, like, the whole climate preparedness and mitigating the effects of climate change involves stopping all of this treating the earth just like a sit a set of resources to extract, you know?

Simon   Yeah, yeah. And it's not, you know, it's not like, I mean, we use wood products, right? But it's just how do we change our relationship to do that in a way that works for us in the present, and will also work for future generations. I'm working on a forest management plan right now for a property—for a reserve—but that will allow timber harvest, and it's, you know, it was purchased from Weyerhaeuser, it's 1300 acres. And a lot of it was logged fairly recently before they sold it because they kind of extracted the value that they could, But it's thinking about, okay, but the trees are too dense, we're gonna need to thin them. At what stage do we send them, you know, that we can actually extract some value and that value goes into the local economy, and we're creating timber products, but we're not—but we're sort of mimicking the natural cycles in order to get to a place where in a couple 100 years, it's a mature, old growth forest, right? And at that point, like, I don't need to consider what the economy is like in 100 or 200 years, I don't need to consider what we need out of forest products. But like we can make it work for us in the present by clearing little clearings and creating, you know, have like diversity areas that're similar those clearings that I talked about before, or selectively thinning, you know, the weaker trees and creating a more open canopy that mimics those natural systems, but also allows for economic activity or for just wood products that we use in our lives. And I really like that, because it's that dichotomy of, like, what do we need now, but how can we plan for a future that's unknowable to us? But we do know that we want all grow for us again someday for future generations. 

Margaret   Yeah, and I like it because it's acknowledging that it's, like, well, we do want to use wood to build our houses or whatever, you know. There's, in many climates, that's the best way to do it. And most of us prefer to live in shelter and things like that, you know. And it's just—and people have this like, okay, well, since clear cutting, you know, on massive scale is bad, and looking at the earth as a series of resources bad, therefore, we have to feel guilty about using, like, you know, interacting with the earth, and that also doesn't do us any good. One, because guilt-based organizing this garbage. But it's also just, like, it's not—it's a babies and bathwater problem, you know. It's a—we do, we are animals, and animals use, well, other animals and nature to do the things we want to do. I remember trying to, you know, we were trying to protect this forest in Southern Oregon, and it was, it had actually been burned. And it was a salvage—it was old growth forests that have been burned on public land. And none of the locals would log it because everyone knew it was bad. So there was like all of these out of state loggers, which is funny because then, you know, of course we get accused of being outside agitators or whatever. And, you know, I remember one of the times some loggers got past one of our blockades and, you know, and people are like yelling at them. And the logger are like, well, what do you do for a living? You know, and I was like, I'm a landscaper. And the person next to me is like, well, I'm a logger. You know, it's like, like, you can be a logger. Like, if you're—you can be a person who turns trees into lumber and have that be a positive thing in the world, you know, you can do forestry in ways that aren't monstrous.

Simon   Yeah, and we often don't give people the opportunity to engage with these practices that we all need, you know, to function, at least in the society that we build. We don't give them the opportunity to engage in that way. You know, you can't just like, well, I'm not going to work—if I'm a logger, I'm not going to work on any standard commercial timber operations, I'm only going to do selective logging and I'm only going to do, you know, sustainable logging. I mean, that sounds great. But you know, people who, again, quote/unquote, own the land, I mean, they need to allow that, they need to give people that opportunity, or they need to organize and demand it. And it's sort of the, you know, it's kind of the, like, Plato's cave of forest management. You know, we all need to, like, envision a different world, you know, that can work for us in order to get there. There's a leap of faith that needs to happen, I think, and there's not a lot of faith in what feels like a declining industry and a, you know, climate change, and all of these things.

Margaret   Something that we were talking about, you know, when we were talking about doing this episode—about, you know, there's all this information about how to do reforestation, or, you know, sustainable forestry and all of these different things. But I'm guessing most of you listening don't have even as much access to land as, say, I do. Right? And, you know, and so it can be kind of hopeless thinking like, well, what do I do about this? And, because yeah, most land—most privately owned land—is owned by these, well I don't know this is as a statistic, but there's certainly a lot of land that is in private hands in this country that is just, you know, resources to extract, like, things people who would not be interested in doing this. And the reason I was thinking about this is so useful to talk about—pardon the motorcycle revving its engine outside my office—the reason I feel so useful to talk about is because the current situation, to me, doesn't seem like it's going to stay. Because we probably, as a society, are nearing the end of our ability to stick our fingers in our ears about climate change. I'm sure we'll always have, you know, people will always have, like, disaster fatigue, where we—it's not like we're suddenly gonna wake up one day and everyone's gonna realize climate change is real and, you know, have a glorious happy revolution or whatever. But things will shift as more and more people, like, essentially have to come to terms with this. It'll probably shift in bad ways also. But the thing that I—it occurs to me is that it's like, these people who own, you know, giant tracts of land and stuff, like some of them are people, and some of them are people who would see themselves as decent people. And I think that a lot of people who see themselves as decent people are going to start having a different relationship to economic production in the very near future. And maybe some of the other ones who don't want to change, have a change of heart, might cease being able to have the physical security necessary to control what happens on their property. You know, it's, things are gonna change, probably. Well, they'll definitely change, just I can't tell you how they're going to change. So it feels like it's useful to understand all this stuff and to understand the importance of reforestation and all of this, because we might be able to start convincing some of these people that this is what should happen, you know, that they should not manage their property the way that they currently do at the very least. I dunno. Is there any hope in that?

Simon   I think the shift that needs to happen is that we need to think about these things long-term. And, ideally, it would be in multi generational cycles. But even thinking about things in terms of people's own lifetimes, and one of the issues with commercial timber management is that it's not even in people's lifetimes, or it's not even in the lifetimes of the company, its quarterly profit returns, its stock prices, it's all these sort of abstract but very quick return things that just—they don't—there's no way for that to really intersect in a healthy way, no matter what you think about capitalism and the stock market and stuff. And I would guess that most people listening to this don't have like super favorable views on that. But there's just no way for that quick cycle of profit returns to mesh with managing an ecosystem, and particularly managing an ecosystem like a forest where, even in a short-lived forests in some regions, you're talking about trees living 100 years. You know, and then in other areas 300 years, 500 sometimes, you know. So it just can't—it can't operate that way. And a lot of the people that work for these companies are people that have lived in these areas for a long time now, right? And do feel like they care about the land, but also they feel like they care about their communities and they need to provide jobs and they're just sort of wrapped up in the system. And I guess I'll make the forest for the trees puns, right, you know you can't see your way out, the trees are too dense in a tree farm. You need to thin it out a little bit. And, sorry, for that terrible joke. But I think that a lot more people are reachable than we know, and we need to just talk to each other. And I think we all need to sort of meet—I don't want to say meet in the middle—but meet in kind of a new place where we're not sort of old school environmentalist in that we say, okay people do bad things to nature, and then we need to just stop people from doing the bad things to nature. It's like, what new—and then we're not just extractivist, you know, logging everything, mining everything, well the economy, you know, jobs, the economy, blah, blah, blah. We need to come to a new place where it's like, how do we develop this relationship that works for us, you know, with each other and with with nature. And that sounds very Kumbaya, but I do think you're right, that climate change starts to—it starts to force a shift. And even the management of these companies know that, you know, Weyerhaeuser, they're not climate denialist, you know. They do experiments to see how far north they need to move their tree seedlings, you know, their stock, you know, do we bring seedlings from Southern Oregon to halfway up Washington because they're adapted to the hotter climate? They're studying all of that stuff, they know it's real. And the people working for them, I think, largely know that it's real too. It's certainly in the past few years around here, I think, gotten to the point where it's unavoidable. I work with loggers and farmers and people that don't always have the same views as me, but that—I hear a lot less climate denial now than I did even five years ago. We've just had too many extreme events. People know it's here. And, you know, and yeah, disaster can create an opportunity, we realize we need to change and we need to come to a better system with each other. And that may, you know, whether you believe in the power of government to change these things or not, that can lead to either community solutions, people just demanding better from the organizations with whom they work. And also, a lot of this stuff could be easily changed in state legislatures. You know, there's the power in Oregon and Washington to say, no, we are going to disincentivize these outside investment groups from owning these forests. We're gonna, you know, lay down a heavy hand. And if you can get local communities of loggers to say that that's good and that's fine instead of kind of these, like astroturfed, you know, Timber Unity-type groups that are really just right wing, you know, corporate funded, hollow entities. You know, if you have actual communities making their voices heard, change feel possible.

Margaret   That idea of, like, we have to meet at a third place is really fascinating to me. You know, I remember—well I don't remember. It was before my time in Earth First. But, you know, one of the, like, one of the main stories we talk about, right, is the story of—are ou familiar with Judi Bari, the Earth First organizer who organized loggers? And she got bombed for it, right. And, you know, basically like, she was organizing as an Earth First-er, but very also explicitly as a labor organizer with the IWW. And being like, you know, loggers have one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, and, you know, and are by and large people who like the fact that they spend all their time outdoors, you know. And I'm not trying to come Kumbaya either and be like, oh, well, you know, we'll never have to be opposed to the people who are working on resource extraction or whatever, right. But the less we can be, the better, both strategically and ethically. And also, I mean, I think that's why Judi Bari got bombed. I personally believe that that was by the federal government. I know there was a lawsuit that, one, proving that at the very least, they were certainly ready to go to show that, you know, like, ready to blame her own assassination on herself, you know. And—assassination attempt, she survived the bombing, died of cancer a couple years later. But, you know, like, I think that that actually is what threatens power is when—not to sound Marxist, but like when the working—well, whatever, anarchist, everyone knows that—you know when the working class gets together and is like, oh, we can actually see passed our immediate differences and work together towards a goal, we accomplished an awful lot. And I don't personally have the first clue about how to do that. And maybe you do have more of a first clue because you work, I presume your work puts you in touch with both environmentalists and loggers and timber companies and things that are these very traditionally at odds organizations?

Simon   Yeah, so my current role is with a land trust. And for those that don't know, basically a land trust, in some cases, buys property directly or has it donated, and then it's put in a trust forever to protect it from development or for restoration, or whatever the threat is. Or it'll be a legal entity, like a conservation easement, that it's still owned by someone else but we have some restrictions on, okay, you can't mine it, you can't put housing developments on it. Maybe you can still log it though, or maybe there's some restrictions on how that logging happens. And so that allows me to kind of straddle that world a little bit. And I've worked in many different organizations with many different entities, but it kind of gives us a, you know, an avenue to interacting with local communities. Like, we're not just flying in, you know, by night—and some people are still pissed at us and that's fine. That's always going to be the case. But we're there more or less permanently. And so, like it or not, we can work together. But also, I mean, you know, yeah, we do, I work with people, I hire farmers for work, I hire loggers for work. We, like as I mentioned, we do, you know, timber production activities. And so, being local and kind of leading by example, if you have the opportunity, it has been really valuable. You know, I will say that a lot of times the groups that get cut out of that conversation of, oh, we need to work with local communities, are Indigenous groups. You know, and when Indigenous groups are brought in, it's usually tribal governments. And, of course, not all tribes are recognized federally. And if they're not federally recognized, they're out of luck. You know, locally we have the Chinook tribe fighting for recognition and wanting to be a part of managing lands in our region on the lower Columbia River, and being cut out without funding, without recognition. But other tribes are, and so they are able to kind of assert themselves. And so I think this is all true. You know, I don't want to go down the road of romanticizing rural communities, because I think that there's a lot that also needs to change, but there are a lot of people in those communities who, yeah, absolutely want it a different way. And like you said, just like being outside, they like being in the woods, and they just really care about things. And, you know, one of the funniest things to me is that, you know, a lot of, like, a lot of these these people in a way that I don't—it doesn't have any packing in theory or in politics, really—but like really push back against private ownership. You know, when you think about like private property being not just like an absolute thing, but a bundle of rights, you know, I have the right to log this, I have the right to access. You know, all these private timber lands used to be, like, widely accessible to people in local communities. And that, especially when they're a smaller companies, and so people grew up, you know, going to places in the coast range and hunting and fishing and just hanging out and camping and, like, that was their backyards. And they have the larger companies coming in and being like, well wait a second, we can we can charge for permit access, you know, and we can hire our security to control it, and we can put up gates on all the roads. And that really pisses people off, you know, and I think there's a real organizing opportunity there, you know, for someone to bridge that gap and be, like, yeah, you know, you're right. These big private companies really are, you know, taking away something that is not theirs to take away. You know, you own it too, and then can we extend this to, okay, but also you own it, but also, you know, there were people here first that also owned it and stuff do and have an ownership stake. And we can kind of build a new vision of who owns the land.

Margaret   Yeah, no, it's like—it's like, people coming back just instinctively, on some level, to the the idea of the commons. You know, the idea that there's this land where it's okay to like—I'm not encouraging this, I'm just talking about the original commons in England or whatever—but like, it's okay to take some trees every now and then. It's okay to forage. It's okay to hunt. It's okay to see this as a common pool of resources that we all, you know, maintain and draw from. And in the enclosure of the commons, of course, you know, is the now everyone needs permits, you know, and you get all the Robin Hood stuff about, you know, don't go hunt on the king's land or whatever. It's just kind of interesting to watch that—not the same. But, you know, history doesn't repeat, it echoes, or whatever the—rhymes? I think it rhymes. I don't remember what the cliche is. I'll make a new cliche by not knowing the original cliche.

Simon   Yeah, no, I mean, it's true. And that entity that people are mad at for these access issues. I mean, it's, we have—there's just a vision of, like, here's the tax lots on the map, and that's who owns it. And it just is always much more complicated than that. And I think we just need to, like, recognize and put that complexity forward. Maybe in our society, in a way, that we all kind of know instinctively, you know, that it's wrong to just like, gate it all off and say it's a private property and, you know, screw you. And—but by reinforcing that sense of ownership, too, it makes all this stuff easier, it makes my work easier. And I want to expand that sense of ownership, because sometimes the people that are invited into having a say are people with with power in our society.

Margaret   Yeah. The large landowners and...

Simon   We can—I think we can build it—yeah, we can build a different ethic of, you know, how we interact with lands, with natural lands.

Margaret   Do people—I mean, I don't know whether you would specifically know—but I wonder if people do guerrilla reforestation, you know, just like, going to—

Simon   You know, it's a really good question. And like, I remember—so, in Oregon—well and a little bit in Washington—I think it was maybe four years ago, we had the first big wildfire near Portland in a lot of people's lives here. And that was in the Columbia River Gorge, which is like a really beloved place. You know, it's—the Columbia River is, I'm sure, you know, of course, but like, for your listeners who haven't been there, the Columbia River is like carving through the Cascade Mountains. And so it's this massive river, and it's easily accessible from the city. And so there's lots of hiking. And a wildfire started there. And a lot of people, unlike in other areas of the West, hadn't really experienced wildfire close to the city before. And so there was a lot of, like, real emotional scarring for people about, like, we lost this place. Like, it's gone. Like not knowing what was there yet. It was closed for a couple years for safety. You know, like, a lot of the hiking trails and things are still closed. And a long-winded way to say there were groups popping up, I remember on Facebook, you know, being like, I'm starting this group, and I'm gonna go in and start planting trees, who's with me? Like, we need to go plant trees. And, of course, people like me were jumping in and saying, well, actually, fire is a natural process and blah, blah, blah, and like, maybe don't. Let's give it a second. Like this is actually like, the gorge probably burned pretty frequently because there were a lot of, like, village sites and people were there and fires—anyways, whatever. But that sentiment was certainly there. So, like, clearly when people, like, know and love a place I think that, like, they can be organized to like do that, you know. Because this was a place that held a lot of, like a really special place in a lot of people's hearts. And so the question is, like, a lot of the places that really need reforestation are the super degraded places that no one goes to, you know, that aren't like the beautiful mountains. It's like the agricultural pasture that's like a little bit degraded and, like, maybe it's kind of a problem now. Or like just this little strip of land next to the creek, you know. So, I would love to see, like, that sort of like community response to doing that kind of thing. I think it would be like incredibly cool. And in terms of guerrilla efforts, I think probably the best examples you would find outside of the United States. Like I am not going to know the name of the village, but I have a family friend who is a doctor who spent a lot of time working in Rwanda for Doctors Without Borders. And she met these people that, like, in this little village they've started just reforesting, like, the hillsides next to their town. There were like these landslides happening and they just—now they started to get like NGO funding and stuff. But they started themselves. And I really wish I remember the name of this group and what they're doing but—and the name of the village—but I don't know. But I think in places without resources and without, like, everything is very codified, you know, here's who owns this land and here's who's responsible for it. There've been really like beautiful examples of people just taking it into their own hands. And this whole village just goes out and plants trees and I—the pictures are looking at—and it's like they're just, they grow them themselves. And they're like terracing the hills a little bit to, like, retain some moisture. And it was, like, to save their land and their lives. Like there were these landslides that were threatening them and they just started doing it, you know? And so I think there's—the best examples, you need to look outside of people like me who work for governments and nonprofits and things like that and look at other parts of the world.

Margaret   That's uh... Okay, so the takeaways are: planting trees is good. Bringing beavers is good. Plant trees whether or not you have permission, but possibly, ideally, get actual local expertise about where to plant the trees and what kind of trees to plant. Change property relations. Yeah, no, no big deal. Damn it.

Simon   No big deal. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Simon   Also, you know, I mean, build your own expertise, right? Like, just, if you are interested in a piece of ground and in restoring it, just start going there. Like if there's a creek in your town that's kind of abandoned and, you know, whatever. Like, just seeing how it behaves for a couple of seasons, you can start to build that expertise. 

Margaret   Cool. 

Simon   So it's not that complicated, really.

Margaret   Okay, well, that's probably a good note to end on. Do you have—for people who didn't listen to the last episode necessarily—do you have any organizations you're excited about shouting out or how people can follow you and bug you on the internet?

Simon   Yeah, just the same things, I think. For people that are in the Portland, Oregon region, a great group—if you're interested in planting trees—to volunteer with or donate to is Friends of Trees. I don't work for them, but they're excellent. They plant trees in natural areas and in neighborhoods. And so you can just google Friends of Trees Portland and find them. For me, nothing to plug. But if you want to find me on Twitter, it's @plant_warlock. And if you have general questions about forestry or restoration, I'd be happy to to get in touch with you.

Margaret   All right. Well, thanks so much for letting us steal even more of your time than originally we planned.

Simon   Yeah, thank you.

Margaret   Thanks, everyone, for listening. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I was just basically, as soon as we finished the call last time, I was like, no, wait, there's more we want to talk about. Because, while it's such a big issue, reforesting the planet to not all die seems like an important thing to talk about. And I hope you enjoyed listening to the conversation again—well, it's not the same conversation. So different conversation. I bet everyone really just sticks around to the end in order to hear me ramble. That's like the main thing. But if you want to be able to keep hearing me ramble, then the best way to do it is to tell people about the show. Yeah, sure. That works. Help feed the algorithms that run the world and things by liking and sharing and subscribing and retweeting and original tweeting and Instagram story sharing and we're on Facebook and Instagram and, you know, I'm on Twitter @magpiekilljoy. And I'm also on Patreon. And if you want to support the show, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon which goes to support all the people who work on this show and all the other stuff that we're really excited to start putting out soon. And I particularly would like to thank Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, The Compound, Cat J, Starro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, Hugh, and Shawn. Thank you so much. And also, if you want access to the patron only—Patreon only content—but you don't make as much money as like we make—if you—whatever, if you're like not doing super well financially, just message me on whatever platform and I'll give you access to all of it for free. We do like a monthly zine that at the moment has been like zine by me, but soon is going to be zine—original zine by someone else. I'm restarting an old publisher called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. I'm very excited about it. And we also have YouTube show now called, get this, it's called Live Like the World is Dying because it's the same show, it's just on YouTube. There's some stuff that, like, visually makes more sense—that makes more sense visually. I need to eat, so I'm going to be done recording now. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you're doing great

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Episode Notes

Margaret talks to Simon, a restoration ecologist who works in the Pacific Northwest, about confronting climate crisis with reforestation, and about hope and resilience in the face of environmental devastation.

Simon can be found on twitter @plant_warlock.

The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

1:00:24

Margaret
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 use she or they pronouns. And this episode I'm excited—I put a call out basically being like, who should I talk to about reforestation and how we can confront climate change through reforestation and, you know, how microclimates affect things, etc. And I am very excited to talk to my guest for this week, Simon, about reforestation. But first, Live Like the World is Dying as a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts. I tried to go into, pretty neat, y'all heard it, but I tried to go into the radio producer voice but I gave up. We're proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts, and here is a jingle from another show on the network. Da duh daaaa!

Jingle Speaker 1 (Scully) Where did you get this?

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More of an anarchist militant...

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People involved in social struggles, everybody else.

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People have been waiting for some content.

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Radio.

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The show.

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The Final Straw and I'm William.

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And I'm Bursts of Goodness.

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Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.

Margaret
Okay, if you could introduce yourself with, I guess, your name, your pronouns, and some of what you do for work professionally that has led you to end up on this podcast talking about this issue.

Simon
Hi Margaret, thanks for having me. My name is Simon Apostle. And I've been a restoration ecologist working primarily in Oregon and Washington for the past decade or so. And a lot of my work has focused on reforestation projects, I guess would be an easy way to describe them to lay people, but really I'm a general practice restoration ecologist. And that means applying science to the field of restoring ecosystems.

Margaret
Okay, so that brings up the broad and probably easy to answer question of how do we fix the ecosystem? It seems kind of broken right now.

Simon
Yeah, I mean, it's obviously the biggest question that is, you know, people are never able to answer in my field. I think the first thing you need to know is what's wrong. Which is a question that is answerable through a combination of research and also just feeling out your values, you know, how do—what do we want from our ecosystems globally and locally? And in the early, kind of the early times of ecological restoration as a field, and it's a fairly new field, you know, the idea was, okay, we're going to find historical reference conditions. We're going to figure out, you know, this is what ecosystems used to be—and used to be usually meant, what were they like before white settlers—I'm speaking at a North American context here which, of course, you know, plays into a lot of racist notions about noble savage, you know, how native peoples here really didn't affect the ecosystem that was in a natural state. And as the field has developed, especially in recent years, people have become much more cognizant of what people have been living in and interacting with and manipulating the ecosystems around us for millennia. But then that question becomes much more complicated, you know, our relationship with the natural world is different than it used to be and different than people in cultures historically have related to the ecosystem. So it becomes a very difficult question to answer. So you need to start to fall back on some priorities, you know, or—and those priorities can be something like, well, we value biodiversity, you know. We can look and see that this ecosystem here is degraded, it's full of introduced weeds, there's only three species really dominant. And we know a minimum, whatever things were like in the past, that there was a lot more going on here. So that's a really good starting point. So you have a value of biodiversity.

Margaret
The the moving away from, like, reference systems is really interesting to me. So the idea is that, like, basically, people are moving away from the idea of, well we're going to make it exactly like it used to be in thism like, quote/unquote, untouched natural state, which of course doesn't really exist because humans have been interacting with nature for a long time. But instead picking what values matter to us and then applying them? Is that—

Simon
Yeah, I think that's true. And one of those values is historical conditions. And that's kind of the core value of the field. But it's the introduction of these other values that have made things much more complicated and I think much more interesting, but also much more true to how we interact with the natural world. So certainly a value is, we know—we basically know that we've messed up. We know that we've come in and through agriculture, and through building cities and roads, and all of the things that modern society does, we've impacted the natural world in negative ways. We see declines of species, we see loss of biodiversity, we see introduction of invasive species from other areas. And so we know that these things are problems, but what I think my field is starting to wrestle with a little bit more is, okay, well, what is what is really the solution? We can't, we can't, you know, find a time capsule and go backwards.

Margaret
Right.

Simon
And even if we did, you know, we don't know how people were managing those systems before we—an when I say we, I'm talking about white people which, again, you know, there's lots of native people that are involved in ecological restoration and that's becoming more of a focus as well. But it's introducing those more complex values. And then, of course, you introduce global warming which is—kind of makes it clear that you can't just go backwards, you know, we don't know what the effects of climate change are going to be in every system or in any system. And so that throws a wrench into the whole idea of, okay, we can just, we can just return.

Margaret
I like that I like—I mean, I don't like that everything's going horribly. But I like this idea of acknowledging that we can't go backwards and, you know, one of the things that always—when I was a younger environmentalist and I was more involved with green anarchism, one of the things that wasn't always the problem but could sometimes kind of come up as a problem is this idea of, like, pretending like we're all going to go back to the quote/unquote natural way of living and like living off of the land in very specific ways. And it never made any sense to me because it always seemed to me that people,—even people who are like foraging and things like that, I always thought of, you know, I mean, if you live in a city, dumpster diving is foraging, you know, like, not just picking berries, or whatever, and—not to be dismissive of foraging in wild environments—but it always seemed like this romanticization of the past. Of, like, trying to recreate the past rather than taking the ideas—well it's like people, the thing that we're excited about is like people working with what's around them. And what's around us is different than what was around people before industrialization and things like that. So it's just, it's kind of interesting to me to see a parallel with that in something like ecological restoration. And, I mean, it's even in the name "restoration," right? To restore things kind of implies the taking things back to what they used to be, but I don't know.

Simon
Yeah, you have to respond to the world as it exists in front of you. And you need to maintain a level of idealism, you know, in order to be in this field, I think, you know, because you're faced with the kind of enormity of the world being fairly messed up, you know. There's a lot of tragedy in environmental fields, you know, it's you feel like you're just fingers in the dam and trying to stem the bleeding. And so, in a way, kind of letting go of that vision of, we're just going to completely return and we're going to have these little time capsules of true native ecosystems that are how things were, and then everything else is changing around it—letting go of that maybe can start to allow for some hope and for a broader vision of the future. But there's room for lots of different methods and lots of different results, and that's going to vary a lot locally as well. I'm speaking again kind of in the context of having worked, you know, in the Pacific Northwest. But things may be different somewhere else. So, and the impacts that you're dealing with may be different. So, there's a lot to consider there. But certainly, you know, some of my work is in coastal estuaries in forested wetlands and it's important work, it's important to restore these areas that have been degraded by agriculture. The land has subsided through lack of sediment inputs and diking. We can restore them and we can, we can rebuild these wetland forests and the estuary. But we also have the knowledge that many of these systems that we're, right, quote/unquote restoring, are going to be gone in 100 years. That's just, that's a certainty. And so is there still value in doing that? And maybe the answer is yes. Because maybe, really, it's not restoration, it's just a form of stewardship of the land. You know, we're taking care of it, we're improving the condition for generations of plants and animals. And we can't know what will happen after that. We know that this thing will be gone, but there will be something else after it. And we're maintaining some biodiversity just for the time being.

Margaret
Well and it seems like if we, if we restore certain areas, even though we know we're going to lose them, you know, we might lose them in like different ways than we would otherwise lose them. I don't know if this is totally naive. But I'm like, well, you know, we know that desertification, and we know that, you know, well at least climate is going to change and overall be much harder. We know that's true. Right? But maybe the way things die off can be different, you know, if we make things a little better ahead of time.

Simon
Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. And I think that there's functional reasons that would be true, just basic population ecology reasons that that would be true. You know, if you're working somewhere and you know, like, for example, okay, we're trying to, you know, we're working on a dry site and we're trying to restore, let's say, ponderosa pine woodlands in the American Southwest. But we know maybe this is a marginal site for Ponderosa pines, and eventually they're not going to persist in this area. Well, one of the potential mechanisms of climate change is that things move both north and they move uphill, they move up slope, especially in mountainous areas as the temperature warms. And those upslope areas become become relatively warmer, but they maybe are closer to the temperature that was previously in the valleys. It's oversimplification, there's many other factors. But if there aren't trees there, then there's no seed source for that population to move up upslope, right. So, you know, and we deal with a similar thing in these estuarine systems in coastal areas where we know sea level rise is going to flood these places out, it's like, well, at least we have the spruce swamps. We have spruce, and if the spruce exists, the spruce can move into the upper areas. Or if they're there, maybe, you know, you have more trees, they capture more sediment, it slows that process and allows things to adapt. And sometimes the slowing of those start processes can be really beneficial.

Margaret
Is this the like—when I was in Arizona I went to this place, I think it was called Mount Lemon—and it was like a sky island. It was basically the Pacific Northwest, but in Arizona. I think it even had Douglas firs. I feel like wrong when I say that. But there was some—

Simon
No. I mean, it probably does.

Margaret
And that's cool. That's like a—do you know this concept, have you heard of green nihilism or like eco nihilism or climate nihilism or whatever, like nihilism as applies to the climate but in a positive way? Have you heard this?

Simon
Yeah, totally. And I mean, I think it's kind of self explanatory, right? Like, it's just, it's too much and it's like, well, there's just there's a fatalism about climate change.

Margaret
Yeah. And this idea—and I think when people use it positively—like green nihilism is like, you know, people sometimes talk about, like, giving up hope in order to be able to, like, you know, stopping—like, giving up stopping climate change and moving towards adapting to climate change. I actually think that that style shouldn't—to me that doesn't feel like nihilism at all, it actually feels very hopeful. Because most of the time, when I think about climate change, I kind of think over everyone forced to live underground and grow foods and hydroponics and, you know, the earth—surface of the earth is unrecognizable. And so when people talk about, like, well, maybe everything will just be a little bit different. I'm like, oh, that sounds so optimistic. And I get really excited about that optimism. But I like, I don't know, the thing that you're talking about now seems like this, like, in between space where it's—you know, it's like, knowing you're going to lose, but seeing what you can gain by trying to win in the process.

Simon
Yeah, I mean, you have to be realistic about that things are going to change, but we also know that changes are just a part of ecology. It's a part of the natural world. And I—these—it's funny to say that out loud, right, because that's the sort of phrasing that gets used by climate denialist—deniers and such, to say, oh, you know, climate change is natural these things happen. And of course it's not. And the rate of change is extreme and it's bad. But we also can—we can have an active hand in that adaptation, I think is what you're kind of getting at. We can, we know that change is coming. And there's people who are working on trying to slow that rate of change and that's what, you know, we're trying to do if we're talking about reducing emissions and things like that. But when we also talk about—a lot of what we talked about in ecology is resiliency, which, of course, is a really important concept in human communities as well, right? It's how do you build community resiliency in the face of disasters, in the face of climate change, or other threats. And that's a lot of what we talked about in restoration as well now. We kind of, when we talk about moving on from that historical model, one of the things that—one of the buzzwords now is—and I say that not negatively, because I think it's important—is resiliency. And a lot of things can make an ecosystem resilient. One of those things is biodiversity. You know, if we don't know how the world is going to change, the more organisms occupy a space, the more they occupy a piece of ground, the more likely it will be that some kind of balance or equilibrium is going to be found later, or that one of those organisms is going to survive and thrive in some form that may not be the current form, it's not going to be the community composition that it is today, but you probably also won't have a monoculture. It won't disappear completely. You won't get desertification or whatever the specific threat is in the area that you're living and working in.

Margaret
So it's just like similar to how farmers, you know, one of the reasons that people push back against Monsanto and these other sort of attempts to sort of monoculture our food sources is because if you have only one strain of rice or whatever then whatever blight comes through iw will take out all of your rice. Versus, the more different strains you have, the better your chances of actually getting a good yield.

Simon
That's exactly right. And that's talking about even just genetic diversity, right. And it's really just, it's threat mitigation. The more—if we have a diversity of species, the same way we think about diversity of genes, you know, and we think about climate change as a disease to an ecosystem, if you think about as a singular living body, the more diversity you have among plant species, the more likely it is that the ecosystem is going to be able to respond. You know, so you don't—if you have a single overstory tree species, which in some cases you have, in some marginal ecosystems that's all that's there and that's all that's available. But if that single overstory species becomes impacted in a way, specific to climate change, to the point where maybe it's wiped out, which is a real possibility in some parts of the arid West where you have native bark beetles, often increasing in damage to forests stands, largely due to climate change, you know, you have warmer winters and so they're able to be active for longer, you have less kills from freezes, so you have whole stands disappearing. And if you have a single tree species in those stands, then it's not a forest anymore It'll be something else. But if you have a multi-layered canopy with with many different tree species, then you know, perhaps one of those other species is going to be resilient, it's going to resist that, threat and it can occupy the space. So it's really just, it's just kind of building in more options for the ecosystem to adapt.

Margaret
I like this a lot. Like, I don't know, I really am enjoying learning this stuff because it—because it dovetails so well into, like, what I believe about the world and things like that. But like, you know, I mean, one of the main things that I'm interested in is that I believe diversity is a better form of strength than, like, unity. Rather than trying to make everyone agree to something or making everyone the same along almost any axis, instead, getting people to work together despite differences, you know, and, like actual multiculturalism versus like the melting pot, for example. Or, you know, even like in political movements, having diverse opinions, diverse strategies, diverse methods, and then just working together to try not to step on each other's toes and to try to figure out how all of our different strengths can tie together. And so I'm excited to hear that that's, like, the main way that people are thinking about creating resilient ecosystems is, you know, because I think people have this concept of, like, the way to stop climate change is, you know, essentially this eco fascist idea—or I heard someone call it, I think, climate Leviathan or something like that—you know, this idea of, like, a top down, here's what we all must do approach. And yet, I think that replicates, well, the problems that got us here in the first place, but also, you know, that would be like saying, like, oh, well, this is the tree, this particular tree will resist climate change the best. So we're just gonna, like, clear cut everything and plant that tree, you know?

Simon
Yeah, I think, oh, yeah, I just—I think there's a lot of social lessons probably to be drawn from ecology. And I think it's tempting for people and it's been done a lot. And it interplays, right, we—ecology is the study of relationships between organisms functionally, and if you're talking about restoration ecology, it's just how do you restore those relationships. And if you have a monoculture, there's no relationships to be had, or there's fewer. You know, your web becomes just some kind of simple grid with a few connections instead of this kind of unknowable complexity of interactions. And it's that sort of unknowable complexity that I think is, like, most beautiful in ecology to me, and is maybe why I was drawn to being a practitioner instead of a researcher. Maybe I'm also just not smart enough, that's part of it, maybe I'm not good enough at the math. You know, it's, you know that you have to let go. You get to act and you get to see how the ecosystem responds, and you're never really going to know what all those response mechanisms actually were. I mean, I think that's really nice. But yeah, I mean, it's, an ecosystem is not top down, it's not anything down, it's just the interaction of many organisms. And as a top-down actor, in a sense, you know, choosing our inputs into the ecosystem, I think that's something that does need to be decided as a society in a way, but also that society can be in, you know, there's layers to that, right. It's like, how, what is our ethic? How do we treat natural systems? You know, I think there needs to be like a moral framework. But then a lot of this stuff, it really is only, it only functions on a local scale. I mean, I think it's, in my field, it's so important to just continue to work in one place as much as possible. I mean, it just, I'm still learning plant species, you know, in sites that I've worked on for years and it's, like, I didn't even know this thing existed. And so some level of local control, even if we're operating in the space where government and funding and all of these things are major factors, you need local experts. And some of that is just that, like, we don't orient our society towards local expertise because people have to have jobs and they need to move on from those jobs. And sometimes a career opportunity is going to be in a different part of the country. And, on and on. But without that local knowledge there's just—you miss too many things. And you miss many things regardless. But—and that's why when people, you know, people do lip service to Indigenous knowledge and cultural practices and stuff, and sometimes it's not genuine, but the most genuinely important thing about it is that local knowledge, right, and when you think about, like—in my field, I think about just like the massive tragedy of losing, you know, 1000s of years of knowledge. And then what of it that we have—because these these, you know, cultures and Indigenous people are still with us and they're like—I see, like, yeah, tribal governments and just individual native people trying to insert themselves into these spaces and natural area management and being kind of like, oh, well yeah, you can have this over here. You can do this over in this other space. And it's like, you know, what little we have left that we didn't, you know, wreck of this built up knowledge over 1000s of years, we're kind of just, like, shunting to the side.

Margaret
Yeah, kind of marginalizing it.

Simon
And putting it into it's own little box when really that's the model we need to be replicating, you know, and building as a culture, right. We need to build those generations of knowledge.

Margaret
I like, I get really excited about organizational structures that are bottom-up, right? Like, where the main most important thing is that local expertise, is the fact that the people who live in an area are more likely to have the skills they need to deal with problems in that certain area, but they might need resources. And in some ways, you might want to centralize the acquisition of these resources or whatever, you know, or talk with each other and like network and coordinate with each other, you know, because there's some—there are decisions that need to be sort of made at a larger and wider level. But I think that just, like, we can essentially invert the kind of hierarchies within our society. But I suppose that is tangential to reforestation. And I've been spending the whole time trying to come up with a way to phrase the pun, like, see the forest for the trees, but I'm just going to leave that there, and you all can come up with your own version of that. What, um, to try and be, like, more specific and more practical about it: How does reforestation affect, like a local area? Besides—I guess, like, okay, it's two separate questions. One is the large scale question: How does reforestation impact climate change, besides, again, like protecting biodiversity like you were just saying, and giving, like more tickets in the lottery of survival or something? But also, like, is it true—okay, I'll just go—like, is it true that if we plant a whole bunch of trees then we'll be able to slow down or mitigate the effects of carbon in the atmosphere because of trees capturing carbon? That would be a first question.

Simon
Yeah. So the simple answer to that first question is yes, of course we know trees capture carbon. And through photosynthetic processes trees and all plants, not just trees, which is an important point that people miss, capture carbon. And that carbon is stored unless it's burned or, you know, otherwise disturbed, sometimes through decomposition processes, you can have methane and carbon released back into the atmosphere. But yes, on a global scale, reforestation, generally, if you're starting at zero state—you know, you take a bare piece of ground and plant trees—reforestation is an effective way to mitigate or counter the effects of climate change. Now, I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but I will say that one of the scariest sets of words in my field is "global tree planting initiative."

Margaret
Oh, interesting, okay, because that's where my brain goes.

Simon
Yeah, that's less a function—well, I think it's a function of going back to talking about needing local solutions—or at least needing local expertise, even if you have a global initiative. And a lot of it is that, frankly, there's organizations out there that are, they're just big grify, you know, that are saying, you buy this product, we're going to plant a tree. You don't know really where that tree is, or they're going to maybe—sometimes that money goes towards replanting timber plantations in Canada or something, you know, and it's like, well, the carbon accounting of something like that is pretty sketchy, because they were probably going to replant it anyways because it's functionally a farm. Right? They're just replanting the trees that they're going to harvest again in 50 years. And in other cases, you have organizations kind of swooping into areas and planting non-native species, you know, in areas that were already vegetated, and maybe that vegetation has similar, you know, carbon storage capacity as that monoculture of trees that you went in and planted. So, you know, I don't want to get too far down that road. But I—the answer is that trees, yes, of course, store carbon. So does other plant life. And the most effective way to use forests to—at least in the Pacific Northwest where I have some knowledge—to combat climate change, it can be tree planting, but it's protecting existing forests from logging and destruction. Because it's really the old trees, at least in this system that I'm familiar with, that have the most carbon storage capacity. But big, old, you know, 100 plus year old trees.

Margaret
I mean, that's—I guess it's not surprising to me that the organizations are the problem with tree planting initiatives, you know, because I'm so used to not even thinking organizationally at this point that I'm like, oh, no, you just plant trees everywhere, right? But I'm like, oh yeah, but if there was like, either, of course—yeah, of course, these companies where they're like, oh, we want to get the most carbon capture per dollar or whatever. And so yeah, I guess they'll go plant the wrong trees in some area and mess up that ecosystem and mess up the ways of life of all the people who live around there and things. Yeah, I mean, I guess it seems to me that, yeah, defending the trees that we have as well as, I guess, replanting and reforestation but from local, like, in ways that are applicable to the local context as best understood by people who are Indigenous to that context, or at least are experts in that local context, is that...?

Simon
Yeah, I think that's right. And the other thing I would add to that is carbon accounting is extremely difficult. And in any scientist who studies this—I'm not a scientist who studies carbon accounting, but from everything that I've seen and read, and everyone who I know and I've talked to, there's so much hedging as to be the point, well, we know that this probably has impacts, but maybe those impacts are two centuries down the line. One example is I just saw a presentation about, you know, is looking at what was the carbon storage capacity in coastal wetland systems. Again, this is just, these are places I work. So this really smart researcher whose name I'm forgetting—but that's probably okay—was looking at carbon capture, and then also carbon and methane emissions from these wetland systems. And one of the conclusions was that these wetland systems are long term if left alone, you know, net carbon and methane positive, right, like they will capture more than they take in. But a lot of them are actually emit more methane and carbon through decompositional processes. You know, you think about walking around in a swamp, you stick your boots in, and you get that smell of sulfur and methane. Those decompositional processes, which are super important and do a lot for the ecosystem, emit more methane, which is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon than they do capture carbon. And eventually it becomes carbon positive, I guess would be the term, right, that it's capturing more than it's emitting, because methane doesn't last as long as the atmosphere, you're continuing to capture carbon, you know, over time, that could be 400 years in the future, you know. So that doesn't make it not worth doing, but if the idea is we're going to solve climate change by planting trees, you know, or by manipulating ecosystems in order to prioritize carbon capture without considering all these other things, I think it's probably too difficult. It's a nice bonus. But I—my feeling tends to be that there's so much that restoring ecosystems, including forests, reforestation does for societies and for people beyond that—things that you can see and feel and effect—and feel the effects of locally, that we should be valuing those things as well.

Margaret
Can you give me examples of some of those things?

Simon
Yeah, well, initially, you know, I know you wanted to talk about micro climates.

Margaret
That is my next question, so this is great.

Simon
Yeah. I mean, well, we can jump right into it I guess. There's like, there's been some really interesting research lately on the local climate effects of forests. I was reading a paper earlier about, you know, of course you have you have effects on ground temperature, just through direct shading, right. Just the creation of shade can make a massive difference. In the Northwest, we just experienced what has been described as 1000 year heat event. In Portland, where I live, we had temperatures pushing 120 degrees, which is, like, not fathomable.

Margaret
Yeah.

Simon
You know, I still can't fathom that, even though it just happened and I'm seeing the effects.

Margaret
Yeah.

Simon
Seeing dying plants. You know, it's apocalyptic feeling. But because we have a good network of temperature sensors and weather stations, you can see that in neighborhoods that had tree cover, you could easily be 10 degrees cooler than neighborhoods without that. And that's going to be largely because of just the direct shading effects. And then there's also cooling effects from respiration and trees, you know, water is one of the best temperature moderators that exists, right. And so just the process of trees respirating and giving off water vapor through that process cools the air. And so—

Margaret
Oh it's like evaporative cooling that's happening on the Trees? Cool.

Simon
Essentially yeah. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's thermodynamics. And that respiration slows, you know, when you have a super hot temperatures, a lot of species will undergo, you know, like, sort of heat dormancy, summer dormancy. But it still happens and depends on the planets but, and then of course just the direct shading. I mean, obviously, shade is cooler than being in the direct sunlight. And open concrete and asphalt is the opposite, it reflects a lot of heat. So in an urban context—and there's been actually some really incredible research done by—again, trying to recall his name. A researcher, same person. Yeah, I will, maybe I'll come up with a later. But a researcher at Portland State University who's done thermal mapping of the City of Portland and now has moved on to other cities, basically showing where there's these urban heat islands, right. And these heat islands are—I mean, it's incredibly stark. And of course, there's all these social implications because the heat islands are in poor neighborhoods, and the rich neighborhoods have big old trees. But again, yeah, that the cooling effects just directly from being your trees is well known and it's becoming more and more well documented.

Margaret
Yeah, I live—I mean, part of the reason I got excited about like reading about microclimate stuff is that, you know, I live on a land project where slightly more than half of it is open field. And then the other half is up in the woods. And I'm the only one who built her house up in the woods. And there's, you know, when it comes to running my solar panels and things, there's a lot of disadvantages here. And the humidity is a little bit worse up there, which is a problem in the mid-Atlantic, although I feel terrible complained about any climate problem that I'm facing in one of the most temperate and so far least affected areas. But it's a 15 degree difference between—you know, and I'm not that far into the woods or something, but my house stays fine in hot Southern summer without AC from, as long as I haven't maintained some airflow and have vents and things. And if I walked out into the field, I'm like—like, I'll walk down in the morning and I'll have a hoodie on, and I'll get to the field and everyone else who lives there will be, like, you know, not wearing a shirt or whatever. It's stark in a way that I never—you know, it's like, I know it on some level, like, oh, if you walk on the middle of the road and it's black and, you know, it's asphalt, it's hot or whatever, right. But I never quite, you know, felt it daily that that difference. And so that's why I got excited about it, just because I was like, oh, this works here. It clearly is applicable on a global scale and I should enforce a global tree planting initiative.

Simon
Yeah. You can make pretty good money at it.

Margaret
Yeah. How long does it take to create a microclimate? Is this something that, like, listeners who if they have, like, if they have enough power to influence the, you know, flora of their neighborhood and things like that could be pursuing as a way to at least keep their environment, like, a substantial amount of cooler, or?

Simon
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean it's, of course, gonna depend on the growth rate of trees. And that's going to depend regionally. I mean, I live in a pretty productive climate, a mild climate so far in our history and lifetimes. But there's tree species here that, you know, in their established can grow 5-10 feet a year. So that's very much within our lifetimes. Those shade effects, you know, you start to feel that as soon as it's putting out shade, and the more shade that's put out, the stronger those effects will be. So absolutely. If this is a primary, you know, if you're talking about an urban context of interest in your neighborhood, you do want to consider, right, like, what is the growth rate of the species that I'm planting? You know, maybe that's an important consideration for a reforestation project or picking something near your house. You know, if you look in the West, you know, all the old homesteads, they would plant poplars in a row, either as a windbreaker or as shade or both next to the houses, because poplars and things in Populous, in that group of plants, grow incredibly fast. They're also very brittle. Something to consider if you're planting near your house, you know. Limbs can fall off and such. But yeah, I mean, it's something that you can be involved in and do and, you know, especially on sites that I work on, I have sites where I I planted the trees or planted trees with a group of people and eight years later, they're, they're 25 feet tall. And so you're really seeing a forest develop.

Margaret
That's cool.

Simon
But of course, that's going to depend on on where you live.

Margaret
Okay, here's an oddly specific question. How do you plant a tree? Like when I was a kid and it was like Arbor Day or something, they were like, go home and plant this pine tree. And they gave us like this like pine tree sapling, and I like dug a hole and I put it in the hole and then it died.

Simon
Yeah.

Margaret
You know? And so I've convinced myself ever since that I can't—I have like a, you know, an anti-green thumb or whatever. And if anytime I plant anything, it's gonna die because I like tried to plant a pine tree in elementary school. But, what's involved in just the literal act of reforestation or even just tree planting.

Simon
Yeah, well in reforestation, you know, what you're talking about, mostly is scale, right? And so the most important thing is covering acreage and making sure that we can cover as much ground as possible and in the field of ecological restoration locally, we're, you know, we're actually borrowing a lot of practices from agriculture and from commercial forestry where these things are—there's lots of money behind them and techniques have been established, right. So a tree planting crew in the Pacific Northwest, even in steep terrain, and the less steep it is, the easier. You know, each crew member can plant 1000 to 1200 trees per day, would be about standard.

Margaret
Oh wow.

Simon
And, you know, if you're reforesting it at an area, say it's canopy species only and you're—you maybe planting 300 stems per acre on a restoration project. So each crew member might reforest four acres a day, on a on a good day. You know, if we're doing a restoration project, we're also planting understory species and other things as well, then maybe that drops to an acre. You know, scale is the most critical thing. So it's professionals, people who know what they're doing, right. And it's not that anyone can't learn, there's some simple things that all plants want when they're being planted. You know, not—letting the roots hang naturally is maybe one of the most important things that people kind of get wrong when they're planting a tree. It's like oh, my god, this, these roots are too big, I'm just going to kind of stuff in the hole and then they turn upwards and we'd call that J rooting. Right? So the root basically forms a J and the tree can recover from that, but when you think about a young sapling developing, one of its biggest limitations in a lot of climates, not all, is going to be water availability. And the deeper those roots are—so the deeper the hole is, the deeper the roots are, and the more natural they are in their arrangement—the later it's going to be able to access water into the dry season. Every inch of depth might gain at a week as the, as things dry out. Trees get planted too high, you know, roots get exposed. That's another component.

Margaret
Okay. So you just, like—you're going out there with like a, like a one person gas auger or something and drilling a bunch of holes and then going back through and putting saplings that were grown in a nursery somewhere into it?

Simon
Yeah, most of what most of what we would use in reforestation projects locally, it's almost all going to be hand planting. Again, you're talking about pretty steep terrain. In some cases we may use augers mounted on the back of a tractor. But anywhere that's flat in Oregon and Washington in the winter is usually pretty wet, when we're planting things. So it can be hard to get equipment around. But usually it's snow, we plant smaller trees, things that people can carry. We use what we would call bare root stock, primarily, that's grown in a commercial nursery. And instead of coming in a container, you know, a plastic pot that creates a lot of trash and also is just heavy and hard to carry around, we—the plants when they're dormant get pulled out of the ground with the roots exposed to the air and then they get put in a, basically a planting bag and sealed up. And then you pull them out when it's time to plant them and the roots are just exposed to the air and you plant them in the ground directly. And when you have that, each tree planter can carry maybe 200 trees at a time in planting bags just on their shoulders because the weight is significantly lighter when you don't have the soil attached. So almost all hand planting. So that 1200 trees a day will be—they're digging every one of those holes and just sliding the tree in. You just dig as small hole as possible. You open it up a little bit and—it's a cool process to watch.

Margaret
Yeah. What do you what are you digging it with that if it's not like a gas auger or something? Like I guess I'm yeah, building foundations.

Simon
Yeah, we have planting shovels. They're just a long shovel with a long narrow spade usually. In some cases, there's a tool called a hoedad in steep areas. And actually—I'm going to get the history wrong—I think the tool is named after a group of basically hippies that moved out to Oregon in the 60s to be on tree planting crews and they developed this tool, you know, or they named the group after the tool. But I think it was the other way around. Anyways, one or the other. But the hoedads were a cool group of kids back in the day. And so on steep terrain you might have basically looks like kind of a long pickaxe with a blade at the end. But usually, yeah, it's just like a 16 inch long, narrow shovel.

Margaret
Okay, and then what if someone's trying to plant trees a little bit more DIY, whether getting them from a nursery? Or even, like, is it feasible for people to try and plant from seed with trees? Like, I really don't know much about gardening. I feel almost bad, this podcast is like not focused on food. But I would like to.

Simon
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And again, this is where connecting with people locally and understanding what things need to grow locally is so important, right? We don't use a lot of seating for trees and shrubs just because we have a well-developed network of nurseries that grow these seedlings. And it makes maintenance a little bit easier to be able to know exactly where the seedlings are. So you're not mowing something that's, you know, an inch tall. But trees grow from seed, you know. And definitely, you know, one of the things that I've done is on a project where we've had to remove alders, they were going to see it at the time, and we just ground that up into mulch and the seeds that were developing on the tree were part of that mulch, and then that just got spread around on the site. And then we had like, thick stand of alders just pop up. And they were mulch, basically, from the bodies of the parents.

Margaret
Oh wow.

Simon
In some cases you can also use natural processes to get those seeds to establish on their own. Like another example would be the cottonwoods locally, which a lot of my restoration is of kind of cottonwood galleries along rivers. They time their sea drop to happen after the river is just dropped, you know, the spring floods have receded. And you have all these, this exposed mud and exposed ground so the seeds can take advantage of that exposed ground. And so, of course, because we have hydroelectric dams on a lot of the rivers here, you don't have that flooding anymore and you have weedy grasses and things. But if you clear that ground at the right time of year underneath the trees, you can get a response of seedlings dropping all around and among those trees. So the remaining mature trees will kind of sprout a forest if you just, you know when those seeds drop, you know when the natural time is for them to emerge, you can use that to your advantage.

Margaret
How do—you know it's, like, okay, so you work on restoration and reforestation and things like that. But then, of course, as you pointed out, we're also losing a lot all the time. Right? And it's kind of two questions. And one is—sometimes I worry about, you know, my work as an environmentalist or even as, like, with encouraging preparedness, like how much am I just, like, in some ways, like, allowing the system to continue. Because if I'm mitigating—as an activist, if I'm mitigating the worst effects of a system, then in some ways I'm allowing it to continue, right? And like, you know, charity is particularly famous for this of, like, basically just, like, well, industrialized capitalism wouldn't work without charity because it doesn't—you know, like, people need that or there wouldn't be a workforce anymore. And yet, at the same time, this act of redistributing resources is very good, right? And so in the act of physical resources we'll talk about, you know, mutual aid instead of charity. And I wonder about, like, something like reforestation. Where do we cross the threshold? Is it just a matter of scale of crossing the threshold from, like, being a release valve for the worst parts of industrialization versus, like, gaining ground ecoligically.

Simon
Yeah, right. I don't know. I don't know how to assess that, like, on a global scale. But what I can know is that—you know, circling back to talking about resiliency—if you're doing something to the best of your knowledge to improve your local natural environment, you are—you're counteracting some of those negative effects. Whether it's enough, I don't know. I mean, there's lots that we need to do aside from climate change, I think, to like, start gaining ground instead of just halting it. And the history of the environmental field, or of conservation of natural resource management, is starting with that, oh, we just need to halt things, right, we need to preserve land. And that's super important and still needs to happen. And restoration was kind of people thinking, well, we need a next step, right? We've preserved a lot of land but, like, a lot of its degraded. But of course, we're still building new subdivisions. You know, we're still converting small farms to industrial agriculture. These processes are still happening. And so the answer is, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to know what action is going to have like the best total positive difference. I think maybe organizing to stop a new subdivision is going to be a more effective use of your time, or just more impactful, than reforesting an area that's already natural, that is just degraded. I really don't know, and part of that's going to depend on what you're valuing. You know, what are you most concerned about? Is it habitat—is a total, you know, is it climate change? Is it total loss of green areas? Is it shade as we're talking about, you know, local climate mitigation? These are all things to consider, I guess. And, yeah, I don't know when we reach the tipping point in the other direction, but I know that, for me, if it's directionally—if it feels directionally good, then maybe I've just chosen not to think about it beyond that, because otherwise it's too hopeless.

Margaret
No, no, I totally understand that. I mean, it's like a thing that I wrestle with when I'm doing activism, but it doesn't make me stop doing activism. You know, I'm like, okay, like, we're still gonna—we still need to do these things even if it isn't yet at a critical mass at which it, like, is winning or whatever on this larger scale. I guess I've always been a big fan of, like, sort of why not both approach [inaudible] girl asking why not both. Because, like, I've always been of the, like, stop/demolish the institutions of destructive—or, you know, like, stop oppression while also building liberation as like, you know, both things are so necessary and I guess I can accidentally sometimes get caught up in that false dichotomy of, like, building up the things we want versus tearing down the things that are destroying the world. I guess, coming towards the end of this, but I wanted to ask—because you were talking about how the work you do, you know, kind of relies on idealism and hope. And I think that that's something that's in short supply right now. And despite my last name, and despite the fact that I run a podcast about the end of the world, I believe very strongly in hope, at least as a strategic thing. You know, it's like, you can't—you can't win unless you fight to win, and you can't fight to win unless you envision the fact that you could win or at least, you know, have a better time along the way to losing or whatever. And so I guess I want to ask you, like, what gives you hope? What—because most of us don't know that much intimately about the ecological impacts of climate change. It's just scary, right? And I know that what you're talking about, about biodiversity giving us a better shot, that feels really hopeful. But I'm wondering if you have other ideas.

Simon
I would say, one of the most beautiful things I think about being in the field that I am, building forests, a lot of the time is that you are hopefully creating something that's going to outlast you. There's sort of an awe that I try to maintain. And it's not always easy, but some of these organisms that we interact with that might be a couple years old, and they plant it, it could have a lifespan of, in my region, 500 years. We can talk about a coast Douglas fir. And we can't know what the world is going to be like. And it's not really about making your impact, because no one's going to know, oh, I designed, I built this cathedral. You know, it's not like that. But it's, like, you're humbled by the experience of working with something that's so big and so vast in size and in time. And I think that's a really—I think it's a really beautiful thing. And it's a cliche to say, oh, go plant a tree as like an environmental action. But participating in restoration locally—which there are ways to do, hopefully, and people should try to if they have the ability—it can give you that sense of awe. And then if you're able to go back to that place that you helped, you know, 10 years, in 20 years, it's really humbling and it's really amazing. So it gives me hope that things outlast us, you know, that the world kind of goes on, and that also that we can be a positive part of the natural world. It's not just oh, humans are are bad and we're screwing everything up. It's—we can be intentional and how we interact with nature. And I think introducing that intentionality into how we impact the natural world is just so important, and feels good when you do it.

Margaret
Yeah, I wonder if one of the single most important things we can do is fight this idea of, like, humanity as a cancer or whatever, right? Like, you know, humanity itself, like humans are not inherently flawed in this way. Like, we're not inherently going to destroy everything. You know, it's—there's certain organizational systems, both economic and also larger structural systems, that do this thing, you know, and we end up participating in it. But there's other ways that we can live, have lived, do live, will live, you know?

Simon
Yeah. And a lot of times we think about nature as something that we affect incidentally. You know, we do a thing that we want to do for some reason, and then we accidentally have an effect on the natural world. And I would like people to maybe think about it as, we can choose how we affect the natural world, and we can be a positive force, and we can be, you know, get very hippy, but we can be one with it. You know, we're not separate, as you said. And it just, it's I think just a much healthier way to view ourselves and nature. Just go do something positive. You know, be specific in how you want to impact the natural world, in the same way that you would be intentional about how you want to impact your community and your relationships with your family and your friends.

Margaret
Yeah, I like that. I like that comparison and it feels very—it's almost, it's like not even a metaphor. It's just literal. You know, there's like the human and the nonhuman communities that were part of, you know?

Simon
Yeah. And it's not just having less impact, it's having good impact.

Margaret
Yeah. Instead of the—you know, it always struck me as, like, trying to just reduce your impact upon the world was always, like, what's the point of that just so that you can feel better about yourself, you know? Like, actually doing something positive feels way better and way less, in some ways, like, obsessive, right? Because if you're just trying to make sure you have no impact on the natural world, you're essentially just trying to negate yourself. Yeah. Was there—is there a question I should have asked you or something that you really want to bring up that you think I or the listener should hear? I wanted to ask you all this stuff about riparian zones and flooding, but that was entirely selfishly because I live on quote/unquote 100 year floodplain that thanks to climate change is a 4-5 times a year. But I'll ask that another time.

Simon
Yeah. I mean, I think we covered some interesting ground. I would say, connecting with people locally and building that local knowledge is the main thing that I can leave people with. Because that's—I can't tell you what to do if you live somewhere else, or even if you live near me. You know the problems that you face better than anyone, and people in your community probably do as well. So that's, yeah, I can't think of anything else.

Margaret
Okay. Well, thank you so much for coming on. And do you have any—you know, I don't know whether you're trying to have strangers ask you questions on Twitter or if you'd like to shout out anything about how people can either follow your work or learn more about what you do, or if there's any other organizations or anything like that that you're excited about that you'd like to shout out to people?

Simon
Yeah. I would say, if people want to follow me on Twitter, it's plant_warlock. And as much as I talk about, you know, environmental issues and projects that I'm working on that may be interesting to folks. Again, reforestation and dam removals and things like that. I have to admit, I also just talk a lot about how terrible our mayor is and things like that. But I would also say for people local to Portland, if they're interested in tree planting, we have a great organization called Friends of Trees that does tree planting projects in neighborhoods and also a natural areas. And it's a great way to kind of get your foot in the door and see if you enjoy doing this kind of work. And if anyone just has questions or, you know, wants advice on things in the natural world, I may at least be able to point them in the right direction. So feel free to contact me.

Margaret
Okay, thanks so much. And does that organization in Portland—do you all, like, take donations? Can I try and direct people to give you all money?

Simon
Yeah, they do. I'm not affiliated. I just know it's an easy way for people to get involved. But they certainly take donations, and they are always looking for volunteers. That's not, I know that's slowed down and been different during COVID times, but I think they're taking volunteers again, and people can certainly donate to them.

Margaret
Cool. Okay, well, thanks so much.

Simon
Thank you.

Margaret
Thank you all so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. This is the kind of the only way that people find out about this podcast is through word of mouth. And I'm incredibly grateful for everyone who, like, you know, shares and retweets and posts to their story on Instagram and blah, blah, blah, like feeds the algorithm and tells their friends about it. And of course, anyone who tells people about it in person. Well if you don't like the episode then don't tell people about it—unless, actually, if you—if you don't like the episode, you should tell people about how much you don't like it because that will still also drive engagement. That's my favorite thing when people do. And you can also support the show by supporting me on Patreon. Eventually, it'll be supporting a whole organization on Patreon, which is basically what you're doing if you support me on Patreon because other people are very involved in this podcast at the moment and we're going to expand out to other podcasts and shows and things like that. Oh, speaking of which, I now have a YouTube show. The channel is called Live Like the World is Dying. You'll be shocked to know that. And you can find it on YouTube. I only have one episode up as of this recording, but who knows how many I have up by the time it's released. In particular, I'd like to thank some of my patreon backers. I'd like to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana, Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, and Nora. I really can't thank you all enough. I mean, I don't know, I guess if I did too much no one would listen anymore. If I just said just names over and over again in a weird pleading tone. So I won't do that. But I will say that I hope everyone is handling all this as best as they can and I will talk to y'all soon

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Notes Summary

You can find more information about Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, including the zines and resources Jimmy mentioned, a list of mutual aid networks, and social media pages, at https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

Margaret 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 on this episode I'll be talking to Jimmy from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. And we're going to be talking about what is involved in setting up and maintaining a mutual aid network and also what disaster relief looks like. Because, obviously, that's something that's on people's minds for some strange reason. And this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Da duuuuh!

Jingle What's up y'all? I'm Pearson, host of Coffee with Comrades. Coffee with Comrades is rooted in militant joy. Our hope is to cultivate a warm and inviting atmosphere, like walking into your favorite coffee shop to sit down with some of your close friends and share a heart to heart conversation. New episode premier every Tuesday, so be sure to smash that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. We are proud to be a part of the Channel Zero Network.

Margaret Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I already said, and your pronouns and I guess your affiliations as relate to disaster relief.

Jimmy Yeah, my name is Jimmy. I'm with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, any pronouns are fine. Um, and yeah, I've been part of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief since, you know, about five years ago. Um, and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is a people-powered disaster relief network based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. And we work with communities especially, you know, the most marginalized, to assist folks in leading their own recoveries. And this network is a permanent network from below to respond to disasters, building off of the history and the legacy of Common Ground in New Orleans after Katrina, Occupy Sandy in New York after Superstorm Sandy, and other solidarity-based mobilizations. And we, we seek to provide some level of continuity for the larger movement of which we're only a small part. And then also, um, you know, continue to build off of the lessons learned so that we can, um, you know, build off the successes and avoid the mistakes of previous iterations of doing this type of organizing.

Margaret Okay, could you give some examples of situations that you all respond to?

Jimmy Sure. Yeah. So, you know, this last year we've been responding to COVID. You know, before that, um, you know, a lot of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, things like that. And we also, to a smaller extent, respond to what we call invisible disasters. So, you know, even though, you know, for example, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, it's not a hurricane that knocked out power or made it so people don't have heat to run their homes, it's the legacy of colonialism, you know. So, um, you know, we've tried to respond to disasters like those as well as the very visible climate-related disasters of hurricanes and fires and floods and things like that.

Margaret Okay, so y'all are nationwide then?

Jimmy Yes, we are.

Margaret Cool. Um, I guess, so, I want to ask—one of the things that comes up a lot when people talk about, well, mutual aid networks, especially ones that are, say, nationwide rather than, like, specifically rooted in the communities where the disaster is happening, what does that look like for you all—like, are you outsiders coming in? Are you invited in? How do you all navigate that kind of tension?

Jimmy Um, so yes, we, you know, we are—we're national, but we're also local. You know, so all of us are from local communities and involved in local mutual aid projects and movements, you know, for justice and liberation in our own local communities. You know, so Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, rather than trying to supplant or replace local spontaneous manifestations of mutual aid, whether organized through a local mutual aid group or just, you know, the people impacted, you know, assisting each other, we try to amplify that and support that and provide, you know, this ongoing organizing and backup for those, you know, for those mutual aid efforts. So this can look like, um, you know, um, uh, you know, like getting bulk supply donations, or help with clean up, solar infrastructure or water infrastructure. Um, you know, wellness, you know, either wellness checks or setting up Wellness Centers after disasters. We try to be really flexible and adaptive to whatever the self-determined needs of the impacted people are. We borrow the Zapatista principle of leading by obeying, you know, so, you know, both to, you know—we listen to impacted people directly, and respond to their self-determined needs, and we listen to, you know, local mutual aid groups or local solidarity base, you know, justice-ro0ted efforts, and listen to them, you know, and go from there and respond to, you know, and assist however, we can. However, we can leverage our ongoing organizing, and, you know, we have a number of different mutual aid survival programs, um, you know, so we have, you know, like, the Rebuilding a Better World which involves, like, debris cleanup, or, um, you know, cleaning up flooded homes, you know, that's our—we, with our local partners on the ground in Michigan are doing that right now, with the floods up there. Um, you know, with COVID most recently a lot of our efforts—we have been responding to impacted people directly when we're able to, when they reach out to us. But a lot of our focus with COVID has been supporting local mutual aid efforts. There's been a beautiful outpouring of mutual aid globally with COVID-19. And so Mutual Aid Disaster Relief has, uh, you know, supported and amplified and backed up those local mutual aid efforts whenever possible and however, we're able

Margaret To take a step back, what is mutual aid? That's just charity but done by young idealists, right?

Jimmy No, charity is top down. Charity doesn't question—it takes for granted the unjust power relationships in our society, and it at most provides a band aid. Whereas mutual aid or solidarity, it addresses the immediate survival needs of the people while simultaneously raising consciousness and advocating and being a part of these movements for long-term structural changes. So it both meets the survival needs of the people, and in that way, you know, um, you know, we get out of our silos and echo chambers and meet the people where they're at, you know. And also it's connected to a long-term vision for radical social change. And so mutual aid and solidarity, it's about sharing resources, um, but it's also about sharing power. You know, so people who are impacted by disasters, or—you know, whether it's, you know, climate-related, or the disasters of capitalism and colonialism—they have more at stake in their own survival and wellbeing than well-intentioned paternalistic givers of charity. And what we're all longing for, you know, when a crisis hits, is to be part of a communal recovery. And that's part of our healing process, part of how we cope with crisis or with extreme events. And so, you know, just because somebody is impacted by a disaster doesn't mean that they are passive consumers who are just like empty vessels to be filled with blankets or canned goods, you know. People, you know, have skills, have networks, have, you know, a lot to offer. And so one thing about mutual aid is that it's reciprocal. There's no this for that, there's no requirement, but it's, you know, we're giving what we can and receiving what we need. And all of us are, you know, whether it's, you know, people who are supporting, you know, or people who are impacted. And also those two, you know, are not mutually exclusive, they're usually overlapping. You know, so, um, you know, like, one thing that I'll often do is drive around a box truck with, you know, pick up supplies and drop them off in neighborhoods that are impacted. And so, you know, I'll be, you know, going all day, you know, passing out water, food, cleaning supplies, whatever I can get my hands on. But then also, you know, the local community, you know, they'll see that I'm, you know, in go mode, and they'll, you know, come out with an ice cold water, you know, which, you know, after a power outage and nobody has a fridge, it's like gold, you know, and, you know, and so, you know, that kind of mutuality, is, you know, really a key part of mutual aid. And also, there's also a component that I didn't learn until looking into other people's language and experiences around mutual aid and solidarity, is that, you know, with charity there's this emotional distance. There's, you know, like, oftentimes, you know, it's like a traditional, you know, client/service provider relationship, you know, and with mutual aid that is overturned. That, you know, there's an authentic relationship, there's authentic friendships, you know, that—you know, we're not isolated from each other and we get to know each other, we get—we become friends, we become, you know, close to each other. And when we understand, you know, that, you know, predatory landlords are, you know, evicting our friends, you know, we, you know, we join with them and resist, you know, and, you know, mutual aid is also about relationships. And so, um, you know, it's—and relationships are where power is. You know, oftentimes people think in terms—with regards to disasters—in terms of, you know, stockpiling or hoarding, you know, that's the popular imagination around disasters. But in reality, what almost unequivocably happens in almost every location after disasters, people come out of their houses, sometimes meet each other for the first time, and spontaneously come together to meet each other's needs. And oftentimes building off of the relationships that already existed before the storm—or before the disaster. And so, you know, one thing that we talked about a lot in our popular education trainings is that community organizing is the best form of disaster preparedness, and disaster relief is just another form of community organizing.

Margaret You know, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show is that even if sometimes I can get focused on like, you know, here's gear, or here's skills to learn, or whatever, is that people are the best resources and relationships are, like, not only one of the most important things to stockpile or whatever, but more than that just like being around people is actually really good in times of crisis and, like, which is the opposite of the right wing prepper mindset, you know. And, with the solidarity and mutual aid stuff, one of the things that—I've been trying to think about things more and more in terms of—so a lot of communities are extracted from, right? In the same way that a colony is extracted from, resources are extracted from it and brought to another place. A lot of communities are extracted from on a regular basis and therefore, like, need help, right? And charity is this way of like bolstering the extractive process. It's like this way of, like, watering the plants that you plan on harvesting, you know, it's a way of making sure that the extractive process can continue. And the way that I've been more recently thinking about mutual aid is this, ideally, a method of beginning to like reverse the extractive process instead of buffering it up. I don't know.

Jimmy Absolutely, no, at its root mutual aid is radical care, you know, it is loving each other. And in a patriarchal capitalist colonial white supremacist and other, you know, innumerable forms of domination and oppression, to love each other, to love ourselves and to, um, you know, take care of each other is a radical act.

Margaret Yeah. Could you talk about—I really like hearing, like, more, like, specific examples like what either, you know, like specific examples of disasters that you all responded to and how that worked, or just specific examples of when you felt like you knew that you were doing mutual aid instead of charity, like, not just like necessarily, like, gratitude of people, but in terms of what it looks like to have a mutual aid organization, if you could give more specific example.

Jimmy Yeah, um, so one thing that I want to highlight, you know, just to begin with, is you don't have to have it all figured out all in the beginning. You know, so, um, you know, there's a story that Rebecca Solnit talks about in A Paradise Built in Hell, her book, that, you know, after the San Francisco earthquake, people started a community kitchen with one can and one spoon, you know, and then it just grew from there. Similar to that, you know, we, um, you know, sometimes it can feel impossible to start a hospital or a whole Wellness Center. But if we just set up a first aid station, and then have people rolling in and out, and then somebody says, "Oh, yeah, I'm a massage therapist." "Oh, yeah, I'm an acupuncturist." "Oh, yeah, I'm a nurse." "I'm a medic." You know, then it snowballs and takes on a life of its own. Same with, you know, like, maybe the idea of a whole warehouse of supply distribution seems far off, but if we start with a community fridge, or community pantry, just, you know, taking what's in our cupboards and sharing them with our neighbors and then giving, you know, making sure people have the awareness that they can put in too, that they can share as well, you know, that can easily you know, blossom and grow into something a lot larger. You know, Hurricane Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico, pretty bad. And, um, you know, there was this colonial occupation that—I mean, Puerto Rico's been occupied for, you know, a long time—but it was ramped up, you know, after Hurricane Maria. And there was a beautiful explosion of mutual aid organizing throughout the island. There's [inaudible] that are still active that, you know, they took over a governmental buildings that were part of the Oversight Board, the Promesa. Former schools, former government buildings, and they turn them into mutual aid community centers. And out of these centers they have acupuncture, they have computer access for the kids, they have food kitchens, and one thing that we have assisted with for the last couple of years is the solar and water infrastructure. So especially solar, we've been able to access, you know, solar panels, and then, you know, the inverters, charge controllers, battery backup, and help install solar infrastructure at these mutual aid centers to bring them, you know, with, you know, our partners down there, to help with autonomous infrastructure and sustainability. And so one thing that we did in the beginning, um, you know, soon after Maria hit, you know, we were in Florida, we had already had active mobilization for Hurricane Irma in Florida, and so many people who were involved in that mobilization, you know, some of them had family ties and friend ties down to Puerto Rico. And so a delegation went down there. And one thing that we noticed real quick was, you know, our teams down there, was supplies were sitting in FEMA warehouses and not getting out to the people. So one thing that our folks did was they rolled up to the FEMA warehouse and said they're here for the 8am pickup. And the person that the the windows said, oh, we don't see you on the list. And they just insisted, we're here for the 8am pickup. And eventually they were allowed in, they flashed their Mutual Aid Disaster Relief IDs, and they were allowed in and were able to pick up a box truck and carloads full of supplies, and then get that out to the people. And then also, you know, before they had—before they left the island, we made Mutual Aid Disaster Relief badges for local community organizers so they could continue that supply hook up and, you know, continue to try to, you know, liberate those supplies, you know, from sitting in warehouses, to get to the people where they're actually supposed to go. That's one example of how, you know, through our ongoing organizing and just being willing to take risks, we can leverage, um, you know, our access to resources or status as Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, to support survival of the people, but also the local mutual aid organizing of the people as well.

Margaret Okay, and welcome back, which you all won't even notice as a cut. But we lost connection for a moment. And it's funny, because one of the reasons that I don't know how the sound quality is going to be for the listeners, we have a good audio engineer, but I'm no longer—I recorded most of these at home. But now that the trees, now that the leaves are really coming in it blocks my antenna on the top of my house that boosts my cell phone signal enough to do a hotspot enough to do interviews. So now instead I have to go into town near a noisy office and road. So I just think it's ironic. There have been a couple interviews that I haven't been able to do because of my internet at home getting suddenly so much worse. But anyway, so that's why there's a strange break in the conversation. Do you want to talk about the history of mutual aid, whether the history of it like using that word, or the history of it as like a concept, and/or where ya'lls specific lineage comes in. I suppose those are three different questions, but if one of those appeals to you.

Jimmy So mutual aid is—there's, um, I think—called Kropotkin who wrote a book called Mutual Aid. And it was kind of written in opposition to the Darwinian theory of, you know, like, survival of the fittest, that was misused by people. So what Kropotkin did was articulate and give voice to an organizing principle of life. Um, you know, like, what Kropotkin saw with plants and animals, with, you know, like indigenous societies, was that how people survived and thrived was not through competition, it was through cooperation. As far as Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Um, you know, I personally, and other people who are also involved and helped found Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, were part of the organizing in New Orleans after Katrina, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and surrounding areas. And there was a call from Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther, in the neighborhood of Algiers. There were white vigilantes that were roaming the streets shooting and killing unarmed black men. And Malik Rahim had a history of organizing in that community, you know, through the Black Panther Party, and then later through other, you know, movements for peace and justice and environmental justice. And, you know, so at this time it was, um, you know, there were these white vigilantes and also, you know, people stranded out the Superdome. People were trying to cross the bridge to safety and dry land from the east bank to the west bank and they were stopped by Gretna police to turn them back with rifles. And in this context, Malik sent out a call—Malik, you know, and Scott Crowe and others—you know, sent out a call for solidarity and support. Many of us who were involved in movements like Food Not Bombs, or street medics at global justice demonstrations, or indie media, radical independent movement-based media, um, you know, we had some experience with setting up community kitchens, we had some experience with, you know, doing medic work at demonstrations or setting up media centers, you know, for these, you know, big mobilizations against global capital. And many of us responded to that call. There was a blending of the wisdom and legacy of the Black Panther Party, you know, through Malik Rahim and the survival programs. You know, there's the most famous of their programs was the free breakfast program, but they had numerous survival programs. They were doing pest control—community-wide pest control—they were doing a free ambulance program. They did sickle cell anemia testing and education. You know, across the board they were meeting the survival needs of the people, and that's actually what made them the biggest threat to the FBI and to colonialism. They did have an armed component, but what was really the threat was that they were mobilizing the people in a mass way. And Malik Rahim continued that legacy and and then that was translated and melded with the legacy of the global justice movement, you know, where, you know, we were active with, whether it's Food Not Bombs or street medic organizing, and, um, you know, that coalesced in New Orleans after Katrina with, you know, a lot of vibrant mutual aid efforts, and it gave our movements some cohesion. You know, so even people as ideologically far apart as say, like, Michael Moore, the documentarian, or the writers of The Coming Insurrection, they could see what was happening in New Orleans after Katrina and be like, that's actually what we're for. That's what we're about. That's what the world that we're trying to build. And, you know, there were, you know, there was a at least one agent provocateur FBI informant who used his position of power to undermine the organization and take advantage of women. You know, there's a lot of conflicting feelings for many of us who were involved in that in that effort. And we saw again after Superstorm Sandy, you know, where Occupy Wall Street transitioned to disaster response. And again, this solidarity-based network model outperformed the top-down charity model.

Margaret Can you explain that? Like, in what ways does Mutual Aid Disaster Relief do better than than top-down intervention?

Jimmy So Naomi Klein talks about this term disaster capitalism. Disaster, capitalism refers to this idea of how the powerful will use shocks or disasters or crises to reinforce their privilege and power. They put in transformations to the economy or society that reinforce their privilege status. And in parallel to this, there's disaster colonialism. So after a disaster, there's a lot of guns that show up. And, you know, there's, you know, authorities, you know, with guns, the army, the National Guard, Blackwater, you know, similar mercenary type groups, and their general response is not, how can we help the people survive? Their general response is, how do we maintain order and keep people in their place? The nonprofits, the top-down nonprofit industrial complex, goes hand in hand with that militarized authoritarian response. The nonprofit's, they undermine local spontaneous manifestations of mutual aid and make it into this thing that is not reciprocal, that is not participatory, that is not power sharing, where people just wait in line and receive a few items and then, you know, are, you know, go back to being oppressed by their landlords or, you know, the, you know, police or the, you know, the state authorities.

Margaret But what would you say to someone who, like, isn't ideologically committed to mutual aid and is looking for the most efficient response to disaster. Like, regardless of the—I mean, I believe ideologically in mutual aid, but I think that it's worth pointing out the ways in which the the actual just like straight up efficiency of decentralized movements can be so much greater and I was wondering if you can talk on that part of it.

Jimmy Yes, absolutely. Um, a story I heard about with Occupy Sandy, that, um, you know, there were some people involved with FEMA that, you know, they got—they heard about this elder And they didn't have heat, they, you know it was getting cold and um, you know, these people, you know, in the FEMA organization had their hands tied because it's, there's so much bureaucracy, so much red tape, so much hoops to jump through. Even though they wanted to help this person, they could not do anything because the top-down nature of it is not participatory, is not liberating for those impacted or those, you know, involved in the relief efforts. So what they did, these people involved with FEMA, was they reached out to people with Occupy Sandy and people with Occupy Sandy weatherize the house, got them—got the elder situated and, you know, what they needed to survive. And then also, after that mobilization, the Department of Homeland Security issued out a report highlighting how movements like Occupy Sandy that are decentralized, that are people powered, network based, solidarity based, are actually more effective than their command and control top-down model. And these are the same people who regularly infiltrate our movements and undermine almost everything we try to do through infiltration, through agent provocateurs, you know, and even they, you know, have owned up to the fact that their top-down model is not as effective as our mutual aid model.

Margaret Yeah, there's a—it's been going around Twitter lately—a leaked or, you know, declassified document about how to infiltrate leftist organizations and, you know, the behaviors that make leftist organizations less effective. And one of them is like, basically, like, put everything to committee. And like, basically try to stop autonomy within the organizations, try to stop people from acting on the organizations without, like, putting everything to the larger organization and everything to little subcommittees and shit like that. And I thought that was really interesting, not that the people who do that thing are inherently, you know, agent provocateurs, or whatever. But we always have this conception of infiltrators as these people who are, like, go there to like break things or instigate or escalate, right? And that does happen. But it really was telling to me that the main way they know how to fuck us up is to go in and get us stuck in endless meetings and get people to not just do things. And the thing that is our strength as people who practice direct action and people practice mutual aid is our capacity to just do things and then coordinate about the things we're doing rather than centrally plan all of the things that we're trying to do.

Jimmy And that is the organizing principle of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is almost everything is done through affinity groups, through working groups, rather than through centralized planning or organizing. We have, you know, regular, you know, signal threads and conference calls and things like that. But it's mostly to provide updates with each other, um, rather than to do the nuts and bolts organizing. We, similar to the Zapatista principle of leading by obeying, there's this idea of subsidiarity, which means you devolve decision making to the localest scale possible. And so, with our organizing, we encourage everybody to be involved in, you know, affinity groups and local collectives and local mutual aid groups, and then partner with Mutual Aid Disaster relief. And, you know, oftentimes, you know, like, if your local affinity group or your local mutual aid group is unable to cover something after a disaster, maybe Mutual Aid Disaster Relief could, or vice versa. You know, there's some things that a local collective or affinity group or mutual aid group could do that Mutual Aid Disaster Relief couldn't. you know. And so, we kind of work in tandem and hand in hand, you know, and we combine both collective decision making and checking in with each other with respect for autonomy and direct action and self determination.

Margaret I mean, it sounds good. And I've seen some of the work that folks associated with you all have done in eastern North Carolina and have always been impressed by, yeah, the non top-down structure organizing, but still the ability to get a lot of stuff done. To go back, there was like thoughts I was thinking about—I was like taking notes as you're talking about mutual aid and, you know, I remember reading this article in a science magazine in probably like, 2008 or something like that about mutual aid and gay birds. And it was—there had been this like thing that—I actually, as far as I understand, Darwin would not have appreciated social Darwinism, or maybe even didn't appreciate social Darwinism, like, the like, survival of the fittest thing, like, wasn't even the Darwinian concept of evolution. But then Kropotkin was, you know, most famously an anarchist. But well, at the time, he was also very famously, I believe, a naturalist and a scientist. And, you know, all of his work was around saying, like, oh, no, animals just take care of each other. Not always, right, there's like, you know, I mean, obviously, animals eat each other and shit too and like, there are animals that fuck up each other's like chances of reproduction or whatever. But people would sit there and they'd be like, why gay birds? Like, why are animals gay? And, I mean, I think, me as an animal know I am gay. But, you know, this is the kind of thing that rightwing thinkers will bring up all the time, right? And like Alex Jones, like, always freaks out about the gay frogs or whatever. And this article basically points out that it was like, well, the gay birds like do an incredible amount of service for the larger community of the animals and therefore, like, continue to propagate the species as a whole, even if they don't individually reproduce. And it was basically this realization that science was finally catching up—and maybe it had—pop science, at least, was finally catching up to the fact that Kropotkin was right about evolution and the, like, mutual aid theory of evolution is, like, as far as I understand it, predominantly the theory within evolution at the moment, and that it's not this, like, you know, war of one against all that people present. But—sorry, this is a rant I've been thinking about for a while. I do appreciate that it's like, mutual aid wasn't invented by kropotkin, right. And like, Kropotkin didn't think mutual aid was invented by Kropotkin. He was observing it, and he was observing it in, you know, the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, and also in the human, like, all, you know, different human societies all over the world have been practicing mutual aid largely before, essentially, like, various forms of colonization including, like, the internal colonization of Europe and things like that.

Jimmy Mutual Aid predates anarchism. And it also is not a European ideology. It's how life survives and thrives. And it's something that, you know, mutual—Kropotkin noticed and gave voice to, you know, in his book. But also, you know, like, um, there's also a vibrant indigenous mutual aid network that has been growing, you know, over the last year plus. And I feel like their approach to mutual aid and solidarity organizing is also somewhat an antidote to the Eurocentric or ideological-based, you know, European-centric, you know, mutual aid organizing, you know, more broadly, that all of us, you know, involved and devoted to mutual aid and a better world, you know, should be engaging with and learning from and communicating with. Because, you know, indigenous people on this continent, Turtle Island, have centuries of experience surviving catastrophes and living through apocalypses. And there's a lot of wisdom there that those of us, you know, in the cities or, you know, involved in, you know, mutual aid that doesn't have that focus, you know, there's a lot that we can learn from, you know, there's a lot of interchange that can be, can be had there, that we can be attuned to.

Margaret Yeah, and even anarchism as a concept. You know, one of the things that really interests me about this mutual aid revelation from Kropotkin's point of view is that anarchism, as a concept, as a Western concept, was basically just Western people figuring out, like, rediscovering something that so much of the world already knows. And so it wasn't like—anyone who presents like anarchism or these ideas as invented by the people who called themselves anarchists in France and Russia or whatever, right? It wasn't an invention, it was a rediscovering and an applying of things. You talked at the beginning about lessons that you've learned. So I'm really interested in how you all are providing continuity across—hm, how to I want to say this? It's like there's been this huge explosion in mutual aid groups in the past year since COVID started, right. And that's actually the most hopeful thing about the whole fucking crisis, from my point of view. And, you know, it's like the only thing at the beginning of it all that was giving me hope, was watching this mainstreaming of mutual aid. And obviously, with mainstream comes a lot of danger and a lot of people calling things mutual aid that might not be mutual aid. But on the other hand, that also seems to me the only hope because, I mean, I believe in a society that the economic system is essentially mutual aid rather than, you know, anything else. But you—I—one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you all is because you all predate this current explosion of mutual aid. And I was wondering if you could talk about what that explosion means, and like lessons that you're able to bring to people who are coming in this, like, newer group of mutual aid organizers, but also things that you've learned from the newer people who might be coming from a less ideological position, or just are younger,

Jimmy We're totally inspired. And we've been, you know, sowing the seeds, you know, of mutual aid and watering them these past several years. And we all—we would always talk about how, you know, like, if we have a hope for survival, it's not gonna come from the state, it's not going to come from the nonprofit industrial complex, it's going to come from each other and these relationships of support, you know, that are horizontal, and participatory and, you know, from below. And I think still, though, even though we were already responding to disasters, and, you know, there's still an element of, you know, like, that, you know, we're talking about the future survival of humanity, you know, with this explosion of mutual aid with regards to the COVID, there's been over 600,000 people killed just in the United States alone, you know, from COVID. And, um, you know, there's evictions looming, mass evictions looming right now, I feel like we've all lost loved ones or lost, you know, or have friends or have family who have lost loved ones, and for both the climate and, you know, the pandemic, the future is now, you know. There's overlapping constant disaster, one crisis after another and, you know, these local mutual aid groups are, you know, they're carving out laboratory spaces and coming up with new ideas about how to meet people's needs, articulating their vision for social change. And it's hard work. So there is, you know, some stumbling in the dark while we—while people figure it out. And that's normal and that's to be expected. You know, with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, one thing that we've, you know, oftentimes—you know, previously with a hurricane, or a flood, or a fire or tornado, a lot of our efforts were in person, direct to people impacted, um, you know, face to face. You know, going to the neighborhood that was impacted and, you know, dropping off supplies, and then seeing what else they need, you know. And then, um, you know, with this explosion of local mutual aid groups it's, um, you know, shifted things somewhat of how Mutual Aid Disaster Relief has responded in that we are still meeting people's needs directly, you know, when needed or when we are able, but these local mutual aid groups are rooted in the community and they are able to respond in ways that, you know, sometimes a national network is not able to. You know, we've learned a lot, and one thing that we try to do to provide some level of continuity for this larger movement is be a clearinghouse of information and resources. So if people go on the website mutualaiddisasterrelief.org you can see a ton of resources, both about mutual aid in general, how to start a mutual aid network, what is mutual aid, you know, disaster response, and, you know, report backs from different mobilizations, different zines, news articles about the mutual aid responses for disasters. And so, you know, there's 1000s of different resources on there, and some of them we created, but many of them, you know, others, you know, local mutual aid groups, partner organizations and networks created and we, you know, help share because we see that that wisdom is valuable and needs to get elevated and out there more. So we try to, you know, offer a library online about disaster response and mutual aid, you know, for the larger movement. On there, one resource specifically that we put out last summer is our Lessons Learned zine. And so people can visit that, there's a dozen different lessons learned both, you know, like, ideas like moving at the speed of trust and at the speed of dreams. Um, you know, and also things to be aware of, you know, such as the savior complex or disaster patriarchy, and ways to, you know, maintain our principles and values while being responsive to the needs on the ground of those most impacted.

Margaret Okay, let's like take some of those. You know, the moving at the speed of trust and the speed of dreams, what is what does that mean?

Jimmy Yeah, so the speed of trust, you know, refers to this idea of, we need to be building bonds with each other. One of the most revolutionary things that we can do is find each other and build meaningful relationships, you know, that are, um, you know, based on care, based on mutual respect and a shared vision and affinity for that better world we know is possible and are trying to build. Um, it's hard to, you know, as a mutual aid network, whether local or national, to act if you don't have a level of trust and a level of connection, and affinity and love for each other. That basis of trust, um, is the foundation, you know, that we can build off of. We encourage people, mutual aid groups, to, you know, if you don't already have core values or guiding principles or foundation, like principles of unity, something like that, to take the time to come together and articulate that collectively. You know, there's so much that is, you know, adaptable and, you know, flexible, you know, in disaster response, oftentimes we need, you know, some principles or some core values to go back to ground ourselves. And, you know, like that, for us in Mutual Aid Disaster Relief that was, you know, a key part of building that trust initially, um, you know, so that we are coming at it from—we know that we are coming at it with a shared vision of what we're doing and where we're going. And then also this idea of the speed of dreams, it comes from, you know, the Zapatistas. It's this idea that when we put our hands and hearts and bodies in service of our dreams, they can manifest themselves exponentially. Far from being, you know, something that, you know, like, we plant seeds and then, you know, generations, they sprout and grow, we see the effects by moment to moment, you know, day to day and year to year when we are true to our principles and values and we, you know, are devoted to an ethic of solidarity and justice, it can be almost disconcerting, you know, how quickly our dreams can manifest into reality. It's that, you know, snowball thing I was talking about earlier is, you know, we can start with just the tiniest bit of liberated space or mutual aid, you know, organizing, and then as we cultivate it, it's amazing, you know, how quickly that can grow and blossom in 1000 different directions.

Margaret Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that—one of the reasons I've always loved direct action as an organizing principle—sorry about the siren in the background if you all can hear it. One of the things I've loved about direct action as an organizing principle is that it involves actually like starting to solve problems. Like, you know, thinking of these examples that you talk about, about like Occupy Sandy going and winterizing someone's house. We often get so caught up, like, especially right now, when all of this bad shits happening, right? When we think, how do we stop climate change? And in some ways, how do we stop climate change is the wrong question because, while we need to stop climate change, it probably looks like solving specific problems along the way. It might be, how do we create a microclimate in this environment that is more resistant to the fires that are going to come? Right? Because we're not going to actually stop climate change. You know, we can stop the worst of it. And so it reminds me of one of the problems that I see lock up a lot of people in general is any given thing that you have to do, it's really hard to be like, well, I'm thinking about the entire problem and how do I solve the entire problem? So you just don't do anything. You know, whenever people are like, well, how do you write a book? And like any writer who's written books is like, I don't know, you start writing a book, and then it's shit so you go back and change things. And then the third time you write a book you, like, plan it out ahead of time better because you know what you're doing. But it really just starts with doing it. You know, there's the whole anarchist cliche that the secret is to begin. And that's one thing I've always loved about mutual aid organizing is like, yeah, I don't know how we—you know, people are always like, oh, what do you anarchist want or whatever. I'm like, look, I can't tell you everything about the economic system of the society that I want to create. I don't even think that would be a good idea. Because what I want to do is feed myself and feed the people around me who I care about, and then build up from there. And so that's one thing I really like about the work that you all do is that focus on, you just start doing it. And it's what, as you were saying, that's what people do is they're like, oh, shit bad's happening, I guess we should do something, you know?

Jimmy Absolutely. And our mutual aid organizing his movement infrastructure. So, you know, there's this idea of dual power, to be simultaneously, you know, building up our own prefigurative resources and institutions and, you know, power from below, while also challenging, you know, the forces of oppression and occupation and colonialism and capitalism and contesting. You know, there's an element of mutual aid organizing that is, you know, all of us are involved simultaneously in mutual aid organizing and the other movements that are contemporaneous for, you know, the movement for Black Lives, or for the Stop Line 3, or the Dakota Access Pipeline, you know, and so, you know, when we build power from below for mutual aid, we're also building power from below to resist extensive resource extraction or, you know, attacks on indigenous sovereignty or on, you know, homeless sweeps. Mutual aid organizing is fertilizing, you know, the movement of ground beneath us to be stronger the next time, you know, we need to be out in the streets or be in front of the bulldozers at a pipeline camp.

Margaret Yeah, and they all tie together, right? Because the only way that we can like really consistently save ourselves is by also stopping the machinery of destruction that is destroying the climate and destroying communities. Because it's like, well, we can, we can provide tents, to people who are currently without houses, but we also need to, like, stop the people who are stealing their tents and stop the system that leaves them without housing in the first place.

Jimmy Exactly. And, you know, one thing that we talked about in our popular education is audacity is our capacity. You know, so, you know, oftentimes we're just limited by our imaginations, you know, we think something is not possible, so we don't try it. You know, but as soon as we shake off that sense of powerlessness and act, then, you know, we're filled with the sense of possibility and then, you know, things that were impossible, or we thought were impossible, are no more.

Margaret I really liked that. And I think that might be a good note to end on. Besides, of course, the obvious joke about audacity as the primary thing that podcasters use that is suddenly spyware. So I'm avoiding making that joke. And you all should be very appreciative of this inside joke I'm not making that only—anyway. What—how can people find out more about your work or support you? Or are there other things like either final words, or, you know, plugging all this stuff that you all do and how people can support it?

Jimmy Yeah, so people can go to mutualaiddisasterrelief.org to check out our website. We also have on there links to many other local mutual aid groups that you can also be involved in, we encourage people to do both—be involved in Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, and be involved in other locally-rooted mutual aid projects and organizations in general. We have a Facebook page, we have a Twitter, we have Instagram, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, you can find us on all of those. And also, um, we often share a quote from Buenaventura Durruti. Durruti was an antifascist during the Spanish Civil War. And one thing that he said was that our opposition might blast and ruin its world before it exits the stage of history, but we're not in the least afraid of ruins because we carry a new world here in our hearts. And all of us who dream of a better world are carrying that new world in our hearts. And we're going to create it, it takes takes lifetimes. Um, but you know, we're a part of that growing world and we know your listeners, you know, everybody listening to this is part of that growing world. And we're excited to see what we're able to build, you know, together.

Margaret All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. And also, you know, after we hung up Jimmy pointed out that basically everyone doing, you know, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is not as much an organization as it is a movement and that all of you listening who are working on preparedness and are working on mutual aid and things like that are all part of this thing we're all doing and just wanted to extend that thanks. And I would also like to extend that thanks. Not just for listening, but for talking, not just about this show, right, that's a tiny part of it all, but but talking about this stuff with people around you. So thank you so much. And if you'd like to support the show, you can do so by supporting me which will soon be supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness which is an old zine collective that is now kind of rebooting to also do podcasts and YouTube channels—YouTube shows and all that shit. You can do so by supporting me on patreon@patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And in particular I guess I'd like to thank Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, The Compound, Cat J, Starro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, Hugh, and Shawn. And also tell people that there's now a YouTube show of Live Like the World is Dying. So far there's only one episode, if you want to see me talking about the emergency kits that I make and distribute, I determined that video would be a better format for that than doing a whole podcast where I just like talk to myself or Jack or someone about, you know, and then in my kit is a whistle. And, you know, like, I think that the video format worked better for that. And it's been a good reaction. So don't worry, I'm not gonna abandon the podcasting format. I personally listen to podcast more than I want YouTube because I like listening. Everyone's always like, "Oh, I don't have the attention span for podcasts." And I'm like, "I don't have the attention span for video." It just depends on your own mindset and also like where you like to consume content, I think, which is definitely stuff you were wanting to know my opinion about. You really wanted to know my opinion about the difference between podcasts and YouTube. So let me tell you more about—no, I'm not gonna tell you more about it. I instead want to say, again, thank you, and do as well as you can. And I hope that all of the things aren't so overwhelming. And if there's one lesson I'm going to remind myself from this conversation, it's that start with the small things, you know. We—it's so easy to get overwhelmed thinking about the magnitude of crisis that we're all in, everyone on the planet Earth is in and to various degrees, of course, I'm not trying to claim that my position is as bad as many, many other people's positions. But all we can do is we can take something we can do, we can think about what can I do? What can I do today? You know? I can go get hot hands, like hand warmers, and have them around or distribute them. Or I can learn how to build a campfire, or I can go talk to my neighbor that I don't talk to much and kind of get a sense of who she is and how we could support each other if things go wrong. Or we just do things one at a time and hope that collectively—because there's a lot of us on this planet, and if we all do things—well, we all did lots of little things and that caused the destruction of everything. So what have we all do lots of little things in the other direction? And I'm not talking—god, this sounds like I'm fucking talking about straws and shit, like fuck straws. I don't care one way or the other about individual consumerism that causes this issue. Anyway, I guess I'm done with the podcast. Thank you for listening and I will talk to you all soon.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

Episode Notes

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

The guest Guy recommended people support the Gray Coast Guildhall on Patreon to support a small town community space: https://www.patreon.com/graycoastguildhall

Transcript

This is an updated transcript, replacing the machine-generated one which was initially posted with the episode.

1:05:45

SPEAKERS Margaret, Guy

Margaret   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 use she or they pronouns. Normally I do this like whole intro thing that I record after the conversation. But this is a special—a special episode that I'm just doing as quickly—as quick turnaround as I can because of what's going on in the Pacific Northwest with unprecedented heat. And I want people to have information as soon as possible. So please forgive audio quality on my end, I'm recording this from the best place I had access to internet, which is right next to one of the busiest intersections in all of the tiny town of Asheville, North Carolina. But anyway, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And normally I put in a jingle here, but I'm not going to. Instead you should just go to Channel Zero Network. I don't even know the website, you just Google it. I mean, come on, who's actually going to type in URL and you can just type things into the search bar. Go check out the Channel Zero Network, there's a ton of shows that might interest you. Okay, so would you like to introduce yourself with your name and your pronouns? And then a bit of your background as relates to heat related illnesses?

Guy   Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on. My name is Guy, I use he and him pronouns. I live up in the Pacific Northwest on the Olympic Peninsula. And my background related to this, I have been a wilderness educator and backpacking guide for many years, especially working down in the Grand Canyon for several years. So a lot of exposure to heat there. And I also instruct wilderness medicine courses. And so I teach and think about bodies and how bodies adapt to stress, particularly heat stress in this context. Yeah, that's me. 

Margaret   Hurray. I'm so glad that your skillset is about to become very useful away from the Grand Canyon and in the Olympic Peninsula. The rain forest that I believe is not—is it—is it normal for you all to have 109 degree weather? Or is that abnormal?

Guy   That is definitely abnormal. Yeah. We sometimes we’ll cross 100 or triple digits over 100 for one or two days in the summer, usually in late July or August. I cannot remember a time when we hit 108 degrees, and certainly not in late June. It is pretty hot.

Margaret   Yeah, I've—I'm from the Mid Atlantic and now I live in the south on the east coast. And I've, the only time I've been in—I mean, I've been in triple digits. I don't think it ever got hotter than 103/104 the whole time I was growing up. And only time I've been in 110 degree weather was in Death Valley. So I'm worried about you all. So that's why I'm—I don't, yeah, we're going to talk at a later point with someone that you co teach with about more wilderness first aid. But it seems like wilderness first aid is suddenly might become urban first aid in a way that we're not—I'm not really used to and maybe you're not really used to. I guess to start with, do you want to talk about, like, what are the dangers of heat?

Guy   Yeah, so I'll preface this by saying a couple of things. The first is that human—the human body is actually really adaptable and resilient if it has time to adapt to a changing environment. So people can handle really extreme heat if they have time to acclimatized to it. But if we get these big spikes of heat coming in a place where people aren't used to it, we're jumping from the mid-80s, one week to 108 another week, then that becomes a lot more stressful on body. And then add on to that, right, up here in the Pacific Northwest as a culture, as a society, we're not adapted to experience heat. Most people don't have air conditioning. Most people's houses aren't particularly well insulated because, in general, it's a fairly temperate climate. So there's just not the—either the time to adapt on a physiological level or to adapt our environment to really manage and handle this heat. So that said, a few different things happen when we get too hot. So, our body, right, we we sweat, we produce sweat, and that's the primary way that we cool ourselves off. And evaporation is is actually a very effective cooling mechanism. If we have enough sweat, and particularly if there's a breeze that is able to allow that evaporation to continue to cools us off. As our body gets too hot and we start to lose our ability to thermoregulate, we end up seeing a lot of different side effects. And so we used to think of this really clear progression from what we call heat exhaustion to heat stroke. And now it seems more like there's just a lot of different clusters of symptoms that appear when people get too hot. So things like nausea, vomiting, feeling really tired, feeling a little bit disoriented, feeling irritable, some muscle cramps particularly related to exercise, sweating, excessive sweating, but then also maybe some more like chills or pale skin, clammy feeling, as our body just doesn't tolerate the heat extremes very well. And all the symptoms, all those symptoms are unpleasant but fine. And the real danger is when our internal temperature starts to cross 104 or 105 degrees Fahrenheit. And at that point, our brain actually starts cooking. And so we see our mental process change, we don't think as clearly, our personality changes, and we're actually doing long term damage to our brains, and they won't survive that for very long.

