December 13, 2024 • 51 mins
You already know how to organize, you just don't realize it. Mia and James discuss the skills and knowledge you already have from things as basic as having a dinner party that will allow you to start organizing today!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
A media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi everyone, it's me James, and I'm coming at you
today with one of these little requests that I make
sometimes when there's something that we would like you to do,
when it's very important to do. So today I want
to talk to you about Syria, and specifically Northeast Syria.
So with the world's eyes fixed on Syria, many are
rightly celebrating as a brutal dictatorship of Bashara Lasad comes
(00:23):
to an end. But for Kurdish and other minority communities,
recent days have bought violent attacks, ethnic cleansing and occupation
by Turkish back to Jahadis groups in an attempt to
take advantage of the chaos by crushing the Rajava Revolution.
Turkey and its mercenaries are openly committing war crimes against
the regions autonomous communities. Many thousands have already been forced
(00:43):
to be displaced and thousands more are in danger. To
make matters worth this remains largely absent from the mainstream
media reporting on Syria. If you'd like to share your
solidarity with the people of northern and Eastern Syria, please
call on Congress to take urgent action by passing the
emergency Legislation to stop the violence, hold Turkey accountable, and
commit US support to the Syrian democratic forces and the
(01:05):
diverse communities under their protection. If you want to take
action today, you can go to Defendrojaba dot org. That's
d E F E N d R o ja va
dot org. If you are able to the most effective
action we can take right now is to call a
couple of representatives, one representative on one. Senator representative would
(01:25):
be Gregory Meeks. He's from New York. He's a Democrat.
He is a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
His phone number is two zero two two two five
three four six one. Leevon will be Senator James Risch.
He's an Idaho Republican. He is a ranking member's Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. His phone number would be two zero
two two two four two seven five two. If you'd
(01:48):
like to have some talking points, you can find those
on Defendrojaba dot org. If you'd like to donate financially instead,
especially to this humanitarian aid effort for the tens of
thousands of people who have been displaced by the SNA's advances,
you can donate to two organizations that I would suggest.
The first we be Heavier store the Curtis Red Crescent.
(02:09):
That's h E Yva s O R dot com and
you want to go slash e n if you want
to see their website in English, you can donate there.
The other one will be the free Burmer Rangers who
are currently working in Raka. I was talking to my
friend Abat who works with them. You can donate to
them at www dot free fr e E Burma b
(02:31):
U r m A rangers dot com. We will put
all of this in the show notes or the URL,
so if you're driving you don't have to write them down.
Those are the concrete ways that we can help right
now and what is unfolding as a very terrible situation
in nor Syria. Thanks. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It's it could happen here the podcast that's afficing right now.
This is maybe the foremost of the Putting Things Back
Together episodes. I'm your host Mia Wong with me as
James Stout.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
A guy who likes it to put things together.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, and you know, on the subject of putting things
together over the last I don't even know three four weeks,
the question I have been asked the most by everyone
is how do I start organizing? And you know the
problem with how do I start organizing is that it's
not a question that has cleaner simple answers. Now, the
(03:24):
most common answer you get is just join an org.
And the problem is that most of the people who
you were hearing this from are already in an org
and want you to join their org.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Also, the problem is a lot of the orgs that
are currently dominating left to spaces in the in the
United States are trash, yeah, and bad for people. Bad
people in them, bad people who are not in them.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Here's a little test you can you can do, is
your org currently sad that Basha a Lasad is no
longer governing Syria? Because if that's the case, leave yep.
And that's that's a lot of orgs that that's not
for me. Yeah, it takes most of them right now.
We'll come back to orgs in a bit. But what
I'll say about orgs is that, Okay, if you know
(04:07):
an organization in your area that you like and you
think does good work and most importantly spends their time
actually doing work instead of either in fighting or talking
about doing work, you join them. It'll be good but
the important thing about organizations, and this is something we'll
come back to you later. The important thing about organizations
is they have a lot of people. Yeah, and the
thing that makes organizing work is people. It's not organizations.
(04:29):
It's not even necessarily at eological labels. It's there being
a bunch of people who you can use and who
want to do things. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
But something I realized that the more I had these conversations, right,
you know, I'm having them with friends, I'm having them
with strangers, I'm having them with other organizers. And the
more I had these conversations, the more I realize something
sort of startling you. The person listening to this almost
certainly already knows how to organize, but you don't know
that that's called organizing. Yeah, that's a very good point.
(05:00):
I have encountered some of the most stunning or I
mean organizing that like I can't discuss the specifics of
but like some of the best organizing I've ever encountered.
I have ran into in the last three weeks some
people who don't think that they're organizers and started talking
to me about their stuff. I was like, what, like,
people are winning victories that like the like hardcore committed
(05:21):
organizers haven't been able to do in like thirty years. Yeah,
and it's just by random people who don't think they
know how to do anything.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, can I tell a little organizing story? We do
have time, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it. So
I remember, in like twenty eighteen, I am on a
trip with a friend. We're coming back and we see
the arrival of the migrant caravan. One of the migrant
caravan is the one that everyone decided to have a
fucking cow about right before the twenty eighteen mid terms.
And at that time, they were corraling the people of
(05:47):
the migrant caravan in a baseball stadium in Tijuana, and
like it was raining every day. So the baseball stadium
ends up looking like the Battle of the Psalm after
like a couple of days, right, you know, kids in needy,
mud and shit, and I particularly know what to do,
but evidently there were people there who were hungry and thirsty,
and so I get three of my free my friends.
At this time, I was still making about half my
(06:10):
money riding bicycles and the other half riding so my
friends and I was supposed to do a long bike
ride all of us are people who make a living
riding bikes, right, We're not like expert organizers. And I
was like, hey, guys, this is fucked. Which we do.
We called a friend who has a company who makes waffles,
where we obtained like as many waffles as we could
(06:30):
physically carry across the border. At that time, we weren't
able to get in. We found a way to get in.
We began distributing the waffles. After that, we put something online,
people sent us money, and we continued feeding people for months.
None of us, I think, had a particular plan or
a scheduled. Yeah, it was a bit chaotic at times,
but we were able to do that and with a
(06:51):
lot of other people. Clearly wasn't just us, right, but
we were able to process tenths of thousands of dollars
and feed thousands of people be everyone there. And I've
seen this countless times, especially working and organizing with well
with refugees. For the most part, people are so good
at organizing each other in themselves. Like when we got
there with bottles of water and food. There are a
(07:12):
thousand people there who have not had sometimes a drink
for days, let alone more than a thousand. I think
let alone something hot to eat. Right, everybody made sure
that the children and the sick people got what they
needed first. Organizing is something that is very inherent in
us as people. It just we don't call it that.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, And that's part of what I want to try
to the myth. I want to try to puncture with
this because I think particularly in the US, but this
is true in a lot of places. There's this way
in which the organizers sort of TM capital T capital O.
The organizer gets held up as this sort of I
guess even a particularly masculinist thing, which is it's this
(07:51):
guy with specialized knowledge. Yeah, and that's just not true.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
This brings us.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Something that I think is actually really important, which is
what what even is organizing?
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
And the answer is that most organizing is you get
you get a group of people together, you get them
to show up to something, and then you do something right.
And the thing about this, right, that's something all of
you know how to do. If if you can organize
a dinner party, right, if you can get eight people
to show up to a place to eat dinner, you
(08:23):
can do this. It is it is largely the same
skill sets, and all of the skill sets that make
people good organizers are skill sets that you have to
develop to you know, work a job, right. You know,
Like one of the things that comes up a lot
in this which is less discussed and also kind of annoying,
but you know you have to manage it, is that
organizing is about people and sometimes you have to you know,
(08:45):
you have to do things like you have to manage
people's egos. But like, I don't know, almost all of
you work jobs or have work jobs, right, you have
had to like deal with your boss being on one right,
you have the skills to do this.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
You know how to do.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
The interpersonal relationship stuff. It's just that you don't think
about that as organizing, even though that's just what it is.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, that's the core of it is getting people to
do stuff like you do it every day.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
And the way you do this is by building relationships
with people, right. And this isn't necessarily friendships, although that works.
And like one of the easiest ways to start organizing
is by getting all of your friends together because you're
already friends, you have pre existing relationships, and being like, okay, motherfuckers,
we gotta go do something. And actually I love that
the first thing that you brought up was an admittedly
(09:36):
sort of medium ish scale lift version of this. But
one of the very easiest things that you can do
is you can just get food of some kind. You
can either buy it or you can make it yourself,
and you and a group of like eight people, not
even eight people, you can do it with lower I
know people who've done this just solo. Is that you
can just go give food to people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Literally it was this morning yesterday morning. I have some
man house neighbors, right and it was cold, and so
I went out and gave them some hot breakfast or
hot coffee. It's super easy to do. If you are
struggling socially wherever you are, maybe you're finding it hard
to make friends. I know that's the thing that people
often struggle, especially if you've moved to a new place
or post pandemic, or you're still concerned with liuved gatherings
(10:20):
or any of those things. Like, if you start doing that,
you will find other people who want to do it too,
Like so many of my friends I organize with are people.