Margaret   When you say very long, like what are you talking about there, like five minutes, an hour?

Guy   Oh, no, definitely in the in the hours realm. But the longer that persists, the more damage—the more permanent damage can be done to our brain and to our bodies. Depends on the heat extreme. And then once we lose that, once we start losing that ability to thermoregulate altogether, instead of maintaining a temperature that's elevated but not too high, we just kind of start to run away, and we can't cool off at all. And then—and then we need help from from other people, we need a change of environment, we need to be cooled down really, really quickly.

Margaret   One of the—I asked social media right before this interview, like what advice people had and also what questions people had. And the thing that you just talked about, about how we used to see it as heat exhaustion versus heatstroke is very different. That is one of the things that most people were bringing up is, like, make sure you know the difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke with the idea, I guess the prevailing knowledge—what I had known prior to five minutes ago when you said otherwise—would be that heat exhaustion is the like, oh, this fucking sucks and I should probably get somewhere cold real quick. And maybe someone can help me get somewhere—not real cold, but like colder real quick—versus heat stroke is like, you know, call a paramedic, like, get taken to the emergency room or whatever because you're about to die or something. Right? And you're saying that the line between these two is not only not a clear line, but it's not even necessarily a specific progression as much as, like, you are just different clusters. Can you tell me more about that?

Guy   Yeah. So heat stroke, heat stroke is really clear. And maybe that I misspoke a little bit there.

Margaret   I might have misheard you. 

Guy   Yeah, so so heat stroke is very clear. That's when our internal temperatures reached 104/105, the proteins that our brains start denaturing we start doing—we start getting cell death in our brains and permanent damage. And the easiest way to recognize that in someone is a change in their personality, or change in their thought process. Someone who was previously grumpy and maybe a little irritable, or maybe a little hot, or maybe they were just fine, now they're saying or doing things that don't make any sense. And that's because their brain is not functioning properly anymore. So heatstroke is pretty clearly delineated. The distinction is that there's not necessarily a progression from one to the next. You don't necessarily get this long warning sign of heat exhaustion, and you're feeling bad, and then you feel worse, and then you feel worse, and then it's heatstroke. That happens in some people. But in other people it can just go directly to heatstroke without this preliminary experience of feeling a little bit crappy and under the weather and nauseous and faint.

Margaret   Okay. So what do you do in each of these situations? Whether you're alone, or whether you're with someone who's experiencing these symptoms, like what do you do for someone who's suffering from heat exhaustion symptoms versus heatstroke?

Guy   Yeah, so, so in both cases, the problem is that someone is too hot and so the solution is to cool them down. So heat exhaustion, this cluster of nausea, muscle cramps, I just don't feel good, fatigue, maybe some vomiting, that person wants to be cooled down. So we should get into the shade, we should try to move to a cooler environment, change clothes. But we're not necessarily—we have time to do that. Heat stroke, as soon as we see that change in personality or mentation, we want to cool that person down as quickly as possible. And so the fastest way generally to cool someone down is through some amount of cold water immersion. So—

Margaret   Throw them into lake. 

Guy   Throw them in a lake, but probably not throw them because if they have this altered mental status, they can't think as well, we're worried about their ability to swim, right? But get them in running water, get as much of their body in the water as we can while protecting their airway to cool them down quickly. And if we don't have a big body of water we can put them in that's nice and cool, the next best thing is get them as wet as we can, and then fan them. Because that sort of cooling consumes a huge amount of energy, which then cools the body fairly quickly. So if you think about, you get your hands wet, they don't feel that cold, and then you get a breeze moving across your cold hands or your clothes are wet, you get cold really fast, because evaporation takes more energy then simply being immersed in water.

Margaret   Okay, how does, um, how does being in a humid environment, impact evaporative cooling and dealing with this sort of crisis?

Guy   Yeah, humidity is a real challenge here. And that's the thing that we're fortunate about here in the Pacific Northwest where our summers are usually pretty dry. 

Margaret   Okay. 

Guy   But the the more humid the air gets, the less effective evaporative cooling will be. And that means both that just getting someone wet and fanning them won't work as well. But it also means that our body's natural mechanism for cooling, which is sweat, also doesn't work as well. And so there's this concept of the wet bulb temperature which is, rather than looking at what is the temperature on the thermometer, you put a thermometer inside a bulb and you cover it with a damp cloth—now they have mean fancier tools to do this now, but the principle is the same—cover it in a soaking wet cloth. And then they measure what is the temperature that that thermometer reads.

Margaret   When you have a bowl or a bulb. 

Guy   Yep, wet bulb temperature. Bulb.

Margaret   Oh, you get the—oh, you put it inside a light bulb is that?

Guy   Any bulb, any sphirical object, right? It's covered in a damp cloth. 

Margaret   Okay.

Guy   If the humidity is lower than 100%, the temperature that that thermometer reads is going to be lower than—lower than the air temperature, right? Because there's some amount of evaporation which is cooling the air inside.

Margaret   Interesting. Okay. 

Guy   And so this is a way for us to understand what the actual threat of any particular temperature is. Because once we get to 100% humidity, the temperature inside that bulb is going to be exactly the same as it is outside because there's no longer any evaporation occurring and no longer any cooling. And the challenge there—and so this is how wet bulb temperatures are measured. You can look up tables that will tell you relative humidity and temperature and you can find the wet bulb temperature at that intersection. And once we hit about 90 degrees at 100% humidity, or a 90 degree wet bulb temperature—which we could get with either higher temperature and lower humidity or lower temperature and higher humidity—once that wet bulb temperature hits about 90 degrees, humans can no longer effectively function in any kind of meaningful physical exertion outside. 

Margaret   Okay.

Guy   And even completely at rest without any exertion people will start to die within hours once you hit about 95 degrees wet bulb temperature.

Margaret   Which is what it would be at like 100% humidity if it was 95 degrees out. 

Guy   Exactly. Yeah. 

Margaret   As someone who the inside of my house is regularly 90 to 95% humidity during the summer. I know I'm not supposed to be worried about myself today, I'm still mostly worried about y'all. But it actually is changing a little bit my sense of the heat that y'all are facing. 

Guy   Yeah. 

Margaret   What—I mean, okay, so if it's like—do you have a sense of, like, when they're like, it's gonna be 109 degrees, 111 degrees, 116 degrees in the Pacific Northwest this weekend, you know, or maybe you're listening to this three weeks later, I don't know, whatever. But do you have a sense of, like, what kind of wet bulb temperature that is likely to be for people?

Guy   Yeah, so our humidity usually here in the summer ranges between like 20 and 40%, so not particularly high. And so I ran a couple of numbers before this show and who was looking like this Sunday, when we're supposed to hit about 108 degrees during the peak of the day, that'll probably equate to something around a 75 or 80 degree wet bulb temperature, which doesn't sound that hot, but actually is pretty darn hot and really hard for the body to tolerate.

Margaret   And so what that means is not that everyone is fine, it means that the means by which we can fight this with, like, cold water immersion and fanning and things like that actually have a chance of working is what you're saying?

Guy   Exactly. In places with low humidity, water and evaporation works really well to cool you down. The problem with this, and this is what a lot of climate scientists have been warning about for a long time, is that the tropical parts of the world, as we start to get increases in temperature, which are already close to 100% humidity during the hot season, will get so hot that there's no effective way to cool down. And then we'll see a lot a lot a lot of heat related deaths, because these parts of the world also don't have air conditioning and evaporative cooling is completely ineffective. And so in some ways we're lucky up here so far, because our summers are dry.

Margaret   Yeah, and there's—I mean, a lot of people listening don't have access to air conditioning. But I, but there's—there might be like, you know, I know that some cities are setting up cooling centers and things like that. So there is some access to air conditioning in the northwest. So when you talk about like not exerting yourself and things like that, like you're basically saying, like—basically, because when you exert yourself, your body heats up and that's bad. So it's, like, one of the main things people should do is, like, chill the fuck out and, like, not exert themselves as much as possible.

Guy   Yeah, exactly. That's one of the best things that we can do is, right, stay out of the sun as much as possible, try to stay as cool as possible, and just don't do—don't exert yourself, don't do physical labor. Don't go for runs, try to get out of your job if your job involves heavy, heavy physical labor during these hot temperatures—or organize with your other workers because it's literally putting your life at risk. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Guy   To be working in these conditions.

Margaret   Yeah, okay. And then. So if this kind of—not fully covers—but but gets at the idea behind like heat exhaustion, heat stroke. The other thing that at least is on my radar to worry about as relates to intense heat is dehydration. And that's kind of a separate threat, right? 

Guy   Yeah. 

Margaret   Can you talk about dehydration, also, our mutual friends as you have a good story about dehydration? 

Guy   Yeah, I have a lot of rants that I could go on about dehydration. And it's more evil twin, overhydration, also known as hyponatremia. So, hydration is important. Our bodies function better when we're well hydrated. But luckily, our bodies also have this amazing built-in mechanism to help us maintain adequate hydration, which is our sense of thirst. And so, generally, people should drink when they're thirsty, and they should drink a little bit more if they're exercising or if they're in hot weather. And if you're well-hydrated, then you will, you will tolerate heat better and you will be more able to adapt. That said, hydration doesn't prevent heat exhaustion and hydrating doesn't fix heat exhaustion or heatstroke either. The problem is, once you've hit that point, the problem was just that you're too hot and you need to cool down. 

Margaret   So it's a separate problem. 

Guy   Exactly. They go hand-in-hand. Humans do tend to sweat more, lose more fluids in hot weather and need to replace them. The place where people get into trouble—we have this cultural myth of dehydration as the big killer. And, like, you've probably heard people say "hydrate or die," and there's all these stories about people who—athletes who didn't drink enough water and they died. And that's actually not really the case. Most people stay hydrated enough most of the time. They are getting dehydrated and they have access to water and then don't have vomiting or diarrhea that's sucking water out of them, they can maintain adequate hydration pretty decently. The problem, the area that we actually see a lot more deaths and a lot more severe illness is the opposite. This problem over hydration. And so for the last couple decades until well, like, through the 90s and early 2000s, there was a lot of rhetoric in sports medicine about the importance of hydration, and you have to hydrate and drink, drink, drink, and you have to drink Gatorade, and you have to drink electrolytes because if you don't, then you're gonna die of dehydration. And actually, what we were doing was people were drinking too much water. And that changes the electrolyte balance in our bodies, and it ends up making our cells swell up. And we started getting swelling in the brain that can be fairly rapidly fatal. And so most, most of the exercise related deaths like ultra marathoners, hikers, that we used to think were linked to dehydration, most of those deaths are actually linked to what's called hyponatremia, not enough salt. But the real problem is that you've drunk too much water and you've diluted your salt.

Margaret   Oh, god, so we're telling people exactly the wrong thing to do. Being like, all of those other hikers died, so you better drink more water?

Guy   Yeah, so you'd have  to drink a lot. But when people get these benchmarks and they hear like, oh, I should drink, I should drink a liter of water an hour. I should drink two liters of water an hour. I should drink a Gatorade at every stop in this race. People are basing their hydration on some outside metric rather than their own body's sense of whether they need fluid or not. Then we tend to see hyponatremia which is much more deadly and much harder to treat than dehydration. So, like many other things that Western medicine has done, we have invented a problem where there used to be no problem because humans generally are good at knowing what their bodies need and taking care of them.

Margaret   Yeah. Okay. And like—like, I've never drank electrolytes on purpose in my life. Right? Like, I mean, I drink Emergen-C in the morning, but I think I do it for like vitamins, which might also be bullshit, but I don't know. Um, and people are always, like, talking about the importance of drinking electrolytes. And, I mean, this obviously sounds like it ties into it, like, do you avoid hype—hyponatremia—I was gonna just avoid pronouncing that actually. But I failed at that. Do you avoid that better if you are also drinking electrolytes and, like, eating salty snacks and things like that? Is there like—like, how important are like our electrolytes and all this?

Guy   Um, so the answer is twofold, like many things. So electrolytes are important. We should have salty snacks. And our body needs electrolytes to function well. That said, there's just no correlation between drinking electrolyte solutions and a lower onset of hyponatremia. There's plenty [inaudible] of extreme athletes, ultra marathoners in hot places who are drinking mostly electrolyte solutions. And the real risk factor is just the volume of fluid—the volume of fluid drunk. So if people like electrolyte drinks, they should drink them. I drink them sometimes. And it makes me feel better, I think.

Margaret   Yeah.

Guy   But not to prevent hyponatremia and we shouldn't think that we're fixing the problem of low electrolytes by drinking electrolyte drinks, because what we're actually doing is just adding too much more fluid to a system that's already over hydrated. 

Margaret   Okay, so just trust your body and drink—is this like how, like, one of the main things you learn in like street medic stuff is that just water for everything? Like, you know, it's like chemical weapons and you fix it with water. 

Guy   Yeah, water's great. It's amazing. So just water and not too much of it. If you're thirsy uou should drink a little more if it's really hot out. You should eat salty snacks.

Margaret   Yeah. Okay. So if you want to focus on electrolytes, focus on salty snacks instead of Gatorade.

Guy   I mean, you can drink Gatorade, if you like sugar which is what Gatorade is, and other electrolytes drinks are fine. It's not like they do harm—unless you drink too much of them and you think you're helping problem. Yeah. 

Margaret   Okay. Now this is—I'm really glad to like be, like, mythbusting in or whatever and like getting past that, like, stuff you can quickly Google on the internet, you know? So I have a lot of other questions from people. This is—I think everyone's—I already said this, everyone's really worried. Um, what um—and actually, we've been talking about this a lot. We've definitely been talking about things primarily from the point of view of, like, not having access to, you know, air conditioning and things like that, right. Oh, actually, before we leave dehydration, what do you do about it? What do you do if—both where there is a doctor available and where there isn't a doctor available for both dehydration and the problem that shall not be named? 

Guy   Right? Yeah, hyponatremia. Or we could just call it overhydration which is—

Margaret   You call it hyponatremia and I'll call it over hydration.

Guy   Right. That's perfect. Um, so dehydration, the problem is those not enough water and so the solution is they should drink some water. 

Margaret   Okay, cool. 

Guy   And the way that—and the tricky thing here, right, is that we see people, and it's hot out, and they've been exercising, and they say they've got a headache, and they feel kind of nauseous, and they don't feel good, and they're kind of grumpy. And we think, oh, you must be dehydrated, I'm going to give you water. It turns out that the symptoms of hyponatremia are pretty much exactly the same as the symptoms of dehydration with a few exceptions. And so we really actually should be talking to our friends, talking to the people we're interacting with, and asking them some basic questions. How much water have you been drinking? 

Margaret   Mhmm.

Guy   Oh, you had two liters this hour, two liters the hour before, a liter before that, you've had six liters all day and you haven't been doing much. That's a lot of water. Probably shouldn't give you more water. So the treatment for hyponatremia in its mild form is just withhold water. A couple of the things that we could look for an ask about is someone who's over hydrated, who has hyponatremia, is likely going to have pretty clear urine, and they're going to be peeing a lot. They're going to say, yeah, I just have to pee all the time and I really got to drink water, it's really important to drink fluid and I'm peeing and all the time. That's a good indication to say, you should stop drinking water. 

Margaret   Okay.

Guy   Until you're no longer peeing all the time. Dehydration, that person wants water. That's the problem is there's not enough and so they should drink some water. And, right, we might also inquire about the urine and then they could say, I haven't been peeing very much, it's been really dark yellow, it's been smelly. Those are good indications that someone is dehydrated. On the mild side of either of these, it just takes time to fix. If you're dehydrated, you should drink water and rest. And if you're over hydrated, you should rest and stop drinking water. 

Margaret   Okay.

Guy   Once once it gets more severe, once we see mental status change, someone is no longer behaving like themselves, that just means that their brain is angry because it's not getting what it needs. Either it's not enough water in the case of dehydration, or there's swelling and pressure building up because of this hyponatremia. And in those cases, that person really needs to go to a hospital.

Margaret   Okay, what would the hospital be doing? And I know I'm not like trying to encourage everyone to do everything by themselves, but I feel like it's like useful to, like, break open the black box with like medical stuff.

Guy   Yeah, so dehydration—dehydration, they're gonna be rehydrating via IV. That's a thing that we can do in the back country or without access to a hospital. We don't have IVs, but we can rehydrate someone gradually just by drinking water and reducing exertion. And as long as they're not continuing to lose fluid either through sweat or through diarrhea or vomiting, then we can probably fix that problem. Hyponatremia is—there's unfortunately not much outside of a hospital setting once it's advanced to the stage that someone's mental status is changing, there's not much that we can do. And this is one of the reasons it's more fatal than dehydration and exercise context.

Margaret   We can't bloodlet them with leeches?

Guy   Yeah, we can't do that. What they end up doing it a hospital is giving someone a lot of saline intravenously to change the electrolyte balance of their blood, and we just can't do that quickly or effectively orally. So we can definitely give someone salt but we should know that if they're—if it seems like a severe case of hyponatremia or overhydration, that really what they need is a hospital intervention. And we should prioritize getting them to that hospital instead of trying to do it ourselves. Because there's just not much we can do unless we're, that's right, that's way above my paygrade is measuring someone's blood pH and blood chemistry and tinkering with it and injecting different solutions into them.

Margaret   And so this sounds like these are problems related to heat but the—but dehydration and overhydration are like more‚less directly the problems that we're like specifically worried about this coming weekend, because it sounds like it's like more athletes and things, like people who, like, are fucking with things in that way? Or is this, like, are a lot of the people who are potentially going to die because of a massive heatwave, is it mostly heatstroke or is it also dehydration and over hydration?

Guy   Yeah, so in—globally in heat waves the largest deaths are heatstroke related, or heat stress related, and largely in in populations over 60 years of age just because as we age, our bodies just become less adept at thermo regulating, and we're having a hard time adapting the stress. 

Margaret   Okay. 

Guy   Certainly people who are really worried about the heat and think that the solution is to drink a lot, a lot, a lot of water all day long are putting themselves in danger of hyponatremia. And certainly as someone who's working outside and sweating a lot and doesn't have access to water, or maybe they're houseless and don't have shelter and don't have a place to stay cool and don't have good access to clean water quickly could see dehydration set in and be exacerbated by the heat. The major killers, statistically, are heatstroke. 

Margaret   Okay. What—what should someone who's listening to this who is experiencing homelessness or someone who cares about people who are do besides, like, I mean, I guess, like, pressure cities into having cooling areas, invite people if you have AC, like, inviting people in? You know, like, or are there, like, specific—yeah, what would you suggest?

Guy   Yeah, so there's like, there's a couple—I mean, those are both really important and great and we should do that. A couple of other things that that we can do, that anyone can do, to to adapt to heat better, right, maintaining good hydration, but not too much. Salty snacks, all of these things will help with our water balance. Staying in the shade as much as possible and then trying to have a water source, even if it's just spray bottle and like the ability to spray yourself down. Right, spray your face down, spray your clothes down with a little, like, $1 spray bottle you get from the dollar store and you fill up and you can just spritz yourself and evaporate and that will cool you down. Right, damp bandanas around the neck, on the head, even getting your clothes soaking wet in this more dry environment will work because all the evaporation of those clothes—that clothing is going to cool your body quite a bit. Another thing that we see in urban environments is usually with all of the pavement and the asphalt and the buildings and the lack of tree cover, we'll see temperatures that are 10 to 15 degrees higher in urban centers than they are in surrounding forests or green areas. And so thinking about, is it possible to get to a park, is it possible to get to a place with trees that has shade and the plants are through evapotranspiration are helping to cool the area a little more and they're absorbing less heat than these big blocks of concrete that just absorb solar energy and radiate it back out at you? Those will make a big difference. And then thinking about—thinking about kind of the mechanisms by which we gain heat and we lose heat. And so certainly radiation from the sun would heat us up really fast and we can partially mitigate that by wearing light colored clothes that covers all of your skin. So loose fitting long t-shirt, long pants, a big hat, you're actually going to be staying cooler in clothes like that then you will be in shorts and a t-shirt.

Margaret   Does humidity affect that? I have this like general conception that, like, dry heat places are all about cover yourself from the sun, giving yourself shade through clothes is important, whereas like more humid places, more tropical places, it seems like people tend to go with like just less clothes—maybe to like really make it as easy as possible to do the little bit of evaporative cooling they can do. Or am I like just totally off base about this? 

Guy   No, no, I think that that seems accurate to me. I think that the more humid it becomes, the more difficult it is to stay cool and the less the problem is, like, direct solar radiation and more the problem is just that ambient air temperature. All of the moisture hanging out in that air that's holding onto heat and then transferring it to you. I've been lucky to spend—well, I grew up in Indiana which was very humid—but I've been lucky to spend most of my life in places with fairly dry heat, which I much prefer.

Margaret   Yeah, like, I'm just coming at this, like, entirely from this, you know, we refer to it as like, oh, it's just the Baltimore soup, you know, in August or whatever. Okay, um, yeah, a lot of people talked about a lot of different like water methods of cooling—besides, I mean, obviously the, like, get into an air conditioning building is, like, the most bulletproof means or whatever, right? But, um, like, people talk about, like, what, like sleeping on intentionally wet sheets, like spraying your—like wearing wet socks, or even damn clothes when you're trying to sleep. One person was talking about, like, wet the bottom of your curtains and leave the window open so that it, like, wicks up the water and then it evaporates. So just basically doing anything that you can to encourage evaporative cooling?

Guy   Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's the kind of the biggest thing. Um, and right, it depends on if you're trying to cool yourself or your house, less energy to cool yourself. Oftentimes, here in the northwest, it's actually more effective to, as soon as the temperature starts climbing in the morning, close all the windows, trap all the cool air from the night in the house, and rely on your insulation rather than thinking that a cross breeze from outside 100 degree temperature is going to cool your house. But that only goes so far. And so there's also the swamp cooler method, which doesn't work in humid places for the same reason. But you can make kind of DIY swamp coolers by putting a wet sheet over a box fan and then blowing the air through that wet sheet. 

Margaret   Okay. That kind of answers one of the questions that someone asked, which is like, you know, obviously whenever bad things happen, only one bad thing happens at a time. But let's say for some weird reason, a bunch of dry heat might cause fire. And, you know, obviously, the West Coast has been blanketed in smoke for the past several years. And, like, so if smoke it means you got to keep your window shut. You're saying then you just like basically focus on air movement within the house with fans and like personal cooling through dehydration?

Guy   Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Through evaporation. Yeah, like I would—so when there's, when it's not smoke season, which it thankfully is not yet, although I think it'll be coming earlier this year based on our temperatures. When it's not smoke season, I'll open all the windows at night once things cool off, because we do get a big temperature swing here, even in the summer it cools off at night, and close them in the morning and try to capture some of that cold air during the night. During smoke season, just keep it all closed. Stay inside and focus on that evaporative cooling if you need to. So get yourself wet, sit in front of a fan. If you don't have electricity, right, people have been keeping themselves cool with fans for 1000s of years before electricity. Big hand fans are really quite effective at moving a lot of air quickly without much exertion.

Margaret   Okay, so the trade off would be worth it of the exertion of physical motion for the like evaporative cooling? 

Guy   Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it doesn't take that much work to fan yourself or a fan a friend, as long as you're able to get yourself wet, right? If you're just fanning hot air across yourself, that's not going to do any good.

Margaret   Does that tie into the—one of the questions I got that I just, you know, it's like a piece of information that people have that I don't know one way or another, I've never heard of it before. Someone asked if fanning is bad and extreme heat, how do you pull yourself off? It's probably only saying it's like—you're suggesting it's probably only bad if the if you're not causing evaporative cooling, if you're not—if there's no water on you. 

Guy   Exactly, yeah. And I looked that one up because I had actually never heard that before. And it actually is—I think it's a CDC—it's some government guideline. I think it's from the CDC. And it's just really, it's this example of policies and advice being written in a way that's totally robbed of context and is more confusing to people than not, which often is the case. If you're just moving hot air across someone, that definitely will be worse because air—there's some amount of convection, right. But we also create a little bubble around ourselves—and this happens all the time—a little bubble of temperature of air close to our skin that's close to our skin temperature. And so it will be slightly cooler than 108 degrees outside if we're effectively sweating and evaporating some, it'll be slightly warmer in cold temperatures. And if that air is not being disturbed, then it'll help us thermoregulate just a little bit. And if we're moving really hot air across that, then that'll heat us up faster in the same way that sticking your hand or your foot in an ice cold stream or moving water, you're gonna get a lot colder than sticking that foot in the same temperature water that's not moving. Build up a little insulated layer. But that only—but you just fix the problem by adding water and then it's not a problem anymore, because evaporation is much more powerful at cooling. 

Margaret   Okay.

Guy   Yeah.

Margaret   So if people don't have much access to water, basically it's, like, get access to water. If you can't get access to air conditioning, you just need access to water. Is that kind of pretty much the deal?

Guy   Yeah. I think that's the the big thing. And so it's, certainly we should have water to drink, maintain good hydration, but having water that you can use to cool yourself down—whether that's a stream or a river or a lake, or whether that's just carrying some extra water with you, know that you don't need it to drink so you can use it to wet your clothes down.

Margaret   And would Gatorade be more effective for this? Like it has electrolytes in it. And I know electrolytes are good when it's hot out. 

Guy   Um, for cooling yourself down?

Margaret   Yeah. 

Guy   No, no.

Margaret   Oh interesting.

Guy   The only good thing Gatorade is for is, yeah, lots of sugar. 

Margaret   You're gonna fuck up my chance for a sponsorship.

Guy   Yeah Gatorade actually got us into this whole bind with hyponatremia because they sponsored sports medicine conferences from the 90s to the early 2000s and all the studies came out saying how important hydration was and we realized that people are dying all over the place because they're drinking too much Gatorade. 

Margaret   Oh my god, it's literally the plot of Idiocracy. Great, cool. That makes me feel really good about the world. Fuck. Okay. Oh, do you know much about, like, dealing with pets? Like, I guess, like what, like most animals don't sweat? Are we the only animals that sweat? Like, what's the deal with keeping pets cool?

Guy   Yeah, I don't know as much about pets. Dogs sweat, but only through their feet. They do sweat some but they just don't—right, yhey're mostly covered in hair so they're not going to as effectively be able to cool themselves down. Cats are the same. I don't know about other animals. But, right, you're not gonna sweat if you're covered in hair because it won't be effective at all. 

Margaret   Okay.

Guy   And so for pets, it's really, I mean a lot of it is the same. Stay inside, stay in cool, shady areas, right? Get some damp clothes or damp bandana or something on them. We could, like, wet down a sheet or a bed, like a dog bed, ust get it damp and put that on the floor for them to sleep on. I've heard of people putting a couple ice cubes in water bowls. I don't know whether that is actually effective at cooling your dog down, but they probably like it. And then avoiding exertion the same way. Yeah.

Margaret   Okay. Well and okay with the cold water and maybe it doesn't help but it it tastes better to them or something, like, people have questions. I have questions. I don't know enough about this. Like it seems like, would be drinking like ice cold water kind of shock your system? Like if you're—even if, like, someone has heat exhaustion or god forbid heatstroke and you don't have access to a hospital or whatever. Is it, like, is there an ideal temperature? Do you only want it a little bit colder than their body? Or is it like, we would  put them on a fucking glacier if you could?

Guy   Yeah, absolutely. The big problem with heatstroke is someone's brain is cooking. And so we want to stop the cooking as quickly as possible. And we do that by putting them in cold water. And there's just not much evidence that putting someone in cold water from an overheated position does any kind of damage to them. We're not going to make someone hypothermic with 30 minutes in cold water when they've been overheated. We're not gonna—we're—yeah, they might gasp a little bit. When we get that cold water on our skin we have an involuntary gasp reflex and then we adjust to the water temperature, but it's not going to do any damage. And same with drinking ice water. The temperature of the water doesn't make a huge difference in changing the temperature of our bodies. But it's not like drinking ice water will cool us faster than drinking warm water. But I know that I'm more likely to drink water when it's hot out if the water is cold and refreshing, and so—

Margaret   Right. 

Guy   So the way to stay adequately hydrated, ice water is great. You can stick around your forehead and call yourself down.

Margaret   Yeah, okay, so—like sticky—so like getting the ice water on you is probably more important than getting ice water in you in terms of—

Guy   Yeah, if you only have enough. Yeah, but I mean, I just, you know, you get that big glass of ice water and it's condensing on the outside and outside is super cold. Yeah. You could hold on to it and stick that jar on your forehead until you—til you've drink it. 

Margaret   Okay. So I'm not gonna get the story about dehydration out of you?

Guy   Uh, well, I'm trying to think of what our friend would be talking about. The story that I do have is—and this is just more of a general warning story about tunnel vision and people who are convinced that they're right about something, and they don't look at all the facts. But I was, several years ago, I was guiding in the Grand Canyon and I ran into a couple of people who were in fairly substantial distress. And they were a day behind their schedule, they'd gone about four miles, maybe five miles in about 24 hours. And they were convinced that—there was only one person who is really having trouble. And he was nauseous, he didn't feel good, little unsteady on his feet, really classic, pale, kind of pale, clammy skin, really classic heat exhaustion symptoms. And his friend who claimed to be a guide with him was convinced that he had altitude illness because he was nauseous and had a headache and because the rim of the Grand Canyon is 7000 feet, which is not actually very high as far as altitude illness goes. But they were convinced that they had altitude illness and so they were descending into the canyon where it got hotter. And the only solution, they thought, was to keep going down because if they dropped an elevation, then they'd fix the altitude illness problem. 

Margaret   Okay.

Guy   And so I tried to talk to them and convince them that it wasn't altitude illness and that, in fact, it was extremely hot and they weren't a climatized to the heat, because it was springtime and they had just come from the Midwest where it was 40 degrees outside and now it was 100 degrees in the canyon. And they wouldn't listen to me. And I ended up running into a couple paramedics on the trail who were hiking behind me and caught up and overtook me. And they had also encountered this person after I did, stopped them, did a full assessment, knew it was heat exhaustion, tried to convince the people to stop and rest and turn around. But they weren't having any of it. They were convinced that it was altitude illness. I ran into a ranger later on who also tried to convince them to turn around. And I don't know what happened to them. He clearly didn't die because I would have heard about a death in the canyon, but certainly didn't have a good time. And I think the big takeaway there is we, as humans, I think as soon as we think we've identified what a problem is, then we start trying to solve it. And then we ignore all of the other evidence that suggests that could be a different problem. And so I think anytime that you're feeling bad, or your friend is feeling bad, or they're feeling sick, and you think you know what's going on, it's worth stopping and asking yourselves, especially if they're not getting any better. 

Margaret   Mm hmm. 

Guy   Is it actually this thing? Is it actually dehydration? Maybe it's hyponatremia and I should stop giving this person a water.

Margaret   Yeah.

Guy   Is it actually altitude illness, or maybe it's really hot out and you feel crappy and you should be in the shade and lie down and rest and fan you until you feel better instead of trying to rush down to drop in elevation and, yeah.

Margaret   If you had a whole group of people, we have five people, and they're all exposed to the exact same—you know, you're all hiking together, roughly the same amount of exertion, etc. Is everyone gonna get heatstroke at the same time? Or is it like fairly personal about that?

Guy   There's a pretty wide range in human tolerance for heat and exertion. So yeah, it can be all over the place. I would say that, right, the hotter it gets, the higher the probability of heat exhaustion or heat stroke is. But it's, but human bodies are really amazing and they're really adaptable, right? We think of 105 degree internal temperature, like you stick a thermometer in someone's mouth, when it read the 105 we say, medicine says that heat stroke. Their brain's dying. But there are also some ultra marathon athletes who run in really hot weather who have recorded internal temps of 105. And they're totally fine. 

Margaret   God, okay. 

Guy   And that's probably because they've acclimated to that over a long time and they've actually been able to change their physiology and what their bodies used to. So people, people have really different responses. And so we should be looking at, how are people doing? And asking our friends and looking for these little telltale signs. Oh, yeah, this person's a little grumpier than usual and they're kind of ornery, and they look a little pale, and they're kind of slower to respond. We should check in, how are you doing? How are you feeling? Rather than thinking that the objective conditions are what's going to dictate when, yeah. Yeah. 

Margaret   Okay. Yeah, that kind of answers—or it starts to answer one of the questions that a couple people asked which is, like, basically, what do you do if you're someone who just hates heat? Right? Like I definitely have friends who like—they—you know, I'm always—I don't hate heat the same way I hate being cold, you know? You think that's, like, just like a lifetime acclamation and, like, basically, the answer is slowly acclimatize rather than suddenly have a—what's it called, like a heat hell, a heat bulb? I dunno, it's some horrible name for what's happening to you all?  Don't have the bad thing happen.

Guy   Is it "heat dome"? They keep inventing new names for weather phenomena that have actually been around forever. You know, not that this particular heat wave has been around forever. It's certainly new. But I just think about the, like, Arctic bomb polar vortex. Now that we're finally all paying attention to the weather. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Guy   With all these new terms about it instead of, I don't know, stopping emitting carbon and planting a lot of trees. 

Margaret   That'd be a lot of work. 

Guy   Yeah, it'd be a lot of work. It's a lot easier to name all the problems and make some add revenue off of driving clicks to your website. But I digress. Yeah, some people don't like heat. I think that as a person who doesn't like heat and who also guided in the desert for many years, I think the acclimatising makes a big difference. And slowly, right, go to a new environment—if you're not being confronted by one of these heat waves—you go to a different environment, and you don't do your normal level of exertion. You just rest and you hang out and you expose yourself to the temperature, and then you go and you cool off. And then you do it again. And then you do it again. And you'll become more used to that, and especially if you're using other techniques to keep yourself cool. It's interesting—I think that I get grumpier with heat here in the Pacific Northwest than I ever did when I was guiding in the desert. And I think it was—I think a lot of it was acclimatising. And having an orientation of, I know I'm in a hot place here and so I need to change my behavior and I need to change how I'm managing my body so that I can stay cool. Whereas it gets hot right here and I think, I should just be able to do all the things I can normally do. And now I feel terrible. And I'm mad at everyone just because I'm too hot.

Margaret   Yeah. So it's like—maybe part of the whole answer is like actually change your pattern of behavior. Which actually ties into both the "we're all gonna die because of global warming if we don't do anything," and then also the, like, what you talked about, about the person who was, you know, walking further and further down because they were like, no, no, no, no, it's climate sickness, you know, or whatever—or not climate—altitude sickness. And then like, I know that when I do cognitive behavioral therapy, like, the thing that we have to throw away first is I tell—I tell the therapist, what's wrong and then therapist, it's, like, able to specifically say, "Now I know what isn't wrong." Like, that's your narrative. That's the thing that you, like, have been telling yourself. 

Guy   Yeah. 

Margaret   And clearly telling yourself this didn't work, so... And, yeah, which we need to do as a society, we need to actually change our patterns in the same way that y'all in the Pacific Northwest should avoid exertion and, as you suggested at the very beginning, work with your coworkers to collectively avoid exertion, you know? 

Guy   Yeah. Yeah. 

Margaret   Just easier said than done from someone who's a remote worker on the East Coast but... Okay. Oh, sorry—there's one more—people talk—there's like one question left: food, drug, medications to avoid, are caffeine and alcohol like absolutely terrible anathema if you take, like, different, you know, different medications? Is this going to impact the degree to which you're sensitive, and are the things that people can do about that?

Guy   Yeah, um, there's certainly some risk factors. In general, caffeine and alcohol both just don't help the body adapt to any kind of changing environment. And so cold, hot, altitude, all of these things, caffeine and alcohol aren't going to make us feel better. Whether that's a huge risk factor, I'm not convinced. I'm still gonna drink my coffee in the morning, but I'll probably make a cold brew. And, but I'm not going to drink coffee all day, and I'm not going to sit in the sun drinking beer all day. Some other medications—some allergy medications and decongestants have some linkage to just reducing the body's ability to thermoregulate and to cool down. Now, I'm definitely not a doctor. And so if people are taking medication they should look at that medication specifically and look it up and just Google that medication and heat exhaustion or heatstroke and see what—see if there's a contraindication or an extra risk factor there. We'll probably get better information from that than from broad and general statements from the—

Margaret   Wait I thought this podcast is—this past guest is your doc—not just your doctor, but everyone is listening. 

Guy   Yes.

Margaret   We are both doctors. I thought that was the basis of... okay. Okay, um, makes sense. Do you have any, like, final thoughts? Like things about, like, you know, how are you feeling about this whole thing? Or, you know, things that we missed talking about all of this?

Guy   Yeah, no, I really enjoyed this conversation. I think we hit, like, we had a lot of topics. I can kind of nerd out about physiology and bodies and illnesses for a while. So it's been fun to do this with heat. I'm going to make a weird plug, which is, I really believe in umbrellas in the summer for sun protextion. So like, silver, reflective, or light-colored umbrellas, just thinking of other prevention techniques. So you can kind of carry your portable shade with you, and thinking particularly about houseless people people who can't access cool areas. Get a cheap, bright colored umbrella, and you've got your own shade, and it'll help. So I just wanted to throw that one in there. I hiked with an umbrella in the Grand Canyon all the time.

Margaret   And so goth. I'm really excited about that. Well you said bright colored. But you know...

Guy   Mine was silver. It was nice and reflective. But really anything that will reflect rather than absorb heat.

Margaret   Could you tape an emergency blanket to on or something?

Guy   Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And then—and then beyond that, I just think that it's going to be hot here this week. People up here are, I think, probably simultaneously freaking out more than they need to and not enough. By which I mean, a couple of days of extreme heat are going to be challenging for people and we should take care of each other and look out for marginalized and vulnerable people. But we're probably not going to see a lot of deaths, huge, huge problems with a short heatwave like this. However, we should be freaking out about the fact that it's 108 degrees in the Pacific Northwest in June. And this is really, like, where we are headed as a planet. And so we need to be thinking and adapting right now and thinking about how can we—first of all, right, stop emitting carbon and lock as much carbon as possible in the ground. And second of all, how can we change our environments and our behaviors to live in a hotter world? And working 40 hours a week in an urban concrete metropolis is not going to be tenable a couple decades from now when—right, think about the—think about Texas, right? And last summer they got that big cold wave and then they last electricity and we had all these deaths because people could no longer to heat their homes. And we're gonna see the same thing with heat waves as well, where we have brownouts and blackouts, because there's too much electrical demand with the air conditioners running. And so we need to be thinking about, how can we keep ourselves cool without relying on air conditioning? How can we change our behaviors and our patterns to do that? And how can we plant a shit ton of trees? 

Margaret   Yeah.

Guy   Because really, not only because they fix carbon, but because trees cool the environment down, the local environment. They, right, evaporation is a major cooling effect. And trees of evapotranspire huge amounts of moisture when they're photosynthesizing. And all that moisture cools an area down. And so how can we convert these giant, awful concrete metropolises into beautiful forest gardens where we can survive and have food to eat. And also so that we can cool the areas where people are concentrated down. We, right, we see this with just disparities in heat related deaths across the country, where people who are lower income or marginalized or of color live in areas that are more paved and have less access to green space, and they get hotter. And they're more exposed to environmental extremes. So yeah. We should—we should take care of each other in the coming week and stay cool. And we should plant a lot of trees and stop trying to pretend we can continue living as normal when it's not normal anymore. 

Margaret   I like that because it covers—you know, most this podcast is about what most of this episode has been about, like what to do in the very immediate short term, right, to solve this problem, or make it through this problem. But the solutions like absolutely have to be long term and ongoing. And I like that you tied that into that. Um, do you have—do you have anything that you want to, like, shout out, like anything you want to plug, any—I don't know whether your medic trainings are public or if people want to, like, follow you do you do social media stuff? Anything?

Guy   No, not really. I'm pretty pretty nonexistent on the internet. Don't really have any social media. But yeah, we do street medic trainings on and off in the Pacific Northwest, we haven't done one in a while. Hopefully will again. I will plug, actually, because I'm in the process of moving up all the way to the peninsula. And there's an amazing new community project forming in Quilcene. People bought an old theater there a couple of years ago, the Gray Coast Guild Hall. They're just starting some big fundraising campaigns right now to replace the roof and do a bunch of infrastructure upgrades so that it can be a community gathering space and a resource, and hopefully a place that people who are all thinking about how do we how do we actually live together throughout this climate changing world in the long term can encounter each other. And so, Great Coast Guild Hall could definitely use some dollars if you Google that or look it up they have a Patreon. I don't know if they've launched their big Kickstarter fundraiser yet. But yeah.

Margaret   Yeah, and one of the reasons I'm excited about that project is because it's, you know, it's a, it's a social center—will be a social center—and it's like collectively operated, and it's within a pretty small town. And so it's a pretty major percent of that town's, like, social and cultural, like, life or something like that in a kind of really interesting way. Yeah, so it's, I agree, it's absolutely worth supporting. Normally I do this whole, like, separate outro but and so I'm gonna make you stay on the call as I do my outro. So that way, all of my files are in one place so I can edit this as quickly as possible. But thanks, everyone, for listening. And if you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting currently me on patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. But in the very near future that same Patreon will switch over. You won't have to do anything on your end to support a larger collective effort that's going to be doing more podcasts and more zine publishing, called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And I'm very excited about moving to a more collective structure. It makes—just, you know, many hands make light work as long as many hands don't make everyone grouchy and get in each other's way. And in particular—and also you can tell people about the podcast and that's the main way—and you can, you can thank us by telling people about it. But in particular I want to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana and Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Kat J, The Compoun, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris for making this possible. And, yeah, thanks so much. And I hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that happens and stays safe. And it seems like maybe one of the main messages about this is that, well yeah, I guess Guy already said it: you don't have to freak out as bad about this one specific thing, but we need to freak out more about the larger things.

SPEAKERS Margaret Guy

Margaret 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 use she or they pronouns. Normally I do this like whole intro thing that I record after the conversation. But this is a special, a special episode that I'm just doing as quickly as quick turnaround as I can because of what's going on in the Pacific Northwest with unprecedented heat. And I want people to have information as soon as possible. So please forgive audio quality. on my end, I'm recording this from the best place I had access to internet, which is right next to one of the busiest intersections in all of the tiny town of Asheville, North Carolina. But anyway, this podcast is a proud member of the channel zero network of anarchist podcasts. And normally I put in a jingle here, but I'm not going to instead, you should just go to channel zero network. I don't even know the website, you just Google it. I mean, come on, who's actually going to type in URL and you can just type things into the search bar. Go check out the channel zero network, there's a ton of shows that might interest you. Okay, so would you like to introduce yourself with your name and your pronouns? And then a bit of your background as relates to heat related illnesses?

Guy Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on. My name is Guy, I use he him pronouns. I live up in the Pacific Northwest on the Olympic Peninsula. And my background related to this, I have been a wilderness educator and backpacking guide for many years, especially working down in the Grand Canyon for several years. So a lot of exposure to heat there. And I also instruct wilderness medicine courses. And so I teach and think about bodies and how bodies adapt to stress, particularly heat stress in this context. Yeah,

Margaret that's me. Hurray. I'm so glad that your skill set is about to become very useful away from the Grand Canyon in the Olympic Peninsula. The rain forest that I believe is not is it? Is it normal for you all to have 109 degree weather? Is that abnormal?

Guy That is definitely abnormal. Yeah. We sometimes will will cross 100 or triple digits over 100 for one or two days in the summer, usually in late July or August. I cannot remember a time when we hit 108 degrees, and certainly not in late June. It is pretty hot.

Margaret Yeah, I've I'm I'm from the Mid Atlantic. And now I live in the south on the east coast. And I've The only time I've been in. I mean, I've been in triple digits. I don't think it ever got hotter than 103 104 the whole time I was growing up. And only time I've been in 110 degree weather was in Death Valley. So I'm worried about you all. So that's why I'm I don't Yeah, we're going to talk at a later point with someone that you co teach with about more wilderness first aid. But it seems like wilderness first aid is suddenly might become urban first aid in a way that we're not. I'm not really used to and maybe you're not really used to. I guess to start with, do you want to talk about? Like, what are the dangers of heat?

Guy Yeah, so I'll preface this by saying a couple of things. The first is the human The human body is actually really adaptable and resilient if it has time to adapt to a changing environment. So people can handle really extreme heat, if they have time, to climatized to it. But if we get these big spikes of heat coming in a place where people aren't used to it, we're jumping from the mid 80s, one week to 108 another week, then that becomes a lot more stressful on body. And then add on to that right up here in the Pacific Northwest as a culture as a society we're not adapted to experience. Most people's houses aren't particularly well insulated, because in general, it's a fairly temperate climate. So there's just not the either the time to adapt on a physiological level or to adapt our environment to really manage and handle this heat. So that said, a few different things happen when we we get too hot, so our body, right we we sweat, we produce sweat and that's the primary way that we cool ourselves off and evaporation is is actually a very effective cooling mechanism. If we have an up sweat, and particularly if there's a breeze that is able to allow that evaporation to to continue to cools off, as our body gets too hot, and we start to lose our ability to thermo regulate, we end up seeing a lot of different side effects. And so we used to think of this really clear progression from what we call heat exhaustion, heat stroke. And now it seems more like there's just a lot of different clusters of symptoms that appear when people get too hot. So things like nausea, vomiting, feeling really tired, feeling a little bit disoriented, feeling irritable, some muscle cramps, particularly related to exercise, sweating, and excessive sweating, but then also maybe some more like chills or pale, pale skin, clammy feeling, as our body just doesn't tolerate the heat extremes very well. And all the symptoms, all those symptoms are unpleasant, but fine. And the real danger is when our internal temperature starts to cross 104 or 105 degrees Fahrenheit. And at that point, our brain actually starts cooking. And so we see our mental process change, we don't think as clearly our personality changes, and we're actually doing long term damage to our brains, and they won't survive that for very long.

Margaret When you say very long, like what are you talking about there, like five minutes an hour,

Guy oh, no, definitely in the in the hours realm. But the longer that persists, the more damage the more permanent damage can be done to our to our brain and to our bodies. Depends on the heat extreme. But so and then once we lose that, once we start losing that ability to thermo regulate altogether, instead of maintaining a temperature that's elevated, but not too high, we just kind of start to run away, and we can't cool off at all. And then and then we need help from from other people, we need a change of environment, we need to be cooled down really, really quickly.

Margaret One of the I asked, asked social media right before this interview, like corner what what advice people had and also what questions people had. And the thing that you just talked about, about how we used to see it as heat exhaustion versus heatstroke is very different. That is one of the things that most people were bringing up is like, make sure you know the difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke with the idea, I guess the prevailing knowledge and what I had known prior to five minutes ago, when you said otherwise, would be that heat exhaustion is the like, Oh, this fucking sucks. And I should probably get somewhere cold real quick. And maybe someone can help me get somewhere. Not real cold, but like colder real quick. Versus heat stroke is like, you know, call paramedic, like get taken to the emergency room or whatever, because you're about to die or something. Right. And you're saying that the line between these two is, is not only not a clear line, but it's not even necessarily a specific progression as much as like, you are just different clusters. Can you tell me more about that?

Guy Yeah. So heat stroke, heat stroke is really clear. And maybe that I misspoke. A little bit there.

Margaret I might have misheard you. Yeah, yeah,

Guy so so heat stroke is very clear. That's when our internal temperatures reached 104 105 are the proteins that our brains start denaturing we start doing we start getting cell death in our brains, and permanent damage. And the easiest way to recognize that in someone is a change in their personality, or change in their thought process and see someone who was previously grumpy and maybe a little irritable, or maybe a little hot, or maybe they were just fine. Now they're saying or doing things that don't make any sense. And that's because their brain is not functioning properly anymore. So heatstroke is a is pretty clearly delineated. The distinction is that there's not necessarily a progression from one to the next you don't necessarily get this long warning sign of heat exhaustion and you're feeling bad and then you feel worse, and then you feel worse, and then it's heatstroke. That happens in some people. But another people it can just go directly to heatstroke without this preliminary experience of feeling a little bit crappy and under the weather and nauseous and faint.

Margaret Okay. So what do you do in each of these situations? Whether you're alone, or whether you're with someone who's experiencing these symptoms, like what do you do for someone who's suffering from heat exhaustion symptoms? versus heatstroke?

Guy Yeah, so, so in both cases, the problem is that someone is too hot and so the solution is to cool them down. So heat exhaustion This cluster of nausea, muscle cramps, I just don't feel good fatigue, maybe some vomiting, that person wants to be cooled down. So we should get into the shade, we should try to move to a cooler environment change clothes. But we're not necessarily we have time to do that heat stroke, as soon as we see that change in personality, or mentation, we want to cool that person down as quickly as possible. And so the fastest way generally to cool someone down is through some amount of Coldwater immersion. So, throw them into like, throw them in a leg, but probably not throw them because if they have this altered mental status, they can't think as well, we're worried about their ability to write but get them in, get them in running water, get as much of their body in the water as we can while protecting their airway, to cool them down quickly. And if we don't have a big body of water, we can put them in, it's nice and cool, the next best thing is get them as wet as we can, and then fan them because that sort of cooling consumes a huge amount of energy, which then cools the body fairly quickly. So if you think about you get your hands wet, they don't feel that cold, and then you get a breeze moving across your cold hands or your clothes are wet, you get cold really fast, because evaporation takes more energy, then I'm simply being immersed in water.

Margaret Okay, how does, um, how does being in a human environment, impact evaporative cooling and dealing with this sort of crisis?

Guy Yeah, humidity is a real challenge here. And that's the thing that we're fortunate about here in the Pacific Northwest, where summers are usually pretty dry. Okay. But the the more humid the air gets, the less effective evaporative cooling will be. And that means both that just getting someone wet and fanning them won't work as well. But it also means that our body's natural mechanism for cooling, which is sweat also doesn't work as well. And so there's this concept of the wet bulb temperature, which is rather than looking at what is the temperature on the thermometer to put a thermometer inside a bulb and you cover it with a damp cloth. Now they have mean fancier tools to do this now, but the principle is the same. covering a soaking wet cloth. And then they measure what is the temperature that that thermometer reads.

Margaret When you have a bowl or a bulb. So yep, wet bulb temperature bulb, oh, you get the Oh, you put it inside a light bulb is that it?

Guy any any bulb any any any spiracle object, right? It's covered in a damp cloth. Okay? If the humidity is lower than 100%, the temperature that that thermometer reads is going to be lower than lower than the air temperature, right, because there's some amount of evaporation which is cooling the air inside.

Margaret Interesting,

Guy okay. And so this is a way for us to understand what the actual threat of a any particular temperature is. Because once we get to 100% humidity, the temperature inside that bulb is going to be exactly the same as it is outside because there's no longer any evaporation occurring and no longer any cooling. And the challenge there. And so this is this is how wet bulb temperatures are measured. You can look up tables that will tell you relative humidity and temperature and you can find the wet bulb temperature at that intersection. And once we hit about 90 degrees at 100% humidity, or a 90 degree wet bulb temperature, which we could get with either higher higher temperature and lower humidity or lower temperature and higher humidity. Once that wet bulb temperature hits about 90 degrees, humans can no longer effectively function in any kind of meaningful physical exertion outside. Okay, and even completely at rest. Without any exertion. People will start to die within hours once you hit about 95 degrees. wet bulb temperature,

Margaret which is what it would be at like 100% humidity if it was 95 degrees out. Exactly. Yeah. As someone who the inside of my house is regularly 90 to 95% humidity during the summer. I know I'm not supposed to be worried about myself today. Still mostly worried about y'all. But it actually is changing a little bit my my sense of the heat that y'all are facing. Yeah. What I mean okay, so if it's like, like, do you have a sense of like when they're like it's gonna be 109 degrees 111 degrees 116 degrees in business. cific Northwest this weekend, you know, or maybe you're listening to this three weeks later, I don't know, whatever. But do you have a sense of like, what kind of wet bulb temperature that is likely to be for people?

Guy Yeah, so so our humidity usually here in the summer ranges between like 20 and 40%, particularly high. And so I ran a couple of numbers before this show, and who was looking like, this Sunday, when we're supposed to hit about 108 degrees during the peak of the day, that'll probably equate to something around a 75 or 80 degree wet bulb temperature, which doesn't sound that hot, but actually is is pretty darn hot and really hard for the body to tolerate.

Margaret And so what that means is not everyone is fine, it means that the means by which we can fight this with like, cold water immersion, and fanning and things like that actually have a chance of working is what you're saying.

Guy Exactly in in places with low humidity, water, and evaporation works really well to pull you down. The problem with this, and this is what a lot of climate scientists have been warning about for a long time is that the tropical parts of the world, as we start to get increases in temperature, which are already close to 100% humidity, during that season, we'll get so hot that there's no effective way to cool down. And then we'll see a lot a lot a lot of heat related deaths, because these parts of the world also don't have air conditioning. cooling is completely ineffective. And so in some ways we're lucky up here so far, because our summers are dry.

Margaret Yeah, and there's, I mean, a lot of people listening don't have access to air conditioning. But I, but there's there might be like, you know, I know that some cities are setting up cooling centers and things like that. So there is some access to air conditioning in the northwest, okay. So when you talk about like not exerting yourself and things like that, like you're basically saying, like, basically, because when you exert yourself, your body heats up, and that's bad. So it's like, one of the main things people should do is like, chill the fuck out and like, not exert themselves as much as possible.

Guy Yeah, exactly. That's one of the best things that we can do is write we stay out of the sun, as much as possible, try to stay as cool as possible. And just don't do. Don't exert yourself, don't do physical labor. Don't go for runs, try to get out of your job if your job involves heavy, heavy physical labor during these hot temperatures or organized with your other workers, because it's literally putting putting your life at risk. Yeah. To be working in these conditions.

Margaret Yeah, okay. And then. So if this kind of not fully covers, but but gets at the idea behind like heat exhaustion, heat stroke. The other the other thing that at least is on my radar to worry about as relates to intense heat is dehydration. And that's kind of a separate threat. Right? Yeah. Can you talk about dehydration, also, our mutual friends as you have a good story about dehydration? Yeah,

Guy I have a lot of rants that I could go on about dehydration. And it's it's more evil twin overhydration, also known as hyponatremia. So, so, hydration is important, our bodies function better when we're well hydrated. But luckily, our bodies also have this amazing built in mechanism to help us maintain adequate hydration, which is our sense of thirst. And generally, people should drink when they're thirsty, and they should drink a little bit more if they're exercising or if they're in hot weather. And if you're well hydrated, then you will, you will tolerate heat better and you will be more able to adapt. That said, hydration doesn't prevent heat exhaustion and hydrating doesn't fix heat exhaustion or heatstroke either. The problem is, once you've hit that point, the problem was just that you're too hot and you need to cool down. So it's a separate problem. Exactly. They go hand in hand and do tend to sweat more or lose more fluids in hot weather and need to replace them. The place where people get into trouble. We have this cultural myth of dehydration as the big killer. And like you've probably heard people say hydrate or die and there's all these stories about people who athletes who didn't drink enough water and they died. And that's actually not really the case. Most people stay hydrated enough, most of the time, they are getting dehydrated and they have access to water and then don't have vomiting or diarrhea that's sucking water out of them, they can maintain adequate hydration pretty decently the problem, the area that we actually see a lot more deaths, and a lot more severe illness is the opposite. This this problem over hydration. And so for the last couple decades until well, like through the 90s and early 2000s, there was a lot of rhetoric in sports medicine, about the importance of hydration, and you have to hydrate And drink, drink, drink, and you have to drink Gatorade, and you have to drink electrolytes. Because if you don't, then you're gonna die of dehydration. And actually, what we were doing was people were drinking too much water. And that changes the electrolyte balance in our bodies, and it ends up making our cells swell up. And we started getting swelling in the brain that really rapidly fatal and so most, most of the exercise related deaths like ultra marathoners hikers that we used to think were linked to dehydration. Most of those deaths are actually linked to called hyponatremia. Not enough salt. But the real problem is that you've drunk too much water and you've diluted your salt.

Margaret Oh, God, so we're telling people exactly the wrong thing to do. I mean, like all of those other hikers died, so you better drink more water?

Guy Yeah, so you're allowed to drink a lot. But when people get these benchmarks, and they hear like, Oh, I should drink, I should drink a liter of water an hour rest drink two liters of water an hour, I should drink a Gatorade at every stop in this race. People are basing their hydration on some outside metric rather than their own body's sense of whether they need fluid or not. Then Then we we tend to see hyponatremia which is much more deadly and much harder to treat than dehydration. So like many other things that Western medicine has done, we have invented a problem where there used to be no, because humans generally are good at knowing what their bodies need and taking care of them.

Margaret Yeah. Okay. And like, like, I've never drank electrolytes on purpose in my life. Right? Like, I mean, I drink emergency in the morning, but I think I do it for like vitamins, which might also be bullshit, but I don't know. Um, and people are always like, talking about the importance of drinking electrolytes. And, I mean, this obviously sounds like it ties into it, like, do you avoid hype? hype bone night? ceria I was gonna just avoid pronouncing that actually. But I failed at that. Do you avoid that better? If you are also drinking electrolytes and like eating salty snacks and things like that? Is there like? Like, how, how important are like our electrolytes and all this?

Guy Um, so the the answer is twofold. Like many things, so electrolytes are important. We should have salty snacks. And our body needs electrolytes to function. Well. That said, there's just no correlation between drinking electrolyte solutions, and a lower onset of hyponatremia. There's plenty of extreme athletes, ultra marathoners and hot places who are drinking mostly electrolyte solutions. And the real the real risk factor is just the volume of fluid and formed the volume of fluid drunk. So if people like electrolyte drinks, they should drink them. I drink them sometimes. And it makes me feel better, I think. Yeah, but to prevent hyponatremia and we shouldn't think that we're fixing the problem of low electrolytes by drinking electrolyte drinks, because what we're actually doing is just adding too much more fluid to a system that's already over hydrated. Okay,

Margaret so just trust your body and drink is this like how like, one of the main things you learn like street medic stuff? Is that just water for everything? Like, you know, it's like chemical weapons and you fix it with

water. Now all these great, it's amazing or whatever. So just water and and not too much of it. You should drink a little more, if it's really hot out. salty snacks.

Margaret Yeah. Okay. So if you want to focus on electrolytes, focus on salty snacks instead of Gatorade.

Guy I mean, you can drink Gatorade, if you like. Sugar and other electrolytes drinks are fine. It's not like they do harm. And if you drink too much of them and you think you're a problem. Yeah. Okay.

Margaret Now this is I'm really glad to like be like myth. bussed in or whatever. And like getting past that, like stuff, you can quickly Google on the internet, you know? So I have a lot of other questions from people. This is I think everyone's I already said this, everyone's really worried. Um, what um, and actually, we've been talking about this a lot. We've definitely been talking about things primarily from the point of view of like, not having access to, you know, air conditioning and things like that, right. Oh, actually, before we leave dehydration, what do you do about it? What do you do if both where there is a doctor available and where there isn't a doctor available for both dehydration and the problem that shall not be named? Right? Yeah. hyponatremia overhydration, which is, you call it hyponatremia? And I'll call it over hydration?

Guy Right? Go? That's perfect. Um, so dehydration, the problem is those not enough water. And so the solution is they should drink some water. Okay, cool. And the way that and the tricky thing here, right, is that we see people and it's hot out, and they've been exercising, and they say they've got a headache. And they feel kind of nauseous, and they don't feel good. And they're kind of grumpy. And we think, oh, you must be dehydrated, I'm going to give you water. It turns out that the symptoms of hyponatremia are pretty much exactly the same as the symptoms of dehydration with a few options. And so we really actually should be talking to our friends talking to the people we're interacting with and asking them some basic questions. How much water Have you been drinking? Hmm, oh, you had two liters this hour, two liters the hour before liter before that you've had six liters all day and you haven't been doing much. That's a lot of water. Probably shouldn't give you more water. So the very the treatment for hyponatremia. And its mild form is just with hold water. A couple of the things that that we could look for an ask about is someone who's over hydrated was hyponatremia is likely going to have pretty clear urine, and they're going to be peeing a lot. They're going to say, Yeah, I just have to pee all the time. And I really got to drink water, it's really important to drink fluid time pee and all the time. That's a good indication to say you should stop drinking water. Okay, until you're no longer peeing all the time. Dehydration, that person wants water. That's the problem is there's not enough and so they should drink some water. And right, we might also inquire about the year and then they could say I haven't been paying very much it's been really dark yellow, it's been smelly. Those are good indications that someone is dehydrated. On the mild side of, of either of these. It just takes time to fix. If you're if you're dehydrated, you should drink water and rest. And if you're over hydrated, you should rest and stop drinking water. Okay, once once it gets more severe, once we see mental status change, someone is no longer behaving like themselves. That just means that their brain is angry because it's not getting what it needs. Either. It's not enough water. In the case of dehydration, or there's there's swelling and pressure building up because of this hyponatremia And in those cases, that person really needs to go to a hospital.

Margaret Okay, what what would the hospital be doing? And I know I'm not like trying to encourage everyone to do everything by themselves, but I feel like it's like useful to like break open the black box with like medical stuff.

Guy Yeah, so dehydration, dehydration, they're gonna be rehydrating via IV. Oh, that's a thing that we can do in the back country or without access to a hospital. We don't have IVs but we can rehydrate someone gradually just by drinking water and reducing exertion. And as long as they're not continuing to lose fluid either through sweat or through diarrhea or vomiting then we can probably fix that problem hyponatremia is there's unfortunately not much outside of a hospital setting once it's advanced to the stage someone's mental status is changing. There's not much that we can do and this is one of the reasons it's more fatal dehydration and exercise context

Margaret because what if we bloodlet people with leeches

Guy Yeah, we can't do that. They will they end up doing it a hospital is giving someone a lot of sailing intravenously to change the the electrolyte balance of their blood, and we just can't do that quickly or effectively, orally so we can definitely give someone salt. But we should know that if they're if it seems like a severe case of hyponatremia or overhydration that really what they need is a hospital intervention. And when should prioritize getting them to that hospital instead of trying to do it ourselves. Because there's just not much we can do. Unless we're, that's right, that's way above my paygrade is, is measuring someone's blood pH and blood chemistry and tinkering with it and injecting different solutions into them.

Margaret them. And so this sounds like it. These are problems related to heat. But the but dehydration and overhydration are like more or less directly the problems that we're like specifically worried about this coming weekend, because it sounds like it's like more athletes and things like people who like are fighting can with things in that way? Or is this like, are a lot of the people who are potentially going to die because of a massive heatwave? Is it mostly heatstroke or is it also dehydration and over hydration?

Guy Yeah, so so in globally in heat waves, the largest deaths are heat stroke related, or heat stress related and largely in in populations over 60 years of age on this because as, as we age, our bodies just become less adept at thermo regulating, and we're having a hard time adapting the stress. Okay. Certainly, people who are really worried about the heat and think that the solution is to drink a lot, a lot, a lot of water all day long, everybody, a danger of hyponatremia. And certainly as someone who's working outside and sweating a lot and doesn't have access to water, or maybe they're houseless and don't have shelter, and don't have a place to stay cool and don't have good access to clean water. I think we could see dehydration set in and be exacerbated by the heat. The major killers, statistically, are heatstroke. Okay.

Margaret What? What should someone who's listening to this who is experiencing homelessness or someone who cares about people who are do besides like, I mean, I guess like, pressure cities into having cooling areas, invite people, if you have AC, like, inviting people in? You know, like, or are there like, specific? Yeah, what would you suggest?

Guy Yeah, so there's like, there's a couple, I mean, those are both really important and great. And we should do that. A couple of other things that that we can do, that anyone can do to to adapt to heat better. Right, maintaining good hydration, but not too much salty snacks, all of these things will help with our water balance. Staying in the shade as much as possible, and then trying to have a water source, even if it's just spray bottle and like the ability to spray yourself down. Right, spray your face down, spray your clothes down with a little like $1 spray bottle you get from the dollar store and you fill up and you can just spritz yourself and evaporate and that will pull you down. Right damp bandanas around the neck. On the head, even getting your clothes soaking wet in this more dry environment will work. Because all the evaporation of those clothes, that clothing is going to cool your body quite a bit. Another thing that we see in urban environments is usually with all of the pavement and asphalt and the buildings and the lack of tree cover. We'll see temperatures that are 10 to 15 degrees higher in urban centers than they are in surrounding forests or green areas. And so thinking about is it possible to get to a park is it possible to get to a place with trees that has shade and the plants are through evapo transpiration are helping to cool the area a little more and they're absorbing less heat than these big blocks of concrete that just absorb solar energy and radiate it back out at you know it'll make a big difference. And then thinking about thinking about kind of the mechanisms by which we we gain heat and we lose heat. And so certainly radiation from the sun would heat us up really fast. And we can we can partially mitigate that by wearing light colored clothes that covers all of your skin. So loose fitting long t shirt, long pants, a big hat, you're actually going to be staying cooler and clothes like that then you will be in shorts and a T shirt.

Margaret Just humidity affect that I have this like general conception that like dry heat places are all about cover yourself from the sun giving yourself shade through clothes as important whereas like more humid places, more tropical places. It seems like people tend to go with like just less clothes maybe to like really make it as easy as possible to do the little bit of evaporative cooling they can do or am I like just totally off base about this.

Guy No, no, I think I think that that's that seems accurate to me. I think that The more humid it becomes, the more difficult it is to stay cool. And the less the problem is like direct solar radiation and more problem is just that ambient air temperature, all of the moisture hanging out in that air that's holding on to heat and then transferring it to you. I've been, I've been lucky to spend Well, I grew up in Indiana, which was very human, but I've been lucky to spend most of my life in places with fairly dry heat, which I much prefer.

Margaret Yeah, like, I'm just coming at this, like entirely from this, you know, we refer to it is like, Oh, it's just the Baltimore soup, you know, in August or whatever. Okay, um, yeah, a lot of people talked about a lot of different like water methods of cooling. Besides, I mean, obviously, the, like, get into an air conditioning built in this, like, the most bulletproof means or whatever, right? But, um, like, people talk about, like, what, like sleeping on intentionally wet sheets, like spraying your, like wearing wet socks, or even damn close when you're trying to sleep. One person was talking about, like, wet the bottom of your curtains and leave the window open so that it like, wicks up the water and then it evaporates. So just basically doing anything that you can to encourage evaporative cooling?

Guy Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, that's the kind of the biggest thing. Um, and right, it depends on if you're trying to cool yourself or your house, in less energy to cool yourself. Oftentimes, here in the northwest, it's actually more effective to, as soon as the temperature starts climbing in the morning, close all the windows, trap all the cool air from the night in the house and rely on your relation rather than thinking that across breeze from outside 100 degree temperature is going to pull your house. But that only goes so far. And so yeah, there's also the swamp cooler method, which doesn't work in humid places for the same reason. But you can make kind of DIY swamp coolers by putting a wet sheet over a box fan, and then blowing the air through that wet sheet. Okay.

Margaret And that kind of answers one of the questions that someone asked, which is like, you know, obviously, whenever bad things happen, only one bad thing happens at a time. But let's say for some weird reason, a bunch of dry heat might cause fire. And, you know, obviously, the West Coast has been blanketed in smoke for the past four years. And like, smoking means you got to keep your window shut. You're saying then you just like basically focus on air movement within the house within with fans and like personal cooling through dehydration?

Guy Yeah, yeah, absolutely. To through operation. Yeah, like I would. So when there's when it's not smoke season, which, thankfully is not yet although I think it'll be coming earlier this year, based on our temperatures. When it's not smoke season, I'll open all the windows at night once things cool off, because we do get a big temperature swing here, even in the summer, it cools off at night, and then in the morning, and try to capture some of that cold air during the night variants folk season. Just keep it all closed. Stay inside and focus on that evaporative cooling if you need to. So get yourself wet sit in front of a fan if you don't have electricity, right, people have been keeping themselves cool with fans for 1000s of years before electricity. Big hand fans are really quite effective at moving a lot of air quickly. Without much exertion.

Margaret Okay, so the trade off would be worth it of the exertion of physical motion for the like evaporative cooling? Yeah,

Guy absolutely. Yeah, it doesn't take that much work to fan yourself out a fan a friend, as long as you're able to get yourself wet, right? If you're just being hot air across yourself. That's not going to do any good.

Margaret does that tie into the one of the questions I got that I just you know, it's like a piece of information that people have that I don't know, one way or another. I've never heard of it before someone asked if fanning is bad and extreme heat, how do you pull yourself off? It's probably only saying it's like you're suggesting it's probably only hot, bad if the if you're not causing evaporative cooling? And if you're not, if there's no water on you. Exactly. Yeah.

Guy And I looked that one up because I had actually never heard that before. And it actually is I think it's a CDC. It's some government guideline. I think it's from the CDC. And it's just really, this this example of policies and advice being written in a way that's totally robbed of context and is more confusing to people than not, which often is the case if you're just moving hot air across Someone, that definitely will be worse because air there's some amount of convection, right. But we also create a little bubble around ourselves. And this happens all the time a little bubble of temperature of air, close to our skin that's close to our skin temperature. And so it will be slightly more than 108 degrees outside, if we're effectively sweating and evaporating some, it'll be slightly warmer in cold temperatures. And if that air is not being disturbed, then then it'll help us thermoregulate just a little bit. And if we're moving really hot air across that, then that'll heat us up faster in the same way that sticking your hand or your foot in an ice cream or moving water, you're gonna get a lot colder than sticking that foot in the same temperature water that's not moving. build up a little insulated layer. But that only but but you just fix the problem by adding water. And then it's not a problem anymore, because evaporation is much more powerful at cooling. Okay, yeah.

Margaret So if people don't have much access to water, basically it's like, get access to water. If you can't get access to air conditioning, you just need access to water is that kind of? Yeah, pretty big deal.

Guy I think that's the big thing. And so it's certainly we should have water to drink maintain good hydration but having water that you can use to cool yourself down and whether that's a stream or a river or a lake or whether that's just carrying some extra water with you know that you don't need it to drink so you can use it to what your clothes down.

Margaret And would Gatorade be more effective for this? Like it has electrolytes in it. And I know electrolytes are good when it's hot out. Um, for cooling yourself down. Yeah. No, no, no interesting way. The only good thing Gatorade is for Yeah, lots of sugar. You're gonna fuck up my chance for a sponsorship.

Guy That Gatorade actually got us into this whole bind with hyponatremia because they sponsored sports medicine conferences from the neighborhood 1000s. And all the studies came out saying how important hydration was and we realized that people are dying all over the place because they're drinking too much. Get rid of too much.

Margaret Oh my god, it's literally the plot of idiocracy. Great, cool that that makes me feel really good about the world. Fuck. Okay. Oh, do you know much about like, dealing with pets? Like, I guess Like what? Like most? Most animals don't sweat? Are we the only animals that sweat? Like, what's the deal with keeping pets? Cool?

Guy Yeah, I don't know as much about pets, dogs, dogs sweat, but only through their feet. Do sweat. So um, but they just don't, right? They're mostly covered in hair. So they're not going to as effectively be able to cool themselves down. Cats are the same. I don't know about other animals. But right, you're not gonna sweat if you're covered in here because it won't be effective at all. Okay, and so for pets, it's really helped me and a lot of it is the same. Stay inside, stay in cool, shady areas, right? Get some damp clothes or damp bandana or something on them. We could like wet down a sheet or add like a dog. Just get it damp. And put that on the floor for them to sleep on. I've heard of people putting in a couple ice cubes in water bowls. I don't know whether that is actually effective at cooling your dog down but they probably like it. And then and then avoiding exertion the same way. Yeah.

Margaret Okay. Well and okay with the cold water and maybe it doesn't help but it it tastes better to them or something like that. People have questions. I have questions. I don't know enough about this. Like it, it seems like would be drinking like ice cold water, kind of shock your system. Like if you're even if like someone has heat exhaustion or god forbid heatstroke and you don't have access to the hospital. But whatever is it like, Is there an ideal temperature? Do you only want it a little bit colder than their body? Or is it like? No, we would if I can put them on glacier if you could?

Guy Yeah, absolutely. The the big problem with heatstroke is someone's brain is cooking. And so we want to stop the cooking as quickly as possible. And we do that by putting them in cold water. And there's just not much evidence but putting someone in cold water from from an overheated position does any kind of damage to them. We're not going to make someone hypothermic with 30 minutes in cold water when they've been overheated. We're not gonna we're Yeah, they might gasp and a little bit and we get that cold water on our skin. We have an involuntary gasp reflex and then we adjust to the water temperature, but it's not going to do any damage. And same with drinking ice water. The temperature of the water doesn't make a huge difference in changing the temperature of our bodies. But it's not like drinking water will cool us faster than drinking warm water. But I know that I'm more likely to drink water when it's hot out if the water is cold and refreshing, and so, right. So the way to stay adequately hydrated. ice water is great. You can stick around your forehead and call yourself down.

Margaret Yeah, okay, so they said like, like sticky. So like getting the ice water on you is probably more important than getting ice water in you in terms of

Guy Yeah, if you only have enough. Yeah, but I mean, I just, you know, you get that big glass of ice water and it's condensing on the outside and outside is super cold, huh? Yeah. Okay, hold on to it, and stick that jar on your forehead until you till you drink it. Okay.

Margaret So I'm not gonna get the story about dehydration out of him.

Guy Uh, well, I'm trying to think of what our friend would be talking about. The the story that I do have is, and this is this is just more of a general warning story about tunnel vision. And people who are convinced that they're right about something, and they don't look at all the facts. But I was several years ago, I was guiding in the Grand Canyon. And I ran into ran into a couple of people who were in fairly substantial distress. And they were a day behind their schedule, they'd gone about four miles, maybe five miles in about 24 hours. And they were convinced that there was only one person who is really having trouble. And he was nauseous, he didn't feel good, little unsteady on his feet, really classic, pale kind of pale, clammy skin, really classic heat exhaustion symptoms. And his friend who claims to be a guide, with him was convinced of the altitude illness, because he was nauseous and had a headache. And because the Rim of the Grand Canyon was 7000 feet, which is not actually very high. Altitude illness goes. But they were convinced that they had altitude on this. And so they were descending into the canyon where it got hotter. And the only solution they thought was to keep going down, because if they dropped an elevation, then they'd fix the altitude and less problem. And so I tried to talk to them, and convince them that I wasn't altitude illness, and that, in fact, it was extremely hot. And they weren't a climatized to the heat, because it was springtime. And they had just come from the Midwest where it was 40 degrees outside and I was 100 degrees in the canyon. And they wouldn't listen to me. And I ended up running into a couple paramedics on the trail, who were hiking behind me and caught up and overtook me. And they had also encountered this person after I did stop them did a full assessment, knew it was heat exhaustion, tried to convince the people to stop and rest and turn around. Or they weren't having any of it. They were convinced that it was altitude LS ran into a ranger later on, who also tried to convince him to turn around. And I don't know what happened to them. He clearly didn't die, because I would have heard about a death in the canyon, but certainly didn't have a good time. And I think the big takeaway there is we as humans, I think as soon as we think we've identified what a problem is, then we start trying to solve it. And then we ignore all of the other evidence that suggests that could be a different problem. And so I think, anytime that you're feeling bad or your friend is feeling bad, or they're feeling sick, and you think you know what's going on, it's worth stopping and asking yourselves, especially if they're not getting any better. Mm hmm. Is it actually this thing? Is it actually dehydration? Maybe it's hyponatremia I should stop giving this person a water?

Margaret Yeah.

Guy Is it actually altitude illness, or maybe it's really hot out and you feel crappy, and you should be in the shade and lie down and rest and fan you until you feel better? Instead of trying to rush down to drop in elevation? And yeah.

Margaret If you had a whole group of people in five people, and they're all exposed to the exact same, you know, you're all hiking together roughly the same amount of exertion etc. Is everyone gonna get heatstroke at the same time? Or is it like fairly personal about that?

Guy there's a there's a pretty wide range in human tolerance for heat and exertion. So yeah, it can be all over the place. I would say that the right the hotter it gets, the higher the probability of heat exhaustion or heat stroke here. But but it's like human bodies are really amazing when they're really adaptable and right we think of 105 degree internal temperature, like you stick a thermometer in someone's mouth. When they read the 105, we say medicine says that heat stroke their brains. But there are also some ultra marathon athletes who run in really hot weather who have recorded internal temps of 105. And they're totally fine. Okay, and that's probably because they've acclimated to that over a long time. And we've actually been able to change their physiology and what their bodies do. So people, people have really different responses. And so we should be looking at how are people doing and asking our friends and looking for these these little telltale signs? Oh, yeah, this person's a little grumpier than usual. And kind of ornery, and they look a little pale, and they're kind of slower to respond, we should check in how are you doing? How are you feeling? Rather than thinking that the objective conditions are what's going to dictate? When?

Margaret Yeah, okay. Yeah. And that kind of answers or starts to answer one of the questions that a couple people asked, which is like, basically, what do you do if you're someone who just hates heat? Right? Like, I definitely have friends who like they, you know, I'm always I don't hate heat the same way. I hate being cold. You know? You think that's like, just like a lifetime acclamation and like, basically, the answer is slowly acclimate climatized rather than suddenly have a what's it called, like a heat Hill, a heat bulb? on some horrible name for what's happening to you all? Yeah.

Guy Don't have the bad thing happen is that is that as a heat dome, they keep inventing new names for weather phenomenon that have actually been around forever. You know, I'm not that this particular heat wave has been around forever. It's certainly new. But I just think about the like, Arctic bomb polar vortex. New now that we're finally all paying attention to the weather. Yeah. All these new terms about it instead of I don't know, stopping emitting carbon and planting a lot of trees. B time. That'd be a lot of work. Yeah, it'd be a lot of work. It's a lot a lot easier to name all the problems and make some ad revenue off of driving clicks to website. But I digress. Yeah, some people don't like heat. I think that as a person who doesn't like heat, and who also guided in the desert, for many years, I think the climate Ising makes a big difference. And slowly, right, go to a new environment, if you're not being confronted by one of these heat waves, you go to a different environment, and you don't do your normal level exertion of exertion. You just dressed and you're hanging out and you expose yourself to the temperature, and then you go and you cool off and do it again. And then you do it again. And you'll become more used to that, and especially if you're using other techniques to keep yourself cool. It's interesting. I think that I get grumpier with heat here in the Pacific Northwest than I ever did when I was guiding in the desert. And I think it was, I think a lot of it was the climate tising. And, and having an orientation of I know, I'm in a hot place here. And so I need to change my behavior. And I need to change how I'm managing my body so that I can stay cool. Whereas it gets hot right here. And I think I should just be able to do all the things I can normally do. And now I feel terrible. And I'm mad. Just because I'm too hot.

Margaret Yeah. So it's like, maybe maybe part of the whole answer is like actually change your pattern of behavior. Which actually ties into both the we're all gonna die because of global warming, if we don't do anything, and then also the, like, what you talked about, about the person who is, you know, walking further and further down, because they were like, No, no, no, no, it's it's climate sickness, you know, or whatever, or not climbing, altitude sickness. And then like, I know that when I want to do cognitive behavioral therapy, like the thing that we have to throw away first is I tell, I tell the therapist, what's wrong. And then therapist, it's like, able to specifically say, Now I know what isn't wrong. Like, that's your narrative. That's the thing that you like have been telling yourself. Yeah. And clearly telling yourself this didn't work so and, yeah, which we need to do as a society we need to actually change our patterns in the same way that y'all in the Pacific Northwest should avoid exertion and as you suggested, the very beginning And then work with your co workers to collectively avoid exertion, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Just easier said than done from someone who's a remote worker on the East Coast but okay. Oh, sorry, is one more people talk about? Like one question left food drug medications to avoid our caffeine and alcohol like absolutely terrible anathema if you take, like, different, you know, different medications is going to impact the degree to which you're sensitive, and are the things that people can do about that.

Guy Yeah, um, there's certainly some risk factors. In general, caffeine and alcohol both just don't help the body adapt to any kind of changing environment. And so cold, hot altitude, all of these things, caffeine and alcohol aren't going to make us feel better. And whether that's a huge risk factor. I'm not convinced. I'm still gonna drink my coffee in the morning, but I'll probably make a cold brew. And, but I'm not going to drink coffee all day, and I'm not going to sit in the sun drinking beer all day. Some other some other medications, some allergy medications, and decongestants have some linkage to just reducing the body's ability to thermo regulate and to cool down. Now, I'm definitely not a doctor. And so if people are taking medication they should, they should look at that medication specifically and look it up and just Google that medication and heat exhaustion or heatstroke and see what see if there's a contraindication or or an extra risk factor there. We'll probably get better, better information from that than from broad and general statements from the way that this

Margaret podcast is this past guest is your doc is not just your doctor, but everyone is listening. Yes, we are both doctors. I thought that was the basis of okay. Okay, um, make sense? Do you have any, like, final thoughts like things about like, laying, you know, how are you feeling about this whole thing? Or, you know, things that we missed talking about all of this?

Guy Yeah, no, I really enjoyed this conversation. I think we hit like, we had a lot of topics, I can kind of nerd out about physiology and bodies and illnesses for a while. So it's been fun to do this with heat. I'm going to make a weird plug, which is, I really believe in umbrellas in the summer first. So like, silver reflective or light colored umbrellas, just thinking of other prevention techniques of carry your portable shade with you and thinking particularly about houseless people who can't access cool areas, get a cheap, bright colored umbrella, and you've got your own shade, and it'll help. So I just wanted to throw that one in there. I hiked with an umbrella in the Grand Canyon all the time.

Margaret And so I'm really excited about that. Yeah, he said bright colored. But you know what? Yeah,

Guy mine was silver. It was nice and reflective, really any anything that will reflect rather than absorb heat?

Margaret Could you tape an emergency blanket to on or something?

Guy Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And then and then beyond that, I just think that it's going to be hot here this week. People up here are, I think, probably simultaneously freaking out more than they need to and not enough. By which I mean, a couple of days of extreme heat are going to be challenging for people and we should take care of each other and look out for marginalized and vulnerable people are probably not going to see a lot of deaths. Huge, huge problems with a short heatwave like this. However, we should be freaking out about the fact that it's 108 degrees in the Pacific Northwest in June. And this is really like where we are headed as a planet. And so we need to be thinking and adapting right now and thinking about how can we, first of all right, stop emitting carbon and lock as much carbon as possible in the ground. And second of all, how can we change our environments and our behaviors to live in a hotter world and working? Yeah. Working 40 hours a week in an urban concrete. Metropolis is not going to be tenable couple decades from now, when? Right? Think about the thing about Texas right and last summer, they got that big cold wave and then the last Electricity and we have all these deaths because people could no longer to heat their homes and we're gonna see the same thing with with heat waves as well, where we have brownouts and blackouts, because there's too much electrical demand while the air conditioners running. And so we need to be thinking about how can we keep ourselves cool without relying on air conditioning? How can we change our behaviors and our patterns to do that? And how can we plant a shit ton of trees? Yeah, because really, not not only because because they fixed carbon. But because trees cool the environment down the local environment. They, right. evaporation is a major cooling effect. And trees of apo transport transpire huge amounts of moisture, when they're photosynthesizing. And all that moisture cools an area down. And so how can we convert these giant, awful concrete metropolises into beautiful forest gardens, we can survive and have food to eat. And also so that we can cool the areas where people are concentrated down. When we write we see this with just disparities in in heat related deaths across the country where people who are lower income or marginalized or of color live in areas that are more paid to have less access to green space, and they get hotter, and they're more exposed to environmental extremes. So yeah, we should we should take care of each other in the coming week. And stay cool. And we should plant a lot of trees and stop trying to pretend we can continue living as normal. When it's not normal anymore. I like that because

Margaret it it covers it you know, most This podcast is about what most of this episode has been about, like what to do in the very immediate short term, right have to solve this problem, or make it through this problem. But the solutions like absolutely have to be long term and ongoing. And I like that you tied that into that. Um, do you have Do you have anything that you want to like shout out like any any thing you want to plug any? I don't I don't know whether your medic trainings are public or if people want to like follow you. Do you do social media stuff? Anything?

Guy No, not right. I'm pretty. We're pretty non existent on the internet. No, social media. But yeah, we do. We do street medic trainings on and off in the Pacific Northwest, you haven't done one in a while. Hopefully will again, I will plug actually because I am in the process of moving up all the way to the peninsula. And there's a there's an amazing new community project forming in quilcene. people bought an old theater there a couple of years ago, the gray coast Guild Hall. There, they're just starting some big fundraising campaigns right now to replace the roof and do a bunch of infrastructure upgrades so that it can be a community gathering space and a resource and hopefully a place that people who are all thinking about how do we how do we actually live together throughout this climate changing world in the long term? Can I encounter each other and so a great coast Guild Hall could definitely use some dollars with you Google that or look it up they have a Patreon. I don't know if they've launched their big Kickstarter fundraiser yet. But yeah,

Margaret yeah, and one of the reasons I'm excited about that project is because it's you know, it's a, it's a social center will be a social center, and it's like, collectively operated, and it's within a pretty small town. And so it's a pretty major percent of that town's like, social and cultural, like, life or something like that. And it kind of really interesting way. Yeah, so it's, I agree, it's absolutely worth supporting. Normally, I do this whole, like separate outro but and so I'm gonna make you stay on the call as I do my outro. So that way, all of my files are in place, so I can edit this as quickly as possible. But thanks, everyone, for listening. And if you want to support this podcast, you can do so by supporting currently me on patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. But in the very near future, that same Patreon will switch over, you won't have to do anything on your end to support a larger collective effort that's going to be doing more podcasts and more zine publishing, called strangers in a tangled wilderness. And I'm very excited about moving to a more collective structure. It makes just you know, the many hands make light work as long as many hands and make everyone crouching getting each other's way. And in particular, and also you can tell people about the podcast and that's the main way and you can, you can thank us by telling people about it. But in particular, I want to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana and Chelsea Eleanor Mike staro, Kat j, the compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the Dog, Nora, and Chris, for making this possible. And, yeah, thanks so much. And I hope everyone is doing as well as they can with everything that happens and stay safe. And it seems like maybe one of the main messages about this is that well, yeah, like Guy already said it. You don't have to freak out as bad about this one specific thing, but we need to freak out more about the larger, larger things.

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Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Lynn continues to talk to Inmn about everything that's been going on in Ukraine for the last couple years with the invasion and different ways that preparedness manifests during a military occupation or invasion. For the second half of the conversation they focus on preparedness for blackouts and how it's always a great time to get into TTRPGs.

Guest Info

You can support Ukrainian leftists doing rad things at:

Renegade Relief Runners https://renegaderelief.org/ Solidarity Collectives https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/

Lynn also recommends you check out the podcast "Ukraine without Hype" for a weekly Ukrainian news round-up with leftist analysis from journalists in Kyiv, and interviews with some of the people she mentioned in our discussion, such as Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, the American transwoman who became the Ukrainian Territorial Defense spokesperson, and Vladyslav Starodubtsev a writer who talks about the Ukrainian labor struggle."

You can also support Lynn's partner, who is fundraising for equipment for his brigade, the 100th Separate Mechanized Brigade. They are defending towns on the Avdiivka Axis, one of the toughest directions at the moment. You can follow him on the platform formerly known as Twitter @SillyNami and if you would like to support them directly, you can send donations to his paypal account: wildflock100@proton.me

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.

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This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

Episode Notes

Margaret talks to Parks from Appalachian Medical Solidarity about disaster relief, what kinds of medical interventions are often needed after a disaster, and how to both respond to and prepare for them.

Guest info and links

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

49:54

SPEAKERS Margaret, Parks

Margaret   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. I use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking to Parks, who is a medical professional who works with Appalachian Medical Solidarity. And when I say this week I mean I recorded this interview at the very beginning of starting this podcast, which was just before the pandemic. I started this podcast in early 2020 when I had no real reason to think that COVID was going to become COVID in the way that it did. So this episode about, you know, medical things and disaster situations didn't really seem like it made a lot of sense. It's not what a lot of people were thinking about when it came to disaster and medical issues throughout all of 2020. But I actually, I still think this information is really important. And there are so many other crises that are happening now and will continue to happen. And so we talk a lot about, well, just what it means to be a responder to disaster, especially from a medical point of view, and I hope you get a lot out of it. I know I did. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Jingle   One to two one two, tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth black radical podcast for the people. Our host hip hop anarchist, Sima Lee the RBG, and sex educator and crochet artist, KLC, share their reflections on Maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trap liberation, and everyday ratchet. They deliver fresh commentary with the queer, transgender non conforming, funny, Southern guls, anti imperialist, anti oppression approach, poly add and bullshit. Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero Network, Buzzsprout, SoundCloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.

Margaret   So, welcome to the podcast. 

Parks   Thank you. 

Margaret   Do you want to introduce yourself with whatever name, pronoun, and affiliations that you would like to be known for for this podcast?

Parks   Sure. So my name is Parks, I use he/him pronouns, and I'm affiliated with Appalachian Medical Solidarity.

Margaret   Could you maybe start by talking about what Appalachian Medical Solidarity is, like what you all do?

Parks   Sure. Appalachian Medical Solidarity is a group that is centered in Asheville and the southern Appalachian area. And we provide disaster medical interventions, particularly after hurricanes and things of that nature. And we're working on other projects around the area, we do a lot of education in the area. For example, we taught a CPR certification class this weekend, and a Naloxone class.

Margaret   So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you told me once—you went through the list of how people design die and natural disasters and how it's not what people think it is. And clearly preparing or understanding how natural disasters work is, like, comparable to understanding how larger disasters work and things like that. So I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little bit about disaster and what the actual, like, kind of threat models are?

Parks   Sure. So there are several kinds of disasters and natural disasters, as you and your audience are likely aware. One that my group deals with specifically based on our geographic location is hurricanes. In developed countries, or countries with well-built infrastructure such as buildings and roads, deaths from hurricanes tend to come after the event itself. So the hurricane may kill less than 10 people—I'm not, I'm making up numbers there—but a small number of people will be killed by things like wind and falling trees and powerlines coming down and, you know, maybe a tree falling through their house and hitting them, that type of thing. More people die in flooding during the event than anything else. So most people don't die from being hit by a tree or blown away. They die from drowning and flooding, particularly when trapped in houses or when trapped in their cars, situations like that. So in places like the United States, those fatalities tend to be low. More people die in the few days after the hurricane. So as the power is out and infrastructure is down and people start to do things to cope with the infrastructure being down, part of the issue in developed countries is people are not accustomed to the infrastructure being down, so they're not necessarily aware of safety precautions to use when using things like grills or propane heaters or other non-conventional items, or in non-conventional areas. So people tend to die of carbon monoxide poisoning when they're using devices that need to be used in a ventilated area indoors, such as propane heaters, gas grills, things of that nature. They also tend to die after those events from chainsaw injuries, that's pretty common one, or from improper use of chainsaw, so trying to cut down trees and people being untrained to do so and having the tree fall on them. In that scenario, that type of thing. That's a much more common way to die in developed or over developed countries after disasters. People also die from food poisoning after disasters as they eat things out of their refrigerators and freezers that are going down. That's not as common, but it does happen. Sometimes people have issues with the spread of contagious illnesses inside of shelters. But here again, that's not usually causing a lot of people to die, it's causing a lot of people to have colds.

Margaret   So would you say that one of the better ways to prepare is more about, like, knowing how to use your emergency equipment—like knowing, like, chainsaws and propane and all that or?

Parks   I would—yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Knowing how to use equipment without, you know—knowing how to properly use a chainsaw, knowing when and where to properly use a propane heater. The other thing I would suggest is simply not using those items if you're not trained or unsure. You know, after a hurricane event, if you're a little cold, you know, put on extra layers if that's an option. If you can eat crackers and peanut butter instead of trying to, you know, make some kind of makeshift stove inside your house, then do that. You know, wait till it stops raining and you can move your grill outside. So use a little bit of common sense and forego small what are, you know, small luxuries essentially like cooking your food indoors or heat if you can, if you can live without it. 

Margaret   I want to ask you about Appalachian Medical Solidarity and your experiences with it and like what you've seen, or what people who are part of AMS have seen or like, I know, for example, when we had the conversation before we did this interview that you talked about while you're a medical professional, and you're often not using your, you know, surgery skills or something like that on the ground.

Parks   That's true. You know, with Appalachian Medical Solidarity, I am a medical clinician and I don't end up using my medical skills very often after disasters. We occasionally will see things like people having to use insulins—types of insulin they're not accustomed to and they don't know how to do the calculation to identify the proper dose. So sometimes people need help with things like that. And upper respiratory issues. They're not usually—what we're seeing at as a volunteer community group are not the kind of issues that people are going to the hospital for. The hospitals tend to still be in place, people go to the hospital. So the things we're seeing are relatively minor as it comes to medical issues. What we're seeing more is people needing help mucking out their houses, needing help cutting out drywall, needing help getting trees out of the road or off their houses. So mostly what we're seeing is a great need for cleanup and also a need for supplies to get into certain areas. So it can be difficult with trees down and powerlines down and flooding and roads washed out to get things like clean water to certain areas or food that people can eat. So a lot of transporting supplies and the, you know, one to three days after a disaster before FEMA is able to come in ends up being something that we see a lot.

Margaret   That's one of the kind of advantages that I found that—or at least people talk about, like autonomous and anarchist disaster relief and mutual aid—how this is about like the ability to mobilize quickly and maybe, like, without some of the inefficiencies of large organized structures. And I'm wondering if you want to talk about how you all organize, to get supplies and aid to crisis areas?

Parks   That's a great question and it's one that we've been working on. I think we can improve our dispatching capabilities and how we identify different areas and need. At least in our recent experience, one of the things we've run into is a need to pre stage before disasters when we know a disaster is coming. So that's not always possible. But with hurricanes, we tend to have a sense that that's maybe going to hit, so getting closer to the area—or as close as you can to the disaster zone and stay safe so that you're not just adding to the, you know, people that need to have supplies brought to them. So staying in an area that's near the disaster area where you're still safe. And so you're able to quickly mobilize supplies and able to mobilize personnel into areas that are hardest hit is an important thing. We mostly do it through cell phones and, at times, driving around randomly, honestly, and looking for people. We've also watched flood maps online to see where flooding is the worst and where places might be isolated. News media pretty quickly starts to cover and tell people where isolated pockets might be, like this town is cut off, or that town is cut off, or, you know, these highways are washed out. So you can use that information to try to dispatch your personnel to those areas and to dispatch supplies to those areas. But I think that could be improved upon. So pre planning is certainly a helpful thing, you know, trying to come up with who is going to be a dispatcher, who's going to watch the news, who's going to watch the flood map, who's going to be pre staging, all of those things are important. And one of the points I think, also is that specialized personnel aren't necessarily needed in these cases, you know? Just having people who can drive, having people who have vehicles that, you know, like trucks or trailers that can move a large quantity of water. And just having people that can drive back and forth supplying water and food to certain areas is invaluable. You know, it's nice to have a nurse, it's nice to have someone who can use a chainsaw. But it's, that's not the majority of people that are really needed.

Margaret   How do you get into isolated areas?

Parks   That's a great question. There was one hurricane in which we teamed up with some private pilots to be airlifted into those areas. I'm not sure if airlifted is the right word, we weren't jumping out of the planes, but small planes that could land and fields or could land in small airports and rural areas would take two or three personnel and a quantity of supplies, and they were able to fly back and forth and bring supplies into places where roads didn't have access for several days. And that was invaluable. So that's one of the more fancy ways that we've been able to access folks who are cut off. Other ways are, you know, tall four wheel drive vehicles. So just having the kind of equipment or having the kind of vehicles that can withstand those kind of conditions and get into places. You know, if you have a small two wheel drive hatchback car, it's not going to make it. So having somebody available, who has the type of vehicle that might be able to get into more challenging environments. 

Margaret   One of the things that I'm interested in is sort of the cultural bridging that happens during disaster and crisis. And I've heard stories that there was kind of an interesting cultural difference between the types of folks who own small airplanes and the types of folks who organize anarchistically bring supplies places, is that something you feel like you can talk about it?

Parks   Sure, that's absolutely the case. And I think that's a major issue in people signing up to be personnel after disasters, you know? I think people who initially are going into these areas in the first two or three days need to be people who can interface with all kinds of people, who can withstand being insulted, who can withstand, you know, different things like that, like it's not a—it's not as safe and supportive working environment in any way. You know, socially, the people who were operating the private airplanes, for example, tended to be wealthy individuals, often were white males who were wealthy, a lot of them—or possibly all of them—were Republican, these kind of things. So folks who feel uncomfortable interfacing with those folks, or feel uncomfortable building bridges with those folks, you know, there's a need to be polite, there's a need to reach out, there's a need to work together, there's a need to problem solve with people who are very different from yourself, who, whose ideas of, you know, even who should deserve help are very different than yours. So, being someone who's very diplomatic is very valuable in those scenarios. And folks who aren't as diplomatic or who don't want to interface with people, you know, that are very different than them, are possibly better suited to roles like doing dispatch, or gathering supplies, or, you know, there are plenty of roles to do. But it's important to consider that folks are going to have to interface with a lot of different people who are not necessarily being their best selves, and who are very different than them and have a different idea of reasonable politeness than they do.

Margaret   Yeah. I mean, that's kind of one of the things that sort of interesting about disaster scenarios and apocalypse and all that kind of crap is that you get into this idea of a lot of different types of communities having to pull together in order to survive. And one of the things that I'm kind of trying to explore with this podcast is the sort of idea of the opposite of—instead of like a nationalist approach to disaster, where you like bunker up with your friends and you have yours, fuck you—like this, like, internationalist approach of, like, working together with diverse communities and things like that. And so it's just fascinating because usually when I think about, like, working with diverse communities, I don't think of, like, right wing libertarian types, you know? And yet, I mean, there's a certain amount of, like—and maybe I'm being overly generous—but like, okay, yeah, they may be a rich Republican, but they're willing to fly into storms and small planes in order to give people things for free. So that's kind of what we want from people. You know?

Parks   I absolutely agree. You know, there's something called the disaster bug, which is where people go into disaster zones, and they, they get really fixated on it, or they really enjoy it, and they seek out that scenario again. And part of the reason for getting that disaster bug in my opinion is, you know, people are at their worst at times, but really overall people are at their best. You know, people are ready to collaborate, people are willing to do things they wouldn't normally do, like, help people, they wouldn't normally help, things like that. So watching communities draw together, watching people, you know, go to their neighbor's houses and see if they need anything, is beautiful and a wonderful thing. And, you know, you get to meet all kinds of people that you wouldn't normally get to meet—or I get to meet all kinds of people that I wouldn't normally meet. And I really value that and my experience. You know, I think it's interesting to meet the rich Republican dude that wants to fly people into a difficult flight situation and deliver food to people they might not normally think about. I think that's great. You know, it expands their horizons potentially, it expands our horizons, and, you know, ultimately it helps people and that's really the purpose. But I personally think that's great. But I also recognize that that can be a challenge for some folks.

Margaret   Yeah, that makes sense. I want to talk about how have you—and if you don't we can cut this part out—have you had to do sort of disaster triage or like—like, in what way has like your—as a medical provider or whatever, how do you plan for medical care, specifically in disaster situations, or especially if you're preparing for a situation in which hospitals weren't available, but even in preparing for situations in which hospitals are harder to get to and things like that?

Parks   Sure, that's a reasonable question. And I don't have a great answer to it, actually. You know, hospitals and paramedic teams and those kind of groups already have triage processes in place. So there are, for example, toe tags or tags that medical personnel will put on individuals indicating the severity of their illness. And then they will decide based on the number of casualties and the number of people needing medical care what order to treat people in when they can't treat everyone at once. So those kinds of organizations already have a system for that. I can't say that my group has had a need to triage people in that way because we simply haven't seen large numbers of injuries at once, which is fortunate. 

Margaret   Yeah.

Parks   It would be good for us to prepare for that perhaps I haven't really taken it into consideration. But, you know, a lot of what we're seeing is needing to assist people using their own medications. So needing to help people find their inhaler in their ruined house, or find a neighbor who uses an inhaler that they can borrow, or calculate a new dose of insulin based on what insulin might be available to them. So getting people supplies, getting people on medications that they already take, you know, having people—helping people to find the medical equipment that they already have that they need, those things are helpful. And prior—you know, certainly prioritize people with medical needs in terms of transporting them to shelters or transporting them to hospitals, things of that nature. But we have not been responding in the—well, I should say, I have not been responding in the minutes and hours, you know, few hours right after a disaster during which time people may need things like swift water rescue, or may need things like airlifting out situations, where there may be people who are injured enough that they require getting to a hospital within a few minutes or within an hour. Those would be done by—those kind of rescue things will be done by specialized teams and we're certainly not trained to do those.

Margaret   Okay, and maybe also the people who are more immediately already on the ground?

Parks   Correct. So not only people with specialized training, but people who are already on the ground, you know. I would certainly advise any group to be well aware of what I would call scope of practice. So be well aware of what you can safely offer and what you cannot safely offer. And don't go outside of that. Don't try to offer something that you aren't trained to do, don't try to offer something that you're not prepared to follow up with, that you're not able to do all the way through. You know, don't offer someone transport to the hospital if you're not sure you can get them there, or if you're not reasonably sure you can get them there. You know, because you're delaying their getting into an ambulance, you're delaying their getting into a medical fight helicopter if you're offering something you can't follow through with, if that makes sense.

Margaret   Yeah, that's actually a really interesting concept. And, like, could apply to a lot of situations, but even gets back to the, like, the chainsaw use for example of, like, you know—I've only recently started actually training with a chainsaw and I always thought it was just a matter of, like, making sure you're not in the way of the blade. And like making sure that, you know, if it bucks back, the blade won't hit you. And that's, like, that's a big part of it. But then I'm like learning that there's, like, a lot of stuff about the way trees hold tension and that apparently what kills a lot of chainsaw operators is just, like, releasing the tension on a tree and having everything go crazy. And so the scope of practice, that's a useful phrase I hadn't heard before.

Parks   Absolutely. And I would say, you know, do what you can. A lot of people don't do what they can, you know? Step up, do what you can, decide you're going to help. That's the first thing. You know, assess the situation, decide you're going to help, and then help in a way that you're able to. And of course if you set up in a truck, you don't know if you're going to come up to a washed out road. And if you do, that's okay, you know, turn back, don't try to cross, you know, a flooded area you can't cross or anything like that. Don't try to offer medical care to someone who's more hurt than you can really help them with or—or do what you can, you know? If what you can do is hold their head still while the EMS gets there, great, do that. You know, do it, you can. Absolutely step up and do what you can. But don't try to do things that are outside of your abilities. And don't take risks. In a scenario where it's difficult to get people in and out of a situation, if you are a relatively healthy person who's going in to help and you get hurt, you are delaying care for people who are already hurt, you know, you're clogging up the system. And, you know, you're also getting hurt, which is a problem. But not only that, but you know, you're clogging up the system, you're making one more casualty for medical personnel to deal with, you're making it worse. You know, one of the first rules in medical care is do no harm, right, don't make it worse. And it's really easy to make it worse. It's a lot easier than you think to make it worse. You know, don't go in and say you're going to sterilize water and you don't know how and you poison someone. You know, don't go in and think you're just going to figure out a chainsaw and get hit by a tree. You know, there's lots of things that might be trickier than you think. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Parks   So go and help but sit and think a while before you take on a project that you might be unprepared for and might be dangerous.

Margaret   What are some—if people are interested in doing either disaster response or preparedness within their own communities for potential disaster, what are some of the skills—especially like first aid or medical type skills—that you think people can and should develop? Like in a more generalized sense, like what should people be learning and focusing on?

Parks   Basic medical care at home is a good thing to focus on. So the number one thing that I see people not doing enough of is washing their hands and washing their hands properly. That sounds really basic, but people really don't do it enough. So learning how to wash your hands, washing your hands for an adequate amount of time with clean water, with soap, and doing it consistently when you need to. You know, if you're touching a person and you go touch another person and you haven't washed your hands, you're spreading, you know, potentially you're spreading all kinds of pathogens from one person to another and to yourself. So learning how to wear gloves, when to wear gloves, how to take them off without contaminating yourself, you know, how to wash your hands in a way that's effective. I would start there. I think those things are really important. Recognizing an infection is a helpful thing. You know, being able to look at a wound and say, within reason, if it's obviously infected or not. I mean, that's—that can be a specialized skill, but there are some things that, you know, a regular person might be able to learn in advance that may be helpful. So those things are important. I would say also water is a big thing after any kind of disaster that's gonna affect infrastructure. So focus on getting enough water, storing enough water, knowing how to sterilize water, knowing water from—knowing what source to get your water from, you know, you don't want to use flood water, for example, that's very difficult to impossible to sterilize in a way that's going to be accessible after a disaster. You know, there might be people out there with specialized skills who know how to do that, but most people are not, you know, that's not a good idea. You know, finding a stream is going to be better, collecting rainwater is going to be better. There's lots of different, you know, water sources that you can identify that might be better choices for you. So if you want to get fancy or do a little more, you might identify water sources near your home, for example, you might find out where your nearest stream is. If you're, you know, if you're living in a place that might have the kind of disasters where your water infrastructure might go down, and that's more likely in some places than others. But first and foremost, I would say water. 

Margaret   What, um, can you talk more specifics about, like, for example, what kinds of places the water infrastructure is more vulnerable and also, like, how people might, yeah, get water, filter water, sterilize water, whatever they need.

Parks   The CDC has some good guidelines on that. As does as FEMA actually, so FEMA's website has good instructions on what kind of sources to look for after a disaster. Firstly, knowing about storing of water is helpful. It's not great to store water in your empty, you know, gallon water jug that you got from the, you know, from the store, unless you're able to sterilize it. And you can sterilize it by using a mix of bleach water, I don't remember the ratio, but shake that around in your container, empty it out, rinse your container, and store water. So prior to events know how to store water if you're going to use your own containers and know how to store it properly. And, you know, be wary of glass containers because they can break. And if your water supplies on glass containers and it breaks, you know, you're out of luck. So first of all know how to store water beforehand. And if you're able to do that, you can avoid having to find sources of water afterwards, which is ideal. You know, sterilizing your tap water is something that may be accessible to you if the tap water is not contaminated. The other thing to do is to know how to turn off the main—the water mains to your house. So if there's an announcement that the water is contaminated, you would turn off the water main to your house, empty the faucets, and you can typically still use the water that's in your hot water heater if you have one. So—and a lot of this is geared toward people who live indoors, obviously. So if you don't live indoors that's going to be a different scenario. But if you do live indoors, using the water and your hot water heater can work. And there's a, usually there's a way to empty it. There's like a faucet at the bottom of the hot water heater or something like that. You can use the water in there. You'd probably want to add bleach to it. But look up the proper ratios of bleach to water and, you know, have some bleach in your house that's fresh. Bleach goes bad after about maybe six months or a year. So make sure you have something that's unopened and not flavored or scented or—I guess not flavored, but whatever. Not scented and without like additional cleaning agents. You don't want to use, like, a tile cleaner with bleach. You need to use, you know, the regular bleach in a bottle that that's all that's in there.

Margaret   What about like the kind of water purification tablets and things like that?

Parks   Iodine water purification is not generally recommended. Generally bleach is recommended because it kills more of the pathogens that you're going to be encountering after that kind of disaster. You know, if that's all you have, then that's all you have. But in terms of pre planning and what to get, I would recommend bleach.

Margaret   Are you talking about, like, maybe you'll get Giardia or like maybe you'll, like, die immediately? Or like what's the—what's the threat model from contaminated water like floodwater or whatever.

Parks   That depends. I don't have a great answer for that. You know, in eastern North Carolina, in floodwater, there are millions of dead animals floating, you know, stuff from septic systems can be in there. So any kind of fecal oral type pathogen could be in there and, you know, think of water with, you know, human waste in it as well as rotting pigs. You know, sometimes the wastewater pits overflow, like from coal fired power plants have wastewater pits, and those can get into the groundwater or into the floodwater. So there's not just bacteria in floodwater. There's also toxic chemicals that can't be filtered out, that can't be removed with bleach, for example. So that's one of the reasons why flood water is not going to be a good option. If you can find a stream that's not contaminated heavily, you know, that's not a strange color, that's not covered with floodwater, that may be an option. Collecting rainwater is an option. You can remove salt from salt water by like taking a large pot with a—that has a lid with a handle, turn— flipping the lid over so the handle is facing inside the pot, suspend a mug or a cup from the handle inside the pot on a string. Put saltwater in the bottom of the pot, boil that for 20 minutes or so. The condensation will collect on that upside down lid, drip down the handle, and drip into your mug. You can probably find diagrams of that and your listeners might already know how to do this kind of thing. 

Margaret   Home distillation. 

Parks   Right. But some some knowledge of home distillation might be helpful. You know, I've never been in a situation where that was helpful, but I'm sure people have been.

Margaret   Yeah. You mentioned how some—a lot of the advice that goes around is more helpful for people who live indoors. Do you want to talk about—do you have any information about either how to help people who are, or people who are themselves not living inside in disaster situations?

Parks   If you know does that stress coming, it's good to let people know who might not already know. So some folks who live outdoors are certainly going to be in the know about, you know, things that are happening in their community. But it can be helpful to spread that information. So let people know that there's a hurricane coming, let people know that flood—flooding is going to be happening so that people can, if they have encampments, they can move them uphill, you know. I live in a mountainous area so, you know, in this area moving uphill as an option. That's not necessarily going to be an option in a lot of places. But seeking shelter, securing whatever, you know, materials that you have for housing or trying to keep dry, all of those things are going to be important. Letting people know where security—or where like emergency shelters are in case they want to go to emergency shelters can be beneficial. Just making sure people are aware in advance. You know, somebody who—I live inside, so somebody who lives outside might be able to—might be better able to provide information on preparedness and that scenario.

Margaret   Off the top of your head—or, what are some of the common myths about disaster survival that that irritate you?

Parks   I don't think this is a myth. But I think people are both underprepared and over prepared. Okay.  Sometimes people prepare for like situations that sound more interesting, rather than situations that are more likely. For example, people might have wilderness survival skills that involve starting a fire with sticks or, you know, distilling water in strange situations or, I don't know. And while those things might come in handy at some point, things like washing your hands and knowing how to store your water reasonably safely, you know, knowing that expiration dates of foods or how to tell if your meat is spoiled or not, you know, those like less romantic, I guess, skills are actually going to be far more important and far more useful and far more likely to be utilized. So I think it's easy to prepare for, like, what are we going to do if civilization collapses? And while living in the woods, like we need all these skills on like, you know, do you—like, do you really—like in what situation are you going to, like, need to go and kill a deer because you really can't get literally anything from the grocery store?

Margaret   Yeah.

Parks   You know, that might, I don't know, maybe that happens. But you know, in the United States that's really unlikely to be—depending on where you live. You know, maybe if you live rurally and you already depend on killing deer or killing animals for your food then, of course, you know, you're going to continue to rely on that food source. But for people that don't already rely on that food source, you know, developing those more specialized skills is interesting and cool, but don't neglect the less interesting skills and preparations. Like it's good to have a radio that runs on batteries. It's good to have extra batteries. Do you need 100 guns? Probably not. You know, guns are really overrated. I think after disasters, you know, most people are very kind to each other after disasters. You know, if people are looting, it's generally because they need the stuff. And if you're the kind of person that wants to shoot people because they're stealing items from a store, I don't know what to tell you other than, you know, you might reevaluate your life. But, you know, I don't know how useful it's going to be unless you're planning on hunting because that's something you already rely on. You know, for a lot of folks like myself who don't rely on hunting, live indoors, you know, a gun is not actually going to be helpful. I don't think, you know, having social skills, having the ability to talk to people that aren't like you, you know, knowing how to wash your hands, I really can't say it enough.

Margaret   That's gonna be the title of this episode: Wash Your Fucking Hands.

Parks   Wash your hands and do it right. You know, using hand sanitizer—this is an important one—using hand sanitizer after you go to the bathroom is not effective. You need soap and water. 

Margaret   Okay.

Parks   The kind of pathogens that are spread from the oral fecal route, so to speak, are not cleaned off your hands by hand sanitizer.

Margaret   What is hand sanitizer good for?

Parks   Hand sanitizer is good for anything that gives you a stuffy nose. Anything that gives you diarrhea, you need soap and water. 

Margaret   Okay. 

Parks   Not anything in the world but, you know, that's a rough estimate.

Margaret   Well, okay, so you talk a bit about risk analysis. I'm really excited about what I think hackers but maybe other people coin threat modeling. And like people talking about, like, you know, okay, your internet security might be really good, but based on the wrong threat model. And, you know, a gun for example is a good tool for certain threat models, like someone specifically trying to kill you.

Parks   Right.

Margaret   But a very bad tool for a lot of other threat models. And so it sounds like kind of what you're talking about is that people have sort of poor threat modeling when they think about preparedness in general.

Parks   I think that's a great way to put it, you know, just like if you're writing and knowing who your audience is, you know, know what you're preparing for and be fairly reasonable about that and don't, you know, skip things that you think are obvious or skip things that you think are boring. So, you know, if you're preparing—I don't know, if people prepare for earthquakes, I'm not sure how on earth you would do that. You know, they hit randomly and horrible things happen. But if you're preparing for a hurricane, if you're preparing for flooding, you know, prepare for that in a way that makes sense. And do some research, you know, it doesn't take very long if you have access to the internet or a library to do a little bit of research, and don't discount, you know, government websites. Really, the CDC offers good information and FEMA offers good information on preparedness. You're going to have to tailor that to your own specific needs of course. You know, if you use insulin and needs to be kept in a refrigerator, you need to focus on being able to refrigerate that. 

Margaret   Okay.

Parks   You know, if that's not with a cooler, ice, or whatever, you need to prioritize ice if that's your situation. Other people are not necessarily going to need to prioritize refrigeration after that kind of event, for example. Or, you know, as I was saying, if you're planning to live in the wilderness with no contact with any kind of "civilization", then, like, your skill set certainly needs to be different than if you're trying to survive, you know, an urban setting that suddenly has no infrastructure. You know, one of the main issues—well I don't know about main issues—but one of the issues after Hurricane Sandy in New York City was people in high rises who couldn't flush their toilets and didn't—and lived, you know, on the 10th or 12th floor of a building and were unable to haul water up and down the stairs because of physical issues. And that quickly became a very, very dire problem. 

Margaret   Yeah.

Parks    So, you know, and that's a problem that's specific to a certain physical scenario. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Parks   So preparing for your physical scenario and preparing for the actual threat and having some sense of, you know, maybe over prepare slightly. But you don't necessarily need, like, a year's worth of food for an event that's probably going to take a week or two to stabilize.

Margaret   Right. Well, if you have a year's worth of food than you have, you know, 300 peoples' day's worth of food.

Parks   That's true. And there may be, you know, scenarios in which that makes sense. But in that scenario, it's still a week's worth of food, you're taking into consideration the number of people. Yeah. And if you want to be able to feed your whole town, that's awesome. You know, is it necessary? I don't know. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Parks   You know,

Margaret   You once said something something to me that was one of the best examples of risk analysis that I actually use fairly often—I came to you with a medical concern and I said, am I going to die because of this or that thing? And you said to me, well, I can't tell you that—because you're honest to a fault—you're like, I can't tell you that you won't die because that's completely possible, you could also be eaten by a shark today in Asheville.

Parks   Right, I remember that. Yeah, and I think those things are reasonable to keep in mind, you know, you're not likely to be killed by a chainsaw if you're not using one after a disaster, so I don't know.

Margaret   So I'm not gonna wear my chops all the time.

Parks   Right, so you don't need to wear your chainsaw chaps all the time necessarily, unless you're just like them maybe, look, I don't know. But yeah, you know, think about what's likely and think about what's important. So if something is unlikely to occur but will definitely kill you, if it does you may want to be—have some preparedness for that, within reason. 

Margaret   Yeah.

Parks   You know, if something is not likely to happen and not going to be a big deal if it happens, you don't necessarily need to prepare for that. Like, how much do you need to prepare for boredom, you know, maybe a little bit, but that's not super important. You know, it's not that likely that you're going to be stuck in your house more than a week. But if you were and you didn't have water, you could die. Humans can survive a fairly long time without food, but we can't survive more than a few days without water. So, you know, that's why I emphasize that too.

Margaret   So eat peanut butter and crackers rather than tainted meat if you're only stuck for a week?

Parks   Sure, yeah, you know, if you have the ability to cook, you know, if you have a grill, if it's not raining, you know how to use the grill, it's the first day after your freezer has gone down, absolutely cook all your meat, you know, and eat it and share it and all those things, that make sense. But if it's been a week, and your freezer has been off for a week, and you've got meat left, you know, and that's it, don't eat it. If it's been sitting out, you know, unless it's jerky or something like that, you know, you don't want to risk a diarrheal illness or a vomiting illness if you if your water supplies are scarce, particularly. 

Margaret   Probably final question: So we talked a little bit about the the kinds of people that you'd be working with to go into disaster areas. But in terms of going into communities, often as outsiders, what does that look like in terms of not been more trouble than you're actually worth, in terms of making sure that it's like sort of a consensual relationship with the people? I know, I was talking to someone who's from a Caribbean island and he was talking about how, you know, non official organizations showing up to help are often just in the way and doing all the wrong things. While, of course, also most people I know are also very critical of the official organizations who go into help because then they take resources and centralize them and disempower people and cut people out of agency and things like that.

Parks   Yeah, don't go to a disaster area unless you have truly something to offer and you're able to get yourself in, supply for all of your needs the entire time you're there, and get yourself out. If you can't do those things, don't go unless you're already there in your chapter with other people, then respond accordingly. But, you know, if you're not already in a disaster area that hit where you are living, don't go on vacation to see how bad it is, you know, don't drive around in an area to gawk at the damage. There's, that's rude. Don't do that. And it's not helpful. You know, if you have, like, two power bars and one 16 ounce bottle of water, don't go into a disaster area and think you're prepared because you're not. You're going to be a drain on resources. You know, there are going to be a lot of people who already have skills in an area, you know, if an area in the United States is hit by a hurricane or, you know, some kind of disaster, there are already medical personnel there. You know, there are already people there who know how to use chainsaws, there are already people there who knows how to hunt or, you know, various things. So, to some extent, you know, keep your ear to the ground, see what people need. If you can, you know, ferry water to the edge of a disaster area and give it to someone who is already networked to distribute it or something like that, that may be very helpful. And it may be boring to you to drive, you know, 100 gallons of water from, you know, where you live to the edge of a disaster zone and then go home again, you might be tempted to like, dive in and drive around, go be helpful. But you know, driving water to the edge and going home is really helpful in certain scenarios. You know, driving in with a bunch of food that you don't know where you're going to leave it, and you're just driving around trying to give it to people who don't, you know, you don't, I don't know, you don't know where the need is. That's not necessarily as helpful. Yeah, don't become a drain. Don't go and need to be fed or housed or clothed or need water in an area that's already strained. You know, the more people that there are in a strained situation with limited resources, the less those limited resources are able to go around. So be realistic about what you can contribute and be realistic about whether what you can contribute is going to be better than what you know the people—the skills that people already there have, if that makes sense. 

Margaret   That does. If someone wants to learn more about either Appalachian Medical Solidarity or other mutual aid disaster relief organizations, do you have a place to point them to or anything like that?

Parks   I'm not sure. I think AMS has a Facebook page. I don't actually know. 

Margaret   Okay. 

Parks   Yeah, I'm not sure. If you're in the Asheville area, you know, we do put out announcements for classes and things that, you could certainly come and talk to us. There is a team with AMS, with Appalachian Medical Solidarity, that does stuff on computers and social media. 

Margaret   And you're not on that team.

Parks   I'm not, and I'm not on that team. And I don't use computers outside of work if I can help it because I don't like them. So I'm sorry, but we could probably find that information and add it.

Margaret   I'm going to add it, yeah. I'll do an aside.

Parks   Thanks.

Margaret   Okay. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. Is there any—Is there anything I missed, any like final takeaway, besides wash your hands?

Parks   Just have water, wash your hands. Those are really important. Decide to help, you know, I think is what I would say, decide to help and realize what helping is and realize what not helping is in any given scenario. You know, don't let your worry about, you know, being a burden or not knowing how to help or not having specialized skills, don't let that stop you from helping. Decide to help, but help within reason. Usually—you know, find out what people need, find out what people don't need, don't guess what people need and just start sending a bunch of crap to an area, it's not helpful. You know, but find out where you can plug in, try to get reliable information on what's needed. And if you have the ability to meet any of those needs, then do it. Absolutely. But don't go outside of your scope of practice, don't go outside of what you are actually able to contribute. Contribute what you can, don't try to contribute what you can't. Okay.

Margaret   Okay. Thank you so much. 

Parks   Yeah, absolutely. 

Margaret   Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. Please tell the machine overlords about it—or rather, tell them to tell other people about it by liking and subscribing and posting and following us on social media. We have—you don't even have to just follow me on social media now. Live Like the World is Dying has its own Instagram page and Facebook page, although Facebook is, besides being terrible for the world is also really terrible in terms of engagement for projects. It's actually just a garbage fire that is trying to get me to buy advertising. And then turns down my advertising? I finally like gave in and tried to give it some money to, so that people who like the like the redesign page actually see Live Like the World is Dying posts, and I was rejected. And well, fuck you, you don't like me, I don't like you either. And clearly, that's my only problem with Facebook or the algorithms that run the world is that they didn't like me personally. Anyway, you can also tell about it in person, that's even cooler. And if you want to support this podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me, which will soon be supporting the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publisher. But you can support us on Patreon—or currently me on Patreon—later us on Patreon, depending on when you're actually listening to this, at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy or patreon.com/I-don't-know-what-I'm-going-to-change-it-to. But I'm sure you can find it, you clever people. And there you can support us. There's a zine that goes out every month. It's very behind, but it's going to become less behind now that it's a collective project, and all kinds of good stuff. Also, if you don't have any fucking money, don't give me any fucking money. It's totally fine. We'll give you all of our ship for free. If you message me on any social media platform, I'll give you access to all of our content for free because money should go from the people who have more money to the people have less money and not the other way around. In as much as money is a useful construct, which is a different argument for a different time. In particular, I would like to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana and Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris. You all make this possible and I am endlessly grateful. And I also am grateful to everyone else. Because now that people actually like pay attention to this shit we have a fucking chance, right? Like, we can all like take care of each other and like live happily ever after unless everything's on fire—we'll figure it out. Right? We'll figure it out. Okay, be well.

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Episode Notes

Margaret talks to author and organizer Shane Burley about fascism: what it is, why it comes up during times of crisis, and what we can do about it. They discuss the ways that we organize as anti-authoritarians to confront the ultimate authoritarianism.

Shane Burley is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017). His work has appeared in places such as NBC News, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, Truthout, In These Times, and Protean. He also runs the antifascist neofolk blog A Blaze Ansuz. You can find him on Twitter: @shane_burley1.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

1:16:24

SPEAKERS Shane Burley, Margaret

Margaret   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, I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to author and researcher Shane Burley about, well about fascism, about what it is and why it comes up during times of crisis and what we can do about it and the ways that we organize as antiauthoritarians to confront the ultimate authoritarianism which is, you know, fascism. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network. 

Jingle Speaker 1   Where did you get this? 

Jingle Speaker 2   Your friendly neighborhood anarchist. 

Jingle Speaker 3   More of an anarchist militant. 

Jingle Speaker 4   People involved in social struggles. Everybody else.

Jingle Speaker 5   People have been waiting for some content. The Final Straw. [inaudible] Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.

Margaret   So I'm here today with author and activist Shane Burley. And if you want to introduce yourself with I guess your name, which I already said, and your pronouns, and then I guess a bit of your background and how you come to know a bit about the apocalypse and fascism. 

Shane Burley   Sure, sure. So Shane Burley, he/him or them, both a fine. I'm based out here in Portland, and recently just wrote a book, a collection of essays sort of tying together fascism, antifascism, and the kind of feeling of the apocalypse. I've been an organizer for all my adult life, labor, mutual aid groups, housing groups particularly, and part of kind of integrated social movements on both coasts, and have definitely seen a certain kind of crisis set in—maybe a longstanding crisis—but when that really came into fruition in 2020. So the feeling of the apocalypse was something I felt like I knew really well. And it's how I became—began to kind of understand the last few years within the narrative of apocalypse, particularly kind of the religious apocalypse that a lot of us were raised with.

Margaret   Okay. And that's kind of interesting to me because usually when I think about the apocalypse, and when I—when I talk about it, I actually don't think much or talk much about the religious apocalypse, like—and so that's actually a little bit outside my own purview. And I was wondering if you could expand on that, because I mean, like, I have ideas about how the current world relates to societal collapse in a secular sense. But could you explain more what you mean about religious apocalypse?

Shane Burley   You know, I think a piece of it comes to how I kind of understand religion or maybe spiritual practices as a sort of folk tradition for understanding our emotions, our experiences, our relationships, both kind of small, interpersonal, but also like big social systems. And so, you know, the apocalypse is something that's such—one of those ever present—kind of perennial concepts in people's folk traditions, trying to understand themselves in the world. It can be sometimes cyclical, there's many apocalypses and many rebirths, that kind of thing could be one, long standing apocalypse. But I talk about this in my book is that, you know, I had a lot of religious terror growing up in advance of the millennium. And so, you know, I was born in 1984. So I was a teenager when, you know, what the Y2K happened. But in the years leading up to that when I was still pretty young, there was this really intensive feeling that apocalypse talk was starting to happen, particularly the kind of Christian eschatology of Revelation, the rapture, and that really sort of captivated me in the worst possible way. And something I bonded—that fear I bonded on with my mother, because she had been captivated by that when she grew up Pentecostal in kind of rural California. And so that feeling of terror about what could happen, the end of the world, that stuck with me for a very long time, and not in entirely bad ways it's—and to a degree it's kind of the narrative story I give to the emotions of feeling trapped and not sure what's about to happen or feeling like things are kind of falling to pieces. And that narrative quality sometimes helps me step back and kind of understand it. And I think, after Trump's election, a real ramping up of climate collapse, economic—just totally dissolving, watching capitalism basically begin to break apart—there was that feeling. I felt like I was 10 years old again, you know, hearing about Revelation. It felt the same. And then when I was actually putting the book together it became so obvious because when I was writing the introduction, the smoke from the forest fires out in Oregon had literally blotted out the sun. And it had this kind of sickening red glow that covered everything. And people saw photos of it, you know, they were not photoshopped, it really, really was that profoundly kind of disturbing. And so it felt like it was unmistakable that there was a continuity here, that this kind of story of the apocalypse was one that was really coming to fruition more so than it had as an adult. You know, it was ephemeral when I was a kid, it was in my mind, but this was actually coming around me, and so I started to kind of understand it in that way.

Margaret   How do you think that—because I mean, most of your work, you know, when when you message me and you're saying, "Hey I, you know, I wrote this book on the apocalypse," and I was kind of like, "No, no, no, you write about fascism." Because obviously, anyone can only do one thing and obviously I'm a living example of that. But, you know, in some ways in my mind the religious aspect of it almost answers this for me in a different way than I normally think about, again, because I, I think about the world somewhat in religious terms, but I was not raised in the same kind of—I was raised a lapsed Catholic, you know, and the apocalypse wasn't something that we really talked about. I tend to think of fascism as rising in this very, very secular way. Like I think about like the material conditions or whatever, like almost like a materialist rise of fascism or something. And, and yet, I guess there's also this, well, this religious rise of fascism quite obviously. And I was wondering if you could talk about that. Why is fascism on the rise now?

Shane Burley   Yeah, there's a lot there. I, I just talked about this with someone else because they had asked me why in any of my work I don't cite Marxist theories on fascism. I never do. You know, and this is like, the kind of like, well Trotsky is the kind of thing people like to cite a lot. But there's a lot of versions of this to talk about, you know, it's the splitting of the middle class, or it's the, you know, the artisan classes meet with—there's all these kind of class dimensions that are meant to kind of tell that material story. Like this, you know, A+B=C, these conditions have been met, therefore this happened. And I don't actually think in those terms. I think in not anti-materialist terms, but I actually think about it in the ways that ideology is forced because I actually think that the conditions are much more muted than had been written about, you know, it's not as specific. There's a sort of this term, I use it in the book bunch of times, it's from Robert Paxton, which is "mobilizing passion." So it's like the energy that comes from a crisis. This could go into a left wing direction, could go into a right wing direction. Generally in privileged communities that goes into a more right wing direction. And I think that that—those conditions, quote/unquote, are this simple—that's the—that is as simple as it gets. It's just that kind of crisis can lead to it. There are kind of other factors that go in and sort of geopolitics. But what I think is more important is to think about it as a crisis of identity, of breaking of, you know, the tried—attempts to return to tradition for people to kind of parse out who they are, and—I think that that story of fascism is actually what brings us continuity from interwar years. 

Margaret   Okay.

Shane Burley   Because those conditions that happened in Europe and in a few countries. Yeah, they showed no permanent stasis for how those conditions will be carried over. What happened in Germany, what happened to Italy—like in terms of the economy and those sorts of things—aren't going to happen exactly today. But what does drive them together is this crisis sense of rebirth, the the—the reification of human inequality, those sorts of things. And so we're heading to a period of a lot of instability brought on by climate collapse, economic collapse, that kind of thing. And so I think that you're seeing that tumultuous is as much of material conditions as you need.

Margaret   Yeah, that um—okay, let me pitch to you my theory about the rise of fascism and how it ties into what you're saying. 

Shane Burley   Oh go for it.

Margaret   It's a very pessimistic theory because when people ask me, I basically say that like in the 20th century we were sort of able to defeat fascism, like, as an organized political entity on some level. Obviously we didn't defeat authoritarianism. We did defeat nationalism. We didn't defeat all of these other things. But I kind of think we never will be able to again, because—not that we can't like a beat it down. But my theory is that basically as climate change makes more resources scarce to more people, it—and makes more places unliveable, there will be mobility of people and there will always be people who respond to the mobility of people with like fear and scarcity and complete sort of ignorance of how labor creates all wealth and that more people means you can do more things. And so there's always going to be people who have like the "I've got mine, fuck you" response to crisis. And I just see that crisis deepening as climate change sets in. I don't know, does that map with what you're talking about?

Shane Burley   Yeah, I think he does. And I think this is gets down to that kind of collapsing of the middle that's been used a lot—why you have the radicalization of both the left and the right. Because this kind of centrist modicum of liberal politics is built on stability, it's built on the idea that this current system—which feels like it's lasted forever but it's only been here a short period of time—that's gonna, that's going to continue. And actually, when you're having increased crisis, you actually have the edges built out. And so part of, I think—part of what I think antifascists actually bring—and particularly like radicals anarchists actually bring to the antifascist project—is a battle for who owns the edges in general. So like, you're saying, we have this crisis of migration—it's not actually crisis, is totally invented by folks who are enemies of migration. But it does create that sense of crisis, and we actually end up engaging in a war with them for how we're going to approach that. Is this period of crisis going to strengthen us as a people through a revolutionary vision? Or is it going to divide us into these nationalisms that are kind of worn out? I do think that in a way we have a choice between socialism and barbarism here, that there—like we're actually going to—we kinda have to win it, otherwise somebody else is going to. So I think, like, I half agree with the pessimism. I think that there—we could be pessimistic about this. But we actually are kind of called to question on this. So we are having the question call on us right now. Like, are we going to take the challenge of the fringes to a degree? Are we going to look at this moment of crisis and say, "No, we're going to tip over and create a new revolutionary society out of that crisis." Because we don't have a choice now, it's not a matter of pushing back the crisis and trying to retain some kind of progressively moving forward center, that just can't happen anymore. The conditions don't allow for that. So instead, we have to live in the crisis.

Margaret   Okay, so basically—so maybe it's not that we can't beat them this next time, it's that the center can't beat them this time. Right. Like, like a very centrist—I mean, you know, obviously, all—anything you call centrist depends on what perspective you're looking at, right. But like, theoretically, an alliance of sort of centrist powers defeated, you know, the far right last time.

Shane Burley   Yeah totally.

Margaret   The tankies listening will love that I'm calling the USSR centrist. But that's more polite than what I would normally call the USSR. So and—so this time it actually has to be the radical left, it has to be socialism, it has to be the idea of, like, we're all in it together to some degree, as like the only way to actually try and keep it beaten down which then maybe—I'm just trying to repeat back what you're saying, cuz I'm trying to, I'm trying to think it through. So you're saying that the thing we have to do is that when people are leaving the center, we have to help them leave the center in a good direction instead of a bad direction? Is that kind of where you're getting up?

Shane Burley   Yeah, I think—I mean, in a way it's just a call to everyday radicalism to like not abandon any communities, to offer them like a tangible vision. I mean, part of the problem here is that the left loses. And the left loses so consistently, so spectacularly, that it's hard to maintain the argument at certain times, we have a revolutionary vision to offer. We abandoned certain communities, we disregard so many types of folks. And so we actually have to build that up and have a real viable alternative and the ability to win something from it. You know, like, part of why the centrist powers—you know, the great global powers—were able to defeat fascism is that they had something to offer, they were offering, like, you know, stable homes, they were—I mean, they weren't really everyone, but there was an image of it, there's like a certain kind of, like, white middle class that developed in the 50s and stuff, and they were making these arguments. All of those promises have had the rug pulled out from under them. They're all kind of revealed to be such a fraud. And people are living with that reality now. And so we—in a way we have the ability to capture that energy, and we have to deal with like a cogent vision, something really profound to offer. And I actually think that 2020 was a good example of what we have to offer, which is we don't have money and things like that, we have each other. We have the ability to share things and do it together.

Margaret   But what if instead of creating a viable alternative and creating really good visions of what we want, what if instead we create a sort of pure elite click of radicals and then anyone who doesn't totally align with us we abandon to the center and/or the right. Have you thought about that as a as an option?

Shane Burley   Let's just create affinity groups and do little a like ideology test before people can join, you know, that will be the vision of the revolutionary future. It was something—someone was asking me about, like, the things that—the things that 2020 did wrong. Like, the few different things that organizers did wrong. I just—my answer was the revival of the affinity group as a model of success. Nothing felt more alienating or most more closed off, more impactful for most people.

Margaret   So I want to push back against that idea. And maybe it's defensiveness, right. But I think that the concept of the affinity group isn't inherently flawed—like this concept, for anyone who's listening isn't aware, as far as I understand that the concept of the affinity group is that one of the primary makers of change that you can participate in is basically you, like, crew up with some of your friends and you figure out what you want to do and then you do it together. And you have like, really tight solidarity within that group. And it's a, it's a means that has, like, primarily been pushed towards, like, direct actions and demonstrations and things like that, right? It hasn't been leveraged as much in mass actions, and, you know, labor actions and things like that. But it has been used to, like, mutual aid organizing and things. But I don't know, this something—actually is really interesting. This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I've been thinking about how people do and don't come to the left, and specifically the anarchist left or the anti authoritarian left or the anarchic left or basically the "we can't, we're not going to tell you exactly what to do" left. And on some level, we can tell people like, "Hey, here's a bunch of really good ideas." And they can be like, "Oh, cool. I want to join." And we don't usually have a good system for which—by which they can join, right? Because especially if we organize an affinity groups, it's like, well, we organize with our friends and we don't know you, you're not our friend. 

Shane Burley   Yeah. 

Margaret   So good luck. We have your back in the streets, probably, maybe, if we know you. I mean, ideally, right? As compared to people who organize, like, I think both churches and to some degree the right wing—well the far right actually, I think, has some of the same organizing problems that the left does. But it immediately becomes your friend group if you go join other types of organizations, right. And it provides a sense of meaning. And I would hold that it's actually a sense of meaning and affinity that holds most people into politics, into an ideology or a culture. So I see some, like, real limitations to the affinity group. But I also don't think it's wrong that people want to, like, organize with the people that they know and they care about. And I actually think it makes us more resistant to certain types of ideological takeovers and like—

Shane Burley   It does.

Margaret   —strong figureheads and things like that. But I, I just, I think we need to solve this problem of like, how do you give people places, like , you know, my argument that I've been making lately—sorry, I know, that was me interviewing you and I just, I've been thinking about this a lot. I don't get to talk to humans all that much. 

Shane Burley   No, go for it. You're good. 

Margaret   I've been thinking a lot about, like, what does it mean to instead of gatekeeping on the left, like, usher. Be an usher for the left, right? It's like, helping people find the place that they belong, which might not be with you, you know? I don't know actually. Okay, so that's my like vague defensiveness. But I'd like to hear your critique of the affinity group before we get back into what is fascism and how to fight it.

Shane Burley   I mean, I—I think I fundamentally agree with you and I, in all my years organizing and doing things, it is strong bonds and ideas and ideology that actually keep people there. There's this mythic idea that someone joins organizing through a perfect storm of experiences that are validated non political ways, you know, like, they were about to lose their house and the tenant union came in, they saved it and they join the movement. Now they're radical, that's the way you do it. Not, you know, I knew somebody or somebody introduced an idea to me at a party or something. Like, that's the "bad way" to come. And so no, and I also think it's important to work towards depolitisizing spaces. I don't like and I was—I've been in a number of these groups when I was younger that had this almost, like, discouraging people from being like intimately involved with each other as people, you know, as if that would weaken the project. 

Margaret   Right.. 

Shane Burley   But what I'm—I think, when I'm talking about more is that there is a real lack of, like you said, moving people into things, of finding ways to get people included, to reaching out to them. So you know, over 2020 there's a lot of mutual aid projects. And I remember trying to touch base with a number of them—and this, this is something this is—this is something I've talked to other people about, I think it's a tough situation. It's partly, you know, getting older is part of this, maybe not feeling as tender to radical spaces as you get older. You know, I know that like having chronic health issues or experiencing disability, things like that will sometimes pull you out of those things. And I remember feeling like very tough to feel like I had a home space in the mass protests that were happening in 2020. And often feeling like people were moving without me or kind of chase—trying to chase those groups because the tight affinity group model was based on something that I wasn't invited to and a lot of people weren't invited to. And so that, if that's the the tight knit entry to it, it ends up I think having kind of a heartbreak for a lot of people that have not been able to find their way into it. And so that's sort of the thing is, if we have too many boundaries on it, and we haven't found that way of actually getting people to form that, it almost feels like a, like a romantic dream, the affinity group that you'll never have.

Margaret   Yeah, which has, like, I've always been a, you know, perpetual outsider, right? Like, there's any group I'm in, I always am convinced forever that I'm, like, not really the—I'm not part of the core of it, you know, they like, you know, when I was younger I was like, people don't even tolerate me here. Which may have been true, might not have been true. It was kind of annoying. And then as I get older, it's like, oh, they tolerate me, because I'm, like, interesting, but I'm not part of it. Right. And I think that that's actually a very common sentiment. I've talked to a lot of—a lot of anarchists who have that feeling despite being part of a sometimes really cliquey culture. 

Shane Burley   Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 

Margaret   So yeah, that's, uh, I don't know, that's a good point. It's funny because I'm like, well, I didn't experience that that much in 2020 because I wasn't super involved in the streets like I went sometimes, right. But I didn't work with an affinity group I tested riot materials and made shields and—

Shane Burley   Yeah that was great.

Margaret   —ran a podcast, you know. It's like I found, I found my, like, individual ways to help. And I really like that and maybe idealize that, where it's like, oh, everyone has their thing they can do and all I have to do is figure how to like, plug all these puzzle pieces together.

Shane Burley   In that way it's like, the more you need those affinity group support—and the kind of support that goes far beyond just organizational support, like the ones that really intervene in your life in a way—the more you need, that, the harder it is to find, you know. I remember years ago both my parents died in like really rapid succession. And I felt like I forgot how to talk to other people, you know, I'd just kind of stare in conversations for a really long time, much longer than people would have expected. And I think, in a way, you know, the political spaces I was doing stuff, people's reaction was that—on that—was to sort of back away from me. And to make it so that all the expectations that come along, both spoken and unspoken, I no longer could meet, therefore I couldn't really be there. You know, I couldn't travel to meetings, I couldn't necessarily be as dependable as I used to be, all those sorts of things. Really dramatically pulled me out of a shared space of mutual aid. So I spent a lot of time thinking, like, what would it mean to flip that script? What how would we create something that, like, not just, like, creates a stable mutual aid but, like, seeks people out? That kind of like grasps after them? And I don't—it's not like I have a great answer about that. But I do like the idea that that's like our mission. 

Margaret   Yeah.

Shane Burley   Is to, like, constantly like reaching out towards them.

Margaret   I think that's like one of the biggest questions that we have to ask ourselves as a, as antiauthoritarians, because we have to say, you know, it's so much easier when you can say, "Well, here's the plan. We all do this, which Joe over there told us to do, you know, and all praise Joe, and we'll get this done." You know, and then because someone is, like, lost and they don't know what to do with their life, right? It's like cults recruit that way. So do fringe ideological movements. You know, so do churches, all of these three things are roughly the same thing sometimes. And, you know, it's very effective, but it's predatory. Right? You know, it's like, I always say that, like, antiauthoritarian revolutionists, we're playing—we're playing the game on hard mode, but it's also the only way to get the good ending if it's a video game, you know? Like, if you play it on easy you actually, no matter what you do, you get the bad ending. You have to play on hard mode to get to the good ending where we don't create more tyranny.

Shane Burley   This is, I mean, it's also a question of, like, organizing in general. You know, I remember being part of groups where the term "social insertion" was used a lot, you know. Which led to lots of great jokes, but like, it was this idea that, like, you know, you have an analysis, that analysis is well forged—you know, many—lots of people have got into this thing. And so you're going to go into a social movement and you're going to help shape it in a positive direction. You're inserting into this. But you're not predatory. No, no. Because you really believe in that social movement, right. Therefore, you can't be predatory. It's not entryism because you're totally well intentioned. It—now I, you know, when you look back a lot—and this is the foundation of organizing in general, you know, anyone that has like, you know, be like a union organizer talks about, like, agitational conversations. You draw people's trauma, you agitate it, and then you move it towards a path, right? Like that's the function of the classic organizing. But it does, there's a lot—like you are really going in there with the intention of moving people at vulnerable stages, moving people's projects at vulnerable stages. It's a, it's a really tough balance. And it's not one that I think is perfect. There's been a lot of times in these organized spaces where I'll see these conversations happen and I'm just like, I don't feel good about this. I feel like I was just, you know, selling somebody a Macbook or something.

Margaret   Yeah, I mean, you know, it's something I think about with, like, it's easier for me to think about with like my veganism, right. I don't seek to proselytize veganism. Like, one, I just straight up don't believe it's the answer for everybody. You know, some people don't even have a question so why would they need an answer? But when people come to me, and they're like, oh, what's the deal? Why do you do this? I'm very happy to talk about it. Right? And say, like, this is why it works for me. And I kind of tried to do that with anarchism, but it, you know, but it feels a little bit more urgent, right? With anarchism. But that urgency is dangerous, right? It's the same thing as like a Christian missionary because, you know, a Christian missionary, you have to go do this because you're literally saving people from eternal damnation. And so there's this, like, similar drive sometimes into saying, like, well, there's oppression and anti-oppression, and I need to teach everyone anti-oppression. And it's true. But also, it's not going to work until people are ready to like come to it which, of course, also doesn't have any reflections within the church and come to Jesus. I don't know. Yeah, the social insertion thing always bothered me even though I on some level, right, I do it, but I do it subculturally, right. If I'm involved with a subculture I try to like stake out a presence for, like, radical ideas within that subculture that, like, come from that subculture, you know. I'll try and say, like, well, I'm involved in goth and here's all the, like, things that I reflect well with about the goth subculture that work with my values as an anarchist. And I'll definitely like tell people that. And in my head that's different than saying, like, I'm going to demand that all goth spaces be leftist. I might demand that all goth spaces be free of Nazis. But that's only to do my part to make sure the entire world is free of Nazis.

Shane Burley   I feel almost like less conflicted when it comes to a subcultural space. You know, so it's like, you know, like, we've talked about, like, neofolk and stuff. Like, I am entering a neofolk space to change the rules and kick out all the Nazis totally intentionally, like, I—like they should be scared. It's a nefarious plan. We want to eliminate them from the space entirely. But, like, when someone's sort of, like, sharing their, like, human vulnerability, I feel like we need to hold that with care, you know, and sometimes that's a really tough balancing act. You know, there's, there's a lot—I mean, I used to feel uncomfortable with the radical politics-to-church analogy, but it's very true. And in a lot of ways, just common human impulses, right, to try and come together with other people figure out a solution for this mess. You know, we have our own version of eschatology. We have our own version of the Second Coming, like, all those sorts of things, in a way, I feel like maybe it's a common human story just told with profoundly different language. And so I it's—I mean, this was true all in 2020, because there was so much trauma. Just—all of the kind of political friction was built on trauma, all the transitions were traumatic ones. So the question was, how do you radicalize this moment but also, like, really holding true to supporting people through that trauma.

Margaret   So this idea of how—I'm answering the beginning of what he said instead of the end of what he said because I got fixated on it. This idea of, like, you entered the subculture and you kick the Nazis out, right, and that is your, your entryism. That is your, you know, I'm trying to change this. And it's interesting because it's, that's different than saying, "I'm going to enter neofolk and make it an anarchist space." But instead it's saying, "I'm going to enter neofolk and to make it a space that is okay for me and mine and my, like, leftism, and drive out the Nazis." And so, I actually do think that's different than like walking in and saying, "Everyone needs to be this." And so that's actually, I think that reflects onto, like, antifascism as a larger movement. I think this answers the question of how to change the world perfectly and we've solved everything. Is that antifascism—you know, it's like people use anarchists and antifascism almost interchangeably if they're talking shit in the media, right? And also, like, you know, historically, right, like you know, anarchists are the forefront of antifascism and then also, if you look at the period in which, you know, authoritarian left was like not really a player on the scene for, like, until more recently again, you know, anarchism, antifascism were fairly synonymous, right? But it's different because it's saying, we want to drive out the Nazis, like, we want to stop Naziism and make it okay for us to be anarchists or anarchic or, you know, some other leftist position that is a reasonable one. And then when we do that the thing that we're united about is drive out the Nazis. And I find that that, like, naturally tends towards people being, like, "Hey, what are the alternatives to the Nazis?" And like thinking more for the—on their own, "How do I get involved in making sure I'm part of a society that has no room for Nazis, period." And then come to the left and that way.

Shane Burley   It's sort of like capturing another mobilizing passion too, you know. Like, the passion of music, or of a musical space or a subculture—so there's a lot of really emotive experiences in there that somebody else is capturing. Like somebody else is telling that story. We're not there. And so it's a totally contested space. And I think there's a chapter in the book that talks about this. But it's, it ends up being a [inaudible] struggle. That's one that's like so overlooked in a lot of political groups, they look kind of down on that or don't see it as productive work because they don't want their movements and remain subcultural so they avoid engaging in subcultural struggle. The other part is you kind of have to be a part of that subculture to deal with any sicerity. 

Margaret   Right. 

Shane Burley   But it is something where you're sort of like saying, I'm not allowing these people to take energy anymore. Like we are, like, it's like a war for that energy and space. 

Margaret   Yeah, because I think people are attracted to subculture for the same reason that they're attracted in some ways to ideology, which is that they desire a sense of meaning. And I would say subculture is usually more about, like, aesthetic meaning, right? Which is incredibly valid, and I care about it deeply as a person. And yeah, like, subculturalism gets a lot of shit. And actually, I think it's comparable to the way affinity groups get shit, right? Because, like, if you have the cool kids and you're not one of them, then it's really natural and actually an antiauthoritarian and good urge to be, like, well then fuck the cool kids. Right? 

Shane Burley   Yeah. 

Margaret   But and I think we— 

Shane Burley   I've always said, fuck the cool kids, for sure. 

Margaret   Yeah. And then what's funny is then you end up being the cool kids who say fuck the cool kids and you're like, you can't join because you have a baseball cap, and then you're like—or whatever. I don't know what the cool kids I—well, all the cool hipster anarchist all have baseball caps now anyway. But, you know, it's like, you're like a normal guy wearing khakis, you can't join, you know, because fuck you. It's like, nah, you're actually just being the cool kids. But, so if we—people who don't like subculturalism within radical politics, it makes sense, right? If you think—if you conflate punk and anarchy, right? And you're not a punk, you therefore think, well, I'm, I can't be an anarchist. And as a—and then probably there's a bunch of dumb punks who are like, "Oh, the fact that I'm a squatter is the only good real way to be an anarchist." Right? And so then, you know, they're gatekeeping, anarchism, etc, right? And I find that the answer is not to then, like—I remember when all of a sudden all the punks, like, started trying to dress as normal as possible in order to, like, infiltrate the mainstream. 

Shane Burley   Yeah. 

Margaret   And I think some people did that to infiltrate the mainstream, but I actually think most of them did it because they actually wanted to dress normal, or dress in a different aesthetic than they were previously. And they were actually making room for you to dress in a different aesthetic within the radical movement. And so I think that's good. I think that the, like—my answer has always been we just need to make every subculture a space that engenders radicalism, you know, and we need to—and then we just need to make sure that they all, like, get along with each other where it's not, like, "Oh, well you're, you know, you're into metal that's dumb" or whatever, right?

Shane Burley   You know, I think in a way—I don't know if this is a step too far—but a liberated society is a web of very collaborative subcultures. You know? Because people, people are different, they'll have different tastes, religions, like, you know, ways of living life, diets, things like that. And the goal is to allow people with different while eliminating nationalism and like those dividing lines and hierarchies. And so I respect people's subcultures. And a lot of—you know, I talked about—I have a chapter in the book called "Contested Space," and I talk about neofolk, I talk about heathenry a lot. A lot of these things like, if you—when you talk to antiracist heathens, you ask them why you do this work they're like, "Because nobody else will care. They'll just give this away to people," right? Like, people don't care about our subcultures, except for us. And to remain true to that, like, we're the only ones that can do it. So it becomes, in a way, a really essential political struggle because the struggle to, like, whether or not we have the ability to create spaces that really reflect us.

Margaret   Yeah.

Shane Burley   And a lot of ways like all these Nazi infiltrations into a lot of subcultures is like a direct attack on our ability to, like, enjoy life, to have like an aesthetic way of living.

Margaret   Yeah. And then, so this all comes back into this thing where it's like, it's about solidarity instead of unity. It's instead of saying, like, it's not about everyone suddenly becoming the same and all having the same ideas. It's just literally about, like, not hating people for having other different religious ideas, or aesthetic ideas, or even political ideas within a certain frame. Right? As long as the frame allows for other people to have political ideas, you have a lot more freedom to accept them, right? Okay, so how would you describe fascism? And how would you suggest the fight against fascism, what it might look like? Those are probably—those are really simple questions. 

Shane Burley   [Laughing] I'll give you, like, 10 word answers then we'll be good. 

Margaret   Yeah, listicle maybe.

Shane Burley   So in my first book I basically have two [inaudible] in the definition of fascism. So one is the belief in human inequality, that people are fundamentally hierarchical and unequal, for a myriad of reasons, biological or racial or spiritual. And the other thing is that identity is fixed, immutable, and determines who you are. So those identities and the hierarchies are bound together. Race is the most common one you see, but gender plays in there, sexual orientation, sometimes religion, there's other factors case—there's different versions of this that can play out. And but we use intentionally vague language so that you can include a bigger swath of types of far right movements that have that kind of base commonality. Well, part of this is a revolutionary return to a pre-enlightenment way of living or a pre kind of modern way. So you'll take kind of earlier modern racial ideas and try and bring them up to the current day by using, you know, pseudoscience, or reinterpreting spiritual values, things like that. There's a revolutionary element to it, it does seek to basically undermine the basic assumptions of society. So that it can achieve both the hierarchy and the identity models. And it has a populist element to it. And that's, I think, one thing that gets sometimes lost in this and it particularly gets lost in some of the older kind of Marxist tropes about finance capital, or monopoly capital, things like that, is that the working class does fascism, the white working class in particular does it in a really mass level. People participate in fascism, it's not just happening from the top, it actually happens in a lot of ways from the bottom or the middle. But it happens from mass complicity. And the violence is a really central part of that as well, because violence is kind of understood as the fulcrum of hierarchy and identity. It's how politics happens in this kind of revolutionary cycle. It's turning back on the center with a new revolutionary, not to turn things back to where it was, but they take the reactionary things they like from the past and modernize them, which is a very complicated series of forces. Why I think it's really hard to answer, you know, there's, you know, hundreds of hundreds of books written about what fascism is and almost none of them actually agree with one another, which makes it really, really hard to fight it. I think—so there's a few things, having a clear understanding of what is fascist and what is not, I think, is really important. And I think that has actually been built up pretty well over the past five or six years, people actually have a much more sophisticated understanding of politics, like just everyday folks, because they've been forced to do it and to really orient to it. The fundamental core way to fight fascism is to disallow its presence. And so fascism has to do all the normal organizing things to grow, it has to talk to people, it has to build sometimes groups, both formal and informal. Deplatforming is the process by which those things seek you no longer have access to other people. So breaking that chain is the fundamental core of antifascism. I think another core piece of that is having a revolutionary vision to offer people that runs counter to that, that exposes the lie for it and actually brings people together in something that really gets at their needs, you know, that really gets at the solutions to economic inequality are the feelings of alienation, the lack of community, those sorts of things. I think that's the other piece of it. Antifascism is an inherently negative thing. And I think we actually kind of caught earlier about why. It's actually a really simple proposition. We're not trying to build everything, we're just trying to stop this one place so we can exist. But when we exist, we do the other thing, right? The other thing is part of how we exist. It's like a civic life, to live a joyous life is to actually build that community. And that's how I kind of—I talked about this in the book. That's how I think of a revolutionary vision is us building something that supports us in our own image, like when we're doing that you're engaging in that revolutionary project.

Margaret   Okay. Given like, so basically saying in some ways, it's actually hard to defeat it with centrism, it's hard to defeat it with—certainly anyone who's like disaffected by the status quo is obviously not going to be super attracted to the status quo. One of the things that—okay, so what about like, I'll just pitch my, like, my thing that I think about a lot with how to defeat fascism, is that I think the fascist mindset is an attraction to individual power. And, like, to be strong—maybe community power—but like, to be like strong with your buds, right? And against this thing that you're afraid of. Like, I think that—I think that essentially fascism is a cowardly position. It comes from this—and I—this is like very pejorative, I mean, obviously I love pejoratives to say about Nazis—but like, it comes from this position of fear, right? Like, these people are coming, they will therefore destroy my way of life. I am not strong enough to live my own life if these other people are around. This kind of thing. But also, like, I think people want to get high on power, and especially, like, street level—like, it seems like fascism has historically tended to have a paramilitary element of, like, you know, people run around beating up people that don't like, right? And I think those people are very much attracted to strength. And when they get beat up, it's not fun anymore. Like when they can show up in enough numbers to when it's real fun. And then when they get their asses handed to them, it's not anymore. And maybe this is like kind of leftover from some of them—the pre—like, we've learned a lot about confronting fascism in the past three or four years, right? I'm basing this mostly on my experiences of talking to primarily European, especially Eastern European, antifascists who are doing work, like, over the past, like, 10-20 years, is this idea that like, yeah, when it's not fun anymore, when when you're not strong anymore, you quit. I don't know. Does that? Am I wrong about that? Are we've been proven wrong? Or is that, how does that tie in?

Shane Burley   No, I mean, there's, there's a really old through line from like Adorno and folks—like Adorno wrote, you know, "The Authoritarian Personality" about this kind of process, you know, that was really at the heart of what fascism was. I think, you know, I think there's a sort of rebellion against soft power, the idea that power is gained through consensus and compromise and lobbying and persuasion, and like a sort of return to hard power that, like, wins by force and strength, like sort of cuts out all the other stuff. Which feel as though—at least have been told to them—is how things are done now, which is why you're in x, y, and z situation, which is why your life is going nowhere, because of this kind of coercion of softness.

Margaret   They can punch their way out of all this talk.

Shane Burley   Right, right. And this is a deep, I think this is a deepseated thing in our culture, in general. There's this Marxist named Moishe Postone who wrote this really famous essay on antisemitism called "Antisemitism and National Socialism." And he talks about the commodity form—basically that the way that products are made sort of bifurcates labor. There's like the good labor of, like, artisans, people use their hands. And then there's like the bad labor of, like, finance, capital, or maybe like real estate people, bankers, that kind of thing. But the reality is that both of them are a part of the system, right? They're actually both a piece of capitalism. And really an equal measure. But we don't see it that way. And so we ended up experiencing a bifurcation whereby we start to resent this one type of capital, when we start to like, you know, celebrate the other type of capital. And I think there is a really deeply layered process in that where we create a false image of what's responsible in our lives. And then we look at this sort of producer's mentality of a strong person using their hands, laboring, that honest person, and that person has to be the one that's being kind of attacked by the other person, the other person is basically characterized by their, you know, greedy persuasion and their lies and their, you know, board rooms and their greasy hands and that kind of thing. And so I think we ended up having a culture that helps to build this in, that it helps to tell the story that if you were only to just be strong, and to essentially use violence, you would be able to see through all the petty perversions of society, all the things that make us so sick. If you could just overcome that and be like the artisan instead of the finance capitalist, then you would somehow come out. And I think there's a deep mythology, because what's happening is that story is being told. But then there's real impulses underneath it. People really are losing their homes and they're losing their farms. They really don't know the community, they don't have neighbors, they don't have good jobs, they don't talk to the kids. I mean, those things are real. And so I think that that process—having a real tactile experience, right? It's going out with your buddies in your goofy polo shirts and hitting someone, it feels like you're doing something, right? Like, you're really reaffirming that dichotomy. That's profoundly powerful thing. And I think that, you know, when you see people out in that kind of, those—again, I've been a lot of these Proud Boy rallies where they attack people, and not just Proud Boys, other groups—like, they are as high as people could be. I mean, there's almost like a spiritual dimension to setting yourself up for that kind of violence. It imbues so much meaning in their lives, and they attach so much meaning to it. So I think you're right, I think there's this process about claiming individual power. But the reality is, I mean, you know this, it's not like a secret that that's not power at all. That's maybe one of the weakest things a person can do. What's powerful is coming together with other people and realizing your vulnerability with them. And having the ability to actually change something. Like that's, that's a—I mean, it's infinitely more powerful. But again, we're being told that that's the slimy way of doing things in a way. That that's the, that's the coercive way. That's a soft way. That's the way of liberals and people who have gotten this in this situation in the first place.

Margaret   Yeah. And then I think about—I mean, there's like, there's ways that we always have to be on guard. I don't want to say, like, antifascist is the same as fascist. It's just not true, right. Antifascist violence is like an inherently defensive quality that—on the other hand, I mean, I'm sure Nazis would say that theirs is defensive, too, about their way of life or whatever the fuck right? But—

Shane Burley   They always frame it as defense. 

Margaret   Yeah.

Shane Burley   That's, it's so consistent always. Even when—the beginning of the Holocaust they framed is self defense.

Margaret   And so then it's like an interesting thing where in some ways I'm saying, well, like, the way is that if you beat them up successfully enough, they go away. And, you know, that is in some ways holding on to hard power or promoting hard power. But yet I—and maybe I'm wrong about this—but okay, there's like this story that has always sat with me. I was talking to an antifascist, an old punk from Asheville who was part of the antifascist kicking out shit, Nazi punks in the 80s. And he was like, well they outnumbered us, right? But we won eventually on some level of driving fascist organizing out of Asheville. And the way we would do it, is we gave them no rest. You see a Nazi, you jump a Nazi. And he was talking about this time where he was, like, walking home, he sees three Nazis, he's alone, and he jumps them. He jumps all three of them. And he gets the shit kicked out of him, right? But it's like—but it still breaks their sense of security and rightness. Because they're not the ones who instigated that, you know? And eventually it kind of drove people away. And, and maybe this is bullshit, but I think about how, like, theoretically—like Nazis will play the underdog card if it's all they got, right? But like, what they—their good card is claiming underdog without being underdog that's like their strong card in their deck. But claiming underdog while being underdog doesn't really work very much because only the most like deeply ideologically committed Nazis stay Nazis in that sense. Everyone else is kind of like, yes, isn't really fun anymore. And again, I don't know if this is outdated. And I wonder—I questioned my own in this case, like, insistence on hard power. And I think that there's all kinds of, like, soft power that goes behind this. And like, it seems like antifascist organizing has at least as long of a history of, like, organizing, and also like counter recruitment, and like, soft stuff. 

Shane Burley   You know, it—it's like those things you're indicating, those are actually approached as organizing, right? So it's like never letting you rest. And this is something I've heard from other groups. You know, when I interviewed Rose City Antifa for my last book they said they basically were able to successfully take down Volksfront—which was like a, you know, a big confederation skinhead gang in the 90s centered in Portland—just because they were so tenacious, because they never stopped, right? They made it so impossible. But that was like an organizing project. It actually wasn't just about like building up muscles and taking them down. It was about, like, you know, how do you look at a situation and find all the ways to make them totally unsuccessful, you know, to make them unstable at home and at work. So it was almost like in a way of like, those sorts of things, whether or not they're engaging in physical resistance was almost like a secondary thing to the negotiation of being like a community organizer and being like in that community and thinking—and there's the other different too is that they really are defensive. I mean, people are being pushed to defend themselves because of the violent presence of Nazis if, you know, if neo-nazi skinheads weren't out murdering people in the 80s I doubt a movement of people would have formed to take them on. Like they—their violence was so ever-present that they—people were forced to do it. You know, and I also, as much as people I know there's like, you know, riot porn videos and stuff, I never really hear antifascists doing a ton of celebrations of violence, because I don't think that there's a lot of like joy in that for most folks.

Margaret   Yeah. And then I almost think that the ones that have the most joy are the sort of, like, when it's almost like you're like clowning them. Like, obviously, it is not totally the same to put a pie in someone's face as punch them in the face. It's almost like you're doing it to make sure that people laugh at them. You know, like, I just think of the Richard Spencer punch, you know. Like it wasn't, like, he got taken to the ground and, like, you know, kicked to death or something. Right? It was just like, he was talking and now he can't because someone sucker punched him.

Shane Burley   Yeah, it was like a humiliate—like a public humiliation. You know, it also, it stops their continuity. I mean, like Richard Spencer could no longer just go talk to a camera anymore, right? It's too uncomfortable to do that. So the function wasn't that, like, stopping them with the fist, it was now they have the specter hangover of not be able to do x, y, and z activity. That work was—I mean, it was so clear with Richard Spencer too because he was so upfront about it. I talked about in the book, too. I mean, like, that's what stopped them was that they could not do the events anymore. So they couldn't do the practical organizing they wanted to do, their organizations really couldn't function anymore. So it was sort of like taking that to its logical conclusion, like, how do you see through the situation and like a real organizer way, which is why I think part of why the left is different—or radicals are different—because it is about a community building project. Because at the fundamental core, it's about how do we realize an actual vibrant, loving community?

Margaret   I'm just, like—I mean that's probably what they say. But there's a difference just literally in whether or not ours is about, you know, ours is about inclusion and theirs is about exclusion, you know? Okay, well, how does all this tie into apocalyptic survival, right? We're talking about what is fascism? How do we stop fascism? You know, why—I mean, I know the answer to this, but why am I having you on this prepper podcast? What is—how does how does this tie together?

Shane Burley   I think there's a couple things here. I think the first is acknowledging what we're actually living in, which is much more severe than I think where—what is normative to discuss. And I think part of why it, we, we don't encourage that kind of discussion is that we are afraid it would lead to apathy, we're afraid it would lead people to not fight, you know, things like climate change, to not try and push back on, like, emission standards, whatever the reforms are, you know, and I think there's a fear that pushing past that would then disallow us all the kind of both morally and practically accessible things to do. The other thing is just living with the actual reality of where we're at, you know. What's that mean, like, [inaudible] a lot, you were trained to live in a world that no longer exists. That's a really profound thing that we have to kind of sit with. And so I'm now in a situation where in the next couple of months, within a few miles of my house, the entire ancient forests that surround my city will ignite in the flames, right? And they'll blanket everything with a toxic smoke where I'll have to wear a gas mask and we have to use air purifiers. That's, that's what this is now. We can expect that, we put on calendar. That's what our life is like now for that period. We're living in an era where literally, like, people's financial investments are dominated by stuff like cryptocurrency. I'm not even trying to make fun of people, I just, this is just the kind of chaos of the modern economies, where we're heading to a place where, you know, states—while as kind of monstrous as they are—are still things that we've sort of depended on, those are starting to break down in their practical functions, they literally couldn't meet the challenges of 2020. It wasn't just they get it in a shitty way, it's that they could not do it at all. And so what that does is it sort of forces us into a counter power project where these sort of things like mutual aid stuff take on a level of importance that they didn't have for every person all the time, you know, there—I know you've been a part of bunch of mutual aid groups, I've done a bunch, you know, Food Not Bombs when I was younger, and a lot of them were really bad. And I feel kind of bad, like, drawing out the worst examples of them over the last year because I've talked about this a lot.

Margaret   You mean like how we thought eggplant should be cooked in Food Not Bombs?

Shane Burley   We'd like—you know, there was just times when I was like, I was like, you know, the food we're cooking is subpar. We're like two hours late because we're hung over. And just stuff like that all the time. And the reality was that the soup kitchen down the road, which we had all kinds of ethical problems with, did it much better. Like they just did what we were trying to do a lot better. That has actually in a way collapsed in on itself where the idea that there is a service space that exists and non-politicized way has sort of disappeared, and we're all that's left. And also our ability to do it has gotten better. And there's better examples historically, you know, like, survival pending revolution programs with the Panthers, there's other groups that done it really well. But we're hitting an era of capacity where we're actually in a way sort of able to take it on. And what I saw in 2020 was, you know, mutual aid groups come together really quickly around the Coronavirus, then those mutual aid groups to the protests, and grow that and create the whole infrastructure. And then that infrastructure then pivots to the fires, which then pivots to the next thing. And we're actually able to do that in a really profound way. So as this crisis is unfolding and we're living through profound prices, our ability to survive through collective action is really ramping up. And so I'm seeing these different projects as ways of not just seeing through how to survive the crisis, but what's on the other side? You know, our ability to survive now and to do it in a vibrant way is that revolutionary project that comes next. And so, when I think about the apocalypse, I don't just think about, you know, all like the kind of, I don't know, eschatological fantasies of like the Left Behind series, you know, where like, it's like fire and brimstone and, you know, people being beamed up to heaven. I think about what does it mean to bring something to an end. And I think, like, if we're thinking about collapse and things like that, that's endemic to our society now. That's not an end of anything. That's just a continuation of what we've had to a degree. What ends it is changing our underlying conditions. And so I think by responding to this crisis in the way that we're doing—and this is just the seed of it, hopefully it just grows as we create really vibrant structures of survival, healthcare networks, of solidarity networks to support people in tenant situations, all the kinds of things that we're going to need. By doing that we actually do have the ability to shift to the next stage, that we actually answer the crisis, not with more crisis, but by bringing this thing to an end so we can build something new.

Margaret   Okay, so that actually answers my pessimism at the beginning of it, right, is—like, there's going to be something new. Things are not going to continue. Now. I mean, I'll be real, like, people thought capitalism is gonna fall before. I actually don't want to put all my eggs in the capitalism is definitely going to collapse basket, or even the nation states are going to collapse basket, just because they're oddly resilient. Right? But it's gonna be fucking different. 

Shane Burley   Yeah, yeah, exactly. 

Margaret   And, and it completely certainly could collapse, which people just sort of forget is possible, and then they remember it as possible. But now the Biden's president they forget as possible again. And so then, if everyone's looking at this escalating crisis, there needs to be an answer we offer. And Nazis are offering an answer, which is blame the migrants, be strong by being a fucking coward. You know, masculinity taken to its ultimate and—not even its ultimate extreme, a weird, twisted side path of masculinity. And so yeah, I guess we got to do something new instead. And that's the answer to the pessimism is everyone's going to change their mind about how society should work. So we just have to fuckin good enough answer.

Shane Burley   And I actually am optimistic about it. You know, one of the, one of the realities—I think we—I have gotten historically caught up in this kind of, this under resourced space. Like, we don't have money, they have the money. We don't have the time, we're always working trying to survive. But the reality is, we have the one thing that this new model is built on, we have each other. That is all that we actually need. And the reality is I think that maybe this is the materialism of the—maybe this is the dialectic is that the conditions have met into a place where I think, like, for example, we have social media tools that do allow us to connect in ways we didn't before. We have the ability to travel and be with people in a way we didn't have before. We have the ability to spontaneously rise up in coordinated fashion that was really hard, you know, a couple of decades ago. Conditions are ripe to actually realize what it means to build a society of relationships. That is possible. And by doing it now, by living that through, it inherently challenges power. That is a revolutionary process right there. You know, it's not one that leads to a revolution, is it right there. Like, living that new society is that revolutionary process because it creates the friction and tension. And the reality is that we are, like you said, it's not like capitalism and the state are going to disappear tomorrow, but they are going to devolve even further into more outstanding cruelties. Which, in a way, puts the necessity on us because we can only survive by doing it together, that—we can always survive through a new society.

Margaret   Yeah, when people ask me, you know, when people I'm—like, um, you know, I prepare for the apocalypse or whatever, like—or even like, I want to have an anarchist society or I want a totally different society, people will be like, "Well, how would you do this, that thing or the other?" And you're like, well, how do we do it now? Like, people will be like, "Well, how would a revolutionary society make antibiotics?" And you're like, well, I literally don't know because I don't know how we do it now, but there are people who do know how and many of those people might join us and tell us how, or just keep doing it. You know, and—yeah, you're right, we always fall into this idea that, like, we—I think overall one of the biggest problems is I think that, like, leftist revolutionists, anarchists, whatever the fuck, like just don't know how to, like, take themselves seriously and act big. Like, because we are so used to being told we can't do anything but, like, throw a tantrum. And now I'm not like talking shit on rioting, I think that's actually a great way of expressing power and learning to find power with each other, you know, but that—we're being told that all we can do is, like, stir things up a little bit. And, you know, we even run into this within, like, ostensibly left spaces where people are like, "Oh, well, you know, you antiauthoritarians don't actually accomplish anything." And they're actually just lying. Like, they're just, they're either wrong or lying. We have we accomplish things on massive scales constantly. Probably the most interesting revolutionary project happening in the world right now is the democratic confederalism of northern Syria, at least in terms of like scale that it's happening on, you know? And we can do that, you know? It doesn't require—I mean, it requires organization which actually gets into that soft—I don't know. Ah, man, there's just so much to fuckin think about all this.

Shane Burley   In a way it gets at the problem—it gets it the reality of the problem—which is that we're not engaging in revolution because it's easy. 

Margaret   Yeah.

Shane Burley   We're doing it because it's hard. Like we didn't—like, easy doesn't get us where we're trying to go, right? Like we just talked about earlier, it's actually the hard. You know, one of the—I used to love this, coming from a kind of authoritarian communist that would try and stack up their list of accomplishments. And I'm like, name one of those, that was a liberated society. Not one of them. Never one. Like, the reality is that like, it's just hard. And it's unlikely too. That's the other thing, it's a journey. And so we, it does require sort of throwing it all in, which used to feel scary, except we are all in all the time now. You know, like, we live in a war society now. And so it's never going to be a situation where the comforts of stability are just there that we can kind of retreat to for safety. Instead, all we have is each other, which has a volatility to it, but it's one that we control.

Margaret   And there's upsides to this, like, no one thinks the normal is normal anymore. You know? Like, I don't—I never actually want to fall into the, like, "Collapse of society is good, actually." Right? Because like, yeah, the existing society was a nightmare, but like, the breakdown of it causes so much trauma, pain, and death—

Shane Burley   So much pain.

Margaret   —that you can't, yeah, you can't celebrate it. Like because it's also a failure. We didn't successfully, like, shift before this happened, right? But there's something nice about like, you know, like people believing that your position is a lot more reasonable than they used to believe. Like, even just stuff like, oh hey, I'm going to go to this medical training. Or before the inauguration, I'm going to spend $1,000 on trauma medical supplies and make sure that they're distributed to people. Or whatever the thing is, right? I can say that to, like, coworkers and stuff now, right? Because people are like, yeah, I mean, okay. It's not necessary, what they would do, but like, it doesn't seem as far fetched as it used to.

Shane Burley   Yeah, I was talking with Scott Crow and I was working on the book and, you know, we're talking about the Common Ground Clinic, and we're talking about the real early days of being in, in the kind of Katrina—in like the aftermath of the hurricane.

Margaret   Could you, could you explain for people who don't know what you're talking about?

Shane Burley   Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Scott Crow and number of folks came out there and worked to develop this kind of community-run clinic, this kind of mutual aid project—a number of mutual—actually it became an interlocking web of different types of mutual aid projects. And one of the things he was talking about, like, you know, you want to fight collapse. Like you want to—there's really no—nothing should be romanticize about collapse. There's also a reality of, like, things were gone. There is actually a void there now. And so in a way we, you know—he's like, what I had to offer—which felt so partial in other situations—what I had to offer was what was necessary then. It's all there was. And so in a way there's less competition for how to solve problems, in a sense. Because we've seen that like there is—there really isn't an offered solution. It's not like we can take the temporary solution that state is offering when it comes to the Coronavirus. All that was there was us helping each other. No one else is going to show up at our house and deliver medication, it just wasn't gonna happen. And so in a way, like, our ideologies and like the ideas that underskirt that suddenly have an incredible relevance for people because they actually answer the question everyone has. And I think there is that common experience makes the case better than we ever could have. It makes the case in a very sincere way. And it's one that we don't have to pump full of kind of this ideological performance. We're just there trying to exist in this kind of supportive, overcoming way. And, maybe it's just the silver linings playbook in a way, but it's about looking at a lot of these crisis happening and seeing, like, how can I be there in the best version of myself I can with other people. Like, how can I show up and live this out and try and support community and build it with the confidence that doing that is a revolutionary act, that it does actually get us somewhere? You know, in a time—I mean, like, this was, this was fucking hard. Like, this was a really hard year and a half. And coming through it, we did it with each other and we really saw a vision of what we were. And I—it comes down to—I think, you know, Robert Evans I think talked about this on the podcast. You know, people are smart and kind with each other in crisis for the most part. The non—there's an elite panic of rich people that will kind of force that crisis and stuff that survivalists, right wing survivalists often talk about. But what we see is that our ability to handle this crisis is incredibly resilient, and incredibly caring. And in a way it runs counter to every narrative and structure we have in society. So I—seeing that, it gives me a lot of hope and optimism, not just that we can make it through this incredible sense of collapse, but also that we can build something new out of it. And maybe that's the dialectic, the conditions we were always sort of promised.

Margaret   I really appreciate your optimism, partly because I think I usually try to be the more optimistic person—not necessary on this podcast, but in conversations in my life, and that I sort of needed this pep talk today. So I actually really appreciate it. It actually ties into—it makes me think about—we got to wrap this up in a moment. But I think about um, you know, sometimes you work and your work and you work in a project, and it just doesn't resonate with people. And maybe you care about it so you keep doing it. And sometimes you work and you work and you work and it resonates with people way beyond, like, what you put in is—you get way more out of it than what you put in. And this podcast has actually been an example of that. My previous podcast is not an example of it. I I ran a podcast called We Will Remember Freedom which was an anarchist fiction podcast, and it had listeners and had people cared about it, right? And I put a lot of work into it. 

Shane Burley   Yeah I listened to that. 

Margaret   And I'm proud of that podcast. And then I made this podcast right before the Coronavirus and it resonated more with people. And, while both things are important to me, it actually makes sense to do these things that resonate with people, and mutual aid and rebellion are kind of what we've been doing forever—not like just you and me, but like, you know, the antiauthoritarian left—and it's resonating with people right now. And it's a really good time to let it keep resonating with people and to, like, put energy in when it's coming back. And, I don't know.

Shane Burley   It's—I actually think it's almost, in a way, like what we're talking about the subculture is like people like survivalism. They want to be able to do these things and they don't feel welcome in those spaces. So there's this—I think, this idea that like, yeah, I think this is kind of cool. I'd like to be able to, you know, do edible plants or do, you know, medical training, like build self defense—they want to do all these things but then they go and look at the spaces where those are available and don't see themselves in is all. So when when someone gives them the option of like, yeah, I'm actually going to validate your desires and we're going to allow you to be yourself with it, that's like a really profound thing. I think that, but that's happening all over the place with mutual aid and survival things, with DIY stuff is having a huge Renaissance. People want to have that really hands on, tactile effect in their lives. And I think because they've seen that so many things were sort of outside of our control, and we're doing it in this way that brings us together. And I think having, combining those things and not having this isolationist survivalists fantasy allows people to really rethink, what would it mean, like—what would it mean to build community in a crisis? And I think that—it is optimistic in the end, I think it's giving people a real path forward.

Margaret   And I will say to anyone who's listening, my favorite type of response that I've gotten from this podcast is—well, I mean, the most nice in my personal life is when I go to something and people are like, "Oh my god, I love your podcast." That's really fun. But overall, hearing from people who were, who weren't necessarily leftist, but just like weren't right wingers who were like, well, I like living in the woods and I have always been kind of into preparedness. And, you know, it's refreshing to hear people talk about this who don't think antifa are terrorists or whatever. Right? And, you know, and who are concerned about the rise of fascism. And, I don't know, I appreciate that so much. Because for all I'll talk about, like, I really mean it when I say, if I enter a space, all I want to do is kick out the Nazis. I don't want to tell people they have to ideologically agree with me beyond "don't murder me for being trans." You know? I don't know. Okay, but do you have like, last thoughts about fascism, apocalypse, survival? And then, if not, or at the end of, would you like to let listeners know more where they can find your books and your other content?

Shane Burley   I think, you know, one of the threads in the book is that people can make apocalypses in your life, like the belief in white genocide has created an apocalypse in many people's lives in the form of mass shooting and really cruel violence. And there's no reason to believe that in the next couple of years, suddenly those forces will disappear, which I think is why community support, defense, mutual aid, is so crucial. Not just in times of trauma, but all the time. And so I don't, I don't want to have it be an optimism that's based out—you know, that doesn't see the real crisis and trauma that we're in, that could be coming, that has happened. It's about trying to do it together as much as possible. The simplest, most basic element of my politics is about being here with each other. It's hard to make it much more complicated than that. So, I think if we're able to answer that, how we do those things together, how we survive together, we'll end up answering a lot more questions than we thought we would. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Shane Burley   Find my stuff. Yo, I'm on Twitter. I'm very online @shane_burley1. My book is "Why We Fight." Pick up AK Press if y'all want. They're the publisher, but you can also buy directly from them. And I'm doing a bunch of writing all over the place right now.

Margaret   Okay. Yeah, do you still run a music blog? 

Shane Burley   Oh, I do. I do. So you can find it at antifascistsneofolk.com. It's called the Blaze Ansuz. I'm trying to do more interviews than I have been lately. But basically what I'm doing is interviewing antifascist neofolk and similar musicians. It's a lot of ways all over the political spectrum that they all are just united on on hating Nazis and wanting to boot out the far right from the, some sort of music scenes that they've been a part of. And we've discovered a lot of great bands, a lot of bands have come out, have come together with it. I know that there's some music festival coming up in the works. You might know more about that than I do. And there's a bunch of compilations with some colleagues over at Left Folk. They'll be putting together and doing a bunch of work over the next year promoting as many bands as possible because the numbers of bands identify as antifascist neofolk are just like, it's like dozens and dozens of dozens, just growing really fast. 

Margaret   Cool. We're taking over. Speaking of subcultural insertion. And don't worry listeners, if you don't know what neofolk is, neither do we. It is a very hard to understand conceptually genre. All right. Well, thank you so much for for coming on the podcast.

Shane Burley   Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I really do love the podcast. So it's a real treasure to be able to join. 

Margaret   Oh, thanks. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general, please tell people about it. Tell people about it on social media or, you know, ideally in person. And also do all the algorithm shit like rating and reviewing and subscribing and doing all that shit because it feeds algorithms. [Singing] Algorithm, algorithms, they rule the world. Okay, and if you'd like to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. Although in the very near future, that's going to shift over to supporting us on Patreon. But for the moment, because I'm starting with some other people who work on the show with me we're restarting a zine publisher that's existed—an anarchist zine publisher that's existed since 2005 or so called Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. And I'm really excited for that project to come back to life. And it will be supporting this show and supporting a lot of other things including a monthly zine and hopefully more podcasts and all kinds of cool stuff. And my Patreon will be shifted over to become a Strangers Patreon. And if you'd like to support currently me, soon us, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. My patreon currently is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. If you're listening to this in the future, it might be something like strangers in a tangled wilderness, or tangled wilderness, or I don't know. Damn, this is gonna be a problem when that happens. Hooray, complicated things with computers and me talking about it at the end of my show when I should probably—I'm not even going to cut this out. I'm going to keep it. In particular I'd like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog and Kirk and Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher. Shane, The Compound, Cat J, Staro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, Hugh, and Sean. Thank you all so much, your contributions allow this to happen, allow us to keep happening, and allow us to move—I keep promising that we're moving towards weekly but I swear to you, we're moving towards weekly, and I'm really excited about it. And yeah, I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on and I will talk to you all soon.

Episode Notes

In this episode, Margaret talks to Liza Kurtz about disaster studies and elite panic.

The guest, Liza Kurtz, is a a PhD candidate in disaster studies who studies the impact of disaster on society, specifically how class and other antecedent conditions make people vulnerable to disasters. She is @semihumanist on twitter, and you can email her at liza.c.kurtz@gmail.com.

The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

1:07:41

SPEAKERS Margaret, Liza Kurtz

Margaret   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. I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking with Liza Kurtz, who is a PhD candidate in disaster studies who studies essentially the impact—well, the impact of disaster upon society. And we talk about a lot of stuff, we cover a lot of ground in this episode. But primarily, we're talking about the ways in which people do and don't respond to disaster. And basically, are trying to kind of bust the myth of that everyone runs around and, you know, murders each other or whatever. And also we get to talk about elite panic which is the idea that basically the people who are invested in the system are the ones who panic during times of extraordinary crisis. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another podcast on the network. Da daaaaa.

Jingle Speaker 1 Kite Line is a weekly 30-minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions, and how it impacts all of us. 

Jingle Speaker 2 Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite. Whispered words, a note passed hand-to-hand, a request submitted the guards for medical care. Elicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will bear it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kite Line we hope to share these words across the prison walls. 

Jingle Speaker 1 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.org.

Margaret   Okay, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then also just kind of, like, what you do, like, what do—you know, why did I bring you on this show?

Liza   Sure thing that sounds great. So my name is Lisa Kurtz. I am a PhD candidate at Arizona State University. I use the pronouns she and her. And my research really focuses on specifically heat and power outages in the southwest. That's what my dissertation will be about. But in general, I am grounded in disaster sociology as a discipline, looking at it from sort of a conflict theory lens, which is a fancy way of saying, I look at class struggle and how antecedent conditions of disaster make people vulnerable to what we perceive as these, like, natural events that cause great harm.

Margaret   Okay. What does that mean? That last part. 

Liza   Sure, yeah. That's a good question. So basically I think we have a tendency, and certainly there's a tendency in popular culture and in the media to perceive any kind of disaster as—the term you'll hear used in legal circles, and sometimes in the press, is an "act of God," right? Like something no one could have predicted that just happens, that's nobody's fault. And it causes great suffering, but that suffering often isn't really drilled down on to see why did this happen. And so what disaster sociology and disaster studies try to do really is pick that apart and really trouble the implication that these things are just natural and just happen. Because they don't. And so if you look at who suffers most from disasters, if you look at why disasters happen at all, really all they are these natural events make a lens that that focuses and amplifies what's already going on in society. So if you have inequality, you have injustice, disaster brings all of that to the fore. But there's a temptation to think of it as coming out of nowhere, when in reality, we create the conditions that make suffering happen during a disaster. So Katrina is a great example of this. You can say, "Oh, it was, you know, a hundred-year storm, nobody could have predicted a hurricane that large." And there's some element of truth to that, but there's more elements of truth to how we built the city of New Orleans reflects, like, the racial injustice of its history and the poverty that we've allowed to flourish there. And all of that can get hidden behind the idea that this storm just happened.

Margaret   Yeah. It's interesting, because one of the things that I focus on when I pay attention to disasters is actually the almost—the inverse consideration as far as it goes, as far as class—not in terms of like, clearly, people who are oppressed in society along numerous axes are far more likely to suffer during disasters. But I guess I like, I put a lot of my energy into thinking about how people come together during disasters. And the main thing that I've been learning slowly and I kind of want to talk to you about is this idea that, like, everyone except the elite come together and, like, work on shit together during disasters. Is that—

Liza   Oh, man.

Margaret   Is that true? Is that, like—that's my conception, right.

Liza   That is certainly. Yeah, that's pretty spot on in a lot of cases. Yeah. And you're right certainly that people who suffer disproportionately during disasters, the folks who are vulnerable, who take the hardest hit, whether that's health or money or property damage, that doesn't make them not incredible at self-organizing and incredible at building community and responding to those events. It just makes—means they take a disproportionate amount of damage. And yeah, you're super right in the sense that we see—so, to really talk about this I'm gonna have to backup, and maybe this isn't that interesting, but I hope it is. I'm not sure if you know anything about the history of disaster studies.

Margaret   I do not.

Liza   Okay, so a lot of disaster studies came out of World War Two, like, civil defense ideas. The idea that there might be air attacks or even a land invasion of the United States by Axis forces or, right afterward and during the Cold War by Russia. And so there was this—oh, yeah, of course. Like it all goes back to the Cold War if you look hard enough, right. 

Margaret   Yeah. 

Liza   So there was this enormous interest in what the civilian response would be if something like that happens, and how we can encourage regular civilians to take the stress off of military forces that might be forced to respond by becoming self-reliant. So that's where you see this, like, advertising in glossy magazines about, like, build your own fallout shelter kind of thing. All the stuff that you see in video games now, all that was super real during the Cold War, and before that it was it was air raid shelters during World War Two. And it was really to take the pressure off of military and humanitarian forces who might be forced to respond. The idea was, you didn't want to be part of the problem. And so there was this massive wartime militaristic interest in what civilian populations would do and how we could train them to be self-sufficient. And so part of that was a ton of interest in and research into—that was funded by the military and a lot of cases—into how people would behave if something went really, really wrong. Like, would they panic? Would there be mass chaos? Would they turn on each other? And the perception that still lingers to this day in the media, if you see any bad disaster movies, and they're pretty much all bad—although some of them are bad and fun and some are just bad. If it's got the Rock, I'm there and I don't care.

Margaret   Yeah, no, that's just natural.

Liza   Yeah, so the perception and the expectation was that civilian populations would panic. That if there was an air raid, or a bombing, or something went wrong, there would be this mass panic. And then, as you get researchers starting to look into this, what they find actually is that people are usually pretty good at self-organizing in response to an immediate crisis. And so even though the perception is still, in the media, that if anything goes wrong it will be immediately a Walking Dead kind of scenario, as one of my interviewees put itrecently—that's not really true. Especially not among, like, middle class and lower class communities that live side-by-side with each other all the time. And we'll go into elite panic a little bit more. So that's where there started to be the seed of dispelling the myth of disaster panic was then. And that research happened in the 70s and the 80s, and the late 60s a little bit. And that has since been borne out by most of the available data, that people are really good at self-rescuing, that the real first responder is your neighbor most of the time or a family member, and that folks are pretty good at making the best of terrible, terrible situations and making life easier for each other. Now, where you see that start to fall apart is in elite panic, which is when affluent communities or communities that tend to be racial enclaves—like all-white suburbs, and things like that—get that fear of the other bite, because their perception is that as soon as anything breaks bad, it's going to be a Walking Dead scenario and everyone is going to come for their stuff. And I don't know what goes on in their head. It seems like a very, like almost a wild west, like, take your wives and children kind of mentality. Yeah. Which is really, I mean, the more you unpack that and really think about it, the more fucked up it gets. Um, and so the elite panic can be super dangerous.

Margaret   I mean, on some level, I might be coming for their stuff.

Liza   Yeah, well, fair. Yeah, absolutely. 

Margaret   Like, I might come for their stuff. I mean, you know, they have too much of it and they're not sharing. I mean, not to tie into their own fears. It's just, you know, the billionaires of this world like...

Liza   No, that's real. I've never confirmed this. But there's anecdotal reports in the Balkan Wars of people who stockpiled supplies because they sort of saw things going poorly becoming extreme social pariahs and sometimes even the targets of violence because of their, their hoarding tendencies, stockpiling goods in advance and keeping other people from getting them. So apparently that was like a severe social crime at the time, although I've never confirmed that in the literature. I've just heard that anecdotally. And it's, it's easy to understand why, like, if you're taking it and not sharing, then I can certainly see something similar happening here. I mean, I often tell preppers—when people ask about preppers in my work, I tell them preppers are going to die alone in a bunker full of goods because it's great you have all that stuff, but there isn't much you can really do with it if you don't have the social connections to make social life happen. I think prepping in particular is a particular—a particularly elite and American form of the myth of individualism taken to the most dramatic extreme

Margaret   Well it's interesting thoughbecause it—if it comes from this idea of us being asked to self-rescue, us being asked to be resilient, you know—I know maybe it's like I'm always, like, trying to, like, salvage what I can out of prepping because in my mind, yeah, like the the bunker mentality—which I talk shit on, and probably every single episode—because I basically find people who are, like, functionally know a lot about prepping but don't call themselves preppers for a lot of good reasons. The bunker mentality is obviously just going to get you killed, whether it's by disease or, you know, there's like—but, but it's interesting when this idea of like being resilient, being prepared, rather than being like "a prepper" maybe. I don't know.

Liza   Yeah, absolutely. And I want to draw the distinction here between what I would probably call if I, in academic speak, like the practice of prepping, which is the knowledge and the goods and knowing how to do basic survival tasks if needed, and sort of the classic American dominant culture of prepping, which is that hyper-masculinized, hyper-muscular Christianity, like, it's just going to be me and my family and my guns and a bunker full of food kind of thing. So when I talk about prepping in a derogatory way, I definitely mean the culture and not the practice. Yeah, no, I think—I have a really complicated relationship with the idea of resilience because, on one hand, I think resilience can be used to recognize how incredible some communities are at self-organizing and taking care of themselves in the face not just a disaster but of tremendously difficult conditions. Like, it is truly astonishing what people can do to find ways to survive. And here especially we see that a lot. In Phoenix, air conditioning—which is where I am—air conditioning is really not a luxury like it is in many other places. It is 110%, a survival skill or a survival tool because it is not uncommon for summers to be 115 here, which is, if you can't cool off that can be extremely detrimental to health. And so the people who have to live without air conditioning, in my work, have a tremendously creative number of strategies. Now, should they have to use them? No, of course not. They should, they should be able to have access to air conditioning for equity and health reasons. But that doesn't make the things that they do any less creative or impressive in doing so. And what's interesting to me is that sometimes we talk about prepping and the failure of systems or natural hazards can sometimes invert the relationship of who is most—how would I put this—of who is, like, doing the best in the sense that in my work in Phoenix, people who live without air conditioning are far more prepared for blackouts. So they may be more at risk in the everyday scenario as opposed to having air conditioning, but if the city's grid failed, they already have the culture and practice of staying cool without access to air conditioning down in a way that somebody who like me, honestly, who can afford air conditioning and uses it all the time really doesn't.

Margaret   Just as a tangent that I'm curious about, what do people do without AC in severe, like, in severe heat. Like what do you recommend to people in power outages in the southwest? 

Liza   Oh, boy. Well, yeah, that's a complicated question. But we've been very fortunate here in Phoenix to never have a truly widespread power outage. And so generally when there are smaller scale outages here, it's possible to seek indoor cooled shelter in another part of the city. But my dissertation focuses on asking residents what they would do during a three day power outage where the entire metro area does not have power. And I think I definitely ruined some people's days asking them that because it's one of those things that's uncomfortable to consider, for sure. But people who don't have power really talk about very, very smart ways. And what's especially interesting is they tap into knowledge that was present prior to the city having electricity. So these really old practices of things like hanging wet blankets over doorways so that your humidifying the air that comes into your house for greater evapotranspiration is one of them. Fairly straightforward things that most of us might think of, like wearing lighter-colored clothing, or staying out of the sun. But then also some really amazing stuff like knowing, you know, knowing which structures in the town are adobe and were built prior to air conditioning and are designed to stay cool. So if you're in a modern house in Phoenix now when you don't have AC, the temperature inside the house will rise very quickly. But many adobe structures were built prior to air conditioning or even, like, swamp cooling which is another thing we use here which is basically a giant humidifier prior to those being accessible. And so adobe structures will stay cool significantly better than modern buildings.

Margaret   Yeah, I like—then you also have the problem how dry it is because, yeah, the thing that immediately strikes me as evaporative cooling, like, I would be like, oh, can you like, you know, I don't know, build, like, water catchment on the roof that holds water on the roof so it evaporates instead of transferring heat or whatever. I don't know. But that's dependent on a very different ecosystem. And also just some bullshit that I made up right now.

Liza   I mean, if you think about it, that's how all survival strategies started, right? Like, hey, I wonder if this works? Yeah, no, water is a huge, a huge cooling strategy here. And it's funny because I'm originally from Tennessee, and I literally until I moved here did not know it was possible to buy humidifiers. I'd never seen anything but dehumidifiers. And so when I got here I was like, why would you want to put water in your house? And then my first summer I was like, oh, I get it. Yeah, water is hugely important in everyone's cooling strategies here. And that's another issue with blackouts in particular, because certainly if you go and ask many people who are responsible for critical infrastructure systems, they will tell you that power outages will not cause water treatment and pressure issues. But if you look at the history of citywide blackouts, the United States, there's almost always somebody who is having to cope without household potable water at the time. And so it seems like these systems are not as resilient as we would like in terms of critical infrastructure. And here, if you don't have access to household water, a huge number of your cooling strategy is, like, you know, just slam dunking yourself in a cold bath if you need to—suddenly become less tenable. And that can be really, really a problem.

Margaret   Yeah. Let's talk about—I kind of accidentally derailed you or intentionally derailed you while you're talking about elite panic. But I'm really interested in that, because I'm really interested in this idea—like, again, the the working understanding that I've had, just from my my layman's perspective or whatever, is that during disasters, overall, people like essentially self-organize—not in a utopian way inherently, but often in a way that people kind of miss when things go back to normal. But then when everything gets really fucked up seems like when the existing power—the previous power structures attempt to reassert themselves. That's like been my observational understanding of, like, talking to a lot of people involved in disaster relief and things like that. But it seems like that ties into elite panic, this idea that people who are actually invested in the previous power relations, and especially property relations, are maybe the ones who can't handle the idea of everyone suddenly taking care of each other and shit.

Liza   Yeah, absolutely. I think that's spot on. And I think you really see this sort of that—well, you might almost call it like a pivot point, or an inflection point where things could turn one way or the other in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. And you really see that reflected in the practice of disaster capitalism. So I think sometimes we overlook—because it seems so inevitable—that disasters have poor outcomes, and they do for many people. Disasters can also be an opportunity to say, "Hey, business, as usual, is what got us to this outcome. How can we do things differently?" Because there's sort of a shock to the system, whether the system is you as a resident or the household or the town or the county or the state, like, they're really, they're a shock point. And so they provide an opportunity to stop and say, like, okay, business as usual—the everyday practice of how we run things—got us here? How do we make sure this doesn't happen again? And if you really start engaging with how does this not happen again, that means transforming those everyday practices that got you there. So I think you're spot on with that idea that elites and people on the top who have an interest in preserving the status quo see the inflection point and sort of grab it and pull as hard as they can in the other direction. And so it's not just that there's, I think, a desire to go back to the way things were and preserve the power structure and the property relationships and everything else of the place before the disaster happened. In a lot of cases, they're perceived as opportunities, which is extremely messed up and amoral, but it's true that really these things are seen as, here is a great opportunity to restructure things towards a more capitalist, a more stratified, a less just system. And one of the things that I think you can see right now with that is because COVID closed public school systems, which is a good thing, like, kids don't need to be spreading COVID. Like, I'm broadly supportive of the public health need to close school systems. It provided this vacuum for all these alternatives, and these think pieces to crop up, etc. And these companies to start pitching like, well, do we really need public schooling anyway? 

Margaret   Oh, shit, uhuh. 

Liza   Can this be replaced by a different system that's more private, that's more controlled by capital, that's less interested in the public good, that is more about profit. And that's a classic, classic example of what's called disaster capitalism, where something goes wrong and suddenly it becomes an opportunity for someone somewhere to restructure things so they can make more money.

Margaret   Yeah, and that's, I mean, you know, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, all that shit. Like, with COVID now, everyone buys everything online. I buy everything online. I'm terrified of COVID and I work from home. So, you know—and then you're like, I don't know, just watching. society restructure itself to buy everything online. And online is kind of, it—I don't know whether it's naturally or it's designed that way by evil people. But, like, overall, the internet is so good at decentralizing things and yet in terms of, like, commerce, it seems like it's really good at centralizing. It's like really good at having the everything store. You know?

Liza   Yeah. And I don't know enough about the architecture of the internet and economics therein to say, like, if that's by design, or just a function of the way it works. But yes, it does seem to be—seems to be so good at creating monopolies in that way.

Margaret   When you're talking about adobe houses, you know, and how, okay, the old houses are actually built with adobe or whatever. You know, it just—it really strikes me about how completely arrogant the colonial and industrial system is, in that it's like, well, whatever works in New England is what should work in Arizona. And it's so baffling to me, you know, because it's like, well, there's so obviously, like, a steep pitched roof exists that way to shed snow, you know, and then people were like, "Oh, we'll just put these steep gables everywhere." And like—

Liza   Right.

Margaret   It's just... I mean, I say that as someone who lives in a a-frame somewhere where there's no snow—well, not no snow, but not much snow. But in my defense, I actually just built it that way because it's the cheapest and most structurally sound way for someone who doesn't know how to build a house to build a house is have fewer walls, more roof. I don't know, it just, it—it depresses me to think about.  Yeah, no.  This the centralizing urge. Go ahead.

Oh, I just, I think you're so right. And I think it's, it's—maybe there is something to the idea that accelerated consolidationist capitalism makes everything sort of a bland universalism in much of the way that Amazon is a bland universalism. Because I do think one of the things that we've really lost that is super helpful in the practice of preparing for disaster is local knowledge. Just localization in general is such a huge thing. Whether it's knowing where in your landscape the water is, or knowing what kind of house does best without AC. And certainly here in Phoenix I have been known to just, like, scream a little bit in my car driving around because there is a massive fad for pulling out old, beautiful 50s Ranch homes and putting in—I've heard them referred to as "McModerns." So houses that take up the entire lot, that look, like you say, very much New England-y. They're often two storeys which is dumb in the desert, they have no green buffer around them at all to help cool anything, they're made of, like, the cheapest possible, like, wood and sheet rock and very little insulation, very large windows that face, you know, like east and west, often. And so you just look at these buildings that are literally the worst possible choice for this environment. And they are building them constantly and it really like it is tremendously painful to see in these beautiful neighborhoods that were originally orange groves. And so when people started building houses there, they would leave the orange trees around their houses, and so there was significant shade and food in your front yard, and then they will just rip them all out and replace them with these. And what really gets me—and this is like such a classic example of a thing people think they're doing for a good reason that is actually worse —s many of them have astroturf lawns, which I understand from the perspective of not wanting to use water or like your grass always being green. But you've replaced, like, not that I support suburban lawns, but you've replaced something that is at least a plant, even if it's a monoculture, with plastic. And sure it doesn't use water. But the thing that gets me the most is my colleagues study surface temperature, and astroturf is the worst thing you could put down for heat.

Margaret   Yeah. Okay. 

Liza   Like, it's worse—you might as well have paved your yard.

Margaret   Yeah.

Liza   And it's also carcinogenic. And so there's this, like, pseudo-greenwashing that's actually just absolutely the worst thing you could do for everyone involved, all these horrible McModerns that are the worst thing you could build for the desert. And we have—and I think it really all just comes from a desire for, I want to live in a place that looks like every other place. And we've come so far from, like, the localized knowledge of knowing adobe is better and xeriscaping is better and all of that.

Margaret   Xeriscaping?.

Liza   Oh, sorry, X-E-R-I. Xeriscaping is desert landscaping. So it's the practice of planting your yard in a way that is congruous with, like, the natural environment of the Sonoran Desert that we're in here.

Margaret   Yeah, it's this arrogance that I almost can't handle. Because it's, like, if you build your life around, I assume that I will always have a gas line and a power line and, you know, I will always just have as much electricity as I could possibly want. You know, it's like, now that I live somewhere where I generate my own electricity—I mean, a solar panel generates the electricity for me. It, which isn't, you know, carbon neutral, either, you know. But I'm so aware of, like, how incredibly not necessary wasteful AC is, because you kind of need it in a lot of circumstances. It's not a waste. But it's not exactly this, like, low power device. You know? And, I don't know, just the things that we take for granted, it confuses me sometimes.