Like when we had the end of Title forty two
and people were in between the fences that a lot
of the people who I organize with now or who
helped people with now, I didn't know. I just showed
up with a giant side of generator that I happened
(10:41):
to have and some stuff that we had a whip
around a call zone for and like, people who care
about the same things as you are generally cool and
it's a good way to make friends. And then you
can go on from there.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Yeah, and there's a second compounding thing here too, which
is that you know, feeding people it's a way to
build relationships with people. And also it's a really good
way for people to get to know you in general
and know that you are someone who will help them
with things. Yeah, and from there, and this is a
very common exception. I mean this is I literally had
this conversation with one of my friends who's like an
(11:16):
old school Food Not Bombs organizer. Food Not Bombs is
a very very it's a cool organization. You can just
like found a food out Bobs chapter. They have like
a couple of principles, or you can just do your
own thing. And I'm pretty sure it's still like the
largest anarchist project in the world because all it takes
is you and like three other people and you just
go feed people. But the thing is from doing that, right,
(11:38):
if there's other things that you're concerned about, people will
bring you their problems and you can help them doing it.
And this is a very good way to get into
other kinds of organizing because suddenly, once you start building
these relationships, everything sort of cycles and cycles, and you know,
you get involved in more and more things. Yeah, and
that's kind of a that's kind of a late stage
thing that we're sort of jumping to a bit. But
(11:59):
I want to go back to the beginnings of how
so how do you get a group of people together
to do a thing? And the answer is you kind
of already know how to because you you presumably at
some point in your life, have like organized a group
of friends to go do something, right, Like I've gotten
a group of people together to go accomplish a task.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, it could literally be anything, right like, yeah, if
you've got some people to go to a BA, you
have the skills.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
One way I've been thinking about it recently and in
my project is putting is thinking about it as like
putting together a heist crew. And I, okay, I could
vouch for this right. The feeling of walking up to
eight people and telling them individually, I'm putting together a
team and I want you it is. It feels you
(12:49):
can just do it. There is nothing stopping you. Nothing
in the world can stop you from just walking up
to your friend and going I'm putting together a team.
And it feels exactly as good as you think it
with them Ice movie, it rules. It's so fun, amazing, Yeah,
and and and but this gets into also what kinds
of people you want to do right, because obviously you
(13:13):
know there's two vectors of this. There's on the one hand,
you have the aspect of okay, who do you know? Right,
And a lot of organizing is just about here is
a problem, and I know someone who has some sort
of skill or resource that can that can help deal
with it, and you put people in touch with each other,
and that's organizing. That's so much organizing is literally just hey,
(13:35):
like I have like a broken part of my car.
I know someone who's like a car mechanic, right, and
you put you put them in touch. And you have
successfully organized people, and you have built relationships, and you
have made all of the sort of social web that
creates organizing. You've made it stronger. It also just feels
good because you know, and that that's an auxiliary benefit
to all of this is that it's it's a great
(13:56):
it's a great way to sort of break break the
isolation we're all under.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, I think the best solution for despair is I'm
thinking of a quotation here something the busy bee have
no time for despair. But the thing that makes me
feel better about the world is that I have seen
that people can fix massive problems with very few resources
by just showing up. And like, I think, organizing is
(14:23):
what gives me, what allows me to enter this period
of time that we're entering into with a great deal
more hope than I otherwise would have done.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, And do you know what else will help you
enter your situation?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Is it the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but
we are not in control of the length of the ads.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
They just do it. We're sorry, here's a really long
period of ads. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
We are back. So I want to I want to
return to my my highst career. If I don't know
if you're a D and D person, the other way
you can think about this is you're putting together like
a Dungeons and Dragons party or like an RPG party.
And the way you need to think about this is, Okay,
so you've picked a thing that you want to do, right,
you see, you've seen something in the world that is
bad and you you figure it. You go, okay, I
(15:23):
can do this thing to solve it. And maybe and
maybe that's you know, it's literally something as simple as
feeding people. Maybe that's you know, I want to start.
I want to start doing tenets organizing. I want to
start because my rent is too high, right, people are
getting evicted. I want to start doing like immigration defense.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
And from there you make a list and that list
is you know what you're interested in doing, and you
try to match what things need to be done with
people you know who have those skills. Yeah, and this
is you know this, this is this is where you
really get into the hist things, right, because everyone has
their sort of like highst role. Now, obvious part of
(16:00):
this that you want is you want to create sort
of balanced teams. Right. You want people who have overlapping
strengths so you don't just have only one person who
can do a thing. And part of the way to
successful organization works over time, and I mean just how
successful organizing works is that eventually you are trying to
organize yourself out of a job, which is to say,
(16:21):
you want your organization to function such that if you're
not able to do it, you know, or just you're gone,
or you cycle onto a next thing, or you know,
any any number of things that can happen. You want
the organization to still be able to keep working without you,
and you want you want you're trying to get people
to be able to replace you as the person who's
like organizing the thing, right. Yeah, And at this point
we can start talking about the kinds of skills that
(16:43):
people need for organizing, and a lot of people and
this is unbelievably common when I talk to people, and
like especially women and especially like a lot of non
binary people and trans people particularly have this is that
people don't believe that they have any skills. Yeah, and
then you talk to them for five seconds and they're like, well,
I'm good at carrying heavy objects, right, I'm good with kids,
(17:06):
which is a huge one. We'll get to you in
a second, right, or like I don't know, I have
a car that's a huge skill. There are so many
different skills that are so useful for so many things.
I'm just gonna go over lots of things that are
actually really useful to get to get people a sense
of like the kinds of things that there are. There
are massive roles for so one of the most important ones,
(17:27):
and this is something you can you deliberately look for.
You know, this is this is one of the things
you do at the beginning of any union organizing campaign.
Someone who's good at talking to other people and making friends.
That is a staggeringly useful person because against most organizing
is just talking to people and building relationships. And you know,
one of the things you do when you when you're
doing you're sort of they call it power mapping. But
(17:47):
when when you when you're figuring out how you're going
to organize a workplace, is you find the person who
everyone likes and talks to and respects, and you talk
to that person. Yeah, because that person can you know,
can sort of like organize people down the chain because
they have they have their relationships already and also they're
good they'll be good at, you know, talking to new
people and and spreading your organization that way, and so
(18:08):
like you know, if you're just someone who's social or
and this is also very useful if you have a
friend who is very social, because I know a lot
of us are oporary social. But you probably have a
friend that you're thinking of right now who is very
good at conversations that is charming and is good at
making friendships. That person unbelievably useful, incredibly useful and compelling skill. Yeah,
(18:29):
there are also things like research people who are good
at and I think people are much better at research
than they think to take like a Tete's organizing example. Right,
one of the common things you have to do is
find out stuff about a landlord, right, Yeah, And there's
the higher difficulty version of that, which isn't that hard. Also,
want to I want to mention this, but like going
to a courthouse and finding records about who owns property
(18:51):
companies that it's not that hard. It's it's like you
could just do it, right, It's not as hard as
you think it is from someone saying it. But there's
also even just easy things in that, right that all
of you probably already know how to do, which is
just looking at someone's social media profiles, and finding out
information about them. Yeah, and this is very useful, yeah,
for like union campaigns, bosses.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
If you've ever been a person who uses dating apps,
especially if you're a woman, Yeah, yeah, then you know
how to ocin. Actually maybe you don't credit yourself with
that skill, but one hundred percent that like you've developed
that skill to keep yourself safe and you can use
it for good.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Do you want to explain what ocenters and yes? How
that how that process works? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Sure. So open source intelligence is it's an acream doesn't
really need to exist. It's gathering information of open sources,
things that are openly accessible, right, as opposed to like humint,
which is like being a spy, or singint, which is
capturing signals. Open source information is you're creeping someone's Instagram,
creeping their Facebook, looking at the weird fucking shit that
(19:52):
they put on good Reads.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
All the data that is out there, largely on the Internet,
about us. A lot of people put a lot of
information on the and it's very easy. And I would
imagine if you're under fifty and maybe if you're over
fifty two, like you just know how to do this
because it's what you do anyway, you want to find
out about someone. And especially if you are a person
(20:15):
who goes on dates with people who you haven't met
before and haven't been introduced to by a mutual friend,
but you meet on the internet, you probably already do
this to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah, and this is something that's very useful for I mean,
there's so many use cases for this, right there's you know,
there's the very obvious ones where you're dealing with the
local Nazi and you're trying to organize around like running
them out people say from them, and you can find
information about them. But I mean, it's useful for cops
who are beating people, is useful for like politicians particularly,
It can be very useful for It's useful for landlords.
(20:45):
This happens all the time. It can be very very
useful for bosses in union campaigns. Unions have like teams
of researchers usually to like do this kind of stuff.
But the thing is also and this is something I
don't think people understand. Those guys, like the people they're
hiring difer researchers are just you, but they got a
job being a researcher for a union. Like they have
the same skills as you They know how to like
(21:07):
Google stuff, and they know how to look through people's
like dating profiles and like look through their their facebooks
and their Instagrams and like a big one, a big
one that that the rich people especially do not think about,
is like cash app and venmo.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh venmos app because yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Because people's peoples trying. People just leave public transactions out
there like that. That's how they got what's his name,
the congressional Gates. Can I legally call him the congressional pedophile?
I guess they call him the accused pedophile?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, the man credibly accused of sleeping with an
underage woman lots of times, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
And one of the ways they found that was that
and also like paying paying for that, right yes, which
is which is rape. By the way, I want to
be very clear about that, Like, yeah, having sex with
someone who is underage is rape. It is always rape,
you know. And the way people found that was that
they just looked through like his cash app history and
they found all of these money transfers to people. You know,
this is all very very simple stuff. That's that's very
(22:06):
very useful organizing wise, that you already know how to do.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah. Pinterest is another absolute bad people. Yeah, so much
people that they be pinning you know if if if
you're hearing some of these things and and you think
that you can figure out how to do this. That's
also a huge skill. Finding people who are willing to
learn things and willing to learn new skills is a
huge benefit to to organizers because you know this, this
(22:33):
gives you, like, this gives you a flexible person, right,
it gives it gives you someone you can like flex
into into any of a bunch of roles that you need.