Liza   For sure. And you shouldn't have said solar panel, because in my head it was just you biking furiously on like a bike generator to keep the computer on while we do is so you could have had me there. No, absolutely, I think—yeah, I mean, an AC is one of those things where, I don't know, it's almost like putting a band aid on a bullet wound here a little bit in the sense that I'm not going to argue that centralized air conditioning is the single most effective intervention for saving people from dying from heat, which is a huge problem here. About 500 people in the state died last year from heat-related causes last year, which is not an insignificant number. And actually, extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related hazard. So you know, when you worry about hurricanes or tornadoes or things like that, it's really heat that's the major killer of people. And so I would never say, like, don't have central AC for ecological reasons, because it is a huge and immediate public health intervention that saves lives. But also, it doesn't solve this fundamental problem which is, part of the reason we need AC so badly is we built the city in a really stupid sort of 70s-thinking kind of way, which is there's tons of uncovered pavement, and really tall buildings that, you know, like, the urban heat island here is very, very real, it doesn't cool off overnight. And so the need for AC is great, but the need to think beyond AC and think about how do we look into the future and actually reduce the need for this, like, immediate public health triage of just get in a cool environment so you don't die right away?

Margaret   Well, okay, so the the need to fundamentally restructure huge parts of our society seems very apparent and increasingly apparent to more and more people, especially as, you know, climate change barrels down on everyone, even if you were willing to ignore all of the systemic oppression that people face. And I think sometimes—and I know I do this, and I wonder whether—you talk about how capitalists look at disaster as opportunity, and that's a problem. And I'm like, so do revolutionists, and so do people who want society to be fundamentally different. Because you have this, some level of like wiping the slate clean, and there's a certain amount of opportunity to restructure society. And it seems like very often capitalism is better at this than us. But there are also these, like, you know, like watching mutual aid networks pop up all over at least the United States last year in a way that like—and I wouldn't, you know, I don't want COVID to have happened, right? But when people look at that and say, well, we actually need to learn how to take care of each other and build these, like, networks by which to take care of each other. To me, that's the beauty of it. But then it's—now I wonder whether I'm doing the same kind of ambulance chasing that capitalists are. Do I let myself off the hook just because I think what I'm doing is good and what they're doing is bad, right? Like, they think the opposite. But I'm right.

Liza   Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think it is—if it's ambulance chasing, you're only chasing the ambulance, to help stop the bleeding as opposed to charge the patient. So I think that there's a fundamental value difference there. And so yeah, no, you're you're absolutely correct in the sense that they're are opportunities, and there are opportunities, whether we want them to be or not, so we might as well seize them. But I think part of the problem is about how—not just in media, but even to each other-how we storytelling around disasters as, like—it's very hard to hold the tension in your mind. Like with COVID, it's very hard to hold the tension in your mind between so many people, particularly people of color and otherwise vulnerable folks have paid this horrible price for our inability to cope with an epidemic. And at the same time, this sort of—and that's, there's nothing good about that, that is massively negative. And at the same time, we are being presented with this opportunity that could allow us to build something better, like these mutual aid networks that you mentioned. But it feels–it's very hard to talk about, in a way that feels respectful and honorable—to say like, this is an opportunity for something better to be born out of the ashes of this enormous tragedy. And so I think it's easy for those conversations to get derailed, one because of how we talk about disasters as, you know, like always negative with the panic and everything like that—the mythology around disasters makes it hard. And then two, the difficulty of respectfully talking about this. But I would certainly argue that if we want especially—and I'll use COVID, as the example here—if we want to honor the people who died unjustly of COVID, there is no better way to do so, than taking this opportunity and seizing it to make a system and a world where that won't happen again.

Margaret   Yeah, that's a—that's a good way to put it. And I wonder, you know, it's like, I mean, what we should be trying to do—and what people do try to do is just that the systems of power we're up against are rather good at what they do of maintaining their power—is do this anyway. You know, it's like, there's been mutual aid networks for—well, ever, obviously—just assigning a word to it in the 19th century, or whatever. But, you know, we need to restructure things anyway. And if you were to take Phoenix as an example, it's like—I mean, I kind of, I have to admit, I look at Phoenix as like this just grand arrogance in the desert, that, like, probably shouldn't be there. And I know that that's not fair to the actual individual people who live there, you know. And so I don't want to be like, get rid of Phoenix or whatever, right. But like—but instead it's like, well, probably the slow, hard work of restructuring needs to happen anyway. Like the slow, hard work of figuring out how to rebuild the city in such a way that it isn't just, like, waiting for disaster. I don't know.

Liza   Oh, yeah. I think you've touched on something there that I always try and challenge people with when they talk about Phoenix as a grand experiment in inevitable failure—building I think at this point the fifth largest city in the United States—or the fifth largest metro area, actually—in the desert which is—I don't necessarily disagree that that is not an immediately intuitively good idea. But now that it's here, I like to think of Phoenix as the perfect testbed and sandbox because it's the hottest large metro area in the United States. And if we can turn this thing around, and we can make Phoenix in the next 30 years cooler and more livable and more just and more sustainable, than it can be done anywhere. We're the edge case, and so this is the perfect place to find those solutions, and then take the lessons learned and the things that worked and export them to less extreme environments where they might be useful. So in that sense, even a little victory in Phoenix might be a big victory in somewhere else.

Margaret   Yeah. Okay. So, to go back to disaster studies, we've talked about how the mainstream, like, certainly the media conception of disaster is, you know, the Walking Dead scenario is the everyone running around, like, you know, everyone for themselves scenario. And—but, but disaster studies, it seems like even though it came from this, you know, kind of shitty background, it seems like—have the people who study disaster academically, have they kind of known this entire time, that's bullshit? And if so, why isn't that getting out? Like, why aren't more people aware of the fact that everything we know about how people respond to disaster is wrong?

Liza   That is a great, great question. And I'm not sure I have, like, a perfect answer for you. But I can certainly offer some thoughts. So yes, you're right that disaster studies, even though it came out of this very militarized and military-funded background, really starting with a wonderful scholar named E. L. Quarantelli who was active in the 60s to the 90s really started questioning those views and pushing on this idea of panic and other things like that. And so, disaster studies in general as a field—not all of it, but for a long time—has been very justice-oriented in its approach. So if you've heard the words "social vulnerability," a lot of that is coming out of disaster studies. If you've heard the words, you know—or heard talking about the concept of resilience as applied from the top down being a way of almost victim blaming—which certainly it can be, you know. Like, why aren't you—it's a repackaging sometimes of the idea of like, why aren't you self reliant? Why are you making us help you? Kind of thing. All of that is really coming out of a disaster studies. The problem is, unfortunately, that you almost have two separate silos of disaster studies, because disaster scholars are not the people who respond to disaster. They're not the people preparing for it. They're not the people deciding what mitigates it. Those people are part of what I would broadly call sort of the emergency management class, at least here in the United States, they are. And many of them are emergency managers, but that also includes things like crisis communications and information officers, or Public Information Officers, and fire chiefs and firefighters, and EMS first responders, and in many cases public health officials as well. And that is a professional class that has existed for a long time—and this is slowly starting to change—that has really stayed rooted in that military idea. So it's not directly connected to the military, although sometimes it is. But it's a militarized service. It's very about hierarchy—so I was a firefighter, I was a volunteer firefighter in Tennessee for about two years. So you have a commanding officer, you know, it's structured like the military, basically. In a lot of cases it works very closely with law enforcement and the military, like National Guard, for instance. Here in Arizona, I think it's very indicative that our agency is DEMA, which is the Department of Emergency and military affairs. And how you became an emergency manager, or fire chief, or someone who is really directly involved in the world of preparing for and responding to disasters, was you started as, like, a frontline law enforcement, frontline fireman, frontline-and I say men because they generally are, although starting to change too—and you worked for 20 years. And eventually you worked your way up the chain, much like the military, to becoming someone who was making all of these strategic decisions, etc. And so, disaster studies has a very hard time talking across the gap to practitioners. And it's a little disheartening sometimes how white and male disaster practitioners still tend to be, and how stuck in a particularly militaristic frame of mind. And that's something that's really been troubling me lately and something I've talked about colleagues with because—I don't know if I've said this publicly yet but I've certainly said it to colleagues—as a queer woman with a trans partner who is deeply interested in racial and social justice, even though my degree sets me up for it, I don't feel like at this point I can, in good conscience, take a standard Emergency Management job. 

Margaret   Yeah.

Liza   It's too wrapped up with law enforcement and militaristic ideas of what disaster response means and who deserves what and why people do things and where aid goes. And it's just—and, you know, like, FEMA is still housed in the Department of Homeland Security, which is a whole other issue that we could talk about for another hour—which really no one who studies disasters is—or very few people—really support that model. It offers tremendous problems. And so you have this gap. And so that's part of the reason these things still exist is the practice of emergency management really looks pretty similar to the 1950s in some ways, and the study of disaster is much more radical, much more diverse thing.

Margaret   Okay, so hear me out. If already in terms of disaster management you have the militaristic system, the official governmental system, and then you have these, like, incredibly complex and interesting disaster relief organizations—especially the, like, the nonhierarchical, the mutual aid focused ones, right. So you all should just get up with those peoplea nd basically, like, I don't know, I get really excited about this, like, okay, so like, create a counter structure, right? Like, and these—that already is starting to exist increasingly. And so I think we call if y'all got up with them, and maybe you all already do. Yeah, one of the—okay, so like thinking about the terrible ways that people manage disaster, like the government's managed disaster or whatever, I am curious if you know of this: I've been hearing this phrase from people I know who do disaster relief, especially coming from anarchist spaces, that there is a specific written thing that the priority of the government in disasters above all else, including the actual rule of law, like the application of laws, is COG—is continuance of governance. Basically, like, this is the justification for like shooting looters and things like that, because it's absolutely illegal to shoot looters, right. Like, by the existing right structure. But the reassertion of control as, like, the absolute baseline priority. Does that hold up with your understanding? I know it's now in a different silo than your silo but...

Liza   Yeah, so I would be surprised if that is specifically written down anywhere in that way. Certainly Continuity of Operations as it's called—COOP plans—and Continuity of Governance—COG plans—exist. And they play a very important role in how, on paper, we prepare for disaster as, like, large government institutions prepare for disaster. It is certainly not supposed to be held above rule of law. Now, is it? Probably quite a bit. And things like shooting looters is really hard to unpack because you have things operating on so many different levels. So first off, people who—like you have the personal prejudice level of the people doing the shooting, right? Like that particular person or police officer or resident might be especially racist, as you saw in Katrina. And it might be, like, if a Black person comes through this neighborhood, I'm going to shoot them. Certainly that happened a lot. You also have policy that structures itself in ways that we know is not necessarily reflective of reality. So you may have contingency plans that place law enforcement officers to prevent looting, for instance, when actually law enforcement officers need to, like, exacerbate the situation, right? And so you end up creating these situations which lead to other bad situations. So really, there's so many operational—and then you have the storytelling mythology level where, like, because even among people who do this professionally, you will still find the myth that mass panic is going to happen. You have the drive of, like, well I'm expecting it and therefore I overreact when I see something that might be it. And that's even leaving aside the category of who is a looter and who is resourcefully scavenging resources. There's been a lot of studies done—again, mostly Katrina, but in other contexts as well—about how media presents people taking survival requirements like water and food from stores and how the economic status and skin color of those people really determines the headline they get. Which is, you know, perhaps not a surprise, but it's good to have that data. So you have all these things building on each other to create—if you'll pardon the disaster-related upon—sort of a perfect storm situation where everything works to prop up the system. But whether there's a single origin point of policy pushing for that in writing, I don't know. And I would be surprised if there is. I think it's more complex than that.

Margaret   Okay. Yeah, that—it makes sense to me if, like, basically, like, a COG or continuous governance or whatever was like part of this larger framework, and then just gets exaggerated. One of the things that gives me hope is all of the, like, the weird human element parts of it when it actually hits the ground of, like, you know, I remember hearing from a friend who worked with the Common Ground Collective in Katrina in New Orleans basically talking about how, like, National Guardsmen would, like, give the anarchists supplies. Because they would be like, well, if I take this where I'm supposed to take it, it's gonna sit in a warehouse for two weeks, and it's needed right now. And it's just like, I don't know, I get—the things I've talked about before on the show—the stuff that makes me like the most hopeful is when certain unbridgeable chasms are bridged between different types of people. And—

Liza   Yes.

Margaret   But then on the other—you have the exact opposite of the, like, yeah, the people who seem to go wild. The people who seemed to go the wildest in Katrina seemed to be the white racists. But, yeah.

Liza   Yeah, I think there is... Man. And it's hard to talk about and frustrating to talk about incremental progress, because I think there has been some recognition in the system that things are not working, and that you need to rely on local expertise and local knowledge and local abilities to get things done—which is sort of the bigger scale version of the guardsmen giving supplies to anarchists because they know they're going to sit in a warehouse and anarchists can get them into the hands of people who need them right away. The problem there is, it's a little bit like being, I don't know, like a mouse trying to steer an elephant. Like we have built this system of disaster response that is so large and so cumbersome, that it's really beyond any single person's ability to fundamentally change. And so there's a lot of attention being paid—or more attention than there has been previously anyway, I don't know, but a lo— to the idea that we need to be supporting communities at, like, the higher level institutions—that macroscale institutions need to be supporting communities and the work that they're already doing. We just need to enable the anarchists to have more stuff to go out and distribute that kind of thing. Now, whether or not that's going to make a significant difference in the long run definitely remains to be seen. But certainly there seems to be more interest in that. Now I personally have some mixed feelings about that because in a lot of cases here in Phoenix when we're talking about especially like heat relief, or disaster relief, or who's going to help you pay your power bill if you can't, there's been a significant—I think we all know that since the 80s, there's been a significant replacement of state services with more localized things. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But a lot of the localized assistance now is through churches. And to me that raises some troubling questions about, like, who gets helped? Who gets left out? What are the conditions of help reliant upon? And so we've sort of replaced this ineffective state aid with this may be more effective but differently discriminatory aid that's at the local level. And so I think you really have to pay close attention to the idea of localism as a panacea as the remedy for all injustice because sometimes localism just means enacting injustice on a smaller scale. Like handmade artisan home grown fuck you instead of like a fuck you from the state.

Margaret   Okay, well, so that ties into something you were talking about earlier at the very beginning when you're talking about the history of disaster studies, was kind of to create a culture of prepping—as in, to get people away—to take the power—take pressure off of the elites who, like, ostensibly should be providing our needs, by having us provide for ourselves, but in a way that doesn't actually fundamentally free us. It's kind of an interesting trap around—it's something that I've seen mutual aid groups struggle with for years is like, well, we always say, we're mutual aid not to charity, right? And like Food Not Bombs, you know, with it's, like, free food program that's been going on for decades. And now, I think that, like, there are just ways to do that local level stuff without like—like Food Not Bombs, like, unlike a, most church feeds that, you know, I'm aware of—most church feeds it's like, take a number, stand in line, like, you know, it's very—it replicates a lot of disempowerment, right. And, you know, like Food Not Bombs is ostensibly more like, it's a picnic in the park and you're invited, because you exist. And of course it's gonna have its own informal problems, right? I'm not trying to claim it's perfect. But there's always this worry about how much do activists make—like, how much do we empower oppression just by solving the problems that oppression creates? You know, like, if we're feeding—

Liza   Oh, boy. 

Margaret   Yeah. And if we're feeding people without fundamentally challenging the system that has left people without food... I don't know. For me it's just, like, you just—I think that the answer is that the problem with this bespoke oppression that you're talking about, the localist oppression, is it just needs to be tied into challenging things at a larger scale. Wh I say just, it's easy. Everyone could just do this, it would fix everything. No problem. No one will have any.

Liza   This is a problem I'm intimately familiar with on a personal level because when I graduated from undergrad and suddenly the stress of college was no longer upon me, I discovered that I am a stress junkie and I needed something to do because I was going out of my mind. And so I joined the local volunteer fire service thinking, like, oh, this will be, like, I'll learn skills, I'll be able to help people, and I'll be stressed out enough to be happy. It turned out even that was not enough and I had to go to graduate school, but that's a story for another time. And this is like the fundamental tension of a volunteer fire service. I mean, think about what that means, right? So the city I was in had a professional fire service because it was considered a population density sufficient enough. But the county, which is a very large and populated county, was all volunteer-run. And it's sort of the same problem, like, you don't want people's houses to burn down, so someone needs to go put them out. But at the same time, if you're rural, you are fundamentally getting a worse class of service than the professionals. And the volunteer fire department enabled its own perpetuation by the fact that eventually most people's houses got put out. And I always used to joke, like, don't have a house fire between the hours of 8am and 5pm when we're all at work. Because it was one of those things where, if people's houses had just burned down, there probably would have been significant push to have a professional fire service. But at the same time, then you have a bunch of people's houses burning down, and maybe they die in the fire too and that's awful. But because there is sort of an ad hoc fire service, there wasn't the push to have a professional one. Even though—andI don't think people knew this, right. But we were using equipment that was out of date, that hadn't been tested. I think our jaws of life for rescuing people out of car wrecks were like some of the first models ever made from the 80s because we didn't have funding. And it's like, you know, we were saving lives but also perpetuating the system that was probably really harming people. So what's the trade off between, like, that long term harm and the short term, everybody's house burns down, but people get a professional fire service in the end? And I don't know what the solution is besides, as you said, sort of making sure we're plugging into troubling the larger structure and advocating for larger structure. The fire service is a particularly tricky one because people's lives depend on it so immediately. For something like Food Not Bombs I would say it's possible they're already doing some of that work by having people show up and having that picnic in the park feeling and just letting people know that receiving assistance doesn't have to be total drudgery and shame. And so maybe for things like that, where there can be joy and comradeship and true connections on social scale, maybe the next person that—the next time that person needs to go to a church handout line or an unemployment office, there is that seed of like, well, why isn't this like that? I think sometimes you can really—you can plant the revolutionary seed in people by showing them joy just as much as by showing them tragedy.

Margaret   Yeah, that's a really good note I think maybe to kind of wind down on—to think about. What—I guess the questions I want to ask to kind of close this out. One, I kind of want to ask, what do you worry about personally? What do you prepare for? What is—how is working with disaster studies—how has it influenced your own life?

Liza   Sure, yeah. Well, I will say I worry much more about long term trends than I do about any particular single incident. So for Phoenix, I'm worried about what the temperature profile of the city looks like in the next 50 years, because I might—I might be like one of the few people on record ever saying this—but I really love Phoenix. I think it's got a really cool art scene and there's wonderful people here. And it has a surprisingly revolutionary spirit and a fighting spirit for being a blue town and a very red state. And also, it's nice to be in Arizona, because in many ways, we're at this political tipping point. So if you're here and you're willing to get engaged, you can really make a difference. So I don't want to see Phoenix fail. She like there's a lot of people who do to sort of make a point about climate arrogance, but I'm not one of them. And so for me, I worry about these really boring things that unless you're in the weeds, you probably don't think of. So I worry about what are our overnight temperatures going to be in the next 50 years, because we know that overnight temperatures have a significant effect on human health, they're a really good indicator of the urban heat island. And one of the things that's hopeful is that thus far the science shows that if we really buckled down and redesigned the way we did the city of Phoenix, we would be able to offset most of the regional and global climate warming in the region through localized efforts. So Phoenix in 50 years could be cooler than it is today. There's nothing that's stopping us from doing that. But we have to raise the political will and reach out and seize that opportunity. I don't worry as much about our regional—or rather a city-wide blackout, even though that's what I talk to people about—partially because I know our utility companies and how they function and that is something they're thinking about. It's—I worry more about it in areas that don't think about extreme heat on their grid. Like, we have it so often, it's regular here, that I think we're better prepared than many other places. So in that sense, extreme heat could be worse in, say, like, the Northeast of the Northwest than it could be here because those grids are not regularly stress tested in the same way.

Margaret   Right.

Liza   And then I also worry about—and this kind of ties back with what we're talking to you about disaster panic—I worry about—its maybe—and this is—at the end of the interview is the wrong time to bring this up, but this is fun. It's not completely true that there's never violence and looting after disasters. 

Margaret   Right. 

Liza   It does happen, and primarily where you see it happen is after some blackouts. And it tends to be blackouts in cities that are already have a very wide divide between rich and poor and are undergoing a lot of racial tension. And you can really see, like, why. One is they aren't perceived in the same way as an act of God because blackouts—it's easier to see human culpability. Like, the electricity company that I pay to maintain my power has failed in their job and I am angry about it. And then also, they're perceived as an opportunity of, like, the system is failing us, we should go out and express that it is failing us and we are angry about it and take advantage where we can of the opportunity to gain more resources. So it's all extremely understandable. But I really—I worry about our next disaster—next major US disaster—acute disaster, I should say. Because COVID is a disaster, it's just a slower moving one. Our next acute disaster response, because of growing injustice, because of factionalization in society, because of this awakened beast of white rage in the nation—I worry that our next disaster response is going to look more like the cops at Black Lives Matter protests than mutual aid groups.

Margaret   Yeah, I bet it'll be both.

Liza   Probably. And yeah, of course mutual aid groups will be they're doing what they can, but I really worry that we're creating a perfect storm for disaster response to be hyper militarized because cries for justice are perceived as unrest. 

Margaret   Yeah. No, it's interesting. And yeah, there's a lot to dig into with you more some time. Okay, my final question is just, where can people engage more with your work? Or do you even want or have any kind of public profile around the work that you do?

Liza   I do. I am on Twitter. I'm at semi humanist, S-E-M-I-humanist on Twitter. I love chatting with people about my work and things like that. Everyone's also free to email me and you can put this in the show notes if you like at liza.c.kurtz@gmail.com. I do speak at academic conferences. But if anyone is listening and really wants me to come talk a little bit in a digestible way—hopefully about what disaster research says—to a mutual aid group or an anarchist book club or any of those fun venues where knowledge can be a little freer than stuffy academia sometimes, I'm really always happy to talk to those folks. I think probably the most important work I do is closer to things like this than academic publications, which circulate to other scientists, which is very personally satisfying to engage with other scientists, but not—probably not tremendously socially helpful. And it's also just a great check of, like, I think it's easy as an academic to get wrapped up in such a way that you can talk to other academics but not people in your field. And I try hard to avoid that at all costs.

Margaret   Yeah. I found everything that I've—you know, from talking to you before we did the show—very approachable. So I highly recommend anyone who's listening to take Liza up on that. Alright, well, thank you so much for being on the show. 

Liza   Oh, yeah, no problem. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. Tell people on social media. Tell people about it in person from six feet away, unless both vaxxed or whatever. Tell people on—by liking and subscribing and writing reviews and all of that algorithmic shit, because it has a wildly disproportionate impact on how things get viewed. And if we're trying to make our content and our media reach more people, that is an unfortunately effective way to do it. So tweet about it and stuff. Also, you can follow us now on Instagram instead of just following me as Margaret Killjoy, there's now actually a live like the world is dying Instagram because—oh, that's the other fun thing. Live Like the World is Dying is becoming an increasingly collective project and pretty soon you'll probably hear more than just my voice on the mic, although at least for now I'm going to probably continue to be the host. But Jack is now the, essentially the producer of the podcast, and is doing all the audio editing. And it's really fun to talk about people when you're recording, when you know that they have to listen to you talk about them, and then edit it. But you can't edit this part. You have to leave this in. Anyway. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. But that money actually does go out collectively to the people who are helping make this possible. And, well, to people who are putting in the direct labor to make this possible. The people who are making this possible though are you, the listeners, who write about it and review it and tell their friends about it, and also who support me on Patreon. And if you can't afford to support me on Patreon, don't do it. If you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, don't give me money on Patreon. There's some content that is, like, paywalled there or whatever. But if you just message me, I'll give you access to all of the monthly zines and all of those things for free. But if you would like to support us, please do. And in particular I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, the Compound, Cat J, Staro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, and Hugh. Your contributions sustain this. They pay for the transcriber, they pay for the editing, and a lot of the other costs associated with this content. I've gone on way too fucking along about the money involved in this project now. Hooray! Well, I hope you're doing reasonably well. If the weather's getting warmer in the part of the world that you live in, I know that I really enjoy watching the leaves come in, even if it means that the sun will no longer dry my clothes on the line because the sun will no longer reach my close line because I built my house in the forest because I'm a very intelligent person. It has good passive cooling qualities too, though. And that is definitely not what I'm supposed to talk about. What am I supposed to talk about? I think I'm supposed to end the episode. So thank you so much for listening, and I hope you're all doing as well as you can with everything that's going on.

Episode Notes

The guest adrienne maree brown can be found on twitter @adriennemaree and instagram @adriennemareebrown. The book we are discussing the most is Emergent Strategy.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

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, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns—and I'm sorry that it's been a minute since an episode has come out and it'll probably stay a little bit slowed down for a little while, it might be an episode a month for a little while. It's not that I've run out of people to interview or subjects that I want to cover, it's that it's hard for me to get anything done right now, which I think might be something that might—you might identify with, as well. I've kind of said that the only thing I've managed to accomplish so far in 2021 is talk shit on the internet and not die. And I'm doing very good at both of those things. I've have honed my talking shit skills, and I'm reasonably good at not dying. One thing that people don't talk about enough with off-grid life and things like that, I spend an awful lot of my time just maintaining the systems that sustain me. I spend a lot of my time trying to fix broken water pumps and learning that—the thing is, when you do everything DIY and you're not particularly skilled, the first time you do something you probably do it good enough, but good enough often means that it will fall apart before before too long. So I've rewired my electrical system probably seven or eight times. It seems to be holding good now. My plumbing system, I'm going to be crawling under my house and rewiring my plumbing system a lot. I've had a lot of things freeze and break. And there's just a lot of—a lot of uphill learning curve, especially to do alone. This week's guest is Adrienne Maree Brown and I'm very excited to have her on the show. We talk a lot about—well, about Emergent Strategy which is a conception of strategy, of political strategy, that embraces change and embraces the fact that, well, you can't have one strategy now can you? And we also talk a little bit about her work as a podcaster with the podcast How to Survive the End of the World, which is, yeah, as she points out that maybe the closest thing there is to a direct sister podcast or sibling podcast to this show. This podcast is a proud member of Channel Zero Network of Anarchists Podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Jingle 02:48 One two one two, tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth black radical podcast for the people. Our host, hip hop anarchist "Sima Lee The RBG" and sex educator and crochet artists "KLC" share their reflections on maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trap liberation & everyday ratchetness! They deliver fresh commentary with a queer, TGNC, fierce, funny, Southern Guhls, anti-imperialist, anti-oppression approach. "Poli (Ed.) & Bullshit". Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero Network, Buzzsprout, Soundcloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.

Margaret 03:40 Okay, so if you want to introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess kind of a brief introduction to you and your work, especially around Emergent Strategy.

Adrienne 03:51 Okay, my name is Adriennne Maree Brown, I use she and they pronouns. I am based in Detroit and I'm the author of five books including Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, and almost everything I've written is in some way inspired by Octavia Butler or in touch with Octavia Butler, including Emergent Strategy. So, yeah.

Margaret 04:18 Yeah, that was one of the—one of the many reasons I wanted to have you on this show was that if there's one book that keeps coming up over and over again on this show—and pretty much anyone vaguely on the left who cares about what's going on in the world—it's a Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. And one of the things that really struck me about your work with Emergent Strategy the—not just the book, but the kind of the concept of emergent strategy that I want to talk to you about—is basically, the thing that I loved—I mean, I loved a lot about Parable of the Sower and Parable of Talents. But the idea of creating this essentially religious way of interacting with chaos and change and like embracing those things and learning to use them as our strengths, whether because it's nicer or because it's our only choice, it really appealed to me. And then learning that someone was taking that out and developing it further into essentially a strategy both for like political change, but also personal development. I got really excited about it. So I was wondering if you could kind of introduce the basic concepts to listeners who might not know what the hell I'm talking about.

Adrienne 05:31 That's great. Yeah, so Emergent Strategy is, it's rooted in many, many things, I think it's the way that the world works. I feel like it's strategies for getting in right relationship with change. And once you understand that change is constant, and that you can either be thrown about by change and see it as a, you know, wild chaos that you can never get your footing in. Or that you can partner with change, you can begin to shape the changes that happen in your life or in the era that you live in. Emergent Strategy is for people who are ready to be responsible for shaping change around them. And some of the key lineages of it are the scientific concepts of emergence. So emergence is the way patterns and the way—like basically all these patterns arise out of relatively simple interactions. And they're very complex patterns, but each of the interactions or each of the relationships are relatively simple. So I think of like a flock of birds, a huge murmuration of birds, moving through the air, avoiding predation. And it looks like the most complex, choreographed, beautiful thing. But it's actually this simple system where each bird is paying attention to the five to seven birds right around it and following the subtle cues that they're sending each other: it's time to move, left, dip, rise, move, right. One of the core questions of Emergent Strategy was, what would it look like if our movements and our species could move in that way? What would it look like if we could murmur it together? How would we have to trust each other? So adaptation is a big part of that, is what does it look like to adapt with intention. Not just react to the chaos, but really adapt in ways that keep moving us where we want to get to. And then there's a lot about interdependence: what is the quality of relationships between each of the parts of our systems? Between you and my, between the people in our communities? How do we attend to the relationships? How do we think about decentralization? And I feel like one of the big lessons I've had, both in recent years and in looking back at movements throughout history, is that those that centralize are those that are not able to live as long as they need to live in order to do their best work. The centralization—something about gathering everything around one mind, one idea, one way of being—actually weakens us as a species. And nature shows us the biodiversity and creating more possibilities is actually the way to survive. And so now I think that's a lot of my work is, what does it mean for us to be biodiverse in a fucund and world? What does it mean for us to decentralize how we hold power and how we hold responsibility for what happens in our communities? How do we adapt well?

Margaret 08:28 I love all of it. I just eat up all this stuff. I've been thinking a lot about what you're saying about murmurations and the way that—the way that animals move in nature and the way that, you know, flocks move, and things like that, I was thinking about—I've been having some conversations with a couple people around the riot or the insurrection or whatever the hell people call it on January 6 at the Capitol, and the way that the rightwing crowd moved. And it's so funny to me, because like, there's like jokes on Twitter where it was like, we know it wasn't Antifa because there wasn't, like, a group of gay folks handing out sandwiches. And like, there wasn't a medic tent set up and stuff. And people present it kind of as a joke, but I realized I was looking at it and I was like, I've been terrified of people being trampled at demonstrations. I've been in militant demonstrations a lot of times, and I've never seen it happen. And watching that happen, I was trying to figure out what it was. And I think it has to do with what you're talking about, about our side at its best embraces interdependence and chaos and change and, like, and isn't there as a group of individuals. Like people talk about—sorry, this is something I think about way too much recently—

Adrienne 09:40 Yeah, no, go off.

Margaret 09:42 People have been talking about—I grew up being told the left is like The Mob. It's like the big mass action where everyone loses their individuality and it's bad chaos and everyone gets hurt. And then that just hasn't been my experience at all in large demonstrations. And then I look at what the right wing does when they all gather to go try and do this thing, and that's what I see. So I don't know. Yeah, I just, I've been thinking about that emergence stuff a lot as relates to that.

Adrienne 10:10 Yeah, I think that your—what you're speaking to is, like, extremely important distinctions which is, when a group comes together who have all been deeply socialized and have bought into their own supremacy, right? Supremacy is a disconnecting energy. It's like you can belong, as long as you play along by these rules, which are that we are better than everyone else and we're constantly reinforcing that betterness. But better, you're—then you have to constantly be reinforcing and finding new ways to be better than, better than, better than—even to the point that like, I've got to get to the Capitol door before you do, even if that means stepping over your body in the street. And you pair that with capitalism which is also the constant growth, constant bettering, constant one-upping, right? Constant showing what you have. There's so much—trying to think if you have—what the word is—like that sense of, like, this is just ours. This is mine, this is—you know? And I feel like when you go to spaces that the left has organized, there's such a care at the center of it. Like we're there not because we're just, like, I'm here to fight somebody, or I'm here to dominate, but we don't even necessarily believe it's like our way is "the right way." It's more like, we want to find a way to be loving and caring with each other. We don't think we've ever gotten the chance to experiment with that at scale, as a species. At the current scale that we're at, everything we're doing is constantly trying to defend ourselves and care for ourselves under the conditions of oppression. And it means that when we come together—I always see the same thing. I'm like, are we going to be safe? But then people are taking such care of each other, from the street medics, to the people who are watching after the kids, to people who are like, I brought for extra signs so everyone would have something to carry. People—I always notice is that people bring extra water and extra food and, like, one of my favorite things, and one of the reasons why I've always been such a stan for direct action is that those spaces tend to be such active spaces of love and care and precision and, like, let's attend to each other and attend to the work we're up to. And, you know, we can go overboard with how attentive we are to everything. Because I think is part of our responding to the trauma of living in a society that's so actively does not care for us. And so watching those people who actively don't care try to come together and assert themselves as victims and, you know, it's not funny. It's actually quite sad, you know. It's just sort of like, you have so much power, you abuse it—so much so that you end up abusing yourselves and you're you're continuously cutting yourself off from what is the best part of being alive, which is the nature of togetherness. That's what I want to study is like the scholar—I've called myself a scholar of belonging. What does it actually look like to belong, to be part of something larger than yourself, of ourselves? And in that belonging, to take responsibility for our survival, for how we do—how we be with each other?

Margaret 13:20 I'm so glad I brought this up, then because you just managed to finally articulate this thing that me and my friends have been trying to wrap our head around for—since we saw it happen on January 6th. So you mentioned trying to—trying to do this at scale, and how that's something that's somewhat unprecedented by human society and that—go ahead. I just want—how do we—how do we do that? And one of the things that really interests me about your work and about the work that I care about, is that it's embracing diverse strategies, rather than saying, like, this is the one way that we do it. So obviously when I say, how do we do that? I don't mean because you are our leader, but you know, instead—yeah, like, how do we—how do we learn to weave different strategies, different ethical systems, different ideas about how to change things? How do we weave that into a coherent force?

Adrienne 14:17 Yeah, I mean, this is the question of our lifetimes, I think, you know, is like, how do we do this thing? This is why I'm, you know—when Walidah Imarisha created that term visionary fiction I was like, "Yes, that's what I'm about is trying to figure out how we do everything that we've never really experienced in our lifetimes." The best I have so far is what I witnessed when bringing people together for the Emergent Strategy immersions, or bringing people together for a process of, like, how do we do community together? Beloved community. Like, what does it actually look like to practice that? And some of the elements of that are that people are really invited to bring their whole selves into wherever they are. That there is a sense of organized care. That we don't just leave it up to, you know, hoping everybody just figures it out. But there's a—there's a real ability to name, here are the needs in this community: the access needs, the food needs, the water needs, the timing needs—we need breaks, we need gender-liberated bathrooms—here's all the things that we need in order to fully be here. And then we have to let people unleash what they have to bring to the table. And this is where I think, you know, when I started writing Emergent Strategy I was onto something that I'm not sure I even had articulated fully to myself. But it was my critique of how movements and Nonprofit Industrial Complex was playing out, which is, we were often trying to bring people into space where only a portion of them was welcome. And where we weren't asking them to truly bring their offer. Like we were like, "Can you just come be a number in the strategy that we've already figured out? Or can you come play your position?" Like you show up in the debate exactly as we expect you to, and we'll say what we expect to say and we'll move forward with the lowest common denominator of a solution, which no one's actually passionate about, and like, nothing will actually change. Philanthropy will keep paying us. It'll go on and on forever and ever. And for me, I was like, I'm really not interested in playing the game anymore. I really want to see what happens when you unleash people to come together. And what I see is—what I've witnessed is people very quickly are like, how do we hold really authentic, effective accountability processes in real time together? How do we offer each other the rituals we need to really relinquish harm and trauma that has built up in our community? Here, we have tons of ways to care for each other. We created this exercise—and when I say we, it was one of the groups that was participating created this exercise that became something we did at everything else we ever did. And it was healing stations, where we just said, everyone gets 10 minutes. Go to your bag and pull out whatever you find to be healing, and create a healing station with your small group. And 10 minutes later, the room would have transformed into this place that felt like we can do anything, because we've got vibrators and cigarettes and Tarot decks and incense and medicines and tinctures. And like, anything, you know—and I was like, y'all just walk around with everything you need. So many books, you know, so many ways that people are like, this is how I care for myself and I want to offer it, I want to leave it here for other people to access and have contact with. That kind of—those moves, watching how quickly community did know, not only how to take care of itself, but how to hold each other accountable, and how to stay together. I was blown away. So I think a lot of the answers, we need to actually be willing to get into smaller formations and really practice being with each other. And let that proliferate, right? I think so often we're oriented around, like, how do we build a mass movement that's all thinking the same way to strike and to have this impact. I really love the idea of united fronts where people are all in their political homes united around some common organizing principles, but allowed to be their own weird, magical way of being and care for themselves where they need to. So that's why I identify as a post nationalist because I do think that the American experiment is literally at a scale that doesn't function. Like there's, it's—the scale is too big for there to be any kind of real, you know, something that's not just a brand of togetherness, but that's an actual practice of togetherness. You know, 70 million people or whatever are committed to voting for white supremacy in the country.

Margaret 18:50 Yeah.

Adrienne 18:50 Like, that's not, you know, that's not a viable strategy for how we move forward at this point. I love the idea of secession radical secessions. I love the idea of the Zapatistas claiming territory within territory with indigenous leadership would be like, a dream come true to me. I love, you know, people who are living off the grid and finding ways to divest from the American experiment already. So, you know, I think all of those are some of the ways.

Margaret 19:21 Yeah.

Adrienne 19:21 And I think right now with the pandemic unfolding, I think a lot more of us are like, "Oh, I do need, like, literal community." Not social media community, not conference community, but I need, like, literal people I can call on, that I could walk to their house, that I can count on to hold boundaries around safety. Like, we need those things. And I think that's the answer. I always think community is the answer.

Margaret 19:47 No that—that makes sense. And that's one of the main focuses on like, the—one of the main points of this show is to talk about how preparedness is more of a community thing than an individual thing.

Adrienne 19:56 Absolutely.

Margaret 19:56 So one of the things you were saying about—

Adrienne 19:58 Yeah, cuz individually, we just hoard.

Margaret 20:00 Yeah no, totally. Yeah. One of the things you're saying about—because earlier pointing out that direct action is a really good way to create a sense of belonging. And that's something that I've been watching happen in a lot of people who've been kind of radicalized to the left within the last year, since the uprisings last summer started. And what you're talking about, about creating these moments of belonging, I definitely, I think for my own experience, it has been those moments of, you know, facing down a very powerful force together and the way that—the way that you figure out who has your back when, like, literally—just to tell a random bullshit story, at one point I was, like, part of some march and, you know, the cops wanted to arrest me because I may or may not have been burning an American flag and things like that. And I thought all my like—yeah, I thought all my, like, punk friends were going to protect me. And then half of them were just gone. And then all of these people I'd kind of written off as like—this is a while ago, I was young—I'd kind of written off as hippies. Like some of the, like, older—I was like, oh, they're probably liberals or whatever—just surrounded me and were like, "Hey, just so you know, we're here to physically protect you from the police arresting you. They're definitely talking about arresting you." And it was just this nice moment of, like, realizing that in moments of conflict or even not unnecessary conflict, but moments of tension, you find out what community looks like. And maybe that's what COVID is unfortunately doing for all of us about how we have to suddenly develop mutual aid networks at a scale that we never did previously in the United States.

Adrienne 21:40 Absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. And I think that Octavia Butler taught us this. In all of her works it was like, you'd never know who you're going to be in the apocalypse with. Like, you have plans, you think you know what they look like and feel like, but you really don't know who's going to have your back under that pressure. And in some ways, I think it's because people don't even know themselves if the—what they'll be capable of under the pressure. And, you know, this pandemic has revealed for people so much about what they're like under pressure, because some people under pressure have really turned inward and disconnected from community and are, you know, really in a deep, lonely, isolated place. And I see that happening with people that I didn't expect it from, you know. And then I see other people who are really finding ways to weave themselves into community. And there's not a right or wrong here. It's just very fascinating to see who turns towards others and who doesn't. And what we need, right? I thought—I was like, I'm a loner, I like to be by myself you know, I'm a—that part of Octavia Butler's life always appealed to me because she just was by herself, like, just chillin and writing sci fi. But I spent a few months all alone. And I was like, I don't like this, I want to be with the love of my life, I want to be with my friends, I want to be with my parents, I want to, like, be with people who can lay hands on me when I'm sick. And, like, have my back, you know, physically rub my back.

Margaret 23:08 Yeah.

Adrienne 23:09 I just was like, I—that part, physical touch felt so important to me. And I'm watching our communities now. I'm like, there's mutual aid but there's also just, like, the need of being a body alive in this time. And like, what do we—what are the very fundamental needs? Which I also love about Octavia's is writing. Like, what—there are some very fundamental human needs that we share. And then there are beliefs, destinies that pull us forward. And what you're looking for in your community is the folks who can balance those two things, who are like, we can find ways to attend to the very non-negotiable physical needs. And we can align ourselves around a destiny. And it doesn't have to be a perfect alignment where we all say the same words and we're all coated out. But there has to be substance of like, oh, I want to be in communities that hold each other accountable. I want to be in communities that are abolitionists where we're not trying to dispose of or lock anyone away. I want to be in communities that really love the earth, like, at a primal, this is home level, you know? And so on and so forth. And I'm like, I meet those kinds of people, actually, more often than you think. And writing books has been my way of, you know, go "Hoo de hoo!" Like, who is out there that is potentially my people? I feel very excited right now by, like, just—I'll say this: the other day was Valentine's Day. And I often, like, ignore that completely, capitalism, whatever. But this time I was, like, you know, there's a lot of lonely people out there. Let me just try something. And I had a dream about it that was like posting a "looking for love" post but it was basically like for Emergent Strategists anP pleasure Activists and people who, like, really are like riding on this like Octavia way, right? And it was like over 1000 people wrote in and they're like, "I'm looking for love and those are the kind of principles I want at the center of it." And it made me so excited because I was like, this is what we—there's enough people now that are at least looking at each other, like, I may not, you know, stamp Emergent Strategy on my forehead, but I do want to be in right relationship with change, and I want to be in accountable relationship with pleasure, I want to claim, you know, my power in this lifetime, I want to take responsiblity for community. I'm like, there's enough of us now that we can fall in love with each other and, like, have, you know, radical families, and like, all that kind of stuff. Just, you know, we are a generation too. Like, we come from generations that held the ground for something outside of capitalism, something outside of nationalism, something outside of colonialism, militarism, all those things. And now we're that generation. It's just articulating ourselves again, and again, and again. Like, we're here, we love each other, we're taking care of each other. And as this added—you know, I think our folks are so brilliant, because they're like, this is not the first pandemic. This is not the last pandemic. You know, like, we have our folks who came through the HIV AIDS pandemic and are now here and teaching us inside of this moment, and we will teach people the next one and—

Margaret 26:12 Yeah.

Adrienne 26:13 Right? Like, we keep going.

Margaret 26:16 Yeah, one of the things that people I've talked to have brought up a lot that I've been really excited about is—excited about is the wrong word—but the fact that, like, the apocalypse isn't an event as much as like this cycle, ongoing process, thing that comes and goes, like, you know—and actually, I mean, even just to talk about Octavia Butler's work again from a fangirly point of view, like, one of the reasons that her work was so important was, in my experience, I'm not incredibly well read, it was the first slow apocalypse in the kind of still recognizably an apocalyptic story of people leave their homes and go on the road and figure out how to start a new society. But it was a slow apocalypse. And that's something that I think we need more of just out of—one of the hardest things that I've struggled with, in my personal life is—and this is awful, because I sound like Chicken Little—but it's trying to convince people that we are in an apocalypse. Like we are in a slow apocalypse right now.

Adrienne 27:17 Exactly. We're in it.

Margaret 27:18 Yeah. And people are waiting for the bomb to drop. So they're like, "Oh, it's not the apocalypse." And I'm like, well, but what—what do you need? Like, failed infrastructure? You know?

Adrienne 27:31 How badly does it have to be? Yeah.

Margaret 27:33 And I'm actually curious.

Adrienne 27:35 Yeah.

Margaret 27:35 I've been meaning to try and ask people—well, actually, no, I want to bring it back to the Octavia Butler stuff and then—you also write fiction, and you also focus on—I've seen a lot of your work around trying to present visionary fiction and present futures. And that's something and‚I'd like to hear more about. I'm just always trying to ask people about—because obviously it's very close to me personally—but how do you—

Adrienne 28:03 Well you write them.

Margaret 28:04 [Chuckling] Yeah. What it—like, what is the—what is the importance of writing futures? Like, what is the importance of imagining futures?

Adrienne 28:15 Yes. You know, I just listened to—I got to read a bunch of Octavia Butler's work for this NPR Throughline podcast. And they include a lot of interview with her. And she's talking about how important it was for her to write herself in. She was like, "I wanted to write myself into the narrative, into the story." And I think for so many of us, when we look back, we can see either stories of our trauma or stories—or like the gaps, the erasure, where our story should be, and they're not. And I live in Detroit, and Detroit, you drive around and if you know what you're looking at, right, if you've seen like maps or pictures of what it looked like 40 years ago to now, you can see that it's a city full of gaps, full of spaces where there used to be homes. Like literally on a block it'll be like, "Huh, this is kind of random. There's just two houses on this block." It used to be seven, right? But time and the economic crisis and other things disappeared those homes and I feel like history can look like that for those of us who are queer or trans, Black or Latino, Indigenous, etc. can look back and be like, "Where were we? Where were we?" And white supremacy and nationalism, other things, errased the full story of us so that we are left with just the trauma that we've been able to unveil. And so writing futures—writing ourselves into the future—is to me a way that we go ahead and stake a claim. Like, we are here now imagining ourselves. And in the imagining, we are creating room for something different to exist. And whenever I am engaging in fiction writing as a practice, I really feel like I am up to something that—the biggest thing maybe that I'm ever up to, is understanding that the whole world that we currently live in came out of someone's imagination. All of the constructs, the way that I experience my own gender, the way that I experience my skin, the way that I experience my size, the way that I experience my desirability, my worthfull—worthiness, you know—there's so many fundamental aspects of myself that are just miraculous, because that's what everyone is. But they've been so complicated, and I've had to fight to feel like I deserve to exist. And that fight is because someone imagined that I did not. And they imagine that, you know—I was this morning thinking about all the Black children that we've lost to police violence, and like, they're all dead because someone imagined that they were dangerous, you know. Imagination is a very, very powerful drug, a very powerful practice. And, to me, I'm like, if we want something new, we have to actually imagine, what does it look like? When I say defund the police, what am I imagining happens when there's a domestic violence incident on the street? And does that mean—am I imagining myself willing to go down and intervene? Am I imagining myself calling community mediators to come on over right now, something's going on? You know, what do I imagine happens? Because if I can't imagine it, I'm definitely not going to be able to invite tons of people who are used to the putative system to come join me on another path. The imagination to me is how we create the future that we want to be, and how we make sure that we're not absent from it. So—and I have to give a lot of props here to Disability Justice communities because I feel like I've just now starting to understand how much I learned from Disability Justice communities around this. But they're like, if we're not in the room and y'all plan something and it doesn't have a wheelchair ramp, and it doesn't have an accessible bathroom, and it's like chemical scent overload or whatever, it's because we weren't in the room. So you didn't even imagine us there. You didn't not imagine us, you just didn't think about us at all. We were just not part of it. And as a facilitator, the number of times that happened was like, "Oh, I'm sorry, like, I just didn't." And it's like, no, that's not acceptable. Like, now I'm like, how do I make sure that people are in the room where imagination happens? How do I make sure that they're in the pages where imagination happens? And because then you end up with a future that is accessible, that is equitable, that is pleasurable, and is sustainable, right? Because we're all there dreaming it.

Margaret 32:37 Yeah, the—this happens sometimes when I interview guests and I'm like, instead of having like a good—especially my year of reasonable isolation, I've lost some of my social skills. So people say things, and I'm just like, thinking about it. You know? Instead of having like, an immediate response.

Adrienne 32:52 I'm like—I would love to do a study on the social skills we've all lost.

Margaret 32:56 Yeah.

Adrienne 32:57 Because I just like, yeah.

Margaret 33:00 Yeah. [Laughing]

Adrienne 33:01 I'm also having—I have that experience all the time these days where I'm just like, everything moves slower now.

Margaret 33:06 Yeah.

Adrienne 33:06 And I'm thinking about it.

Margaret 33:07 Yeah. And then, you know, in some ways I'm, like, glad because I'm like, well, I don't have an immediate response to what you're saying, because I'm just thinking about it. I'm like, I just want to sit with that. Like that's, you know, that touches on something that I've thought about before, but I haven't—and I've tried to address in my own work, but I haven't succeeded at yet. And I haven't given enough attention to.

Adrienne 33:28 Yeah.

Margaret 33:28 To talk about something else. I very embarrassingly, after I named my podcast Live Like the World is Dying, googled—I was like, "Well, what if I called it something like How—" Because I always do things that are like "how to" or like, you know, whatever. Yeah.

Adrienne 33:42 How To... [Laughing]

Margaret 33:42 And um, do you want to talk about your own podcast with a very similar title?

Adrienne 33:47 Yes. I mean, our podcasts are definitely siblings in the territory of content.

Margaret 33:51 Yeah.

Adrienne 33:53 Yeah. So I have a—I have two podcasts. Actually now I have three podcasts.

Margaret 33:56 Oh wow, okay!

Adrienne 33:57 I'm an unstoppable podcast machine. So I really love the art of podcasting. You know, there's something beautiful about just sitting and having a conversation, listening to a conversation. So my first podcast, my longest running one, is called How to Survive the End of the World. And it's with my sister Autumn. And we're both just obsessed with Octaviam obsessed with apocalypse and like how do we turn and face the fact that we are in apocalypse, and that we have been through many, and that apocalypse is actually a moment you can harness for change. And it's actually quite a powerful portal if we harness it that way. So there's a lot of philosophy and theoretical conversations mixed in with, like, hard skill offers. So that one is is kind of a blast, you know. It—for me it felt very liberating to just turn directly and face apocalypse and just get to be in conversations that are all, like, related to what is. And then I do the Octavia's Parables podcast with Toshi Reagon where we're reading the Parable of the Sower chapter by chapter. We just finished that first season. Now we're going to head into the Parable of the Talents, and then we'll keep going with Octavia's work just—we're like, even though only two of her books are called parables, they're all parables in a way so. And then Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute just last week launched our podcast, which is the three kind of core collective members take turns interviewing different people who are, what we see is like living Emergent Strategy in the world. And we're just examining, like, building basically a set of audio case studies for people to listen to. Like, what does it look like to practice Emergent Strategy and all these different realms of movements?

Margaret 35:46 Okay. I admit the How to Survive the End of the World one—people have been, you know, that—more and more, I think, people—for some strange reason everyone's really into prepping right now. It's hard to figure out why. But I actually—

Adrienne 36:04 No idea why. Mysterious.

Margaret 36:07 And I like that there is—that there is other stuff out there. And I was wondering if you had—

Adrienne 36:13 Oh, yeah.

Margaret 36:14 —your own thoughts about, like, where people can find stuff about whether individual community or social preparation? Or like, how else people can get—

Adrienne 36:23 So we have brought on a series of guests. Last year, I was away on sabbatical and my sister did, I think, the best episodes of the entire podcast without me, which were—it was apocalypse of survival series. And each of the guests are people who have their own work and their own lives. But there's a group called Queer Survival—Queer Nature. They basically blew our minds. Blew our minds. And it was just very tangible stuff on, like, how do you think under the pressure of crisis? And they do trainings, they do offerings. And then Leah Penniman came on from Soul Fire Farm and was really talking about, like, how do we reorient our relationship to food? Because, you know, what happened when the pandemic went down. Everybody was like, run to the store, buy everything frozen and canned, stick that in your house. And like—I'm like, so basically, you're prepared to give up even having access to any organic, fresh food. And that's your plan for how you're going to survive. Like, what does that mean? Right. And I feel like, listening to someone like Leah Penniman, it's like, what is it instead look like to begin to organize ourselves around farms, around food growth, around the cycles of planting and gardening and growing. I'm hoping that that becomes one of the next iterations that emerges from this pandemic crisis is that people are like, okay, we were not fully ready to actually be growing and thinking about food as a community. That's something we want to be orienting ourselves towards. I know that for me that's something I'm thinking about is, do I have the first clue about how to grow my own food if I wanted to? [Laughing, inaudible] How would I do that? You know? So I just started, I'm now growing cilantro and lavender, which is not something I could survive on but it is, like, a move in the right direction. And I have aloe and I have other things. But I'm like, what does it look like to actually, like, think about a season and put things in the ground? And how much food would it take for me and my partner to live? How much will we be able to contribute? One of the things I love, that I feel like I learned from the conversations with Leah, but with other farmers, Black farmers—Derek Cooper, other folks—is like, everything that we grow is actually immediately abundant. If you're doing it, if you're in right relationship with whatever it is you're growing, you end up with more than you could ever need. And that's why so many farmers end up doing all kinds of cooperative efforts of sharing their food out to other people, because you get so much. I love that as a problem and as a challenge for us. It's like, could we deal with the abundance that would come if we actually all gave a portion of our time and attention to growing food directly from land? So that's one of the things I'm—that's like one of my next horizons is, like, inspired by this Soul Fire Farms community is, like, what does it look like to actually get our hands dirty in a different way.

Margaret 39:23 Cool. Yeah, I um—when all this happened I was like, I live on land that is technically a farm. And I consider myself to not have a green thumb at all. And—

Adrienne 39:36 Yeah.

Margaret 39:37 —and I've like, you know, the few times I've tried to grow food, it's failed. So I've convinced myself that I will never successfully grow food. And so—

Adrienne 39:43 You're like, see, I can't. [Laughing]

Margaret 39:44 Yeah, exactly. Which is funny because I think that I'm capable of, like, almost anything because I'm so obsessively DIY that I like—I'm, you know, in a house I built and I've learned plumbing and electrical since the pandemic started so that I could make my house meet my needs and, and all of these things. But I'm like, I'm convinced that growing food is entirely just magic that is beyond me. And what I've decided to do personally is I'm going to start mushroom cultivation because I'm like, well, this fits my like, "I live in the forest." Everyone else lives in, like, you know, elsewhere in the sun. And I'm like, "I'm in the forest, everything is dark and rainy." And, you know, trying to play to my strengths while still—but then there's the thing where it's like, I don't even envision—as much as I talked about my isolation, I still live with land mates, right? I'm, and I imagine that, come crisis, we continue to help each other. And so I'm like, well, I live with people who know how to grow food. So— I will focus on learning how to fix the rainwater catchment and things like that.

Adrienne 40:36 Exactly. Exactly. Like there's a way to be of use. And I mean—well, two things are happening right now. One is, I have my first mushroom log out on my deck. So we, you and I are mycelium familia. And I'm very excited about it. But same thinking is just like, I can grow mushrooms, like, I'm in a place where, like, there's enough condition for mushroom growing. And then I feel the same way, right? That I'm like, even if I never get great at growing food, if I'm in community with people who do grow food, but I have other skills to bring to the table, then that's great. And one of the things I'm always worried about is like, is my only skill talking? Like, do I still do I have other—you know, like—and then, you know, like, no, facilitation is a skill. Mediation is a skill. That's something you can offer to a community. I do doula work, that's a skill. But I'm always looking at like, you know, I'm of value in the current conditions, how would I be a value in future conditions. And I want to make sure that whatever I'm developing myself, I would be a community member that people would be like, "you're of value to us."

Margaret 40:44 Yeah. Yeah.

Adrienne 41:47 And not just because of what you do, but how you show up how you are, right?

Margaret 41:50 Yeah.

Adrienne 41:51 Like, I would love to have such value to my community that even if I can't do anything—because I have arthritis that it's just getting worse and worse and worse and worse—so Toshi and I talked about this often that, like, if the community all had to run for it, we wouldn't be running for it. So we would be like, okay, we'll sit and hold down the fort and, like, distract them and point them in another direction and that'll be our usefulness. Or whatever it is, like, you know—but be—I think everyone should be thinking about that question. How can I be of use in community? How do I understand my usefulness? How do I understand the relationships I'm in? Not transactionally, but in a sense of mutual aid and a sense of, we all need, we all have to give, how do we do that well with elegance, with grace? Yeah.

Margaret 42:34 Yeah, the usefulness question, it comes up so much when we talk about disability and the apocalypse, like you're talking about, and I really liked the way that you phrased—you phrased it, how you come to interactions is also part of our usefulness. And, you know, and—and then there's even stuff around like, you know, I've friends who, through like, sort of, like no fault of their own, or whatever, have... let's go spiky personalities. Right? And yet, we—I think it's like, partly it's a challenge to figure out how we can be useful, but it's also partly a challenge to figure out the usefulness—like, what people around you bring to you. And so like, for me, it's like, okay, my friends who are, like, maybe really hard to get along in a facilitated consensus meetings because they're opinionated and angry. And like, often because the world has done horrible things to them. And yet, like, for me, I kind of secretly enjoy, like, learning to help those people point themselves. Be like, ah, you have all of this anger. Here's this institution that needs destruction. How would you go about destroying it? You know.

Adrienne 43:09 Like, how would you do it? I love that, Margaret, because I—I just turned in the final draft of my next book, which is called Holding Change, the Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation. And there's a whole section on there, like, quote/unquote problem participants. And one of the things I was noting in there is like, every single person who shows up in the space as a problem—whatever kind of problem they are—if you can harness the energy that they're bringing in, they're often the most effective people. They're coming to the space. Right? You should be able to harness and move that energy somewhere. But particularly the grumpy, grouchy, curmudgeonly, flat, you know, this isn't working. Often those are the most visionary people in the room. And what's happening is that they are hurt by how it's all going down. You know, they're like, why are we not free yet? Why is it going like this? Like, why aren't we doing a better job? And like, harnessing that energy could free and save the world, right? So I always keep a couple of curmudgeonly, grumpy people close by. [Chuckling] Just keep me honest and to keep me like motivated.

Margaret 44:47 I think we're running up on time. How can people find out more about your work?

Adrienne 44:55 You know, go to akpress.org to buy the books there. I prefer people buy them straight from AK, which is an amazing people's press. And I'm on Instagram, that's where I'm like a person, you know, on social—the place where I—I mostly put pictures of things that I think are beautiful or cool. And then I have a website, adriennemareebrown.net, where I blog and I keep an archive of the interviews I do. So this will eventually live there. Yeah.

Margaret 45:31 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, or any of the other episodes, please tell people about it. Like, first and foremost, the way to help the show is to tell people about it in person or online. And, you know, I always go on about the algorithms that run the world and how we can influence them. And, you know, and that's kind of shitty to just sit around and try and influence algorithms. But if you like, or subscribe, or post about this, or review it, or whatever, on whatever platforms you listen to it, it helps far more than it should. It helps bring it up into other people's feeds and it helps people more find—more people find out about it. And all the support that I've been getting for the show, especially seeing people post about it on social media and things like that. And, you know, people I know telling me that they like it is kind of the reason that I'm continuing going with it right now. I'm very low energy these days, and that'll swing back around, I'm sure. But hearing that it's useful to people is—matters to me and it makes me feel like I'm not wasting my time. So thank you all. And also you can support the podcast more directly by supporting me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. There's not a ton of stuff that you get, like, that exclusive, except that I do ostensibly a monthly scene that I mail out to people. It's also very far behind. I point to, you know, the world, and hold that up as my excuse which is getting kind of old for myself, but so it goes. And I do try and post up there as much as I can and also try and send out presents to my Patreon supporters as much as I can. In particular though I would like to thank Hugh and Dana and Chelsea and Eleanor, Mike Satara, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris. I—I'm overwhelmed by the amount of support that I've been getting. And I've been able to use that to hire a transcriptionist. And now also potentially get more help, like the show might end up collectivizing, who knows, we'll see how it goes. In which case, me having bad mental health times won't be as much of a hold up. And that'll be good for everyone. And so thank you to my supporters for helping that make—helping that look like it might become a possibility. Anyway, I hope you all are doing as well as you can with everything that's going on and I'll talk to you soon.

Episode Notes

Cici can be found on twitter @postleftprole. The IAF-FAI can be found on twitter @IAF__FAI and through their website iaf-fai.org. The Javelina Network can be found on twitter @JavelinaNetwork.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

For an overview of radio from an anarchist perspective, check out the zine For An Anarchist Radio Relay League.

Transcript

1:32:19 SPEAKERS Margaret, Cici, Eepa

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, Margaret Killjoy. Are use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking with two people who have a lot of experience with different radio communications, mostly HAM radio and other means of two-way radio communications. Their names are Cici and Eepa and they work with the Indigenous Anarchist Federation and/or the Javelina Network which is a network of—well, they'll explain it. And we're going to be talking a lot about radio communications, and they actually do a really good job of breaking it down—a subject that could feel very technical. I know I get very overwhelmed when I try and understand radio communications. They break it down in a fairly non-technical way that, well, I'm excited for you all to hear. So this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And usually I lead with a jingle, but this week I'm going to do something slightly different and first I'm just going to say welcome to the Maroon Cast. I don't believe they have a jingle yet. But there is a new podcast on the network called the Maroon Cast and it is absolutely worth checking out. And the jingle—they actually call it a commercial—that I am going to play is from the Institute for Anarchist Studies who are offering grants. And here's that. Hooray. Hey radicals, anarchists, and all of you liberatory leftists. Are you a podcaster, video maker, multimedia artist, or writer? The Institute for Anarchist Studies wants to let you know we have grants available for projects focusing on Black and Indigenous archaisms, police abolition and alternatives, and mutual aid. For details and how to apply visit anarchiststudies.org and click on the grants application post on our main page. That's anarchiststudies.org. Anarchist-studies-dot-O-R-G. Applications close January 31, 2021. Spread the word and tell your friends. Okay, so if y'all could introduce yourself with I guess your name, your pronouns, and then any political or organizational affiliations that makes sense with what you're going to be talking about today.

Cici 02:32 So my name is Cici. I do she/her pronouns, I also do they/them pronouns. I don't really have any organizational affiliations at this time. I am—I have some experience with radio in a like a certain area, but in other areas I'm still learning and I'm trying to get up to speed. I am a licensed radio operator which helps a bit. But obviously, like, you don't have to be licensed to do stuff with a radio. And that's I guess enough about me.

Eepa 03:13 All right, [I didn't catch a lot of this except Eepa] and I use he/him pronouns. My affiliations, I'm with the Indigenous Anarchist Federation and I'm a part of the newly formed Javelina Network. And basically, I am fairly new to the whole communication world. But it's one of those things that I've become very passionate about building up people's knowledge that way in communities for mutual aid, you know, both in disasters and just for general preparedness. We have ways of communicating that don't rely on, you know, corporate infrastructure or government infrastructure.

Margaret 04:02 Yeah, so I guess one of the first things that I want to ask you all, for people who are, like—so this will probably be in some ways a slightly more technical conversation than some of the—some of my shows, just because, at least, there's an awful lot of acronyms and weird technical stuff that comes along with learning about radios. And I think it's worth—I'm going to ask you all a lot about that stuff. But I guess I was wondering if you all could start with kind of like a pitch for why we should care about radios. Like, we all have cell phones. Shouldn't we just use cell phones? Like what are some of the advantages of understanding and having an experience with radio communication?

Eepa 04:40 So one of the things that people should consider whenever they're using—whatever type of communications you're using on a daily basis, that could be using email through ProtonMail or using Signal or WhatsApp, or just using your regular cell phone service—these are things things that are controlled by somebody. So the infrastructure that makes them possible is controlled by either corporations, or they're controlled by corporations and regulated by the government. They're subject to warrants and data collection and they're subject to a lot of other, you know, less security-related, but more just infrastructure in general. You know, if, as we saw in hurricane Maria, when hurricanes come they knocked down cell phone towers and if you don't have cell phone towers, your cell phone just becomes a, you know, a box with whatever photos you have on, it doesn't become very useful for communications. And the same thing goes for emails, when you are logging on to your, you know, ProtonMail account which is, you know, a great service and everything—if those servers go down in Switzerland, then you're out of luck—that that means that communication no longer exists. If the United States government decides to block a certain app that—that could basically cut off your service and take away all of your context. So it's a very fragile thing that we have, you know, during normal circumstances cell phone services is great, it's convenient. And honestly, it should still probably be your primary means of communication because of its ease of use. But there's a lot to be said for having all of the infrastructure you need to communicate in your own hands without needing any external infrastructure, aside from a community of other people who are likewise equipped and trained to communicate with.

Cici 06:42 I think that's an excellent answer. In addition to what Eepa said I would basically just add on, like, yeah, there's—it's hard with the infrastructure that people usually use—cell phone towers, servers, routers, or at least, you know, commercially available routers and phones and everything. People don't have—people in, like, their communities don't have a lot of control over it. One of the things that I'm actually—I need to do way more study into it, because it's rather technical. But if something were to happen and the internet were to go down, either unintentionally, because—or, you know, not because of a—because like it's natural—something natural happens like a hurricane. Or because the government has shut the internet down for the express purposes of, you know, preventing people from communicating. One of the things radio can do is it can actually mimic a internet, I should—I may say mimic but it's actually a true internet protocol. So you can actually get an internet running up in your community. Those are the kind of things that I think radio is great for. I would echo what Eepa said where it's not really a—in terms of people saying, "Well, I have a cell phone what's, you know, what is radio offer to me?" I'd actually say, yeah, I don't think that just being able to say, "Hey, I communicated with somebody in another spot." Like, that's not really the attraction necessarily for learning a bunch of radio things. I would also note for a lot of people who are just doing off-grid stuff, there's a lot of places where your cell phone just, there's just no signal, it's too far away from cell phone towers. You can still get out with a radio if something were to help. A lot of people are like, well, you know, I'm not gonna be setting up a another Wifi internet system. But, you know, if you're ever hiking or you're doing stuff that's just not close to a big city or whatever, it can still be useful if something happens, you get hurt, you're not out in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone signal needing extreme medical attention immediately. So I just like to point that kind of thing out where it's useful on an individual level, but it's also useful on a community level.

Margaret 08:58 Yeah. Yeah. I mean—

Eepa 09:00 I think that that's probably one of those—I think that's one of those misconceptions that people have about radio, just in a general sense, is they think that it's two people on walkie-talkies talking to each other. But there's a whole realm of radio use that includes, you know, sending messages, photographs, even videos utilizing radio that people are probably not aware of.

Margaret 09:24 I only learned about that really recently when someone was talking about how you can take your Baofeng radio and—I think it was, like, get a photo from the international space station on your cell phone by having your, like, cell phone listen to what's coming out of your radio?

Eepa 09:46 Yeah.

Margaret 09:48 That was a good moment of like, "Oh, this is some scifi shit." And I'm like, "Oh, and I mean it's some like 1970s scifi shit." But it's—that's so fucking cool. Yeah, I mean, okay, so like, I'm rudely guessing that a lot of people who are listening, if they have much experience like, say, direct action stuff, they're probably their only real experience with radios might be walkie-talkies. Right? And so I was—I was wondering if there's like a way to, like—the thing that really intimidates me when I look at radios is that I look and then I'm, like, okay, there's high frequency, very high frequency, ultra high frequency. There's walkietalkies which use FRS. There's MURS. They're CB radios, there's GMRS radios, there's the Business Band, there's a HAM radio. There's AM/FM, SSB, contint CW, like, there's like all this shit, right? And so I guess I kind of wanted to like start and try and kind of break some of this down if you all can, like, maybe talk starting with like—maybe you'll have a better pedagogical sense of like where to start or something. But in my head, I would ask you first about maybe, like, Family Radio Service, the walkie-talkies, that people might be used to, like what they can be used for and kind of build out from there. Or if there's another way to introduce all of this that you all would like to use.

Cici 11:18 I can't actually speak too much to the Family Radio Service. I'm glad you mentioned that there's a lot of different modes. What tends to happen is there's very few people that know all of that, or if they do they're a dime a dozen. At least from my experience talking to other radio people, they tend to focus in areas that they think are interesting, or areas that they think are useful, or whatever. So for instance, you mentioned Family Radio and you mentioned, I believe it's GR-GMRS, I actually have like no experience in those. I mentioned in the introduction that I'm licensed. What I meant by that, or I probably should have been more specific, is that I'm licensed as an amateur radio operator. If people have ever heard someone talk about HAM radio, that's basically what I'm talking about. HAM is just another way of saying an amateur radio app. I'm an amateur in the sense that I don't get money. I'm not like a radio station. I'm not commercially broadcasting, like, the radio you might listen to music or whatever. So that's all that means. Amateur doesn't necessarily mean you don't know a lot or that, you know, it just means I don't get paid. And that my license basically says I can't get paid to broadcast. So that's kind of my experience. So yeah, I don't know if Eepa would be able to talk about the Family Radio Service. Some people have heard CB radio. I believe that's—it's similar to amateur radio but it's it's still very different. I actually associated with truckers doing stuff in the, like, I know, that's kind of an old association, doing stuff in their cars. As far as modes, I know Margaret, you mentioned things like single sideband which is that SSB. That's a voice mode. You mentioned—I guess I should start with the—you mentioned high frequency, very high frequency, and ultra high frequency. Usually people will shorten that to the individual letter. So like very high frequency they'll just say VH, VHF. Those just basically are a shorthand way of talking about how far you can talk. So for instance, people that have Baofengs are often going to be using very high frequency or ultra high frequency. Very high frequency is usually going to be a line of sight, maybe a little bit further because radio waves can actually see a little further than, like, the way we see the horizon. But for instance, if you and a friend both had Baofengs and you lived in the same city, depending on your antenas, that a bunch of other technical stuff, you should be able to hear each other. A lot of times the type of radio also use a repeater. The repeater is basically something that will send the signal further—it's it's own equipment but it will send your signal further than if you just had it by yourself. So when people hear that I just want them to think, "Oh, that's just distance." My interest is in very high—or, excuse me, is in just high frequency, just HF. That tends to be very far distances. So like that's usually talking to people in other countries, or talking to people across, like, a country, like a big country like the United States, or the so-called the United States. I'm in the Midwest, I can use high frequency to talk to someone in California which is obviously not line of sight or, you know, horizon. So that's all that means. I don't—a lot of times HAM radio and radio in general uses these terms that make stuff sound really technical and really like scary, but it's actually just a—there's an easier way to understand it. So that has to just do with distance. That's all I'll say about that for now. I don't want to overload but uh...

Eepa 15:01 Yeah, and so basically what I'll add to that is there's two basic things that somebody who's new to radio needs to do to understand what their radio is going to be used for. And so like Cici was talking about with the frequencies: Frequency is one of the two things that you really need to pay attention to when you're a beginner, is frequency and wattage. So wattage is just how much power is actually being emitted from your radio. So one of the ways that you can think about frequency—we'll start with frequency first—is it's basically wavelength. And so the shorter your wavelength, the smaller it is, the smaller the distance—or the frequency or sorry, the frequency. So ultra high frequency, very short distance. Very high frequency is going to be kind of a medium distance. And then high frequency is long distance. Now what the Family Radio Service radios that you're talking about, they broadcast on very high frequency. But what makes them not very good for communicating at distance is they have a low wattage, so they're legally not allowed to go above a certain wattage. And so that means that they can only communicate at like a very, very short distance. Basically, these radios were designed so that way parents and kids could have radios or, you know, a family convoying on a vacation—this is in the days before cellphones—could have communication with each other. And so they didn't need very high wattage, and they didn't want these radio frequencies to be basically blocking other radio traffic. So it's a low wattage, very high frequency and that means that it's going to be a very limited distance. So even with like ultra high frequency, if you have a low wattage, you get even less distance. What amateur radio opens up to you is higher wattage, and it opens up more frequencies. So that's the key thing there.

Margaret 17:09 Okay, yeah, I took a bunch of notes about this right before. Right before we started I was trying to like map out all of this because I've been learning about this some for a while. And I was just trying to map all of this out. And what I came up with was basically like three types of, in the US, unlicensed types of radios, and then like two sort of types of licensed radios with HAM radio being kind of like the big—or amateur radio being like the big open one. And it was kind of interesting to me because I learned, like, for example, like I was reading about, like, what the hell is the difference between CB and FRS, and between walkie talkies and trucker radios as I always kind of saw it. And yeah, so I guess if CB is high frequency it needs—it can go further on lower wattage—or I don't know if it goes through a low wattage, but it can go—it bend—the the frequencies like bend around the horizon and hills and shit better. But apparently it takes like a much, much more of an antenna and it doesn't like going into buildings and shit very well as compared to like—

Eepa 18:17 Yeah.

Margaret 18:17 UHF, which is like much more—I don't know, in my head it's almost like piercing rather than, like, you know, it doesn't go very far but it like goes through things a little better or something? And doesn't need as much of an antenna. I don't know, that's what I—what I—so I guess—like, what I came up with as the things that you can use unlicensed are—well, I mean, you can theoretically use anything—well anyway—actually, I'm gonna ask you some about some of that stuff and a little bit, what you can get away with. But unlicensed, you can use FRS which are like the walkie talkies, you can use CB which has like a slightly higher wattage limit and is shortwave only but requires more of an antenna, and then something called MURS, M-U-R-S, Multi Use Radio Service, which is, like, a little bit better. And then, I think, in terms of licensed radio, I'm actually—I'm running this past youu so you can like tell me if I'm wrong. But also if I'm right then I'm just expressing everything that I learned to the audience. In terms of licensing, there is one type of license you can get without taking a test, you just give the US government 70 of your dollars. And it's General Mobile Radio Service, GMRS. And it's, like, still substantially more limited than amateur radio, right? But it allows more—I don't know, it's a little bit—it's nicer than than family radio service. It's nicer than a walkie-talkie. It's like a fancy walkie-talkie. And you don't have to take a test, versus amateur radio, which I guess you have to in order to—you have to pass these very intimidating tests in order to start using it, or in order to legally start using it. And I guess—I dunno, does that match up with with—does that seem correct? This is just like what I put together right for the show.

Eepa 20:08 Yeah, so if people wanted to just get on the radio, like, tonight, if you could just go down to the store and pick something up and get on the radio. Basically, what you outlined is spot on, you know, Family Radio Service is probably the weakest kind of radio that you can get. And, again, if you're within, you know, eyesight of the person you're talking to those kind of radios will work for you. CB radios are larger, typically they're mounted in like a vehicle. So they are a little bit less easy to keep on your person but they do carry further. So this is what nowadays you tend to see, like, off -oaders and other things like that use whenever they're going out in the desert and off-roading. Again, you have limited channels on both of those. So you have, like, you know, theoretically there's a bunch of channels in there, sub-channels, but it's very limited. So if you're in a city or something, you could find very easily that all of those channels are occupied and being used by people. And so that could just make things really confusing and really challenging. CB radios are kind of known as, like, the wild west of like the radio world, because you can say and do anything on that radio channel without any kind of punishment. So it's full of very not great things. And, again, it's a very busy radio channel because it's used by a lot of unlicensed people to communicate. Now, when you're talking about basic commercial radio, which is that license you're talking about for those handheld, the GMRS, that is going to be something that usually requires that you show you are a business. So you need to have an LLC, a nonprofit, some kind of designator, some kind of, like, you know, tax ID or whatever, to tell the FCC that yes, I'm a business. They will assign you a little tiny frequency of the spectrum that none of the other businesses in your area have and then you're stuck with it. So that means that you might have a few channels on your radio, but that's all that's going to be available to you to legally use. And you're having to pay money on a regular basis to keep that license.

Margaret 22:23 Okay.

Eepa 22:24 The one upside to that is you do get to use a slightly more powerful radio that—I mean, they are designed for, you know, like, mines and construction sites and factories, that's typically where these kind of radios are used. So they are more powerful and they also have the legal ability to be encrypted. So you can actually get encrypted radios, which is not legal on any other radio service. The only way you can do that is through the GMRS. But you have to go through a major company to get your encryption service which means if somebody wants to de-encrypt your radio, all they have to do is get in contact with the company and find out what your encryption keys are and then they're in. So this is also something that you see a lot of law enforcement that had switched to is this style of radio, just a modified one that are, you know, higher power and use repeaters. So these are all legal non-testing options, but they're purposefully designed to limit you. They're designed to basically reduce your capacity to communicate beyond line of sight in a way that, I mean, the amateur radio community would say the reason why is because, you know, you can't have people running rampant on the on the air, there needs to be, you know, law and order on the air. So that's part of the reason why the amateur bands are more thoroughly regulated, is to basically make sure that there's a system of accountability to the government.

Margaret 24:00 Okay.

Cici 24:04 Actually, I'm really glad that Eepa shared tha. I have—my information outside of HAM radio is very limited so I actually learned a lot listening to that. The only different thing I would like to say is there's actually a lot of changes coming with the—not with the testing, but the FCC—this is extremely recent. Like, I think the actual report from the FCC is, like, was dated like December 28—of like a few days ago, like last month, basically, it'sless than a month old. But they did actually say they're going to start charging people for HAM radio licenses. This is extreme because it used to—like, as of right now it's completely free. You have to take a test, but you don't have to pay any money. Sometimes if you look online you'll see people saying they want $15. That doesn't actually go to the FCC, that goes to the people providing the test itself. Those people are actually just HAM radio operators. It's, one of the interesting things is that the FCC actually has a very decentralized, like, they basically let HAM radio operators test each other and that's—they just send the paperwork to the FCC to get your callsign. So if anyone's at home thinking, "Oh, I was thinking about getting licensed and I think I'm ready." If you don't want to pay the FCC $35, like, I would, I would say, like, do what now. Along with that, they actually cut the GMRS license to $35 as well, it used to be $70. So they actually made getting a GMRS license and getting a HAM radio license the same price. HAM radio—people on ham radio, very upset, like, they—one of the big things is, oh, we need to attract people to HAM radio. So, like, the community in general is not happy about this change. It hasn't taken effect yet. The report doesn't actually say exactly when it's supposed to take effect, like, it's supposed to take effect the month after the report, but then it has to go through a bunch of bureaucracy. If I had to guess I'd say they're probably going to try to do it sometime around February/March. But it might be sooner, it might be more after that. As far as my experience, I—that's correct, you do have to take a test to get into HAM radio. Even in HAM radio, the first—there's three levels. Basically you have to pass each test to get to the next level. So like you can't just, like—so the levels, the first one you have is technician—technician level. The second one's a general level, that's actually where I'm at. I have a general level license. And then the highest one is called amateur extra, a lot of people just say "extra." That's—extras basically have the most privileges on the HAM radio.

Margaret 26:36 They all sound inverted. Like, if I was to come up with the hierarchy, I would be like amateur, general, technician.

Cici 26:44 Yeah no, they're like actually, like, holdovers from older—like there used to be advanced, there used to be a novice and, like, they've changed—the FCC is the one that's in charge of making these levels. And it's like, it's changed a lot. It used to be kind of like five or like three and a half kind of, and now it's basically just the three. Sometimes you'll run into a really old HAM who's like, "I haven't advanced license," and it's, like, what the hell is that? But it's basically like an old, depreciated license that they don't issue anymore. So yeah, I'm at the middle level. You can't just jump straight to, like, one of the levels. So like, if you're like, "I think I know enough to get an extra license," you can't just go and say, "Give me the extra test, I'll get an extra license." But you can take them all in one sitting. So like, if you're like, "I'm pretty sure I could do the extra," they'll give you a technician test. If you pass it, they'll give you a general test. If you pass it, they'll give you an extra test. The extra test has more questions, it's—I'm actually studying for it right now. It's very technical. It's kind of like what Eepa was referring to. There's kind of a culture of HAM radio. And it's, there's this idea that you basically have to earn your privileges on the bands by knowing what you're doing and all this type of basically hierarchy type of ideas. But I mean, it is helpful to know some of the things that are in the test. I've actually learned a lot, just from having to study for the technician or the general test even though I've forgotten some of it. The licenses are good for 10 years. So you do have to actually renew them every 10 years. So yeah, after a few years I'll have to renew mine, and pay them this stupid fee that didn't exist when I first got it. But yeah, also something I want to put out is if you—you only need a license if you want to transmit. By what I mean by that is if you want to send a signal out. That's important if you're, like, if you're in an emergency situation, you're probably going to want to send a signal out. If you're trying to communicate with people that are not near you, you want to send a signal out. But if you just want to listen you actually don't need a license, you can actually go grab a radio tonight, tune your radio to HAM radio bands and just listen all day long, as long as you don't transmit. And technically you're not supposed to interfere. So you can't, like, jam other people's signals. But, like, if you're not transmitting, you can listen, like whatever. Like there's no license to listen. So that's something interesting I want people to know: if you just want to listen to stuff, you don't actually need a license.

Margaret 29:05 What do they talk about around you? Because around me, like, I got a scanner and, you know, it doesn't transmit any way, right? And I set it to listen to HAM radio channels, and I mostly heard like a 70-year-old talking to maybe a 15-year-old about like how to cook hot dogs and how to get trucks unstuck in mud, and then started explaining a story about snakes that I found very improbable. And that was about the most interesting thing that's happened, like, all of the many hours I've, like, just had the scanner on in the background. I don't know. I'm curious what you all have heard people talking about on these things.

Cici 29:45 So for me, I actually don't do that much listening. Going back to kind of like different areas of different—I guess that's something called "rag chewing." In the HAM radio world that's if you hear someone say, "Oh, you're rag chewing," that's basically you're getting on the radio, you're just listening to other people. A lot of times people will make—I don't want to say a game, game probably sounds—is the right—is the wrong—but people will actually do this as a contest. Like, sometimes people will try to contact as many people as you can in a certain amount of time. You've heard of people called "contesting," that's what they mean. You'll hear some people "de-exing," this is better if you have that—so if you're in the high frequency, you try to get people as far away from you as you can. A lot of that, actually, you don't say much. Because you want to get as many contacts, you'll actually have this very non-conversation. It's basically like your call sign, like, some necessary information and that's it. Some people actually automate it. It's interesting. So you don't actually say a lot when you're doing that. However, I know we mentioned ultra high frequency, the UHV—or excuse me UHF, I'm sorry—UHF earlier, and somebody might be thinking, "Why would I want to even talk"—like they're very short, like, distances. They can penetrate into buildings which is helpful. So someone's like, "Why would I want to do that? If somebody right there, like, what's the point?" I mentioned earlier, one of the things you can do is you can create your own WiFi networks. Those actually operate. And those vary—or excuse me, not very, but ultra high frequency. 13 centimeters is about where that happens if people are able to look at a band plan and, like, see what links go where. If you were trying to set up your own—like, even like the commercial WiFi networks operate in that same thing. That's why your router is generally limited to your house and just outside your house and why you can't pick up a router like a mile away. So that's kind of like—I know, this is getting away from the question of what do people talk about around you.

Margaret 31:50 Oh, no, no. Go on. This is a better tangent.

Cici 31:55 It's like you don't have to necessarily even if you—there's a lot of people that have radios and they hardly ever listen, they don't ever rag chew. One of the things I'm trying to learn is it's basically Morse code. I don't know why I said basically, it is Morse code. It's called—for technical reasons it's called "continuous wave" in HAM radio. So if you hear people saying CW, that's Morse code. One of the attractive things in Morse code—because someone's like, "Well, why would you want to do that, that seems way more, way more like technical and you have to learn a whole thing and then"—it gets out when nothing else can. When I say that is a radio signals take up a certain amount of space, basically, in the bigger—the more space it takes up—bandwidth is how, I guess, the technical word for that. But the more bandwidth it is, the harder it can be to get that signal out. This is particularly pression, as Eepa was saying, a lot of times you're limited in how many watts you can put out. So if you're running something that's not a lot of watts—especially you've got like maybe an antenna that you've made or an antenna that's not extremely efficient—if you can do something like Morse code, it might get out, when if you were trying to do a voice code wouldn't get out. Now you have trade-offs with that, like, you know, you have to, you have to have equipment that will use it, you'll have to have somebody on the receiving end that can listen to it. But actually a lot of people use automatic—something, I forget what it's called. But it's basically something where when it comes up to your computer, or your radio, depending on if your radio is nice enough, will just automatically translate the Morse code for you. So you don't necessarily have to know it. In the HAM culture it's kind of like, well, that's cheating, you know, like you're supposed to like actually learn it and whatever. But if you're using it as an emergency thing, for instance, it can be really important. Another thing is if you don't really want to listen to what people around, you have to talk about, like I don't want to care—I don't care how people make hot dogs. The jokes is actually that if you are actually—a lot of it's just what gear do you have, what radio do you have? And like, "Oh, how nice is your radio?" And it's just, like, this is not information I need. One of the things, you can actually send out images? Which seems kind of like, "Well, I've got a computer, why do I care that I can send out images and like actually receive them?" This can be key if you're in a place where the government's actually shut down on purpose, you know, your your internet or your cell phone stuff, because they're doing things that they don't want people to know. For instance, I don't actually, I don't know if it's still happening. But I remember in the northern region of India, there was a blackout there a year or so ago. The Indian government was doing just, we don't really know because nothing could get out. But if you had a radio that could send out—there's fast scan and slow scan—TV is what it's called. But if you could send out an image without the government knowing, you could potentially let people know what's going on and in a situation where it's otherwise impossible to get communication out. So I mean, that's something that I—basically my answer to the question, "What do people talking around me?" is, "I don't really know." I'm not listening to people around me so much and I'm not a I'm not rag chewing, basically. But that's just to give people examples of what you can do if you're like, well, I'm really antisocial, I don't want to talk to anybody around me about just random stuff. So...

Eepa 35:14 Yeah, for like around me, one of the things that—I actually do listen. I'm actually still in the process of getting licensed. The tests are themselves are, you know, intimidating and challenging but you can develop a lot of interesting insights, basically, by listening. And, I mean, around where we're at it's simple stuff, like, they have little game shows where you can, like, call in answers to trivia questions. And they have, like, little social meet and greets. They've got like a technical night where if you're having a problem with your radio, you can call in and they'll help you troubleshoot what's going on with it. And this is all done via repeaters, which means you could use a UHF or VHF, you know, like a Baofeng basically, to talk to somebody in Ohio. Now, again, these repeaters are run by local radio clubs which means, you know, you don't control the infrastructure, which means if those repeaters were to go down or, you know, the government was to take them over or something like that, you could lose access. And that's one of the reasons that I'm very interested in HF because HF is a self-contained communication system where you're able to do everything on your own. The IF's in contact with some of the people—some of the anarchists in Ethiopia. And during the recent civil war in Tigray that was one of the issues that they were running into and something that they had wished that they had basically prepared was people who could actually send out images and send out news reports on the radio from within Tigray because a lot of the news was only coming from the Ethiopian state forces. And there were, you know, reports and rumors of massacres and other things like that. But there were no images, there was nothing really to substantiate what was happening. And so just touching on that, the ability to send images and things like that is really nice. But just when it comes to listening, I think that's actually something really critical to think about when you're looking at radio from a prepper kind of standpoint, from a—the idea that you are trying to get into communications because you want to be a part of community awareness. The primary thing that you will be using radio for in a situation where communications are shut down through normal means, and that could mean just a grid down, you know, Hurricane knocked out the power grid or something like that. Or it could be something more sinister where, you know, the government is purposefully denying people access to communication. The primary thing you're gonna be doing on radio is listening, is intelligence gathering. It's figuring out what all the other HAMs that are on the radio are talking about, what are they seeing, you know. Are they seeing, you know—are there rumors of, you know, troop movements to the north? Are there rumors, that there's a food shortage in the town that's north to you or that, you know, they're sick people really concentrated in a certain area? That intelligence gathering is something that you can do with really cheap equipment. You can—one of the things that we recommend on our site is to get a shortwave, you know, receiver or something that can listen to all of these different bands. And just use that as a tool in your community to get people the ability to listen and learn because information is absolutely critical for survival, it's the central thing you can have in a situation where stability has crumbled, is to have information awareness on the ground. So listening, even when you're, you know, not licensed, can do that. It also can kind of give you an idea of what your local HAM community is like. Because one of the things that you will very, very rapidly learn, if you're a minority and you're involved in HAM, is that the community is blazingly white. And sometimes they can be fairly reactionary. And you can actually start to take notes of people that are actually kind of cool on the radio and people that you never want to talk to you again, just based off their call signs because they're required to give those. And that can help you decide in the future how reliable somebody information might be, or what kind of perspectives they might be providing in a disaster situation. So that kind of, like, finite information gathering is an important skill to develop even before you consider transmitting, you know, that's something you can work on right now.

Margaret 39:59 Yeah, that makes sense.

Cici 40:00 I'm actually really glad he mentioned that. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Margaret, I'm sorry,

Margaret 40:04 No, go ahead.

Cici 40:05 I was just gonna say like, I—I'm gonna preface this just legally by saying, don't ever do anything illegal on the radio. But one of the things that I don't think people necessarily realize is that the FCC isn't—they don't have the manpower to sit and listen to like every single band. So like, generally, if you're doing something say, untoward, or you're not necessarily licensed, it's not the FCC that's going to like find out. It's the other HAMs. HAM radio is largely kind of self-disciplined. It's self—like, for instance, we do our own testing. Like, it's not like if you do—if you do something someone's—the band hammer is gonna come down. It's basically if you piss off enough HAMs or if they know, they'll— they're the ones who's going to report it. Eepa had mentioned earlier in our conversation that in HAM radio you can't send encrypted communication. However, you could send—and there's kind of a formality of how you send information via HAM radio—but for instance, you could say what they would expect you to say if you were doing a regular HAM conversation and it could mean not what they would necessarily expect it to mean. So for instance, one of the things on—I don't know a lot about voice because I actually am trying to focus more and Morse code, but one of the things that you're supposed to do on Morse code to call a another radio is CQ, CQ CQ. And then someone will be like is, you know, are you looking for someone? You can use those codes to mean for your intended audience whatever you want them to mean. So it's not encrypted. But it's also something where the other HAM radio, if someone happens to be listening, has a HAM radio, they won't necessarily know what's going on. Again, you should never do anything illegal on the radio. I just want to let people know that it's not like there's a radio police that sits and actively listens, like, it's really just other HAMs that are gonna report you. Also, that's something to know. If you note that you're in kind of a, you know, maybe you live in a really remote area and there's just not a lot of other HAMs, you're listening on the air, and they're just not a lot of other people, you don't hear a lot of other people. That also might mean there's not really a lot of people listening, which means there's not a lot of people that could report you to the FCC. So that's something to keep in mind as well. If people were, you know—also something to note that even in a licensed situation, for something that's considered an emergency, and this is actually one part of the test, you can break HAM radio protocol and laws in the case of emergency. And that's actually something that's acknowledged. So like, if something were happening where it's like, this person needs immediate attention, you're not expected to follow all the—like, you can get on the air and be like, "I'm not licensed, but I need help," and most HAMs are gonna not, you know, they're not going to get on you. Like, that's allowed. So that's also something I want people to know, like, if you just want to radio for emergencies technically you should be licensed and it's good, because you'll have experience and you'll know what you're doing, but if it's something like this is like four death, or this is extreme, other HAMs aren't gonna report you. Like, people are generally, you know, and also that's allowed. So even if they did report you other HAMs would be like, well, that's allowed in the rule. So something I just wanted people to know.

Margaret 43:44 Yeah, that actually helps.

Eepa 43:45 So if you break your leg out in the woods, go ahead and get on your Baofeng and start honking.

Margaret 43:51 So I feel like at this point, I should probably tell the audience what a Baofeng is. Which is, as far as I understand—because that's actually, that's how Baofengs were introduced to me, right is like, "Oh, yeah, I got a Baofeng." Like, "Oh yeah, there's radios over there, they're Baofengs." And like, everyone like talks about it, like, "Whoa, like, this is the fucking coolest thing ever," right? And it's just a really cheap radio that can do a lot of things. And it can do a lot of things that are legal like transmit at low wattage on FRS. And it can do a lot of things that would only be illegal if you were licensed. But it's just kind of like, what, a $20 or $30 radio you can buy on the internet and you can like swap it out with a nicer antenna? And it's just kind of like—it's become, like, kind of like a thing in this sort of like tactical and prepper and whatever worlds is like Baofengs is, like, the thing. But actually what you were talking about, about how you can use it in emergencies. That's kind of how I've always seen, like, I have a Baofeng, right? I don't really know how to use it. I've pretty much just used it to listen to things. But I'm like, okay, I could theoretically transmitted an emergency if I needed to. And, you know, for a $20 thing that can transmit in an emergency, that's cool. It's also cool that it's a tool that, like, isn't limited, like, I hate when I buy something and it's like, this is locked down to make sure that you can't do the things it's supposed to do. Just the things that you're allowed to do. You know?

Eepa 45:23 Yeah.

Margaret 45:23 I hate that kind of shit, I—there's a, just, I don't know, whatever. I'm clearly an anarchist, I—there's—I don't really have to defend this position very hard.

Eepa 45:36 Yeah, and so like, those Baofengs are basically like, I mean, the the way that you can think about it is, like, your first, you know, foray into radio if you are, like, just—what I generally recommend Baofengs for is if you're actually interested in doing like, computer stuff with it, if you're interested in doing programming, they can be really fun to play with. Also, if you're interested in a radio that the cops can confiscate and you're not going to miss it because it's not that much of an investment, that's another really good reason to get a Baofeng. But if you're a beginner and you're serious about getting into radio, I do think that there are better options for just ease of use, because Baofengs can be very difficult to program, sometimes, they can be very finicky to use all of the functions of it. And so something like, you know, an Alinco, or a Yaesu, you know, these types of like, you know, Japanese radios can be a little bit more easy to use and they're going to be much more durable, you know, as far as like weather proofing and things like that. But again, that's something you have to weigh the pros and the cons of, you know, is this something that's gonna be confiscated at a protest, I probably don't want to spend a lot of money on it. Whereas if you're something where this isn't my go bag, I need something that's going to survive no matter what, then you might want to invest more money in something that's going to be easy to use and is going to be durable. So I mean, yeah, the Baofeng s ubiquitous, because it is cheap and there are better options that are still affordable.

Margaret 47:20 I feel like the Baofeng is like such a perfect way to introduce someone to help goddamn convoluted radio looks, like, you know?

Eepa 47:30 It can't—that's one of the issues with it is if you were—if I was to hand you a Yaesu. Like if I was to give you just like a Yaesu FT4X you would be able to program that without plugging in into a computer. It's much easier to use. You can just run to the menu, everything's right there. It's not convoluted and complex. And I think that's one of the issues with the Baofeng is it kind of—if you're not used to radio it can be very, very intimidating if you see that as your first introduction to radio. At least that's been my experience. I do have Baofengs, I was that typical person where I went out and I, first thing I got was, you know, a four-pack of Baofengs that I split amongst some of my comrades. And we were, you know, learning how to use them. But it was much more challenging. And the first time I used a radio with a nice, smooth, easy operation interface, you know, a nice, easy menu system. It really—it made it a lot less intimidating.

Margaret 48:35 Now you sold me. I mean, yeah, like, I basically look at my Baofeng and I'm like, I'm an idiot. And I'm like, I know how to program a computer to some degree, like, I've been doing technical shit for very long time. And I just look at it, and I'm like, I don't have enough time to dedicate in my life. Actually, this ties back to something I don't remember—I think it was Cici who was saying it but I'm not sure—earlier about how like, you know, Cici's like well, I actually very involved in this community, right, but then you're like, but I only know about the stuff that I'm interested in. I don't necessarily have to know everything about everything. And that is one of the things that's so hard about radio is when you look at it from the outside, it's just a string of letters that you're supposed to know how to make sense of. I mean, it honestly reminds me of like when you get into guns or something when everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, well if you don't have this thing go attached to this thing and the other thing and then this thing, then you're just gonna die." Well I don't wanna die.

Cici 49:32 I mean it's actually—yeah, I'd say with guns it's a good analogy. Like, there's very few gun people who, like, their experienced with revolvers, and they're experienced with like the latest pistols, and they're experienced with like lever guns, and their experienced with black powder, and their experienced with like—yeah, like, if people are—I don't know if listeners, if your listeners would have a good sense of like how guns are. I know you've done some episodes on firearms, but generally people tend to know more about certain aspects of firearms and they do other aspects, even though—even people that have a broad knowledge will know more about stuff than others, like black powder is very specific. A lot of people don't—who know a lot about guns, still don't know a lot about black powder, or vice versa. In the same way radio is kind of like that. There's very few. And I mean, like, I haven't met anybody who's, like, I know everything about every aspect of radio. That's, like, a crazy person. Like, or I should say, a person who's like, you know, they might be an engineer or something or that's their job.

Eepa 50:33 Yeah, yeah.

Cici 50:34 So for most people, like, I actually don't do too much what I would call local radio stuff and be—that'd be the very high frequency and ultra high frequency. I am interested in mesh networks, which would be the setting up those WiFi networks, but I haven't actually done a lot with it. What I'm interested in, the stuff is usually called high frequency, it's more long-distance, it's very different from the ultra high frequency. So I'm still learning a lot about setting up a mesh network and how to do a decentralized WiFi. I'm still learning a lot about that. What I guess my interests lie more in something called, I mentioned Morse code over there. There's another aspect of radio called QRP. So yeah, QRP is just a fancy way of saying low power. Generally, when people talk about radio they're gonna be talking about wattages. So we've been talking a lot about Baofengs and I know Eva mentioned the Alinko radios, Yaesu radios, these are generally going to be handy talkies. They looknkind of like what people might think a walkie-talkie would look like. The type of radios that would be a base station, they'll look very different. They look kind of like a—basically a box. It's a real, if it's a nice space station, that might be a really big box. Generally those are going to be at 100 watts or more, but those are also going to be extremely expensive. They're going to also generally require kind of semi-complex antenna setups, a lot of room to set up some type of base station like that. The stuff that I'm interested in for low power, the difference is that it's much cheaper. And a lot of people look at radio and they're like, I don't have an extra $1,000 to just drop on like a nice radio, I don't have an extra—especially if you want to do long distance stuff. That was kind of my interest. That's actually why I have a general license. If you get a technician license, it actually kind of limits you to very high frequency and ultra high frequency. You can do some stuff on the longer distance, but it's very limited. So yeah, you to even do stuff with long distance in a general sense, you have to get a general license, but a QRP is a way that you can not spend a lot of money—or at least spend less money, it still might be a lot of money, relatively speaking. But um. What'd you say?

Margaret 52:58 And QRP means low powered, right?

Cici 53:01 Yeah, low power. For Morse code, that's five watts or less. For voice modes like single sideband, that would be 10 watts or less. Actually, a lot of HAM radios kind of poopoo it because they're like, why would you use, you know—it's just, it can be difficult because you're using such little power, but you get a lot of benefits with it. A lot of benefits is you can use a radio that doesn't—or you can use an antenna that doesn't take up a lot of space. If you live in an apartment, that's huge. If you live in a place where, you know, like, you don't—you're not supposed to set up outside antennas or something, that's huge. I already mentioned that it's very cheap, or cheaper, I shouldn't say very cheap. But it's cheaper than doing other types of radios that use much higher power. Also, one of the big things is that you can make your own radios. We were talking about earlier how one of the benefits of radio was that it's decentralized, like, you're not about to go make your own smartphone.

Margaret 53:55 Mm hmm.

Cici 53:56 At least I can't. I don't know anyone who can. But you could make your own radio. And you can make your own antenna. In fact, a lot of HAMs encourage people to make their own antennas because it's—antennas are actually kind of expensive to go buy. It's actually cheaper to make them. So like a lot of HAMs will just learn how to make antennas out of, like, nothing. Like a lot of people make them on a tape measure and stuff, like it's very—if you're kind of that person where it's like I want to experiment and I want to kind of just make stuff with found materials or stuff that's, like, I have already at my house. Like, that's a huge benefit. Also, we didn't mention this earlier, but RF safety kind of is a related to the amount of—it's related to a lot of stuff, but it can be related to the amount of watts you're putting out.

Margaret 54:39 What is RF?

Cici 54:41 Oh, sorry, RF is radio frequency. It's just—it's the type of energy we're using for radio.

Margaret 54:47 So what is—how does it tie in to safety? Sorry, I'm just like...

Cici 54:52 Oh, it's okay. So if you're using something like 100 watts or more and you're transmitting. Like, for instance, you should never touch an antenna at that many watts that's transmitting. You're gonna get an RF burn. It's basically something that, like, it can get kind of complicated. But—and there's—I don't want to like scare people or anything, like, it's not—I'm not trying to be like, "Oh, we didn't talk about safety." But the lower wattage you use the less you have to worry about that, basically, especially if you have an indoor antenna or something. Like, if you have an indoor antenna, you really want to keep your RF, like, levels lower so you don't—part of it is actually practical, like, we haven't talked a lot about interference. But if you have a really, really high, like, wattage, and today—it can cause interference. And it can be something where your neighbors are trying to like use their electronics, and they hear all sorts of weird stuff, they hear all sorts of clicks and whatever. That's because you're using like a really high power radio. So, like, your neighbors just might get mad and be like, "You're, we see this antenna outside your house, and it's doing this thing and blah, blah, blah." So using a less power, it can be—it can cause less interference. But also it will just cause less RF like fields, which means that it's safer to operate inside. And someone might, like, might be thinking, "Well, why would I want to operate inside? If I can operate outside, shouldn't I?" Well, it depends. Are you doing something where you don't necessarily want people to know you're operating. A big antennas, like, if you have a huge antenna outside your house, or even just kind of a moderate one but something that's obviously an antenna and not a TV antenna, it'll be like, well, that person's a radio operator. Not everybody wants that immediately known if they were to walk by their house. I'll just say that. It's something that, if you're using QRP, it's much easier for you to not cause interference, to operate from completely inside, and to be able to make your own equipment.

Margaret 56:51 It's really cool honestly. Like, talking to you makes me want to learn how to build radios.

Eepa 56:58 I mean, it's like, there's some benefits to, like, QRP, like low power HF radios for prepping especially because they're mobile. You can literally put one of these—you can put a full QRP setup—a low power radio, power source, an antenna, and like an antenna tuner—in your purse. You could put it in a very small satchel and be able to talk to somebody states away. So these can be really compact and really mobile solutions that still give you access to autonomous email, like, still give you access to, you know, listening to all of these different bands, transmitting all these different bands. So from a preparedness perspective, that is a huge benefit. The low wattage basically allows you to use less power from your battery so you can use a very small solar panel that folds up and into your backpack to recharge your battery when you need. And so that just has tremendous benefits for mobility. And one of the key things to think about from a, maybe, a situation where you have any type of adversary. So that could be, you know, a lot of white supremacists militia types have created radio nets and have radio training. They're—they've been working on preparing this for years, they have pre-designated frequencies and nets, they've got all these different things set up. And one of the things that they can do is they can track you. So it's extremely easy to triangulate and locate the source of a transmission. So if you are needing to transmit something that is sensitive or that will identify you, as politically opposed to people that might be interested in finding you, you're going to want to transmit from locations away from your place of residence and also in a way that doesn't, you know, create a big circle on the map around your house. You're going to want to choose random locations to transmit from, and you're going to want to use, you know—low power helps with that a little bit as well. You can reach the people you need to without giving away your position too much. But as soon as you click the transmission button, you're opening up the world to find out exactly where you're at. So you can transmit what you need to, pack up, and get out of there if you need to. That's the nice thing about those low power rigs. So that's something to really think about when you're getting into radio. And, yeah, you can build your own, you can build your own antenna. There's some awesome antennas that you can literally just launch up into a tree with a slingshot and it's—all it is is one giant long strand of speaker cable, speaker wire. That's it, that's an antenna. Nothing more is needed. You just need a little antenna tuner to hook up to it and your radio and you're good to go. So those kinds of things are—they open up the whole world to you on a very, very—on a lower budget than you would be if you had a base station. One of the things that we talked about with the article that we released the Javelina Network is that handheld radios and QRP HF radios are very good for transmitting on the go and that was our main focus on that. You can do base stations which is like based out of your apartment, based out of your co-op or your bookstore or whatever you want to do. But again, that's a known location, that's a fixed location, that means that you have to be much more careful about what you're transmitting. And if you're transmitting outside of legal areas, the amateur radio committee has a whole community of amateur snitches that their whole thing—they get their jollies by tagging people on not having licenses and stuff. So it can happen. You just got to be careful about what you do.

Margaret 1:00:53 That's actually one of the questions that I—when I asked around basically being like what should I ask these people? One of the questions that came up a couple times was how real is—I think—it was presented to me that's called fox hunting? Like, the hobby of tracking down on licensed operators. What a great culture, what a wonderful culture where their whole thing is just snitching on people. But so, yeah, my question was, like, how real is that? Like, how much do people—especially like, let's say if you're not—I mean obviously if you're doing something where people are—where the people around you are politically opposed to you, and opposed to what you're saying, obviously that will increase the odds. But if you're just, like, coordinating some random bullshit like picking up lumber or something like that, how much do you act—do people—how real is this? How much do people actually get kind of tracked down?

Eepa 1:01:52 So from my experience, basically, fox hunting—I'm sorry, I've got a ICE helicopter flying over me right now. The—as far as fox hunting goes, if you go to any type of, like, HAM Fest or HAM convention or HAM con or, you know, whatever you want to go to, they will all have fox hunting competitions. This is something that, you know, people really enjoy doing is just like, you know, hunting down signals. Now, what this is typically used for is not going to be tracking down the guy who's saying, "Hey, I got lumber," or, you know, the person who's like, "Hey, you know, I need to pick up a quart of oil from you," or something like that, or the gal that's, you know, "I've got eggs for sale," or something like that, you know. It's not typically going to be stuff like that. It's usually like sources of interference that people are going to be tracking down. So if you're causing a lot of interferenc, and it's pissing people off, then they will fox hunt you down, and they'll find out what's going on. So if you have a jammer or something like that, which are illegal, and you operate that jammer and it makes people mad—if you operate it for long enough, people will find it and they will make sure that that is put to the stop. And so you have to be careful if you do utilize jammers and things like that, that you're not using them when you don't need to. So fox hunting in, like, day to day circumstances is a little bit less of a threat. If you know kind of what radio people sound like—and, again, do this at your own risk. This is something, again, that, you know, is illegal. But if you had like a fake callsign and you just follow the standard protocols of calls, you could basically get away with it as long as you didn't accidentally have some callsign that somebody there knew as being somebody else. So generally it's not going to be an issue if you're just talking between two people, you select a frequency, you listen to it, nobody's on that frequency, nobody's been on that frequency for a long time, and you just use it to call each other to coordinate something. Just kind of sound like you belong and you'll be okay. As soon as you get into an adversarial situation, that's when you do have police operating like stingers and other devices that will track down cell phone data, they'll track down radio data, everything—any kind of frequency that's being emitted, those things will be able to track down the source of so just be very aware of when and how you're transmitting, and be safe about it.

Cici 1:04:29 Absolutely. And I would actually add to what Eepa says: If you're going to use a call sign, first you want to absolutely know who—you know, if you're licensed—So, okay, so for people who are like what the hell is call sign?

Margaret 1:04:43 Yeah I was about to ask.

Cici 1:04:46 For HAM radio, what—basically what happens is you take this test. Assuming you pass they'll—what the license actually—the most important thing that I guess the license gives you is a call sign. I actually have a call sign. I'm not going to say it. The reason I'm not going to say it is because for anybody that says a call sign, it's instantly look up-able. When you take the test you have to give like an address, it's supposed to be your home address, of where you live. And basically that data is publicly available. So like, if I were to say my call sign right now, anybody listening to this podcast could go look it up online and find out exactly who I am—or at least, I shouldn't say exactly who I am. They could find out the name that I gave to the FCC, which is my real name. They could find out the address I have listed. You're supposed to updat it, like, you know, every time you move or whatever. A lot of people don't necessarily but like if they find out, like, that can become an issue. So for instance, let's say you just found a call sign. Nobody's using it. Cool. Somebody happens to look it up—and they might actually do this innocuously, a lot of people want these—they're called QSL cards. It's basically a little card that say, "Hey, I contacted you." And it's like a postcard that 's like, oh, cool. So they might just look it up just thinking, "Hey, I contacted you, I want a little postcard," and see that, you know, that call sign's registered to somebody in Texas. You were transmitting from, like, Washington. Like, they might be, like, well, that's kind of weird. That's not necessarily a tip off. Because, you know, you could be traveling. It's not like you have to change your call sign when you go traveling, you're on vacation, whatever. But if you're constantly—like, if you live in Texas and you're constantly transmitting from Texas and you never transmit for Washington, but that call sign is assigned to someone in Washington, like that's gonna tip somebody off, like, is this person really who they say they are? Also, you might—this gets a little dicey, too. But if you're using voice modes and, you know, your call sign says tou're this 58-year-old guy and you don't sound like a 58-year-old guy, like, that might start making sound like, you know, is this person who they say they are?

Margaret 1:06:57 Is it gonna be like four random letters or something? Like is—or is the call sign, like, this is like, I don't know, Phoenix Rising, I don't know...

Cici 1:07:06 Oh no, they're random letters. Like, for instance, I'm not gonna say my call sign. But, for instance, I'm reading this book, HAM—like HAM radio people generally love sharing their call signs, like, they'll put it on books. The call sign of [inaudible] from this guy that I'm reading, it's G0KYA. And actually, the G in the beginning means that he's actually from the UK. So not only are they location-specific, but they're country-specific. So like, if you just made up a call sign, like, people can generally tell if it's real or not. They're supposed to be a certain length, they have certain—like, for instance, in the in the US, generally if you get a call sign, it's gonna start with K or W. So like, that's something, if you're going to do that, you should know that these are things. Now of course this could all be alleviated just by getting an actual, like getting licensed and getting an actual whole sign. Still be careful who you share it with, you know. Like, maybe don't just go around telling everybody what your call sign is like most HAMs do. Just because, you know, maybe there is that really reactionary guy at the local HAM and, like, he gets a whiff that you're not, you know, you're not—your politics upset him. He knows your call sign. Also, if you're broadcasting you're supposed to actually say your call sign every 10 minutes. So it's not like, "Well, I'm just never gonna say my call sign when a broadcasting." You're supposed to. You're not just gonna keep it secret so that's something to think about. As far as fox hunting, yeah, there's this whole thing where HAMs will set out a radio, they'll hide it, and the whole game is to try to go and find the transmitter. This is actually something you don't even need to be licensed to do, you're just listening for this transmitter. So like, technically, you wouldn't even—you don't even need a license to go fox hunt. Anybody could track it down if they're just listening to you.

Margaret 1:08:48 That honestly sounds fun.

Cici 1:08:50 Also—I would also mention, that's actually something I'm interested in doing. We're not the only people at Radio Stash, obviously have radios. And if you know how to foxhunt and you note that there's this—or maybe there's just this guy in your local HAM community. If anyone's interacted with HAM, it tends to be very old, white, retired dudes. Like the average age of HAMs is probably something like 60 or 70. Like, it's very old. Like, it's people that have the money to buy like $1,000 base stations usually. So like, maybe there's a guy there that's, you know, he's always got a Blue Lives Matter shirt on. Or maybe, you know, he went to, you know, he went to DC recently, or something. And maybe you don't know his, you don't know his call sign, or maybe he's using a fake call sign or something. But if you can triangulate your signal, you could probably find out where he's at least transmitting from. Whether or not that's his house is, you know, it's a different thing. But you can actually use a lot of this stuff—the stuff that they use against us you can also use, like, to help us as well.

Margaret 1:09:56 So I'm impressed that we made it an hour and eight minutes before we brought up the fact that the fascist attempted to stage a coup in the United States yesterday. Sorry, anyway, what were you gonna say?

Eepa 1:10:11 Oh, no, I was gonna basically just add that when it comes to that security culture around call signs, that's really important. I've remember going to a protest of a basically a bunch of white supremacists, you know, ethno-nationalists or whatever. And there was a guy there who had his FRA sticker and his call sign on the back of his truck. And so I just went online, I looked at the call sign, and I showed him a picture of his home address. And I said, "Do you live here?" And he's like, "Yes." And then I showed him a picture of his little earth and his truck sitting in his driveway of his house, I was like, "This is your house in your truck, right?" And, you know, his face went white. And it was just like, either you put the call sign on the truck, or you put the the FRA sticker, but you'd never put both.

Margaret 1:11:02 Yeah.

Eepa 1:11:02 And typically, it's just don't even put your call sign in your vehicle. Because if you show up to an event, police will be able to look that up, fash will be able to look that up, anybody who knows about that can look it up. So that's just a really basic piece of security culture to do. And I can guarantee you that there are people who were in DC that had their call signs that the FBI are going to be looking up as we speak to go and arrest them. So don't snitch on yourself.

Margaret 1:11:31 Yeah.

Cici 1:11:32 Yeah. So no, I mean, like, be very diligent who you share your call sign with. Talking about repeaters, anybody could call into a repeater. So if you're using a repeater and you know that there's people in the area that you don't want them to know your call sign, like, either don't transmit longer than 10 minutes or, you know, just be aware of that you don't want it to be where there's a situation where you're constantly saying your call sign and now people you don't really want to know where you are, either know where you are, or they find out you have a call sign, or something like that. I do want to mention that if you're doing a data mode—there's these things called data modes, which are basically not voice modes. It's, you know, it's not your voice. Also Morse code obviously isn't your voice, it's just a series of beats dits and dots. It's harder for people to tell that's not necessarily you—not in the terms of location but in the terms of like, dits and dots. So like, if you have a friend that lives close to you and you know, their licensed, and and they said it's okay—you should never do anything illegal on the radio, by the way.

Margaret 1:12:35 Yeah, that would be wrong.

Cici 1:12:37 For someone to tell that, oh, that's not you doing dits and dots. I mean, they could maybe? Like maybe your friend transmits at a certain speed and you never transmit at that speed. But even then you could use a keyer which just puts it in automatically. And then like lots of people use keyers, like, that could be—like someone would have to really know, like, I know that dude and I know, that's not how he sends code. Like, that's a really specific situation. But if you're not using voice you have a little more... I don't know. Don't ever do anything illegal on the radio. But also, you don't have to use voice.

Margaret 1:13:12 Yeah.

Cici 1:13:13 Just gonna say that.

Margaret 1:13:14 And I mean, like, it's funny because like, I actually think that—go ahead, go ahead.

Eepa 1:13:18 No, no, no, no, go for it.

Margaret 1:13:21 I actually do think that, like, I think it would be great for us all to get licenses. Like it would actually be like, you know, I mean, it's like—do I think it's like ethically necessary that people have licenses to drive cars? No. But do I, like, want people who are driving cars to know how to drive cars? Yes. Right? And it's not the same thing, right? But like, I would say that, like, I intend to slowly work towards getting my license, right? And, you know, anyone who's interested in radio, it seems like a really good way to do it. And so—but yeah, no, I appreciate that sort of nuance of the conversation around, like, here's how you can choose to access radios while you're still working on them in emergency situations, etc. You know?

Eepa 1:14:06 Well, and I would say, basically, when it comes to getting your license, I think that is actually an important step for people to take because one of the things that allows you to do is to get lots and lots of practice. Practice is going to be the most important thing for you to actually be effective in a, you know, grid down or a, you know—in a sensitive situation, you don't want to be figuring out how to do new modes, how to, you know, what the bands are in the area, what your radio can operate at. You don't want to be figuring that out on the fly. And so if you spend a lot of time with a license interacting with other people in the community, even going and learning from some of those old white codgers who, you know, know how to build, you know, nice antennas or mobile rigs or things like that. You can do that and you can learn—you can learn a lot. And so that's the upside to the license is that you're going to be able to develop and nurture the skills that will come in handy later. Because one of the things that I'm very interested in is a program called JS8Call. And what that does is basically it creates a network of people that, you can be off the radio, and somebody can send you a text message. And the next time you get on the radio, other radios have stored that and when you get on, it'll send you that message. So it's just like an email, or just like a text message.

Margaret 1:15:32 Cool.

Eepa 1:15:33 In that whenever your radios on, you can get those messages. So the other nice thing about that is they have individual rooms. So you could set up a room in JS8Call just for your local mutual aid thing. And if somebody logs in, you will know that they have logged in from your group. And if somebody logs in who's not from your group, you will know. So it offers you a little extra level of security over just general voice transmission and things like that. So, but learning the fineties of all of these different things and learning what your niche is, because again, everyone has different interests and different talents. The best way to explore that is going to be with a license. Now, the second things go south and you need to be using your radio for revolutionary purposes, you also need to know how to operate securely without your call sign, and how to, you know, vary your location, how to vary your signal strength, how to use transmission that actually bounces off of the ionosphere instead of line of sight, and things like that. There's all kinds of cool tricks you can learn, but you really need to practice them and refine them and make sure you know what you're doing before you get to a situation where you're going to be asked to be the expert. And it can be very intimidating, technically, to be like, you know, there's all these different things that I can learn, I can do all this, I can do all that. One of the things you can do is if you are one of those people, like, you know, us, that's very interested in radio and thinks that it's like really interesting and cool, is become extremely proficient at something and then develop simplified protocols for people who aren't extremely interested but want to have communication. We have, one of the members of the Javelina Network is a veteran who used to be a radio operator overseas. And basically, you type the numbers in, you push the button, you call. And that's basically the level of complexity. And that enables large-scale coordination of logistics, of people movement, of intelligence, of all kinds of stuff like that, just having community members that know how to make those transmissions. So if you are the kind of person who's excited and interested in radio, and you're developing those skills, your other role is to act as a teacher about just basic stuff. You pre-programm the radio and you give it to somebody and you say, "Okay, this is how and when to transmit. This is why you transmit. This is how you stay safe." You just give them the basic instructions and that way, they don't have to worry about programming, they don't have to worry about all of the minutia that, you know, you can get easily lost in. And that's the way we can we can lift each other up. That's part of, like, what the Javelina Network's all about.

Cici 1:18:11 Absolutely. I love that. Also, I would say to people—so yes, HAM radio is generally—it's going to be more reactionary as a general rule. You're going to generally be dealing with old white dudes. But it's not—I don't want to paint them as all bad people. Like there are—some places are better than others. I liked what Eepa said earlier about just kind of listen and see what kind of people are there. Some HAMs, some like people in HAM radio, they love teaching new HAMs, they love trying to—there's this kind of subset of HAMs that we always need to be like getting more people into this. It's like, if you just show up and you're just like, "I don't know anything," or you know, I don't know anything, but I need help. There's, depending on the club or the culture that exists in your area, there might be somebody there that's like willing to just take you under their wing. That's actually a word in HAM culture for people that teach. It's kind of hard to find these people actually, but they're Elmers. An Elmer is actually supposed to be a mentor for you. They're supposed to, like, help you. You know, you don't have to be super political and you don't have to tell these people what you think or whatever. A lot of HAMs, you know, a lot of HAMs actually won't tell other people what they're thinking either. They're there just to have fun with the radio, they're not trying to necessarily tell people all of their business either. So yeah, you might have a guy that, you know, we were talking about access to equipment can be a huge limitation to this hobby. If you find an Elmer, and a lot of these guys have old equipment or they have just, they've accumulated equipment, they might just give you an old radio they're not using anymore which could be huge, you know, and you can develop like these relationships that they don't have to be, like, your best friend, like—or you know, maybe they are your best friend. I don't know. Like, they can, you know, they don't—not all HAMs are like out to get you or trying to like find all the—they're not all just trying to find the person messing up so they can report them to the FCC. There's actually, with a license change, I've been reading a few things in HAM radio community and one HAM was so upset that he was like if I hear somebody transmitting and they're made up a license, like, I'm not going to report it. Because he's, like, he just doesn't think people should pay $35 to the FCC. So I mean, like, not everyone is not everyone in the HAM community is like, "Oh, we're gonna get you." But also, yeah, I would also say, share what knowledge you have. One of the things that I think, like, if you are somebody that does have a little bit more money, or maybe you do have a little bit of, I don't know, you could buy 10 Baofengs, you can give them out, teach people how to tune them into the police station—a lot of police have, they basically have it where you can actually listen to them. A lot of people actually do this, not just for political reasons but just to, you know, they just want to know why there's a million sirens going off. As long as you don't transmit and as long as you don't jam the signal, you can listen all day long. And that can be helpful. Listen, see what's going on, call your friends being like, this is where they're going to be at or this is what's happening. As far as the licensing goes, part of the reason people get licenses is so they don't accidentally do stuff. For instance, like if you were listening into like a ambulance, or like a health—like something for, like, EMTs—you don't want to accidentally interfere with them. Like, obviously, they're going to go help people who are in like medical distress. So like, you want to make sure that you know how to use the Baofeng but that's kind of what Eepa was saying. Like, if you have access to where you can get equipment to people, and you can teach them. "Look, I've already programmed this for you. I've already set it up to the frequency. This is how to change the frequency if you need to. But in general, like, just listening and if youm you know, want to let somebody know what you hear just, you know, call somebody." That's great. Like, no one is expected to know everything in this hobby. So like, yeah, if you can help somebody who—I actually don't know a lot about Baofengs. I've been focusing on other stuff. So like, I'd love for someone to help me do things that are more like VH VHF type of technologies. So...

Margaret 1:22:18 Well, do y'all have any—we're kind of running out of time and it's funny cuz there's so much about radios that I can easily talk with us forever. But are there any last thoughts that we—or things that we haven't covered that you want people to know?

Cici 1:22:35 Ah, I didn't mention this earlier, but I'm actually a volunteer examiner. I mentioned earlier, like ham radio people are the ones who actually give the exams. If people are interested in getting licensed, either now or in the future—I don't know I didn't put out any contact information, but feel free to let get in touch with me. I'm actually currently studying for the extra license. I want to do it before they have to pay the FCC $35. But once I get the extra license—one of the things the licenses actually let you do is test other people to get licensed. So maybe you're in an area where, again, the HAM club sucks, they're really reactionary, they don't want to help new HAMS, they're just mean, whatever, but you still want to get licensed. If you have a friend that can help, like, basically a—you need three VEs to do a test. But like, if you have three people in your community who could basically be those VEs and help you get tested—

Margaret 1:23:32 What does that mean? Oh, a volunteer examiner?

Cici 1:23:35 Oh, yeah, volunteer diameter. Yeah, sorry, VE. That can help tremendously. One of the things that pandemic's actually done is that you used to have to do that in person but now there's actually a whole system of people doing this remotely. So you can actually take your tests on Zoom, you don't have to show up anywhere. So that's great if you're, you know, you're homebound, or you know, it's a pandemic and you just don't want to leave your house because you're quarantining. So yeah, that's actually one of the benefits that's happened recently. Like, this is recent in terms of, like, I think, April they—the FCC authorized like 14 groups to give remote exams. So yeah, if people have questions about getting licensed, questions about QRP which was the low power stuff, questions about Morse code, please get in touch with me. It can feel very overwhelming but I want people to know that they're not—they don't have to sit there and struggle. I'm actually also trying to learn how to do antenna stuff—antenna stuff's just one of the coolest things. But yeah, I guess that's my last little bit.

Eepa 1:24:40 Um yeah, for me, basically, I want to encourage people to check out the Javelina project. This is something that we have launched together, basically a bunch of decolonial, anti authoritarian kind of people who are interested in building autonomous communications, building networks, creating ways for us to basically keeping in touch and to get information in and out of places as time goes on. You know, we want to be the kind of people that help, you know, next time there's a Standing Rock or Wet'suwet'en and actually set up indigenous communication networks in and out. So that way, you know, when you're frozen out of any type of other media, you can still get media in and out. And we're trying to create resources for, you know, like, a how-to guide of how to set up digital modes on your Baofeng, that's gonna be an article that's gonna be coming out soon.

Margaret 1:25:30 Cool.

Eepa 1:25:31 We're going to be doing an article soon about pirate radio, how to set up a pirate radio station. We're going to be doing articles about, you know, like JS8Call. So I definitely encourage people to stay tuned for that. We already have a guide up on the Indigenous Anarchist Federation website called Skills for Revolutionary Survival: Communication Equipment for Rebels. And that has information, all the basic information about what radios are, what radio you need depending on what situation you expect to be in, recommendations based off of price and like weatherproofing, things like that. And then video resources that you can watch to not only start studying for your test if that's what you're interested in, but also to look at kind of the logistical side of communication. So those videos are a part of that article as well. And basically, you know, just get out there and you can start working with a very cheap radio very fast, use a shortwave radio scanner and start listening to all your local channels. If you want to be the person in your, in your little anarchist cell or in your community who's, you know, next time there's a big storm system that comes through and you want to listen to weather bands, you can learn how to do that. Learn how to listen to it on your radio. And that's a skill you can start developing right now. So there's no time to wait. You can always start the next day that you have access to it and get involved.

Margaret 1:27:00 Yeah. Okay. And then how can folks find you all online?

Eepa 1:27:05 So for the Javelina Network, our Twitter literally just got launched. And it is @JavelinaNetwork which is spelled like the animal: J-A-V-E-L-I-N-A-Network. We decided to go with Javelina because, you know, instead of being hams from Europe, we're the Indigenous little pig so. We're the Javelinas is on the air.

Cici 1:27:36 I love that, by the way. I didn't even think about like people contacting me.

Margaret 1:27:43 You don't have to say it if you don't want, but you just—you said earlier that people should contact you. So I'm giving you a chance if you want.

Cici 1:27:49 I guess Twitter but, like, I don't know if people should contact me on Twitter. I'll go ahead and put my Twitter, why not? I think @postleftprole I think?

Margaret 1:27:59 That sounds right.

Cici 1:28:03 Yeah. Get in touch with me I guess. Just, I guess, request to send me a DM. I guess you can't like to send a DM if I haven't friended you or whatever. But just send a friend request be like, "Hey, I listened to the podcast, I'm curious." I'll, we can talk further. So. I'm not always online but uh, I try to respond—I'm actually on Twitter a fair bit so I guess I'll try to respond. I'm not always on Reddit, or at least I'm not always checking my messages on Reddit. So Twitter's probably more reliable. Right now I'm not a—I don't have any official channels. I should probably think about that. In the future, actually, I hope to put up some videos and stuff to help people do radio stuff. So if people want to get in touch with me to see if when I get that going, like, I'd be happy to let people know.

Margaret 1:28:55 I'm really excited about that work.

Eepa 1:28:56 And you can contact both of us. I was gonna say basically you you can contact both of us at javelinanetwork@protonmail.com. That's an email that all of us that are part of the Javelina Network more generally have access to. And so, like, if you're interested in something as well, that's a—if you're just want to use email, that's a good way to get in contact with us as well.

Margaret 1:29:20 Cool. All right. Well, thank you all so much for your time, and I've been I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. And I—you've really helped break the, like—I'm like, okay, I was like, I came into this with practically a spreadsheet being like, "Alright, this thing maps to this thing. And then this thing has 40 channels and blah, blah, blah." And then you're all like, "No, no, no, you just, you find something you're interested in and you go with it. " It's brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed that, or at least got something out of it. And if you want to support the podcast you can do so by telling people about it, you can tell people on the internet, you can even tell people about it in person, although you should tell them from far away—so you should probably shout about it from far away. Like walk up to strangers and scream, "Hey, Live Like the World is Dying!" That would actually be pretty cool if it became the new YOLO... because everything is YOLO. Anyway. But yeah, people have been doing an amazing job of telling people about the podcast, and it's been really wonderful bringing in new listeners. It makes doing this podcast feel worth it. And if you want to support me more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. If you support me on Patreon, it's how I pay for the podcast. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And I put up zines ostensibly every month but I am very far behind because of the pandemic and my resultant complicated ability to interact with my own mental space and the amount of work I have to do—which I'm sure no one else is dealing with, it's a thing with the pandemic that actually only affects me. I'm the only person who is dealing with it. [chuckling] Anyway, sorry. But yeah, and you can support me there. And if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, don't support me there. Just contact me and I'll get you access to all of the information, all of the stuff that's behind the paywall of Patreon, I can give that to you for free. But in particular, I'd like to thank Eleanor and Mike and Satara and Kat J and The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the Dog, Nora, and Chris. Thank you all so much for making this possible. I never expected to get as much—anywhere near as much support as I do get from people. And I've been able to start passing that along and, you know, hire a transcriptionist to keep this podcast more accessible and hopefully start looking into other ways to expand this content beyond just me in the near future. So thank you. Thank you all so much for listening, and I hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on.

Episode Notes

The guest, Philip, has compiled this list of further resources and encourages people to check out look into them because there are a lot of good lessons about how counterinsurgency has operated historically that can help us resist today.   Know Your Rights trainings are available from the CLDC and ACLU [including the Live Like the World is Dying episode on the subject]   For the history of police and state repression

• "Our Enemies in Blue": "Secret Police, Red Squads, and the Strategy of Permanent Repression"
• "Life During Wartime" - Kristian Williams, Lara Messersmith-Glavin, William Munger
• "Witness to Betrayal / Profiles of Provocateurs" - Kristian Williams
• "Basic Politics of Movement Security" - J Sakai
• "Policing Indigenous Movements" - Andrew Crosby & Jeffery Monaghan good for Canadian context
• Intercept article on TigerSwan surveillance of Standing Rock:
• "New State Repression" Ken Lawrence
• "War at Home: Covert Action Against US Activists and What We Can Do About It"- Brian Glick

Government resources on counterintelligence

• Church Committee Report (federal committee on FBI COINTELPRO ops)
• "Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peace-Keeping" Frank Kitson

The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript:

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, Margaret Killjoy, and I use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking with Philip who, among many other things, teaches security culture trainings. And I first was introduced to Philip's work on it when we had a conversation about the complexities of security culture. Security culture—we'll go over in this episode—is basically the idea of creating a culture of security, a culture of a way—creating a culture by which people don't get caught as much for the types of things that they may choose to want to do in order to advance, you know, their desires. It's for activists and revolutionaries and shit to not get fucking caught. It has lot of good tools around how to do that kind of culturally. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And—but for this week, and next week, I'm going to do it a little bit differently, and instead of running a jingle for another show on the network, I'm just gonna tell you about another show on the network because I don't think they have a jingle yet. And basically say that the Maroon Cast is now a member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts and I'm very excited about that. And you all should go check it out. Also, the Institute for Anarchist Studies is an organization that gives grants to people who—well, I'm just about to play a fucking jingle for it. So I'll just fuckin play the jingle for it—da daaaa!

Jingle 01:40 Hey, radicals, anarchists, and all of you liberatory leftists: Are you a podcaster, video maker, multimedia artist, or writer? The Institute for Anarchist Studies wants to let you know we have grants available for projects focusing on Black and indigenous anarchisms, police abolition and alternatives, and mutual aid. For details and how to apply visit anarchiststudies.org and click on the grants application post on our main page. That's anarchiststudies.org. Anarchist-studies-dot-O-R-G. Applications close January 31, 2021. Spread the word and tell your friends.

Margaret 02:24 Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with whatever name you want to go by, your pronouns, and I guess kind of a little bit about what brought you to this work of teaching and security culture trainings?

Philip 02:35 Yeah, my name is Philip, I use they/them pronouns. I'm living in Suquamish Territory and the Salish Sea. I've been involved in a lot of solidarity work with Indigenous liberation movements and Black liberation movements that have exposed me to a lot of frontline experiences and experiences with state repression, both immediately and down the line. And in response to those encounters with law enforcement with legal repression, and with the effect that that has on our movements, me and a lot of friends and comrades have dived into learning about security culture, learning about the tools and the techniques that we can all use to keep each other safe. And also learning about the ways that the state works to isolate our movements, to discredit our movements—basically, to disempower us—so that we're able to be more informed about how to take care of each other. So I'm definitely deeply indebted to a lot of Black and Indigenous liberation movements for developing these skills and passing them on. And I'm here to just try to contribute now what I've been taught and foster a conversation about how we can be moving into this, like, pretty unprecedented territory in the world of new state surveillance, expanding state surveillance, more encounters with police, but also with right-wing vigilantes, paramilitary groups, white supremacists, and some of the tools we can use.

Margaret 04:07 That makes sense. Yeah, one of the reasons that I wanted to have you on in particular is a conversation that we had about the nuances of security culture, and I'm really excited to get into that stuff. But for people who have no idea what we're talking about, could you introduce the concept of security culture?

Philip 04:26 Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like there's a lot of intersections between security culture and a lot of other topics that you've had on this show or that you might have on in the future. Ultimately, I think of security culture as this big framework. And it's a framework that helps us reduce risk for ourselves when we're engaging in social movement work, basically by protecting sensitive information. So one definition might be: It's like a mix of interpersonal and organizational and technical practices that help us be more resilient to state repression. It's a shared set of customs, that helps us minimize risk by explicitly naming some norms, over our boundaries and over our communication and that helps us lessen our paranoia, reducing ambiguity, and feeling more secure as we're engaging with the inherently risky work of challenging unjust power systems.

Margaret 05:31 So what are some of the examples of that when you talk about, like, changing social norms in order to accommodate security culture? Like, you know, what comes to mind with that?

Philip 05:43 Yeah, well, I think that the first thing to say is, intentionally or unintentionally, we all have a set of security practices that we do as human beings. We all have boundaries with each other, intentional or unintentional. And the point of security culture is really to be explicit about those boundaries. I, you know, I really want to do a shout out that a lot of people already practice security, culture, and situational awareness in their daily lives, you know, especially trauma survivors, people who are targeted by police and state surveillance. But some of those specific boundaries and norms that we might use would be having, you know, a clear idea of what information is sensitive, and then not sharing that information with people who don't need to know it, to protect yourself and to protect them.

Margaret 06:37 Like so concretely like—

Philip 06:38 That—

Margaret 06:38 Go ahead.

Philip 06:40 Yeah, so that would, you know, a big, obvious one is like, don't talk about illegal activities that you have done, or that you're thinking about doing or asking someone else if they've done it. A big thing might be like, "Oh, yeah, I thought I saw you at this protest the other week doing this illegal action. Was that you? How does that feel to you?" That's a big thing that we wouldn't do. That's a pretty clear violation of norms and boundaries over not wanting people to expose themselves in that way.

Margaret 07:09 But what if you want to change your profile picture to, like, you throw in a brick on, like, Facebook?

Philip 07:15 And that's another one, you know, it's not only the explicit things that we share with each other, but also what is available to the outside world, to law enforcement, or to right wing groups through our social media presences, through, you know, just things that are immediately perceptible like bumper stickers or, like, the Antifa uniform that we're wearing. Being aware of the information that we're communicating, even if it's non-verbal.

Margaret 07:45 One of the—

Philip 07:45 Though I do wanna say— One of the main things is we should be aware of the sensitivity of the information and limit the information that's sensitive. And then the flip side of that is not stressing about information that is not sensitive. So it's not only, you know, being discreet and confidential about things that could expose us to legal targeting, but also then shedding the worry and anxiety of, "Oh, do I need to be lying to everyone in my life because they asked me what kind of coffee I like, and they're trying to build a case against me?"

Margaret 07:47 Go ahead. Mm hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. I—you know, it's like, when people first started talking about security culture around me, I ran into a lot of—we kind of all ran into a lot of issues of it with it, where it would cause, like, a lot of paranoia and then also a lot of like bravado and, like, it definitely, when practiced poorly, can be kind of not a very pleasant culture to be in. Like, it can become a culture of paranoia. But one of the things that I always really liked doing, you know, okay, so it's like—Alright, if you engage in a culture where you just don't talk about crime, like, you kind of have the sense that everyone around you is doing crime and that's cool (assuming they're doing cool crime, because lots of good things and bad things are crime). You can kind of just like—like, one of the things that I try and tell people is just, like, assume that everyone is a secret badass. Like, the shitty kid has been like sleeping on your couch for two weeks and like, doesn't do her dishes enough or whatever. Like, maybe she's getting up to, like, really wild shit. Or maybe she's on the run, you know, and kind of just assuming that everyone is up to something cool. And therefore you just don't need to know it. I don't know. That's something that's always worked for me. Yeah. Yeah, and I think there's absolutely something to be said there about—it takes a lot of intentional work to sort of decouple these practices from some of the, just the other cultural norms that we all have. And that being a big thing of social clout.

Philip 10:00 Of, you know, wanting—especially in a movement space—to be able to, like, celebrate the badass shit that we're doing. And one of the awkward things about security culture, or that makes it a little counterintuitive to people who are just learning it is that a lot of times the things that maybe have the biggest impact on our lives, or that we're spending lots of time or energy working on, or that were these really activating, or traumatizing, or fun and exciting experiences we had, we can't really talk about with other people, both for our safety and their safety. And so it's really nice, then, to think, not only, you know, is that something that we shouldn't do, but then also allowing us to think about, well, what are some of the positive ways that we can still be fostering community connection, and, you know, healthy, strong relationships and trust with people where we're not having to communicate about risky things that could implicate us in, like, all sorts of legal entanglements, but instead we can be still be building vulnerability and trust with each other. And that's a really big, important part of security culture that I think gets missed by a lot of people is that this is a great opportunity, actually, for us to think about what are our community norms around communication and interpersonal dynamics? And what are some of the ways that we can shape those intentionally to, like, really build trust and group cohesion and the ability to make us all feel like we're able to do the things that we need to do to survive in this world while staying safe?

Margaret 10:00 Yeah. Okay, so what are some of those things?

Philip 11:32 So I think a big one is that building trust with each other is an active process that we all need to be doing, especially in movement work. One of the big things that I think is really important is being able to, you know, talk about harmful and difficult dynamics that come up about conflict that comes up, about addressing accountability, and how much of state repression is able to impact movements by fracturing us along pre-existing tensions that we aren't able to work through. So there's a lot of examples in that historically, of state targeting movements, basically, where there was already distrust that was unable to be resolved, and fracturing movements by encouraging people to distrust each other because they weren't able to work through conflict.

Margaret 12:25 So you're basically talks about how the way that the state will essentially, like, bad-jacket or fed-jacket people, like, in order to sow distrust. Like basically, like, pick apart, like, so-and-so is unpopular, or maybe so-and-so actually caused harm, right? Like, so-and-so abuse someone or assaulted someone or is, you know, in accountability around it, or evading accountability around it, basically like sowing distrust about therefore, like, that person doing state work? Or what do you what do you mean by that?

Philip 13:00 Yeah, I think that is one popular example. We can definitely talk about that—about both how the state uses false accusations, you know, maybe to break trust—but also how real continued harm, real accusations, are then downplayed when we're existing in this like defensive, reactive space of being, "Oh, well, if, you know, we're going to be talking about these things then it's obviously a bad-jacketing." And so our movements are put in between a rock and a hard place because of just the widespread norm that exists of not being able to address the conflict when it comes up. But another way that that also happens is just how not only direct state intervention can fracture movements, but even the perception of state intervention, the fear and paranoia that gets spread through knowing that we're surveilled, through knowing that there's all these historical examples of actual state harm and us imagining then that we are being actively targeted at that time and us fracturing under that stress, even when there's not active state repression happening to our specific movements. And so it ends up that we almost start policing and repressing ourselves. And we're doing the state's work for it.

Margaret 14:20 I guess, like, one of the things that I think about this is I try to use history and awareness of that connection to actually—hm, how to I want to say this? It's like, I assume everyone's a cop and that makes me not paranoid. And I feel like there's a right way and a wrong way to do this. But for me, and the security culture that I practice—and this might be wildly unpopular—I just I assume that a decent portion of the people that I'm friends with and am close with, so possibly people I've been known and working with for decades, might be state agents. Or I've certainly had a lot of friends, a lot of people very close to me, become state agents, become informants in different cases. And because I'm able to do that, it kind of doesn't break my trust. Because I know that I'm, like, firewalling, all the information that I'm putting out there, right? I'm thinking about what I say to whom and because of that, you know, when someone turns out to be a state agent, I'm like, "Well, okay, like, I didn't trust them anyway so I was careful about what I said to them." And, you know, and obviously, this can be done in a very bad way. But, I don't know, I find it really useful to study basically, like—like, we can look at the history of COINTELPRO and it can, like, you know, drive us into a lot of fear and a lot of, like, just looking over our shoulders constantly, right? Or we can look at it and be like, "Okay, this is the situation that we may or may not be in, and what are the right steps to take if that's the situation we're in." And I think, for me, I mostly watch this be much harder on people for whom it's a shock, for people who come in and are like, "Wow, we're all doing this wild shit together and this is so great." And then it turns out that you're all being surveilled, or, you know, two of you are cops or something like that. And it's kind of heartbreaking and causes more fear as compared to if you just enter it knowing that that's going to be the case.

Philip 16:36 Absolutely, and I think you highlight two things there that feel really important to me in a security culture practice. So one is just having those proactive boundaries and that discretion, and just making that part of your everyday life—part of your way of relating with people and not this whole other mindset that you're adopting just in moments of direct action. Basically assuming, like, I just don't want to publicly share anything that I don't want read back to me at a grand jury hearing.

Margaret 17:10 Right.

Philip 17:12 I think another thing that is really important with what you just said is how important learning from history and looking at the concrete and well-documented examples of state repression that we can learn from prepares us to be able to be more resilient. And that that is an actually really important part of being able to evaluate risk and being able to care for ourselves and being able to know what's coming down the line. And that that should be something that we're constantly doing. And it's a lot of work but I think that's one of the things that I've been really excited by, it's just thinking about all these different resources and tracking the terrain of state repression and being able to then sort of stay ahead of the ball as best we can with thinking about what sort of terrain we have to be working in, and the actual tools and maneuverability that the state has, or that right-wing groups have to be interfacing with us. You know, it feels—not to minimize the very real risks that many people are experiencing by confronting white supremacy and capitalism and state violence.—but thinking about this on a little bit more exploded of a level, it feels like we're, you know, kind of playing this like big elaborate board game. And that state repression isn't functioning in the way of just pure unbridled force being exacted on any sort of social movement. There are absolutely moments of that. You know, we have seen assassinations, we have seen brutalization, there are many historical examples, you know, bombs were dropped on the MOVE collective in Philadelphia, police assassinated Fred Hampton of the Black Panthers while he slept in his bed. There are big examples of that. But by and large, at least as far as, you know, the material that is publicly available to reflect from, the way that state repression happens is more by controlling dissent through these sort of like light touches, by erecting the container that social movements and public opinion exist in, and trying to have that subtle touch, you know, that sort of negotiated management or that controlled management, similar to a lot of ways of how street protests are handled by police. Now, instead of it just being an outright brutality, it's more of negotiating with movement leaders, shutting the terrain, and if we're able to track that and we're able to keep a good tab on where public opinion is at, keep a good tab on what sort of restraints the state has for interacting with us for not trying to move public opinion towards supporting popular movements, you know, we're able to then track the sort of tools that we have available to be able to challenge these systems and have a little more strategy, a little more creativity, you know, thinking outside of the box and really engaging with this in a very adaptive and flexible and, like, spontaneous way. And I think that's one of the greatest strengths of decentralized movements is being able to be really flexible and responsive in a way that the state and other authoritarian or hierarchically-organized systems aren't able to keep up with.

Margaret 20:25 To keep asking you kind of the same question over and over again, but can you give examples of that? Like, what is it about decentralization that gives us that kind of advantage, like, or what are some examples of people using that advantage?

Philip 20:40 So I mean, one great example is just looking at the trove of documents that gets produced through surveillance of movements, and realizing how little these different analysts and intelligence agencies actually understand about social movements and about organizing. And so one example of that is specifically, there was a great series published by The Intercept after Standing Rock about this intelligence agency, Tiger Swan, and all the surveillance that they did on the Standing Rock movement. And this is an enormous cache of documents. You know, the state spent millions of dollars surveilling and compiling networks and trying to understand how these movements were working on the ground to be able to contain them and neutralize them. And yet, at the same time, the state just didn't seem to fundamentally understand how it was possible that such a large movement wasn't operating along, like, traditional military structuring. They were naming people who were, you know, a media spokesperson, or someone who had a popular Instagram feed who was documenting a lot of it, as the leader of the movement or as supplying arms, when that was so clearly not the case to anyone who was able to participate on the ground. And so that smokescreen of the state not understanding the organic flows of movements or how it's possible for things to exist in a [inaudible] fashion, it creates this haze that allows us to kind of keep, you know, the specifics of how we're relating with each other protected from that surveillance and allows us to remain safe.

Margaret 22:23 Yeah, I had a—Go ahead.

Philip 22:25 I mean, the counterpoint to that is just when states—when militaries are engaging with traditionally organized enemies, you know, whatever might be a centrally-commanded military unit, it's really easy to, you know, be able to identify the central command and eliminate it. Versus, you know, states, armies, militaries engaging with irregular guerrilla warfare is a very difficult situation to be able to differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. And, you know, I really love to point at the example of the United States military losing to the Vietcong, you know, the greatest military empire power on the planet losing to some communist guerrillas in the jungle who, you know, were able to operate in a way that this empire was just not able to respond.

Margaret 23:21 Yeah, so that's like, one of the things I like about security culture is it helps create that smokescreen because—and I like the way that phrasing it as a smokescreen—where they have a hard time seeing what a decentralized movement is doing. And a lot of times we don't understand what a decentralized movement is doing. It's like, I feel like whenever I'm engaged in a very chaotic and organic situation, I spend about half my time just trying to figure out what's going on, right? And—in order to understand what's happening so I can figure out how to best engage with it. But on the other hand, I like how a security culture—it's like, I don't know which of my friends are up to things besides what they talk about. And I don't need to know and it also it helps—it helps to minimize—I mean, like, you brought up earlier about the like social clout and, like, I think one of the things that destroys movements is social capitalism, is the idea of, like, everyone's trying to gain clout, everyone's trying to, you know, I mean, to say it cynically, you know, like, have the coolest podcast and get everyone to support your Patreon or whatever the fuck, right? But—and even if you're trying to do that for the best of reasons, even if you're trying to do that in order to like, you know, get out good ideas or whatever, social capital ends up playing a lot into it and social capital games are really dangerous. and way more than like being a cool podcaster or whatever, being a cool militant is like—to the people who know—that's like extra cool. And you get way too much say and what's going on if everyone like is, like, "Oh, yeah, like, she's doing all this like crazy shit," right? And it's kind of this thing, it's like a little bit hard, but you kind of like learn to just accept like, "Oh, alright, well, like I'm a secret badass and no one knows." Well like, not me, but like, you know, maybe when I was younger, I don't know. But like, I don't know—you talk about the smokescreen thing, it's just like, I literally don't know who's up to no good, you know, and that's great. It feels really good. I'm like, I literally can't snitch because I have no fucking clue. One of the things that you were talking about earlier, or that we were talking about earlier, that I feel like is worth breaking down for people who are, you know—I mean, obviously, this podcast is about preparedness, right? And I believe that revolt is an important part of preparedness. But people might not necessarily know what we're talking about when we talk about, like, snitch-jacketing, fed-jacketing, bad-jacketing, you know, which are like, slang terms or terms that we've come up with because this just happens over and over and over again and we want ways to be able to identify it quickly. But what the fuck did those mean? Are you able to break that down?

Philip 26:05 Sure. Yeah. Um, let me first—first, like, explicitly name some of the tools of state repression. I think that might be a helpful thing.

Margaret 26:14 Yeah. Explicit stuff.

Philip 26:15 So in my like conceptualization, ultimately, we have to recognize that challenging and unjust power system, that power system has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. So as we're challenging white supremacy, capitalism, militarism, you know, we are putting ourselves in a position where those systems are going to want to then minimize our ability to change them. And we get our power through working together collectively. And so I kind of see that fundamental tool of state repression has been isolation. A quote that I always go to of how clear that is from J. Edgar Hoover, who was the director of the FBI during the counterintelligence program against the Black Panthers, where his main objective—he, you know, writes that it's to expose, to disrupt, misdirect, discredit, and otherwise neutralize the activities of these black nationalist organizations. So there's a really intentional, conscious push from these state actors to isolate us and to neutralize us. And the ways that they do that historically has been through surveillance, both to gather information, but also as a sort of intimidation, you know, show of power through arrest, whether that's legitimate or illegitimate, through grand juries and legal intimidation, through smear campaigns in the media and discrediting movements, or, you know, saying these protesters are bad because they engage in these types of tactics, through disinformation and spreading paranoia within movements, promoting infighting, blackmail, infiltration, entrapment, threats, and you know, again, all the way up to police brutality and outright assassinations. But so a big way has been by planting informants, by planting undercover agents and those undercover agents either provoking people into committing acts of the state is then enabled us as justification for repression—so we've seen that with the RNC, the Republican National Convention, where an undercover agent encouraged two people to try to use Molotov cocktails and then that resulted in them getting arrested and facing lengthy prison sentences through federal court. But undercovers and informants also can be there to just spread misinformation to break trust, to disrupt group dynamics. And that's just been a really clear way that popular movements have been repressed historically. And so I think that's a reason that it's really easy for us now, as we're worried about security, to say, "Oh, there must be an informant," or like, "Oh, I know that this has happened in the past and so I'm extra aware of this possibility." And one of the outcomes of that is that people who are suspected of being involved in movements with bad intentions can be labeled as an informant, or as a snitch. And so that's basically snitch-jacketing is when you say, "I think this person is working for the police or is providing information," without having clear evidence. And this is something that's really personal to me because I, you know, I've learned a lot of my security practices through trial and error, and there's been error and I've messed up and I've hurt friends and I've hurt movements that have been a part of through dynamics just like this. And I think that's, you know, something I want to hold a lot of humility and hold a lot of accountability for is that I'm saying all these things, but these aren't easy things to implement.

Margaret 30:05 Yeah.

Philip 30:05 You know, the response to snitch-jacketing, or the response to thinking that someone might be a snitch, isn't to snitch-jacket, but to confront them directly with your concerns and be able to establish, you know, some way of trying to work through that conflict. Being able to address other people with your concerns, with your direct concerns, not things that you're assuming or projecting, and, you know, being able to name things directly, as they are. So saying, "Oh, I am skeptical of this person, because they are sketching me out by taking photos in times that I think are really inappropriate," or "Because they're always asking questions that kind of seem to be digging at trying to expose illegal activities," or "I'm not really sure if they are who they say they are because they're never telling me any information about where they're from or what they do."

Margaret 31:01 Right.

Philip 31:02 And so, therefore, this person clearly must be working for the FBI and is here as a plant to disrupt our movement. Therefore, this person is a snitch, and I mean, yes, sure, that has happened historically. But in my appraisal, labeling someone is a snitch does probably just as much if not more damage than just name—than that person actually being a snitch. Because it's all of a sudden creating a huge atmosphere of distrust.

Margaret 31:29 Right.

Philip 31:29 It's creating paranoia. It's exposing huge divisions within the movement. And so even if that person isn't a snitch, by labeling them as a snitch, you've essentially just done the state's work for them of spreading distrust and isolation within movement,

Margaret 31:45 Which is cool because then you can say, "Oh, that person's snitch-jacketing people, they must be a fed." You know, because if you're doing the state's work... Obviously don't do that. And that's called "fed-jacketing." The idea of saying instead of—it's the same fucking concept. It's like, you know, someone's probably a fed instead of—

Philip 32:04 Yeah.

Margaret 32:05 Yeah, one of the ways that I've always heard people talk about it that I've always appreciated is just: judge people by their behavior, not whether or not, like, they're a cop. Like, so rather than assuming, "I think that person's a cop," just be like, "This person is doing something that is making us all less safe." So address that, you know. Address the fact that this person is taking pictures at inappropriate times. Address your distrust of someone, right" But not by saying, like, "I think they're a cop," unless you have hard fucking evidence that they're a cop, you know?

Philip 32:41 Yeah, I really go back time and time again, in thinking about security culture, and seeing really clear intersections between security culture and harm reduction, and transformative justice and conflict resolution. You know, I think, in our society, we aren't given a lot of tools for working through conflict and that is especially aggravated by being in this very intense atmosphere that a lot of activists are existing under. But if we were able to—proactively, before engaging in movement work together, as much as possible—generate, what those norms are and what our shared agreements for how we're sharing space with each other are, then we're able to set the container. And then when someone steps over those boundaries, we're able to hold them accountable more directly. And that's ultimately what security culture is, you know, it's culture as a set of shared practices that are embodied, that we're using all the time. And I think it's really important, again, to just make that explicit. And I know that's not always possible, because sometimes we're working with people that we just met. But as much as we're able to, I really like to think about what it would look like if we were able to generate explicit norms and boundaries with each other, and then be able to hold each other to that and say, "Hey, you're making me uncomfortable right now because I told you earlier that I wasn't interested in talking about my historical involvement in that movement, and you're asking me a lot of questions about it. And so I'm just going to ask that you stop asking me those questions."

Margaret 34:20 Yeah.

Philip 34:21 Instead of saying, "Oh, well, this person is now a snitch."

Margaret 34:23 Right.

Philip 34:24 But that level of direct communication is challenging, and it's really challenging especially when we're all working in adrenalized frontline environments, or when we haven't gotten a lot of sleep and we're just existing up coffee and cigarettes. And it really speaks to me of just how much there needs to be this intentional push of like building in, like, a feminist ethic of care and of group cohesion and saying, like, we are going to work through this together.

Margaret 34:56 One of the things when you talk about holding people accountable to these new social norms that we create, this sort of brings up kind of the dark side of security culture, which is cliquishness. And, well, it's tto things: when I think of the downsides of security culture—I'm clearly a proponent of security culture, I'm trying to do an episode on it. But when I think of the things that we need to be aware of as we attempt to implement it, the two biggest downsides that I think about is creating cliquish, closed off social circles and basically making, you know, obviously, we would never want to be called a Vanguard, but you know, a revolutionary clique. And also, basically making ourselves ineffective. Those are the two biggest concerns that I have. And one of the things that I would say about it is that, like, if we hold people—and it's, actually what you're talking about is great for this, because you talk about, like, trying to set these social norms explicitly, instead of just having them be implicit, right? Because when we hold people accountable to social norms that they don't know about, like, that's not a good way to build a movement, you know? If people that come in and they act in ways that are totally normal for them and, like, you know, their culture, which isn't, like, cool kid anarchy or whatever the fuck, it's really quick—it's really easy if we take these—if we—if these social norms and if these boundaries are so important to us, and, you know, many of them should be very important to us. But if we see them as, like, something that of course people should just know and respect, then we just kick everyone out and get fucking nowhere.

Philip 36:41 Yeah, that is a really important thing to bring up. And, I think especially talking about security as this adaptive changing field, the practices we have in the way that we approach this work needs to change as the moment that we're organizing in changes. And I personally learned a lot of my security culture norms and practices through the lens of an anarchist punk subculture, specifically through the lens of frontline forest defense and other land defense campaigns. And the sort of tools and cultural norms that came out of that are ones that evolved really to protect people who were working in small groups or by themselves, engaging in very risky actions—you know, generally like under the cover of night, so to speak—and so it did lead to a set of practices that had a inherent cliquiness to them. I think we're in a really different historical moment right now. I think we're in a moment where mass unrest has spread all across the country in a way that I think is pretty historically unprecedented within the United States. And our security culture norms should change to reflect this mass moment we're in. So it's no longer the same situation as it was in the late 90s or early 2000s during the Green Scare. And one of the most important things that our movement can and needs to be doing during this time is being accessible to people who are newly becoming politically active, who don't have those sub cultural norms, and are coming into movement spaces for maybe the first time and are excited to be part of this huge uprising.

Margaret 38:33 Yeah.

Philip 38:34 And so something I've experienced a lot of the time is, just as much as there's that social clout of, you know, being the badass militant, I think there's also social clout of being the super secure militant.

Margaret 38:47 Oh, yeah, totally.

Philip 38:48 Who doesn't answer any questions and it's super dodgy and you don't know anything about them. And that's, I think, a really alienating experience for people who are just coming to movements for the first time without having that sort of background, and it's almost as much of a risk as the state repression itself for isolating our movements. You know, we're not existing solely in a static confrontation with state repression. But the terrain is changing a lot. And so we need to be evaluating what the different risks of our actions are. And if the risk of state repression because our security culture is too weak is lower than the risk of isolation because our security culture is too strong, then we need to be changing our security culture.

Margaret 39:42 Yeah. Yeah, I um, you know, the less directly involved I am in the streets, the more I read history-which is sort of a classic getting older move, which I'm not super proud of, but whatever-and one of the things that I'm like learning more and more as I read through different revolutionary history is that, like, sometimes the only way to be safest is fucking win. Like, and there's the quote, shit. German person... I don't even remember what revolution it was from, it was like before the 1848 stuff, but it was—this revolutionist has a quote, 'Those who make half a revolution dig their own grave." And, you know, and that person watched their friends die in jail, right? And, like, because if we—if we go half way we're just gonna fucking lose and—or die or, you know, whatever. Like if, I don't know, I think about it a lot like this—in the current moment, like to just be like really concrete and to not—I am not giving advice at all. Like, I just I literally don't know what the best thing to do is, but I think we need to have a conversation about it—is that like, okay, so on one level, taking pictures of burning cop cars is a really good way to get someone sent to prison, right? Especially if you take pictures of people who are setting cop cars on fire, which I think you just shouldn't fucking do. But if it weren't—

Philip 41:19 Absolutely. For all listeners, don't take photos of people doing illegal activity.

Margaret 41:24 But it's also the pictures of cop cars on fire that are causing the revolt to spread, right? And a movement that says, "No journalists," or you know, certainly, like no, no—and I am not trying to fucking weigh in on this. I am way too armchair on this particular uprising because I live somewhere where it's not particularly conflictual. But it's not as simple as like, just like, no one ever take pictures of any of this, ever. No one talks about what's happening, ever. Because if people don't know that this shit is happening, no one's going to get inspired. And for me, that is always, that has always worked out to mean, take a picture of, like, the broken window rather than the person breaking the window, you know? There's like,

Philip 42:19 Yeah.

Margaret 42:22 But it's...

Philip 42:24 Which is aa security culture tool right there of, your recognizing the different risks inherent in each activity, the risk of someone getting legally implicated through a photo, or the risk of your movement getting drowned out in the media cycle because there isn't popular media representing what we're doing.

Margaret 42:45 Yeah.

Philip 42:45 And then specifically, you're talking about our intentional ability to choose how to navigate those risks, and doing something that gives us the benefit of having our own popular media, of being able to build the movement while doing our best to protect people from the like actual legal evidence of, "Oh, here is this photo of you doing such and such action."

Margaret 43:07 Yeah.

Philip 43:07 And again, it's hard to know specifically what kind of photos might lead to incriminating evidence, hypothetically, but we can make educated guesses. And really, it is all about risk management and knowing the risks and it's not a one-sided risk. It's not, there's just the risk of state repression. You're absolutely right, that the risk of isolation and of getting swept under the rug is going to be a huge thing. And I, you know, again, it feels difficult to try to talk about this in an hour-long podcast because it feels like so many very large, important intersections between security culture and all these other fields that you could, you know, have an entire 'nother interview about. But I think one important one is movement strategy. And, you know, so being another armchair philosopher with you here. Looking at the historical moment of Biden about to enter the White House, you know, for the last four years, there's been this coalition of middle class liberals aligning themselves more actively with antifascist and radical left movements because there's been this clear enemy in the eyes of a Trump presidency. And I think historically we can see that once there's a return to quote/unquote "normalcy," you know, to attempt to reestablish the neoliberal order, there's going to be a move by the Democratic Party, by the centrists and the liberals, to separate themselves from the radical anarchists, the radical left, the militant component that has been supporting their return to power in some ways by being positioned against Trump. And I think it's really important to think about what that means for us practicing security at this time, of trying to weigh the pros and the risks of maintaining that relationship. And trying to use this as a time to continue to build power and not sort of go back to the edges of the social sphere because there's a Democrat process. Again, I'm not providing any concrete recommendations, but I think we should think about the implications of our actions. And, you know, one big place of this is thinking about how, in different contexts, militant actions can be really inspiring, or they can be really alienating for the rest of the population. And there are times that militant action can totally fractionalize and destroy a movement. And, potentially, this could be one of those times. You know, again, I'm not trying to say that people should or shouldn't do anything, but I think we should think about the coalition that has been being built for the last four years and how we can try to use this time to strengthen it and try to build more collective power with people who are shifting further and further to the left from the centrist position, instead of holing up in our militancy, in our purity of our anarchist movement, because that is going to leave us high and dry to fascists and then to state repression. And so it's going to be a good cop/bad cop of the liberals and the fascists against us.

Margaret 46:20 When you talk about, like, there are times when militant action will inspire people and their time where it'll divide people, I think about, like, people often make one claim or the other, you know? They'll say like, "Oh, violence alienates people," or, "Fighting the police alienates people." And it's like, first of all, it's like, yeah, probably alienates certain people but there's other people who certainly are like, "Oh, these people are, like, actually fucking about it and they're willing to, like, defend themselves and each other." And that's really inspiring, right? It's gonna be different with different people. But I think about it when I, like—just talk about survival bullshit that I think about way too often—when I'm building a fire in a precarious situation and you, know, building a campfire in a precarious situation, there are times when if you blow on the fire, it goes out. And, but also, if you never blow on the fire, you'll never have a fire and it'll go out. And, you know, that's the main metaphor that I think of when I think of that shit. When—you just have to know the right moments. You have to know the right moments, both like sort of on a tactical level of like reading the crowd around you, and also on a strategic level. I personally think that the main way to not go back to the margins is to, like, not be fucking shy about what we believe in, and that it's a reasonable thing to believe.

Philip 47:44 Yeah.

Margaret 47:45 And to like—

Philip 47:46 Absolutely.

Margaret 47:47 —avoid cliquishness. And it even gets into some of the security culture stuff you're talking about arlier. I was thinking about it where it was like—like, I have these like fucking Nazis. Hey Nazis listening to this show. Hello. And I'm just so impressed with the fact that people might hate listen to a podcast. And you know, and like one of the things that like Nazis always try and do when they doxx people or whatever is their like, they're gonna, like, tell people, right? They're gonna be like—and like, you can't fucking call my family and be like, "Did you know your daughter's an anarchist?" You know? You can't even call the local cops and be like, "Did you know Margaret Killjoy is an anarchist?" Right? And I'm in a different position than most people, right, because I intentionally do a lot of public facing work. But still on like an interpersonal level, just fucking be about what you're about and don't be ashamed of being about what you're about without shaming other people for being about what they're about. And that's how you find common ground. And that's how you, like, one of my goals is I want people to be like—like, I know, people who don't shit on the anarchists when all this stuff started because they, like, know some good anarchists who are nice to them.

Philip 48:54 Yeah.

Margaret 48:55 And so a lot of people want to hide the fact that they're anarchists or whatever other given, like, radical leftist position. And sometimes that's necessary from a security point of view. But you brought it up earlier when you were talking about how there's certain things you do have to keep hush hush, right? Like, like, no one should specifically know, like—actually, it's funny. I just like basically don't commit crime. But no one should specifically know I, like, you know, graffiti-ed to building in 2002—which I actually didn't do. But, like, they don't need to know that. Right? But I'm gonna be like, "Yeah, I was involved in anti war movement in 2002," or whatever the fuck to date myself, you know. And like, it's useful, and I don't know. It's just stuff I think about way too much. And the other part of it that you were talking about that I want to bring up is that when I first got into anarchism my friend was, like, "Oh, anarchists, you're the berserkers of the peace movement." And I was like, "What?" And he was like, "Yeah, when they need people to go run at the front and die, that's you." And he was talking shit. But more and more I see that like radicals have a high risk tolerance, right? And anti-authoritarians in particular have often been willing to build coalitions with people and willing to put ourselves at risk for broader movement goals with people who turn around and, like, turn their backs on us and let us go to jail or whatever. And I don't think that means that we shouldn't be risk tolerant. I don't think that it means, like, in some ways this is our advantage. But we do have to learn how to not be useful idiots. I don't know.

Philip 50:47 Yeah, and especially right now as there's a nationwide conversation about defunding and abolishing the police, it feels like such an important time to be putting these anarchist perspectives forward in a way that's actually contributing to people within the broader community being able to see us publicly and proudly, showing that we can live our values in this way. And it also, I think, is worth noting that different people have different stakes, whether that's based on social location, or the activities were involved in, the types of projects we're doing. But, personally speaking, as a white person, you know, I've got different social privileges and resources that I'm able to use. And so being able to mobilize a lot of the social capital I have and then add that with a layer of saying, "Oh, and actually I do fully believe that we should abolish the police and abolish prisons and implement transformative justice frameworks." Doing that doesn't really pose much of a risk to me. And it makes this entire project a lot more legible. And I do feel like there's been a big concern I've seen in a lot of anarchist communities about being authentic with our politics. You know, there's sort of been an emphasis that I've experienced of people, maybe downplaying their politics and trying to more just live their politics directly through the actions they do. And that's important. Of course that's important. But I do think that we're in a very different moment right now. And you're right that I think it's a bit of a sink or swim time.

Margaret 52:24 Yeah. Yeah, I think that we even see this—like, to take anarchism out of it for a second—like Antifa Or, you know, antifascism. Like, they really tried to Red Scare that shit really fucking hard in the past couple years. And it clearly worked for a large minority of the population, right? Antifa is like, code for terrorists to a huge chunk of the population, but only a minority of the population. And I think it's the reason is only a minority population is that so many people of all walks of life were just like, "What? Yeah, that's normal. It's totally normal to be against fascism." And like, watching Richard Spencer get punched and then having the whole world just be like, "Ya know, that tracks. I dunno. Punch white supremacists. That make sense to me," And so when we refuse to—when we when we're about what we're about, like, I think it fucking helps. Yeah.

Philip 53:30 Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, again, I want to just go back to security culture having risk management as one of its core goals and aims. And I come from a background of doing a lot of, like, large management-type projects, where I interact with all these sort of tools that get developed in like the business world or the nonprofit world for making decisions. It's actually a really helpful, like, resource bin to go and get stuff from. And one of those tools is a risk matrix. So it's basically a graph where you have likelihood of something happening on one side, and then severity if this thing did happen or, you know, negative impact if this thing did happen. And then you can kind of plot different scenarios on their, on how likely they are to happen versus the negative impact. So the likelihood of the problem versus the severity of the problem helps us make decisions about how to approach all those problems. So like one thing would be driving is something that we do every day, it happens very frequently, and the possibility of you getting into a car crash would have really high, you know, potentially lethal consequences. And so as a result, car companies put all of this energy into safety mechanisms and airbags and all that. So thinking about this in security context situation, by actually quantifying, by explicitly naming the different potential outcomes of the work we're doing and the risks associated with them, I think it helps us visualize it more. And so the risk of us being authentic about our politics, and of then experiencing state repression, seems like a very high impact risk. And so we are risk adverse to that, or I historically have been risk adverse to being authentic about my politics. But the much higher likelihood—although lower risk—much higher likelihood outcome, is that being isolated, and not being able to build our movements has resulted in anarchism being socially isolated historically and, you know, of neoliberalism or centrist regimes being able to just marginalize them invisiblize these groups. And I know that these are things that we've already been talking about, but I think that that same sort of risk matrix can help us similarly with maybe smaller decisions. If we're making a decision about what types of actions we feel comfortable personally engaging in during a campaign, you know, we can think about, okay, these are the different frameworks that we have for what capacity the local police have, the amount of surveillance that we feel we're being under, the likelihood of this action succeeding, and actually being able to graph all these things can help us make informed decisions in a way that just thinking about or just talking about it, sometimes you can get lost.

Margaret 56:50 Yeah.

Philip 56:53 Another tool that I really appreciate using a little bit is kind of on that same note, it's the spectrum of risk. I think it came from CrimethInc, but it talks about different vulnerabilities of actions to state repression. Or like different levels of, like, illicit-ness of actions. So, you know, from the most mainstream and acceptable of a permitted march to, you know, the most nefarious, evil, militant anarchist thing you can imagine, and a whole spectrum in between them. And then for those different actions or activities, there's a different accompanying level of security discretion that we can use where with the mainstream march, you want to be as public as possible about it, because your objective is to get the message out, to get people out to make a big strong showing. Whereas with the evil, nefarious nighttime plot, you don't want any public attention on it whatsoever until it's completed.

Margaret 57:56 Right.

Philip 57:56 Theoretically, you know, whatever the objectives are. And again, a whole spectrum in the middle. And so, especially at this time, is showing us the strength of popular movements getting hundreds of 1000s of people out in the street, I do think that we're leaning maybe more towards the wanting to be public side of things. And if we're using security tools, if we're using discretion that limits the reach, then we're actually inflicting harm upon ourselves by being overly cautious. And so we are then engaging in, again, the isolation that counterintelligence is trying to inflict on us the whole time.

Margaret 58:37 Yeah, and then—sorry, it's like every—I'm thinking about all this shit wile are you talking about this stuff. I was gonna make a joke earlier while you were talking about how, like, what, no, we shouldn't just make decisions about what crimes to commit based on peer pressure. And then I kind of, like, get lost in this rabbit hole, where I'm thinking about how like so much of our movement historically bases its decisions on what crimes to commit, basically, by peer pressure, which you could also call social capital, or whatever, you know. And I was thinking about in the context of, like, you know, you and I addressing the fact that like, "Hey, anyone listening to this, like, don't fucking take our word for it." Like, I really like that the way that you're describing security culture is a set of tools that people can use to make their own decisions about what risks they want to do—they want to tolerate personally. And I actually think that a security culture tool might be basically, like, if you feel like you're being peer pressured into committing a crime, that's a huge red flag, right? Like, so many of the different infiltrations that have happened, you know—the FBI fucking loves infiltrating radical movements of different types, especially at the moment Islam, you know, like, what it considers, like, Islamic movements or whatever—and manufacturing criminals to then, you know, persecute, right? You know, there's been so many instances of a lot of the actions that people go down for were always the FBI idea in the first place. And one of the main tools, I think, that that happens through is social pressure. And basically, like, I'm now turning this into the ad of like, where like, the kid walks up and is like, "Come on, man, don't you wanna be cool and, like, do drugs or whatever?" Like, no do drugs only if you want to do drugs, and if you want to do drugs, that's fucking cool. If you want to commit crimes, like, you know, whatever, think about the ethics of your actions. Make your decisions based on ethics and risk, not based on crime. Crime just affects the risk part of it. And I don't know, yeah, just like fuckin—like way too often when I meet, like, younger radicals, I just kind of want to be like, "Look, like, I'm not saying be careful but, like, be a little bit careful. And like, don't jump off a bridge because your best friends that you met two months ago are doing it." You know?

Philip 1:01:12 Yeah. And I think a healthy way of doing that is really cultivating a good self-awareness of what your skills and your experience and your acceptable level of involvement is with different kinds of activities and of what you are willing to participate in, you know, ahead of time as much as possible. And being really secure in that and not feeling peer pressure. And again, I think it's easiest and healthiest if we're able to do this in our movement of making that norm established from the get-go in a really clearly articulated way of we're respecting each other's boundaries over what they do or do not want to participate in. And we aren't going to encourage people to do things that they're not comfortable in. But also being able to know what feels right or what feels wrong, having that situational awareness of, "Oh, this feels off to me." And being able to trust our gut instinct, or at least—or at least listen to our gut instinct—at least, you know, give it the time to think about the impact. Because, you know, because—and I do want to again say that, um, you know, I've made poor decisions, solely listening to my gut instinct and not thinking about the other power dynamics that were at play. And that's a real thing, too. But situational awareness and tracking how a situation feels is a big way that our bodies intuitively know to manage risk. I mean, we're living creatures who have existed in a risky world. And we do have ways that we know how to move through that world and keep ourselves safe. And obviously, we're in a totally different context. But trying to tap in to our intuitions is a really helpful way. And I think, you know, again, that goes a lot back to people already practicing security culture on a regular basis, especially people who have experienced trauma or who are targeted by violence and brutality, having a heightened awareness of their surroundings and of the risks that they're being exposed to, and making decisions in a much more intentional and active way than someone who is not at all needing to think about those things because they come from a social location and a privileged background that has insulated them.

Margaret 1:03:36 Could you—like basically saying that, like, if you're a rich kid, you're a lot more—you're a lot safer from—a rich kid, or white or, you know, have different sets of privileges, you're less at risk with the decisions that you're making is that...?

Philip 1:03:52 Um, well, a little bit. I mean, I am saying, if you're a rich white kid, you should go commit crime.

Margaret 1:03:56 [Laughing]

Philip 1:03:59 I am saying that people who have experienced marginalization and brutality, you know, oftentimes will have more situational awareness and will have just like a more natural set of security practices that they're doing to keep themselves safe than someone who hasn't experienced those things. And so being able to cultivate that awareness of what we're interacting with, with who we're interacting with, with our read on the situation, if something feels out of place, if there's a car parked behind the march with unmarked license plates, that looks brand new, and it's got tinted windows, and "Oh, that seems out of place. I wonder if I should keep an eye on that because it's either an undercover cop or a right wing vigilante who's about to drive into the crowd."

Margaret 1:04:49 Right.

Philip 1:04:49 You know, that is security culture and cultivating that awareness of who we're interacting with and how we're interacting with and the different risks is an important tool to just integrate into our everyday practice.

Margaret 1:05:05 No, I like tha. I like this idea that being, like, conscious—like as like a personal security culture technique or whatever—being conscious about what's happening and being conscious about your own choice in the decision or whatever... [Sighs] What am I trying to say? It's like, the people who do shit because they're swept up in it—it's okay to be swept up in what's happening sometimes, right? And I'm not trying to say like, never, like, go with the crowd. Because sometimes also, like going with the crowd'a literally the safest thing. Like, even if like—like, sometimes when all your friends are jumping off a bridge you should probably fucking jump off a bridge. Like, because if you chose your friends carefully—like sometimes I pick—I think about how I like pick my friends very carefully. And so therefore, sometimes I trust their judgment more than my own. And sometimes solidarity, like, requires that. But if you're doing shit just because you're swept up in it, especially a crowd of strangers, especially something you're new to. It's not as good of a scene. And also like the people who do that are like literally more likely to roll. Like, you know, some of the people that I've seen turn state's evidence after, you know, felony arrests or whatever are the people who were just, like, kind of in it for the social capital, they were in it as a social scene. They were, like, you know, like, "Oh, I guess all my friends are an anarchist so I'm an anarchist too," or whatever the fuck, you know? Which is a great way to start getting involved in radical politics is, like, pick cool friends. And, you know, they do cool shit, break the law, breaking the laws, cool. I think I'm allowed to?—I don't know, whatever. And, but the people who don't mean it, I don't trust them as much. And I worry about, like, expressing who I do and don't trust on this show because, like, I just don't trust anyone. But that works for me, but apparently it doesn't work for most people. So, but okay, to run with this paranoia thing for a minute: Like, one of the reasons I think that way is that, like, you know, when I first got involved in political activism or whatever, you know, I was involved in forest defense community in the Pacific Northwest. And I went to some of the last meetings of this particular forest defense crew. And they were just like, tree sitters and shit, right? It was like, it was illegalism but it's, like, above ground illegalism. Like people who sit in a tree are, like, "Hey, I fuckin sit in trees." You know? Like, that's like, one thing I'll like admit to, right? I've like sat in trees. And so it's not—they're not, like, the super sketchy arsonists or whatever running around at night. They're not the ELF. But they certainly were infiltrated as though they were. And I went to some of the last meetings of this organization because I joined it near the end of its time. And then during a FOIA request—a Freedom of Information Act request where you send off to the government and say, "Please give us information about this." Or maybe it was during court discovery, I can't remember which—it came out that, like, I think about 3 out of 8 or 9 people in that meeting were informants or cops of one style or another. And so it's just like, okay. 30% of the people in this movement are informants, you know? And that is, like, the wrong sample to pick from, right? Very few movements—there certainly have been movements that have been as heavily infiltrated as this—but most social movements are not as heavily infiltrated as the environmental movement was during the early 00s. But... I don't know. I don't know why I'm talking about that. I'm not specifically—

Philip 1:08:56 No, that's, um, that's an important point of—I mean, tracking, that not only is it the immediate moment, that you're doing whatever action you're trying to protect through security culture, that discretion is important, but that it's something that you're then carrying with you forever.

Margaret 1:09:16 Yeah.

Philip 1:09:18 And, you know, whatever we want to say about statute of limitations or not, the point is that once you do something that you don't want to talk about, you should be fully prepared to not talk about that forever.

Margaret 1:09:32 Yeah.

Philip 1:09:33 Forever. And I think that's part of the process that maybe gets overlooked. Again, when we're checking in with ourselves about what our boundaries are, what we're comfortable doing and what we're able to do sustainably, think about, am I able to do this and am I able to then hold that with me and not be able to express, you know, "Oh, this specific thing that I did at this specific time gave me this lasting feeling that I really want to process through." And I think that's a really important and so so so frequently overlooked part is that we need to be prepared to be continuing our security culture practices indefinitely onwards.

Margaret 1:10:16 Yeah.

Philip 1:10:16 And so building in some rituals or some practices or some ways of being able to process through the intensity of what happened or to process through grief or honor that experience is I think, a really cool possibility to see emerge out of security culture becoming more sustainable.

Margaret 1:10:38 Yeah. Yeah, because it can—otherwise it can kind of sit in you and just make you, like... Yeah, I think that people don't recognize that when you make certain decisions you make are—especially younger people, she said, sometimes don't realize that, like, actions are permanent, you know? Or, like, decisions you make have permanent impacts, which actually, we forget about in the other direction, too. I think sometimes we forget that, like, the fires we light today are beacons for the future, you know, whatever. Don't start fires do whatever—I'm not trying to tell people what to fucking do. But like, it can—you know, it's like interesting to realize that you're also, like, part of fucking making history too, you know. And so the decisions we make have permanent impacts in positive and negative and more complicated than that ways.

Philip 1:11:39 Absolutely. And I think that's something that I lean in frequently of using security culture in the most dry, analytical way possible, of just thinking about this as a tool to mitigate risk. And that's such a cool thing to also be thinking about the activities we're involved in in the totally idealistic and romantic and visionary ways that they also are. And so security culture, by being so methodical and being able to give me that basis of security to act from, then allows me to be able to like fantasize about the world that I want to be a part of, and not be enmeshed in anxiety or paranoia over how the state is going to respond to me enacting that.

Margaret 1:12:26 Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think that having good security cultural practices is a good way to—well it's like prepping in general, right? Like, I have my to go bag or whatever. And it's not so that I can sit around and, like, freak out about what to do if the forest, I mean, catches fire, which is the most likely scenario by which I would need my go bag, right? But I now mostly put the thought of the fear of that out of my head, because I've done roughly the best I can. I have roughly what I would need, if that were the case. And in terms of, like, you know, having the pretense of being a revolutionist or whatever, just inherently by calling myself an anarchist, I—there's a, there is a certain amount of risk, like, you know, I remember trying to explain it to someone that I was like, yeah, if Antifa is designated a domestic terrorist organization or whatever, like, even though I don't do shit, that could really directly impact me personally, because I'm very public about, you know, my beliefs, right? And—but I can't worry about that. And so what I can do instead is come up with my best practices, put them into place, and then be like, you know, not wash my hands of it, but like, basically be like, "Alright, I'm doing the best I can on that front," and, like, yeah, if Biden lives up to his campaign promise of, like, prosecuting anarchists, like, that might impact me, you know. I don't know, we'll see. Like—but that's not within my control. And like, I—what's within my control is to just, like, you know, know who knows about when I graffiti-ed something in 2002, which I didn't do. I literally didn't. It's just a—I'm just trying to come up with a bullshit thing I can say on the show.

Philip 1:14:21 Yeah, but to just drive it home all the time. I mean that's, and that's great. And what you're doing is you're alleviating that possible concern or anxiety over not being prepared for the forest fire by just always being prepared for the forest fire.

Margaret 1:14:37 Yeah.

Philip 1:14:37 You know, you're just mitigating that risk ahead of time. And that's opening you up to being able to do what you really want to be doing safely and not being concerned about all the time because it's just your standard operating procedure.

Margaret 1:14:49 Yeah. Yeah. And then the other thing too with like security culture is just like we also have to make sure it doesn't give us a false sense of safety. And I think you brought this up earlier, but if there's like a point I want to like drive home as we're probably, you know, winding down or whatever is just, like, this isn't safe, right? But honestly, like, choosing to believe in revolution feels like the better when I look at the, like, the cost/benefit analysis. Like, it's safer to—like, we're more likely to survive to be old if we fucking overthrow capitalism and like halt climate change, you know? Even if it, like, brings with it short term risk.

Philip 1:15:36 Yeah. It's up to us to live.

Margaret 1:15:39 Yeah.

Philip 1:15:42 I guess I want to just end on some very specific, concrete things to do for security. This has been really great to talk with you about the overall picture, which I think oftentimes is missing. But it would feel a little remiss to not say some specifics like—

Margaret 1:15:58 Yeah.

Philip 1:15:58 One, don't cooperate with the police. Don't talk with law enforcement. You know, you have a right to remain silent, you have a right to a lawyer, don't answer questions, don't answer questions about your friends. Just be silent.

Margaret 1:16:13 Yeah.

Philip 1:16:14 And a great way to get more comfortable with that is to practice, you know, practice not answering a direct question from police. It's socially awkward, it takes energy. Also, you know, researching know your rights trainings, which are readily available online. And being more informed about some of the safeties that you do have, or some of the ways that you can interact with that is really important. That just feels like the foundational thing: don't talk to cops. Another simple thing would just be, you know, with so much going on digitally because of the pandemic, there's just been a lot going on through Zoom and Facebook and Google. And you should just always assume anything going on over social media or over a large email server is publicly available to right wing vigilantes and to the police. So, as best as you can, try to normalize using encrypted messaging like Signal, or encrypted email like Riseup or Proton Mail just for everything, not just for your activism. And even then don't share things online or over Signal that you wouldn't want read back to you in a courtroom in a criminal hearing.

Margaret 1:17:31 Right.

Philip 1:17:32 And, you know, ultimately I think that just staying abreast as much as possible and reading about counterinsurgency and about state repression and learning about how movements historically have responded is probably the best way to set yourself up. And so I compiled a bunch of resources that I found very helpful historically. Maybe you could list them in the show notes for people. But there's some great—there's some great manuals, both constructed by the state about how to implement counterinsurgency and how to manage popular movements, and then also lots of great books just looking at how social movements have resisted that and continue to win.

Margaret 1:18:15 Okay, is there any other—any other thing that we didn't talk about that we should have?

Philip 1:18:23 You know, there's a lot of talk of operational security in the prepper world, which is kind of the closest thing I found to right-winger security, culture, and timing and time again I'm just so surprised how, at the end of the day, their solution to security risks comes through stockpiling ammunition and being prepared to shoot your way out of any situation. And the thing that I love about being part of this community is how much of a focus we have on relationships and on community. And ultimately, I do think we get our security from each other. You know, we're only as strong as we're able to be with each other. And being able to work through conflict and being able to work with each other safely to create the kind of world is so much more transformative than stockpiling ammunition and dehydrated food in your basement.

Margaret 1:19:18 Yeah.

Philip 1:19:19 And, you know, at the same time, there's a lot of great stuff to be found through right-wing and prepper communities on operational security. That's especially a huge topic in military intelligence realms and is well worth researching. Also, again, looking at situational awareness tools and techniques, which is another big hub used by various prepper and right wing groups. Looking up different risk management tools, which is, you know, a huge field developed by like business leaders and techies and nonprofits. There's a lot of tools out there and we can apply them to do the good work that we need to be doing.

Margaret 1:20:01 That makes sense. Yeah, one of the—you know, just like reading about, um, just to continue with the like, the only way out is through kind of concept sometimes is I read about—when you're talking about how, like, the main way to stay safe is relationships, right? Like solidarity has always been our strongest weapon. And in a very, like, practical, direct way, even down to like when revolutionists all go to jail for trying to have a revolution, the main thing that gets them out of jail again is that when other people keep trying to have a revolution, and whether that revolution wins and frees the prisoners, or whether, basically, the existing system is like, "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Maybe if we let some of these people out they'll like, you know." With the Frederick Douglass quote, "Power concedes nothing without a demand," you know?

Philip 1:21:01 Yeah.

Margaret 1:21:02 And yeah, just not abandoning people when they're inside or not abandoning people, just period, is our best bet even as individuals to stay safe.

Philip 1:21:20 Yeah, absolutely.

Margaret 1:21:22 Okay, so final thoughts?

Philip 1:21:26 I'm just happy to be able to be on here and share some of the tools that I've learned. But I really want to say I'm not an expert. And if you're in a different situation than me, you've got different tools to use, you've got different lessons to learn. You know, this is what we make of it. And I'm really excited to see the ways that people are going to continue to adapt these tools for their own circumstances.

Margaret 1:21:47 Yeah, totally. All right. Well, thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast you should tell people about it, because it's not a security culture that—I was supposed to try and make a joke about how it's, like, security culture as relates to telling people about things about the podcast, but I don't know how to land it. So I won't tell that joke. But you can tell people about the podcast and that would mean a lot. And people have been doing that and that means a lot to me. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by following me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And if you support me at any level, you get a bunch of access to zines and music and me writing, "I'm sorry I'm late on the following things" notes to you all that are painfully earnest and heartfelt. And if you support me at $10, I'll mail you a zine. If you support me at $20, I'll shout out your name in a minute like I'm about to shout out people's names in a minute. But also, if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, please don't give your money to me. Give your money to yourself, because you need it more than I do. And if you want access to the content that I make that's behind that pay wall, just contact me and you can have access to that. You can contact me in general. You can contact me on Instagram, which is Instagram @margaretkilljoy, or I'm @magpiekilljoy on Twitter. Don't follow me on Facebook. I have—I hate Facebook. I use it. But it's weird. I don't know. I mean, they're all weird. You're not really waiting for me to talk about social media, you're waiting for me to end the episode. So in particular I would like to thank Eleanor and Mike and Satara and Kat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris. Yeah, you all make this possible in a way that warms my heart and the aforementioned embarrassingly heartfelt and earnest ways. Anyway, thank you all so much for listening and I hope you're doing as well as you can with everything that's going on. And we keep us safe.

Episode Notes

The guest, Dibs, runs a website called dibsfitness.com and can be found on Instagram at @dibs_pt.

The host, Margaret Killjoy, can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript:

Margaret 00:14 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast where it feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and this week I'm going to be talking to Dibs who is a personal fitness trainer in Montreal. I'm going to be talking with them about personal fitness, obviously, I guess that's the name of the episode that you clicked on. And they have a lot of really useful and concrete tips for how people with different relationships to their body can engage in personal fitness and training. And of course, well, it's worth pointing out that this episode does come with a content warning. We do talk about eating disorders, and we talk about relationships to eating and fitness and the way that they can become obsessive. So—and that that question is pretty clearly marked. It doesn't come out of the blue. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another podcast on the network.

Jingle 01:12 Gooooood morning slaves! Looking for relief from the steaming hot plate of bullshit served up on the daily by the mainstream media? Are you thirsting for solid and reliable information to escape the mind-numbing vortex of corporate news and Trump tweets? Are you ready to check out every time you hear a despacito on the radio one more fucking time? Then tune your dial to sub.Media, a mouthwatering hub of infotainment and subversion that'll make you want to quit your job and join the motherfucking resistance. Dive into our newly designed website and gorge yourself on one of the 500+ videos and audio tracks from our vast library of anarchist films, hip hop, and riot porn, or choose from one of our original shows like Trouble, Burning Cop Car, A is for Anarchy, Video Ninja Reports, and the Stimulator. Fuck Netflix, watch sub.Media.

Margaret 02:07 Okay, and Dibs, if you would like to introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I just said, and your pronouns and any, you know, what you do for work, any political or organizational affiliations that make sense with what you're going to be talking about today? Also maybe, like, your identity as relates to some of what you're going to be talking about today?

Dibs 02:26 Sure, so I'm Dibs, my pronouns, they/them, I am a certified personal trainer or fitness instructor some might call it, so I have my certificate 3 and 4 in group fitness and one-on-one training. I identify as transgender, and I have ADHD, and I am sort of still recovering from an eating disorder. So I guess that's relevant to probably what will come up, maybe?

Margaret 02:57 Yeah, that actually-that is a lot, like-and that's actually something I'd love to talk to you about what we're talking about this is like food and our relationships to food. So I wanted to have you on because I spent a while looking around, I was—I wanted to get someone on who is a personal trainer. And, of course, one of the problems with personal trainers, not personal trainers themselves but the fitness industry, is that it is very ablest, very centering of cis people, very centering of like thin people, and also centering of the weight experience, and just has a lot of problems. And then you came highly-recommended through our mutual friend as a personal trainer who specifically works to kind of counteract that stuff. And the reason I want to have someone on is talking about personal fitness: one is just sort of selfish. I'm like, "Oh, I'm getting older, and I need to worry about this stuff more." But you know, it's like—okay, it's a weird tangent to start with. But the first time I really ever thought about this stuff was years ago I was playing accordion and Amsterdam and a friend of mine walked by, and he was this older, like, super tough anarchist guy. And, you know, maybe in his 40s or something—actually might have been much younger than thatb ut when you're young, everyone seems old—and he said, "Oh, what are you doing?" I was like, "Oh, I'm playing accordion." And he said, and I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm coming home from the gym." And I was like, "Why are you at the gym?" Because I was an idiot. And he was like, "Well, because we want to have a revolution and we need to be stronger than the police." And I was like "Shit."

Dibs 04:34 Great answer.

Margaret 04:35 I'd never thought about it from that point of view.

Dibs 04:38 Yeah.

Margaret 04:40 And that's kind of where I'm coming from personally about a lot of like fitness goals. And I think that a lot of people are looking at this, as the world becomes more conflictual, they might be more interested in personal fitness. As the world gets a little crazier, they might be more interested in personal fitness. Would you be able to talk about your own experiences where you're coming from about personal fitness and kind of what got you engaged with it?

Dibs 05:04 Yeah. I mean, I've always been an active kid. I definitely have, you know, some symptoms of ADHD just have many hobbies, try all the things, like, as a child in like primary school, I did everything from like tap dancing, to soccer, to softball to netball to guitar lessons. Like, I always had, like, something that made me need to want to move. And then, so I played team sports for a while. And then when I left school and I became an adult, that's sort of when I looked at the gym for exercise. And at the same time of leaving school is when I started to think about my gender. And I've spoken about this to many people with, like, how my sort of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia is very much intertwined. And so I don't know, you know, what led me more down the path of wanting to lift weights and stuff. But, you know, wanting—having—being transgender and wanting to change your body. Before I started HRT, and before I had top surgery or anything, like, my only option or what I saw was to train so I started doing weightlifting. And then my dad passed away when I was 19 from heart disease. Suddenly, just one night, he went to bed and didn't wake up. And that scared me.

Margaret 06:29 Yeah.

Dibs 06:30 And I was like, well, I, you know, I want to live longer than 44 maybe. I mean, now I'm not so sure. But, you know, I was like, okay well, these are the things that led to that for him. What can I do to change my lifestyle? And yeah, and then I went from gym to gym, and I've done the fad, you know, lose nine kilos in six weeks, I've done those dumb challenges a couple times. And I've done—you know, and then I became a personal trainer and I found a gym to work at and that was a whole—that's a big story itself. It was very culty and so toxic and weird and straight and suburbian—suburban, sorry. But uh, yeah. So that's sort of where my journey—my fitness journey in a nutshell.

Margaret 07:20 No, that makes sense. And it brings up a ton of things that I'm really curious to ask you about. Because I've had some of those same experiences of like, you know, when I would go and study martial arts, I would go and study martial arts like, "Hello, fellow cisgendered men," and like, it would never really work, you know, like, people couldn't quite figure out what to make of me. And usually, I didn't get along very socially in any of the martial arts gyms that I've trained in. So, for listeners who are just starting to want to get into personal fitness, I guess, where do you begin? And I know that obviously, like, hiring you, for example, would be a good way to start. But that isn't going to be available for everyone. And, you know, like, how do you begin? How do you assess where you're at? How do you start building program that works for you?

Dibs 08:19 Yeah, it's, uh, it's tough. Like, I think the overwhelm is in the choice because anyone can go on the internet and look up, you know, "home workout program," or "three day home workout program," or whatever. And there's so much free stuff out there that's just copy and paste, cookie cutter bs that, like could work for some people, but it's not going to work for the majority of people. So I guess, like, start—there's a lot—there's so much on social media right now that's for queer people and for people of all different bodies and abilities, especially like on YouTube as well, you can find little communities of people who were various abilities and various backgrounds showing what you can use with just your body or like very cheap pieces of equipment. So, you know, using the internet is great, but then where do you start? And then if that's overwhelming you, I guess like, if you've done something in the past and you've sort of fallen off the wagon, you can go back to that thing. So like did you use to cycle? Did used to swim? Did you used to play team sports? What about that sport did you like or what muscle groups did you like working the most, you know? Like, was it your agility and your hand/eye coordination if you're playing tennis, and what can you sort of relate that to? That's another thing that you can start practicing if you don't necessarily have a tennis court near where you live in, you know? So it's like, you have to be—start slow and be really kind to yourself to not expect too much too soon. And the act of just making something a small habit that you maintain through, you know, half the year or year is a massive goal in massive achievement in itself. So, you know, if you don't know—if you really want to learn how to squat or do a push up, you can—there are so many articles on working your way up to a push up or working your way up to a chin up or something like that. Everything can be broken down into much smaller steps in fitness. But my sort of mantra is—what I what I like to promote to everyone is joyful movement, and you find the movement that brings you joy, and you're going to do it, and it's not going to be like that daunting task that hangs over your head.

Margaret 10:35 So rather than like, you know, screaming, "I'm doing this for Sparta!" and then doing like 50 pushups every morning or whatever, like...

Dibs 10:43 Yeah, like—because yeah I know, like so many people, like, "Oh, I just do 20 push ups and 50 sit ups before I go to bed every night." And that's—like, my mom says that. She's like, "I do my 20 sit ups before bed and like 20 squats, and that's how I'm gonna keep my belly fat away." And I'm like, oh my God. Like you don't—and that's not fun for her. She doesn't like doing it. She just thinks that's what she has to do to look hot for her boyfriend. And, you know, like you—but now she plays—or well, before the pandemic—she played adults all-gender soccer. And she—that was what she was what she thought was fun, because she played with some people from that she worked with so she got to see her work colleagues, she got to, you know, have fun in a non-competitive teamsport environment. Like, yeah, basically—I mean, I know, even if we are doing this for serious business, because we want to, you know, fight off police and survive the apocalypse. You can still, while the world is still [inaudible] have fun. Find the thing that brings you joy and, you know, make light of it. Because that's the only way you're going to commit to it before the end times when you're like, "Oh, shit." You'd rather be prepared—this is the whole point. Yes. You're preparing now.

Margaret 12:01 Yeah. Oh, that's actually that's really interesting because I, you know—um, before COVID and things like that I would go boff, I would run around in a park with foam swords and shields and—actually turns out that learning how to fight with sticks and shields is way more of a life skill than I expected. But, um, but you know, that's not happening right now, because of COVID. And a lot of, like, team or group exercise stuff obviously isn't happening right now. And what are some ways that people can find joyful movement in isolation or in greater isolation?

Dibs 12:40 Yeah, so I guess if you're one of those people who is really just not leaving your house at all for—unless, you know, you need groceries, or even then you're just getting someone else to send you stuff and you're stuck at home: I've been leading online aerobics dance classes, which are quite fun. Or, you know, if you can't find one of those and you don't know—if the time is not good for you—like, put on some music and dance because cardio is so important, like your cardiovascular health is gonna—that's what's going to help you run and keep running and not stop. So dancing for, you know, an hour non-stop, like, that is a hardcore workout. People who have gone to raves, I'm sure you know how sore your body is the next day. Like, dancing is really, really good for you and it's going to help you build stamina. So that's one thing. Just putting together a little routine at home is quite easy. I like to tell people, there's a form of exercise routine called an AMRAP: as many rounds as possible. And so I say, you know, find five exercises that you know, you've been taught before, do 20 of them all in a row as many times as you can in 10 minutes, or 15 minutes, or 25 minutes. So say you're doing 20 squats, 20 push ups, 20 mountain climbers, 20 burpees, 20 lunges, and then go back to the top of the list and keep going, top of the list, keep going, work your way through until your timer goes off on your phone, and boom! You've done a workout. It's—there's so many different ways that you can do it and to keep you motivated and to remove the thinking out of it. You don't have to make it complicated. It can be quite simple. And, you know, if you can't do push ups, do them on your knees. If you can't do knee push ups, lean against the wall and do them on the wall or the door until you build up your strength or lean on your kitchen counter or your couch or something. There's so many things you can do just at home to-you know, or follow along YouTube workouts. If you just type on YouTube "follow along workout." I know they're not the best because they're always just demonstrated by people who were ripped in bikinis. I'm gonna try and put some out online to try and show some diversity. But, you know, there's different ways at home that you can find-or like find your favorite person on the internet. Copy what they're putting out. But yeah, like, dancing is my favorite. And then creating your own routine and, you know, maybe put on a podcast where you're doing it or put on music that you like and work through your 15 minutes, and then you're done.

Margaret 15:12 Okay, that makes sense to me. That's, um, that's like stuff that I feel like, on some level, is like what I was subconsciously drawn to when I was trying to become more in shape. I was like, "Oh, I'll just, I'll dance more, you know, while like working at a standing desk I'll, like, play music and then, like, walk away from the computer or something." But then, as I find myself being like, "No, I must be serious about fitness" instead, I kind of find myself moving away from that kind of stuff and more back into the, like, you know, "I must do yeah, 20 squats every morning" or whatever.

Dibs 15:45 Yeah, yeah, it can come in whatever shape you want. Because even within dance, you know, if you're dropping it low, you're doing a squat. Like, there are many ways to do the typical fitness movements like the patterns that you use, like a push, a press, a squat, a deadlift—there's so many ways to do that, that are not, like, regimented and formal in everyday life, like when you're cleaning or you're gardening. Gardening is great exercise, as long as you keep good posture and you're not hurting your back. Like, that's another way to get those movement patterns in.

Margaret 16:22 So that's—that brings up something that I think about a lot. Most of my exercise at the moment—obviously, everything—I think about everything through the lens of myself, but whatever, that's totally normal, you know, it's not like people listen to this. Um, okay, so like, most of my exercise comes from construction and building and crafting, right? Because I live, you know, in the woods alone. And so, like, I feel like most of my exercise is like carrying heavy shit up the hill to my house, right? And I often wonder to what degree I'm like getting exercise and to what degree I'm just like hurting myself. And, like, when you're talking about gardening and being good exercise as long as you maintain good posture, like, it seems like maybe that's useful across the board is like—where is the line between getting stronger and more fit and wearing yourself down?

Dibs 17:18 Yeah, it's—that's a hard one, especially if you're doing something out of necessity, like, if you're building stuff and you need to get the materials, you know, before it rains or whatever, like, you're not going to stop when when you reach that limit, you're just going to keep going. So then you just have to know how to look after yourself afterwards. Like, the line is different for everyone depending on, you know, depending on what you've built up before and you're—like, I love that that's how you get your exercise because I love functional fitness. I've been, you know, rummaging through curbside trash way more often than the last three months that I have in my entire life. And I've been—I've found four cinder blocks in the last four weeks and I've carried them home like four blocks to my house because I wanted to make a bench seat out of them. And like, you know, I—by the third one that I found, I figured out the correct posture and the way to hold it that wasn't going to make my biceps feel like this snapping off. So sometimes it's trial and error. But, you know, and sometimes you pay for it afterwards and you just have to make sure you rest or stretch correctly. But the—it is such a fine line between totally wearing yourself out. But I guess, if you're doing something functional fitness-wise and it's taking you the whole day, like, you know, people who do landscaping and they're just slugging it out for six hours, eight hours, all day. And a lot of them have bad backs. But you can avoid that if you're using the right tools, like if you have things that help you lift and wheel things like a wheelbarrow or dolly or whatever. You just have to make sure you're taking breaks intermittently, like think—stop and think. "How am I holding this? Like, where's the weight? Where can I feel the most strain? Is it in my back? Is it in my biceps? Is it in my core?" You really want to feel things in your abs the most when you're holding them rather than your back. And then, you know, if one bicep is straining more than the other change the bottom arm and the top arm so you're evening yourself out. Cuz you just have to be more attuned to your body and take time and do a little scan and think, "Where am I feeling this?" I know it's hard because when you're in the moment and just want to get stuff done, you're not going to stop, but I find that difficult as well. And then maybe when I get home I realized that I was carrying it wrong. But to people have a much better attention span than than me, that's something that you can do is stop, scan your body, where am I feeling this? Can I readjust? Can I change hands or or change my stride somehow or change my posture? Do I lift it closer to my chest? Do I hold it down below my legs? Do I lifted it up above my head with my elbows locked out if it's light enough to give my back a rest? Those—you just carry things in a different way each time to give different body parts the load.

Margaret 20:02 Okay. Yeah, it's funny, I have—there's sort of a joke that, you know, if you're like punk past 30 you have to like pick between your options and it's like CrossFit, or knitting, or whatever. And I didn't pick either of those, I guess I picked podcasting and that's probably on there too. And sometimes my friends who do deadlifts and stuff, I'm kind of jealous because I'm like, "Oh, I should probably know how to do that really well because I like, later today I'm going to go have to drag my 50 pound generator to a different spot and hook it up to a 20 pound propane tank to get enough power to, you know, edit this interview. And I don't know, this is like cliche, right? But what I was like younger, I didn't really think about this stuff. And now I'm, like, I always make sure I put down heavy things, not on the ground but have thing's at about waist level.

Dibs 20:56 Yeah

Margaret 20:57 You know? And am I like, am I doing myself a disservice by doing that? You know, like, am I reducing my ability to learn how to deadlift? I don't know.