And also can you know, pick up skills to learn things.
Having a car and being able to drive, and I
know a lot of you don't do this, but if
you do do this, this is you immediately, even if
you literally cannot contribute anything else to a project, being
able to just drive a bunch of water to a place,
(22:56):
oh yeah, huge, staggeringly useful. The amount of things people
can't access because they can't get there, it's vast, Especially
when I talk to migrants right have recently arrived in
the US. They don't have a US cell phone, they
can't uber Oftentimes nowadays you can't even pay for mass
transit with cash, you have to have a special card
and you have to get to the place to get
(23:18):
the card. Right, The problems you can solve by being
able to drive someone five miles are enormous, especially in
the US where everything is designed around everyone owning a
motor car at all times.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Yep. Yeah, And like transport based skills are also very useful.
I mean, if you hike a lot, that's a very
very useful skill. There's a lot of sort of mutual
aid projects. There's a lot of you know, I mean
even things like setting up summer camps is the thing
that like leftist groups do right, and being able to
hike very good for that. It's good for things like
wilden just rescue. There's a lot of you know, the jams,
(23:50):
like the work you do that has to do with
like going in helping migrants. Like being able to hike
is staggeringly useful skill.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, yeah, it's very like, it's useful. It's important. It's
okay if that's not something you can physically do or
you know that that works for the way you like
to live your life. Like another thing I was thinking
of which can be massively important and people don't realize
is if you know how to take off a tail
light and replace the bulb in it. Yes, like we're
entering a time when people with darker, people with TPS,
(24:21):
people who are undocumented, people are on temporary migration statuses
are going to be definitely afraid of any interaction with
law enforcement. If you can change the bulb on someone's
tail light or their turn signal indicator as of us
in the UK, then you can meaningfully protect that person
in a really important way. And it can literally take
(24:42):
ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And this is something that you know, can scale up
depending on how much skill you have. Right, there's even
just very basic auto maintenance stuff is very useful for
stuff like this. But you know, like if you're a carpenter, right,
if you're an electrician, you do some kind of trade work, right,
you do plumbing, right, That is the thing that is
massively useful to a lot of people. There's a lot
(25:04):
of other kind of just skills that you have from
your job that can be very useful. I mean, having
someone to manage a spreadsheet, oh yeah, yeah, is staggeringly useful.
And another one that I think people don't understand that
they really have. But like being able to set up
a meeting and like having a thing that lets you
(25:25):
be like, Okay, here's when everyone is free, Like you
probably have to do this for your job or just
for you know, trying to get your friends to go
even just like be on a call together or like
go have food or like just do anything. That is
what literally, genuinely one of the most important skills you
(25:45):
can possibly have as an organizer is the ability to
just sort of like go talk to people and be like, hey,
can you show up to this thing here?
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And that is that is so much of just what
organizing is. Can you be here at this time? And
then trying to figure out a time.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So we're going to close out this sort of skill
section with some I think just sort of like domestic
these skills that I don't think people realize are super useful.
If you have a button maker, you are instantly the
single most useful person in any organization. I love that. Yeah, well,
you can obtain a button maker. They're very easy to use.
But if you have one or you know the person
(26:20):
who has the button maker, and suddenly you can just
crank out buttons for every single event, they rule. Everyone
loves them. It helps. It helps enormously. It's awesome.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
That's a badge for those in the Commonwealth. Also, if
you have a sewing machine, yeah, I was about to
mention that, Yeah, yeah, you're a hero.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
One of my friends recently made me a little patch
and it's really cool and I like it, but not
all my stuff. But if you can sew, like, that's
a skill that I do not have. It's so great
when people can fix stuff for someone or you know,
make stuff fit someone. You know, if you're a person
who finds it hard to get closed that you like
(27:00):
to wear that make you feel good and someone one
of my friends could do that. And one of my
friends was making clothes for another friend for like a
Renaissance fair, and like it was the nicest thing I've
seen someone do for someone else in a very long time.
It really made her like, yeah, feel like nice and
(27:21):
cared for. And like you might think that like this
is just a weird little thing that you like to
do with your sewing machine, but you can meaningfully really
make someone feel cared for using that.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Yeah, And that's a huge part of what organizing is right,
and that that goes into one of the things that
is also an appreciable skill that's very useful. Is I
mean just like being nice to people, being kind to people,
and having people around who are good at like keeping
groups together. Yeah, that's its own distinct kind of person
is someone who can you know, keep all of the
(27:52):
people who are involved in a thing enjoying being around
each other. That's that's the kind of person who's very valuable.
And it's something that you can and look for, you know.
And if that's not you, like you can there's something
you can you know, find in your friends. You can
find in this sort of the people around you. Yeah, definitely,
there's also something that I think you can tell when
an organization is collapsing because this is like the first
(28:14):
thing with the quality drops drawing and graphic design are
very very useful because a big part of what you
do organizing is like you make a flyer and you
put a flyer on a bunch of telephone poles to
tell people that there's a thing happening. Yeah, and yeah,
you know, and this is also something you know later
on you might be making a social media presence, but
just having good artists and having good graphic design people
(28:37):
is enormously useful for this kind of stuff. Yeah, and
al along this line, these things like making music, and
there's a bunch of different ways this can go. This
can be an immediate thing where you know, like you
have people on a picket line, right and everyone's singing
songs and this is great. We love this. Yeah. Also,
and this is another thing that you can be thinking
about in terms of what skills you have and what
things you can create. Benefit shows. Yes, this has been
(29:00):
a huge part of a lot of how some of
the unions off up here has been getting funded is
by just having like punk benefit shows. And if that's
the thing that you can do, or you know, people
in bands, you know, people who make music, you know,
people who just make stuff who are willing to contribute
it to the cause, that's great.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I remember one of we had one night last September,
so cold. We were in the desert and they're like
a thousand people, right, and we were at that point
we were really struggling to feed everyone, even you know,
because there was so few of us. But my friend
bought out like their guitar and some bongo drums they had,
and I think I had my harmonica in my truck
and like we were sitting around with these We had
(29:38):
some Sikh guys, had some Weiga folks come from China,
and then some Kourdish people and they were all displaying
their different music and it was so nice like that,
taking people out of a shitty situation for a moment
with music. Again, like, don't underestimate how important that it.
Don't feel like if you have that skill, it's not
a useful one.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
No, And this is something I've I've been starting to
say more and more. If you need a theory brained
way to say this to someone who like is is
like a curmudgety Marxist who hates fun. Morale is a
terrain of struggle that this is. There's a reason why
morale is one of the most important factors of military campaigns.
You can't get people to do things if they're too
(30:19):
depressed to do it. Yeah, and being able to raise
people's morale, it's it's this massive If you want again,
want to go into technical language, is a massive force
multiplayer right, It makes everyone you have enormously more effective.
The better they feel about themselves and the better they
feel about the situation they're in. And things like music,
things like art. I mean things like pulling pranks. This
(30:40):
is a yeah, if you were, if you were a
good practical jokester, this is a staggeringly useful skill both
like in terms of you know, you need to be
careful about whether you're you're playing your pranks on like
other people in the org, but like you know, if
you know how to just like pull pranks, this is
a really really useful thing. In like Union cap Tenant's organizing.
(31:01):
There are a lot of people who you can pray
and it's very funny and it lowers their morale and
it raises your morale.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, and I going back to your music as all, like,
like morale is a terrain of struggle. Like the other
memory I have last year of playing guitars is in Rajava,
being inside at night because everyone was getting drone struck
all the time and it was dangerous to be driving around,
sitting around with some ZD friends and like we spent
all night playing the ood, which is like a it's
(31:31):
like a guitar with a gord on the bottom, and
to describe it like it's a string instrument. It's a
string instrument, is what it is. And like that made
everyone so happy we had such a nice evening. Everyone
was able to like get through. It's a relatively difficult thing. Like,
you know, it sucks that people are being killed and
just for driving around are existing, and they're bombing all
(31:53):
this city and infrastructure and the power keeps going out
and all these things, right, like, but there's a reason
that those people have ooed around after fifteen thirteen years
of war, and it's because it is important, and so
don't overlook that.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And you know, and resisting fear is another huge aspect
of this, right, A lot of the ways that people
like a lot of the ways that you demobilize people
this is, this is why regimes like this spend a
lot of effort trying to make people afraid. He is
that it makes it harder for you to act. And
things that you know, the things that make you less afraid,
even if they sort of seem silly, are very very important.
(32:31):
And you know, on sort of this note, one of
the things that you know, as you've assembled your group
of people, right, one of the things that that's important
to be able to sort of have a grasp on
is that you can't just do organizing by having it
only be the capital the serious thing, the captalty organizing
thing all the time. Your organization will not hold together.
(32:53):
There has to be actual, like bonds formed between you
and the people you're organizing with and the people you're
trying to help.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Hm hmmm. I don't want to call out any organization
in particular, there is an organization that perceives organizing to
exist solely in the realm of wearing a high vias
vest and carrying a clipboard and getting people to write
their email addresses down and then telling them to attend things.