Dibs 21:07 I think you're saving your back in a long time. Because especially like, deadlifts are really good, they're an amazing full-body exercise. But if you’re having something with an awkward shape that prevents you from doing it with the correct form, then it's not going to be good to do so I think you're correct in putting it up higher so you don't have to go all the way down if it's a weird-shaped thing.

Margaret 21:27 Okay. Cool. Glad to hear my laziness is good. You mentioned food and eating disorder stuff. Is that is that okay to talk about?

Dibs 21:38 Yeah, we can dig into that.

Margaret 21:40 Um and, you know, content warning for anyone who's listening, obviously, we'll talk some about eating disorder stuff and I know that that can be very hard for a lot of people. So how does one—one of the things that I also worry about as I do this, right, um—again, to just use myself as the example for everything—I didn't think a ton about food until I came out as trans. And now I think about food way more than I would like to just because of the way that my body puts on weight being in a sort of masculine way, right? And both the combination of aging and suddenly holding myself to like feminine beauty standards are—is a wonderful one/two punch to deal with. But it's hard because I also want to become more fit. But I also really don't want to fall into what I can really easily see as disordered eating and just obsession about food. And I'm wondering how you manage or how you would recommend to people to manage dealing with fitness and as relates to food and how awful our society is about food and body image?

Dibs 23:01 Yeah, it's pretty terrible because, you know, a lot of the things out there are all about eliminating a certain either food group, or food source, or whatever. And it's all about eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. So the way I reframe it is don't think about what to cut out thinking about more about what you want to add to your diet to help you either feel fuller, or to help you get the nutrients that you need. So, you know, if you're a person that doesn't drink any water, start by adding an extra glass of water to your daily intake until that becomes a habit then add another until you're drinking, you know, at least 2-3 liters a day. Yes, good job drinking your water. So (laughing) she takes a sip. Yeah, so, you know, adding things like that. So it doesn't have to be food, it can be water. It can be, you know, if you're someone that only eats two colors, brown and white, maybe start adding a yellow thing or a green thing or a red thing to your plate. So, you know, add a sweet potato if you really hate vegetables, I know mushrooms are also black and white and brown, but there a vegetables so you can add mushrooms to your plate. I, you know, I used to hate sa—I probably only started eating salad when I was like 18, maybe 19. I used to never eat any vegetables and then I realized the certain ways that I like them cooked or prepared that will make me eat them more. So, you know, add—when I have now my bacon and eggs for breakfast I will put, like, a handful of baby spinach on top. And, you know, the way that that tastes is delicious is because it's smothered in bacon juice. Sorry, the vegan. But, like, that's how I deal with it and that's how I add my vegetables in so when you're thinking about like food and eating for your body type, like, there's a couple of TED Talks out there actually that are that are titled, you know, "The Perfect Diet," or "What is the perfect diet?" And I quite liked them. I watched them all because I wanted to see what they, what dumb stuff they said. But it's actually quite good because at the end, they're all like, "The perfect diet is the one that feels the best for your body or like what makes you feel the best." Because the Mediterranean diet's not everyone, keto is not for everyone, intermittent fasting is just dumb—unless, you know, unless you are experiencing food scarcity and then, you know, of course, you're going to not eat for 12 hours, and then you have your little window of eating time or whatever. But you know, a lot of us try all these things that were just not made for us. And instead of listening to what someone else's is spouting on the newest Instagram trend of the newest juice cleanse or whatever, like, just listen to your body more and think, "Okay, do I feel bloated when I eat beans? Do I feel bloated when I eat dairy? Do I feel bloated when I eat this? Like, do I have diarrhea or gas? Or like, what is this food making you feel?" I realize I get real gassy and I get an upset tummy when I have dairy, so I try and reduce that. Like it's—if you stop—and stress is something that helps you hold weight too that is—prevents you from digesting properly, right? Because you're in fight or flight, you're not going to digest your nutrients and absorb them. So if you're stressing less about, "Oh I can't eat this, or I can't that," and you're just, you know, you're not being too hard on yourself, that's also going to benefit you because you're going to be more calm. So I like to go at it thinking of what can I add? What's something easy, just one thing at a time, to add to my routine, to add to my grocery list or when I go out dumpster diving, what's the ingredient I'm going to add—you know, add a new vegetable a week, or whatever, a new legume or bean or whatever to try if you need to color your plate, and then pay attention to what foods make you feel like crap.

Margaret 26:57 Okay, I like that idea of the adding and sort of—that's—it's one of those things that probably should have been obvious. But, I mean, I spend a a not tiny amount of time like—I mean, I do the same thing that I think a lot of people do where I kind of go through a, "Oh crap, I'm out of shape, I better go figure out what will suddenly make me better," and then get into it for about three weeks and then drop it. And so I've, clearly, I've read a lot of fitness blogs and diet blogs and things like that as a result. And I haven't run across that and it seems so obvious. One of the things, you brought up dumpster rain, and I was thinking about how I actually ate better back when I dumpster dove for more of my meals then when I stopped dumpstering. I stopped dumpstering personally because of anxiety, I have a lot of food anxiety issues. And—but then what would happen is I didn't have much money and it's really hard to prioritize greens, it's really hard to prioritize things with no caloric content to speak of, right? You know, when I—if I have $8 to spend at a restaurant or something like that, there's no way that I'm buying the $8 salad, I'm buying the $8 burrito, you know. And it's interesting because that habit stayed with me after I no longer have the same, like, financial issues. Yeah, it was only very recently that I was like, "I'm ordering a salad at a restaurant." And it was very, it was a—a whole new world.

Dibs 28:27 Delicious?

Margaret 28:28 No, it was—it was good but it was like I still have kind of this, like, yeah, but if I'm paying at a restaurant, I want to be stupidly full. Like I want to, I want to look at the last bite of food and be like, "Can I do it?" You know? And I don't know maybe that's just from, like, food insecurity. I'm not sure.

Dibs 28:49 I'm like the opposite. I'm like, "I'm paying for the salad. I must eat all of my vegetables. I have paid for it." But uh, yeah, no, I get what you mean about that habit and you want to you want to spend your money on what's going to make you feel the most full, which is totally fine. And, so hot tip to anyone who has minimal income to spend on food and wants to feel full: potatoes, white potatoes are the most satiating food on the planet. I'm sure you've seen [inaudible] this fact. Probably many times.

Margaret 29:17 I haven't. No, go ahead.

Dibs 29:19 Yeah, well, fun fact: most satiating food on the planet like per gram, what you put in your mouth is it fills you up more than anything else. So you're—I mean, they have a decent amount of vitamins and minerals in them but, you know, you want to mix it up. If you want to, like, if you find potatoes or buy potatoes, and then you find other green things like zucchini or asparagus or bell peppers, capsicums, whatever you want to call them. I call them capsicums. You North Americans very strange. "Peppers."

Margaret 29:51 I was thinking that your accent didn't sound very Canadian.

Dibs 29:54 Yes, I'm from Australia. I now live in Canada. Mysterious So, you know, you can mix that potato with other things and then hopefully it still comes out tasting like potato because obviously that's going to be the most tasty thing in your meal. But I like to just heat up a skillet, grate some potato, and then grate some other veggies on top. And then you've got this big mishmash of delicious, mushy—or crispy depending on how you cook it—vegetables to put in your facehole. And, you know, it's—so if you want something to feel full, like, don't feel—be ashamed of not eating that many green things, but have your base, you know, starchy carbs that's going to make you feel full like beans, or rice, or potatoes, or pasta, and then throw some green things on top. Like it doesn't occur to many people when they're making pasta to do more than just the pasta and the sauce, like, you can throw baby spinach leaves in your sauce or you can throw like chopped up asparagus or mushrooms or whatever other vegetable to like, fatten it up, you know, make it really chunky and more filling. And then you'll—the pasta won't sustain you for that long, but the vegetables will help you keep—stay feeling fuller for longer. So you want to eat things that are full of fiber, right, that's what's going to make you full. If you go to, like, a juice bar. And, you know, you order a tropical juice, whatever, they're going to put things through the juicer, they're going to remove the skin and you're basically getting like the sugar from three apples and a banana and a pineapple, half a pineapple, or whatever. And none of the fiber or the really good chunky nutrients that are gonna fill you up. If you actually eat—physically eat an apple and bite into it—you can't eat more than like one and a half, two apples max before you feel like you're gonna explode because you're super full. Because you're getting all the fiber and you're getting the gut, like the guts of it. You're getting the meaty part of the fruit. So it's—that's another hot tip is don't juice things, like, you want the skin you want the flesh, that's what's going to feel you—make you feel awful.

Margaret 31:59 Okay. Yeah, I like that. It seems like a lot of food stuff comes down to, like, eating simpler—like not eating like less things, but eating like—not like raw food, but like, closer to—like less, I dunno, less processed.

Dibs 32:15 Less processed. Yeah, I mean, I know it's not easy for everyone to find that, to do the, you know, no processing. Like, some people want to get a $2 burger from In and Out Burger or A&W or whatever because that's what they have access to and that's what's going to be their meal for the day and that's fine. But, like, if you—you know, dumpster diving, or you have a local grocer, or a local farm, veggie and fruit distributor down the road from you, and you want to spend a couple bucks, like, that's the best way to do it is, like the closer—the less stages from earth to you to your mouth the better, right? If it's fall off a tree, it's grown from the ground, it's come straight off an animal's back, like, eat it. Fantastic. It's going to fill you up and it's going to be cheaper than if you've gotten something that's been picked from a tree, put on a truck, gone into a factory, run on a conveyor belt four times, got put in packaging, got on another truck, and onto a shelf, and then into your hand. You're going to be paying more for it and you're going to be getting less nutritional benefit from the thing.

Margaret 33:21 Okay. So in the meals that you're describing, which are very similar to the meals that I eat, but they don't have a lot of protein in them, as far as I can tell. And I'm curious your take on the—you know, I ran across the idea that you're supposed to eat, what, half your body weight in protein every day or something? Well, not half your body weight...

Dibs 33:41 Yeah, there's a formula where you measure your body weight and then divide it by 2, and then there's—you times that by 0.8 grams, and that's the amount of protein that you—that is a minimum, quote/unquote, "minimum intake." And that's, you know, if you're like lifting weights, if you're trading. So obviously it's going to be different depending on your hormones, because estrogen and testosterone do affect us differently and how our body deals with proteins and how it synthesizes muscle and stuff like that. So it's going to change depending on your hormones, it's gonna change depending on your weight, how much weight is muscle, how much of your weight is fat, what exercise you're doing. So like, those calculators are sort of helpful for trainers as a base level so you can look at your client and—but then you have to put in all these other factors around that. So I'd say for the average person looking at that calculation, don't worry about it. We—there's so much protein—like I'm not advocating veganism, vegetarianism, or being carnivore or whatever, like, whatever you have access to, it's great. I've tried so many different diets, like, I've tried all those things. And right now I just eat what I can get my hands on and what's cheap. Um, because that's what works for me. But you can get, you know, there's so much protein in a handful of spinach or, like, you know, peanut butter or eggs—eggs or protein and fat. So if you just survive on eggs, like, I used to have a 5 egg omelet every morning. Like, if you can get your hands on meat, you don't need that much, like, I used to—when I was doing like that stupid "lose nine kilos in six weeks challenge" like, what we're eating every day was like 160 grams/180 grams of cooked meat. So like, one quarter has been removed, like 180 grams cooked meat and then 2 cups of veggies for 3 meals a day. And then, yeah, of course you're going to get thin because you're not like eating. And there was like no carbs. They were like, you have like a pinky-sized pile of mashed potato or whatever. Like that's, you know, of course you're gonna get skinny if you're not eating any carbs and you're and you're in a calorie deficit so. But you can survive on not much protein and you can also build muscle on not much protein. Like, there are so many vegan bodybuilders out there and vegan athletes. And you can—there are many sources of protein and I think we don't get taught enough about where our food comes from and what's in our food in school. You know, I think there was a video—a viral video that went around of kids being asked, you know, "Where does the potato come from? Or where does this not come from?" And they couldn't tell you whether it was a tree, the ground or, you know, they're like, "The shop? I don't know." So I think we—it's definitely important to learn more about food and what macronutrients are and what micronutrients are. So macros are your protein, fats, and carbs. Micronutrients are all the vitamins and minerals that are inside food as well. So it's important to learn about that and to know what you're getting from each different thing because you need, like, you know, life's all about balance. You want—and your body craves variety. That's why, you know, when you stop yourself silly with your main meal, your brain's, like, "Hey, you still got room for dessert." Because that's a different nutrient for your body to absorb, its sugar. So you've just filled yourself up with, you know, some vitamin A, some vitamin C, some carbohydrates, like blah, blah, blah, and then you body's like, "Hey, but you haven't had that sugary, milky thing over there." Like, that's why we can still eat something different when we feel so full, because your body knows that you need a variety of different nutrients to keep yourself going. And it sees the benefit in all of them. So, you know, eating as many different things as you can is always better than, "This is my one food that I eat every day all the time."

Margaret 37:49 Mmhmm. That's something that I'm very bad at and I have inherited been very bad at. At one point my dad who I don't think listens to this podcast, I'm not sure—went to the doctor and was like, "I don't feel good." And the doctor was like, "What do you eat?" My dad explained exactly what he eats. And the doctor said, "Every day?" My dad was like, "Yeah." You know, it was very carefully thought out thing. It wasn't like, he wasn't eating junk. You know?

Dibs 38:12 Yeah.

Margaret 38:14 And I have a similar habit that I have to fight the desire to just eat the same thing every day.

Dibs 38:22 Well, because it's easy, right? Like, that's why a lot of people do it. And I used to do it and a lot of people with anxiety do it too because it's something that you can control and you know it doesn't make your stomach upset, you know, you can be full on it. Yeah, do you, how many meals do you have a day?

Margaret 38:40 Two and a half?

Dibs 38:43 More in the afternoon? Or do you like wait a bit after you wake up?

Margaret 38:48 Yeah, I mean, okay, so—I eat a Builder Bar for breakfast or some other protein bar, which is another long standing habit of sloth, I guess. And then for lunch, you know—or sometimes a bowl of cereal or something. And then for lunch I'll eat—if I'm feeling fancy I'll cook like, you know, potatoes and some greens or something. But usually it'll be, I don't know, oatmeal or something like that for lunch.

Dibs 39:19 Yeah.

Margaret 39:19 And then dinner is like the meal that I'm like—I can't be fucked to cook. And the worst thing about—well can't be fun to cook for myself. Like I enjoy cooking with other people, but I have a very hard time convincing myself that like I'm worth the effort of, like, taking an hour out of my day, like, three times in one day.

Dibs 39:41 Yeah.

Margaret 39:42 Just to like eat food when there's this packaged thing that will make me not hungry that says it has all the things I need in it. And obviously this is sustainable for the long term. Oh...

Dibs 39:56 Well that's where, like—you know, speaking of long-term prepping, short-term prepping comes in handy. So like, you know, cooking more rice than you need and then having it in the fridge and then, you know, you can have rice as your side for the next three or four days with your dinner. Or when you make a big salad or you make a big tray of roasted vegetables in the oven, make enough so you have, you know, enough for your sides for the next three or four days. So that's something that you can do to help combat the time spent so then it's like, "Okay, this one day, I'll spend an hour or an hour and a half prepping and then tomorrow, the next day, the next day, I'm gonna thank myself because I'm gonna have to do is put it—warm it up somehow or a eat it cold." And it's done.

Margaret 40:38 That makes sense. But um, it's also a reason that I need to expand my solar bank to get a freezer.

Dibs 40:45 Yeah.

Margaret 40:46 At the moment, I have a very small fridge. And because it's winter, I don't even really successfully have a fridge because there's not enough solar power. So now I have a cooler on my porch, which is perfectly good for vegetables, but I don't know whether I would trust cooked rice to it.

Dibs 41:04 Not sure. Maybe, I've always wondered that because it doesn't get that cold in Australia. So I've come here and I'm like, "Wow, my outside is cold that my fridge. Do I need a fridge? Can I can I rent out my fridge in winter to someone else I just use outside for myself?"

Margaret 41:19 Yes, but then it's harder to keep it from freezing. The cooler on my porch is actually—at the moment it exists to keep my stuff from freezing, not to keep my stuff... Yeah, it's interesting.

Dibs 41:29 Yeah. But yeah, like it's—then it becomes hard because if you don't have storage space, or, you know, if you live with a bunch of roommates, it's hard to put put things in a fridge for yourself. But yeah, you just have to pick the thing that's small and easy to put in a little container and just pick one thing to prep that takes the longest time and then cook the other things the day of or whatever.

Margaret 41:51 No, that makes sense.

Dibs 41:52 Yeah.

Margaret 41:53 Um, so you talked about how hormones affect your body differently, right—or different hormones will affect bodies differently. And I was wondering if you could talk about that, because I think that a lot of people who are listening are trans or have other reasons why they take hormones or hormone blockers. And not all trans people take hormones, I actually personally don't take hormones. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how different hormonal systems affect your decisions about fitness and how to, how to work to the advantages of of any given hormonal system.

Dibs 42:33 Well, so I've also trained myself before I started testosterone, and I was training when I was on testosterone, and now I'm off it again. And so I've experienced what training is like with all the different hormones—hormonal combinations. So you know, testosterone will turn you into a furnace, and so you're burning calories a lot quicker then someone who runs on estrogen. Your—you build muscle a lot quicker as well. You know, lucky bastards. But, uh, so you need more food generally. So someone on testosterone is going to have a higher caloric intake to just maintain and it's going to be easier to put on muscle. But the actual training regime, or like the exercise selection, should be exactly the same. You shouldn't have any need to do a specific type of exercise or type of training because of your hormones. So a lot of—that's why I think it's such BS to put like gender on intake forms for gyms or trainers or whatever, because, like it actually doesn't affect the training that much. If you're giving someone nutritional advice, yes, you're going to need to know that. But for the exercise prescription, we can pretty much do the same thing depending on your time available and your energy levels, you're just maybe going to be lifting a different weight depending on how much experience or how much practice you put in. And, you know, I hate that standard barbells now, standard Olympic barbells, are categorized into the men's barbell and the women's barbell, because they have a 5 kilo difference—weight difference.

Margaret 44:21 Lord, just...

Dibs 44:21 If you'd—like it's so silly. If you've ever watched like, you know, a CrossFit competition, those women very strong, can probably lift more than a lot of cis men who don't work out. So like, really, strength depends on how much time you put into it. Like if you're someone that's lifting a lot, doesn't matter what hormonal makeup you have. Strength is about your body weight and, you know, how much practice you put in. So that's why like powerlifting competitions are broken up into weight classes because it's all about your power to weight ratio. It's not fair if you know a 300 pound person is lifting against a 500 pound person because they're gonna have just different power to weight ratios naturally no matter how much they practice. And so, as a, you know, as a trans person, and even as a cis person, you don't have to worry about what trainings for men and what training so women or what trainings people on testosterone or not. It is does affect, you know, the amount of calories you're burning at rest. And it'll affect your progress timeline a little bit. But you don't really have to take that into consideration when choosing your exercises. Like I always say, the perfect exercise is the one that you do, and the one that doesn't injure you. So if you're like, "Oh, I must do this specific type of training," but you're on the couch every day because you're dreading doing high intensity workout. Obviously, that's not the one for you, because you're sitting on your ass. If you're like, "F yeah! I'm gonna do boxing today because I love boxing, like, I'm gonna do some sparring or some shadow boxing," and you get up because that excites you, then that's the exercise that works for you. But yeah, like, hormones are really such a small player and, like, they choose—they decide where your body fat is, is the biggest thing that they do, right? So like, if you are a trans person not on hormones, and you want to make your chest look bigger, then you're going to just do exercises that workout your chest. If you want to make your ass look better, you're going to do exercises that target you butt. You cannot target where fat comes off your body. That's just not a thing we can decide as human beings, it just happens randomly, just depending on your genetics. But you can decide where you target the muscle growth because you do exercises for those muscles and the surrounding muscles—the surrounding like assisting muscles. Okay. Yeah, one time I was—before I came out as trans even to myself, but I, you know, it was maybe one of the first really obvious signs—I was doing weightlifting and I stopped because I started having veins in my arms.

Margaret 47:07 You know, like, muscle—like, in my, like, vein sticking out of my muscles or whatever. And I was like, "Oh, no, that is not an acceptable thing for me. I would definitely rather be a little bit weaker than have my veins popping out." So I just stopped weightlifting. Probably should have just start eating more fat maybe? I'm not sure. But it wasn't really the—I mean, okay, so that actually ties into something that I want to bring up is that—and I guess I've been kind of trying to—in the same way that obsessing about food can be really bad, ut does also seem like obsessing about fitness can be really bad. When I think about, personally, probably the time that I was physically healthiest was the time that I was mentally the least healthy, where I was incredibly obsessive about what I ate and about exercising, but it was absolutely obsessive. And I'm wondering if you have ideas about preventing fitness from being obsessive and like maybe, like, understanding like realistic goals or something? I don't quite know how to phrase what I'm trying to get at.

Dibs 47:07 Yeah. Well, that's a hard one. Because, you know, that's what happened to me and I don't know if there was any way to prevent it, but at some point you catch yourself and I think it's just one of those rock bottom moments where you're like, okay, yeah, this is a problem. I'm—you know, because I had the similar thing to you as when I was at my physical peak and I thought I was looking great and I was trading all the time, but I was obsessing over what I was eating. Like, I ended up going to hospital with a stress condition that affect my guts. And I had—I was at a festival over a New Year's and I missed the countdown, I missed the New Year's Eve party, because I was in like excruciating pain and couldn't get out of bed because I had, like, a gastro problem of like, cramping, like, all in my entire torso. It was like, terrible, because I was eating the wrong makeup of food and I was literally just stressed all the time because I was—it was—I was also working a really intense, demanding job which was in the gym. And so you have to have that moment where you're like, "Okay, cool. Well, you know, I've missed this socialization with my friends, or I'm not going to parties, or I'm, you know, I'm stressing about pre-packing food to a wedding because I don't know what they're going to serve." Like when you get to that point. Like, seriously, like, that's what I was doing. Like, I was, you know, you don't want to go out because you know there's going to be cake and someone's gonna offer you at the end and you're gonna have to deny it, like say no, like, you shouldn't get to that point. And that's when you know, things have gone too far. So like, I mean, it is really hard to avoid that but you need to just go into any sort of exercise routine or nutritional change thinking that—or knowing that it could be sustained thing, or maybe you're gonna try this and it's not going to be for you, and that's okay. And it's totally fine to not have fitness, you know, not have your life revolve around fitness. Because, like, I like to come at it as a holistic thing, like, fitness is not gonna work on its own. If you're smashing yourself in the gym six days a week, or you know, you're going for runs every day, or you're doing your home workout six, seven days a week, that itself is not going to help you holistically if you're then not sleeping because you're stressed, or you're not sleeping because your body is ruined because of all the work you're doing. You're not hydrated, you're not stretching, you're not—you just can't be calm because your heart rates always elevated because you're always moving or, you know, cooking or whatever, like, it has to be a holistic thing for your body to be working properly and for you to make it sustainable. So if—something's always going to give, you know, if you're sacrificing too much for this fitness lifestyle or this diet that you're following, it's not going to be sustainable. And then it's going to cause you problems in the long-term. So you want to think about, okay, well, I'm smashing all this protein powder and all these like supplements all the time. What about when your, like liver, it gives out later? Or what if, you know, you end up getting heart disease or you have a heart attack because you're always stressed? Like, you have to think about long-term, what's going to put the least amount of stress and strain on your body and your internal organs.

Margaret 51:34 Okay. Yeah, I've always found—it's funny, because I end up using like muscle building, for example, as an analogy when I think about different—the way that different systems work. About, you know, as far as I understand it, you need to like work out the muscle group until you damage it a little bit, but not a lot a bit?

Dibs 51:52 Yeah.

Margaret 51:53 You know, in order to trick your body into building it back stronger. And it seems like a lot of mental health stuff for me has been that way. Where like, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy, the behavioral aspects of it with like exposure therapy will be like, well expose yourself to the thing that makes you anxious, but not go overboard with it, right? Because if you go overboard with it, you just make it worse. And that's how exercise feels like, is like, you know, you could be like, "Oh, I need to get stronger." So you could damage yourself versus like, I don't know, it's an analogy I use for way too much of my life.

Dibs 52:30 I like it. No, it's good. Yeah, you need it—you need to challenge yourself a little bit, but not too much. Yes, I guess, that.

Margaret 52:38 So one of the things that I want to talk to you about because I think that—one of the things that I've run into a lot when I talk about, you know, the end of the world and fitness—and obviously, anyone who's listened to many episodes of podcast knows I'm not necessarily talking about, like, the nukes drop and everyone runs around in Mad Max cars or whatever. But actually, you know, I'd argue that we're dealing with a version of the apocalypse right now, in that it is the possible death throes of a system that has currently sustained some of us and not others of us. But a lot of people feel like anything that talks about like disaster preparation excludes them because of especially disability. And also, things around fitness I feel like tie into both disability and like size-ism. And I really want to like separate out the two because I don't believe that size is like a disability, you know, like being fat or whatever. But both of those things seem to come up a lot in fitness discussions. And I'm wondering if you have opinions about how to navigate this—how to navigate fitness from the perspective of someone who's been basically told fitness isn't for them or feels personally that fitness might not be for them.

Dibs 53:53 Yeah. Well, yeah. And that's something I'm really passionate about and I'm trying to get more into with the content that I'm putting out on my social media channels is to target those audiences who feel like, you know, the fitness industry is against them. But there is, you know, there's a tiny mini little fitness industry revolution happening right now. And there are certainly people in my in my circles who I follow who are fat trainers, who are trainers with disabilities, who are, you know—or who are then specifically targeting those minorities and saying like, "This is for you. This is your time, like you can do this, we can all do it together." And it's not that hard to change, you know, if you have a class of people of different abilities of different sizes, like it's not hard to accommodate those—that mix group as a trainer. And, you know, a lot of trainers—to be fair, like, these days, you know, a lot of degrees you just pay for, right? So it's not hard to be a personal trainer. There are so many people out there who are a fitness conditional, like, you know, it's—so a lot of them don't know, they don't have the ability, that haven't been taught, or they haven't tried to think for themselves, "How do I include these other types of people in my class." So then, you know, a few people from those memories have gone and gotten their certification and have been, you know, the role model for everyone else. So, I like to, yeah, say that I—my tagline for my businesses is "fitness for every body," as in every

Episode Notes

The guest Walidah Imarisha can be found online at walidah.com. Her books referenced in this episode are Angels With Dirty Faces and Octavia's Brood, both published by AK Press.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy and on instagram @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this podcast through her patreon.

Transcription:

LLWD - 22 - Walidah on Envisioning the Future 1:21:45 SPEAKERS Margaret, Walidah Imarisha

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, Margaret Killjoy, and this week I'll be talking to an author and activist and poet and just a historian—I'll be talking to will Walidah Imarisha who is, just, I think is absolutely wonderful. And that'll probably come across way too much in this episode. But I'm talking to her because I'm interested in talking about—well, this week is a little bit of a departure from usual, instead of just talking about the end of all things, right, we'll be talking about envisioning better things. And we'll be talking about how important—how necessary it is—to be able to imagine better things in order to make those better things real. And so we'll be talking about the importance of fiction, but we'll also be talking about what it means to envision a world, say for example, without police and prisons and how we can move towards that. And, yeah, I'm just really excited for y'all to hear this episode. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Duh da duh daaa...

Jingle Speaker 1 01:28 Kite Line is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions, and how it impacts all of us.

Jingle Speaker 2 01:39 Behind the prison walls a message is called a kite—whispered words, a note passed hand to hand, a request submitted to the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a cadence trusting that other people will bear it farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kite Line we hope to share these words across the prison walls.

Jingle Speaker 1 01:55 You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.org

Margaret 02:06 Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then like political or organizational affiliations that kind of concern what you're going to be talking about, or maybe like the books that you've written that are about what we're going to be talking about.

Walidah 02:22 My name is Walidah Imarisha, she and her pronouns. I am a writer and an educator. I have done a lot of work on science fiction and social change, culminating in co-editing Octavius Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. I've also written the creative nonfiction book Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption.

Margaret 02:46 Oh, the fact—I've been telling people for years that my favorite book against prison is Angels with Dirty Faces. And I actually have a really hard time reading nonfiction, which is kind of embarrassing because I'm an author. And the fact that you describe it as creative nonfiction really helps explain part of why. For anyone who hasn't read it yet Angels with Dirty Faces is like, um... it's talking about prisons, but it's talking about prisons from the point of view of, like, several specific people who are in prison and, well, your interactions with them. So the reason I have you on this, like, community and individual preparation podcast is—the important—I kind of want to talk to you about the importance of actually, like, envisioning something better. And because it's this kind of cliché that, like, we know what we're against, but do we know what we're for? And sometimes I kind of hate when people ask—I actually almost always hate when people ask that—because my argument is that if you're being hit with a baseball bat, you don't actually have to articulate what you would like society to be like without someone hitting you with a baseball bat before you can get someone to stop hitting you with a baseball bat. But yet at the same time I do personally want a much better society and I know that you've done this work also, yeah, with Octavius Brood, which is just labeled visionary fiction. Is that right?

Walidah 04:13 Yeah.

Margaret 04:14 Um, could you talk about visionary fiction? And could you talk about what draws you to that? And what draws you to painting better worlds and resistance?

Walidah 04:24 Sure. Yeah. I mean, I feel—I agree with you. And I think it's a, you know, it's yes/and. And so, I also think it's really important who's asking these questions, right? Are we asking these questions of each other or people from outside being like, "Well, what do you want then?" Like, I don't really owe you anything if you're coming with that tone. Um, you know, for me, "visionary fiction," I started using that term to refer to the intersection of science fiction or imaginative fiction, fantastical art, and social change. It's deeply steeped in, you know, radical organizing, in thinking and building liberated futures. It's not a utopian project, it's really more about how can we imagine the futures we want to figure out new ways to build them into existence. So we're never going to get to those perfect futures because as science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler said, we're not going to have a utopia until we have a few perfect humans and that seems unlikely. So we won't reach utopia. But I think the practice of utopia is the useful one. And really, I mean, that is what organizing is, is thinking about this world around us and how we actually want it to be and, you know, that's the foundation of Octavia's Brood, which I co edited with Adrienne Maree Brown. The premise is all organizing is science fiction. And we believe that anytime you imagine a world without the ills we fight against, without borders, without prisons without police, that is science fiction because we haven't seen that world. But we can't build what we can't imagine. And so Octavia's Brood is fantastical writing, visionary fiction, specifically written by organizers, activists, and change-makers, the folks who are, you know, in the world trying to make it a better place. And I think that intersection of imaginative spaces and social change is not just useful, but it's absolutely imperative for us to build something other than this world around us.

Margaret 06:50 No, that makes sense. I really like the quote that you just had of, we can't build what we can imagine. That—I don't know. I like that a lot. It ties into a lot of what I what I think about with my own writing. And so this is a weird tangent, but okay, so like, so you're saying it's not a utopian project, right, even though it's sort of in some ways about envisioning utopia. And utopia has this like really mixed reputation, right? And I think some of your work, you've talked about how Oregon was developed as a white utopia, for example. And, you know, I remember doing a talk—I think I've even said this on the podcast before, I'm not sure—I was doing a talk about A Country of Ghosts, an anarchist utopian novel that I wrote. And I was doing it at Tel hougen, an Indigenous info shop. And someone who was there was like, "Yeah, you know, that white people with utopian ideas destroyed everything, right?" And I was like, "Yeah, no, you're just right. I don't have a counter argument. Like, you're just correct." And so I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, about like the idea—maybe the difference between like utopia as a thing that you're specifically trying to create versus utopia as like a direction to walk or something like that? I don't know. I don't know how to phrase this.

Walidah 08:21 No, I think that's I think that's a really useful differentiation. I think the idea—the sort of arrogance and audacity to think that we could create a perfect society, I think is rooted in, you know, everything that is against what we are wanting to build. It's, you know, it does result in, you know, in these projects, I mean, you know, Adrienne often quotes Terry Marshall talking about, you know, that we are in an imagination battle, that we are living in someone else's—specifically as black people—living in other people's imaginations. And this is the result of that— of us, you know, the world being manifested through this white supremacist imagination. And I do think it's important to talk about utopias because, I mean, so much of the goal of white supremacist hetero patriarchal, you know, capitalism has been to create their vision of utopia and to, you know, impress upon it, and press it upon the rest of the world. And so I think it's important to talk about that as utopia because it complicates the notion of utopias you're talking about, but I do think the sort of thought exercise of utopia is useful. I often quote, Eduardo Galeano and his quote of saying, "What is the purpose of utopia then, it is to cause us to advance."

Margaret 10:03 Yeah.

Walidah 10:05 Yeah, I think if we frame it in that way it becomes incredibly useful. Because as a thought experiment, to me, it roots very much in, you know, in Ursula K LeGuin's The Dispossessed, the subtitle of which is "An Ambiguous Utopia." The foundation of that ideas is these folks think they have built the perfect, you know, anarchist society and then realize, you know, the liberation we want is not a destination. And if we ever think we have reached perfection, that is the very moment that we begin to replicate the very systems of dystopian domination that we fought and give our lives for. And so I think it's important to continually think of this as, you know, as a process and a practice rather than a destination. And to continually get to ask the question, "What is our ideal world?" knowing that we won't reach it, but we will continually not only better ourselves and society, but we will create space to reimagine what we consider to be utopia. I mean, we're all growing. I'm growing. We're all messing up every day. We're all learning how to do better every day, hopefully. And, you know, so to imagine that the destination that we set at some fixed point in the past is the destination we want to go to today is—it actually does a disservice to ourselves, because it stops us from being able to grow and to continue to imagine beyond what we're told as possible.

Margaret 11:52 Wait, I thought we were just following the blueprints that Bakunin laid out. Is that not? Like? Yeah, no, I really like that. I really like this idea of that—I mean, for me, it's one of the reasons why, you know, personally, I'm an anarchist but I'm—just in general anti authoritarianism appeals to me is because to me it's this, it's a little bit clear to say like, no, no, no, no, there's not a "perfect." There's not a like, a system that you create, and then enforce on everyone, you know? It's a—instead it's always gonna be messy, it's always gonna be this process.

Walidah 12:31 Yeah. I mean, it's rebelling against the tyranny even of our past selves really. Right? Like, the plan that I laid out for myself when I was 20, you know, is certainly not the plan, you know—And even if the destination of this—even if I'm heading the same way on the horizon, certainly the lessons that I've learned along the way have deeply impacted, shifted, and changed. And if I don't allow myself the space to do that, then I've locked myself into a moment that has then become just my life.

Margaret 13:06 Yeah.

Walidah 13:07 But we do that with our movements every day.

Margaret 13:11 I like this idea. So—because it's like, we need the plans. We just—to even think of it like in terms of the individual, like you were saying, like the plan of what you were going to do when you were 20. It's like, we always need to have these plans so that we can do anything, right, otherwise—like, if I didn't have an idea of like, what I want it to be and what I wanted to do, I wouldn't make any progress. But yeah, no, that makes sense to be able to, like completely readdress it at any point.

Walidah 13:39 Well and just recognize that, you know, I mean, that the world is so much larger than we imagined, that the sky seems vast. And one point on the horizon that seems like the end point, when we reach it we recognize, oh, there is a whole infinity of sky beyond that. So why would we just stop when we've reached that point if our goal was to just continue exploring and seeing and experiencing and doing as much as possible.

Margaret 14:10 That's so good. I like, I love all that shit so much. Okay, so why then fiction? Why choosing to express that specifically through fiction, as you all did with Octavius Brood?

Walidah 14:31 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think again, for me, visionary fiction is about creating possibilities and as many entry points. So, you know, I think fiction is one way to do it. I think you can do it in any genre and whatever messy intersections between genres, the infinite intersections of

Episode Notes

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript:

1:16:39 SPEAKERS Margaret, Petra

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 use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking to my friend Petra, who is a wilderness instructor, basically about camping, about sleeping bags and tents and tarps and how to stay warm and the fact that you need to keep your lithium batteries in your sleeping bag with you and things like that. From the context of, in case you needed to move over land in a hurry. And well, originally, I was going to interview her about both what to do in terms of when you have the right stuff to be prepared and what to do when you don't have the right stuff to be prepared. We actually ran out of time just talking about all the stuff to have in order to be prepared. So consider this the episode about going camping when you have time to gather the materials that you need, which is most of the time, right? You probably have that time right now while you're listening. Because there's one kind of interesting thing is that, as bad as things seem, they're probably always going to get worse, and like basically this is the time to get ready. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's another podcast from the network, jingle?—Here's a jingle for another podcast on the network. For some reason, I can never get the nouns right in the order of the sentences when I say this particular part of the show. I... here's the jingle:

Jingle Speaker 1 01:44 Where did you get this?

Jingle Speaker 2 01:45 Your friendly neighborhood anarchist.

Jingle Speaker 3 01:50 More of an anarchist militant.

Jingle Speaker 4 01:52 People involved in social struggles, everybody else.

Jingle Speaker 5 01:55 People have been waiting for some content radio show.

Jingle Speaker 6 01:58 The Final Straw. Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.

Jingle Speaker 7 02:01 If you're listening, you are the resistance.

Margaret 02:12 Okay, my guest this week is Petra. And if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then maybe any political or organizational affiliations or just what you do for a living as relates to what we're going to be talking about on the show today?

Petra 02:26 Yeah, so my name is Petra LeBaron-Botts and I live in Portland, Oregon, my pronouns are she/her/hers. I try to not have any political affiliations, actually. I find that my politics, although pretty consistent in overarching theories are sort of constantly mutating in specifics. And so I find that, and have found over the past several years, that not having any political affiliation seems to serve me better. So it's also something that, you know, and every job I've had, we've been very discouraged in terms of talking about it. But I am a wilderness educator, I guess, in the most basic of terms, lead trips, and currently teach for a community college in Portland.

Margaret 03:22 Cool. Okay, so I guess the main thing that I kind of want to talk to you about is how to camp when you're prepared to camp—so the framing that I'm imagining this particular conversation in is, you know, I reached out to you in a rush in the middle of the night during the uprising when I was like, "What would I need if I suddenly needed to move over land?" Like if suddenly the American South became a dramatically inhospitable place and I, you know, there were militia checkpoints on the roads or whatever—whatever the reasoning would be, I was like, "What would I need to get out on foot?" And, you know, I've camped a bit my life, right, and I, you know, live off grid, but there's still a lot of stuff. Like I said—I think I specifically called you to be like, "What kind of camping pad do I actually need? And also, are poles actually worth it?" And because, you know, I did most of my more active outdoors-ing while I was a younger woman, and was a little bit more physically resilient to sleeping on the ground and stuff. And so, so yeah, I guess I wanted to talk to you. We'll get into some other stuff about what to do when you don't have what you need. But I wanted to talk to you about like, when you have what you need, how do you go about camping or thru-hiking? Like, what's some of the stuff?

Petra 04:54 Yeah, I think that in planning for trips and planning for camping, there's a lot of working backwards, sort of, where do I envision myself going? How far do I envision myself going? What sort of tolerance for misery do I know that I have or not have? And working backwards, therefore, what kind of gear do I need or what kind of gear can I jettison? So I don't know that there's like a really easy answer to that. I think that being prepared tends to look like knowing the weight of your gear, knowing the number of miles that you can travel with a full backpack—and a full backpack, I mean, that's a pretty broad term because they're full backpacks that are, you know, 20 pounds and full backpacks that are 80 pounds. So, you know, how much weight can I personally comfortably carry according to the number of miles I want to travel? So yeah, a lot of working backwards and a lot of sort of not having a strict formula to work with.

Margaret 05:58 How would you gauge that if you are like, let's say you are a modestly physically active person who does not make a habit of thru-hiking or, you know, overnight backpacking or anything like that? What—how would people start getting a sense of—or people have different levels of ability, you know, I was just going to start using myself as an example. But how would you start gauging how much weight you would consider carrying and how far you think that you would try to push yourself on a given day?

Petra 06:34 I think one of the important things is to get a baseline understanding for how far you can travel before you start to feel really miserable. So that might look like, you know, in your initial stages, especially if you're not used to, say, walking up a lot of hills, is going out with very minimal equipment, going out with a bunch of water and maybe, you know, a couple of extra clothing layers, and going and walking up, you know, maybe 1000 feet of elevation gain, you know, maybe over two or three miles and seeing how that feels to your body. You know, is that already pushing it or not. And then I think another great step to take is getting everything that you think you're going to need—so there are sort of infinite packing lists that you can find online for back country trips—sort of getting together everything that you think you need, putting it all in a backpack, and then just taking that on a walk for even just a couple miles around your neighborhood or the place where you live and start to see how that feels. Because a lot of people the—when that you make the jump from day hiking to overnight backpacking, it's a pretty steep learning curve. And I think people tend to underestimate how much things weigh and they also tend to overestimate how much weight they can carry before they start to feel really miserable. So if you tell the average person you know, you're going to have to carry, you know, 35 pounds of gear on your back. 35 pounds doesn't necessarily sound like a lot of weight. But as soon as you put it on and start to move at a, you know, reasonably fast hiking pace over several miles, that weight tends to add up really quickly and start to feel real heavy.

Margaret 08:23 Yeah, that makes sense. When I was, you know, when I was younger, and lived out of a backpack, I felt like people always started by putting like, kind of, as much weight as they could possibly have in their backpacks. And then would kind of like, like, people who are hitchhiking and hopping freight trains and stuff. And then would slowly kind of just slimming down and getting rid of everything extra and then actually would then move back up to being like, well, now I want bolt cutters or some other fucking stupid heavy thing. Because they kind of know what they do and don't need by that point. But okay, well, to start with like, kind of the basics from my point of view—and please correct me if I'm wrong—the one thing that I always considered indispensable was a sleeping bag. Like, I always felt like no matter what, like, my backpack could just be a damn sleeping bag. And now I wasn't in the wilderness. I was like, in cities, so things like getting water and food were like more available. But um, yeah, I don't know. You know, it's like, I don't want to turn the show into just like a—just gear talk, right? Like, what's the best sleeping bag and stuff like that. But I—sometimes some of the gear stuff is important. And I guess it's like, not necessarily like what's like the best top of the line sleeping bag, but what's like, what's a baseline that people would be looking for? And I know it has to do with environment, but...

Petra 09:57 Totally. Sort of a few—kind of a few big characteristics I guess, to look at: The first one is, you know, if you go to like Dick's Sporting Goods and you pull a backpack off one of the—or a sleeping bag off one of the shelves, it's probably going to be one of those rectangular synthetic sleeping bags. Or they might even have like a, you know, like a fleece lining on the inside of it. You definitely want to get away from those rectangular sleeping bags, and go for something that's a mummy fit sleeping bag. So that's the one that's, you know, tapered the feet to narrower down there and then it sort of flares out around where the shoulders and torso are. And you want to do that just because you want to minimize the amount of space that your body has to heat up. So in rectangular sleeping bags, you have a lot more dead space, a lot more airspace inside the sleeping bag, which means it's harder for your body to heat up all of that air. So you're just kind of wasting heat. So mummy cut or mummy fit sleeping bags are important to look at. And then sleeping bags are rated according to their survival temperature. Which is to say, when a sleeping bag has a listed, you know, temperature rating, you should be safe, you should not die, down to that temperature. One thing that's really important to remember is that that's not a comfort rating. And so one thing that I really encourage people to think about is, do you tend to sleep really cold? You know, are you always cold when you're sleeping? Or are you the kind of person who's, you know, waking up and sweating in the middle of the night. And that's going to make a difference in terms of, you know, what kind of temperature you might opt for. I would say, you know, if I were going to pick one sleeping bag that would, you know, get me through the vast majority of conditions all the time, I would say a 20 degree synthetic bag.

Margaret 11:58 Okay.

Petra 11:59 20 degrees is, you know, that'll keep you alive through, you know, most certainly Pacific Northwest weather, you know, not being in the mountains. And you can always add in, you know, like a liner or, you know, have a hot water bottle or some of those chemical heat packs to make it a little bit warmer. But that'll keep you alive and reasonably comfortable in a lot of conditions. And then I always recommend the synthetic. They are bulkier and they are heavy, but they'll also continue to insulate even when they're wet. Which down sleeping bags won't. and especially here in the Pacific Northwest, eight months of rain, that's eight months of potentially having a not insulating sleeping bag.

Margaret 12:43 Yeah, that's actually really interesting. I'm happy to hear that because I tend to recommend synthetic sleeping bags, but the reason that I do it—and this is just to my best knowledge—is that synthetic sleeping bags are happier compacted, like, all day long. As compared to down sleeping bags need to be stored, like, outside of their stuff sack. And, you know, most people don't do what I do, which is sleep in a sleeping bag every night. It's an old habit. Dies hard. I've like—it takes so many comforters to be warm in a bed but it just takes one 0 degree sleeping bag and you're fine. And, you know, but most people probably are going to be keeping their sleeping bags like packed away, right? And if it's going to be living in the bottom of your pack, then—is that true? That synthetic is happier compacted?

Petra 13:38 Yes, well I don't know if it's happier compacted it's just less miserable when it's compacted because, yeah, if you're storing a down sleeping bag compacted, you know, in a stuff sack you're going to end up with clumping feathers and you're going to end up with inconsistent distribution of the down and so it's—you know, you're going to have sort of spots that feel really cold and that, it doesn't take a terribly long time for a down sleeping bag to end up with that clumping if it's been stored compacted.

Margaret 14:09 Okay. Cool yeah, and synthetic sleeping bags also cheaper so that's also nice.

Petra 14:16 Also that.

Margaret 14:17 And I literally don't know how down—what geese are treated—I have no idea.

Petra 14:24 Yeah, you know, there's this certified cruelty0free down now and I think it's probably bullshit, so yeah.

Margaret 14:32 Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.

Petra 14:34 No geese had to suffer for those synthetic sleeping bags.

Margaret 14:37 So one thing I learned about sleeping in sleeping bags only more recently, which is embarrassing because again, that's been about half my life now has been the primary thing that I sleep in. It's that the loft of the sleeping bag, the like puffiness of it, is so crucial to its warming value. And so I was learning that like you shouldn't put a blanket over a sleeping bag if you're trying to maximize the efficacy of a sleeping bag. Is that something you know much about?

Petra 15:06 I wish I could comment more on sort of the physics of it. But yes, I will say that one of the reasons for that—one reason that I do know—is that the way that—the reason that down or synthetic fill, you know, the reason that it's effective is because there's air trapped in between feathers or sort of in that synthetic fill. And your—that trapped air is being heated up by your body. So your body is not only heating up sort of the airspace inside of your sleeping bag, but also in the air that's contained in the fill.

Margaret 15:43 Yeah.

Petra 15:43 And so when you compress that you are reducing the amount of warm air that can be held close to your body. So it's ultimately just making it a little bit colder for you.

Margaret 15:55 Yeah, that makes sense. Do you know if the rating of—Oh, and another question that I get asked and I, I think I have an answer to but I'm not entirely certain is, there's a rumor that goes around that sleeping in a sleeping bag with clothes on reduces the efficacy of a sleeping bag.

Petra 16:16 It's kind of half true. It's totally fine to sleep in clothes. But kind of, you know, just like we've been talking about this trapped airspace, if you are wearing a ton of clothing, then the airspace—there's just this little tiny sort of layer of air right around you between sort of your body and your clothes that you're eating up. But it's preventing your body heat from fully radiating into the airspace inside the sleeping bag. And then to that, you know, down or synthetic fill. So you can—you know, I sleep in like wool long johns and like a long sleeve base layer. But, you know, often when people are cold they'll say, "Well, I'm just going to put on all of my clothing and wear it to bed and then it'll be even warmer," which is not true. The better way if you have a bunch of extra clothing and you are cold at night is actually just to take that clothing and ball it up and stuff it inside your sleeping bag with you. Because that's just, again, reducing the amount of airspace that your body needs to heat up in order to make the sleeping bag warm.

Margaret 17:27 Okay. Yeah, and I also kind of recommend to people—like it's just something that I learned from a long habit—is that you put the clothes that you want to wear the next day, if they fit, into your sleeping bag so that they're not freezing in the morning and your life is like slightly less miserable. And then a weird random thing I've learned in the sort of modern era: I learned a long time ago that modern electronics are not designed with squatters in mind. And lithium batteries are not happy when it's cold out.

Petra 17:59 Correct.

Margaret 18:00 And so I also put my phone in my sleeping bag at night so that the battery's dead in the morning, and may or may not have occasionally put an entire fucking laptop in my sleep for the same purpose.

Petra 18:01 Yeah. When I used to work for—I used to guide for a wilderness therapy program. And, you know, we had radios that we had to carry and bags full of medication. Another thing that's really good if people don't already know is if you carry epinephrine, epinephrine can freeze and once it freezes it loses its potency. So if you have like an epi pen or epinephrine that could go in your sleeping bag with you as well. So I used to have a sleeping bag full of like epi pens and radios and batteries and then my spare radio batteries. And so every time I would roll around at night you're like, "Clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk clunk," and all my shit just, like, rolling over my sleeping bag with me.

Margaret 19:00 Uh huh. Yeah, and then also a ceramic water filters are—you have to like drain them. You can't let them freeze or whatever.

Petra 19:11 Right, because if there's water in there and it freezes it expands and it can crack the filter.

Margaret 19:16 Yeah. And I haven't had that. I haven't, like, had that happen to me yet in my personal life, but my water filter is no longer a ceramic water filter, the one on my house.

Petra 19:28 Yeah, that's why I don't—you know, it's for your house so it's a little bit different, but that's why on my personal trips I don't carry a filter anymore. I don't ever filter.

Margaret 19:37 Oh, interesting. What do you do for drinking water?

Petra 19:42 I do chemical treatment instead. So—and chemical treatment can sort of run the gamut from really super incredibly cheap up to, you know, not expensive but definitely more expensive. I use Aqua Mira which basically creates chlorine. And I like Aqua Mira because there's relatively little aftertaste. And sometimes in the outdoors I have a hard time drinking enough water, especially when it's cold. And if it's cold and my water tastes like shit, I'm definitely not going to drink it. So I use Aqua Mira, but you can use bleach. Bleach is an incredibly effective and super cheap way of chemically treating your water.

Margaret 20:27 So you should just drink bleach if—if you drink bad water, and then you just drink some bleach?

Petra 20:32 Yeah, I hear that will also solve COVID-19 too. So yeah, it's the one-two punch.

Margaret 20:38 Okay, so—no, it's actually interesting about water filters. Because I've been putting little tiny vials of chemical treatment into, like, any kind of survival kit that I pack for anybody. But for me—and I keep one like in my, you know, my day pack that goes with me everywhere, or whatever, right? Because I really like light, cheap, useful things that just, like, don't take up any space and you can forget about them. And,—but then when I imagine, like, actually, camping, I've always ended up using, you know, like, I use the mini Sawyer, that was like, the ceramic filter that I used on my house when pandemic started because I, you know, wasn't leaving my house because there was a pandemic. And so I've always seen the ceramic filters as like kind of the step up from the chemical treatment. So that's interesting to hear that you prefer the chemical treatment.

Petra 21:32 they definitely make water tastes a lot better when you filter it. I just—I, you know, they're bulky and I just often don't want to take the time to filter water. So chemical filtration—you know, and let me say this—it really depends on where I'm going. You know, I used to work in southeastern Utah, and we largely—and Southwestern Colorado and southeastern Utah—and our water sources are all cow ponds. So you know, imagine brown water that you cannot see through with floating mounds of cow shit in it.

Margaret 22:08 Oh, god.

Petra 22:09 I'm gonna filter that.

Margaret 22:10 Yeah.

Petra 22:11 Definitely filter that water. But for anything, you know, in most of the Pacific Northwest, up in the Cascades, the water—I mean, we're so lucky out here, the water is so great. So I don't bother filtering that and I just will do chemical treatment.

Margaret 22:25 Okay. And for anyone who's listening who is like, "But the water so natural, I want to just drink it." You ever had Giardia? I had it once.

Petra 22:35 I have and it's horrendous.

Margaret 22:37 Yeah. It's a real bad scene. And I kind of think it would murder you if it happened in a situation where you couldn't, you know, have access to ways to get food and water in you.

Petra 22:53 Yeah, that becomes a really dangerous situation, actually, especially if you're pretty far out. Because, I guess for anyone who doesn't know, the biggest symptom, biggest sign for Giardia is really terrible diarrhea. So vomiting and diarrhea. And so you're just losing so much fluid from your body. And that just very quickly becomes really dangerous and then you're not able to walk very far. So yeah, I highly recommend—please, please do something to make your water drinkable.

Margaret 23:24 Yeah. Yeah, it's like, we think we're in a more—when you're out in the woods you think you're in a more pure environment than you are. And I've seen so many times, like, forest defense camps, or, you know, kind of more hippie backpacker types or whatever, who just are like, "Oh, no, it's cool because we're so far away from civilization, you could just drink right out of the stream." And I've seen those people get very sick. And I've been sickened by someone who I chose to trust and drink her water. And it was a poor decision because it was unfiltered water. And yeah, I've never had an experience of my life where I had to shit and throw up at the same time.

Petra 24:01 At the same time. It's so incredible. It just comes out really aggressively.

Margaret 24:06 Yeah

Petra 24:06 From both ends.

Margaret 24:07 So anyway, water. Water. Take care of your water. Okay, so so back to sleeping. You know, because this is one of the things I called you about, right, is because imagining, okay, like—I've done some cold weather camping, but I haven't like, done a ton of it. Right? I you know, I grew up in a place that has four seasons, but winter is not six months long, you know. And so—and I used to just never fuck with sleeping pads. Like, again, I was usually in an urban environment so I just find a cardboard dumpster and get a ton of cardboard and sleep on it. Which is incredibly uncomfortable. And one of the reasons it's so uncomfortable is that if you sleep outside all the time, you kind of have to—maybe everyone's body is different about this, right? But like if I sleep on my side and I do don't have enough padding, I just I toss and turn all night, right, because the grounds too hard on my hips and so I can only sleep on my back or on my belly. But then that isn't warm enough when you're cold, right? If you're sleeping and it's slightly cold, you don't want to sleep on your back, like your body will just get mad at you for sleeping on your back. And so sleeping pads, someone invented this wonderful thing called portable mattresses that should have occurred to me much younger than they did. What kind of sleeping pad do you use or recommend?

Petra 25:34 Yeah, so sleeping bags come in—or sorry, sleeping pads come in two basic varieties, two basic overarching varieties. One is a closed cell and one's an inflatable or an open cell. So a closed cell sleeping pad is like the ubiquitous, you know, yellow accordion fold sleeping pad that looks like an egg crate that you've seen, probably, you know, everybody using. So that is, that's great if you are a person who generally doesn't have any trouble sleeping, regardless of where you are. I personally would never take just that. But I have a lot of trouble sleeping to begin with even when I'm, you know, at home in my own bed. And so that sort of becomes, you know, that trouble becomes, you know, exponentially worse when I'm in the back country. So I personally take—always, regardless of where I am, but especially in the cold—I take both. I take a foam—I take that accordion fold egg crate yellow foam sleeping pad, and I also take an inflatable one. And that is just extra comfort for me, which I really appreciate because, you know, especially in the context of, you know, being outdoors for my work, work tends to feel a lot easier and I tend to be a much nicer person if a reasonable amount of sleep the night before, especially when I'm in charge of people's well-being, you know, I try to be well rested. Um, the combination of the two is, I would say, really important in the cold. Foam, you know, closed cell sleeping pads, they'll give you some insulation from the cold ground, which is great, but they don't provide a lot of comfort, you know, it's basically kind of a step up from cardboard, right? It's not that much softer or thicker. And then using an inflatable one, that's going to give you the extra comfort but using an inflatable sleeping pad directly on cold ground, all you're going to end up with is that cold ground, cooling that air inside of the inflatable sleeping pad and it's going to—it's going to draw away your—it's going to try to basically draw away your body heat until your temperature, your body temperature, is the same as the temperature of that air. So if you use the two, you have the insulation from the ground, you're not cooling down that airspace inside the inflatable pad as quickly and you're just that much more comfortable overnight.

Margaret 28:08 Okay. Yeah, I actually I tried this for the first time after talking to you.

Petra 28:13 And?

Margaret 28:14 It was great. I had just finished—I managed to maybe get trapped in a blizzard in what I thought was early fall—well actually is was mid fall—because I confusingly decided that I should drive a loan through, what's that state that's really cold? North Dakota and Montana. I don't remember which one I got stuck in the blizzard in. It was a very long day. And so I slept in my car that day, which is not particularly comfortable. And then the night after, I was like, I'm going to just fucking camp, you know. I made it somewhere a little bit warmer. And yeah, it was really, it was really comfortable is one of the nicer sleeping out moments I've had.

Petra 29:00 Yes. That's so great. Yeah, it's—for me, you know, there are lots of places where people are willing to shave off ounces and gear that people are willing to leave behind. For me, the combination, I just, it's unmatched. The quality of sleep that I get, and the comfort that I get from the combination is so worth the extra weight to me.

Margaret 29:24 Yeah, when you're talking about being grouchy in the morning, right? Like, it's like one of these things that people like laugh about, like they're like, "Oh, yeah, haha, I'm like really unhappy." But like, I hadn't quite realized, you know, how important morale is, you know?

Petra 29:41 Oh my god. Yeah.

Margaret 29:42 Like, I actually think it's probably on a regular basis the difference between life or death is like, just like, some vague level of comfort in a bad situation. You know?

Petra 29:55 Totally. Oh, 100%. You know, in all of the really terrible situations that I've ever been in, yeah, I think the reason that all of them didn't end with severe injury or death was because of some kind of comfort, whether that's physical comfort or emotional comfort, but you know, doing whatever the hell you can to try to keep morale up.

Margaret 30:16 Yeah, I could really see myself like, um, you know, you know, one of those movies where you're like trapped under a boulder and waiting for rescue or whatever? I could definitely see myself just, like, pulling out Nintendo Switch and playing Skyrim until the battery dies. You know?

Petra 30:32 Yeah.

Margaret 30:34 Because, like, yeah, morale is so much more vital than I would have expected, you know? And I—it's that kind of macho attitude of like, you know, doing without anything or whatever, right? Okay, so what is—speaking of stuff that people bring and don't bring, like, what some of the bullshit? Like, okay, so you're clearly like, for example, not—certainly in terms of your sleeping arrangements you're more maximalist than some, you know, campers and backpackers, but what some of the stuff that people think they need, that they don't?

Petra 31:19 Um, you know, gosh, a lot? I—there are all sorts of things that I think fall into this, and it kind of depends on what people are hoping to do, or sort of what kind of trip they're trying to have. So, you know, there are all kinds of really fancy gadgets that you can get, you know, I think there's now like a back country french press that you can get and, you know, a back country pour overs so you can have your perfectly brewed cup of coffee. So there's stuff like that, but I also kind of don't hold that against people because I get it, like, you know, at some point you're willing to carry the extra weight for the things that matter the most to you. One thing though is excessive toiletries. Every time—and this happens all the time—people are always trying to bring full size sticks of deodorant. I just don't get it. Because I get that there's this, you know, we have a lot of sort of cultural norms around, you know, how you smell and what you smell like. But I never really understood that. I just think, you know, we're outdoors, just embrace the fact that you're going to stink and the more smelly items that you bring, the more attractive you are to bears. It's just one more thing you got to protect from bears at night. So there's that, you know, some people will bring full-on camping pillows that are really bulky and quite heavy. People bring chairs a lot. And I think, you know, if you have back issues then that's great, whatever, do your thing. A lot of that—there are a lot of stools and chairs that are being made now that are really pretty cool and don't weigh all that much. I'm trying to think of what else people really are attached to. People tend to bring more clothing than they need. It's been pretty—I've been pretty impressed actually, I haven't seen people bring a whole lot of really absurd stuff on the trips that I've led, which is pretty good after I think 600 days working outdoors now that I have.

Margaret 33:30 Yeah.

Petra 33:32 Yeah, that's a really disappointing answer. I'm sorry.

Margaret 33:36 No, no, it's okay. Cuz I mean, that's like, I was just saying that I'm gonna bring a Nintendo Switch, right? So like—and I, you know, the things that I most immediately think of are like, I think I've talked shit on wire saws before on the show. The like, sort of like, gadgets, the like, kind of like, "tactical cool," like...

Petra 34:02 Yeah.

Margaret 34:03 You know, like, I don't know, that's the kind of stuff that I when I think of—besides, I don't know, besides, yeah, too much clothing. People don't realize that when you just go camping, you just don't change your shirt which actually has some problems down the road eventually, but...

Petra 34:18 Eventually. Do you know what a Woodsman's Pal is?

Margaret 34:22 I do not.

Petra 34:23 It's like—Oh, I wish I could—it's kind of like a smaller machete.

Margaret 34:28 Mm hmm.

Petra 34:30 Well I guess machetes come in all come in all sorts of sizes. It's basically designed for chopping wood but also sort of shaving strips of wood for tender. People have tried to bring those and, you know, really, just a just a regular knife will do. I, you know, people trying to backpack with axes and hatchets and—I mean good for you but I would say, you know, A) you shouldn't be chopping anything off of trees and B) If a log is so big that you need to chop it down in order to burn it, it's probably just too big to begin with.

Margaret 35:06 Yeah, no, that makes sense. I, yeah, a hatchet has not made any kind of level of my cut. I could imagine situations where like a machete might be useful, but like, I'm pretty into the just, like, one fuck off knife, you know, one fixed blade knife. But I know a lot of people are into folding saws, like, again, this is kind of less like three-day trip kind of thing and more a little bit of like, you know, I'm off to go start my new life in the forest eating squirrels or whatever. Um, but I feel like I would bring a folding saw in a lot of environments like to cut wood with, but I don't know.

Petra 35:53 They work pretty well. I did I have a pretty limited lifespan.

Margaret 35:57 Oh, interesting.

Petra 35:58 At least for me, you know, I've found that with heavy use, you know, six months before that thing is really warped or not really working well or part of the handle breaks off.

Margaret 36:10 Mm hmm. Okay, what do you recommend? What do you use instead? Or do you just replace them every six months?

Petra 36:18 You know, I don't these days find a lot of occasions to really take a folding saw—doesn't really feel necessary for where I'd go or where I work. So I just sort of the one standalone fuck off knife. That really does it for me. Mm hmm.

Margaret 36:34 Yeah. I love my fuck off knife. I also—I made my fuck off knife. I like was living with a knife maker and I was like watching over their shoulder for a long time. And then I was like, "Can I make one now?"

Petra 36:49 That's awesome. Has it—have you managed to get it and keep it pretty sharp?

Margaret 36:55 I am not incredibly good at sharpening knives. This is uh—I'm glad—this is the skill set that I'm like, very embarrassed that I seem to lack. It's a very fine dexterous thing. I got it very sharp when I first did it, very carefully. And then since then, honestly, I don't really sharpen it. And it still does the stuff that I need a knife to do, which is like, cut open boxes and make people not fuck with me when I'm wearing a miniskirt and have a giant knife.

Petra 37:28 Yeah.

Margaret 37:30 So like, I really need to sharpen it. Like I—you know, it's like, I can't shave with it, right?

Petra 37:38 Right.

Margaret 37:39 And I've definitely had knives when I could—I could shave with this knife when I, you know, when it first came out of the sharpening or whatever. But I don't know, what kind of fuck off knife do you like?

Petra 37:52 I carry a Mora knife, which is a pretty—it's just a pretty standard knife. I don't know, I made a new handle for it, which I really like. Because it comes with like a shitty plastic handle, you know, and I wanted something that's wood. They're relatively easy to sharpen. And I say that as a person who really sucks at sharpening things. They're pretty easy to sharpen. It's a good size. I like it, because you can both cut things and, like, whittle with it pretty well. So it's not an enormous blade. But I found it to be a good sort of all-purpose knife.

Margaret 38:29 Okay, that's cool. So what do people forget to bring all the time? Like, what are some of the things where people are like, "Oh, gee, I—" you know, I don't know, you would know the answer to this. And I could conjecture, but I'll be wrong.

Petra 38:45 Yeah, I there kind of three things that come to mind. One is, you know, people are really great about packing a stove, but are way less good about packing lighters. So you know, because then just sort of, I don't know, becomes less obvious as something that you would need. So people will always, you know, they'll have their fuel bottles and they'll have their stoves but they won't actually check to make sure that they have a lighter. Always have a lighter, always. Another thing is—sort of broadly I'm going to say something to protect your skin. And sort of two different areas of that. One is people always forget sun protection like sunscreen which, you know, and a lot of people are like, "Oh, well, you know, I don't really, you know, I just tan really quickly or whatever." Being significantly sunburned in the back country on a long trip is so shitty, it's so terrible. So even if you know you have like a broad brimmed hat, I think having that sort of extra sunscreen on top of that is great. The other thing is, if you're going to be traveling on snow, you needs some really burly sunscreen or you need something with zinc oxide in it that creates like an actual physical barrier on your skin. Because the combination of the sunlight and the reflection of the sunlight off of the snow becomes really intense. And people, you know, I personally have repeatedly burned the inside of my nose, the roof of my mouth.

Margaret 40:26 Whoa, okay.

Petra 40:26 Like all of these places that are so bad to have a sunburn. And so—and for me at least, you know, sunscreen, most sunscreen won't cut it because I'm sweating all the time. And so for that, you know, like diaper rash cream, which is like basically pure zinc oxide, is really great. It sits on the skin, it doesn't rub in, you're going to look really silly because you've got this white junk all over your face. But it's an actual barrier and also, you know, it protects you a little bit from wind burn and all of this just is such an important thing just for comfort and longevity in the back country and I think people tend to overlook that. Because they sort of figure, you know, well, as long as it's not a debilitating burn, then I'll be fine.

Margaret 41:13 Okay, that is absolutely something that I regularly overlook, so.

Petra 41:18 Yeah.

Margaret 41:19 I can't imagine the inside of my nose burning.

Petra 41:23 Oh, it's so bad. And I don't—have you ever had a second degree sunburn?

Margaret 41:27 No.

Petra 41:29 So second degree sunburn. You know, a second degree burn is when you have the formation of blisters. And as soon as you have blisters anywhere on your body in the back country it's a chance for infection. You know, depending on how bad they are, you're losing fluid from your body. So I've had many a second degree sunburn on my face.

Margaret 41:50 That's a terrible.

Petra 41:51 And it's just not fun to walk around with your face leaking fluid through your blisters.

Margaret 41:56 That would make me never go outside again. I would be like—

Petra 41:58 I know. It's really terrible.

Margaret 42:00 There's a murder orb in the sky and it's trying to murder me. That's its job.

Petra 42:05 The cursed a day star.

Margaret 42:06 Yeah. Wow. Okay, so people forget sunscreen. Yeah, it's interesting. I've been running across the like—there's like a list of like The 10 Essentials and it's like 8 years old and I could not tell you it off the top of my head. But sun protection always seems to make the list of, like, the absolute bare essentials before going out into the woods. And it has never been an essential for me. And I—but I think that's because I'm not—I mean, you know, because I haven't pushed this. I don't do multi day thru-hikes and stuff, you know?

Petra 42:44 Yeah.

Margaret 42:45 So.

Petra 42:47 Um, you know, there's one other thing—you just got me thinking about The 10 Essentials—another thing that people tend to forget, or they overlook, or they just convince themselves that they don't need it, is an actual compass, versus just your phone map. You know, I think we can do we can do so much with our phones now. And we have all of these, you know, neat devices that we can carry, that people assume that if they have, you know, a GPS, then they're never going to be lost. But there are so many limitations, so many ways that that can go wrong. And so I think people forget and overlook the fact that you need to have a map and a compass, and you need to be able to know how to use them together.

Margaret 43:31 Okay. Yeah, I was thinking about campuses as like—I mean, it's funny because compasses also fall into the, like, realm of like, if I see a knife with a compass in the handle of it, I assume it's a garbage knife and a garbage compass and like—

Petra 43:45 Correct.

Margaret 43:47 So like a compass embedded into another object is like almost always a bad scene. It seems like it's not inherently wrong, right? But there's just—if it's gonna be a quality compass, it seems like it's gonna be standalone is that—?

Petra 44:01 The tough thing is, especially if you're trying to navigate over any kind of distance, you have to—so depending on where you are in the world, there's going to be a difference between where true north is in relation to you, and where the needle of your compass points to. So there's a difference between true north and magnetic north. And that difference can be up to like 40 degrees difference. So you can probably start to see, if you don't have the knowledge of the declination, that difference between true north and magnetic north, and if you don't have a compass that has sort of clear individually marked degrees, then you can end up 40 degrees off of where you're actually trying to travel to.

Margaret 44:47 Okay. One of the reasons that I pitch people carrying a compass even if they kind of either suck at navigating like I do—because I haven't done it since I was a boy scout, which, you know, was a long time ago—or who just have no idea about navigation, is it seems to me to be like a kind of useful thing. And maybe, I don't know, this is like my own conjecture, basically to be like, well, at least I'm walking the same goddamn way.

Petra 45:14 Yes.

Margaret 45:14 So like, that was always my like, "I should carry a compass so that if I'm lost, I'm at least fucking walk in the same direction."

Petra 45:22 Totally. Even if you don't know how to do anything with your compass, if you can walk and keep—basically keep the needle pointing towards the same degree marking or pointing in the same direction, then yeah, you're more or less walking a straight line. And you're going to do better at walking a straight line with that than if you had nothing.

Margaret 45:43 Okay. Cool. I'm glad to hear that this—one of the things that I realize is that a lot of like—the things that scare people off of prepping—one thing that scares people off of prepping is that, like, it's so gear-oriented that it like, seems like it's only for antisocial people with lots of money and storage space, which is obviously like, not true, right? Those people are actually less likely to be in bad situations than the rest of us. But then also, even after that, it can be very skill-oriented. And sometimes that takes time that we can't always dedicate to this stuff, right? Like, I want to learn navigation again, for real. I couldn't do it again, you know, and I learned it 25 years ago or something. But I would love to, right? But there's just also so much other shit that I would love to do. And like, it's really interesting to learn which things you could use whether or not you have some skill and like figure it out in the woods and which things that you, like, actually probably need to figure out ahead of time. And I'm wondering, because you were telling me before we started recording that what you do is um—well here, do you want to explain the difference between being a guide and an instructor? And then the reason I'm going to ask is because I want to ask if there's things that people assume that they will be able to do that they cannot do or vice versa, things that people assume they can't do that they can do.

Petra 47:16 Yeah, absolutely. So I guess in sort of pretty brief terms, guides—in the sort of traditional sense—wilderness guides are people who take paying clients out and sort of facilitate an outdoor experience for them. That could be a backpacking trip that could be, you know, you kind of see them—I associate them the most with climbing mountains, you know, you can pay a guide who will basically close the gap, the knowledge gap, right? Will take you, a person with no, you know, background or skill in climbing mountains, and get you to the top of a, you know, relatively technical peak, get you back down safely, and will sort of cook all of your meals as you go. So I—the reason I shied away from guiding is because I find that when people are paying a guide, you know, guides are not inexpensive, right? And so I think when people pay a guide they sort of expect, "Well, you know, you are going to set up my sleeping, or you're going to set up my tent, you're going to cook meals, you're going to do all the technical stuff so that I don't have to worry about it." Right, and I just really kind of hate that. I do—I knew that if I went into that, that I would become really jaded and really cynical and really antisocial. And so what I do instead, and what I've done ever since I got into working outdoors in 2011, is I've been an instructor. So I take people who want to learn the skills into the back country and we do some, you know—I used to work courses that were 30 days long. So we'll do some really long 30 day trip, or we'll do like a—you know, we'll climb a mountain or we'll go snow camping. And I'm there to teach people how to do it as they are kind of immersed in the situation. And I really love what I do just because I—because there's a curiosity, because people feel some responsibility for their own well-being, and it feels much more like we're sort of a functioning team versus, I don't know, like a mother duck and a bunch of ducklings.

Margaret 49:37 Okay. That's cool. Okay, so when you do that, what are the things that—like, what are some of the skills that people can pick up easier than they think they can? Or what are some of the skills that people like—you actually probably need to study ahead of time? Basically, like, almost, where can you cut corners in your preparation in terms of skills, and where do you really have to focus in?

Petra 50:05 I think most outdoor living things can be picked up on the fly, you know, you can learn how to cook over a backpacking stove and even make, you know, some pretty awesome meals. And you can figure it out sort of in the back country. You can figure out, you know, how to put up a tent, you can figure out how to, you know, keep yourself relatively comfortable during the day, you can figure out how to make a fire kind of on the fly. You know, that—there are definitely some tips that make it easier, but you know, that's not something that you need to, you know, study beforehand. The two things that I would say really do require some forethought or some planning or some training is navigation, right? A lot of people think that they know how to navigate with a map and compass, but when it comes down to it, they have no idea. And I see this again and again, even in the sort of people I've worked with. And the other thing is building shelter. So putting up a tent is one thing, but trying to create a shelter, even like a tarp shelter, has more kind of nuance than you might expect. Anybody can put up a tarp shelter that, you know, kind of looks like shit and definitely won't last the night, but it takes a little more planning to sort of get a really nice weatherproof tarp shelter. And then, you know, something that I teach people in the context of my job right now and also, you know, has personally saved my life in the past is snow shelters. Digging a snow shelter is not intuitive. It's not intuitive. It's not. There are a lot of things to think about that you might not immediately think about. And that's one thing where I do think that if people are going to be in a remote situation in the snow, you oughta know how to build a snow shelter.

Margaret 52:06 Okay, that's good to know. I have no idea—I mean, I have an idea of how to build snow shelter in that I've, like, seen some diagrams and some very nice books. But you know, I have always just had tents if I'm—well, I've mostly avoided the snow because I didn't need to not avoid the snow so I would just hitchhike south because it was cold. But so okay, in terms of what you can cut corners with and what you can't, what about with gear? Like, you know, there's so much stuff that's marketed to, like, as soon as anyone who's listening, this podcast starts googling any of this shit, your ads are gonna be full of like all kinds of garbage, right? And they're gonna be like, "If you're a real man you're gonna get this real man box. And once a month, we send you a man tool." And it's always, like, some random fucking bullshit and like—and a lot of the shits, like, really expensive, right? Like, I've definitely learned—but then some of it's so fucking cheap. And like my one example that I use personally all the time is that, like, I swear by $5 folding knives.

Petra 53:15 Oh, yeah.

Margaret 53:16 Like, I have a hard time envisioning what an $80 folding knife is for. Like, I just—like, maybe it would just last me the rest of my life but I'm not convinced by that.

Petra 53:31 Yeah, you know, I think for some of these companies you do pay a premium for a lifetime guarantee, which is pretty nice.

Margaret 53:39 Yeah.

Petra 53:40 But I'd say you know, it kind of depends on how much you envision using that particular thing. Like, yeah, I might spend $80 on a knife if this knife is exactly the kind of knife that I want and I use a knife all the time.

Margaret 53:53 Right.

Petra 53:53 But personally, I just—that's not really worth it to me.

Margaret 53:57 Right.

Petra 53:58 But I will say like, I don't know if you know the company Darn Tough that makes socks. They're from Vermont.

Margaret 54:03 No.

Petra 54:04 They have a lifetime warranty on all their socks.

Margaret 54:07 Whoa. Okay, so you—

Petra 54:08 I have tested this and it's a real thing. If you develop a hole in one of your socks, you can take a picture, you can send it to the company, and they will send you a new pair of socks. Lifetime warranty.

Margaret 54:19 Okay, that's cool.

Petra 54:21 Totally worth the extra money.

Margaret 54:23 Yeah. Okay. What about like tents and—like what gear—because so much of this gear is so fuck off expensive. And yet so much of it is also available. It's funny when you're talking about the ubiquitous camping mat. And I'm like, in my mind, the ubiquitous camping mat is a blue foam mat from Walmart.

Petra 54:48 Yeah.

Margaret 54:50 Which I think is just ready to—go ahead.

Petra 54:52 I was just gonna say maybe ubiquitous just in the circles that I've been in for a decade now.

Margaret 54:57 Yeah. I have an accordion fold one now cuz I'm a fancy bitch but like, yeah, I'm curious what—if you have any other ideas of like gear that you can and can't cut corners with.

Petra 55:14 Yeah, um, you know, tents are kind of a weird story. Like the sort of cheapest tent that you can buy at like a, you know, an army navy surplus store or like Walmart or anything like that—those tents will work for sure, you know, they might even hold up to some, you know, some high winds, relatively high winds or some hard rain. They're just much less durable, and they're much heavier. So I guess really any gear can work if you don't mind carrying the weight. Because a lot of those tents that you can find at, you know, at Walmart or, you know, any like sporting goods store, or those like sort of cheaper, more basic tents. They're like 6 pounds, 7 pounds. And you know, in comparison, you know, if you buy like a really fancy tent, you can get one that's, you know, under a pound. But that's like a $900 tent. And I don't know about you, I'm never gonna fucking buy at $900 tent.

Margaret 56:21 No.

Petra 56:22 No, so—

Margaret 56:24 If I did, it'd be one of those giant camp, like, army ones that you like put a wood burning stove in and then you, like, stand outside with spears.

Petra 56:31 Like, can I have my horses inside of it? If so, great. $900.

Margaret 56:36 Yeah.

Petra 56:37 Kidding, I don't have horses. But if I did, I'd want to fit them in there.

Margaret 56:40 Yeah. Okay. Anyway, sorry, you were saying...

Petra 56:43 Oh I just said, you know, you can make a whole lot of gear work.

Margaret 56:46 Yeah.

Petra 56:47 And it's just, you know, there are going to be trade offs just because the cheaper models are going to be a little less durable, they're going to be heavier, they're not going to just last you as long, they're not going to hold up as well to extreme weather. But if you don't intend on, you know, walking a ton of miles, or you're not going to be in really crazy weather. You know, that's fine. You can get by with a tent like that, you know, that's absolutely fine. And you know, now—there are a lot of websites that are springing up now that are discount gear sites and they are absolutely worth checking, you know, if you think that you want one of these lighter weight, more durable tents. There are lots of them that pop up on these discount gear sites for, you know, 50–60% off.

Margaret 57:36 Okay.

Petra 57:36 So the the cheaper gear that's still, you know, pretty high quality—it's definitely out there. It just takes some some searching.

Margaret 57:45 Okay. Yeah, I guess it maybe on some level a tent then ends up kind of similar to, like, what I say about helmets with a demonstration. Which is, like, the best helmet is the one that you're wearing, you know?

Petra 57:55 Yeah, absolutely.

Margaret 57:56 And so, yeah, it seems like maybe some stuff you can get the nicer of. I do like all the things that like the nicer one is like not actually quite as good, like a down sleeping bag. I mean, like down sleeping bags are really—I'm certain they're great for very specific situations, you know. But, and speaking of another one, the other thing that I called you anxious about was hiking poles, and I called you about hiking poles because I basically was like, I am not as—I mean, it's funny cuz I'm in some ways more fit than I used to be in that I work on physical things all the time because I have to fix my stupid house constantly. You know, but I'm just, like, 20 years older than I used to be—well actually I'm 37 years older than I used to be if you're counting far enough back. But, uh, you know, anyway, um... Now just think about how old I am, god dammit. So I called you basically being like, "Oh, I might need poles, like, it seems like if I'm going to be carrying a lot of weight or moving across treacherous terrain, these poles seemed like a good idea." And could you tell me what you think about trekking poles?

Petra 59:07 Yeah, I am 2,000% on Team Trekking Pole. I love them. And I basically never hike without them. And even if I'm not using them while hiking, I'm always carrying them with me. So actually this kind of relates back to your question about, you know, where you can cut corners. One thing that I totally failed to mention is that if you don't need a completely enclosed tent, there are great lightweight tarps out there that are really affordable, you know, especially for something that's so compatible and so lightweight. You know, you can buy a super ultra lightweight tarp for like $30 which is just a lot cheaper than your average tent which is, you know, going to run you at least like $100 up to, you know, $900. So, lightweight tarps are great option and a lot of those can be pitched between trekking poles.

Margaret 1:00:04 Okay.

Petra 1:00:04 So you don't have to carry, you know, special tent poles or anything like that. And, you know, speaking of, you know, things that sort of serve multiple functions, the trekking pole is the unsung hero because you can use it to put up your tent. You can—they're incredibly, incredibly helpful for taking weight off of your joints. So, going uphill, they take, you know, they give you sort of a little extra momentum going uphill. And on the downhill, especially if you're like me and you have really busted knees after a lot of years of treating them very badly.

Margaret 1:00:39 Uh, huh.

Petra 1:00:40 They take a ton of weight off of that. And if you tend to end hikes with sore knees, trekking poles might really significantly help you.

Margaret 1:00:48 Okay.

Petra 1:00:49 They're also, you know, I used to be a wilderness EMT. And my favorite part of becoming an EMT, or, you know, any sort of wilderness first, you know, medical first response is first aid arts and crafts—or learning how to splint a broken bone. When you split a broken bone, you know, you need something that's rigid, that's going to, you know—that you basically strap to that injured extremity so you can prevent it from moving around. And trekking poles are so great, especially if you get ones that are collapsible, because then you can custom, you know, you can adjust the length of them. So, you know, you can fully extend them if it's a broken leg, or you can make them really short if it's a broken arm. So they're really great for that. And there's also a really hilarious story about Andrew Skurka, who's like this really famous thru-hiker and backpacker, who had a grizzly bear running at him. And he threw his trekking pole at this bear, and the bear turns around and ran away while shitting himself.

Margaret 1:01:59 Damn.

Petra 1:02:02 Scared the shit out of this grizzly bear with this trekking pole. Which I just love the visual of that so much.

Margaret 1:02:12 Yeah, I um—I hope I am never in a situation where I ever have to consider this.

Petra 1:02:18 Me neither! So yeah, I think trekking poles are absolutely worth it.

Margaret 1:02:25 Okay. Yeah, when I was younger I would, like, seek adventure, you know? Being like, "Adventure. That's cool." And now I'm like, "No adventure is when bad stuff happens, that's what makes it adventure." I'm like, if I go hiking, and all I can say is like, "Man, that waterfall was amazing." You know, like, that's a better trip.

Petra 1:02:46 It's been great.

Margaret 1:02:48 Yeah. Okay, the one other gear question—I mean, I'm sure I could talk to you gear way longer than this. The one other thing that I wanted to ask you about because I've been trying to look into for my own work is—"work," work have been prepared.

Petra 1:03:06 It's work.

Margaret 1:03:06 Yeah, well especially now that I do this podcast. Um, do you carry an emergency radio of any kind?

Petra 1:03:12 I don't. But let me say that that is something that I feel really terrible about. And I—that's sort of my next gear purchase, is a radio. There are a bunch of different kinds. And they're—one of the reasons that I haven't gotten one yet is that this is one technology where it feels like—or sort of one back country technology—where it feels like the technology is improving so quickly, that I keep waiting because I don't know, you know, the next iteration is going to be able to like microwave a bag of popcorn for me while I'm out. But, you know, there's a spot, there's a personal locator beacon, there's the Garmin inReach, they're all of these different options. And they kind of differ in terms of, you know, some of them just allow you to alert, you know, search and rescue, and you know, sort of your designated emergency contact when there's an emergency. So basically just has like a big red panic button, more or less. And then there are ones that let you text people and receive texts, which is nice, especially if you need to—you know, one problem with, like, the big red panic button scenario is that you can't actually tell search and rescue what's going on. They can pinpoint your location, but they don't know if it's, you know, is this a heart attack? Is that a broken bone? Can you be evacuated on foot? Do you need a helicopter, all of that.

Margaret 1:04:40 Right.

Petra 1:04:40 And so it's nice to have the text capacity so you can say, you know, one patient, 30 years old, broken femur, need a helicopter.

Margaret 1:04:53 Yeah. I—it's funny because I worry about that kind of stuff. Mostly because my version of—well I mean I like camping and from a camping and backpacking point of view, those make a ton of sense. But if I'm, like, right wing militias have taken over the region that I live in and I would like to leave. I don't imagine carrying, like, anything that locates me being a positive to my my health and safety. But I'm—but I could imagine either wanting a radio that can transmit, or even just like the like, the little like portable shortwave and FM and weather and whatever, radios. I don't know. Have you messed with any of those at all, or?

Petra 1:05:38 Not a lot. No, I really haven't. I think it's a great idea, though, sort of, as you mentioned, you know, it all kind of depends on what function you specifically need. And I think having some kind of communication that is not reliant on cell service is is great, you know, and that is another one of the 10 Essentials, right, is some sort of emergency communication device. And, you know, our phones are great, but our phones also tend to not, you know, work terribly reliably. So yeah, I don't have any great words of advice with those particular things. But I do think that having something like that is critical.

Margaret 1:06:18 Okay. Well, you know, I had this whole section prepared of asking what to do when you don't have all the stuff with you that you want to have. But we're coming up on an hour already and I guess maybe this is a conversation mostly about how to, you know, the gear that you might want to bring with you when you're preparing rather than what to do when you're, you know, surviving with just a fuck off knife and whatever. Is there anything, like, anything that you want to bring up—last words of advice, things that you think the listeners should hear? Or that I should hear?

Petra 1:07:00 Not really, I think that I do—I guess there is one thing I want to say, which is just that there's a whole lot of material out there that's going to tell you, you know, what you should bring what you shouldn't bring. And I think that people really just figure out what works for you. Because it might be something you know, maybe a tarp, a lightweight, tarp, works great for you. And great, like, that's what you should take. Or maybe you are the kind of person who needs, you know, sleep is really difficult for you. And you need a little bit of extra luxury when it comes to your sleeping setup. And that's great. You know, have that. Because I think, as you, I think, so correctly pointed out, right, morale is so important. And if we—I think the outdoor community, right, we're obsessed with gear, but we're also really obsessed with like denial and denying ourselves comfort, right? Which is great in some situations, right? If you're a thru-hiker and you want to hike 50 miles a day, great, you're probably going to have to ditch a lot of gear.

Margaret 1:08:06 Oh God.

Petra 1:08:06 But for most of us, for most of us, we're not going to be traveling that kind of distance, and bring some things that make you feel comfortable because that is ultimately going to keep you safe, right, is if you've had enough sleep, you've had enough calories, you've had enough water. You know, if you chemically treat your water and you hate the way it tastes, and that makes you drink less water, bring a filter, you know, then it's really worth it. So I think for a lot of these things, just like test out different sleeping situations, try different methods of treating your water, figure out what kind of food you like when you're hiking because there are lots of things that I like when I'm hiking that I really don't like at all at home.

Margaret 1:08:50 Like what?

Petra 1:08:50 So you know, figure out what those things are.

Margaret 1:08:53 What are they for you?

Petra 1:08:55 I—so I'm like not a candy person at all. But Sour Patch Kids in the back country are like the greatest thing in the world. And also just, like, regular—I think now they call it—hopefully they have changed it away from calling it "Oriental" ramen, because who approved that?

Margaret 1:09:15 Yeah.

Petra 1:09:16 I think now they're calling it their soy sauce flavor. But the soy sauce ramen, I can't get enough of it in the back country, and instant mashed potatoes.

Margaret 1:09:24 Oh, okay.

Petra 1:09:26 Yeah.

Margaret 1:09:27 That's cool.

Petra 1:09:28 And especially when you mix the two of them together.

Margaret 1:09:30 Yeah. I'm trying to think of like, yeah, when we would do forest defense basically like as soon as the food supply runs would come, all of the sugar just gets eaten right away. And at some point, people developed a rule where only tree sitters are allowed to get candy just because like to get people to do tree sitting, right? You know, you like, you need something nice dude.

Petra 1:09:57 And it's funny because I have such a—I normally have such sweet tooth, but not in the back country. I am just like all salt all the time.

Margaret 1:10:05 Okay. This is because you're sweating more you think?

Petra 1:10:09 Yeah, I think so. I assume that that's what it is, and so my body just permanently craves sodium. But yeah, and—oh, and potato chips, even if they're like crushed all to hell, like, potato chips in the outdoors are so great and I never eat potato chips at home. So yeah, just figure out what you like and what you crave when you're outdoors.

Margaret 1:10:31 Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know, now you have a good excuse whoever's listening to go camping and go hiking and learn more about this stuff. You know, learn what you prefer. Oh, I wanted to ask you, are you a tent, bivy, or tarp sleeper?

Petra 1:10:51 Tarp if it's—if the weather's nice. Tent in sort of snow and alpine situations. I hate bivies. I hate them. Some people really like them. They're lightweight. They pack down really small. But I don't know if you've ever had an MRI before. An MRI is like my worst nightmare, right? Because your in this tube that you can't escape from and it makes a shit ton of noise and that's basically the same.

Margaret 1:11:23 Okay.

Petra 1:11:24 So I hate them. But what—my perfect shelter actually, which is something that I don't, doesn't really fit into any one category that you mentioned, is a pyramid tent, which is kind of like a cross between a tarp and a tent.

Margaret 1:11:42 I have no idea what this is.

Petra 1:11:44 Okay, look it up. It's my favorite shelter.

Margaret 1:11:48 Okay.

Petra 1:11:49 Absolute favorite shelter because it's really roomy, it's really small, and it's really light.

Margaret 1:11:54 Okay, cool. That sounds great. Yeah, I never fucked with tents, because my threat model was always not animals, or even necessarily weather, it was like people, right? Because I'm sleeping places that either I'm not supposed to be or I just don't want anyone to see me anyway because people are incredibly cruel to, you know, people who are sleeping places that they should—you know, that aren't in houses or whatever. And so I just never fucked with tents because I was like, "No, that's the way you get caught, right?" And so a bivy to me seems like the best of all worlds, right? But I've only slept in one once. I just finally got one. And you know, I always just slept like out with no shelter or under a tarp. And then—if it's gonna be raining—and then—but now I have a bivy. And I've only got to sleep with it once and I'm like, I don't know. I haven't figured it out yet. And I haven't slept in the rain with it yet. I think I might hate it in the rain. But I don't know. And that's the whole point of it.

Petra 1:13:01 Yeah, they're really miserable in the rain, at least in my experience, and in the wind. The other thing that I really don't like is you can't keep anything dry. Like, if you have gear—the thing I like about tense is, you know, if the weather's really miserable, you either have a vestibule created by your rain, you know, your rain fly that you could put your gear underneath, or you bring your gear into your shelter with you, With a baby, you're just shit out of luck, man. I hope the weather is not going to be bad because everything's going to be out in the elements and I find that whenever I sleep in a bivy, I wake up to like a totally soaked backpack.

Margaret 1:13:40 Even with like the cover over the backpack or whatever.

Petra 1:13:45 I use a—I don't use a rain fly or rain cover for my pack. I use a like a trash compactor bag inside it.

Margaret 1:13:55 Okay,

Petra 1:13:56 Which is way cheaper and way more durable, but then also just allows for the sleeping bag to get totally—or the backpack to get totally soaked.

Margaret 1:14:04 Cool. Yeah, nope. That actually, that makes sense about bivies. I'm so sad. Why did you killjoy my perfect solution to all problems? Well, now I have a new perfect solution, it's a pyramid tent.

Petra 1:14:15 I thought you liked the killjoy.

Margaret 1:14:18 Aaaaaaah I see. Yeah, it's almost like I took it as my last name. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing all this knowledge. And, yeah, I hope that you're doing as well as you can, as things go wild in this world. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell people about it on various social media or even in person. Although right now it's not a good time to talk to people in person. You should avoid all people all the time, because no one should have a pod. If I don't get to have a pod, no one gets to have a pod, but you should tell people about the show. If you liked it. If you don't like it, you probably didn't make it this far. I don't know, unless you hate listen to podcasts. What a strange thing to do. You need to reconsider your life choices. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And I ostensibly put up a scene every month. But actually now I've been so focused on this podcast that I've fallen pretty far behind. But I do put music up there and I do put up zines and there's also a whole backlog of, like, almost 40 zines and a bunch of songs and things like that from my various bands. And there's no behind the scenes content for the podcast. There just isn't. Sorry. I already feel weird doing exclusive content at all. And actually, it's not actually particularly exclusive content if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, just messaged me and I'll get you all of the content there for free. But, yeah, in particular, I'd like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the Dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, the Compound. Thanks just for making this possible. And thanks to you all for listening. And I hope you're doing as well as you can all things considered. I need to come up with another way to say that instead of all things considered because I think that some radio people have already taken that particular phrase. Anyway. Be well.

Episode Notes

Our guest Deviant Ollam can be found on twitter @deviantollam.

Our host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, on instagram @margaretkilljoy, and on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Some (but not all of the links) and such referenced in this show:

• Non-rightwing gun channels on YouTube include Forgotten Weapons and InRangeTV
• Keyed-alike key systems are available from Hooligan Keys and Ultimate Security Devices
• Deviant's advice for people looking to get into the field is on his blog

the "Deviant Keyring" includes: FEO-K1, EK333, 222343, C415A, CH751, 16120, 1284X, plus Jiggler Tools

Transcript:

1:16:11 SPEAKERS Margaret, Deviant

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 Margaret Killjoy. I use she and they pronouns. This week I'm talking to Deviant Ollam, who's a security researcher—a hacker basically—only instead of just hacking computers, Deviant hacks his way into buildings as part of, doing physical pen testing of—basically breaking into buildings to see how it's done. I'm excited to have Deviant on the podcast for a lot of reasons, and I think that you'll get a lot out of what he has to say about how so many keys, you know, so many locks in this world all use the same keys and what those keys are, and learning how to let yourself in. And also a lot of this is really useful when you think about your own security, when you think about the ways in which people might be able to access you through your various means of physical security. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's another podcast from the network. Well, it's on another podcasts jingle. It's like a little well teaser for another podcast on the network. Doo doo da doooo!

Jingle 01:22 Kite Line is a weekly 30 minute radio program focusing on issues in the prison system. You'll hear news along with stories from prisoners and former prisoners as well as their loved ones. You'll learn what prison is, how it functions and how it impacts all of us. Behind the prison walls, a message is called a kite. Whispered words a note passed hand-to-hand, a request submitted to the guards for medical care. Illicit or not, sending a kite means trusting that other people will be farther along until it reaches its destination. Here on Kite Line we hope to share these words across the prison walls. You can hear us on the Channel Zero Network and find out more at kitelineradio.noblogs.org.

Margaret 02:02 So this week I'm talking to Deviant Ollam, and if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I just said, and your pronouns and any political or organizational affiliations—maybe what you do for a living might be relevant to this particular episode.

Deviant 02:17 Sure, so thank you for having me on. I'm Deviant Ollam, I use he/him pronouns, and I show up a lot in odd places in the hacker world and on the internet. Most people who have ever come across me or my work probably know me for something relating to the physical security space that can stem from locks and lock picking where I am on the board of the Open Organization of Lock Pickers. TOOOL is a nonprofit that has been teaching about locks and lock picking to people for decades now it seems. And we run the Lockpick Village at major events like DEFCON and a lot of smaller regional events as well. I own companies that work in this space. I am a consultant and covert entry technician. I'm a locksmith, I'm a safe technician. But the physical security world is pretty broad. So it gets into matters of, you know, maybe security on the road and security moving around in cities. I have plenty of affiliation, as do other people in my family, with people who are, we'll say sometimes disadvantaged in the security side of things, either people who are housing insecure, or I do a ton of work with the Sex Workers Outreach Project—so SWOP and SWOP Behind Bars. I have lectured and talked to sex workers and other people in the communities that have to kind of move through cities in ways that either they are not noticed—so you don't want to stand out—or they have to position themselves in environments that their security might not be 100%. So I have a whole talk, actually, that's just called "From Street to Suite." And it's like, imagine, you know, a high rise building and there's this room up in a nice high floor that seems safe. What are all of the steps from the curbside all the way up to that room and all the barriers that should protect you or inhibit someone from getting up there? And let's walk through, like, knocking each one of them down. And that goes hand-in-hand with a lot of the work I've done that isn't really lockpicking but has to do with lock bypassing or bypassing of access control systems. Things like key to like systems people have this famous key ring that they've been building now in the community. I gave this talk in South Dakota once and people like always freeze frame right at around the half hour markm like 30 minutes 30 seconds in, where there's this list of keys that I always carry—it's a small list, right? But now there's—it started, like, eBay auctions which show up and it was calling it like Deviance Key Ring. And then there were on Amazon, like, frequently bought together. And now there's just a locksmith in Portland, Oregon area who just runs hooligankeys.com and it's a list of like my keys and other keys. I don't make these keys, right, but I'm kind of popularized the idea of having a go kit with a certain set of keys in them, cuz why pick the locks when you can just operate them like an authorized user.

Margaret 05:08 Yeah.

Deviant 05:09 And we can get into the other side of the more kinetic physical security of firearms and the like. I've been a frequent participant in the firearm community for ages and ages. I think much of the gun culture is a dumpster fire. But friends of mine, like my buddy, Ian, who runs Forgotten Weapons, is just a very mellow, very happy, kind guy. My buddy Karl— Who runs In Range TV. Yeah, Gun Jesus and the sauerkraut? Absolutely. Yeah, Carl has always taken tons of incoming fire from a lot of the edge floor type gun community people because he speaks out very plainly and very loudly about Black Lives Matter, about fighting against racism and fascism. He's the one who runs to gun matches where, like, furries will routinely show up. "Oh, hello, nice to see you again. You're gonna run the whole course of fire in the first full suit? It's pretty hot today."

Margaret 05:29 Gun Jesus. That's the most 2020 shit I think I've heard all week. Yeah, I wanted to have you on the show because, you know, I was reaching out to one of our friends in common. And I was like, well, who does physical pen testing, you know, who does this stuff of basically figuring out how to get into places that either you're not supposed to be or maybe have been abandoned? And, you know, and my friend said, "Oh, you need to talk to Deviant." And I was like, okay, and so I looked you up and I was like, oh, this is literally the person that I've been watching the YouTube videos of for the past—you know, it's not like—about once a year I guess I'll watch a talk of you talking about how to spit your drink through doors to trigger motion sensors.

Deviant 06:44 A lot of people have seen that opening the bank late at night.

Margaret 06:47 Yeah.

Deviant 06:48 With a glass of whiskey.

Margaret 06:49 Yeah. So from a prepping point of view, you know, you said that you have these these keys on your go kit. Would you consider yourself a prepper?

Deviant 07:02 So yeah, it's one of those very loaded terms, where, if you if you use the phrase "prepper," on paper that can just mean a certain set of skills—collecting certain skills, collecting certain tools. But if you use it in conversation, a lot of people attach a bunch of politics to that and a bunch of worldview to that. There's some people who are, you know, if you hear someone's a "prepper", you might think, well, they're planning for something they think is coming. As opposed to, if you tell someone, well, yeah, I mean, I learned first aid because I hike and, you know, I learned gun skills because personal security and maybe I'm going to go hunting, people attach different meaning to why are you learning these things. So on paper I could certainly be described as having a prepper's mindset. My wife and I, for example, will toe in the water gently on this one, right? Every six months we do an evac drill from house, right? We live in a major metropolitan area. It's relatively geologically stable—not like when I was in Montana, where nothing will ever hit Montana. But let's say there was climatologically a really bad flood that were in a coastal area. If you just had to leave, fast. Well, you can do the run around your house like a nincompoop thing. Or what we have is we have a large bag with, like, plenty of, you know, clothes for a few days, you know, some medical supplies, duplicates of medicines, but we also have in the small guns safe—because like the bulk of the guns are all in the basement or in the cabin or somewhere else—like the bedroom gun safe contains within it some household valuables, the bedroom gun, and a list. And it's just literally the comfort of: okay, you open the gun safe, there's a backpack underneath it. Step one is if you have to—like if the house is on fire, throw everything from that little lockbox, which is about all the bits of precious in the house, and the gun in the backpack, get the hell out of the house. If you have another five minutes, well then you grab items like two and three, you know, you go—you step it down. The cats are like items two and three, basically. And, you know, then if you have another five minutes, well then there's, you get some art off the walls. She's created a lot of art over the years and I have, you know, I went on Amazon, I got $7 little zipper art sleeves. So within 20–30 minutes, the truck could be meaningfully loaded in a way that if we had to like leave the house and potentially never come back or not get back for six months to a year, we'd be okay. Like, better than if we ran out of the house with mismatched socks, one boot, and a magazine of ammo for gun we didn't grab. Like, so just doing that every six months. And it's a pain right? Like, it's a pain to load all this heavy crap into the truck. Because the last things on the list tend to be, like—if you have five more minutes, just grab more ammo, grab more ammo and then drive, you know, grab a couple fuel cans and throw throw them on on the roof rack. Don't even strap them down. So it's a pain, but each time we do it, we iterate for better.

Margaret 10:09 Yeah.

Deviant 10:10 We're like, oh, wow, why is number seven—that's back upstairs. I should have grabbed that first. If I was running downstairs, I should just grabbed like her flight bag. She's a pilot, you know? So grab her flight bag. Because if we ever need to rent an aircraft, get on a plane, leave. So iterating for better, it's soothing to me. It's very calming. Now, does that make me a prepper? Because I have done probably way more than most of the population for a disaster that I don't think is ever coming.