And like maybe there are several organizations like that. I
don't know, I've just I've perceived one locally. If you
(33:20):
don't have those bonds that, like those interpersonal relationships like
these things won't hang together. Like yeah, So many of
my happiest organizing memories, like again going down James's memory lane,
I guess I have a memory of like Christmas Eve
last year, twenty twenty three, me and my friends have
been out I know some of them listen. Some of
(33:42):
them have come across from different states to help us
at Christmas Holidays, which is nice.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
And it was.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Cold and we had been feeding people all day and
then we'd heard some people in another location that we've
gone to find. And then we got to the end
of the day and like, rather than just going home,
I had a bunch of we had some MRIs left
refugeemor is sort of vegan. Lots of us a vegan,
so we were like, we're not going to find any
other vegan food in the middle of nowhere out here,
so we'll set around eating little vegan MREs and like
(34:10):
just talking and like sharing some thoughts and things we
experienced over the last months of doing this, and like,
it's those moments that make you're organizing groups so much stronger.
No one's telling anyone to do anything, you know, those
genuine bonds and that the love and friendship we build
up between each other doing things that are very important.
(34:30):
Don't overlook the value of those because it's extremely valuable.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
And this is something that I think you can understand
in your own life pretty easily, where Okay, if a
random person on the street walks up to you and
tells you to go do something, are you going to
do it? It's like no, why No? Probably not, Like
I don't know, maybe it's something like really sort of hey,
there's children in a burning building. We're going to run
(34:56):
in and grab them. But like the odds are no,
you're going to ignore them. But if your friend goes
and tells you to do the same thing, and you
know you've been friends with them for a long time
and you really care about them, the odds of you
doing it are much much higher. And that's that's all
organizing is. It's finding ways to You have a thing
to do, and you go talk to people and you
(35:17):
ask if they want to help you do it, And
the stronger your relationships are, the more likely it is
to happen. And that's why it's very important to do
things like you know, just like having potlucks, like bringing
snacks to meetings. Oh yeah, and like you know, even
if you're doing a potlucks, it's good to you know,
you do like one capital capital T organizing thing, right,
You get like a little bit of work done, but
(35:38):
mostly everyone's just sort of relaxing and eating chili or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, if you're a baker, you know, you can base people.
It's a wonderful thing to shot God.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Yes, yeah, and just knowing how to cook. I realized
I forgot to mention this one. Knowing how to cook
is a staggeringly useful skill. And it's useful in literally
every literally, any kind of organizing you could possibly be.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
And it is the thing.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It is a skill that is useful in like it's
useful in war zones. It's useful like literally no matter
what organization you're in, if you can cook for people,
oh yeah, and you don't even and you don't have
to be like a good cook. It's just like you
can show up with food that you have made. You
have instantly made this whole thing more successful.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, definitely, Like I've had some wonderful meals in war
zone and I've deeply appreciated those people. More broadly though,
those ties like the way we organize without the state.
The reason I believe that that is the way we
should organize and the way we will continue to organize
in a way that we can make the state irrelevant
is because we understand each other as people and care
(36:40):
about each other as people, and then we approach our
organizing holistically, right with everyone in it, knowing this person
is good at this, but they're struggling with this right now,
and I care about them, so I'm not going to
make them do that right now. That is how we
can build sustainable communities in a way that state cannot
and in a way that capitalism cannot. Right, because fucking
(37:01):
hurts rent Car doesn't care or know about its employees
in a way that we who organize with people and
care and love one another do, And like that's why
our organizations will always be stronger than those created by
capitalism or the state.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah, unfortunately, speaking of capitalism of the state, we're taking
our last ad break where.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
You yeah, hopefully it's Hurts Renticr.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
We are back.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
So I want to wrap things up by doing a
couple of doing a few things. I want to talk
about some kind of basic organizing things that you're going
to have to do that are not very difficult but
are extremely important. And second, I want to talk a
bit about how we did the first organizing project that
I ever was involved in, which was tenants organizing, Because
it's really not that hard, right, you just go do
(38:01):
the thing, it will happen. Yeah, and suddenly it ceases
to be this like, oh, this domain of expert knowledge,
and there's like, oh, this is a really difficult thing.
If you just I don't know, you go give food
to someone and suddenly you've done that and it's happened.
So there are things that are important to like basic
organizing stuff. Knowing how to book rooms from like churches,
(38:24):
from libraries, from whatever meeting spaces, and also knowing how
to book rooms in places that like accommodate disabilities is
a huge thing because a lot of people book meetings
in places are a wheelchair accessible and it's a fucking fiasco.
And you can avoid that very easily, but you have
to put a little tiny bit of work into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Literally, I reached out to a friend to book a
room last night because I knew they would get at
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, you know, there's arranging people's schedules, getting people show
up for stuff, things you can do to prepare if
what you're doing is basically all the things we've been describing, right,
getting together a bunch of people to do a thing
that is technically forming an organization. Yeah, Now, how formal
or informat you want it to be, or just you know,
maybe it's just your organizing project or whatever. There's things
you usually want. You want some kind of email so
(39:12):
people can contact you in tandem with the email. Something
that's very helpful that I think younger people tend not
to think about. Is getting Google Voice. Yes, when Google
Voice lets you set up a voicemail account so people
can call you and leave phone messages. I mean, everyone
should just do this because this is the way that
a lot of older people communicate.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
They won't send you an email, but they will leave
you a voice message. And it's very, very useful for this.
Childcare is something that's important. I did, I mean a
lot is probably too strong of a word, but like
I did childcare when I was organizing, and it wound
up being really helpful because there's a lot of people
with kids, and so you know, there's a couple of
ways that this could work. One is that you know,
you have everyone bring their kids. You have like a
(39:51):
little space, you bring them like coloring stuff, you bring
them toys, you bring them games, and you just sort
of watch everyone for a while. And as an organizing thing, again,
if you're good with kid that's very useful staggering or
useful organizing skill. Yeah. Another way this stuff happens is
you know, everyone pulls together ten bucks and you hire
a babysitter, yeah, for a bunch of kids. And that's
(40:12):
a very useful organizing a thing.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, I organize with people who have kids. I remember
four years ago, fuck me twenty twenty, a long time ago,
and also yesterday, but like we were organizing to feed
and house people and we were having a big Thanksgiving dinner,
and like some of my friends have very young children
and they bought them and I think it's actually really
(40:34):
cool to do that. A like for those kids, it
is normal that, like we look after people in our community.
This is what we do, and ever since I've been little,
this is what we did. And like it's also very
nice for people. Like a lot of my friends also
brought their children down to the border, especially last year
when we had because there were children there anyway, right, Yeah,
(40:56):
some of my friends who bring their children down and
their kids would play with the other kids, and like
it doesn't matter that some of the kids are Kourdition
and some of the kids are from China and some
of them are from Columbia or whatever. They'll get along
just fine. When they're four or five years old, they
don't care. They just want to kick a ball or
see a Teddy Bear or something. And I think it's
really good for your children to you know, you're bringing
(41:17):
them into a world which is cruel and at times unequal,
and like your kids seeing that, like we can make
a difference and we can do this. I think it's
one of the best educations you can give your children.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah, and it's something that's good for everyone involved.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, exactly. And it's also very I think one of
the things I see a lot and people are organizing
thing with refugees of the en housed, is like they're
just people, Like you don't need to be afraid of them,
Like they don't want to hurt your children. And having
your children around shows that, like you have grasped they're
just people, and that you feel safe and your children
are safe around them. And I think that that's valuable too.
(41:54):
You're giving both parties some dignity in that moment.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Yeah, there are some other very basic things that I
think are very important. If you've never done this before,
I'm going to talk a little bit about how you
run a meeting. Yeah, and you would think that this
doesn't matter, and until you watch a group of one
hundred people who don't know how to do this attempt
to get anything done and they it just is a fiasco.
And this is even true sort of smaller groups. Yeah,
(42:19):
so I'm going to give you how to run a
meeting one oh one, Okay. A very common way to
organize meetings that people use all over the world and
it's very effective is you have two things. You have
an agenda and you have a stack, and those are
like the technical terms for them. The agenda, I mean,
is an agenda, right, you know what an agenda is.
You put the things that you need to do on it.
And another thing that's very helpful with these is you
(42:41):
know you're going to be operating at our time constraints
because people don't have forty five hours to be in meetings,
and my god, you don't want to be in a
meeting for that long. Yeah, you know, knowing how long
roughly you want to talk about these things is very
very useful and making sure that you're sort of moving
the conversation through the stuff on the agenda because you
have more stuff you need to talk about. All of
(43:01):
this again, like this all sounds very obvious, and again
you know how to do it, but until you've been
in a room where people have not realized they need
to do this, you don't understand how I put on.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
This stuff gets the pain of it not happening.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
God, I have watched rooms full of like sciet these
are like professional scientists.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
This is an entire room of one hundred feet of
people with physics PhDs who don't know how to run
a meeting, and it's a shit show. And all of
this stuff could have been avoided with some very very
simple things. Yes, the other thing, and this is genuinely
a piece of social technology, right, it is the stack.
It is very simple, right. You have one person who
is the stack keeper, and whatsone wants to talk? You
have one person talking at a time, and what someone
(43:41):
wants to talk, they raise their hand, they make some
kind of signal to the stack keeper, and that person
writes their name down. And so you now have a
list of who gets to talk in what order. And
so you go down the list and people get the
say things, and again you know how to do this.
This is not like a complicated thing. But again I
have one watch people who collectively have like more PhDs
(44:03):
than like I earn money in a week, like who know?
I cannot be able to pick this out, and you do.