Margaret 10:35 Right.

Deviant 10:35 I think we're a very resilient region out here. We have a very strong municipal infrastructure, we have a very nice culture. People are pretty easygoing in the Pacific Northwest. And, yeah, do I think anything's gonna really ever jump off horribly? No. But if that makes me a prepper, because I want to just know that I, you know, could leave if I had to? Sure. I'll wear that label.

Margaret 10:59 Yeah, I mean, that that actually, that's one of the whole kind of points of the show is to—I don't, I guess I'll use the word "prepper," a lot just as a shorthand, but then, you know, usually I pretty much just talking about individual and community preparedness, because I throw in the community in there, because otherwise I'm just talking about a different thing than people think that I might otherwise be talking about. But I really like this idea that your "toe in the water" about it, and you're like, "Oh, I mean, don't get me wrong, we have our list and the priorities written then we do drills." That is more than I think that most people, even people who sort of would identify as preppers, or are being really into preparedness, bother doing.

Deviant 11:38 Probably. Because I think that doesn't cost me anything, right, two days out of the year? And it's not like it's a day-long activity, literally it's a half hour fire drill.

Margaret 11:47 Right.

Deviant 11:47 Versus people who literally tie up a lot of their personal resources and space with stuff, Like this—a lot of people think of prepping as stockpiling with no skill-building and no community-building. In fact, that was really—I think it's a profound statement about society and how the certain mindset is that when the pandemic hit a lot of people who were that kind of like Burt Gummer, in the movie Tremors, right, like that generation of prepper. They were preparing all their life for a disaster that didn't come

Margaret 12:20 Right.

Deviant 12:20 The disaster wasn't, you become a warlord up in the pines in the hills and have, what, a harem of like disaffected citizens who turn to you as a warlord god, and they bow down for your spare beans and guns. That wasn't the that wasn't the disaster we got, we got a disaster that basically said, you have to look out for your neighbors and watch out for one another and be kind.

Margaret 12:42 Right.

Deviant 12:42 And in community.

Margaret 12:43 Right.

Deviant 12:44 And it made a lot of people really frickin sore about that fact. Because they're like, oh, that's not the disaster I wanted.

Margaret 12:53 So to shift into the—one of the things you mentioned is that, you know, things are key to, like, and this is something that I think I really lit up about. I mean, I've known how to lockpick for a while, like, I'm not, I'm no expert at it, but you know, occasionally it's very nice to get into public restrooms or dumpsters or things like that. I would never obviously advocate anyone do those sorts of things. But um, but I was reading the story the other week about wildfire out west. And it was talking about how at one point in order to get emergency crews out of an area they had to use heavy equipment to push all the abandoned cars out of the road. And I was thinking about heavy equipment. And then I was, I knew I was going to be interviewing you, and I was thinking about how apparently most CAT equipment all uses the same key. Is that, is that true?

Deviant 13:41 Oh yeah. That is very, very similar. Caterpillar, Kubota, like all these major brands, Genie Lifts, Sunbelt, a lot of them tend to have uniform keys—not even a key series of a small number, but like a key. And if you ever see a lot of equipment, the keys—we're using key in a broad sense—a lot of them are barely more than safety interlock switches with a little widget that's kind of a little fork of metal or something. The Caterpillar one looks more key-like than others.

Margaret 14:13 Okay.

Deviant 14:14 But yeah, a lot of these devices, they just have—this really gets into a term that I love. And I've been meaning to do a video on this for ages. It was inspired by—every time someone posts like a clip on Twitter or on Instagram of like a fence. They're like, "Oh, I'm going to my neighbor's apartment building. Look at this fence, I can reach right over it and I can hit the latch from the other side." There's a concept that I wish society understood better, especially in the security world, which is that there can be security products, security, meaningful locks, and then there can be symbolic locks.

Margaret 14:51 Yeah.

Deviant 14:52 The fact that someone has a perimeter fence around their apartment complex, and yeah, like you could reach over the bar or they can reach through the bars and hit the thing on the other side. It's not that no one can get past it, it might not even be that high a fence, right? It might be a five, six foot fence. The point is, it's a demonstration of commitment. If you are discovered on the other side of that fence, you can't pretend that it was an accident. You could go, "Oh, I just wandered through here. This isn't the way to shop?" Like, you did that, you know you did that. So a symbolic lock, in many of these devices, it represents a moment of commitment, like, I'm going to operate this machine now. You didn't just bump or flip a button, like no, you took a key and stuck it in a hole and turned it.

Margaret 15:39 Right. And you were carrying it.

Deviant 15:41 That's, yeah, that's what those, a lot of the heavy equipment really is. They're safety interlocks and they are positive confirmation that you are asserting, "I am supposed to be doing what I'm doing," even if you're just asserting it to yourself or the ones around you. But that's why these keys don't have to be outrageously complex. And in fact, the customer service side of things would be a nightmare. They don't want to have customers calling and saying, wait, I need to order another key. What's your serial number? Well, it's on a data plate that's long been scraped away by gravel and rust.

Margaret 16:13 Right.

Deviant 16:13 Like, I don't know, my serial number to my front end loader is you know, so yeah, a lot of these large pieces of equipment in our world are in fact all very, very keyed alike, and anyone who wants to poke about this some more, you can look on Amazon right now. Tornado is the vendor. Tornado makes the heavy equipment key set. And it comes in different iterations, different sizes of key set. The largest one is almost like 100-some keys. But it's not an unattainable price, right, these aren't complex keys. A lot of them are just stamped pieces of metal. So yeah, we have that in our bag on our covert entry jobs. And we've been able to—I've never taken like a boom lift and gotten on a roof just that way. There's probably some OSHA violation involved if I do that. But I could. I've demonstrated to clients walking around job sites, I'm like, so if you want to turn this key you can. For liability I shouldn't, but if you want to start trying to start that up, Oh, look at that it started up. Okay, turn that off. Turn that off. Turn the oil pressure off too. Okay. You know, but uh, yeah, like just having a giant tea set that opens a ton of stuff, that's nice to have around.

Margaret 17:19 What is the um, you know, so I've looked into this key set, and I've done literally the same thing where I googled, you know, "Deviant key ring," and, you know, yeah, I found lots of spare keys here and there on Amazon with like, notes about sell only to locksmiths. And then eBay has like "pen tester key ring" where you can buy, you know, for pretty cheap you can buy like a whole bunch of elevator keys and RV keys and I don't know whether the heavy equipment keys are on there, including some stuff that's like, the Ford police cruisers, for example. And—

Deviant 17:55 Oh yeah,.

Margaret 17:55 To be real, the reason I didn't buy the key ring is because it had the Ford police cruisers on it and I, I think about my own threat modeling. And I personally think it is more likely that the police are going to be curious about the things that I own, then that I'm going to have an opportunity after the apocalypse to need to pilot a vehicle that is part of the Ford fleet series. But I'm curious if you know much about the legality of acquiring, owning, using keys like this.

Deviant 18:29 Right, so the main part that can trip you up—so almost in any instance keys are not defined—now I'm not a lawyer—but in my readings of most statutes, keys are not defined in the same way that lockpicks are defined under the law.

Margaret 18:47 Interesting.

Deviant 18:48 For those who don't know, and TOOL, the 501C3 has actually done legal research. Our lawyers have pulled the lock picking laws and all states. So most states have a burglary tools statute and that is, you know, tools or implements that could be used to commit burglarious offenses and things like that, and felonious entry, and it's very flowery language that's often outdated to our ears today. Most states will have an intent clause for any type of multi-purpose item. So for example, burglary tools aren't just lockpicks. A crowbar can be a burglary tool. A pipe wrench can be a burglary tool. But those, you know, they sell those at Home Depot. People own those and don't go to jail. How is this possible? Because intent. If the circumstances of the situation demonstrate that you may have criminal intent, you're facing different legal ramifications for owning that crowbar.

Margaret 19:41 Yeah.

Deviant 19:42 Now lockpicks, specifically, we start to get into items that aren't necessarily multipurpose items. They're not multi-use. Lockpicks kind of only have one real use. So again, in many burglary tools statutes, lockpicks are called out specifically as greater scrutiny. And there's a handful of states, the most famous for would be Virginia, Mississippi, Nevada, and oh, it's killing me here. Is it? Is it Ohio? Oh my god. There's one other state that has uh... Yeah, there's one other state where it is prima facie evidence—on its face this is evidence of your ill-intent because these tools, hey, come on now, this is not a crowbar that can do many things.

Margaret 20:23 Right.

Deviant 20:24 You know, this is obviously criminal. Now, keys on the other hand, keys are on the other side of the coin. Keys are much more likely to have a legitimate purpose than they are to have an illegitimate purpose. And if you can demonstrate any kind, you could say no, like, I have a product that this key opens, you know, this is my key. It's one of the funny things about—do you know, this is another key to like fact. I know we're jumping around but the listeners are tracking hopefully. When properties are abandoned and they fall into the control of HUD or a number of other agencies that have to do foreclosure work. If a property is semi-derelict, or at the very least, if a contractor is brought in to assess the condition of a property before a bank sale, most of those properties get rekeyed. They get rekeyed to a set of standard lock and keys. So a standard set of Quick Set locks, a standard set of padlock key—there's one padlock key is literally—I did a video about this on my channel—it is the most common Master Lock key in the world. Because there's just oodles and oodles and oodles and oodles of locks with this one key because all across this country properties that are abandoned have padlocks on gates and other entrances. They're all the same key. Now, if you own that key, and only the key, that's a bit of a noodle scratcher. Someone might say, you know, why do you have this key? What are you doing with this? But remember, I said it's also the most common frickin lock.

Margaret 21:50 Right.

Deviant 21:51 Because they're vendors on—if you look on Amazon I found these locks for $1. Because they have to sell tons of them to contractors. Well, if you own the lock and the key, then it's a lot more plausible why you own that key. Well, this is the key to my lock. So the idea of a police cruiser, you know, key. And this, we're talking about the Ford Motor Company, as most automotive manufacturers, they have what's called fleet keying is an option for many—if you want to buy a bunch of models of car from one vendor, they say, "Can you keep them all alike?" A vendor can do that. And they have a key series, like the 1284X, the most common one, is just the first entry in that key series, the 1294X the I think C101 C102. But if you own no Ford vehicles and you've never even worked for a company that drove Ford vehicles, again, someone might say, "Well, why do you have this one particular key?"

Margaret 22:42 Right.

Deviant 22:43 If however, someone had ever in the course of their employment been a taxi driver, been any kind of delivery, any kind of vehicle driver where you might have used a key because that was the key—if you had a fleet keyed vehicle, that's a person who might have a plausible explanation as to why they have that key. So everyone's life is different. And everyone as you point, everyone's kind of risk profile is different for what questions they may have to answer based on the things they own.

Margaret 23:09 Yeah, yeah, I sometimes—it's kind of awful, but sometimes I see people with really cool lockpick earrings and I think to myself, "You don't interact with police very often."

Deviant 23:20 Yeah.

Margaret 23:21 And maybe that's unfair.

Deviant 23:22 And custodial—oh, yeah, and custodial detention is a special animal under the law. Again, not a criminal lawyer. But I do know that there are certain things like duty to inform where if you have keys or lockpicks or anything on you, or possession of a handcuff key—there was a famous case—famous for the lockpicking world—just some poor unhoused person who was getting rousted about by the police. I think he was known to the area he was, they were just one of these people that just get targeted and harassed routinely, right? And the cops had them in their cruiser again, but he had a piece of jewelry. He had like a necklace that included odd stuff on it. One of them was a handcuff key.

Margaret 23:59 Mm hmm.

Deviant 23:59 Well, that was considered evidence of attempted escape from police custody, the mere possession of the key.

Margaret 24:05 Yeah.

Deviant 24:07 Without informing them, and how quickly was he arrested? How quickly was he processed and detained and then left alone? Did he even have an opportunity to say, "Hey, I have this key on me"? That's unknown. Right? That's interesting. I only know about duty to inform on like, you know, in North Carolina where I live I have a duty to inform officers that I'm armed as a concealed carry holder.

Margaret 24:28 Yeah.

Deviant 24:29 And the idea of having a duty—I mean, you know, it changes my, again, it changes my threat assessment. I'm like, am I more likely to be in a situation in which I need to tell a cop that I'm armed and therefore see a potential escalation in that entire encounter? Or do I, you know, it makes me wonder whether I should carry a gun on a given day as someone who carries a gun for self-defense. And so that's interesting to see that applied to locks and these—you know, because in some ways I want to say, like, these pen testing key rings seem like brilliant Bug Out Bag items, right? Like just—now of course you have, you figured out the best deal of all, which is that your job is that you get hired—correct me if I'm wrong—your job is that companies come and say, "Hey, can anyone break into our servers, including physically?" And your job is to break into their server rooms. And in which case owning all of this stuff is actually like, I mean, you get to write the stuff off on your taxes, like I, I assume it's kind of just chill for you. For the most part, and also I'm not at all blind to the fact that I just walked through the world in a much, much more of a friction-free state because I, the way I present, like I have a very frictionless interaction with most parts of society. I have a lot of privilege. But even if I didn't have that, having the job—as you point out—having the job, being a locksmith, being a safe technician, having things that are just, well, it's the same reason that a chef might have chef's knives on them. Like, why are you carrying a bunch of knives? Oh, that they're a chef. Okay. I guess so. Why not?

Margaret 26:11 So what do you carry in your like, in your day-to-day?

Deviant 26:17 Sure. So we'll start with the sort of most minimal. I have a smartphone, right? And I started adding—there's a little, like a little pouch. It's not one of those fold-open wallets that holds my phone. But there's just stuck adhesive stuck to the back of my phone case, there's a little pouch that contains one credit card and my passport card. And this is the thing, like, if I grab my smartphone and just leave the house I can meaningfully have an entire day out and about because I have one piece of ID—and it's my favorite piece of ID, by the way. Whenever I get a new passport I always get the passport card as well because it is, like, it's the most ironclad government ID. It's a passport, literally, but it has no address on it. So you know it's your it's your passport, it's just here's your passport number and here's you. So it says yes, I am an American, this is my age, this is this is my name, and then you can—I can say "fuck right off" if you want to know anything else. You know, I don't want a bar that I'm going into to know where I live, I don't want, it's not their business, right? If I were to ever interact with an authority figure in a state that requires you to show ID after, you know, Bellevue, Nevada, like, here's my ID. I have identified myself and that is all.

Margaret 27:35 Yeah.

Deviant 27:36 But that phone which I said is in a phone case, inside of my phone case, if I peel the phone case open, I have a couple more things. I have some very thin bypass and decoding tools that can be used to work on—there's a very popular style padlock, this little multi-wheel brass-colored padlock that Masterlock makes—a billion people have clone this padlock at this point. But that, you can just bypass those, you can pop them open. And, for example, when I lived in Montana there was a gun range that I had, I was able to go shoot at this gun range. And that was what their gate was always locked with. Well, every now and then they would change the combination. And they were not always great about communicating that combination change and it was a rusty old lock it didn't work well, I didn't like run—and it's cold. It's frickin Montana—bringing gloves off. But I could bypass the lock faster than I could try to fiddle with the combination,

Margaret 28:30 Right. What is the bypass—

Deviant 28:33 So go ahead.

Margaret 28:33 What is a bypass for a combination lock?

Deviant 28:36 So that particular lock, the multi-wheel lock, the original of which was called the Sesame lock, like "open sesame." And then Master cloned it and other people have cloned the design. That would be called either the Sesame Lock Bypass or the Master 175 Bypass. That's the model of Master makes. It is just inserting this thin blade into the body of the lock next to one of the wheels and rocking it, you're trying to rock a little plate of metal on the inside and springs a lock right open.

Margaret 29:05 So it's like carving a door kind of.

Deviant 29:08 Almost, almost. You're triggering a release in a way. That same little mini tool, that same thin blade of metal, can be used to decode many, many multi-wheel locks. So if you've ever seen properties that have locked boxes outside—very popular is a, probably again, the most market penetration you're going to see is Masterlock and they're competing clones that are this sort of gray and black, vaguely trapezoidal, pear shaped lump that's either mounted to a wall or it has a little horseshoe on top, you know, a shackles, it's mounted to like a doorknob or a handle, as the Master 5400 series key box. That and all of its clones, by sticking a blade of metal in next to the wheels I can run the wheels and you can feel where they catch and you can pop key boxes open. So again, I've gone to air bnbs for—I've been traveling and the host didn't send the check in email, or you know, I love being way out the middle of nowhere so I'll get cabin with Tara or something. You drive out, it's late at night, the host has long since gone to bed, no cell service. And you're like, ah shit I didn't get the combination for that. But it's one of those dumbass key boxes. So I'm like, alright, well, I could decode this. And then get inside the cabin. And now there's WiFi, great. Oh, now I can get the connection. Oh, well, that was the combination that I found. So I have tools like that under my phone case. I have a little piece of, you know, soda can metal, like the soda can padlock shame, right? I have a couple—

Margaret 30:35 Is that something that goes in between the—it goes, like, into where the, what the shackle, the U at the top of a lock?

Deviant 30:43 Mm hmm.

Margaret 30:43 Is that what that is?

Deviant 30:44 Yeah, so slipping a piece of metal—and people have talked about this online and you can google "beer can padlock shim" and you'll see people doing this. It's putting a piece of metal, a thin piece of metal, in just the right spot next to the shackle and jamming it down into the lock body will—as you analogized, it's like credit carding a door—you can slip the latch on the lock to spring the catch open. Okay, now, what I'll do is I don't always walk around with a multi-tool with scissors on it. But I don't need scissors if I've already cut the metal. So I'll pre-cut the metal, a couple of them, and leave them under my phone case and I haven't folded them into shapes. So they're nice and flat, they take up no space. So I have a variety of little tools like that under my phone case. I have, you know, SIM card, tool, and some other stuff.

Margaret 31:29 Okay.

Deviant 31:30 So that's my most basic, at my most basic, every everyday carry because I always have a phone on me. And those basic tools are in my phone case. Now if we were to move it into my pockets, I always have a very tiny lockpick set. In fact, my buddy of mine, lockpicking lawyer, and he's done a lot of multi-wheel lock decoding, it's one of his specialties that he'll scramble the wheels on camera and then flip the lock back over and decode it rapidly with or without bypass tools.

Margaret 31:58 Okay.

Deviant 31:59 He's done a little pocket set video that he has. I've got a similar pocket-sized set. It's basically chopped down lockpicks. And there are, there are some other folding pocket sets that are popular for people to have. Mine just happened to be a set that I'd evolved over the years.

Margaret 32:15 I can—my one thing I can brag about having picked a lock once in my life, I mean, I was ah, I was living in this squat in the South Bronx and someone booked a show. But all the PA was locked in his room. And then he was late to the show and the show wasn't gonna be able to start. And so I walked around and looked in the gutter until I found a street cleaner bristle that wasn't old and rusty.

Deviant 32:41 Yeah.

Margaret 32:41 I bent into a tension wrench and then use a safety pin as a pick.

Deviant 32:47 Hell yeah!

Margaret 32:47 And I picked the padlock and saved the show. And it was like, of all of the locks I've picked in my life, which is not a ton, right? I was like, this is it. It was all worth it. I did something good. He was really mad when he came home and then I broke into his room. But I feel perfectly justified.

Deviant 33:06 Absolutely. I think that's a win in my book. That goes really well. Because this person had an obligation to others and, you know, that people, friends got to step in and make sure the show must go on.

Margaret 33:15 Yeah. Okay, so you carry the tiny chopped down lockpick set.

Deviant 33:20 Mm hmm.

Margaret 33:21 And so of course lockpick set you need like all of the different weird things, right? It needs to be at least like, like 15 or different lockpicks, right?

Deviant 33:28 It's pretty minimal. It's just a couple of rakes, a little, a little hook and a little diamond. And a variety of turner tools. I have more turner tools jammed into that than I have pick tools. Because, again, most situations that—these are expedient situations where, like, maybe I'll throw this at the situation, see what happens. And if it doesn't work in a few minutes, I'm probably going to pivot to try something else, either go get proper tools or what have you. And this—it's funny, this loops back around to sort of that other prepper thing where I said a lot of preppers are just collectors of stuff. Where, like, this is my go bag and you start putting more and more crap in it so you can't even carry it around.

Margaret 34:07 Right.

Deviant 34:08 Then like, how useful is it? So yeah, I've tried to keep my stuff that's on me as minimal as possible.

Margaret 34:13 Right.

Deviant 34:14 I've taken things off of my everyday carry key ring in the past, as opposed to trying to add to it with every new whiz bang fun thing. And that everyday carry key ring is the one that shows up—uh, it's shown up in a few talks. But the one that everyone shares is this talk I gave called "I'll Let Myself In." It's about halfway through that talk that you see this set of keys, which we can talk about now. I can rattle them off by memory.

Margaret 34:39 Yeah, if you want to talk about what they open too. I found that that's kind of, is the most handy of these talks, you know, because if you just—I think people like these talks because they like to imagine, like, the power that access grants them, you know?

Deviant 34:55 Oh, absolutely.

Margaret 34:56 So, so sure, what's on your everyday carry key ring?

Deviant 35:00 Sure, so there is—and this is the one that I would use the least, I actually have just demonstrated it so often that I carry it with me—there's an elevator key called the FEOK1. This is, if anyone has seen a lot of talks about elevator hacking, this comes up a lot. Most elevators, much like heavy equipment, have industry default keys. Each brand of elevator will have their unique set of keys that their fixtures just tend to be key alike. Well, the FEOK1 was meant to be a superseding standard that across brands of elevator, this would be the emergency fire service operation key. This was pushed as a standard in the past and has later been walked back because people realize it's a huge security risk. But being able to demonstrate to clients rapidly, hey, this key probably puts your elevators in fire service mode, you got a good chance of it, here to want to try it? That key—which also, this is another interesting thing about moving around buildings. Elevators, if you're in an area that has by code adopted the FEOK1, well, it costs money to rekey your elevator, and you have to recertify it if you start tinkering with it, you know, the panel, right? So it's a solution that many buildings—and you start noticing this, I'll say this and then people listeners will be like, oh, oh, man, I think I've seen that, and they're gonna start seeing it more. Let's say you own a building, and you have Otis elevators—big name in the industry, right? Well, your default Otis elevators going to have a fire key that's going to be the UTF key, that's Otis's fire key. And maybe you've got eight elevators in a bank and you've got another elevator down in the parking garage. You don't want to rekey all these elevators, that's big bucks.

Margaret 36:42 Right.

Deviant 36:42 But you've got to comply with that FEOK1 thing. Well, you can call up supplier like Vader Products are Adams or some other company that supplies the elevator industry and get a little red box and mount that in your lobby. And if you start walking into big buildings and offices and hotels, you might start seeing these little red boxes on the wall. That box can be keyed to FEOK1. And inside that box is your building's fire key and a lot of times other stuff. The elevator equipment room key, the key to the roof, the key to the sprinkler valves, and a lot of stuff just winds up in those red boxes. So on penetration jobs, I have my elevator key but I've never had to futz with the elevator that's, you know, a thing we don't do without special permission. But if I could pop that red box on the wall, suddenly I've got half the keys to the building.

Margaret 37:33 Right.

Deviant 37:34 So that FEOK1 is always with me. Available online, if you ever search for it online and you see a lot of different vendors selling it, you're not sure who's who. I'll tell you this, I don't work for them. Ultimate Security Devices is this sort of scandal of the industry. This is the real—here's the tea, let's dish out the scandal of the gossip world, right? Ultimate Security Devices is Northeast Lock. Northeast Lock, huge vendor, huge vendor and supplier—aboveboard vendor and supplier in the elevator industry. Ultimate Security Devices is them selling stuff out the back door. It's literally like the owner's wife who started an eBay account and then started a website, and the industry gives them a ton of shit for it.

Margaret 38:19 Mm hmm.

Deviant 38:20 And every now and then their site kind of like went away and then it comes back. They move a lot of product out the back door to not anybody, they'll sell to anybody. Okay, so that's your FEOK1. There are two keys that I always have for access control boxes. One is a company called Linear. The Linear company has a lot of press—these are like the sort of telephony boxes that, were there like an intercom system and you usually dial through a directory and they're, they're popular on, like, multi-tenant buildings, either apartments or office buildings.

Margaret 38:55 Okay.

Deviant 38:56 Linear. The official key to all the Linear boxes is the 222343 key, which, again, if we dig into my talk, it's not always sold into that name. It's sold under older obscure names, but Linear has one key and if you get it that opens a lot of Linear boxes. But the big one for these telephony boxes that people, again, like if they see my talks, they've seen some slides. You can spot them a mile away. Doorking systems.

Margaret 39:23 Yeah.

Deviant 39:23 Doorking is this vendor that has a very distinctive feature. On their boxes they have these three big buttons, the A, Z, and call. They have these scrolling, you know, to dial through the directory buttons, these big round silver buttons. And you start spotting those, you know, from your bike just going down the block. You can look and be like oh, Doorking, Doorking, another Doorking. All Doorkings from the factory since I think the 90s have been keyed to the 16-120 key. That is the Doorking key. They have more keys in the series. There's a young kid who got in touch with me, his name is Austin, Austin Tipo. He reached out and he's like, hey, look, there's all these other keys. There's the 16-122, the 16-123. And he found, you know, he ordered them from a supplier, we were comparing the bidding on them. Like, fascinating, there's a whole key series. Never in my f-ing life have I seen anything else used except the first one in the key series.

Margaret 40:14 Uh huh.

Deviant 40:16 So I have that on me. And then the real other last couple of winners are what we'll call cabinet keys. If I'm doing jobs and server rooms and technical spaces, the EK333 key, the MK333 key, is just a very popular server rack key. It opens a ton of stuff in data centers and servers, which is useful if I want to look like I belong there. If I've broken in or there's some other technician doing something, I can just turn to any direction to a big rack of stuff and start shoving this key and it's probably gonna open it. And I just look like I'm servicing something and they're like, "That guy must work here."

Margaret 40:52 Right.

Deviant 40:52 "Is he with Verizon, what does that guy? Johnson Controls?" So yeah, the EK333. Um, C415A is an older key. I've started to drop it from some of my key rings. But that used to be, it would just open a lot of dumb wafer locks, it would open cabinets and locked panels. But the big one, the end-all-be-all, is the CH751. The CH751 key. And there's a whole like subreddit just for CH751 people sharing photos of where it works. That is the everything key in North America. Every rinky dink wafer lock, which is a type of very cheap cabinet-style lock. Every rinky dink lock that's just holding shut everything from toilet paper storage in the bathroom to, like, the phone cabinet over here, to this little locked panel on the outside of a, you know, building that has the water control for the faucet. It's a good chance that it might be CH751. It's the most overused key in America. Say again?

Margaret 41:54 A lot of RVs also, right?

Deviant 41:56 Oh god. Yeah, the default key for RV is not for the ignition typically. But for all the panels, all the outside panels and doors and patches.

Margaret 42:06 Okay.

Deviant 42:08 Yeah, so that's my default loadout.

Margaret 42:11 Yes. So a lot of your work it seems like one of the things that you're trying to do is be invisible in the various places that you go, you know, you're talking about how like, as soon as you start opening, opening things with keys, everyone just assumes you're supposed to be there. I suppose that's the, the idea is that rather than walking around with a crowbar, which probably doesn't look as good to bystanders?

Deviant 42:31 Yeah. But yeah, there's something that comes from having the confidence of someone who just looks like they belong there. Someone who looks cool as a cucumber. And I have the—it's like rock climbing if you're free climbing versus rock climbing on a belay rake, right? If you know you're not going to die, you might make that very perilous leap to get another handhold because you're emboldened by the sense that no harm can befall you.

Margaret 42:57 Mm hmm.

Deviant 42:58 The fact that on jobs I know I'm not going to get in trouble, I'm literally supposed to be there even though I'm doing things that would otherwise be illegal. It allows me to present this air of—like, even when security guards interface with me.

Margaret 43:11 Right.

Deviant 43:11 They say, "What are you doing here?" And time—there was a job that again—we've told this story on some other show long ago, my buddy Rob and I were literally breaking in—like we're using bypass tools. We had just set off an alarm and we're trying to get through another door. And these security guards kind of come into this big warehouse space. And Rob just thinks we are roasted. As security guards like, "Oh, well could you put that stuff down?" These big under door bypass tools. "What do you guys doing here?" And I just looked at him I was like, "Well what does it look like we're doing here?" That was just like—I just clap back with, "What does it look like we're doing?" And it broke his brain because we didn't try to run. We didn't Thumper and offer like, "Oh, well you see my sister sick and I got—" we just, we could not be arsed to care. Which is what your average, like, you know, Verizon guy or Comcast technician would do if you caught caught him on the job like, "Hey, what are we doing that wiring boxes?" "What do you need me for? Is this your wiring box? Get on my way," you know?

Margaret 44:11 Yeah.

Deviant 44:11 So being nonchalant is a form of invisibility.

Margaret 44:15 Mm hmm.

Deviant 44:16 And this is, you know, if you're in a bar, and someone next to you is acting all shifty and touching their pockets and looking at you and looking away, you'd be like, what did this person put something in my drink?

Margaret 44:26 Right.

Deviant 44:26 But if the person next to you in the bar is staring off into the middle distance, half the cigarette is ash because they're stuck in their own brain and they're not caring about whatever you're doing. That's the person that drops your threat radar usually, like well, they clearly don't look like a threat there. They don't care about me. I shouldn't care about them. So yeah, being able to look like you're just preoccupied with whatever mundane task you're doing, it makes other people more dismissive of you.

Margaret 44:51 Yeah. No that makes sense. It also it—I'm glad you brought up the fact that, like, it's probably a lot easier for you to be cool as a cucumber when you know that at the end of the day you're not going to jail because you've, you know, been hired to break into this place. But I bet it's still probably good training, good practice, to learn how to interface with folks.

Deviant 45:14 Oh, yeah.

Margaret 45:15 One of the things that I—

Deviant 45:15 Lie. Lie all the time for no reason because it's just practice.

Margaret 45:22 One of the things that we used to always do is, you know, I—for a while I would make my living as a busker. I would play accordion on the street. And it's really good cover. You know, if my friends are hanging a banner down the street and they need someone to look out, you just—two crusty kids sitting by the side of the road, they get ignored by—I mean, they don't get ignored by cops. But cops aren't coming up being like, "You all are involved with this direct action that's happening," you know, they're just gonna harass you about anything else. It's kind of awful but like, there's just so many different ways to sort of be part of the landscape in people's minds.

Deviant 46:01 It feels especially insidious to—it almost feels like appropriating a space that's not ours. But we have absolutely done sort of stakeouts of target buildings wanting to see like when employees come and go, wanting to see when their guards are there when—maybe they don't guards at night—and adopting either that sort of posture or, not all of our team are musically inclined, right? But adopting the posture of someone who's unhoused.

Margaret 46:27 Yeah.

Deviant 46:28 We've had somebody just—because you actually, especially—look how many of our clients, as you point out, are tech firms, right? The biggest invisibility shield imaginable is being an unhoused person, a distressed person in San Francisco.

Margaret 46:41 Yeah.

Deviant 46:41 Because, quote unquote, we'll call it "respectable society," goes out of their way to not notice you.

Margaret 46:47 Yeah.

Deviant 46:48 And yeah, we've had teammates just kind of sit there under like a ratty blanket with a Starbucks cup with a couple coins in it. And they're mentally, like, literally on the back of a pizza box. One girl, she was just taking notes. This woman was taking notes of like, guard patterns on the back of this pizza box. And the front of the pizza box was, you know, "Came out to parents, kicked me out, anything helps, god bless."

Margaret 47:11 Right.

Deviant 47:12 Yeah, it—by all means, I never thought of the busking idea, too, because that is kind of—it's almost the societal equivalent of that whistling, like, whistling nonchalantly so as to not be thought of as a threat.

Margaret 47:24 Yeah, totally.

Deviant 47:26 Like whistling Row Row Your Boat or something.

Margaret 47:28 Yeah, what you do is you get one person playing the instrument and then the other person is just like, sitting next to them with a radio, you know, but they're just like, just sitting there. And they're the one keeping track of what's going on. And I, you know, I used to make a couple euros, whatever, to do that in Amsterdam.

Deviant 47:44 Oh, yeah.

Margaret 47:46 And yeah, actually, I was listening to this—I tried listening to an actual, like, a proper prepper podcast the other day while I was driving and it was this guy who had infiltrated Antifa. And the Proud Boys were good people but the Antifa in Portland, they would have killed him if they'd known who he was—and all this like just fucking bullshit. And I'm like, how do people take preparation advice from people who are so afraid of their neighbors? Because that's—anyway. But the way that he infiltrated the the Portland protests, this right wing journalist, this like right wing war correspondent guy, he dressed up, uh, you know, as a unhoused person. And what's funny is that he wasn't invisible to the protesters. The protesters were like, offering him like things and trying to talk to him and like, hey, this might not be a good space for you to be in right now but how are you doing? And of course, you know, he then goes on to demonize all of them. I didn't actually even make it all the way through it but I just thought—

Deviant 48:44 He's not that dickbag who did like, "I wardrove and I got all these sim, you know, IMEI," he's not that guy is he?

Margaret 48:50 No, although that person who was lying—

Deviant 48:53 Right.

Margaret 48:53 Just got doxxed today.

Deviant 48:56 I saw. None of that held water like, what they're claiming didn't make sense. And I'm not a real ones and zeros techno-head, but I was like, well that's bullshit.

Margaret 49:03 Yeah, I was caught up in all that. And they were like, trying to claim I'm a leader of Portland Antifa which is really interesting because I'm in southern Appalachia. And also, they claim they got it by wardriving. But my last name is spelled with one "L" on Facebook and nowhere else. And they doxxed me with one "L" and by doxx I mean my name is on a list. Like, sorry. Um, it makes me I mean—I don't know, I don't want to like—I need to knock on wood about some of this. But you know, they like to—I mean, they're fucking LARPing. They're trying to act like they're, like, super elite doing all this amazing stuff. And it was just like some guy in fucking North Carolina who sat at his day job and, like, you know, trolled people social media. Anyway, what would you—Oh, I actually have a question about a specific tool that I got really excited about but I've never had a chance to use. It's these eight-way keys, these like wrenches that are not really keys. It's like triangle wrenches and shit. And they're meant to open like gas lines and water lines. Have you seen these? They're like the little like cigar-shaped?

Deviant 50:18 Oh, yes.

Margaret 50:19 Are they? Are they what they're cracked up to be?

Deviant 50:23 Yes, they are really useful. In fact, I believe Silcox or Cel-Celox? Silox? That is one of the types of those, it's like the little square or triangle one. There is an eight way—It almost looks like a little ninja star.

Margaret 50:38 Yeah.

Deviant 50:39 There's an eight way, like, adapter that's the best one. It's again like cheap on Amazon. It's actually two cross-shaped ones that fit together. And they—because if you had eight points that close together be hard to get a lot them to stick into holes.

Margaret 50:52 Yeah.

Deviant 50:52 But yeah, that's the perfect kind of thing—we have one of those in our grab it and get out of the, you know, get out of the house—in that bag kind of tool. Because again, like you there's plenty of places where you go to a rest area and for no reason, like, the water fountain is turned off or the water faucet is turned off. And not because it's like cold in the winter, just because, well we—I don't know. Who knows. People might get free water, that would be terrible. But yeah, those kind of things. Those, I know hikers who carry them a lot.

Margaret 51:19 Right.

Deviant 51:20 Because they're in the middle of nowhere. They just want to refill their water and for some reason the water valve is turned off somewhere like with one of those non-handle, you have to stick a thing in a hole.

Margaret 51:30 Yeah.

Deviant 51:30 So I've known trail hikers who have those on them.

Margaret 51:33 Okay, yeah, because those are, you know, if I'm too nervous to walk around with a bunch of keys that operate heavy machinery when they clearly look like I'm up to no good. I do feel like something like that in a go bag, to me is just like—I mean, one of the reasons I think what having it is, yeah, turn on water, Or even like, turn off the gas lines in your building if you're leaving because of an earthquake or whatever, you know. And apparently they open maybe subway doors or something I'm not, I'm not sure.

Deviant 52:08 Like the cars, the subway cars?

Margaret 52:11 You know, they claim this and I'm imagining more like maybe the—like windows or something I don't know, you know, the ones that have—

Deviant 52:19 It might be the emergency—so a lot of like mechanical doors—door operators on subway car and things, there's an interlock, right? When there's no power the gears are statically stuck, they're like a screw cog gear, right? So if you can pop an interlock, then the door becomes free sliding. There might be something like that. I've never looked that closely but now it makes me curious if mass transit type doors have a little, a little hole next to them, that would make sense. And again, it's that little slightly extra level of commitment, where it's not just a thumb turn where any, any like 12-year-old kid waiting for like the trolley to start moving could just turn it and then bone the door. But these are the kind of keys that like every emergency vehicle has a little set of Silcox keys in it, you know, so that kind of makes sense to me.

Margaret 53:10 Yeah, the symbolic locks, I think about like, a lot of people who live on land will have gates, right and you know, a gate that has no camera on it or whatever, like anyone can get past them, a lot of them aren't even locked. But a lot of them are pretty much there just for the like, the security of like, you put up a no trespassing sign and a gate and even if the gate is unlocked—it depends. I think there's a state-by-state—the police can't come in without a warrant. Or if they do, you can say leave, you know. And so it's not about, no one can get past this gate, how would anyone ever figure out how to like drive around the gate or something, right? But it's still a useful thing. And it's funny to me because I don't love a world of like, locks and fences and gates and stuff. But, you know, while we live in this world, it seems to make sense to figure out how to keep ourselves safe.

Deviant 54:08 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Barriers demarcate as much as they deny or delay entry.

Margaret 54:15 Yeah.

Deviant 54:15 And it's—as you point out the insidiousness—it's almost like copyright law. Like companies have to be dicks.

Margaret 54:22 Mm hmm.

Deviant 54:22 If they don't protect their patents and trademarks, they lose them. They're like, "Well, you didn't try to protect that." So they have to send all these cease and desist crap.

Margaret 54:28 Yeah.

Deviant 54:29 As you point out with your property, there's different protections under the Fourth Amendment for open fields versus curtilage. And curtilage is defined only by the boundaries that are, you know, enclosing it and a properly designate-able, like, this type of fence—and this was a very clear cut—not even like a barbed wire fence. But as a proper picket, you know, like you have a fence that limits visibility. These are all things that play into the factor of what level of privacy is someone trying to set for themselves. And that actually informs under the law what expectation of privacy or invasion of privacy is occurring under the Fourth Amendment?

Margaret 55:07 Okay. That shit's so wild. When you do your work or when you would imagine leaving and needing to be able to move through the world in a—where law looks very different—do you consider, like, most of what you do seems to be like non-destructive methods of entry, right? Do you also do destructive methods of entry like, you know, crowbars and bolt cutters and things like that?

Deviant 55:32 Yes. When authorized. We have definitely done that on different jobs. And sometimes, like it's—I just did a job on an army base last week where somebody—there was a GSA safe, like, wasn't operating correctly, I had to, as the sanitized language in our industry is, I had to "neutralize" the container. And it was very destructive, it was very loud in the middle of this like, you know, unit, I was just going to town with power tools.

Margaret 56:00 Okay.

Deviant 56:02 But outside—perimeter fence, we have definitely done some destructive work on perimeter fence when authorized. It's also really fun to trench under fences quietly or climb them. There are tools that are just known as "fence climbers," they look like these, oh, they're kind of J hook-looking tools where you can slip them through the fence on a chain link fence.

Margaret 56:23 Oh, interesting.

Deviant 56:23 And it just turns into a ladder instantly. It's, yeah, if you look up like, you know, "fence climbers" as a tool, you'll see that they're are these little folding feet that you can go boop, boop, boop, and then up over the fence, and boop, boop, boop, pull them out the other side.

Margaret 56:37 I miss being small enough that like, I remember when I suddenly was like, too large to just magically be able to climb chain link fences. You know?

Deviant 56:45 I have not been able to do so unaided for a while. I remember like, you know—

Margaret 56:50 I mean, when I was like a little kid. And yeah, your feet fit inside the link.

Deviant 56:56 Yeah. Your sneakers, you toes would be right in there, it was perfect.

Margaret 56:58 Yeah. Okay, yeah, because one of the reasons I asked about like, you know, people used to sort of laugh about it with dumpstering. I mean, most of the way that people get into dumpsters is usually sort of bypassing locks and things where you can like pull the hinge out of the back of the, you know, if it's locked in the front you just pull the hinge out, and then you pop it open the other way. Or, like, if it's a plastic lid, you can kind of just like, sometimes just jump on it, and it bends enough that it—

Deviant 57:23 Yeah.

Margaret 57:24 Goes through. But then you know, some people would be like, okay, we're gonna pick this lock. And then someone's like, well, it's a lot faster to just cut the lock. And now obviously you're changing your relationship with that particular grocery store when you cut the lock. But I just I think of like, I don't know, sometimes the expediency of destructive methods of entry seem um—okay, well, like another example of this: The first time I really hung out with locksmiths was when I was a squatter in Amsterdam and there would be—and squatting was legal. But it was only legal—so it's kind of similar to what you're talking about but like a hair more dangerous in that it's illegal to break into a building, even if it's empty, unless you successfully break in before the police stop you, and put a bed, table, and chair inside. And you can do all of that while the cops are outside trying to stop you as long as there's enough like people preventing the cops from getting to you. It was this weird game. It ended in about 2011 or so when they legalized squatting again.

Deviant 58:32 Oh, man, I never knew that.

Margaret 58:33 And so you'd have these teams of squatters who were mostly professional locksmiths. But it was interesting because they never picked locks. They would go the night before, they would check it out, and they would come back with crowbars and wedges. And they would break open the door because they have to do it in like 30 seconds while cops are trying to arrest them for doing exactly what they're doing, It's very... It's very weird. But so I grew up with that—I grew up? I was an adult—but like, you know, that—I came up into understanding physical security from this more destructive angle. I don't know, I was curious whether you had work with this kind of stuff.

Deviant 59:08 That's why—no, I mean, I'm not usually one to wish that any kind of destructive means was employed. I really do like the bypassing element because it splits those two worlds.

Margaret 59:20 Yeah.

Deviant 59:21 It's—bypassing can be as rapid as something destructive, but as light touch as a non-destructive entry, as a manipulation attack.

Margaret 59:31 No that makes sense. So you're not gonna throw a crowbar in your go bag?

Deviant 59:38 Probably not. I do in the truck. Like, in our truck we have, you know, bolt cutters and big pry bars and things. That's just because there's a job box in the back of the truck that has a bunch of different tools in it. And if you're in a situation where something is badly, you know, if literally, someone says hey, I need to get in this thing. I have no other way in. Well, okay, take out the bolt cutters with big cheater bars on them I guess.

Margaret 1:00:01 Yeah. Okay, so we're coming up on an hour. And so I guess I kind of wanted to ask whether you have any last thoughts or things about individual community preparedness or about physical security penetration. Including like, if someone's interested in knowing more about this or even getting into it professionally, do you have any advice for them?

Deviant 1:00:24 Sure, the real key word and that you've used there, and it's so very, very often absent from these discussions, is the word community.

Margaret 1:00:31 Mm hmm.

Deviant 1:00:32 You know, any kind of preparedness—it's like that whole, well, alright, I've got my gun with my magazine of ammo in it. Well, when you exhaust that magazine of ammo, either you better have really, really neutralized and like, prosecute every single threat in the vicinity. Because if you're out, you've just called a ton of attention to yourself and now all eyes on you. Like, what are you doing? You need to have your next move planned. The same thing holds true for any kind of preparedness, where, you know, much of what I said from the very beginning—Tara I, like, our plan is not, hey, let's get everything in the car and then what, like live in the car up front of the house? No, the whole idea is to get to the next place, get to the next page. Either get out to the cabin, get over to this person's house or that person's house. So having a community of people that expect, you that you say, if you ever picked up a phone and said something is bad, I'm coming, we would say, "Yeah, the guest room is ready, I'll pull down the Murphy bed." Or Likewise, if we call them and say, "Wow, it's no good here. Can we come out there?" They say, "Yeah, you know, we've got the whole separate property, you can take the tiny house on the east side of the property."

Margaret 1:01:38 Mhmm.

Deviant 1:01:40 So anyone who thinks that—and I think this is really the failing of that old generation of like, kind of 80s prepper, right?

Margaret 1:01:48 Yeah.

Deviant 1:01:48 That was a person who was in it for themselves. I don't want to paint any community with a broad brush like that. But a lot of that mindset was, "Well, I need to be ready. So I can withstand so that I can come out on top." Is really that—if you boil it down that's what a lot of I think the old mindset was.

Margaret 1:02:07 Yeah.

Deviant 1:02:08 And I really think that's dumber than shit.

Margaret 1:02:10 Yeah.

Deviant 1:02:11 Because it has to be: What do we do together?

Margaret 1:02:14 Yeah.

Deviant 1:02:14 Like, what tools do I have that you don't have? What skills do you have that I don't have? And having a network of people that you can turn to. If I encounter any—if I encounter a weird firearm I've never seen and I'm trying to figure out how to make it run right, I will call Carl is better than that at me—than me at that. Like he's just better. If someone else has, you know, dropped a deer, I can clean it, gut it, get prepared. But I say well, what else can I do with this deer? Well, Rich, you've been hunting deer since you are way younger than I ever have. What do I do with this deer? Having more people that you can turn to and having more skills—our brains can only learn so much so fast.

Margaret 1:02:52 Yeah.

Deviant 1:02:52 But someone else who knows music, someone else who knows medicine, that's how we—What's this? It's, um, hang on, I can check my notes... Oh, society! That's right. We've been doing this for a while. It's called fuckin society.

Margaret 1:03:06 Yeah. It's actually really good idea.

Deviant 1:03:09 Yeah.

Margaret 1:03:12 Yeah.

Deviant 1:03:13 Yeah. That's the part that gets lost in a lot of these weird Mad Max fantasy, "I'm the lone survivor" plans that people have. I don't get it.

Margaret 1:03:22 Yeah. I've talked a lot about how people and relationships are sort of the best resource that one could possibly have for almost every crisis situation.

Deviant 1:03:32 Yeah.

Margaret 1:03:33 And, yeah. Yeah, the bunker mentality is kind of what I usually end up calling it and it.

Deviant 1:03:40 Yeah, it's a good phrase.

Margaret 1:03:41 It's what turned me off of any of this stuff. But then at some point, I just was like, well, you know, I like being prepared for things. And, you know, a couple years ago a friend of mine, who I'm hoping to have on the show, is an environmental land use engineer. And she studies how food moves around the country and its environmental impact. And, you know, a couple years ago, like, she called me and she's like always the person that kind of calm me down for most of my, like, random political rants. But she was like, there's a decent chance that there's going to be interruptions in the food supply. And I was like, okay, like, at that point, you know, the thing that—that's when I started buying buckets of beans and rice. And I don't like, I haven't, like, filled, you know, sheds and sheds with them. But I'm like, "Well, I would like to be able to feed 10 people for six months in the worst case scenario," you know? And everyone's going to have different things that they're going to want to prepare with, but that's one that made sense to me. So.

Deviant 1:04:43 Yeah, were you speaking to her around like last March or April I guess?

Margaret 1:04:47 No, it was actually, it was about two years ago. It was a—well, maybe even a little bit longer than that, maybe three years ago. And it didn't come to pass but it was some stuff around drought that was happening a couple years ago that basically like, you know, and she called me back to be like, you know—okay, I don't think that that is actually happening this year. It wasn't like sound the alarm, you know? But yeah, no, it, it definitely—the sort of joke that I keep making is we're all preppers now, you know, and that, like, most people need to have at least three weeks of food at home now if they can afford it and have a good enough home to keep three weeks of food, you know?

Deviant 1:05:31 Yeah. And at the very beginning of the pandemic, when it was still—god I don't want to—I'm not dismissing this at all, but it was quirky fun to some people, like people called it "the breadmaking phase."

Margaret 1:05:44 Yeah.

Deviant 1:05:44 How many people were reaching out to—some people had starter for sourdough and some people didn't. And some people were sewing a lot more because they had a sewing machine and some people didn't. I personally was, like we had, we had plenty of yeast because Tara ordered it. We do have a sewing machine, but other people were borrowing it. And I was Johnny Ammo Seed around parts of Seattle because nobody could buy ammo. I was just giving away 556 to anybody. Like, just take these two mags and keep them around. Okay, get me back later. Get me back later. Yeah, I I share what I have and this is what I got.

Margaret 1:06:16 Yeah, no, it makes sense. It actually, it's funny, at the beginning of it all I was looking at my like, 400 rounds of 556. And I was like, well, ammo prices are up and 400 rounds is enough. Now I'm like, "Oh, god, I should have bought it when it was like only 50 cents a round."

Deviant 1:06:33 Yeah, that's perpetually—I mean, we all look back on what firearms used to cost and things that you could have bought them. That's a losing game in my mind to play. You fool yourself into thinking what we could have done. But thankfully—I've been divesting more and more of my ammo. I have been letting other people who go to the range with me—because up here in Seattle, in the Pacific Northwest, I've had a lot of people reach out to me from communities that aren't necessarily at home in the gun world. In fact, I just was on a podcast talking about this recently—Liberal Gun Club has a podcast—where I was talking about like a bunch of traditionally, like BIPOC people or LGBTQIA people have reached out like on DMs and said, "Hey, I'm interested in guns. I hate all the Trump bullshit at gun ranges, but you seem safe to talk to, can you tell me about guns." So a few of us will go to arrange us together. And these were folks who are just getting into shooting during the pandemic. And I was like, "Well, here, just, here's 50—box of 50 of 9 mil, like just use it and don't buy the $2 a round. Don't do that, please."

Margaret 1:06:44 Yeah. Yeah.

Deviant 1:07:38 I'd much rather it be purposed for this right now because I will always get some more later. And that same sort of mentality of, if I really get through two or three ammo, like a couple magazines with a pistol, you got to be on the next page. Because that's not a sustainable solution solving problems that way, right? Okay. Something's wrong if you haven't transitioned to the rifle or gotten the fuck out of dodge.

Margaret 1:08:03 Totally. No, that's actually—I really like that as a practical example of like, one of the things I talk about a lot in this show is that the reason to get the stuff while you can get it is so that you can get it to the people who need it when it's no longer available. And, you know, if nothing else, like, walking around a demo early on in the uprising handing out KN95 masks to people, you know, because it was like, well, I'm sitting on 100 of these and this is where they belong, and it just felt—I was like, ah! Cuz I had a hard time connecting, what do you do as like, when you're the person who thinks about preparedness, and it's hard to get your community to think about preparedness? Like, I remember at one point recently I was talking to my landmates and I was like, look like, if nothing else we have all that food. And my landmate was like, what, but did you stockpile salt? I'm like, yeah, of course, I have a giant can salt up—oh, you're making fun of me. And like, of course, I have a giant can of salt. I'm annoyed that I don't have like giant cans of coconut oil, you know? But that goes bad.

Deviant 1:09:10 That's true.

Margaret 1:09:11 But yeah no, so I really like that you been doing that. And I've had the same experience with firearms where people who I know from, like, you know, pretty strong liberal backgrounds are just like, well, I'm queer and don't want to die. What do I need? And then they hate that my answer is an AR 15. They hate it. But I explain why and then they think about it and they either do or don't, you know? Yeah.

Deviant 1:09:42 That's literally the the one-hour sort of talk that I give on a privately open/semi open sort of Zoom maybe once every month or so now. It's just people who are in that position where they're like, this isn't my community but I want this knowledge. I don't want to look foolish and waste money. What do I do?

Margaret 1:10:00 Yeah.

Deviant 1:10:00 And I have this whole little rundown of a talk.

Margaret 1:10:02 Yeah.

Deviant 1:10:03 There's a billion talks out there that are like, "Intro to Fire Arms."

Margaret 1:10:06 Yeah.

Deviant 1:10:06 That's fine. That's out there. I have what I call—it feels like, for many of us who weren't the popular kid because I certainly wasn't—it's like going to a new school, and you're in the lunchroom for the first time. And you're like, where do I sit? Am I gonna be an idiot? Am I gonna? Am I gonna have no friends? Am I gonna make a bad impression? It's little questions like 223 versus 556. Are they the same?

Margaret 1:10:27 Yeah.

Deviant 1:10:28 And I walk people through. I'm like, well, clearly they're not because they have different names.

Margaret 1:10:31 Right.

Deviant 1:10:32 But the technical answer is they effectively are except for small minutia.

Margaret 1:10:36 Yeah.

Deviant 1:10:36 And then the very technical answer is, but that small minutia means a whole lot to a few very serious people. And here's the details.

Margaret 1:10:44 Yeah. Oh god, yeah. And all that stuff, like turns people off anyway, I think, when you're just like, have to like, know, all of this super specialized vocabulary when it's like—but then it's funny, because then I, you know, I started off being like, "Oh, fuck all the super specialized vocabulary." And then the more I dive into it, the more I'm like, "Oh, that's actually kind of interesting," you know. But it's the same with all prepping shit. I'm like, mostly I just want people to fucking buy extras when they can of their food and like, have some plans and start talking to their friends and neighbors about what to do in terms of times of crisis, you know?

Deviant 1:11:22 Yeah.

Margaret 1:11:23 Well, I think I've probably stolen enough of your time. How can people who want to see more of these talks or—how can people find you online?

Deviant 1:11:34 Well, I am at davianollam, the unpronounceable, unspellable, you know, get it wrong easily name: D-E-V-I-A-N-T-O-L-L-A-M, or probably down in show notes or something. I am that on many platforms. I am on YouTube. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, I mostly just a professional swear word sayer on the internet. But I did have this blog post that I'll throw you a link to, it's kind of the—people often email me, I regularly get people who reach out and say, "Hey, you know, I really, thank you for this material. It's been really enlightening. But what you do is so cool. How do I get into that field? I think I might be able to do this." And I have a whole answer, it's like a very long answer that I've been tweaking and adding to over the years. And it's mostly sort of my own story of the path I took and everyone's path is different, but it's hopefully full of some guidance that people might have. And I'm happy to share that link to anyone who wants, and the industry is always growing. The tech community and the hacker world are nothing if not expanding and welcoming, I hop—if you talk to the right people. There's a few fashion hustle hackers, but fortunately, no one pays attention to them anymore. Yeah, this is a great community to be involved in. Don't be afraid to reach out, don't be afraid to ask questions. I think the hacker community is really defined as welcoming to those who come with a thirst for knowledge, not a pretense of "Oh I'm the biggest badass in the room." You're not gonna get traction with that. But, "Hey, what you're working on, it looks cool. Can you tell me about it?" Is a great way to start with a lot of people.

Margaret 1:13:09 Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much.

Deviant 1:13:13 Thank you for having me. This is wonderful.

Margaret 1:13:19 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell people about it, please post about it and tell people in person and stuff like that. Word has been going out about the show and that makes it kind of all feel worthwhile to me, because the goal of doing this is for people to hear it. And if you tell algorithms, the algorithms will tell other people that what you listen to is worth them listening to. So it's why liking and sharing and subscribing and rating and reviewing and all that bullshit has a really disproportionate impact in terms of, you know, the amount of time it takes to do those things—which is actually really fucked up and I feel really dirty every single time I advocate that people do all those things. But that's the way of it, at least right now. If you want to support the podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me on Patreon. my Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And I put up a lot of scenes, although I'm pretty far behind on that because I've been focused so much on the podcast. But there's still like almost 40 I think scenes at this point they can go back through and read if you want and so put up different music from my various projects and things like that. And if you make less money than if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon, just messaged me and I'll get you everything I do for free because that's the direction that money should go in as much as money should exist. But in particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Haas the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane and the Compound for making this podcast possible. And I'm particularly excited for all the support I've been getting because now I'm able to hire transcriptions—a transcriptionist? Transcriber? I haven't actually asked her what her job title is. But I've been able to hire someone to transcribe the episodes and I hope that that makes it more accessible to more people. And I, you know, it's a lot of work to do that. And I'm really appreciative of the transcriber who's listening to me right now typing this—well, not literally right now, but will be listening to this later and typing it. So it's really funny to be typing about yourself, isn't it transcriber? (Transcriber note: yes it is.) Anyway, I hope everyone listening has a really great time in the near future, stays safe. Thanksgiving was always shit. It's never been anything but shit. And it's extra shit this year. And everyone has their own opinions about that. And the dark is coming for us, but then the sun will return.

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Lynn talks to Inmn about everything that's been going on in Ukraine for the last couple years with the invasion and different ways that preparedness manifests during a military occupation or invasion. Next week they continue the discussion, focusing on preparedness for blackouts.

Guest Info

You can support Ukrainian leftists doing rad things at:

Renegade Relief Runners https://renegaderelief.org/ Solidarity Collectives https://www.solidaritycollectives.org/

Lynn also recommends you check out the podcast "Ukraine without Hype" for a weekly Ukrainian news round-up with leftist analysis from journalists in Kyiv, and interviews with some of the people she mentioned in our discussion, such as Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, the American transwoman who became the Ukrainian Territorial Defense spokesperson, and Vladyslav Starodubtsev a writer who talks about the Ukrainian labor struggle."

You can also support Lynn's partner, who is fundraising for equipment for his brigade, the 100th Separate Mechanized Brigade. They are defending towns on the Avdiivka Axis, one of the toughest directions at the moment. You can follow him on the platform formerly known as Twitter @SillyNami and if you would like to support them directly, you can send donations to his paypal account: wildflock100@proton.me

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.

Episode Notes

If you have been contacted by federal law enforcement as a result of the uprising, contact the National Lawyer Guild's federal defense hotline at 212-679-2811

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy and instagram @margaretkilljoy. You can also support her and this show by sponsoring her patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. Your support has allowed us to get transcriptions available of the podcast for folks who gain information better that way!

Transcript 1:13:23 SPEAKERS Margaret, Mo

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, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. In this week's episode I'm talking to Moira Meltzer-Cohen, who is a lawyer—not just any lawyer, but is my lawyer. It's kind of weird that you get to use the possessive on lawyers. We're going to be talking about repression and how the government likes to crack down on protest and revolt. And we're going to be talking about, basically, know your rights, like how to interact with the police and how to interact with the feds. We'll also be answering some questions that you all had from social media. And we keep referencing the fact that we're going to talk about grand juries in this episode, but during the course of the interview we don't in fact get to it because Mo is a remarkably busy person, as one might imagine, in this particular time in the world, and didn't have time. And also, the episode was already gone on for about an hour. We will almost certainly have her back at some point in to talk about grand juries because they're an important thing to understand from an anti repression point of view. However, at the moment, primarily, people are dealing with police and federal law enforcement. And so that's what we focus on. This podcast as a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Jingle 01:39 Rebel Steps is a podcast about taking action. Season one offered insights into how individuals can join movements. Season two focuses on the ways people can work together to build these movements. Organizing in groups presents many challenges. How do you care for each other and protect each other in the midst of political struggle? How do you lift up the voices of everyone in your group? How do you work through the inevitable disagreements? All of these questions have complicated answers. As I explore these questions. You'll hear voices and stories from my community in New York City, spotlighting a range of organizers from the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, Outlive Them, Pop Gem, Democratic Socialists of America, Libertarian Socialist Caucus, and more. Just like the first season, I returned Paulo Friere's quote, "What can we do today, so that we can do tomorrow what we cannot do today," but this time with the realization that building our capacity will necessarily happen alongside others. Find Rebel Steps on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts and check us out on Twitter or Patreon.

Margaret 02:55 So, welcome to the show, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then any organizational or political affiliations that you feel like make sense with what you're going to talk about.

Mo 03:07 Sure. I'm Moira Meltzer-Cohen, everyone calls me Mo. I am—my pronouns are she are they and I am affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild, and I am a non-denominational anti-authoritarian.

Margaret 03:26 We seem to be getting a lot of those recently. I think that's good. So I first met Mo when we were both working on a campaign for someone named Jerry Koch who was a political prisoner who, I guess, is now a lawyer.

Mo 03:39 Yeah, he is.

Margaret 03:41 And that's amazing. And, and yeah, Mo was just out of law school and then managed to write a motion that got someone free in a way that I think, to my understanding, kind of changed some of the ways that grand jury defense is done in this country or is understood in this country. Is that overly hyperbolic, or?

Mo 04:03 That is hyperbolic. I wrote a motion that is a type of motion that has been used since I think the 60s or 70s called a grumbles motion. It just, it's unusual, partly because grand jury litigation is unusual. But I don't think it was precedent-setting but it was—I didn't expect it to work. And it did.

Margaret 04:32 Okay, so you saved, you changed everything and—but you did very specifically set someone free right out of law school, as I understand, or right after passing the bar. And so we met doing work on that campaign and then ever since then Mo has been kind of the card that I keep in my pocket and a literal and metaphorical sense of—I mean, I've literally had nightmares where the police are holding me and I'm like, "I have to call Mo, you have to let me call Mo!" And then like Mo has come in and saved me.

Mo 05:09 I promise I'll do my best.

Margaret 05:11 And Mo has also done a lot of work for a lot of trans prisoners, including you were part of the most recent campaign to get Chelsea Manning out of jail. Is that right?

Mo 05:21 That's right. I did not represent her while she was serving time after the court martial.

Margaret 05:28 Mm hmm.

Mo 05:29 I represented her more recently, when she was subpoenaed to give testimony before a federal grand jury, and was then confined as a result of her refusal to do so.

Margaret 05:40 Okay. And so I wanted to get Mo on the show because I mean, for one thing, you know, she's an amazing lawyer. And also because so much of her work has focused specifically on anti-repression work. And, you know, okay, so what am I doing talking to a lawyer on a show that's extensively about preparing for, you know, end times or bad times or crisis or disaster? And, I mean, if you're listening to the show, you probably understand that revolt is absolutely an essential part of individual community and even probably species survival at this point. And, of course, revolt will always come with legal consequences, because what does one revolt against but a system that usually has laws and things. And so that's why we have lawyers on our side. And so I want to talk to Mo today about—we're gonna talk about a couple specific things, and we're gonna answer some questions that came from you all. And some of the stuff that we're going to talk about is we're going to talk about what to do in terms of when the police—like how to interact with the police, how to interact with the feds, and then we're going to talk about grand juries, which are annoyingly complex and not a simple thing to wrap your head around. But I think a very important part of repression and anti-repression to understand. Does that kind of cover what you're hoping to talk about?

Mo 07:04 Sure.

Margaret 07:06 Okay, so let's start with the real basics. Let's start with a Know Your Rights. You know, I'm walking down the street, maybe I'm leaving a protest, and the police are like, "Hey, come over here, we want to talk to you." What do I do?

Mo 07:22 Um, I mean, the first thing that I want to say is some of this varies state by state. But by and large, you know, you do have some pretty established constitutional rights. And the first thing I would say is if you're approached by an officer, and they ask you a question, you know, in the same way that if some stranger walks up to you, and starts giving you the power quiz, you have no obligation to stick around and talk to them. You know, you have no obligation necessarily to stick around and talk to the police. So the very first thing that you would do is you would say, "Am I free to go? Or am I being detained?" And if they say, "Well, you're not being detained," then you bounce. If they say, "No, you are being detained." Ask why. They might not tell you, they might make fun of you, they might tell you something that's completely off the wall. They might say, "Well, you fit the description." But whatever they say or don't say, it's information. And I want to be very clear that, you know, asking these questions, it's not magic. Very often the police neither know nor care what your rights are, you know, most of this stuff that I'm going to say isn't particularly powerful in the moment of a law enforcement interaction. But it's still really important to ask these questions and invoke the rights that I'm going to try to teach you to invoke, because later when you're in front of a judge, if you have done this, then your lawyer can make certain kinds of arguments and try to mitigate the harm that can be caused by interactions with law enforcement in ways that, you know, your lawyer can't mitigate that harm if you have not invoked your rights.

Margaret 09:22 Okay.

Mo 09:23 So you want to say, "Am I free to go? Or am I being detained?" Because if you don't ask anything, you know, any further interaction that you end up having with that officer is going to be construed as something that you consented to.

Margaret 09:39 Right.

Mo 09:40 Right. And so if they say you're free to go, bounce, if they say you're being detained, ask why. Make a note of what the officer looks like. If you can see their badge number, make a note of it. If you can see their name, make a note of it. I mean, mentally obviously—you are probably not standing there with a notebook. If they ask if they can search you, say no. If they try to search you, say, "I do not consent to this search." Very often it can be really important to say, "I do not consent to this search," very loudly and clearly so that other people around you and their videos can pick it up. Right? Because an important part of being able to argue that you invoked your rights is being able to provide evidence that you invoked your rights.

Margaret 10:30 Right.

Mo 10:31 Right. So you want witnesses you want people's video to reflect that you said you didn't consent to a search.

Margaret 10:40 Yeah, one of the things... go ahead.

Mo 10:42 Well, again, this doesn't mean that they're not going to search you.

Margaret 10:45 Do they have a right to search you for like—like I used to, you know, when I was more of a street kid and squatter and things like that, I would be stopped by police on a regular basis, two or three times a day, at least twice a week for about a year or two. And one of the things that always seemed like it was part of that encounter was at the very least sort of their right to basically, like, pull the clip knife out of my pocket.

Mo 11:11 Mm hmm.

Margaret 11:11 And that kind of thing. Like, what are they allowed to do, regardless?

Mo 11:15 So they're allowed—if they have a reason to stop you, they're allowed to pat you down over your clothes to look for weapons in the event that they have a reasonable fear for their safety. Now, who gets to define reasonable?

Margaret 11:30 Them, I'm guessing.

Mo 11:31 Yes, they get to define reasonable and this is relevant, basically, you know, all the time, right? Who defines the word reasonable? It's going to be the police, at least until you get in front of a judge. This is relevant, for example, with another thing I was going to say, which is you have a right to film the police, you have a First Amendment right to film the police and the performance of their official duties from a reasonable distance.

Margaret 11:58 Mm hmm.

Mo 11:59 Right. So it's not a crime to film the police, it can be unlawful to do anything that the police can construe as interfering with their duties.

Margaret 12:09 Okay.

Mo 12:09 Right. So, you know, certainly I would advise someone against getting in between an officer and the person they're trying to arrest in order to get a better shot. You know, and if the police ask you to back up, what I think can be useful is to say out loud, I'm backing up and take one step back. Right.

Margaret 12:34 Yeah, that's usually what I've managed to do is basically be like, "Okay, how far do you want me to go," and then I walk like two feet. And I'm like, "This good? I'm here now." But that's actually usually me kind of often trying to—I would never interfere with the police, but maybe have the police pay more attention to me than the people that they would prefer to be paying attention to in that moment, is something that sometimes occurs to me. And so I try to play this very polite game of, you know, continuing to engage them to ask them very specific questions about how far I'm backing up.

Mo 13:12 Okay.

Margaret 13:14 This is gonna be an episode where I tell my lawyer many things that Mo probably wishes I didn't do. Now that I realized…

Mo 13:22 That—you know, just as long as you're aware that this conversation is not privileged.

Margaret 13:27 I don't have—Wait, no, but I thought this whole podcast was privileged now, I thought that was the whole thing?

Mo 13:34 Oh, I don't think there's a podcaster privilege.

Margaret 13:38 Interesting, interesting. But if I have enough clout, then I'm immune to the criminal justice system?

Mo 13:46 Well, I mean, I think that that's clear, because we can see what happened to certain Twitter accounts, once people stopped having enough clout.

Margaret 13:54 Mm hmm. Okay, so just to continue to interject with like, along the way of like—yeah, whenever I've done that, "Am I being detained?" I've actually had a much higher success rate than I initially thought I was going to have with that tactic.

Mo 14:12 I think that if you have an opportunity to ask, you may have pretty good success with it. The thing that usually happens with most of my clients is there's never an opportunity to ask, right? People are—I mean, I work a lot with protesters. So I do a lot of stuff with mass arrests. And in a mass arrest... You know, I have had one experience where I observed a group of people who were kettled, shouting in unison, "Are we being detained?" And the officers eventually determined that they didn't have a basis to detain them, and so they let them go.

Margaret 14:53 Amazing.

Mo 14:54 But typically in a mass arrest, cops show up, use arrest as a form of crowd control, and everybody sort of gets taken off the street with—and there's no opportunity to say, "Am I being detained?" You're just knocked to the ground and flex cuffed. But to the extent that you have an opportunity to ask these questions they can be, you know, it can sort of force a decision. And sometimes that decision will be, you know, we don't actually have enough cause to hold this person.

Margaret 15:27 Okay.

Mo 15:29 I think the more important stuff is being able to, you know that's—asking, "Am I being detained? And if so, why?" Is good for information gathering. Even if it doesn't result in you being released. Right? Saying, "I don't consent to a search," is really important down the road, because if you've explicitly said that you do not consent to a search, anything that may have been yielded or found in a search that you haven't consented to can be suppressed as evidence, right? It would be considered an unlawful search or it could be considered an unlawful search, a violation of your Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure. And a judge might say, "Well, yeah, okay, we found this thing on you during a search, but we can't use it as evidence against you because we obtained it— the police obtained it unlawfully."

Margaret 16:31 Okay.

Mo 16:32 Right,

Margaret 16:32 At what point are they allowed to—go ahead...

Mo 16:35 So they are allowed to pat you down over your clothes to check for weapons if they have a reasonable fear for their safety which, of course, they get to define. And that definition is expansive, you know, so in order to then search you, you will be—if you're arrested—you will be searched incident to arrest, okay, right? The circumstances under which they are, quote, "allowed" to search you are extremely complicated, extremely fact specific, can vary from state to state, are different depending on whether you are walking around, are in a car, are in your home, are in someone else's home, are in someone else's car. So I don't think it's particularly useful to get too into it, because in any event, you're not going to win an argument with a police officer who wants to search you.

Margaret 17:29 Right.

Mo 17:29 Right. The sort of bottom line here is to say, "I'm not consenting to any searches." Now that said, people know, really, what is safest for them. And sometimes, it can be safest to consent to a search. I'm not going to advise you to consent to a search, but I'm going to respect your expertise about your own safety.

Margaret 17:55 Okay.

Mo 17:56 And that's a personal decision that you're going to have to make in the moment.

Margaret 18:00 Right.

Mo 18:01 What I want you to understand is that you don't have an obligation—you don't have a legal obligation—to consent to a search, no matter what the police tell you.

Margaret 18:13 Right.

Mo 18:14 And ultimately, the question of the lawfulness of a search is not a question that could be answered by a police officer, or by you. It's a question that's going to be answered, if at all, by a judge. Later.

Margaret 18:28 Okay.

Mo 18:29 And so arguing about the lawfulness of a search is probably a great way to escalate things out of control.

Margaret 18:37 Right.

Mo 18:38 But if there's a way for you to say, safely, "I don't consent to this search." You can do that.

Margaret 18:45 Yeah, like kind of ah—when I talk to people, I personally—and this is clearly legal advice, because I'm not a lawyer—I basically tell people to try and be like, polite but firm with police. You know, my literal, like, thing I would just say constantly is, "I'm sorry, Officer, but am I being detained?" And I would like definitely say, "Sir," I would say like, "I'm sorry, Officer," I'd be very polite, but I would always be like, you know, "I do not consent to a search," or whatever.

Mo 19:18 And you and I have certain characteristics that make that less dangerous for us to say, than, you know, and so, you know, policing—the issue with policing, it's not about law, it's about power. And the distribution of power is uneven in very predictable ways. So when I'm talking about the law, I want to be very clear that the law is a separate thing from power. It's a separate thing from justice. You know, this is what your rights are, here's how you can invoke them.

Margaret 19:51 Right.

Mo 19:53 I cannot stress enough that there is a difference between what your rights are and what policing looks like.

Margaret 20:01 Yeah. Yep.

Mo 20:05 So I'm going to move on from searches. You know, just to reiterate this, again, it is a fool's errand to argue with a cop about whether a search is lawful. What you can do is invoke your right against unlawful searches or against unreasonable searches by saying, "I do not consent to this search." You need to know that if you are arrested, you will be searched when you get to the precinct. If you are arrested, the very first thing that you should do is start saying, "I am not resisting."

Margaret 20:40 Okay.

Mo 20:40 Because police officers almost universally will start screaming, "Stop resisting," whether or not you are resisting. And it can be really important, again, for evidence that's going to be gathered and presented later if there is evidence that you were saying, "I am not resisting."

Margaret 20:58 God, I fucking hate police. Yep. Okay.

Mo 21:03 The other thing that you need to say—and this is the one sort of invocation of rights that is powerful and that you do have control over—is I want you to say, and I want you to practice—everyone listening to this, I want you to practice ten times a day saying, "I am going to remain silent and I want to speak to a lawyer." You have to say that you're going to remain silent.

Margaret 21:30 Okay.

Mo 21:30 And then you'll have to actually remain silent. Because if you don't actually remain silent, you have waived your right against compelled self-incrimination. The Fifth Amendment is in the constitution for a reason. There is never a compelling reason to talk to a cop, before you have spoken to a lawyer.

Margaret 21:57 Okay.

Mo 21:59 It's okay to tell the cops things that they already know about you like your name, your date of birth, your address.

Margaret 22:09 Are you legally obliged to provide that information and or an ID?

Mo 22:13 It depends. It depends on what state you're in. Some states are what are called "stop and identify" states where it's an independent crime to refuse to show ID or to refuse to identify yourself. Other states, it's not a crime. But it's—it can make your life much harder. So for example, in the state of New York, if you're stopped on the street for something that would be considered a ticketable offense, a summonsable offense, a cop can write you a summons on the street and cut you loose if you show them your ID. And if you don't, they will take you in and process you until they can confirm your identity, which is, you know, four to eighteen hours out of your life that you're not getting back.

Margaret 23:01 Right.

Mo 23:02 So, you know, my advice is typically that anything you can do to abbreviate an interaction with law enforcement is desirable, like the longer and interaction with law enforcement goes on, the less good it is, the less safe you are.

Margaret 23:17 So my general understanding of like, where that would come in, and the process would be like, a cop is like, comes up to me and is like, "Let's see your ID." I say, "Am I being detained?" And if he says, "Yes, you're being detained," I ask, "What for?" And then he gives me a bullshit reason—I've literally been told because I don't know who you are. That was once the reason I was being detained. Which I was like, I had a feeling that wasn't gonna work well in court. But I also had a, like, at that point it seemed to me that there'd be no reason to argue, because a cop is allowed to say whatever they want, as far as I understand about why you're being detained, even if it's not later justifiable. So at that point, once I'm being detained and they want to see my ID, at that point I give them my ID. That's like the understanding that I've been under for a long time. Would that...

Mo 24:02 If they give you a chance. Right? I mean, this is all—I want to be really clear. again, like, when I'm saying, "Oh, these are the questions that you ask," a lot of times, you don't get an opportunity to ask all of these questions. Right? So even if you get a chance to say, "Am I being detained?" So for example, I was arrested once doing jail support. And what happened was that the cop rolled up and said, "Let me see some ID," and I said, "Am I being detained?" And then I got thrown in a van.

Margaret 24:34 Right.

Mo 24:35 Right. So...

Margaret 24:42 Yeah, so your mileage may vary. Yeah.

Mo 24:44 Yeah, mileage may vary. That's exactly right.

Margaret 24:47 Okay.

Mo 24:47 Um, again, the police very frequently neither know nor care what, what the sort of phases of an interaction are legally supposed to be. So, you know, I have a lot of people ask me things like, "Well, when can the cops kick in my door?" And, of course, the answer is: whenever they want to. The cops can kick in your door at any time, for any reason, or no reason at all. The question is, what do they say later to justify it? And again, that's sort of the same thing in this situation. So, if you are asked for ID, it can be really important to know, given what whatever state you're in, whether it is an independent crime to refuse to identify yourself. In some states it is and in some states it is not. In all states, I would venture to say, it can make your life much more difficult if you refuse to give ID. I want to take a second and talk about trans people and the apparent, you know, the inability of police to perceive gender non-conforming people as who they are based on their ID.

Margaret 26:09 Right.

Mo 26:12 You have a First Amendment right to use any name you want to use, whether or not it is your legal name, as long as you are not using that name to avoid civil or criminal liability.

Margaret 26:26 Okay

Mo 26:27 That said, if you're having an interaction with law enforcement, you know—again, this is a safety calculation that you are going to have to perform for yourself—it is not a crime to tell the police, you know, whatever your real name, the name that you use, to give them that name. It can make your life harder.

Margaret 26:53 Right.

Mo 26:54 And depending on what state you are in, there may or may not be any training or protocols for the detention of trans prisoners. Right? So you shouldn't get charged for giving the police a name that is not your dead name. But it can present some complications with respect to, like, what happens if they print you, or what happens if they look at your ID, or they demand your ID and the name is different and, you know, if your appearance is different than your ID.

Margaret 27:38 That's why I always refer to, instead of a dead name, I tend to think of it as my Fuck You name. Because the only people that I'm giving my legal name to are people like, fuck you, like, I don't care about you to tell you my actual name. And obviously every trans person is going to handle that differently, you know, in the same way of like navigating walking through this world. Like, if you go to a demonstration, choosing what your gender presentation is versus like what your ID says it's like, obviously, super complicated.

Mo 28:11 Yeah. I mean, it's a whole sort of separate thing that I could like, really get into, but I don't want to minimize it, right? I'm not want to say like, Oh, it's fine to just give the police to tell the police, you're not giving them your state name and to give them your real name. You know, do what feels safest. And I'm not saying that you never will be charged for, like, what would be called, like, false personation. I have certainly—not in quite a while—but I have seen people charged with false personation when they give their real name and not their dead name. It is always immediately dismissed.

Margaret 28:56 Cool.

Mo 28:58 But it's scary. And it's traumatizing. And it's, you know, it's an act of violence by the state that's targeted to be transphobic.

Margaret 29:11 Yeah.

Mo 29:11 And it's a shitty power move. I'm not going to say that there aren't consequences to it. Of course, there are. Cops are notoriously transphobic, as are many judges, as are many prosecutors. I suppose, as are many defense attorneys, I guess. But particularly depending on where you are in the country. But I do want to sort of reassure people that, you know, I don't think there are lasting legal consequences for just using whatever name it is that you use and the pronouns that you use,

Margaret 29:50 Okay.

Mo 29:51 Okay.

Margaret 29:52 So, to go back to—okay, in this situation, you're now in jail, and you're saying, "I would like to remain silent," if you do end up talking, you said that that ends up like ruining your—it gets rid of your your right to remain silent. Can you then—you can then re-invoke that?

Mo 30:10 Absolutely.

Margaret 30:11 Okay.

Mo 30:12 Absolutely. So this is really important. So you say, "I'm going to remain silent and I want to speak to a lawyer." Then you remain silent. If the police are asking you questions about, like, "Do you know, do you expect someone at your arraignment? Do you have a lawyer? Would you like a phone call?" Obviously, you know, answer those questions. If they start asking you questions about what you had for breakfast, what your favorite baseball team is, anything that is substantive, my advice would be to stay, "I'm going to remain silent and I want to speak to a lawyer." I genuinely do not think there is a reason to engage with police about sports, politics, music, the weather—literally anything, ever.

Margaret 30:55 What if they just want to be your friend? And then you can make friends with them? And then they'll just let you go?

Mo 30:59 Mm hmm. Yes, it has never worked. I very frequently say you cannot talk yourself out of an arrest, but you can always talk yourself into a conviction.

Margaret 31:11 Mm hmm.

Mo 31:13 Please don't talk to cops. Please just don't do it. We really, really want you to invoke your right to remain silent because you cannot unsay something you have said to a cop. Right? If you need to use the bathroom, say you need to use the bathroom. Okay, if you need a drink of water, so you need a drink of water. That said, if they give you a bottle of water, don't touch it to your lips, because they'll take it. They'll take that bottle and collect your DNA from it and put it in a database.

Margaret 31:47 Oh god.

Mo 31:49 So that's cool. And normal. And totally not dystopic.

Margaret 31:55 Yeah.

Mo 31:56 Anyway. But if you need, you know, if you have human needs: food, water, a phone call a bathroom, medical attention. Or if someone that you're in with needs those things, say so. Advocate for yourself. Do what you need to do. And then re invoke your right to remain silent. And if they start asking you questions about anything that happened leading up to your arrest, anyone you hang out with—if someone in your cell starts asking you those questions. You know? Don't answer those questions. That's nobody's business. That is information to which the state is not entitled.

Margaret 32:35 Mm hmm.

Mo 32:36 Right? We don't do their job for them. So invoke your right to remain silent, talk to the extent that you need to talk in order to get your needs met or in order to advocate for other people, and then re-invoke your right to remain silent.

Margaret 32:54 How do you get a lawyer in this situation?

Mo 32:57 Typically, you are either cut loose at the precinct with some kind of ticket that says, "Come back to court on this day," or you're going to be taken in front of a judge. Typically, if you're taken in front of a judge, you will have a lawyer appointed for you, either at that time or very shortly thereafter. There are states where you have to apply for a public defender. And that process sometimes is very onerous. You know, so you may not be given a lawyer before you, before—I would say—you need one. But you know, you're not going to be when you get in front of a judge, you shouldn't be asked any questions other than "How do you plead?" So there's not a lot of opportunity to incriminate yourself at that point. What I would say is, you need to understand that when I talk about invoking your right to silence, I'm not just talking about things that you say directly to cops. I'm talking about like, anything you say, quote "publicly," not just to a cop, but anything that a cop could discover can and very much will be used against you. So if you have been arrested, don't post about it necessarily on social media. Certainly don't do that before speaking to an attorney. Don't talk about anything that happened leading up to that arrest to anyone except your lawyer or maybe your doctor or your therapist, right? Because those are relationships where there is a privilege, right? Where the things that you say to those people don't have to be disclosed.

Margaret 34:40 Like this podcast.

Mo 34:42 Right. Like this podcast is totally privileged, Margaret. It falls under the attorney podcast or privilege.

Margaret 34:52 Yeah. Okay.

Mo 34:55 I'm going to get us fired.

Margaret 35:06 Does that kind of cover your rights in casual encounters, detainment, and arrest?

Mo 35:11 Yes.

Margaret 35:12 Okay.

Mo 35:12 Yes, I really cannot stress enough how important it is not to post about protests or unlawful activity or who you're hanging out with at the anarchist bookfair on social media. And if you're doing the live streaming thing, or taking photographs or trying to do some kind of documentation, the people who need to be observed in this situation are police officers because they are the people who have power that they abuse, right? So if you feel very strongly that you need to take pictures at protests, take pictures of the police. Because taking pictures of protesters, even if they're not doing anything unlawful, can have really serious legal consequences for them. So if you see somebody and, you know, the cops can see someone in a photograph who, you know, they believe might have witnessed something unlawful, that person then can be the target of a grand jury subpoena, right? Which we'll talk about in a minute. But I mean, it can be extremely disruptive to somebody to be called before a grand jury, even if they don't know anything about the crime that's supposed to be investigated. So, you know, I just—please, please stop posting pictures on social media. I would like fewer clients!

Margaret 36:45 That's how you know you're a lawyer on the good side. "I want fewer clients."

Mo 36:51 I want my whole profession to be obsolete.

Margaret 36:54 Yeah.

Mo 36:55 But in the meantime...

Margaret 36:56 Yeah. Um, should we talk about grand juries?

Mo 37:03 Yeah, I also wanted to talk about something... Oh, yeah. Don't take pictures of protesters, because, um, there's like a whole group of non state actors, who will doxx you. And we don't need that either.

Margaret 37:19 I think that there's somewhere—and it's probably more complex—and this really gets into the—maybe you're the wrong person since you're a lawyer and you have—where you're coming from about it. There is this like, awful balance between, on some level, the visibility of these demonstrations is what has allowed them to generalize. And there's a certain amount of safety that I think that can only be found through the generalization of revolt, right? And I feel like I want people to, like, do a better job of like—I mean, you kind of covered this. It's like if you're going to, you know, film these things, like film the cops instead of the protesters or whatever. But like, the pictures of the burning cop cars are a huge reason why these results are so big. On the other hand, people's lives are ruined, because there's pictures of ruined cop car—burned cop cars.

Mo 38:08 Look, I will say this. I say this a lot. People get to make their own decisions about the degree of visibility they want. And so when I'm saying don't take pictures of protesters, you know, what I really mean is like, consent is important. And maybe people who are in those group shots haven't—or those crowd shots—haven't consented to that.

Margaret 38:33 Totally.

Mo 38:34 And I think that, you know, you don't have to stop talking about your politics on social media. Like saying that you're an anarchist on social media at this point in history is not unlawful. It's still covered by the very First Amendment, and you can do that. And, you know, it doesn't mean—you know, anything that you put on social media, of course, has the potential to invite increased scrutiny of you and your community. And that doesn't mean that the solution is self-censorship. I think the solution is courage. But I want people to be aware of the risks that they may be running and the ways in which they may be inviting increased surveillance.

Margaret 39:22 Yeah.

Mo 39:23 Of not only themselves, but their friends.

Margaret 39:26 Yeah. And especially like, what were you talking about, about shooting pictures of crowds and things like that, you know, because it's a it's a different thing between someone who—and I even, I wouldn't... You know, it's a different thing between posing in front of a burned out cop car with no one else behind you. Which is a terrible idea, like, actually. But it's—obviously if you're taking pictures of people attacking a cop car, it's a very, very different situation. Okay, so we just took a break to talk about how we're going to how we're going to organize the rest of the episode and We determined it would be more fun to cut to some of the questions from Twitter and Facebook first. And because you all had a bunch of questions, and they're not quite the same script that Mo has to give to day in and day out to teach people their rights. So, let's see... So one person wanted to ask about jury nullification and what that concept is and whether or not that's like a useful thing we should be pursuing.

Mo 40:36 Um, I think that, as I said before, the law is not always consistent with justice, and certainly is not a one-to-one correspondence. And jury nullification is a concept that acknowledges that. And jury nullification is basically when a jury determines that the person who is on trial did, in fact, engage in the conduct alleged, and that that conduct was, strictly speaking unlawful, but they determined that they believe as a matter of conscience, that the law criminalizing whatever the behavior was is itself so unjust that they refuse to enforce it. And so they find the defendant not guilty, basically, as a matter of justice, even if they know very well that there's no serious debate that the defendant did, in fact, do whatever it is they were alleged to have done.

Margaret 41:44 Okay. That sounds gloriously optimistic in a way that I might not share. Okay.

Mo 41:49 I think it's—it is something that happens and certainly defense attorneys can advise juries that that is a that is a possibility. A defense attorney can certainly say, you know, you are not required as a jury to come to a unanimous conclusion and, in fact, you must vote your conscience. You are legally required to vote your conscience and so you cannot, you know, you must not allow yourself to be bullied into reaching a verdict or into agreeing with your fellow jurors. You know, I think there are—it has some utility. I think it's a really fascinating concept. I know there's a really lovely illustrated zine about jury nullification.

Margaret 42:40 Okay.

Mo 42:40 It's by the guy who wrote, "Go the Fuck to Sleep."

Margaret 42:43 Oh, wow. Okay.

Mo 42:46 Yeah. It's a fascinating concept. It is lawful for a jury to nullify.

Margaret 42:53 Okay. Does that take consensus of the entire jury?

Mo 42:56 Ah, no.

Margaret 42:57 Interesting. Cool. Okay. So then the next question, which I'll say how is was originally phrased and then possibly present a rephrasing? "How do I stop paying taxes entirely and never get caught in Minecraft?" Which I might—the question that I would maybe ask—I actually, I warned you ahead of time that I was gonna ask this question. I clearly am not advo—whatever. Anyway, I would, you know, the rephrasing might be, "What are the means by which tax evasion laws are enforced?"

Mo 43:29 The IRS has federal agents, and you can be federally charged for tax evasion. I am a lawyer and my job is not to advise people on what they should do or what they should not do, but to advise them of the potential consequences of various courses of action.

Margaret 43:50 Okay, and so the course of action is that if you evade paying taxes, and they can especially—I'm under the impression that if they can prove that you tried to evade paying taxes for like—that you actually, not that you like, fucked up and forgot to pay but that you like, consciously chose not to pay. That's when it becomes like, a bigger deal, right?

Mo 44:09 Yeah, I will say this: if you can't pay your taxes, and you are in touch with the IRS about that. They're—they will work with you. If you are trying to evade your taxes, you can end up doing some fairly serious time. So I think that's just a cost/benefit analysis if you're going to do for yourself, my man.

Margaret 44:38 Yeah,

Mo 44:39 Uh, you know, is it worth it to you to do a whole bunch of time in federal prison? Maybe it is. That's not a choice that I would probably make for myself. And that's not necessarily something that I want for you, question asker, but it's also not my decision.

Margaret 45:01 Okay. Yeah, I'm under the impression that especially like, sometimes higher profile people who don't like the government sometimes get audited more than other people. I don't know, this is—

Mo 45:14 Yeah they do.

Margaret 45:15 And so that is a good reason to consider your public nature versus how carefully you pay your taxes.

Mo 45:24 Yeah, I think it's really important to think through, you know, whether your goal is to be visibly smashing the state, or whether you feel more effective avoiding the state. And you often cannot do both.

Margaret 45:45 So it's the one crime at a time theory.

Mo 45:47 Hmm. I haven't heard that. I'm gonna have to think about that.

Margaret 45:52 One crime at a time is like, wear your seatbelt while you're like, have stuff in your car that you don't want anyone to know about. Don't j walk on your way to the demo. You know? That kind of thing

Mo 46:05 I, I think it's a—you know, this has to do with ethics, right? Like, what are your goals?

Margaret 46:12 Yeah.

Mo 46:14 What will help you achieve those goals? How badly will your objectives be undermined if you go to federal prison?

Margaret 46:20 Yeah.

Mo 46:21 Because unless your name is Mumia, you are not as effective in a jail cell as you are out of one.

Margaret 46:32 Yeah.

Mo 46:32 I mean, also, how effective could Mumia have been if he weren't in jail cell?

Margaret 46:36 Yeah. Okay, so—

Mo 46:41 —so that was depressing.

Margaret 46:42 Yeah. Let's move on to two related questions. Okay. Well, the first one is: any recommendations for pursuing a law career as a radical?

Mo 46:53 Be prepared to be really broke?

Margaret 46:55 Mhmm.

Mo 46:57 That's pretty much it. You got to love what you do. You got to love the people you're doing it with. Um, I think it's absolutely possible to be a radical and to be a lawyer, but it looks different than most law careers.

Margaret 47:15 Yeah.

Mo 47:16 The only lawyer I knew before going to law school was my grandfather, who had gone to law school for free at night at the Y in 1932. And he was a labor lawyer. And I didn't really know, up until I went to law school, that there were people who wanted to become lawyers for reasons other than standing up for justice, which is hilariously naive. But I just was like, very sheltered in this way. And so the only role model I had for what it meant to be a lawyer was someone who, you know, whose heroes were Sacco and Vanzetti.

Margaret 48:04 You do have a different background than most of my friends.

Mo 48:09 That's probably true.

Margaret 48:11 I think it's cool.

Mo 48:12 And so, you know, when I was deciding to go to law school, it didn't really cross my mind that there were other ways to be a lawyer than the way that I am currently a lawyer. But then, when I was in law school, I was sort of flabbergasted and demoralized by how committed to law people are.

Margaret 48:41 Would you say there's—in my head, I think of there's like three alignments of lawyers and like a DND. sense, and that there's people committed to law as like a principle—in the same way that I believe in anarchism, I believe that anarchism can never be attained, but you always strive for it. I've met lawyers who have the inverse of that, right? They're like—because in my mind I'm like, the law doesn't work. Look around. It's a terrible system. And then they're like, yeah, but we try and make it better. But like, not make it better in like a social justice way, but literally, like a law as an abstract concept way. Then there's the anti-authoritarian lawyers who go to law school to learn tools by which to navigate a system that we all have to run into. And then there's the like, in it for the money lawyers. Which is funny because when you're talking about like, if you want to go to law school, prepare to be poor. And it's like—I feel like the average person going to law school, in my head, is going to law school for the inverse of that. But maybe I have a misconception of...

Mo 49:46 I don't know. I don't know all the lawyers. I don't know. Sorry. You're gonna have to do some editing Margaret.

Margaret 49:53 Okay, that's fine. I'll just cut out my whole part of that—my whole alignment spiel.

Mo 49:56 No, I like your alignment. I actually really like your alignment.

Margaret 50:00 Okay.

Mo 50:00 Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know, if I have a ton of advice. I think it's really hard to be in a profession that incentivizes—frankly, that is like a harm-maximizing model where the law is truly set up almost universally to diminish the self-determination of my clients, and to maximize the self-determination and lack of accountability of the already powerful. And that does not draw meaningful distinctions between things that are unlawful and things that are harmful, such that people are punished for things that are not harmful, and cannot be held accountable for things that are. Like, that is a hard thing to deal with. And on the other hand, like, you know, I love my work. And I feel really fortunate to be able to work with the people that I work with. And be in a community of people who care about the same kinds of things I care about and who struggle along with me to make my job obsolete.

Margaret 51:19 Okay. So if you want to be very effective, work all of the time and be very tired, becoming a radical lawyer is a decent course of action.

Mo 51:31 Yes.

Margaret 51:33 That makes sense to me. That's probably part of why I didn't end up a lawyer. When we were doing that campaign for Jerry, Jerry ended up a lawyer. And I, you know, I toured around the country giving talks about grand jury processes, and lawyers would come some of the talks, and then be like, "Oh, you actually you did that better than they gave it to me in law school." Not to just like—because I'm actually an amazing lawyer, but I'm trying to say. But, um, and I was like, "Oh, maybe I should, maybe I should go into law." And then I was like, wait, no, I like I'm like, spending good chunk of the day, like, just like kind of staring at the leaves or, you know, not talking to people. Um, okay, so to tie into that question, what can non-lawyers do to aid and support a radical law agenda?

Mo 52:23 Be on support committees. Do jail support. Write letters to political prisoners—so write letters to prisoners! Join Anarchist Black Cross, join Black and Pink. Get involved with your local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. That's it. That's it. That's the end. There's no other things you can do.

Margaret 52:48 Emotionally support the already-tired lawyers that you know. Bring them food. I would bring you food right now. Before we had—before we started this talk, I was like, I am so tired—

Mo 53:00 I wish you could bring me a nap. My at-rest state that since June, is vibrating with exhaustion.

Margaret 53:11 Yeah, see, most people don't vibrate when they're tired.

Mo 53:16 I am actually, I'm fine. I don't want to I don't want to mislead you. I am generally fine. For some reason. I'm just very tired today.

Margaret 53:24 So okay, a couple people wanted to ask about basically how like, now that radicals have guns, now that like leftists have guns, which is sort of new on the scene in the past years or so. I mean, obviously, you know, that goes back way back. Right. IWW is perfectly content to have rifles and the Battle of Blair mountain and all those things. But there's been a lot of questions about how like, lawyers who know gun laws tend to not like leftists, and progressive lawyers tend to not like guns, or not know much about guns and gun law. And so there been some questions about basically how you find that—and because I know there's been a lot of, or at least I've been hearing that sometimes gun laws are being used against, like to target radical communities and things like that.

Mo 54:19 There was a lawsuit that was brought after Charlottesville that targeted a lot of the militias that had come down for that stupid rally. But then it also targeted Redneck Revolt, right? I mean, that's like the kind of liberal thinking in the law that like places a lot of faith in The Law without a lot of nuance that I think can be really damaging. So yeah, I mean, I think this question asker has a—it's a perspicacious question. I don't have a great solution. I mean, for example: So one thing I would say is that more radical lawyers in more rural areas are more likely to have a grip on this. Because there are, culturally, there's like, a lot of places in the United States where having guns is really very common, and is not necessarily a matter of political alignment. I would say like, in places like New York City, where the city itself, the municipality itself, has like extremely stringent gun laws. New Jersey also has extremely stringent gun laws. San Francisco, right? There are certain places where there is sort of this, like, liberal distaste for firearms that ends up being kind of a weird proxy for your politics.

Margaret 56:01 Hmm. So like, of you have a gun, and then therefore your right wing?

Mo 56:07 Yeah. And I don't think it's like—I don't think it's a good thing. And I don't think it's a necessary thing. So I think there are parts of the country where that's the case. But I also suspect that like, places that are more rural and places where it's like much more typical for people to own guns, gun ownership is not a proxy for your politics. And so I think that there are definitely parts of the country where you're not necessarily going to only find attorneys who are conversant with gun law who are NRA members.

Margaret 56:43 Right.

Mo 56:45 Right. I just, I think that's a problem that is born of a certain kind of geography more than a certain kind of politics.

Margaret 56:58 Yeah.

Mo 57:00 I don't know a ton about gun law. But I do think that there's—I think that there are attorneys who are not super conservative or like, explicitly white supremacist who do know about gun law. Okay. And I certainly think, you know, let's like actually look at the ways in which state repression has been brought to bear against black and brown communities by a gang law. There are definitely defense attorneys who work with communities that have been subject to intense state repression, that is basically on the basis of gun ownership, who definitely are going to know about self-defense law and gun law, who are not going to be super conservative. They're just not necessarily going to be working with like, ant-racist white people. So yeah, I think that, you know, when we're talking about like, radical attorneys, or movement attorneys, like, I think we are actually doing a disservice to the profession of defenders who might not be doing work that is explicitly politically motivated, but they're definitely defending against prosecutions that are politically and racially motivated. And they have that expertise and are useful resources to our communities. But like, they might not be visible to like anarchist communities because they're actually on the ground doing the work of like day-to-day defending against racialized state repression that maybe isn't legible to white anarchist groups.

Margaret 58:54 That's a really good point. And are there folks sort of within the framework of lawyers that I feel like most people in movement spaces that I'm and talk about is the NLG, the National Lawyers Guild—and are there lawyers within the nlg? Who might be more from one way or another versed with gun laws? Or is that still not really as much part of NLG culture?

Mo 59:24 I don't think it's super part of NLG culture at this point, because it's only pretty recently that we're seeing people at protests—the people who we defend at protests—being armed.

Margaret 59:43 Yeah.

Mo 59:44 Like, that's just a more recent development. But again, I think some of this is just about geography. I think like, guild lawyers in places like South Dakota and Oklahoma and West Virginia are probably going to have a lot more fluency with their gun laws than people in New York City or Newark.

Margaret 1:00:09 Right. Okay, so we just talked about what to do if the cops are stopping you if you're getting arrested. What about when feds are coming around and knocking on people's doors?

Mo 1:00:19 Yeah, so this is actually really important right now. We're seeing a lot of federal involvement in protest in what are more often and typically historically understood to be matters that would fall under state jurisdiction. So we're seeing federal agents policing protests, we're seeing the assertion of federal jurisdiction based on really tenuous grounds. And taken together with, you know, Trump's claims over the summer about Antifa as like a domestic terror organization, and Biden's sort of parallel identification of anarchists as categorically a criminal identity. Federal power is being consolidated and escalated to repress First Amendment protected activity nationwide. So the first thing that I want to say is, we started a hotline. The National Lawyers Guild started a federal defense national hotline, you can reach it at 212-679-2811. For folks to call in the event that they have an encounter with federal law enforcement.

Margaret 1:01:23 I'm just gonna say it again. It's 212-679-2811. Okay, sorry.

Mo 1:01:29 And so if you call that hotline, you're going to get me and you're gonna be able to have a privileged and confidential—and if you call me back on Signal—a secure conversation about this. What I mean by an encounter with federal law enforcement is not that you got hurt by a federal agent. That's kind of a different issue where you're going to want a civil rights lawyer.

Margaret 1:01:54 Okay.

Mo 1:01:55 What I mean by an encounter with federal law enforcement is, federal agents call you or visit your home or work, or you or someone close to you gets arrested by federal agents, or you are served a federal grand jury subpoena. This is not the right hotline to call if you've been hurt by police at a protest, although I will refer you appropriately.

Margaret 1:02:14 Okay.

Mo 1:02:15 And it is not the right hotline to call about whistleblower matters. But if you call this hotline, you can have a privileged conversation about your rights, risks, and responsibilities, and I will do my best to refer you to the most appropriate legal resources in your geographic area no matter where you are.

Margaret 1:02:32 Okay.

Mo 1:02:33 So the—basically, the most common kind of first contact folks have with law enforcement—with federal law enforcement—is a door knock. So historically, this is the most common way that federal agents interact with activists in person is via door knocks, where they just attempt to approach an individual in their home or work and see if they will speak to them voluntarily. I cannot stress enough that you have no obligation to let law enforcement into your home without a warrant and you have no obligation to cooperate with law enforcement investigation. Certainly not before talking to a lawyer. I am not being contrarian. Declining to answer questions is not evidence of guilt, whatever they may tell you. It is protected by the Constitution. And failing to exercise your rights can be extremely dangerous for yourself and others. There is just never a reason—never a compelling reason—not to consult with a lawyer before answering questions posed by law enforcement. So if an agent knocks on your door, get in the habit of finding out who was at the door before you answer it. If they say, "We just want to talk," it's cops. If it's law enforcement, ask if they have a warrant. And if you're able to do so call your lawyer or call that hotline immediately.