I believe in you.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
I believe in you, dear listener. That you could do this.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, there's a very common Sometimes this is one person
and sometimes this is two people. A very common way
to do it is to have a stack taker and
then have someone who's the facilitator. And the facilitator's job
is to like call on the people and to try
to like move the conversation forwards and get and make
sure make sure everyone's involved. And also another important part
of this, and this is again something you'll you'll know
from your stupid work meetings, is you have to get
(44:37):
people like me to shut up. Your meetings can't just
be one person giving a speech. You have to cut
them the fuck off and you have to get to
the next person.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, and doing that courteously is a skill.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Yeah. Yeah, And finally, on this note, there's a lot
of if you want to go into the like more
technical stuff. Part of the things that facilitators use and
part of you know, the formal name for this is
like the progressive stack, but it's just a thing that's
very useful in organizing is you want to make sure
everyone in a room is engaged and talking and that
(45:10):
it's not just three people who talk all the time.
And you know, and so the idea of the progressive stack, right,
is you're trying to find the most marginalized people in degrees,
people who are least likely to speak, and you're trying
to get them in first. And sometimes this is literally
just like, hey, someone hasn't been talking in a meeting
this whole time, and you can like ask them what
they think about something, or asked if they have anything
to say, and a lot of times they will, but
(45:31):
they just don't feel confident enough to say it. And
this is a very very important skill for a facilitator
or just even you could just do this in a
meeting too, right, Like you can be the person who
goes like, hey, do you have this this person have
anything to contribute? And that is an enormous thing. Sometimes
it can be you know, sometimes it can be a
little bit awkward, but it's a very important thing because
you're just losing out on people who have really really
(45:54):
valuable ideas and contributions and plans. And if you just
let the same three people give speeches, you can't get
to the stuff that's actually useful.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, definitely, if you've been a teacher or in any
way what you know, you probably have had you have
this skill. You might not consider it a skill, but
even if you've been a TA in grad school something
like that, you probably know how to do this.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Yeah. So I'm gonna put all of this together one briefly,
and I'm going to run through basically how we started
the first organizing project I ever day, which was a
tenants union in Chicago. Okay, so this is based on
my memory. It's been a long time since I did this,
but my basic memory of what we did was. Okay,
so one of my friends is an experienced organizer. I
was like a tiny baby, right this this was my
(46:41):
first offline organizing project ever. Right, I had no idea
what was doing. I thought I was a guy, which
like that, that's how much of a fiasco, Like little
tidy baby bea who doesn't know anything? This was, you know.
And so my friend talked to some people that he knew,
and he knew that I, you know, I was interested
in getting involved in tennis organizing, and we we like
went to a cafe and we sat down and we
(47:02):
ate and we just talked about what we wanted to do,
what our plans were, what things we needed to do
to get this organization set up. We talked about ideological
stuff and that's actually is something that's important too. Is
part of organizing is getting people to think intentionally about
their actions and think politically about their actions. Yeah, and
that's something that's very useful. You also have to make
(47:23):
sure that you're not forming a book club, Like book
clubs are fine, but you need to make sure you're
organizing group. If you try to do a thing, has
it just become a book club. But that's you know
that that was something that was very useful to us.
And you know, we started making a plan. And our
plan was, Okay, we made a bunch of flyers and
then we went out and I did this and I
walked around through a bunch of streets and put them
a light post or whatever, and then we put them
(47:44):
like we hung them up in the buildings of tenants,
you know, because you can just like walk up the
stairs right and need to put them on the walls.
And you know, we had this flyer, this firehead information.
This flyer said, Okay, we're starting a tenant's union. If
you have tenant, if you have issues with your landlord,
or you want to talk about tenants stuff like, come
here at this time. We had an email you can
send us stuff. We had a phone number that you
could call. Yeah, you know, and so okay, and so
(48:06):
parallel to this, we like, I forget if it was
a church or if it was some building, some center
or something. We booked a room. We were kind of
lucky in that we had like local press people nice
who we sort of knew. And this is another useful
like if knowing a journalist can be a very useful skill,
because one way to get a project off the ground,
if you're trying to get to a bunch of people,
(48:28):
is by finding a journalist who is willing to cover it.
Because you know, we're we're finding founding like the first
tenants union in this place, right yeah, and you know,
so we had media coverage and we got kind of
screwed when this event eventually came together because there was
like three feet of snow that night, but people still came,
like people still came in the blizzard, Like a lot
of people showed up for this. What are things that
we do? We also, like, you know, we just we
(48:49):
just started talking to people, right, We started talking to
tenets about their problems. We just you know, we talked
to our friends. We talked to the people they knew.
We ended up talking to someone you know, And this
is the thing that just happens as a spreads by
word of mouth, right, people start contacting you. We ran
into a really long time tenants organizer in the city
who had a bunch of incredible stories about how our
corrupt politicians got their jobs by portraying the old tenants organizers, right.
(49:13):
And like I said, the thing is, you know, another
thing that happens in projects is you'll you'll sometimes you'll
just you'll just pick up someone who's you know, has
been doing this since like the sixties. Yeah, and it
rules because they have a wealth of experience and they
want to do stuff. We plotted out what we were
going to do at our meeting. You know, we were
going to do some political education. We were gonna have
a bunch of time for people to talk about stuff,
and we were gonna, you know, get get people to
(49:35):
understand what we were doing, how they could start organizing.
And then we did it, and I unfortunately don't remember
much of what we talked about because I was off
in another room taking care of a bunch of people's kids,
which was very nice, but I don't remember what we
talked about. But like that, you know, but like you
all of those things, right, all of those steps from
the start of you get five of your friends to
(49:55):
go eat dinner and you talk about what you want
to do through someone makes a flyer in like Microsoft
or whatever you make it in like PowerPoint, and that's publisher.
What's what's what's the one I'm blinking, I haven't used
it in so long? The one you make greeting cards
in I really program and I've forgotten it is you
(50:18):
see this to make Christmas cards? But like, you know, okay,
so we made a flyer and then we walked around
and put the flyers up and we made it. We
made an email, you know, we got a space together,
we figured out what we wanted to do, and then
we did it, and you know, and there's a bunch
of organizing from there, right, But like we had started
a thing, and you can do every single one of
those steps. And if you can't personally do one of
(50:38):
those steps, you can think of a person who you know,
who you can bring in to help you do these things.
Because organizing you already fucking know how to do it. Yeah,
you just have to go out there and do it.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yep, you can have faith.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Yeah, and this has been It can happen here? Go organize.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it could Happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
A media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hi everyone, it's me James, and I'm coming at you
today with one of these little requests that I make
sometimes when there's something that we would like you to do,
when it's very important to do. So today I want
to talk to you about Syria, and specifically Northeast Syria.
So with the world's eyes fixed on Syria, many are
rightly celebrating as a brutal dictatorship of Bashara Lasad comes
(00:23):
to an end. But for Kurdish and other minority communities,
recent days have bought violent attacks, ethnic cleansing and occupation
by Turkish back to Jahadis groups in an attempt to
take advantage of the chaos by crushing the Rajava Revolution.
Turkey and its mercenaries are openly committing war crimes against
the regions autonomous communities. Many thousands have already been forced
(00:43):
to be displaced and thousands more are in danger. To
make matters worth this remains largely absent from the mainstream
media reporting on Syria. If you'd like to share your
solidarity with the people of northern and Eastern Syria, please
call on Congress to take urgent action by passing the
emergency Legislation to stop the violence, hold Turkey accountable, and
commit US support to the Syrian democratic forces and the
(01:05):
diverse communities under their protection. If you want to take
action today, you can go to Defendrojaba dot org. That's
d E F E N d R o ja va
dot org. If you are able to the most effective
action we can take right now is to call a
couple of representatives, one representative on one. Senator representative would
(01:25):
be Gregory Meeks. He's from New York. He's a Democrat.
He is a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
His phone number is two zero two two two five
three four six one. Leevon will be Senator James Risch.
He's an Idaho Republican. He is a ranking member's Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. His phone number would be two zero
two two two four two seven five two. If you'd
(01:48):
like to have some talking points, you can find those
on Defendrojaba dot org. If you'd like to donate financially instead,
especially to this humanitarian aid effort for the tens of
thousands of people who have been displaced by the SNA's advances,
you can donate to two organizations that I would suggest.
The first we be Heavier store the Curtis Red Crescent.
(02:09):
That's h E Yva s O R dot com and
you want to go slash e n if you want
to see their website in English, you can donate there.
The other one will be the free Burmer Rangers who
are currently working in Raka. I was talking to my
friend Abat who works with them. You can donate to
them at www dot free fr e E Burma b
(02:31):
U r m A rangers dot com. We will put
all of this in the show notes or the URL,
so if you're driving you don't have to write them down.
Those are the concrete ways that we can help right
now and what is unfolding as a very terrible situation
in nor Syria. Thanks. I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
It's it could happen here the podcast that's afficing right now.
This is maybe the foremost of the Putting Things Back
Together episodes. I'm your host Mia Wong with me as
James Stout.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
A guy who likes it to put things together.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, and you know, on the subject of putting things
together over the last I don't even know three four weeks,
the question I have been asked the most by everyone
is how do I start organizing? And you know the
problem with how do I start organizing is that it's
not a question that has cleaner simple answers. Now, the
(03:24):
most common answer you get is just join an org.
And the problem is that most of the people who
you were hearing this from are already in an org
and want you to join their org.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Also, the problem is a lot of the orgs that
are currently dominating left to spaces in the in the
United States are trash, yeah, and bad for people. Bad
people in them, bad people who are not in them.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Here's a little test you can you can do, is
your org currently sad that Basha a Lasad is no
longer governing Syria? Because if that's the case, leave yep.
And that's that's a lot of orgs that that's not
for me. Yeah, it takes most of them right now.
We'll come back to orgs in a bit. But what
I'll say about orgs is that, Okay, if you know
(04:07):
an organization in your area that you like and you
think does good work and most importantly spends their time
actually doing work instead of either in fighting or talking
about doing work, you join them. It'll be good but
the important thing about organizations, and this is something we'll
come back to you later. The important thing about organizations
is they have a lot of people. Yeah, and the
thing that makes organizing work is people. It's not organizations.
(04:29):
It's not even necessarily at eological labels. It's there being
a bunch of people who you can use and who
want to do things. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
But something I realized that the more I had these conversations, right,
you know, I'm having them with friends, I'm having them
with strangers, I'm having them with other organizers. And the
more I had these conversations, the more I realize something
sort of startling you. The person listening to this almost
certainly already knows how to organize, but you don't know
that that's called organizing. Yeah, that's a very good point.
(05:00):
I have encountered some of the most stunning or I
mean organizing that like I can't discuss the specifics of
but like some of the best organizing I've ever encountered.
I have ran into in the last three weeks some
people who don't think that they're organizers and started talking
to me about their stuff. I was like, what, like,
people are winning victories that like the like hardcore committed
(05:21):
organizers haven't been able to do in like thirty years. Yeah,
and it's just by random people who don't think they
know how to do anything.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, can I tell a little organizing story? We do
have time, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it. So
I remember, in like twenty eighteen, I am on a
trip with a friend. We're coming back and we see
the arrival of the migrant caravan. One of the migrant
caravan is the one that everyone decided to have a
fucking cow about right before the twenty eighteen mid terms.
And at that time, they were corraling the people of
(05:47):
the migrant caravan in a baseball stadium in Tijuana, and
like it was raining every day. So the baseball stadium
ends up looking like the Battle of the Psalm after
like a couple of days, right, you know, kids in needy,
mud and shit, and I particularly know what to do,
but evidently there were people there who were hungry and thirsty,
and so I get three of my free my friends.
At this time, I was still making about half my
(06:10):
money riding bicycles and the other half riding so my
friends and I was supposed to do a long bike
ride all of us are people who make a living
riding bikes, right, We're not like expert organizers. And I
was like, hey, guys, this is fucked. Which we do.
We called a friend who has a company who makes waffles,
where we obtained like as many waffles as we could
(06:30):
physically carry across the border. At that time, we weren't
able to get in. We found a way to get in.
We began distributing the waffles. After that, we put something online,
people sent us money, and we continued feeding people for months.
None of us, I think, had a particular plan or
a scheduled. Yeah, it was a bit chaotic at times,
but we were able to do that and with a
(06:51):
lot of other people. Clearly wasn't just us, right, but
we were able to process tenths of thousands of dollars
and feed thousands of people be everyone there. And I've
seen this countless times, especially working and organizing with well
with refugees. For the most part, people are so good
at organizing each other in themselves. Like when we got
there with bottles of water and food. There are a
(07:12):
thousand people there who have not had sometimes a drink
for days, let alone more than a thousand. I think
let alone something hot to eat. Right, everybody made sure
that the children and the sick people got what they
needed first. Organizing is something that is very inherent in
us as people. It just we don't call it that.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
Yeah, And that's part of what I want to try
to the myth. I want to try to puncture with
this because I think particularly in the US, but this
is true in a lot of places. There's this way
in which the organizers sort of TM capital T capital O.
The organizer gets held up as this sort of I
guess even a particularly masculinist thing, which is it's this
(07:51):
guy with specialized knowledge. Yeah, and that's just not true.
Speaker 4 (07:56):
This brings us.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Something that I think is actually really important, which is
what what even is organizing?
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:02):
And the answer is that most organizing is you get
you get a group of people together, you get them
to show up to something, and then you do something right.
And the thing about this, right, that's something all of
you know how to do. If if you can organize
a dinner party, right, if you can get eight people
to show up to a place to eat dinner, you
(08:23):
can do this. It is it is largely the same
skill sets, and all of the skill sets that make
people good organizers are skill sets that you have to
develop to you know, work a job, right. You know,
Like one of the things that comes up a lot
in this which is less discussed and also kind of annoying,
but you know you have to manage it, is that
organizing is about people and sometimes you have to you know,
(08:45):
you have to do things like you have to manage
people's egos. But like, I don't know, almost all of
you work jobs or have work jobs, right, you have
had to like deal with your boss being on one right,
you have the skills to do this.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
You know how to do.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
The interpersonal relationship stuff. It's just that you don't think
about that as organizing, even though that's just what it is.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, that's the core of it is getting people to
do stuff like you do it every day.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
And the way you do this is by building relationships
with people, right. And this isn't necessarily friendships, although that works.
And like one of the easiest ways to start organizing
is by getting all of your friends together because you're
already friends, you have pre existing relationships, and being like, okay, motherfuckers,
we gotta go do something. And actually I love that
the first thing that you brought up was an admittedly
(09:36):
sort of medium ish scale lift version of this. But
one of the very easiest things that you can do
is you can just get food of some kind. You
can either buy it or you can make it yourself,
and you and a group of like eight people, not
even eight people, you can do it with lower I
know people who've done this just solo. Is that you
can just go give food to people. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Literally it was this morning yesterday morning. I have some
man house neighbors, right and it was cold, and so
I went out and gave them some hot breakfast or
hot coffee. It's super easy to do. If you are
struggling socially wherever you are, maybe you're finding it hard
to make friends. I know that's the thing that people
often struggle, especially if you've moved to a new place
or post pandemic, or you're still concerned with liuved gatherings
(10:20):
or any of those things. Like, if you start doing that,
you will find other people who want to do it too,
Like so many of my friends I organize with are people.
Like when we had the end of Title forty two
and people were in between the fences that a lot
of the people who I organize with now or who
helped people with now, I didn't know. I just showed
up with a giant side of generator that I happened
(10:41):
to have and some stuff that we had a whip
around a call zone for and like, people who care
about the same things as you are generally cool and
it's a good way to make friends. And then you
can go on from there.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Yeah, and there's a second compounding thing here too, which
is that you know, feeding people it's a way to
build relationships with people. And also it's a really good
way for people to get to know you in general
and know that you are someone who will help them
with things. Yeah, and from there, and this is a
very common exception. I mean this is I literally had
this conversation with one of my friends who's like an
(11:16):
old school Food Not Bombs organizer. Food Not Bombs is
a very very it's a cool organization. You can just
like found a food out Bobs chapter. They have like
a couple of principles, or you can just do your
own thing. And I'm pretty sure it's still like the
largest anarchist project in the world because all it takes
is you and like three other people and you just
go feed people. But the thing is from doing that, right,
(11:38):
if there's other things that you're concerned about, people will
bring you their problems and you can help them doing it.
And this is a very good way to get into
other kinds of organizing because suddenly, once you start building
these relationships, everything sort of cycles and cycles, and you know,
you get involved in more and more things. Yeah, and
that's kind of a that's kind of a late stage
thing that we're sort of jumping to a bit. But
(11:59):
I want to go back to the beginnings of how
so how do you get a group of people together
to do a thing? And the answer is you kind
of already know how to because you you presumably at
some point in your life, have like organized a group
of friends to go do something, right, Like I've gotten
a group of people together to go accomplish a task.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, it could literally be anything, right like, yeah, if
you've got some people to go to a BA, you
have the skills.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
One way I've been thinking about it recently and in
my project is putting is thinking about it as like
putting together a heist crew. And I, okay, I could
vouch for this right. The feeling of walking up to
eight people and telling them individually, I'm putting together a
team and I want you it is. It feels you
(12:49):
can just do it. There is nothing stopping you. Nothing
in the world can stop you from just walking up
to your friend and going I'm putting together a team.
And it feels exactly as good as you think it
with them Ice movie, it rules. It's so fun, amazing, Yeah,
and and and but this gets into also what kinds
of people you want to do right, because obviously you
(13:13):
know there's two vectors of this. There's on the one hand,
you have the aspect of okay, who do you know? Right,
And a lot of organizing is just about here is
a problem, and I know someone who has some sort
of skill or resource that can that can help deal
with it, and you put people in touch with each other,
and that's organizing. That's so much organizing is literally just hey,
(13:35):
like I have like a broken part of my car.
I know someone who's like a car mechanic, right, and
you put you put them in touch. And you have
successfully organized people, and you have built relationships, and you
have made all of the sort of social web that
creates organizing. You've made it stronger. It also just feels
good because you know, and that that's an auxiliary benefit
to all of this is that it's it's a great
(13:56):
it's a great way to sort of break break the
isolation we're all under.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yeah, I think the best solution for despair is I'm
thinking of a quotation here something the busy bee have
no time for despair. But the thing that makes me
feel better about the world is that I have seen
that people can fix massive problems with very few resources
by just showing up. And like, I think, organizing is
(14:23):
what gives me, what allows me to enter this period
of time that we're entering into with a great deal
more hope than I otherwise would have done.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, And do you know what else will help you
enter your situation?
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Is it the products and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but
we are not in control of the length of the ads.
Speaker 4 (14:45):
They just do it. We're sorry, here's a really long
period of ads. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
We are back. So I want to I want to
return to my my highst career. If I don't know
if you're a D and D person, the other way
you can think about this is you're putting together like
a Dungeons and Dragons party or like an RPG party.