Margaret 1:03:58 Okay.

Mo 1:03:58 If they have a search warrant, ask them to slide it under the door.

Margaret 1:04:05 And then you're looking for a signature on that, right?

Mo 1:04:10 Yeah, you want it to have been signed by a judge within the last 10 days.

Margaret 1:04:13 Okay.

Mo 1:04:14 If it is an arrest warrant, you can walk outside and shut the door behind you. I honestly would say like, ask them if you can surrender yourself later with an attorney. And if they have a warrant and they say no, walk out and shut the door behind you. Because at the very least, you know, you can by surrendering probably avoid further violence and protect your home from intrusion. If it's a search warrant, stand back from the door and read it aloud so that you know what they're allowed to look for and where, and the agents know that you know what they're allowed to look for and where. If they don't have a warrant, you don't have to open the door.

Margaret 1:04:59 Okay.

Mo 1:05:00 What I want everyone to be able to truthfully say is, "I am represented by counsel, let me get your name and number and I will have my lawyer call you." The reason I want you to be able to say you're represented is that once law enforcement knows you're represented, they can't approach you directly without a warrant. So, you know, either say, "I'm represented by counsel, leave your name and number and I'll have my lawyer call you." Or if you don't yet have a lawyer, say, "Let me get your name and number and I'll have my lawyer call you." And then call the hotline.

Margaret 1:05:32 Okay.

Mo 1:05:34 So what will happen after that—what should happen after that is your attorney would call them try to figure out what they want, if there's a prosecutor who's working with the investigation, anything else we can find out. And then this attorney can be the sort of conduit between you and the state, to the extent that there needs to be any kind of communication and a bulwark against state intrusion. And honestly, typically, this is sufficient to put an end to the inquiry, because the feds often want low-hanging fruit. They don't like dealing with lawyers. They want to see if people will talk to them voluntarily, and if they won't, that's often the end of it.

Margaret 1:06:14 Okay.

Mo 1:06:15 If that isn't the end, the sort of two most likely outcomes are an arrest warrant, in which case, you need an experienced criminal defense attorney—preferably one who is really able to listen to your goals, which in the event that you are someone who's like being targeted because of your participation in a social movement, your goals may be less self-interested then defense attorneys are kind of used to or are trained to assume.

Margaret 1:06:41 Right.

Mo 1:06:44 So your, you know, first most likely outcome if the fed doesn't just go away after hearing from your lawyer is that they issue an arrest warrant. And otherwise, another possible outcome is that you get a grand jury subpoena. And so we'll talk about grand juries in a little bit.

Margaret 1:07:05 Okay. And then... So one of the things that I try to talk to you about with people is to remember, don't like, like, really, really don't lie or tell the truth, especially to feds?

Mo 1:07:19 Yes.

Margaret 1:07:19 Like, it's always best to just never lie or tell the truth. Like, I mean—

Mo 1:07:23 It's extremely dangerous to talk to federal law enforcement.

Margaret 1:07:27 Yeah.

Mo 1:07:31 It's extremely dangerous to talk to federal law enforcement because it is a federal offense to lie to federal agents. And they're, you know, trained to elicit things that can be construed as lies. And if you do lie to them and aren't able to correct, like whatever material misrepresentation of fact, then they can use that as leverage against you to try to get you to cooperate in their investigation. Because they'll say, well, you lied to us and that's a five year mandatory minimum. But if you cooperate, we won't prosecute you for the perjury or for the material misrepresentation.

Margaret 1:08:13 Right. Which includes like—

Mo 1:08:15 So the best thing is to just say nothing, to say, "I'm represented, leave your name and number, and I'll have my lawyer call you."

Margaret 1:08:23 Which includes even stuff like, if they ask about your roommate, don't say like, "Oh, she doesn't live here."

Mo 1:08:28 Right?

Margaret 1:08:29 You know, just literally just the like, shut—you know, ask for a card or whatever, right?

Mo 1:08:35 Yeah, no matter what they say, no matter what they say to you: "Leave your name and number and I will have my lawyer call you."

Margaret 1:08:42 Okay. And then at that point, they call the hotline, and everything works out well, from then on.

Mo 1:08:49 I cannot anticipate the behavior of police and prosecutors.

Margaret 1:08:54 Ah, interesting. Okay.

Mo 1:08:55 But I will say that typically, in my experience, things work out less badly if you call a lawyer. Yeah. Than if you talk to federal agents on your own.

Margaret 1:09:08 Is there from a legal point of view—a lot of the advice that's going around right now in social movement circles that I tend to appreciate is the idea that if you get visited federally, there's no reason to keep that to yourself.

Mo 1:09:19 No, absolutely not.

Margaret 1:09:20 Because they know they visited you, so...

Mo 1:09:23 Of course.

Margaret 1:09:25 And letting people know that you got visited I think helps make people paranoid and then make bad decision—no, um, help people like be aware of their own risks.

Mo 1:09:34 Here's the thing, state repression exists 100% of the time. Sometimes you're fortunate enough to get a reminder.

Margaret 1:09:41 Yeah. That's so dark. Is that the note we're ending on?

Mo 1:09:47 Sorry.

Margaret 1:09:47 No, it's okay. It might be the note we're ending on.

Mo 1:09:50 Oh, I'm so sorry.

Margaret 1:09:55 Well, thanks for being on and we'll try and have you on in the future when you have a chance to talk about grand juries. But for now it seems like police and federal agents seem to be the primary things we're dealing with, at least at this moment. So.

Mo 1:10:08 Yeah, in most parts of the country, that's the case. I think that might change.

Margaret 1:10:11 Yeah.

Mo 1:10:12 In the coming months, but yeah, we'll see.

Margaret 1:10:20 Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, then please tell people about it. Actually, also write down the NLG federal defense hotline number, which is 212-679-2811. And it'll be in the show notes. But you know, write that shit down. I guess, keep it by your door. God, what a dark time. But, you know, that's a thing. And so if you enjoyed listening to this episode, please tell people about it. Please tell people about it on social media, please like and comment and review and subscribe and do all the things that tell algorithms to tell other people to listen to it. And also just, you know, tell people in person. That's been happening more and more, and it's really heartening to see. It makes the effort of this worth it. And also this week is the first week that we have transcription that's coming out alongside the episode and I'm very proud of that and very excited about that. And that's I've been able to hire someone to do the transcription who is a single parent and certainly could use the work and that's thanks to y'alls support. If y'all want to support financially, you can. You can support this podcast by supporting me directly on Patreon. My Patreon is patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And if you back me there, then there's all kinds of zines and music and various things up there. And also, if you make less money than I do, like, if you live off of less money than I make on Patreon in a month, don't back me on Patreon unless you really want to but, you can just message me and I'll get you all of my stuff for free. Because that's the way that money should work. And as much as money should—money really shouldn't exist—but that's completely beside the point. In particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hass the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane and The Compound for making this episode and the show possible. Yeah, that's all I got. Stay as safe as you can. Actually, you know, there's one thing that I want to focus on, there's like something that that most that really gets at something where, you know, what matters is courage. And courage is not—this is my own words of it or probably some shit I stole off a meme on the internet or something—but courage is not the absence of fear. It's the overcoming of fear. And in order to stay safe, we need to stay brave. The bunker mentality is the cowards mentality. I should stop recording now. Have a good week.

Episode Notes

On this episode, host Margaret Killjoy ruminates on the philosophical ideas of how and why to get involved in prepping from a non-individualistic point of view. She also answers questions!

You can follow Margaret on twitter @magpiekilljoy and instagram @margaretkilljoy or support her on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

In this mini-episode, Margaret answers some feedback about the previous episode.

Episode Notes

You can donate to our guest's training of QTBIPOC via cashapp $armqtbipoc or venmo @armqtbipoc

The host can be found on twitter at https://www.twitter.com/magpiekilljoy, on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/margaretkilljoy, or on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

The Indigenous Anarchist Federation can be found on twitter @IAF__FAI Their website is one of the best preparedness resources available for protestors and other rebels: https://iaf-fai.org/

Camp Red Sleeves can be found on twitter @redsleevesaca They run a monthly fundraiser to maintain their anticolonial mutual aid efforts and if you enjoyed this episode please donate to them

Other websites referenced on this episode include: https://www.indigenousmutualaid.org and https://www.indigenousaction.org/

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy, instagram @margaretkilljoy, or patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

The guests provided us with some resources:

Herbal first aid aftercare for those who have experienced police violence: https://drive.google.com/file/d/14nVeF6auCIqQRBh-q3gyEmV5POiYur_Z/view

Seed, Soil and Spirit: an herb school for QTBIPOC and allies with social justice framing: https://www.seedsoilspirit.com

Rootwork Herbals: an online and in-person school: https://www.rootworkherbals.com/herbal-education

Excellent free foundational herbal medicine resources from Jim Macdonald: https://www.herbcraft.org

Introduction to herbal medicine book from Rosemary Gladstar: https://www.storey.com/books/rosemary-gladstars-medicinal-herbs/

Herbal first aid wound care from 7song: https://7song.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Herbal-First-Aid-Wound-Care.pdf

Free online herb school with the late great Michael Moore: www.swsbm.com/school/

This is an herbal respiratory infection protocol. Good for the upcoming flu season: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12b09xsVmA0_6nDTjgqFtxZXnT8CTkClMKDyqPOi-jOk/edit

Youtube channel with educational herb and gardening videos from Joe Hollis at Mountain Gardens: https://www.youtube.com/user/mountaingardens/featured

Ideas for an herbal first aid kit. Make your own! https://learningherbs.com/remedies-recipes/herbal-travel-first-aid-kit/

Learn about Bidens, a weedy and abundant herb that works wonders on serious infections: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/2016/02/16/bidens-as-an-herbal-antibiotic-a-case-study/

Indigenous perspective on relations with plants: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer: https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass

How is our individual health tied to that of our communities, our society and all of life on Earth? Read about Radical Vitalism: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/radical-vitalism-by-janet-kent-and-dave-meesters/

Herbs for grounding in turbulent times: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/?s=herbs+for+grounding

Herbs for when you are freaking out: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/?s=emergency

Zines: Ease Your Mind: Herbs for Mental Health https://firestorm.coop/products/4003-ease-your-mind.html

Under Pressure: Herbs for Resilience https://firestorm.coop/products/12035-under-pressure.html

On the radical potential of herbalism: Using the elements as a map through the ever-changing and increasingly challenging territory, for individuals and movements: You are Nature: Working with the Elements for Change: https://radicalvitalism.wordpress.com/2020/02/01/you-are-nature-working-with-the-elements-for-change/

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at https://www.twitter.com/magpiekilljoy and instagram at https://www.instagram.com/margaretkilljoy. You can support her on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

Robert Evans can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/iwriteok Some of his podcasts (which can be found wherever you listen to podcasts) include Behind the Bastards, It Could Happen Here, The Women's War, and Worst Year Ever.

Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy Her patreon is at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

Kitty can be found on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/kittystryker and twitter at https://twitter.com/kittystryker

Her five-day preparation article: https://thebolditalic.com/be-prepared-a-5-day-ish-guide-to-basic-emergency-prepping-86960f03279

Margaret can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/magpiekilljoy and on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

In this episode I talk with Mixæl Laufer of the Four Thieves Vinegar about their work offering access to medications that are sometimes unavailable. We discuss their work on the epi-pencil, the open source apothecary microlab, aboritificants, naloxone, and other wet chemistry drugs as well as offering some introductory information about how people extract hormones, insulin, and thyroid. We also talk a good deal about what it would mean to live in a world in which access to life-saving and life-improving medicine is actually accessible.

Mixæl Laufer can be found on twitter at https://twitter.com/MichaelSLaufer The Four Thieves Vinegar Collective can be found online at https://fourthievesvinegar.org/ The open insulin project, referenced in this show, can be found online at https://openinsulin.org/

Episode Notes

This episode covers what demonstrators might want to know about wearing body armor. We cover the types of armor, how to source them, how to fit armor to different body types, what you can and can't skip for cost savings, and more.

If you choose to wear body armor, we recommend IIIA level vests for soft armor (bulletproof vests) or level III+ for hard armor (plate carriers). Soft armor is substantially lighter and more convenient, but only protects against handguns.

We are not advocating for escalation, only for individual and community defense and for our ability to continue to demonstrate as safely as we can.

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Casandra continue their talk with Shane Burley and Ben Lorber about how antisemitism manifests on the left and about Shane and Ben's new book "Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism."

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Guest Info

Shane Burley can be found on Twitter @Shane_Burley1, on Instagram @ShaneBurley, on Mastodon @Shane_Burley, and on Patreon at www.patreon.com/ShaneBurley

Ben Lorber can be found on Twitter @BenLorber8 or on IG @ben.lorber.18

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.

Episode Notes

Nwcg.gov has some online training for firefighting. readyforwildfire.org is for basic home hardening / prep fireadaptednetwork.org is a directory of folks working on fire resilience in various areas Calpba.org has all the prescribed burn associations in California

Episode Notes

Bex has compiled this list of supplies and where one option of where you can source them:

IFAK Build 🦇 Current lowest price per kit: $95.25 (This doesn't include tax, shipping, or bag/pouch for the kit)

CAT Gen 7 (1) $30/each: available from NAR, Chinook, Rescue Essentials, etc

ETD (2) 4" flat, $7/each: https://www.narescue.com/flat-emergency-trauma-dressing-etd.html

Chest seal (2) Hyfin twin pack, $15/pair: https://www.narescue.com/hyfin-vent-chest-seal-twin-pack.html

Hemostatic gauze (1)

ChitoGauze z-fold, 3"x4yd, $32/each (on sale) https://www.rescue-essentials.com/chitogauze-xl-otc-3-x-4-yds-z-folded/

Celox rapid Z-fold, 3"x5', needs med auth to purchase? $34/each https://www.rescue-essentials.com/celox-rapid-z-folded-red-packaging/

QuikClot combat gauze z-fold, 3"x4yd, $43/each https://www.narescue.com/all-products/massive-hemorrhage/combat-gauze-z-fold-hemostatic.html

Sharpie (1) Staples 12 pack, $8/12 on sale (.66/each) https://www.staples.com/Sharpie-Fine-Point-Permanent-Markers-Black-12-pk-1812419/product_371792

Gloves (2 pair) Nitrile exam gloves size L, $13/100 (. 52/kit) https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-12549L/Nitrile-Gloves/Uline-Exam-Grade-Nitrile-Gloves-Powder-Free-Large

Shears (1) 7.5" stainless Shears, $3/each https://www.rescue-essentials.com/emt-shears-7-5stainless-steel/

Zipper bag for gloves (1) "sandwich size", $3.50/50 (. 07/each) https://www.staples.com/Glad-Resealable-Sandwich-Storage-Bags-50-Box/product_134708

Episode Notes

I've spent most of the past two months researching police weaponry and how to stay safe while challenging state power. In this episode I discuss gas masks, respirators, goggles, and filters. My guest for this episode is Jack, my bandmate in the band Alsarath ( https://alsarath.bandcamp.com ).

Much of this information can also be found in the article A Demonstrator's Guide to Gas Masks & Goggles, published by CrimethInc: https://crimethinc.com/2020/09/02/a-demonstrators-guide-to-gas-masks-and-goggles-everything-you-need-to-know-to-protect-your-eyes-and-lungs-from-gas-and-projectiles

you can support this show and my other projects on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

You can donate to the fund for US medical volunteers returning from Syria here: http://paypal.me/RojMedical

I recommended the podcast Worst Year Ever's episode The Reasonable Person's Guide to Prepping and you can find that here: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-worst-year-ever-49377032/episode/the-reasonable-persons-guide-to-prepping-59450250/

For gear lists I recommend theprepared.com

The Jane Addams Collective can be found online at https://janeaddamscollective.org/

The full text of the book Mutual Aid, Trauma, and Resiliency can be found online at https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-jane-addams-collective-mutual-aid-trauma-and-resiliency

A transcription of the episode, provided by a comrade who desires to see more accessible anarchist content:

S01E04 Aine on Isolation, Loneliness and COVID-19 Live Like The World Is Dying

0:00.0# (Introductory music) 0:16.8# Margaret Killjoy: Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying, the podcast that focuses on, well, what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. This week I'm talking with Aine, a member of the Jane Addams Collective out of New York city. The Jane Adams Collective is an anarchist collective that works on mental health issues. It's mostly mental health professionals who work on... Basically developing forms of self-therapy and... That are applicable to when people don't have access to traditional therapy or don't want the hierarchical model of traditional therapy. They also have done a lot of work and written a short book about mutual aid and trauma and basically the... How trauma comes up in disaster situations and what we can do about it. So I'm very excited to have Aine on the podcast. I know I promised that this week I was going to talk to a friend of mine who just came back from the autonomous regions of... Northern Syria and I have that interview done but I feel like this particular one needs to go up as soon as possible. One result of my own self-isolation is that I don't have access to my usual recording space. I actually live off-grid without real internet and without electricity so sometimes I have limited access to certain things and the place I normally record has someone living there who can't really have people over right now. So I apologize in advance for the audio quality of the interview. But I think it's absolutely worth hearing anyway and I... I hope you enjoy it. 2:00.0# Margaret: Before the interview gets started, I just wanna say a few words on my own about mutual aid and this particular crisis. I think that one of the things that we're watching happen is the failure of national-level governments to keep us safe but an incredible amount of work done both on the international level and at the local level to... And on the individual level to try and keep each other safe during... During this crisis. And I think in a lot of ways that's a natural pre-figuration of what society probably should look like where... Experts on an international level are able to advise local infrastructure about how best to act without actually having the power at the top. Instead having the power at the bottom, we can keep each other safe. And the other thing I wanna say is that... I'm... I'm cooped up right now but a lot of people aren't. A lot of people are out there working their jobs either because they have some shit service class work job where their boss won't... Shut down the cafe and during a pandemic, or people are out there working at day shelters for homeless people, or working in health or delivering food or working in the other... Essential things that... That we need in order to stay safe as a society. And not only does my heart and... My heart go out to people who are doing that work, but I also want to suggest that in a society that we hope to build, hopefully that most dangerous work, that front line work is something that people can cycle through. People can come in and out of. This isn't... Really my own idea, this is coming from someone I care about who... Works at a day shelter and realizes that people will die if they stop going to work. So they still go to work. But it is an awful lot to deal with right now and I hope that whatever happens, none of us really know what's going to happen, I hope that we're able to, not just cheer on people who are doing that kind of work, but figure out how some of us who are capable can step up and take some of the burden off of those people and maybe cycle people in and out of certain tasks. I don't know, something to think about. Maybe I'm completely off base, I don't know. But anyway, here's the interview and I hope you get as much out of it as I did. 4:39.4# (Musical transition) 4:52.2# Margaret: So, welcome to the podcast. If you want to introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and any political or organizational affiliations that you want to mention. 5:04.7# Aine: Yeah, my name is Aine. She/her. I am an anarchist and I've... I'm in Jane Addams... the Jane Addams Collective. It's a radical anarchist mental health collective that's been around about five years. I do a few other things and do work out of the base in Brooklyn as well. 5:26.7# Margaret: Okay. Do you want to... So I... I put out a call to try and find basically... Anarchist or radical mental health professionals to talk about... What's been going on right now in terms of... I know myself, I know I've been practicing social distancing for a couple weeks already and obviously the number people doing that have... Has just been going up. And of course that is a... Even for an introvert like me, not the easiest thing in the... In this world. And so... I guess I wanted to talk to you about that. About the effects of social distancing and how we can manage them. 6:09.7# Aine: Absolutely. And that's particularly important considering we're already sort of behind in terms isolation. There's been a growing loneliness epidemic in the last... Few years. Partly due to capitalism but due to other things as well, that's sort of... Set us at an off footing here. Like people have fewer friends and reliable social connections than they used to do in a lot of meaningful ways. Often through no fault of their own but it... The social distancing probably feels more onerous when there's already a lack of genuine social connection. And the anxiety that... The virus, while also very scary and a problem, is... A face for people's anxiety about other existing collapse in their own lives as well. And it's a very notable and present face. So it's really easy to think of that one thing as the problem when it's showing the inefficiencies and the breakages in centralization and hierarchical responses to things. 7:15.2# Margaret: So what do we do about it? So what do we do... For someone who's listening to this podcast who... Is going to be practicing social distancing? I guess what I want to talk to you a little bit about that and then I also wanna talk to you about people who have to... Who aren't able to practice social distancing. People who... Do social work or healthcare work or... Just basically... Are continuing to be in high-risk situations. About how to manage that kind of fear and anxiety. But I want to start maybe with... With the social distancing aspect. 7:52.8# Aine: Absolutely. In all of the... Obviously the necessity of having... Reducing the risk collectively for communities spread of the... Of COVID-19 is pretty reasonable. A lot of the social things that one would do to try to maintain their sanity in a stressful time of any sort apply pretty broadly here. Trying to actively maintain, at least virtually, the connections you have. It's very easy to get into an "out of sight, out of mind" sort of a thing when you're alone... And especially when you're lonely. And that sort of perpetuates itself, so even if you're making a point of reaching out to, "Who do I know around here, who do I know who might be doing same thing." And since you're not physically able to be around people if you're doing the ultimate version of the isolation. Having those connections across broader distances, like to your family across the country if they're there somewhere. It doesn't need to be your next door neighbor either. Some sense of connection and someone to talk to is super vital. And if you don't have as many of those, finding... There's a fair number of... Other ways to try to build new connections, at least technologically. I'm not a huge fan of them but if you're very lonely they are helpful sometimes. 9:15.4# Margaret: Can you give me an example, even though you're not a huge fan of it? 9:19.2# Aine: Yeah. Any of the... The centralization of all the websites and message boards where it's like you can go on a thread about something or go on Reddit or find a Discord chat room that has interesting people in it who you can talk to about the things you care about. Those can be outlets. But I think they're useful to an extent and they can reduce some of the degree to which you feel isolated or lonely. But a lot of times the... Nature of technological distance sort of leaves something that's qualitative about human interaction out of it. And though you can abates some of your loneliness as far as knowing that someone is listening to what you're saying and interacting with someone, there's a lot of aspects of what we need out of human interaction that are physically interpersonal. Even if you're not touching someone, having someone there, seeing their gestures, getting an idea of... Those things are very different when they're mediated through a technological lens. Particularly one that's organized and designed for the purpose of developing capital or servicing ads. 10:23.8# Margaret: Yeah, that makes sense. Yesterday one of my neighbors... I live rurally and someone who lives on the other side of the hill as me, we met at the top of the hill and me and their kid just basically sat 6 feet apart and talked about our lives. And it was very strange to have this... 10:46.5# Aine: Aww, that's so adorable. 10:48.7# Margaret: Non-connected picnic of sorts, but... So would... Would you say that one of the reasons... So you say that you're not as excited the technological solutions, is that also... Is there a difference between reaching out to that people you already know technologically versus the kind of... Message board, forum type of connections? 11:11.2# Aine: Yeah, yeah. There's both a difference in knowing what kind of information you can get from someone, what your relationship is like is very helpful in those situations. Like, you don't always go to the same people for one kind of problem. And... But beyond that, it's... When you're communicating with someone on the phone or on a messageboard or something, part of the effort that you're doing is modeling that person in your brain. And literally building a version of them, not necessarily picturing them unless you're super visual. But having an actual... That cognitive process of seeing, imagining the person you're interacting with and their specificity and who you are in interaction with them. It takes up as much as the other normal social things. It's why having a hands-free device to talk on phone while you're driving isn't any safer. You're doing the same cognitive tasks. 12:10.5# Margaret: Oh, interesting. Okay. 12:12.5# Aine: Yeah, yeah. So it... Since it's a bit more tiring, it's a bit... It is just literally cognitively more difficult to communicate remotely because we need be conceptualizing the social relationship we have and the person that we're interacting with in order to build social solidarity and do some of those things, which is possible but limited through technology. 12:37.1# Margaret: So... Do you have... So if you're practicing social distancing and you're not completely self-isolated, are there other things to do? Basically you're just saying make sure to try and keep up with your friends. 12:52.9# Aine: Yeah, yeah. And... 12:54.8# Margaret: Sorry. Go ahead. No, go ahead. 12:57.1# Aine: Yeah. And obviously there's... Depending on where you are, because there's a lot of differences. In an urban it's very difficult to avoid people anyway. I live in New York City and if I feel extremely lonely I can still go to one of the open coffee shops or go to the library and stay six feet from anyone. And just not touch anything and wash my hands. And be slightly more at risk. But I'm also an able-bodied, super healthy, 30-year-old that's not... I'm not in one of those cases where I might be more isolated. The people who are able to physically get out, if not while trying to reduce the degree to which they're exposing themselves or someone else to contagion, those people have to be checking on the sorts of folks who can't. Actually, Zoe said it when they were on your podcast as well. The people are more at risk, who don't have the ability to... Quit working or don't have the ability to leave their homes or are particularly immuno-compromised. The people who are able to check them probably should. If you know people like that in your life, instead of waiting for them to say, "Hey, I need help" maybe see how they're doing. Because there's a lot of people you might know that you haven't thought about. Like, "Oh this person might actually need help right now." 14:17.3# Margaret: Yeah. I guess that gets back to what you're saying about avoiding the, "out of sight, out of mind" kind of mentality. 14:24.1# Aine: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, even if it's just thinking about, "What is my social network?" In the terms of preparedness for disasters, on the average, any person regardless of inclination could do it. The first thing is like, "Okay who are the people I know? What do they know how to do and how can I help them how can they help me?" I know people who if there were some serious medical emergency I could talk to them but... I also get a couple of texts a week from a friend who's extra anxious about something. There's sort of a... Everyone has these different skills and thinking of your social networks partly as like social infrastructure is helpful for preparing for these things. Because to a certain degree some of the informational public health and supportive infrastructure that's at the higher... More hierarchical level is replicated by resource sharing and mutual aid. If you're thinking of your relationships in that way, but oftentimes it's just like, "Oh yeah, I know my neighbor." Not like, "Oh, my neighbor might need some help too." 15:34.6# Margaret: Yeah, one of things that I... I've talked to a couple of people I've interviewed about... Is basically the importance of agency during crisis and this is a particularly interesting one because in some ways, the lack of federal response, at least in the United States, and I know also in Britain it's even worse I think, has kind of left this hole that is being filled by mutual aid networks that are cropping up. I'm wondering if there's anything like that going on in New York City that you're around or... Basically how mental health can plug into... Mental health work can plug into mutual aid in crisis. 16:17.2# Aine: Yeah. There's not a lot going on that I'm aware of. I'm certain there are things happening. I've seen more internal to the groups I'm involved with. People supporting each other and provide advice about if someone's been sick, coming and bringing them food and that kind of thing. But as far as like mental health responses, the nature of this crisis has been making me think a bit about resiliency much as Zoe was talking about in your previous podcast. And the Jane Addams Collective released a book, more of a pamphlet, about mutual aid, trauma and resiliency. And one of the focuses there was about the way that we respond to crisis and mass crises and these sorts of things. And obviously there are things that we can do now to help vulnerable people and mitigate the worse parts of this. But a lot of the things that are the most useful are long-term and preparatory. For trauma or for preparation for a public health crisis. And generally it's... That idea of resiliency is a collective and social idea. You're having to build these things as a group. And part of that's because the way that we tend to respond to crisis and the way that we put urgency on things is very short-term. That's a broad generalization but it seems to be fairly accurate. 17:45.4# Margaret: That we jump from crisis to crisis rather than... 17:47.7# Aine: Yeah. Yeah, we're great at that. Yeah, and it's at the cost of things that we are building that are useful... That are useful in the day-to-day but also are... Have the seed to being something that's self-sustaining or... Survival programs and that kind of thing. If more of those are up and running just on a daily basis, then the need to create them suddenly when some disaster occurs is a lot less present. You just need to prepare them for the specific thing that's happening. 18:19.1# Margaret: It seems like that's often a problem that we also run into. Not just... Governmental structures that aren't prepared for crisis but even as anarchists or even in horizontal structures we often are jumping from crisis to crisis. But I think there's a... It's hard to maintain... It's hard to maintain counter-infrastructure when the traditional infrastructure is working and meeting people's needs and also suppressing any counter-infrastructure. So I wanna give ourselves the credit to say that in some ways it's... It's a very uphill battle to try and maintain counter-infrastructure when... When it's not crisis. 19:02.1# Aine: Oh absolutely. And the... Anything good will be crushed by someone unless you defend it. So... It's definitely an uphill battle. But some of those smaller connections that we don't think of as infrastructure are building blocks for that. The affinity group is mostly mythical in my experience of the world. But collections of people who are willing to do things together do exist more frequently, in my experience. Like sometimes those connections, if we're actually examining and then thinking about the way that we relate to each other and what are skills needs and risk assessments as a collective are. Those smaller connections can be built into something more useful. Because the lack of a strong social connection and even just strong mental health infrastructure, like being able to talk about your problems or the way that organizing in general is not really open for people who are mentally ill. There's not really a place to be kinda crazy and even if you're pretty sane-passing, it's not super easy to not have those things interrupt your ability to be part of a collective working on some of those things. So a lot of these things, while they're... Obviously more obvious now and more immediately pressing and all of that, but one of the most important ways to resist that, like crisis and emergency and continually having our hopes smashed by the difficult situation that we're all in. I don't know, it kind of requires co-opting a bit of that... That politics is personal. It's like that Embrace song. "Your emotions are nothing but politics?" 20:59.5# Margaret: So... Okay, so if one of the main things that we can be doing is... It's this beautiful and interesting irony, the main thing we can do is strengthen our interpersonal connections... While practicing social distancing. Are there things that you can suggest to people who... Like, say you're someone who is more at risk or are most fully isolated, or are cut-off from communication? I know that I... I only have limited electricity where I live and it's not too hard for me to imagine spending some time where my phone isn't working or something like that. What are things that people can do to basically keep themselves... I don't want to say keep themselves sane, but keep themselves from having their mental health deteriorate when... When social connections aren't available. Or are less available. 22:09.8# Aine: Yeah, and for some people that's absolutely going to be true. Findings social connections is hard and harder then it's ever been in a lot of ways. But there are a lot of... Some of the standard... Self-care advice. It's limited but finding coping skills and things that are helpful for you. And also having an idea of when that might be done. Like having some finality to it. Normally you need to be in isolation for 14 day if you think might have it. And you probably... You might isolate yourself longer if you have particular vulnerability to respiratory illnesses. But finding one... Regular sleep is always really helpful even if there's no one around it's important to at least try to have the same amount of sleep every night, even if it's not the same times. That can go pretty far away, along with finding things that you actually enjoy doing. Fighting off boredom is pretty hard. And boredom and loneliness go together pretty well. They really kind of stoke each other. So... Obviously you don't wanna just be sitting trying to entertain yourself all the time. Like take up knitting. Unfortunately a lot of it's... Really personal. Trying to find things that are useful for you or that... Or somewhat distracting from your least pleasant thoughts and inclinations is useful in the short-term but that's not good long-term advice. 23:44.5# Margaret: So video games is not a long-term solution. It's a short-term solution. 23:47.5# Aine: Right. But if you wanna play them for the next 2 weeks, please do. Yeah. Yeah, 'cause it's like if you don't have the social connections that would help reduce what is ultimately a socially indicated problem, like psychological distress, then you aren't going to be able to solve the problem. You can mitigate it and cope with it and make it less onerous to deal with. But it's going to be like a reaction to the symptoms rather than something that's actually radical and gets to the cause of the problem. But coping skills, grounding skills, finding entertainment that you like, if you can physically go outside without exposing yourself to a bunch of people, nature is awesome if you can find it and get it... Yeah. 24:36.8# Margaret: Yeah, that's the thing I'm lucky about. I... I sometimes wish I had running water or consistent internet or... For listeners, we had to navigate this interview based on the fact that I can't go to the recording studio I normally go to because someone who lives there is immuno-compromised and so I don't have internet at home enough to... To do any kind of interview. So this has been kind of fun just set up. But the one upside I have is that I literally walk outside my front door into the woods. And can go... Hiking through the woods if I want. I don't know whether I would trade that for easy access to video games or not. Maybe if it was only a week I might. I might prefer video games for a week. But longer term, nature might be better. 25:33.0# Aine: Yeah. I have access to unlimited video games and I've gotten bored of them. 25:39.1# Margaret: Yeah, you don't really get bored of nature. It just isn't like as wildly distracting or entertaining. 25:46.0# Aine: Right. You can be bored in nature, but that's about it. 25:49.3# Margaret: Yeah. So... So one of the things that I had learned when I did... Cognitive behavioral therapy was this idea... And you've brought it up and I just wanna talk about it a little bit more, get you to talk about a little bit more, is this idea of picking a deadline. Knowing... As a coping skill, like "I just have to get through this for the next x length of time." or something. Is that a healthy coping skill or is that an unhealthy coping skill? 26:16.8# Aine: Yeah, it's... So that's kind of the thing. The whole unhealthy, even that dichotomy, like all binaries, is pretty bullshit. It's useful sometimes and it's not useful other times. It's kinda like... It's not terrible if someone has 1 drink but if they have 20 it's a problem. Coping skills are kinda the same way. So it is really helpful when there is something real in the world that is presumably finite. Where you can just be like, "Okay, I just gotta make it through the next 14 days, see what the world's like and make a new decision then.' Can be... Help belay your anxiety if there's actually going to be anything different about the world in 14 days. But if you're like, "Oh my depression be better in 14 days." I don't know, dude. So it's sort of a... It's useful and a lot of the anxiety, I think, that's happening now, and in general, is about uncertainty and lack of control. Even though state national government... The hierarchical response is a controlling one, partly because... They're trying to reduce uncertainty and make things more legibly organized or... Basically hide the disorder that is under all these things. Less effectively than they used to, thankfully. But a lot of the controlling nature and that tendency to try and to reduce uncertainties is one that we also have cognitively. And to a certain extent, thinking of these thoughts as something that we can control and that we can really master is a... A problem in and of itself. A lot of alternative... Or newer therapies, third stream therapies. Like acceptance commitment therapy or dialectical behavior therapy have sort of a... Different theory of thought than cognitive behavioral therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy, the interventions do work so I wouldn't shy anyone away from it, but the actual... Belief about how thought works that it's structured on is inaccurate. 'Cause thoughts kind of just happen. Most people have had the thought, like when they're on the subway platform, "Oh, I'm gonna jump in front of that train." It doesn't really mean anything. And most thoughts are like that. And to certain extent, anxiety is about trying to control those thoughts. Or believing they're truth. Like that you're connected to them in some really real way. And this is something that both from a therapeutic background and from personal experience I have... A particular interest in. I had severe OCD and a large portion of that was about... Specifically OCD is about controlling what's going on. You're trying to do very systematized ritualistic controlled and precise things, to control things that are completely unpredictable and impossible to do anything about. 29:17.6# Margaret: I mean, that's... It's interesting to bring up OCD stuff, I don't... It's not something that I struggle with particularly myself but I... The other day my land mate caught me spraying down the handle to the bar in the communal space with disinfectant and he looked at me and he was like, "We just need to make sure that we don't keep doing this... Once it no longer makes sense." And... And that's... That's a worry that I haven't had to process too hard yet. I'm just kinda tryna get through this next chunk of time with... I've also pretty... I'm not as concerned for my own health in this particular environment but I believe very strongly in not transmitting it to people who are more vulnerable. And also I'm incredibly medically anxious so I know... Even though I'll be physically fine if I get COVID, I will struggle mentally very hard. And so I... What are some... Do you know any good coping skills then for not letting... These, in my head, neural pathways cement themselves? These... These things that we might do during crisis like social distancing or disinfecting everything. How do we prevent them from becoming unhealthy habits later? 30:44.8# Aine: Yeah. One of the most useful things that I've found is... It's pretty similar to something the Stoics used to do which was negative visualization. And more or less the idea of a memento mori is a version of the negative visualization. But for almost every... 31:05.1# Margaret: That means "remember that you will die", right? 31:05.7# Aine: Yeah, yeah. Like you have a jar of marbles and you take one out of the "days I have left" jar and throw it into the "days I have already lived" jar every day, or something like that. 31:17.0# Margaret: Woah, that's intense. 31:16.8# Aine: Yeah. Well, it's calming in a certain way. Reminding you that this is finite and that these things do matter but you also can't do anything about it. That marble's going to... That day is going no matter what you do. And acceptance in that regard. In dealing with... In CBT, ACT, any of the ways that someone would deal with a phobia to something or OCD, generally exposure is part of that. And the mechanism by which that's helpful is the fact that it forces you to accept that worst case scenario. If you're getting exposure therapy for harm obsessions, an extremely common thing with people with OCD where they're extremely worried that they'll harm themself or someone else. They never would but it's... Very common. Effectively you have to desensitize yourself to... And accept the possibility that you could do that. I wasn't able to drive for about a year because I thought I would drive my car into the center divider and kill a bunch of people. I can drive now but only because I have hundreds and hundreds of times imagined doing that and just accepted the consequences. So, in this instance, for the disease stuff, take the precautions you need to now while it's obviously reasonable and necessary because we don't want to... Say "I'm not gonna get it" and go and get a whole bunch of people who wouldn't be getting sick, sick. But as far as your own personal risk, to assert and accept to a certain extent, go through in your head, "Okay, if I did get it, what is the process? What's the worst case scenario?" And if you're prepared for that then anything else is fine. 33:07.6# Margaret: Okay. So my habit of every time I get on an airplane I accept my own death. That is a... 33:14.9# Aine: Yes. 33:15.4# Margaret: That's a reasonable thing. 33:17.2# Aine: That is exactly what I mean. Yeah, every time I get in a car. 33:20.5# Margaret: Okay. Well what's interesting is with my own experience of self-therapizing with this kind of tactic, is that for a while I couldn't drive because of my anxiety, because I would imagine... Well, I just couldn't control everything that was happening. Like if there was suddenly something in the middle of the road I couldn't stop in time so when I did drive, I would drive like the grandma I'm destined to be minus the children part. And I wouldn't be able to go fast because I wouldn't... If I went fast I wouldn't be able to control everything. And so for a long time I... I... For a long time it was a much more conscious thing and now it's back to unconscious thing. Now I don't... I don't worry when I drive anymore. I haven't been able to reach that same thing with flying, I don't know if I ever will but... 34:16.3# Aine: Yeah, yeah. I definitely know what you mean. That's almost completely analogous. Because it is that lack of control. It's the same reason some of the most ineffective responses to the virus have been made on a national level. You wanna control people coming from Europe even though that's kind of pointless. Those kinds of things are just... "Hey, let's control this as much as we can." We can't do anything about it, it's very uncertain. We're not very good at dealing with uncertainty and accepting it is a huge boon to one's mental health. 34:49.7# Margaret: Yeah, that makes sense. Just accepting that... I think about... Doctors having to do triage or whatever. Doctors having work at all where they accept the fact that they will kill patients by accident. Takes a particularly... Good understanding of threat assessment, risk mitigation or whatever. Can you talk a little bit about the Jane Addams project that you work on? 35:27.8# Aine: Absolutely. So the Jane Addams Collective has been around in different iterations for about 5 years. We've done a lot of different projects. One of the bigger ones was developing a mutual aid self-therapy, which is an alternative therapy model that isn't a hierarchical... Doesn't require a therapist, that can just be done by 3 people, 3 or 4 people. And we've done workshops on that where we've taught people how to do it. We're... A book about it called "Mutual Aid Self-Therapy" is coming out fairly soon. It'll be on AK and stuff. 36:04.9# Margaret: It's actually my... It's sitting in my inbox to lay out. 36:10.9# Aine: I know this. 36:12.0# Margaret: Yeah, I'm just admitting this to the audience. If the book is taking too long to come out, audience please write me and yell at me. 36:20.6# Aine: And I mean you could also write us and yell at us because because we took so long to get it to you. But yeah... So that therapy model, we've tried it in a lot different iterations and we hammered out... It's most useful if it's used by a lot of people and collectively in something that's accessible as easily as possible to as many people as possible because access to this kind of thing, not everyone can afford a therapist and if they can your therapist is a snitch anyway. So... It's sort of... There should be something else. This may not a replacement for therapy but it's certainly helpful and the hierarchy of dealing with a therapist is not there. But that's one thing that we do. We also ... While we were working on making MAST more usable by people who weren't us so we wouldn't have to teach people in our... Physically go and teach people every time we wanted to transfer that knowledge. We wanted to make it like anyone anywhere could do it. While we were trying to do we realized that the... We we needed to address trauma in different ways then we were addressing other psychological problems. So in our examinations of that we also wrote a small, very small, book called "Mutual Aid, Trauma and Resiliency" which is about collective responses to traumatic events and building both individual and collective resiliency. A lot of the... I probably should have just read from that and picked some of those tips for what should you do to deal with things when you're alone or with people. But that's also built out of the fact that that is a collective thing that needs be prepared for ahead of time, much like any kind of crisis like this. So that's a... How we think one could do that in terms of reducing the rate of post-traumatic stress so that the traumas that are inevitable to occur in the process of organizing or living are at least not going to eventually metastasize into PTSD. 38:31.5# Margaret: Do you have any... Do you know enough of it off the top of your head to give some... A basic overview or tips or anything like that, about mutual aid trauma response? 38:43.2# Aine: Yes I do. I knew that I'd had it open here for a reason. Basically our whole model was based around the idea of resiliency. Which is both something individually and collectively that helps deal with trauma. And individual resiliency is oftentimes like... Some of those ability to deal with crisis sort of things. And like a lot of the nature of trauma often involves your expectations about reality have been broken. Like for instance people who are... Who have... Strong political inclinations. Like regular people caught up by a horrible dictatorship who were tortured have higher rates of PTSD then revolutionaries who were caught up by that same dictatorship and tortured. They both experienced trauma from those experiences because they're terrible but one of the fundamental differences is that the person who is fighting the regime didn't have any illusions about what was going to happen to them. It was just as horrible but their worldview wasn't broken. They didn't have to completely reassess everything they understand about... They never had the thought, "Oh, I know government does that sometimes but they'd never do it to me." And the same thing's true for other traumatic events. Like if you're in a group that does a lot of protests and demos, there are certain kinds of things that you kind of know might happen that you could prepare for and think about. If you do anti-fascist work there are other kinds of things that are even more trauma, potentially, inducing that you should think about. But... Let's see, I have more Confrey ones 'cause that sounds useful. Okay, so a few of the things that are really useful individually in dealing with any crisis and change in general, but specifically for trauma is being able to detach and conceptualize problems. So that negative visualization thing I was talking about is little bit of being able to distance yourself from the horror of the thing you're worried about. Because you're conceptualizing it in a more constructed way that's separate from its emotional strength to you. Self-determination, I think you already have talked about that a little bit. How taking agency and not just relying on what's around you to... Actually knowing you can do something about it, even if it's just calling your friends or not freaking out too much. And altruism which... Obviously, harder now. It's what we've been talking about. But... Yeah. And a lot of those things play off into collective traits as well because they build into, if you have people who can support you and building a sense of safety, because dealing with trauma and post-traumatic stress in a treatment sense is usually focused on building a sense of safety in which to go through the trauma. So you're removing the extremely negative feelings so that the person actually can process the horrible things that have happened. And that safety is a social factor. You can build that in a group and oftentimes trauma's tendency to cause mistrust in... Especially if it's sexual trauma or someone assaulted you or something. Those kinds of traumas cause you distrust the same social mechanisms of safety that would give you resilience against future traumas. So building a sense of collective safety is also about material support. You feel a lot safer if you can pay rent or you know if someone will help you out if you can't. But there's a lot of that collective building of it is really hard to do in the moment because we're... If you're chasing the crisis and the crises are constant so I'm not quite sure how we get out of that just yet, but... 42:50.5# Margaret: Well it sounds like... One of the things that... Mutual aid groups that I've been keeping track of or participating in to some small degree... The kind of immediate sense is how do we make sure that the most vulnerable are kept safe? How we make sure that our immuno-compromised and elderly friends have food that arrives and how do we make sure that that food is safe. That's... That's the... The most immediate thing but then the thing that people are already starting to talk about doing is... Also everyone's freaking out because everyone's out of work and... It's funny, I have this album coming out and I have to pay a mastering... An audio technician to master it. And then I'm like, well this is the... The last money that I might see for a little while. And... But it's also maybe the last money that she's gonna see for a while and... So the people are starting to talk about that. How do we meet our needs? How do we... Maybe mutual aid response to this is going to have to start looking like, even from a mental health point of view, knowing that if someone tries to evict you for your unpaid rent that a lot of very angry people will show up. Of course that also gets very complicated because do we wanna have these large gatherings? 44:22.7# Aine: It might be more of effective if the landlord is afraid he'll get sick. 44:26.2# Margaret: That's true. God... I keep thinking about "Masque of The Red Death" and I can't decide... I think I've mentioned this probably even on this podcast before. The Poe story about all the rich people that go and hide and... From the plague and all die of the plague. Anyway... 44:46.7# Aine: Yeah. Just desserts. 44:52.0# Margaret: So... Can you talk a little bit more about MAST and... Which is not necessarily related to this particular crisis but I think is one of the most promising projects that I've heard anything about over the past several years. Can you give a bird's eye overview of it or is it dangerous to give someone half the information of how to therapize... And also can you talk a little bit about why people should believe that you all are... Basically, I know that it's put together by a bunch of medical health professionals with years and years of experience but if you could talk about that as well. That it's not just some stuff some people made up. 45:30.3# Aine: Yeah, totally. To be fair, it is stuff some people made up. But I can attest to our authority, at least in topic if not in power. But... Okay, so MAST itself, we cannibalized from a lot of different existing therapy models and have worked on them in different iterations. So in the development of MAST we've had different open houses. I think we've had... We've had a few of them. We've had at least 10 over the years. Probably more, but I haven't been there for all of them. And effectively the... Over that time we've found which things worked in the context of people actually doing it. Which things were easily understandable by people who weren't us. And more and more ways to take our hands off of the wheel so that it was something that was done by people themselves rather than someone having the knowledge and authority... By de-facto. Like tendencies, leading things... So a lot of the stuff that we take from, we take some things from CBT, some things from narrative therapy, and some things from DBT and other different therapy models. But basically this has been a trial and error process that we've been doing with the last over 5 years of actually doing therapy with small triads. So the actual therapy is we have triads of people, which obviously is 3 people. And to reduce the hierarchy and make it easier to do this process, generally each person has a turn as the narrator, as the person who's talking about what they're dealing with and trying to resolve their problem. And the two other people are supporting them. And both of them are trying to help get the person to recognize something that they wouldn't be able to without someone else poking at them a little bit. And each will take turns doing that. So everyone's in every role, everyone is a supporter twice and a narrator once. And to a certain extent the process of knowing what cognitive tools or therapeutic tools, they're all in the book and they're very simple. Which ones are used, knowing that someone using one on you really does subvert that hierarchy to a certain extent and makes you feel like, "Oh, right they're... I would have told someone to do this, I just didn't know I needed it right then." So collectively useful done in groups of 3 or 4 generally, and focused on reducing hierarchy and... Autonomy. There's a few different phases to it and we have some more specific ideas behind its mechanism of action. But before I get into those, if I do at all, the Jane Addams Collective itself has done a whole bunch of different things but... About half of us are licensed therapists or social workers. Almost all of us work in the field except for me now because I don't have the heart anymore. At least not to do in this context. And all of us have had a lot of experience. I don't know, collectively probably... 50 years of experience working in different mental health settings. And all of us have been anarchists for fairly long times, Smokey longer than most of us. 49:17.7# Margaret: Smokey's been an anarchist longer than a lot of people I know have been alive, so... 49:22.9# Aine: Yeah. I didn't wanna make them feel bad... But... So we have some sort of cred... Also, important to note, in the next year, starting in next year's somewhere around February, March we're planning on opening a community mental health clinic. And part of that is because some of the things that some of the infrastructure that we need to deal with mental health crises, just the world collapsing, are not there and one of the best ways we can do that is by trying to provide access to mental healthcare in the way we know how. So we'll have more details about it in the future, obviously. JaneAddamsCollective.org. But we're planning on actually putting some of these things more directly in practice, in a clinic setting. Also operating on non-hierarchical models and being more community focused then a therapist's office where you just drop in. 50:28.0# Margaret: Okay. Well, we're... Do you have any final thoughts about... About mental health response to the current crisis or anything that you wanna shout-out or talk about? 50:42.6# Aine: Yeah. Check-in on your sad friends. If you know anyone who's got a tendency towards... If you haven't heard from someone in a little while... Even if you don't think you know anyone like that, you certainly do. If you haven't made a point of trying to figure out the... Who around you might need something? You might get some help and some social validation out of that too, but helping people and reaching out to people who might need it is... It works almost better than people reaching out you. As far as validation and... A lot of people might need help, think of the people you know who might. 51:22.4# Margaret: Yeah. Alright, well thank you so much being on the podcast and thanks for all the work that you're doing and... Yeah. Thanks so much. 51:31.3# Aine: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. 51:32.6# (Musical transition) 51:35.1# Margaret: Thanks so much for listening. I... I hope you enjoy it. I'm open to feedback, my email address is magpie@birdsbeforestorm.net and I'm open to suggestions for the show of course. You can find me on Twitter @MagpieKilljoy or Instagram @MargaretKilljoy or Facebook at Margaret Killjoy, all that crap. I also support myself through my Patreon, I kinda wanna keep that. I'm not tryna shout that out so it's super hard right now. I do need it to live but everyone needs work to live unfortunately in the system we live in and that's getting very hard for a lot of people right now and so I'm not tryna go super hard to hawk that. But if you want to, you can support me and I would greatly appreciate it. If you make less money then I make off of Patreon then contact me and I'll give you all my content for free. In particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Willow and Hoss the dog and Kirk and Natalie and Eleanor. You all really make it possible for me to keep up this work. So thank you. And just remember, it's not institutions that keep people safe. It's us that keep people safe. And I don't mean, not the people who are in the institutions, I mean all of the work that is done by institutions is actually done by people. Governments don't build cities, workers build cities. It's not the organizational structures themselves that do the work, it's the people that do the work. And so when the status quo is disrupted, it's important to remember that we still know how to grow food. We still know how to do medical work. We still know how to organize ourselves and each other. And that's not going to go away any time soon. So even in time of self-isolation like this we need each other and we can help each other. And yeah, let's... Let's all keep each other safe. Thanks so much. 53:45.0# (Outroductory music)

Anyone in NYC interested in organizing with MACC can find out more at https://macc.nyc/

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/

You can support the show at http://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

The guest Zoe Martínez works in public health in the UK

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/

You can support the show at http://www.patreon.com/margaretkilljoy

Episode Notes

Kitty Stryker can be found on twitter at @kittystryker and at http://kittystryker.com/

Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter at @magpiekilljoy and at http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/

The following transcript was provided by a comrade who wants to help us make this show more accessible:

S01E01 Kitty Stryker on Anarchist Prepping Live Like The World Is Dying

0:00:00.0# (Introductory music) 0:00:15.1# Margaret Killjoy: Hello and welcome to Live Like The World Is Dying; a podcast that explores life when it feels like the end times. I say "when it feels like the end times", and I’m gonna get into this more throughout various episodes of the podcast, because of course, the world is always ending. It’s always changing the status quo. Always shakes and changes, collapses, rebuilds, all of these things. So sometimes people roll their eyes when you talk about the world ending. And sometimes that makes sense, the world has ended in a lot of different ways. But... It sure feels like the world is ending right now to me and to... Maybe to you and maybe it will, maybe it won't. Obviously what it means for the world to end is a subjective thing. But it's a... It's a stress factor to say the least, on a lot of people's lives right now. Thinking about climate change and thinking about the... The rise of global fascism. So this is a podcast that's gonna explore... Well, how we can live while we feel like the world is dying. For myself and for this podcast I've found that I focus on four different priorities. I focus on living like the world is going to end and that I might not survive, living like the world is going to end and I can try to survive, living like we can prevent the end of the world, and of course, living like maybe the world isn't ending after all. So basically hedonism, prepping, revolution, and not burning all your bridges because... Who knows, the status quo might linger on after all. With this podcast I'm probably going to focus on the middle two of these priorities. I'm gonna focus on prepping and revolution. And I'm going to do that because... Well, I've always sort of wanted there to be more information and more... More going on about anarchist and leftist prepping. Because most of the prepping world is of course steeped in... Not just like right-wing politics, but also right-wing values and individualistic values and of course as an anarchist I believe in the balance between the individual and the community and because of that I don't believe in individualistic survival. I don't believe that the bunker mentality, which we're going to talk a lot of shit on in this podcast over the next couple episodes, is appropriate to most... To most threat models. So I'll be your host, but for the most part I'm going to interview people who know a lot more about a lot of this stuff than me. As for me, I am a prepper I suppose on some level. I keep a small stockpile food. Dried food in 5 gallon buckets in case there's an interruption in... Well, food supplies. I make sure I know where water filtration is. I also keep a to-go bag and... At my house. And I keep another one in my car that's much smaller. Neither of these are a particularly elaborate. They're... They're fairly simple things I put together. And that's... That's more for my own mental welfare than it is like any immediate expectation of crisis. And I also... I live off grid. Which is not something that I'm gonna specifically advocate that anyone else do. I actually live off grid because it just sort of meets my needs here and now in terms of how I like to live. I live about half an hour away from a small city in a cabin I built myself in the woods because I like doing that. I like living that way. I'm an anarchist and that's going to certainly bleed over into the content of this show. I believe in a world without course of hierarchies like the state or capitalism or white supremacy or heteronormativity or... Or any of the intersecting oppressions and hierarchies that rule the world that shouldn't. And so of course, a lot of my... I tell you this because I want you to know my biases because I want you to come to your own conclusions. I have a bias against state and federal aid. I tend to find it to be wildly inefficient. I'm far more interested in creating a society based on mutual aid. And so... And I find agency to be wildly important. I find it very important for us to encourage each other to have agency and so I'm interested in disaster relief or crisis preparation or whatever, that maximizes individual agency, that maximize community agency and... Yeah, that's what's interesting to me so that's what I'm going to be focusing on more. This first episode, our guest is Kitty Stryker who I can let introduce herself. Thanks so much for listening. 0:05:01.9# (Musical transition) 0:05:06.5# Margaret: So today our guest is Kitty Stryker. Well actually, do you want to introduce yourself with your name and pronouns and kind of any political or organizational affiliation you feel like shouting out. 0:05:21.4# Kitty Stryker: Sure. I'm Kitty Stryker, I use she/her pronouns. I'm a... I identify myself as a leftist doomsday prepper. But I'm more of a like... Emergency prepper, street medic. I work with Struggle Of Circus, which is a of bunches of leftists and other sort of radical political groups and a bunch of juggalos coming together to help out at protests and usually do medic related stuff but also be kind of a meat wall around marginalized communities. I identify as an anarchist and... Yeah, I guess I just found it really interesting that when I was looking for communities of leftist to talk to about prepping, there wasn't anything there. 0:06:15.5# Margaret: Yeah that was... I think we ended up kind of finding each other through a similar... I don't actually remember how we first ended up talking about it. Maybe you do. But we've been, for anyone who's listening, Kitty and I have been talking vaguely about how we needed to do something about this... This lack of... 0:06:34.2# Kitty: Lack of information, yeah. 0:06:35.9# Margaret: Yeah. Because so much of the information that's out there about prepping is not really applicable, well, to anyone realistically. But certainly not necessarily applicable to people whose ideology isn't "fuck you, I've got mine", you know? So... 0:06:53.5# Kitty: Right and I think... And it could be actively hostile in forums and stuff. Like places that you wanna go to ask for information and ask for advice become really hostile when people are talking about how much they want to kill antifa or of like... "I can't wait til the race war". It's not really a very comfortable place to ask questions about fortifications. 0:07:19.5# Margaret: Yeah. That makes sense. So why don't we start by kind of talking about the general conception of preparedness and kind of what is leftist or anarchist prepping or preparedness. As... At least as you can conceive it. 0:07:37.7# Kitty: Sure, well, so for me I grew up with parents who are sort of like... Suburban homesteader types, with a mixture of prepping. But are also hoarders so while they have everything you would need in an apocalypse you also wouldn't necessarily be able to find it. So I kinda grew up with the hoarding tendency that they think comes with a lot of prepping. You wanna have lots of things that seemed very important. But also this desire to try to make it organized and make it easily accessible. I realized fairly quickly that while I'm more of a stay-in-place kind of prepper and sort of emergency preparedness person, I also will potentially need to be able to put what I need a backpack and carry it with me. At least for a mile or two depending on the emergency and if I have so much stuff that I can't practically do that without a car, it's not really going to be that useful. I live in earthquake country so I just have to anticipate the roads are going to be kind of a mess. So that was sort of where I came from, was this not very political, camping and also very pagan, getting in touch with earth kind of thing. Like my parents beehives that drives all of their neighbors off the wall. They hate it. 0:09:12.7# Margaret: That's interesting. I've only a couple times been around this, yeah, suburban homesteading idea where you have access to a little bit of land. Not necessarily so much privacy, not so much... Place where you can keep your bees. 0:09:24.5# Kitty: Nope, no privacy. Everyone in my neighborhood is like, "That's the witch house. You can tell because there's thirteen sacred trees in the front lawn. And her dad goes outside and scythes the lawn." 0:09:38.1# Margaret: Wow. 0:09:39.7# Kitty: I don't think he's actually even done that in years so I think it's just an overgrown tangle at this point. 0:09:45.9# Margaret: Well that's even more fun. 0:09:46.7# Kitty: But we have like... We have a pond in there. There's a little herb garden, a veggie garden. We have a crow feeder. It's... It's elaborate. 0:09:56.8# Margaret: I'm imagining this on like a quarter acre, half acre. Is that..? 0:10:00.5# Kitty: Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. With manicured lawns right next to us on either side. 0:10:08.5# Margaret: Well, that's a... 0:10:09.1# Kitty: Really... That's where I was raised. I think that explains a lot. 0:10:13.7# Margaret: Okay. It's an interesting metaphor for being the one person who's... You know, either prepping or being a hoarder. 0:10:22.4# Kitty: I've been the one person for a while. Yeah. But I think that that's in such staunch contrast to doomsday preppers which is what most people think of when they think of prepping. They think of like, "Oh, that's those rednecks in the middle of the really rural areas with their bunker and their nine million guns and their giant water containers." And they're, you know, being completely convinced that there's going to a nuclear war or there's going to be... I don't know. What are some of the other disasters that they're always prepared for? Well, I mean like, definitely race wars. Definitely one of the things. 0:11:09.1# Margaret: Yeah, I mean and that's kind of the... I feel like that's the tell between whether you're talking to a racist prepper or a... Well, obviously if someone's talking about a race war they're clearly racist. But... You know, there's a tell of whether or not they're obsessed with like the... The boogaloo or if they're obsessed with... You know, the possibility of invasion or... System collapse in general. 0:11:32.3# Kitty: Right, right. And like what system collapse looks like. Like what are they actually afraid of, I think is very telling. A lot of times you'll see people say, "Oh, I'm afraid that people are going to come and murder my family for my resources because my resources are so awesome that everyone for miles around is going want to come and murder me." Which, first of all, if that was true I would not be saying it on the internet. That just seems like a bad idea. That's... My boyfriend and I watch doomsday preppers and talk about how we would raid their bunkers because they show us everything. And that just seems very shortsighted, if that is indeed what you are worried about. 0:12:22.2# Margaret: Right, as compared to just kind of showing off and being excited about... Like kind of nerding out about gear... 0:12:27.6# Kitty: I think it's like... Yeah, it's like nerding out and they think it's more of a threat than it is. I don't know. I think... I think it speaks to a desire for conflict that I don't personally have. I don't want to have to use my apartment complex to snipe people. I just don't want to do that. I just wanna be able to grow a garden using a discarded... Shoe organizer from the broken down Ross down the street. That's my type of prepping, rather than preparing for endless violence. 0:13:10.4# Margaret: Yeah, there's kind of a... I feel like one of the main myths or concepts that I'm trying to get across with this podcast... Not a myth I'm trying to get across this, prove that something is a myth, is the bunker mentality is the "I've got mine, fuck you" mentality, that is so common in prepping circles and it's... It's really off-putting because... I mean, even... Even from a pure self-interest point of view it just seems so dumb. So you hole up with your five closest friends in the middle of the woods during the apocalypse, and that's like all fine and good until your appendix bursts and you forget that you're not a surgeon and that your brother isn't a surgeon, you know? And... 0:13:56.0# Kitty: Well you just need more useful friends. 0:13:57.9# Margaret: Well, sure but... 0:13:58.7# Kitty: That's what I did. 0:13:59.2# Margaret: But what if you are the surgeon, right? And then your appendix bursts. 0:14:02.4# Kitty: Well, yeah. Then... Yeah. Then... Then... Well, then you just die. I mean, that's the thing. I think that they... They're so afraid of violence coming from other people that they don't... A, think of the violence that could happen amongst themselves which is kind of inevitable if you're locked in a bunker together. And there's... Especially if there's power dynamics in place and stress, then I feel like there's gonna be some abusive dynamics that come out of that. So if you're not prepared for that, it doesn't really matter how good your resources are. And there's... So that's just even within your unit, and then never mind if you're then expanding out to like... Do you know how to do literally everything in the world? Because you're probably going to help. It's the same as the idea about currency. Everyone's so keen on like... Oh yeah, make sure that you have currency. Make sure you silver buried in your yard. Like... What are you going to do with that, really? Like... I mean... It's cool, I guess. But unless you're going to use that as a brick... I don't understand. 0:15:12.3# Margaret: Well I guess it gets into... In some ways, I think the apocalypse... People who think too much about the apocalypse, whether on they're on the left or on the right, or just bored centrists or moderates or whatever, I think that people are thinking about and imagining clean slates and imagining about how they would like to act and what kind of societies they would like to create, what kind of dynamics they'd like to create. So it's really easy for someone who, say of a libertarian mindset, to be like "Well, of course gold is what matters because we're all going to trade resources. There's definitely going to be market economics after the apocalypse because we're going to institute market... Economics. And then maybe like... Those of us that are like, "Wow, the market's a dumb thing and isn't really particularly interesting to me at all." Like, yeah I have a really hard time imagining that I'm going to be doing much... Even bartering after the apocalypse. Like, I'm... I'm either like rolling with people and sharing shit or I'm keeping shit to myself but like... I'm not gonna be like, "Well, these three bullets are worth that tourniquet," or whatever, you know? At least that's my conception of it. That's when... When I like to imagine the end of the world, which is not actually something I like imagining anymore, but I'm imagining something that is closer to the ideological interest that I have. Which is maybe a fault of mine, maybe that's a blind spot of mine. 0:16:39.5# Kitty: Well, I don't think that's... I don't think it's necessarily a fault. I mean, like one thing that I think when... You know, I have a group friends that we talk about this stuff a lot amongst ourselves. Especially because we're within bicycling distance from each other, so we're sort of like, "Okay, if there is an emergency, we're pretty sure that we could get to each other." But we all have... Slightly different ideas of what we would like to see happen which means we also have a different... Like different ideals and different areas of expertise. And I think that that is actually super helpful. I don't know that I would want to be in a group that everybody thinks the same way, as long as you think cooperatively versus competitively. And for me that's what's important. I don't really care how we get to cooperative instead of competitive, but that's what I want. 0:17:33.5# Margaret: Yeah, that makes sense. So, look, I want to talk more about... Okay, one of the things I really like about prepping in general is that it can be very practical. It's not, it's... Obviously a lot of it is not practical at all. But like... But to take this conversation practically for a minute... Like, what you do... Not necessarily... Both in terms of things that you keep around, but also what are your plans? You talked about bicycling to meet up with your friends. What is... What kind of preparedness do you personally practice? 0:18:05.4# Kitty: So my boyfriend and I talk a lot about what our plans are. Pretty much every three months or so. And we're mostly... And ust to give some context, we're mostly prepping for an earthquake, for a big earthquake, because that's the most likely thing to happen here. I guess there's some possibilities that will end up having a bunch of neo-nazis coming and terrorizing us but I think they've gotten tired of Berkeley and have moved to Portland instead so... We're probably fine for now. So we talk a little bit about what are the risks that are current, what are the resources that are currently around? Maybe... We've been talking about creating a map, like actually getting a map and write, marking down important things that we might want to know where they are when you don't have Google Maps for example. So stuff like that is really important. Like the sort of... Preparing... For immediate needs and also for where you are going to be able to get resources. What area is around that could conceivably be turned into a garden if need be. Which we're actually lucky, we have a park really close by. And we also make a point to know our neighbors. Both our housed and houseless neighbors. So having good relationships with them is really helpful and like giving them ideas of how to be prepared so that we're not overwhelming ourselves trying to take care of them as well as ourselves. So you're trying to match up add the younger folks with older folks or able-bodied folks with people with disabilities so that way there's... It's easier for people to mobilize and so that we know who in our area is going to need help. So that's some of the community planning stuff that's not even focused on my group of hyper-focused friends but just making my environment less chaotic. And so that's sort of like... And again, like a garden, it takes some pruning and some cultivating and a little bit of upkeep but I feel reasonably confident that my neighbors are going to be able to handle themselves. Which is my first big concern because then I can start worrying about things like, what do I personally actually need? One thing that is kind of difficult, I live in an apartment and we don't have a huge amount of space. So I can't have buckets and buckets of freeze-dried food. We do tend to have a lot of canned food, we do tend to have a lot of nuts and dried fruit and stuff like that around so that helps a little bit. It makes it easier for us to find stuff in rubble that we can eat. We also have a... A dresser that we put our prepper stuff in and it's sorted with medic supplies in the first two drawers because that's sort of my specialty... That's my area focus. And then we have sort of more general supplies, so that's where we have LifeStraws and we have bandanas and we have masks for filtering out smoke or disease. We have lots and lots of gloves, we have... Water filtering tablets, we have a bunch different kinds of fire starters. So we sort of put together a compendium of things that we felt would be useful. And then what's probably the least practical thing is my... In the main living room I have a hatchet, I have a walking stick, I have my camping stuff. So it's not all condensed in one place but I have... I do have a spare tent at my partner's house and I have a medic bag. A fully packed medic go-bag that I take to protests in the trunk of my car. So that way I can... I have one medic bag in the house, I have one in the car, and I usually have one at my partner's house. Sometimes I have one at my local bar too but that's the one that usually get used if I go to a protest 'cause that's near downtown. But just having pockets stuff... And then I have a storage unit downtown as well. So I figured it might be more difficult to get into my storage unit but at least it's underground and that would be not a bad place to have some stuff that I don't need immediately but might want down the line, yeah. So... But it's sort of a pack rat... Pack ratty, squirrel type prepping. Of burying little caches... 0:23:27.8# Margaret: I'm impressed because you're... Yeah, you're managing to successfully do in an urban environment what... Well... Something I associate more with the rural environments of... You know, one of the things that I was realizing... 0:23:41.1# Kitty: It's harder. It's harder, but it's only harder if you care about being the only person who can get to it. And I don't really care so much about that. I just wanna have access to it. I'm... Because, for me, I'm someone who... I saw a guy on a scooter get hit by car. I was so glad I had that medic kit on me so that I could actually help him out. And immediately help him out. I'm so glad I had that expertise. So... And actually that's one thing that I also have is a first aid book because, again, I don't know how to do everything. But if I have a book, I can probably figure out how to do most things safely. So... 0:24:26.7# Margaret: What's the book? 0:24:29.4# Kitty: It's an old field manual medic guide, I forget what era. But I prefer to try to go for stuff that's military because... Or serious environmental wilderness strategy guides because then they're not focused on you having access to a full hospital. It's not ideal conditions. Sometimes first aid advice is like, "Oh well just call an ambulance" and it's like well that's not really practical in the sort of situations I'm preparing for so I prefer to look at older stuff. And then take newer knowledge and pack that on top. But knowing how to do some of these things when you don't have electricity, a lot of modern medicine depends on electricity, depends on you having access to different kinds of medications and solutions that might not have. So I think it's kind of... I don't... Until I have to do it in practice I don't know how useful it actually will be. But I'm interested in learning how have people prevented disease... In wartime, in... A forest in the middle of nowhere versus what you you would get trained necessarily if you're getting CPR training for your work. 0:26:08.8# Margaret: Have you taken the wilderness first responder course or anything like that? 0:26:12.4# Kitty: I want to so badly. I'm hoping that I can save up for it or have somebody gift it to me. But that is on my list of, oh my god I would... That be so dreamy. But... I really... I just also am just also am obsessed with medical stuff. I guess that's... That's one thing I would really recommend for people curious about prepping. I would say while it is nice to be able to have information about a bunch of different areas, find the thing that you're really interested and nerd out on that. One of my friends is really, really into finding plants and urban foraging. So that's her area of expertise. It's like, oh, she can tell you every plant you can eat within two miles of your house. And that would be really useful, it's not necessarily something that my brain can hold onto... As easily as medicine stuff. My partner is really good with weapons and... Building shelters. It's not really my area so it's nice to have somebody who can teach me just enough but also has a lot more expertise. 0:27:29.4# Margaret: Yeah, that's something that I... I think about a lot in terms of even just the world I wanna live in. I'm really excited about the idea where we... Instead of having a generalism versus specialization kind of argument, it's another bullshit false dichotomy, probably we should all as much as we can generalize as broadly as we can and then pick the things that stand out to us to specialize in. Like, I don't need to know how to do surgery but I should probably know first... Literal first aid. Like first response... Like there have been a number times in my life where I've... I'm incredibly squeamish, I hate medical things, I hate thinking about it the way that like... Like someone showed me how to use a tourniquet and... You know, I disassociated in order to learn. Because the concept of thinking about like... Arterial bleeding doesn't work for me. But I know that I need to know how to do that so I learn pretty much by disassociating and then kind of when things happen I like disassociate again and then deal with it. 0:28:34.6# Kitty: Yeah, I mean there's some practicality to that. When I was doing medical work at protests I really underestimated how traumatized I was until months later... When I was like, "Wow, I just didn't have feelings for a while." It's a lot and I'm... I love... See, I'm not squeamish at all about that stuff but I'm impatient so like building structures is not my thing. It's like, I could learn how to do it but I don't even put up the tent when I go camping if I can avoid it. So... Knowing that I have a good solid group of people around me who are really excited to do that stuff allows us to do the thing we're excited about but also in case something happens to that person, we know how to do it we just don't like it. 0:29:26.1# Margaret: Yeah. Or at least have a... Can do a rougher version of it, you know? Can do a... I had a... I was just talking to a friend about all of this. I actually don't remember if it's... I'm recordings these interviews out of order from how they're going to play. So I was talking to a friend of mine who's a... A medical professional and he was talking about how in a crisis situation if you have two people, maybe what you want is a nurse and a world class generalist, you know? As like the two people that you need. 0:29:58.8# Kitty: Pretty much. I think having a medic... Like I think everyone should have basic medical training, just basic shit, because that way anybody can do an emergency... Like, okay, "I can put gauze on this and stop the bleeding." That's what I need from people. And every time I go to a protest, people are asking what they could do to help and I'm like, "Just do that. Just do that, only." And help people with sprained ankles and keep them hydrated. 'Cause if you can do all of that then I can focus on stitching someone's head together. That's what I need to be able to be focused on because I'm not the squeamish one. So... Yeah, I think that helps a lot. Also coming up with things for you to do, that gets ignored a lot on prepper forums. At least the ones I've been on. They talk a lot about like, you know, "Okay, you've gotta have all of this foraging skills and you gotta have shelter building and you gotta have all these supplies in order to make all of this stuff," but there are no downtime options. And you're gonna have downtime sometimes. Like you're gonna get sick eventually, if nothing else. So make sure you have stuff to keep your mind busy during those times. 'Cause watching "Alone" for example, I don't know if you've ever seen that one but they put these people by themselves in the middle of the... Was it Canadian wilderness I think for at least the first couple of seasons? And they have to do everything from scratch. They have some supplies on them and a good supply list. But they have to pick like... 1 of 10 items, or 10 different items out of a list of like... pre-approved 50 different things they can have. So have to do a lot of stuff by themselves. And almost every single time the thing that gets to them is just a lack of food and boredom. And if they can keep themselves busy, somehow, like making music or making art or building... Like adding decorations to their shelter, then the fact that they're hungry doesn't bother them so much. But if they don't have anything like that, they're not creative in any way, then the fact that they're hungry literally gnaws away at their brain. So I just think that's a really interesting aspect... Like thinking a lot about mental health in an emergency scenario because I think that gets ignored with a lot of right-wing prepping forums and stuff like that. 0:32:53.6# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah I wonder what... I feel like there's just the deck of card, is what's written about in all the things. 0:33:03.3# Kitty: Yeah, it's always recommended. Always have a deck of cards. 0:33:05.8# Margaret: Which is like... You can tell that they wrote that in the 50's or whatever, you know? 0:33:10.1# Kitty: Right, in that... Part of it's gonna be like, "Oh, like for gambling in order to entertain yourself if... Gambling with the no money that you have. I don't know. It's just... I would much prefer to have... I don't know, Codenames or something. Endless replayability. 0:33:31.2# Margaret: Yeah, I feel like there's a... 0:33:32.1# Kitty: I mean, but... 0:33:32.8# Margaret: Go ahead. 0:33:32.8# Kitty: Let's be honest, I'd be playing Dungeons & Dragons. In my tracker tent as an actual ranger. Playing Dungeons & Dragons. 0:33:45.2# Margaret: You wouldn't play... What's the opposite of it? The dragons play, they play... Humans and Houses? 0:33:51.3# Kitty: Oh, yeah, maybe that too. I don't know, mix them up. Mix them together. 0:33:56.3# Margaret: You'd have roleplaying about what would you do if apartments still existed or whatever? 0:34:00.4# Kitty: Yeah. 0:34:02.7# Margaret: I think that... 0:34:03.3# Kitty: I mean, I guess I don't... I'm not that scared of that. It would be uncomfortable and I'd probably hate it a lot. I'm a house cat. But, you know, I'm not that worried about it either. And I think part of it is because I just made being prepared, knowing where my go-bag is at all times just part of my day-to-day existence. So it's just muscle memory at this point. 0:34:32.8# Margaret: Yeah. Earlier in our pre-conversation, when we talked about what we might talk about, one of the things you brought up is the ableism that exists in a lot of prepping conversations and I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about that. 0:34:46.0# Kitty: Yeah, so I noticed that a lot of discussions on what your go-plan is involves being able to walk long distances. Presumably because they figure walking a long enough distance would get you to area of wilderness, that they feel would be more suitable. I... That is really impractical for a large number of people. People with small children are going to struggle with that. Elderly people are going to struggle with that. People with disabilities are going to struggle with that. Some people with disabilities aren't going to be able to do that. It won't even be just a struggle, it's just impossible. So I think the... We need more diverse resources and we need to talk seriously about how to make this accessible for people who aren't in their... Super hyper fit, in their 30's, ready to charge over a mountain. And in the bay area you could you could walk for eight hours and I don't know that you would find a bit of wilderness... So I don't think that's necessarily the most practical option for all people. 0:36:08.7# Margaret: it's funny to me that all this stuff about going to the wilderness because I live in... Not the wilderness but I very rurally. I live in a house that I built at the end of a... Beyond the end of a gravel road like every stupid stick of my fucking cabin I had to carry up a hill on my back. I actually started building it with a chronic injury and then managed to... Physical therapy my way... This isn't a... Statement about ableism, just the weird stupid shit of building this fucking cabin I live in. 0:36:40.6# Kitty: But looks really cool. 0:36:43.0# Margaret: But there's... Thanks, yeah, no I'm really proud of it and it's funny because actually it's a brilliant place to live during civilization. But if there were some kind of crisis, I would probably get my to-go bag or my car presumably but let's pretend like that's not an option for whatever reason, and I would walk to the city. Because the city is where people are and that is where we can keep each other safe. I think people have this conception of... That people are a danger and that's true, people are dangerous, right? But the wilderness is really fucking dangerous too. And... 0:37:23.7# Kitty: People really underestimate how dangerous the wilderness is. They underestimate how cold it is. The cold will kill you, the wet will kill you. 0:37:34.4# Margaret: Yeah and so getting to... I don't know for certain, it would really depend on the threat, but I would presumably go to a place of higher population so that we collectively can figure out what the fuck to do. And maybe the fact that I have access to certain resources by living on land can become useful to people. And that would be my hope. I could easily imagine a situation where you have, as part of your prepping, you would have... The rural... With rural living access to space. You don't necessarily have access to anything else but you often have access to space and... So you can store tractors and you can store strange devices... Like devices that have very odd and specialized purposes for building or something like that. But then again, the thing I'm slowly learning is that cities have all of those things too. It's just that not necessarily each individual is going to own them. Because not everyone lives on a farm. 0:38:36.4# Kitty: Right. The city owns it or the government owns it. But yeah, there's plenty of parking lots. 0:38:42.5# Margaret: Yeah, that's true. 0:38:45.8# Kitty: So... Yeah. I mean, like... Oh, god. I'm trying to remember what the name of the show was. So I... I watch a lot of prepping and wilderness survival based shows. Somewhat to remind myself that nature is dangerous and also because I find them very amusing. And there was one that was... It wasn't entirely clear if it was a reality show or if it was scripted or both. Pretty sure it was both, but they were in LA. And I forget what they had decided ... The LA one I don't think it was a disease. They had a different calamity happen each season. And in the first season they had a good variety of people. They had several mechanics, they had a couple of nurses and doctors. They had martial arts teachers. So they had a good cross-section of people. And they did decently well surviving in a big warehouse in LA and came up with some incredibly inventive weapons and things. I remember they created a flame thrower out of bits of an old car which was stunning to watch. But then the second season they were in New Orleans, in some of the areas that have been devastated by Katrina. And they had underestimated how swampy it was and how hard it was going to be to get food and how there were tons of snakes and alligators that we're going to kill you. And also that one had a disease element so every once in a while someone would get claimed by a contagious disease and they would just start disappearing. But the thing that really got to them I think is that they didn't have a very diverse group of people. They had a lot of schoolteachers and artists and that's great, that's important stuff, but if they don't have any trade skills as well, they're gonna drop like flies. So it's really important to take your creative energies and learn how to do something that can embrace that but also has a living purpose. 0:41:12.1# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah, as a generalist I think about that where most of my skills are graphic design and audio which is great when you want to start a podcast, if you have been doing electronic music for twenty years or whatever, you know? But I think I've really consciously been working on developing my skills that are not only on a computer, you know? For kind of this purpose. 0:41:39.1# Kitty: Well, hey. Electronic music and audio says to me, making ham radios. Practical and useful. There's always something there, it's just like finding what those things are. Though I will say this, the first season in the warehouse in LA they had a big issue with masculinity. 0:42:04.7# Margaret: I only watched the second season. 0:42:05.4# Kitty: Everybody was... 0:42:06.9# Margaret: I watched the one where they all... 0:42:07.5# Kitty: The first one is great. It's like all these male mechanics shouting at each other about how to fix something better and then this female mechanic just goes and does it. 0:42:16.8# Margaret: Yeah, that sounds like a perfect metaphor. 0:42:19.1# Kitty: And then they when they all brag about how proud that they came up with this idea and she just rolls her eyes and you're just like, "Yup, that's how it would be pretty much." And that said to me a lot about mediation. Knowing how to mediate, knowing your own triggers. Like knowing your own mental health stuff so that you can then navigate other people's mental health stuff. That's also super important. And easy for anybody to do. 0:42:44.9# Margaret: Yeah, yeah I think knowing different organization models. Like I think knowledge and facilitation is a really important skill. I think people basically pick whichever organizational model seems to be practical when the existing larger structure goes away. And I've been in spaces where we haven't been sure how we're going to organize ourselves and I'm surrounded by a bunch of non-anarchists and then I'm like, "Well here's this model where we're all equals but we still actually figure things out." And it just works as compared to I'm pretty sure if someone had been like, "Here's the model, I'm pretty much in charge." And maybe it'll be like some veneer of democracy where he'll be like, and I'm just going to use 'he' for this imaginary patriarch... 0:43:28.5# Kitty: I wonder why. 0:43:29.7# Margaret: He'll be like, "I'm in charge and the we can have a little vote about that if we wanna prove that I'm in charge," you know? And everyone will be like, "Well, he's the one who is offering to get shit done." And what... Of course what people fail to realize is that's like... We get shit done, collectively. Whether it's collectively we do it and someone is taking the credit by being up top, you know? Or whether we do it... So that's one of the things that I think about with prepping. How to... And I think that's maybe one of the things that right-wing preppers are afraid of is they're like... They don't have... The only people skills that they know is this hierarchical system. Well, I guess there's plenty of leftists who also only seem to know hierarchical systems. But... 0:44:13.2# Kitty: I mean it's a pretty... It's a pretty common system. That's why... That's why I kind of enjoy the, everybody gets to be an expert in their own thing so that nobody is super... Nobody can be too pleased with themselves. Keeps everybody humble, I think. 0:44:34.3# Margaret: Yeah. So the one other main question that I... Or thing that I kinda wanna hash out with you for this which is probably gonna be the first episode, everyone who's listening will know whether or not it's the first episode. It will be very embarrassing if this is the seventeenth episode, but... Maybe talk about different threat models. That's... How we we determine what we need, of course, is dependent on what we think is likely to happen and as there's no one-size-fits all. And so you say the primary threat model that you're working with is a natural disaster. Do you want to talk about that or do you want to talk about other threat models or... 0:45:12.8# Kitty: Sure. Well, I think... Okay, a great example is the things that I want for a earthquake is not necessarily what I would want in a tsunami, right? Those are very different natural disasters. As somebody who grew up in hurricane country-ish, you know, it was just really really wet. And having a dust mask would not have helped me in any way. But I would be at much more risk of getting trench foot so that would be like, waterpreoof boots would be way more important. So some of it's knowing your environment and being aware of what your environmental concerns ar. Like living in a city, asbestos is a big fundamental concern. So having dust masks is really important. I feel like I read once that most deaths aren't... In an earthquake, come from inhaling the debris. And that... That causes some of the worst injuries because there's just all of this dust everywhere and... I know that was definitely true with the fires. A lot of people have... Still have some... Some still have breathing problems now from the various fires that were going on in Northern California. So knowing what you need to be concerned about. Like with earthquakes, knowing that the roads might not be super useful to drive on. So having alternative plans for that knowing where your bike paths are. Knowing... If you have a wheelchair for example, maybe thinking of a way to add some tread on your wheelchair might be a practical option. I have a beach cruiser. It's not a racing bike by any means but it's heavy and it's easy to find the parts. And it's really easy to fix myself, that's why I chose that. So thinking about what you can actually do, I think is helpful in figuring out your... Your strategy. I know that I don't know enough about my car to be able to completely dismantle it. However, I do know somebody who does know enough about my car to do that. So I can bike to him and then have him do that. So coming up with those kind of like, "Okay, if this then this, if this then this" strategies helps me at least, I have a very ADHD brain. It helps me have a... A process to go through. Now in California, earthquakes are a big concern especially in this area but fire is also a big concern. And the way I would prepare for a fire versus an earthquake, I would be more concerned about my paperwork disappearing in a fire than an earthquake. Though to be completely honest I'm not that fussed about my paperwork in general. I don't think getting rid of paperwork is the worst plan. But that's not what the government wants to hear from me. So I have... I have some paperwork in a folder that's easy to access if I need to grab something go because my apartment is burning but I wouldn't be as... I wouldn't care much about that if it was an earthquake because in my consideration there would will be enough of a drastic interruption in services for an earthquake that I don't think that that would be an immediate need. 0:49:16.3# Margaret: Yeah and you wouldn't certainly be the only one who has lost their paperwork.

#0:49:20.4# Kitty: Right, exactly. Exactly. And again, I think that we use paperwork as a penalty for so many people that... Maybe mucking up that system a little bit is a convenient little thing I can do on the side. So I... Yeah, I guess... And all of that is completely separate from thinking of having invaders come and try to take my apartment away from me or something. That... I usually strategise for that by thinking about what my plan are if the cops get even more out of control.

0:50:02.9# Margaret: Right. Like fascist takeovers is on my... On my threat model list, you know? 0:50:08.9# Kitty: Yeah, yeah, totally. And you know... The cops have been pretty shitty around here for quite a while, so... You know, it's been a slowly increasing... Plan. But I mean... For me, I'm not interested in trying to shoot my way through the cops. I have no problem with people who that is their plan, I think it's great that there are people who are inclined that way, but I'm gonna go full rogue. I'm sneaky. I'm going to go to the sewers. I'm not as... I'm not as interested in that kind of direct conflict. So my model for that... Or like my managements for that would be really, really different from natural disasters. And I kind of feel like that are all the things that might actually happen. I mean, I guess a meteor could hit but... Eh. The prepping I do for every other disaster would be fine for that probably. Or I'd be dead. And wouldn't care. So... How about you? What are your... What's your threat model? 0:51:23.0# Margaret: So I live on a floodplain. It's not supposed to be a floodplain but global warming has made it a floodplain. And the mountains... When I first moved to the mountains, I grew up in the foothills, and when I moved into the mountains it... It kind of blew my mind that flooding is a problem because in my mind I'm like, "Well, everything is high up" and actually flooding is at least as much of a problem in... Well, the flooding is a problem in a lot different places, you know hurricanes cause floods, but flash floods in the mountains are very real especially in an era of mountaintop removal mining. which is not immediate thing immediately around me but it certainly affects places within a couple hours of where I live in Appalachia. But, you know, storms... Like the weather patterns are just changing dramatically and by living in rurally I'm not as defended against that in some ways because there's not a large crew of people working to try and figure out how to make sure that the little place that I live is... Is safe. And so we have to do it to whatever... Because you're not supposed to mess with of waterways, we have to do it through the state and all that, but in the meantime our land floods. And so... It flooded a couple days ago and I had to go out and try and prevent it from getting worse through whatever means. And... And I actually had this moment, you're talking about paperwork, I started walking into this flood with my wallet in my pocket. And then eventually realized that that was a bad idea. My wallet does not need to be in my pocket. I'm not going to get asked for my papers or need to purchase anything while I'm walking into this flood and... And so it's a... So natural disaster is like the top... Climate change affecting everything is my top threat model where I live. But fascist takeover is on there and fascist takeover... Is a really different set of problems. 0:53:42.9# Kitty: Yeah. And it's different kind of... 0:53:43.8# Margaret: And a lot of it still comes down to knowing your neighbors. 0:53:46.1# Kitty: It's a different set of prepping as well. It's a totally different set skills. 0:53:50.8# Margaret: Yeah. And I mean there's... And one of the things I was thinking about is... The thing I was really... That I realized, a lot of my... I've spent a lot of my life living outdoors. I was a traveling anarchist living out of a backpack, and I was a forest defender and was a squatter and I lived in a van, and now I live in a cabin. Almost half my life I've lived out... Off grid, essentially. And I was thinking how when in February I'm waist and sometimes chest deep in water, I was thinking how glad I am that just kind of by default prefer certain types of practical clothes. It's funny 'cause I... Most of the time... I built my house wearing a dress. But when I'm like, "Okay it's rainy," and I put my puffy vest and my waders, my muck boots, and wool socks. And I wasn't nearly as concerned about hypothermia, which is a major problem in floods especially in February, just because I wasn't wearing much cotton. And it's funny like because I never think about my outdoors skills. Like how to start a fire with tinder and flint and steel and all that. That's not... I don't really see a version of the world where I'm living in the woods alone and hunting squirrels and whatever the fuck, you know? But there are gonna be moments where I might be like... Needing to not get hypothermia while I'm trying to clear up a dam that's forming or whatever. 0:55:26.9# Kitty: Yeah, yeah. Two pairs of wool socks should be on everyone's list in their go bag for sure. 0:55:34.3# Margaret: Yeah, I keep a second vest... 0:55:35.7# Kitty: And the more wool clothing you have the better. 0:55:39.4# Margaret: But what's funny is than I was thinking that through when you're talking about fires, I was thinking about California, I was like... Well, actually the same clothes that are really good in flood and maybe a tsunami are not good in fire. You don't want to wear synthetic in a fire situation. So... But over all... 0:56:00.1# Kitty: But you actually do wanna wear cotton. 0:56:02.6# Margaret: Yeah. Yeah... 0:56:05.0# Kitty: I remember I used to... I used to blacksmith with my dad and he would be like, "What are you wearing? That's really impractical for this." I'm like, "It's fine. It's cotton, it'll just roll right off. You can't catch fire in cotton." He was like, "That's not really true... But it's more true, I guess." 0:56:22.2# Margaret: It's better than polyester. 0:56:24.0# Kitty: Yes, certainly, yes. 0:56:25.3# Margaret: It's not going to melt into your skin. 0:56:27.9# Kitty: I have melted through so many skirts with some prep butts for sure. And I'm sort of learning at this point that that's... That's a concern. But yeah, I mean that's definitely an area of my prepping that I need to be better about. Is just having practical clothes. I don't have that much in the way of practical clothes that can fold up really small and actually keep me warm or keep me cool. 0:56:59.3# Margaret: Yeah. But sometimes people over... Overestimate the importance of this. I've definitely gone hiking in maxi skirts all time. And every time I go hiking with someone new in a maxi skirt they're like, "Margaret, do you wanna wear that?" And I'm like, "Are you fucking kidding me, I've been hiking in these skirts for the past fifteen years I know what the fuck I'm doing." Yeah, they might get caught and rip on things but whatever, you know? So there's a... There's a... I'm suddenly defensive about like, "Oh no, you don't need practical clothes." I don't know, maybe... Maybe we all need practical clothes. But maybe sometimes... 0:57:31.7# Kitty: You definitely need socks and I would recommend more than one pair of underwear. Probably cotton just for... 0:57:38.9# Margaret: But that's, yeah... 0:57:39.2# Kitty: Keeping your genitals fresh. But other then that... You can figure it out. I mean... But also clothes are not exactly in short supply either. There's a lot of trash fashion that we can pad up to make something acceptable. 0:58:01.8# Margaret: Well, in a lot of disaster areas people gather clothes to bring there and all the people there are like, "Why did you bring us fucking clothes. Bring us fucking clean water. What you doing?" 0:58:12.6# Kitty: Well they're bringing clothes because you can't burn them in India or China anymore, right? So it's like, "Oh, we'll give it to poor people." 0:58:22.1# Margaret: That way we get to feel better and clean out our closet, yeah 0:58:25.7# Kitty: Yup. I mean it's just... I guess that's another... That another threat, is just being buried under stuff. Just trash. Just being slowly buried alive under trash. 0:58:39.4# Margaret: Well that's the... That's the status quo problem, right? There's... If the world doesn't end and it keeps going the way it goes that's also kind of horrible. 0:58:49.7# Kitty: Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess actually another threat model that I think a lot about is disease. Disease is definitely a big concern. We... I live in a city where everyone is on top each other. So... A disease can spread incredibly quickly. I remembered there was a person who went to Berkeley Bowl who had the measles or something and they just quarantined Berkeley bowl. And I was like, "I'm not leaving the house for two weeks, just in case, who knows?" And that's even with having a vaccine. It's just... Knowing that when the electricity fails a lot of things like vaccines are going to become a lot more difficult, if not impossible... 0:59:43.0# Margaret: To acquire or whatever? 0:59:45.1# Kitty: And then... And then it's... Yeah, to acquire, keep them cold. To refrigerate medications, that's not going to be possible. So figuring out that is also something I try to be somewhat aware of. Having alternatives to medication, having alternatives to street drugs also. So knowing about... Knowing how to use Narcan. Knowing a little about... I don't even know how to pronounce that, I've only seen it read... Kratom? 1:00:23.5# Margaret: Kratom I think. 1:00:25.6# Kitty: Yeah, so that has been used by a bunch of my friends when they've been withdrawing from opiates. So having stuff that could work as an alternate... I've always packed some pot in my medic bag even though I don't smoke pot. Because it's so useful for so many different things... That it's worth just having it in there. And that's something that could be a real problem. A bunch of people withdrawing at once... Is a huge problem. A bunch of people getting sick at once is a huge problem. So having alternatives for that stuff is something that I'm looking a lot more into. 1:01:13.4# Margaret: Yeah, that's interesting that... I haven't thought about that. 1:01:16.3# Kitty: And that's what... 1:01:16.3# Margaret: The... Specifically withdrawing. 1:01:18.6# Kitty: That's just really something right-wing people don't think about that. I've noticed this. They're afraid of... Sorry, I forget the actual terminology, again ADHD brain, and I tend to call things... Like I called bars alcohol restaurants, that's just... How my brain works. But there's some doomsday thing that a lot of people are hype on... 1:01:39.4# Margaret: Coronavirus? 1:01:41.8# Kitty: About... No, no, no. I wish it was that, that would make much sense but no. They're just being racist and frantic about that while not thinking about the flu which kills a lot more people. But anyway... No. It's the... It's like a solar flare is going to knock out all of our electricity? 1:02:02.9# Margaret: Oh, 'cause then it'll EMP us or whatever? 1:02:05.4# Kitty: That's the one, yes. There's so many of them who are so focused on that but then they don't think about disease at all. And that just blows my mind because disease is way more likely. 1:02:19.9# Margaret: Yeah, people are bad at threat modeling. 1:02:21.0# Kitty: Within our lifetime we've seen multiple plagues. 1:02:25.0# Margaret: Yeah. I mean it's... 1:02:27.7# Kitty: It's just really surprising. 1:02:29.7# Margaret: I think some of it is about... I mean most of it's that people are bad at threat modeling. But I think some of it is like people... Enjoy certain types of threats. Like preparing for certain types of threats more than others. And also probably enjoy preparing like... For something that makes them feel like they have more agency instead of less agency, you know? If you're someone who... All of your skills are about non-electric things you can be really excited about the power grid going down. But I don't know. 1:03:02.8# Kitty: But I mean... That is... That is another area to think about when it comes to ableism, for example. A lot of diabetics aren't going to be able to get access to their medication. So figuring out how do you deal with that. And I don't think there... I don't know that I have answer to that, I don't know that anybody does. While that's for certain something that I would want to... Know more about. 1:03:28.0# Margaret: I think that's why we have to not... It's why the end of the world is bad. Like disaster is actually a really bad thing. Like people clearly get kind of hooked on it, right, because they suddenly have agency in their lives and they... You know, and... Everything I've ever read or talk to people about, like suicide goes down, like psychotic breaks go down, things like that during crisis. And it's... But it's still, at the end of the day, something that if we can avert it we should. And that's actually why... As much as climate change is going to affect things, there are going to be disasters, there's going to be interruptions in our society, if there's ways we can find to make sure that that doesn't kill so many people or ruin so many lives... Even if it ruins economic systems, maybe, you know... And of course as an anarchist I say this, maybe the solution is to ruin the existing economic system. Although ideally by transferring it over to a system that... You know... So that we still have access to the... The things we need in the meantime. Which is actually, it gets... I'm almost done with this rant. The whole... There's a threat that the whole like... There's a Durruti quote where during the Spanish Civil War... Someone asks him, "Well, what about all the destruction of this revolution?" And he's like, "Well, we're workers, we're not afraid of ruins. Why would we be afraid of ruins, we're the ones who built this city, we can build again." And I think about... Often people are like, well, and this is a tangent 'cause now I'm talking about anarchist society, people are like, "In an anarchist society, how would you have antibiotics?" I'd be like "Well, I don't know, how do we fucking have them now? We'll do that. Or maybe a different way, I don't know." And there's still people in the apocalypse, right? There's still a ton of people in disaster and we all know how to do stuff. And so even if like the electrical grid dies, that doesn't mean there's no power. It doesn't mean there's no hospital, even, you know? There's... Like even... We can... Fix these things and do these things and some of those are already prepared for that. 1:05:43.8# Kitty: Yeah. And I mean... And I think... I guess I would say that while it's good to be prepared, I also think it's important not to psyche yourself out. I think it's important to... Not get too excited about it. Because the fact is a lot of people, a lot of black and brown people especially, disabled people especially, will die. In any kind of disaster that you would want to prep for. That's just... That's how we structured our society and that is going to happen. So I think that that is something to be aware of before getting too thrilled about... The end of the world, right? So that you're kinda saying some really fucked up stuff at the same time. And frankly I don't know that I would survive a disaster like that. But I do know that I don't think I could do it by myself. I do think I could do it with community. And I think that that's why I'm so focus on community and mutual aid. I read A Paradise Built In Hell and it's this really interesting book that looks at different disasters and kind of has that... Isn't it interesting how a disaster happens and people come together and help each other even when everything has gone shit. And how... I think this was kinda the intention of the author of this book but she does seem to point out a lot... Isn't it also interesting how often the government steps in and tells them to stop doing that? So no, that is not okay. And will actually murder people to prevent them from helping each other. And I think that... That's something I'd consider as sort of a secondary threat model is... The government trying to prevent people from actually doing okay without them. It's like an ultimate abusive relationship. And figuring out how to deal with that... When you're being funneled into resources that are not ready to handle them. Yeah, so I mean, you know, it's a lot. 1:08:25.9# Margaret: Well this is a... This is a really good... This is going to be the first episode and... So I think we've covered a lot of... Thanks for helping me kind of... Almost like set up what this show will hopefully drill down more about and yeah, thanks so much for... Talking to me about all this stuff today. 1:08:46.8# Kitty: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm glad we could kind of work out... Sort of, here's all of the issues for... Here's a selection of all of the issues. But wait, there's more. 1:08:58.8# Margaret: Yeah, no, exactly. 1:08:59.1# Kitty: I'm looking forward to seeing the series. It should be pretty cool. 1:09:03.7# Margaret: Cool. Alright, well... Thank you so much. 1:09:06.5# Kitty: Thank you. 1:09:08.0# (Musical transition) 1:09:11.7# Margaret: Thanks for listening to the first ever episode of Live Like The World Is Dying. If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends. Tell iTunes, tell Apple podcasts, tell whatever platform you get your podcasts on that you liked the podcast by subscribing, by reviewing it, by rating it and all of those things. It actually makes a huge difference and I think it'll especially a huge difference for the first couple episodes of a podcast. If you'd like to see this podcast continue, you can support me on Patreon. I... I make most of my living through my Patreon which allows me to spend my time creating content and I'm wildly, wildly grateful that that's something that I get to do with my life. In particular, I would like to thank Chris and Nora and Hoss the dog, Willow, Kirk, Natalie, and Sam. Y'all really make this possible and I can't thank you enough. Alright, thanks so much. And join us next time. 1:10:10.0# (Outroductory music)

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Casandra talk with Shane Burley and Ben Lorber about how antisemitism manifests on the left and about Shane and Ben's new book "Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism."

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Guest Info

Shane Burley can be found on Twitter @Shane_Burley1, on Instagram @ShaneBurley, on Mastodon @Shane_Burley, and on Patreon at www.patreon.com/ShaneBurley

Ben Lorber can be found on Twitter @BenLorber8 or on IG @ben.lorber.18

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.

Episode Summary

This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Margaret, Miriam, and Inmn talk about how, despite countless warnings from sci-fi, millions of computers failed us, how Project 2025 is just the worst, how the Supreme Court is paving the way for monarchy by a different name, how the line between memes and the news is becoming more and more difficult to see, how we're setting new records for heat and storms, and how bosses just don't care.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Miriam can be found at Strangers making funnies.

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.

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret talks to Inmn about knives, cause Inmn makes knives. Inmn walks Margaret through some of the mysteries, myths, and practicalities of knives and knife making.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Guest 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.

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks to Mike and Alex from Distributed Medical Device Manufacturing about the role of anarchists in manufacturing and their work manufacturing medical devices, and specifically, about their work manufacturing tourniquets with 3D printers and industrial sewing machines.

Guest Info

Find Distributed Medical Device Manufacturing (DMDM) at DMDM.icu or support their funding campaign on Give Butter at https://givebutter.com/pqygLj

DMDM is a small non-profit based in Tucson, Arizona, USA. We formed as an offshoot of MADR in order to begin exploring how regulatory compliant aid can be manufactured outside the existing profit driven, hierarchical medical device manufacturing industry. Our mission is to make high quality, FDA compliant CAT style tourniquets based on the GLIA design to ensure our communities have access to life saving supplies in the event of trauma events and supply chain breakdowns.

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.

Episode Summary

This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Inmn talks to Monroe and Emmi about the anarchist publication Living & Fighting and the importance of creating our own narratives around what happens in our lives, communities, and struggles.

Guest Info

Living & Fighting can be found at https://livingandfighting.net/ and on Twitter @sw_commune or IG @Living.Fighting

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.