And the way you need to think about this is, Okay,
so you've picked a thing that you want to do, right,
you see, you've seen something in the world that is
bad and you you figure it. You go, okay, I
(15:23):
can do this thing to solve it. And maybe and
maybe that's you know, it's literally something as simple as
feeding people. Maybe that's you know, I want to start.
I want to start doing tenets organizing. I want to
start because my rent is too high, right, people are
getting evicted. I want to start doing like immigration defense.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
And from there you make a list and that list
is you know what you're interested in doing, and you
try to match what things need to be done with
people you know who have those skills. Yeah, and this
is you know this, this is this is where you
really get into the hist things, right, because everyone has
their sort of like highst role. Now, obvious part of
(16:00):
this that you want is you want to create sort
of balanced teams. Right. You want people who have overlapping
strengths so you don't just have only one person who
can do a thing. And part of the way to
successful organization works over time, and I mean just how
successful organizing works is that eventually you are trying to
organize yourself out of a job, which is to say,
(16:21):
you want your organization to function such that if you're
not able to do it, you know, or just you're gone,
or you cycle onto a next thing, or you know,
any any number of things that can happen. You want
the organization to still be able to keep working without you,
and you want you want you're trying to get people
to be able to replace you as the person who's
like organizing the thing, right. Yeah, And at this point
we can start talking about the kinds of skills that
(16:43):
people need for organizing, and a lot of people and
this is unbelievably common when I talk to people, and
like especially women and especially like a lot of non
binary people and trans people particularly have this is that
people don't believe that they have any skills. Yeah, and
then you talk to them for five seconds and they're like, well,
I'm good at carrying heavy objects, right, I'm good with kids,
(17:06):
which is a huge one. We'll get to you in
a second, right, or like I don't know, I have
a car that's a huge skill. There are so many
different skills that are so useful for so many things.
I'm just gonna go over lots of things that are
actually really useful to get to get people a sense
of like the kinds of things that there are. There
are massive roles for so one of the most important ones,
(17:27):
and this is something you can you deliberately look for.
You know, this is this is one of the things
you do at the beginning of any union organizing campaign.
Someone who's good at talking to other people and making friends.
That is a staggeringly useful person because against most organizing
is just talking to people and building relationships. And you know,
one of the things you do when you when you're
doing you're sort of they call it power mapping. But
(17:47):
when when you when you're figuring out how you're going
to organize a workplace, is you find the person who
everyone likes and talks to and respects, and you talk
to that person. Yeah, because that person can you know,
can sort of like organize people down the chain because
they have they have their relationships already and also they're
good they'll be good at, you know, talking to new
people and and spreading your organization that way, and so
(18:08):
like you know, if you're just someone who's social or
and this is also very useful if you have a
friend who is very social, because I know a lot
of us are oporary social. But you probably have a
friend that you're thinking of right now who is very
good at conversations that is charming and is good at
making friendships. That person unbelievably useful, incredibly useful and compelling skill. Yeah,
(18:29):
there are also things like research people who are good
at and I think people are much better at research
than they think to take like a Tete's organizing example. Right,
one of the common things you have to do is
find out stuff about a landlord, right, Yeah, And there's
the higher difficulty version of that, which isn't that hard. Also,
want to I want to mention this, but like going
to a courthouse and finding records about who owns property
(18:51):
companies that it's not that hard. It's it's like you
could just do it, right, It's not as hard as
you think it is from someone saying it. But there's
also even just easy things in that, right that all
of you probably already know how to do, which is
just looking at someone's social media profiles, and finding out
information about them. Yeah, and this is very useful, yeah,
for like union campaigns, bosses.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
If you've ever been a person who uses dating apps,
especially if you're a woman, Yeah, yeah, then you know
how to ocin. Actually maybe you don't credit yourself with
that skill, but one hundred percent that like you've developed
that skill to keep yourself safe and you can use
it for good.
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Do you want to explain what ocenters and yes? How
that how that process works? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Sure. So open source intelligence is it's an acream doesn't
really need to exist. It's gathering information of open sources,
things that are openly accessible, right, as opposed to like humint,
which is like being a spy, or singint, which is
capturing signals. Open source information is you're creeping someone's Instagram,
creeping their Facebook, looking at the weird fucking shit that
(19:52):
they put on good Reads.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
All the data that is out there, largely on the Internet,
about us. A lot of people put a lot of
information on the and it's very easy. And I would
imagine if you're under fifty and maybe if you're over
fifty two, like you just know how to do this
because it's what you do anyway, you want to find
out about someone. And especially if you are a person
(20:15):
who goes on dates with people who you haven't met
before and haven't been introduced to by a mutual friend,
but you meet on the internet, you probably already do
this to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah, and this is something that's very useful for I mean,
there's so many use cases for this, right there's you know,
there's the very obvious ones where you're dealing with the
local Nazi and you're trying to organize around like running
them out people say from them, and you can find
information about them. But I mean, it's useful for cops
who are beating people, is useful for like politicians particularly,
It can be very useful for It's useful for landlords.
(20:45):
This happens all the time. It can be very very
useful for bosses in union campaigns. Unions have like teams
of researchers usually to like do this kind of stuff.
But the thing is also and this is something I
don't think people understand. Those guys, like the people they're
hiring difer researchers are just you, but they got a
job being a researcher for a union. Like they have
the same skills as you They know how to like
(21:07):
Google stuff, and they know how to look through people's
like dating profiles and like look through their their facebooks
and their Instagrams and like a big one, a big
one that that the rich people especially do not think about,
is like cash app and venmo.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh venmos app because yeah, yeah, because.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Because people's peoples trying. People just leave public transactions out
there like that. That's how they got what's his name,
the congressional Gates. Can I legally call him the congressional pedophile?
I guess they call him the accused pedophile?
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, the man credibly accused of sleeping with an
underage woman lots of times, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
And one of the ways they found that was that
and also like paying paying for that, right yes, which
is which is rape. By the way, I want to
be very clear about that, Like, yeah, having sex with
someone who is underage is rape. It is always rape,
you know. And the way people found that was that
they just looked through like his cash app history and
they found all of these money transfers to people. You know,
this is all very very simple stuff. That's that's very
(22:06):
very useful organizing wise, that you already know how to do.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Yeah. Pinterest is another absolute bad people. Yeah, so much
people that they be pinning you know if if if
you're hearing some of these things and and you think
that you can figure out how to do this. That's
also a huge skill. Finding people who are willing to
learn things and willing to learn new skills is a
huge benefit to to organizers because you know this, this
(22:33):
gives you, like, this gives you a flexible person, right,
it gives it gives you someone you can like flex
into into any of a bunch of roles that you need.
And also can you know, pick up skills to learn things.
Having a car and being able to drive, and I
know a lot of you don't do this, but if
you do do this, this is you immediately, even if
you literally cannot contribute anything else to a project, being
able to just drive a bunch of water to a place,
(22:56):
oh yeah, huge, staggeringly useful. The amount of things people
can't access because they can't get there, it's vast, Especially
when I talk to migrants right have recently arrived in
the US. They don't have a US cell phone, they
can't uber Oftentimes nowadays you can't even pay for mass
transit with cash, you have to have a special card
and you have to get to the place to get
(23:18):
the card. Right, The problems you can solve by being
able to drive someone five miles are enormous, especially in
the US where everything is designed around everyone owning a
motor car at all times.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
Yep. Yeah, And like transport based skills are also very useful.
I mean, if you hike a lot, that's a very
very useful skill. There's a lot of sort of mutual
aid projects. There's a lot of you know, I mean
even things like setting up summer camps is the thing
that like leftist groups do right, and being able to
hike very good for that. It's good for things like
wilden just rescue. There's a lot of you know, the jams,
(23:50):
like the work you do that has to do with
like going in helping migrants. Like being able to hike
is staggeringly useful skill.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Yeah, yeah, it's very like, it's useful. It's important. It's
okay if that's not something you can physically do or
you know that that works for the way you like
to live your life. Like another thing I was thinking
of which can be massively important and people don't realize
is if you know how to take off a tail
light and replace the bulb in it. Yes, like we're
entering a time when people with darker, people with TPS,
(24:21):
people who are undocumented, people are on temporary migration statuses
are going to be definitely afraid of any interaction with
law enforcement. If you can change the bulb on someone's
tail light or their turn signal indicator as of us
in the UK, then you can meaningfully protect that person
in a really important way. And it can literally take
(24:42):
ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
And this is something that you know, can scale up
depending on how much skill you have. Right, there's even
just very basic auto maintenance stuff is very useful for
stuff like this. But you know, like if you're a carpenter, right,
if you're an electrician, you do some kind of trade work, right,
you do plumbing, right, That is the thing that is
massively useful to a lot of people. There's a lot
(25:04):
of other kind of just skills that you have from
your job that can be very useful. I mean, having
someone to manage a spreadsheet, oh yeah, yeah, is staggeringly useful.
And another one that I think people don't understand that
they really have. But like being able to set up
a meeting and like having a thing that lets you
(25:25):
be like, Okay, here's when everyone is free, Like you
probably have to do this for your job or just
for you know, trying to get your friends to go
even just like be on a call together or like
go have food or like just do anything. That is
what literally, genuinely one of the most important skills you
(25:45):
can possibly have as an organizer is the ability to
just sort of like go talk to people and be like, hey,
can you show up to this thing here?
Speaker 4 (25:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:52):
And that is that is so much of just what
organizing is. Can you be here at this time? And
then trying to figure out a time.
Speaker 4 (25:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
So we're going to close out this sort of skill
section with some I think just sort of like domestic
these skills that I don't think people realize are super useful.
If you have a button maker, you are instantly the
single most useful person in any organization. I love that. Yeah, well,
you can obtain a button maker. They're very easy to use.
But if you have one or you know the person
(26:20):
who has the button maker, and suddenly you can just
crank out buttons for every single event, they rule. Everyone
loves them. It helps. It helps enormously. It's awesome.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
That's a badge for those in the Commonwealth. Also, if
you have a sewing machine, yeah, I was about to
mention that, Yeah, yeah, you're a hero.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
One of my friends recently made me a little patch
and it's really cool and I like it, but not
all my stuff. But if you can sew, like, that's
a skill that I do not have. It's so great
when people can fix stuff for someone or you know,
make stuff fit someone. You know, if you're a person
who finds it hard to get closed that you like
(27:00):
to wear that make you feel good and someone one
of my friends could do that. And one of my
friends was making clothes for another friend for like a
Renaissance fair, and like it was the nicest thing I've
seen someone do for someone else in a very long time.
It really made her like, yeah, feel like nice and
(27:21):
cared for. And like you might think that like this
is just a weird little thing that you like to
do with your sewing machine, but you can meaningfully really
make someone feel cared for using that.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Yeah, And that's a huge part of what organizing is right,
and that that goes into one of the things that
is also an appreciable skill that's very useful. Is I
mean just like being nice to people, being kind to people,
and having people around who are good at like keeping
groups together. Yeah, that's its own distinct kind of person
is someone who can you know, keep all of the
(27:52):
people who are involved in a thing enjoying being around
each other. That's that's the kind of person who's very valuable.
And it's something that you can and look for, you know.
And if that's not you, like you can there's something
you can you know, find in your friends. You can
find in this sort of the people around you. Yeah, definitely,
there's also something that I think you can tell when
an organization is collapsing because this is like the first
(28:14):
thing with the quality drops drawing and graphic design are
very very useful because a big part of what you
do organizing is like you make a flyer and you
put a flyer on a bunch of telephone poles to
tell people that there's a thing happening. Yeah, and yeah,
you know, and this is also something you know later
on you might be making a social media presence, but
just having good artists and having good graphic design people
(28:37):
is enormously useful for this kind of stuff. Yeah, and
al along this line, these things like making music, and
there's a bunch of different ways this can go. This
can be an immediate thing where you know, like you
have people on a picket line, right and everyone's singing
songs and this is great. We love this. Yeah. Also,
and this is another thing that you can be thinking
about in terms of what skills you have and what
things you can create. Benefit shows. Yes, this has been
(29:00):
a huge part of a lot of how some of
the unions off up here has been getting funded is
by just having like punk benefit shows. And if that's
the thing that you can do, or you know, people
in bands, you know, people who make music, you know,
people who just make stuff who are willing to contribute
it to the cause, that's great.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I remember one of we had one night last September,
so cold. We were in the desert and they're like
a thousand people, right, and we were at that point
we were really struggling to feed everyone, even you know,
because there was so few of us. But my friend
bought out like their guitar and some bongo drums they had,
and I think I had my harmonica in my truck
and like we were sitting around with these We had
(29:38):
some Sikh guys, had some Weiga folks come from China,
and then some Kourdish people and they were all displaying
their different music and it was so nice like that,
taking people out of a shitty situation for a moment
with music. Again, like, don't underestimate how important that it.
Don't feel like if you have that skill, it's not
a useful one.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
No, And this is something I've I've been starting to
say more and more. If you need a theory brained
way to say this to someone who like is is
like a curmudgety Marxist who hates fun. Morale is a
terrain of struggle that this is. There's a reason why
morale is one of the most important factors of military campaigns.
You can't get people to do things if they're too
(30:19):
depressed to do it. Yeah, and being able to raise
people's morale, it's it's this massive If you want again,
want to go into technical language, is a massive force
multiplayer right, It makes everyone you have enormously more effective.
The better they feel about themselves and the better they
feel about the situation they're in. And things like music,
things like art. I mean things like pulling pranks. This
(30:40):
is a yeah, if you were, if you were a
good practical jokester, this is a staggeringly useful skill both
like in terms of you know, you need to be
careful about whether you're you're playing your pranks on like
other people in the org, but like you know, if
you know how to just like pull pranks, this is
a really really useful thing. In like Union cap Tenant's organizing.
(31:01):
There are a lot of people who you can pray
and it's very funny and it lowers their morale and
it raises your morale.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, and I going back to your music as all, like,
like morale is a terrain of struggle. Like the other
memory I have last year of playing guitars is in Rajava,
being inside at night because everyone was getting drone struck
all the time and it was dangerous to be driving around,
sitting around with some ZD friends and like we spent
all night playing the ood, which is like a it's
(31:31):
like a guitar with a gord on the bottom, and
to describe it like it's a string instrument. It's a
string instrument, is what it is. And like that made
everyone so happy we had such a nice evening. Everyone
was able to like get through. It's a relatively difficult thing. Like,
you know, it sucks that people are being killed and
just for driving around are existing, and they're bombing all
(31:53):
this city and infrastructure and the power keeps going out
and all these things, right, like, but there's a reason
that those people have ooed around after fifteen thirteen years
of war, and it's because it is important, and so
don't overlook that.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
And you know, and resisting fear is another huge aspect
of this, right, A lot of the ways that people
like a lot of the ways that you demobilize people
this is, this is why regimes like this spend a
lot of effort trying to make people afraid. He is
that it makes it harder for you to act. And
things that you know, the things that make you less afraid,
even if they sort of seem silly, are very very important.
(32:31):
And you know, on sort of this note, one of
the things that you know, as you've assembled your group
of people, right, one of the things that that's important
to be able to sort of have a grasp on
is that you can't just do organizing by having it
only be the capital the serious thing, the captalty organizing
thing all the time. Your organization will not hold together.
(32:53):
There has to be actual, like bonds formed between you
and the people you're organizing with and the people you're
trying to help.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Hm hmmm. I don't want to call out any organization
in particular, there is an organization that perceives organizing to
exist solely in the realm of wearing a high vias
vest and carrying a clipboard and getting people to write
their email addresses down and then telling them to attend things.
And like maybe there are several organizations like that. I
don't know, I've just I've perceived one locally. If you
(33:20):
don't have those bonds that, like those interpersonal relationships like
these things won't hang together. Like yeah, So many of
my happiest organizing memories, like again going down James's memory lane,
I guess I have a memory of like Christmas Eve
last year, twenty twenty three, me and my friends have
been out I know some of them listen. Some of
(33:42):
them have come across from different states to help us
at Christmas Holidays, which is nice.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
And it was.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Cold and we had been feeding people all day and
then we'd heard some people in another location that we've
gone to find. And then we got to the end
of the day and like, rather than just going home,
I had a bunch of we had some MRIs left
refugeemor is sort of vegan. Lots of us a vegan,
so we were like, we're not going to find any
other vegan food in the middle of nowhere out here,
so we'll set around eating little vegan MREs and like
(34:10):
just talking and like sharing some thoughts and things we
experienced over the last months of doing this, and like,
it's those moments that make you're organizing groups so much stronger.
No one's telling anyone to do anything, you know, those
genuine bonds and that the love and friendship we build
up between each other doing things that are very important.
(34:30):
Don't overlook the value of those because it's extremely valuable.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
And this is something that I think you can understand
in your own life pretty easily, where Okay, if a
random person on the street walks up to you and
tells you to go do something, are you going to
do it? It's like no, why No? Probably not, Like
I don't know, maybe it's something like really sort of hey,
there's children in a burning building. We're going to run
(34:56):
in and grab them. But like the odds are no,
you're going to ignore them. But if your friend goes
and tells you to do the same thing, and you
know you've been friends with them for a long time
and you really care about them, the odds of you
doing it are much much higher. And that's that's all
organizing is. It's finding ways to You have a thing
to do, and you go talk to people and you
(35:17):
ask if they want to help you do it, And
the stronger your relationships are, the more likely it is
to happen. And that's why it's very important to do
things like you know, just like having potlucks, like bringing
snacks to meetings. Oh yeah, and like you know, even
if you're doing a potlucks, it's good to you know,
you do like one capital capital T organizing thing, right,
You get like a little bit of work done, but
(35:38):
mostly everyone's just sort of relaxing and eating chili or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, if you're a baker, you know, you can base people.
It's a wonderful thing to shot God.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Yes, yeah, and just knowing how to cook. I realized
I forgot to mention this one. Knowing how to cook
is a staggeringly useful skill. And it's useful in literally
every literally, any kind of organizing you could possibly be.
Speaker 4 (35:59):
And it is the thing.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It is a skill that is useful in like it's
useful in war zones. It's useful like literally no matter
what organization you're in, if you can cook for people,
oh yeah, and you don't even and you don't have
to be like a good cook. It's just like you
can show up with food that you have made. You
have instantly made this whole thing more successful.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, definitely, Like I've had some wonderful meals in war
zone and I've deeply appreciated those people. More broadly though,
those ties like the way we organize without the state.
The reason I believe that that is the way we
should organize and the way we will continue to organize
in a way that we can make the state irrelevant
is because we understand each other as people and care
(36:40):
about each other as people, and then we approach our
organizing holistically, right with everyone in it, knowing this person
is good at this, but they're struggling with this right now,
and I care about them, so I'm not going to
make them do that right now. That is how we
can build sustainable communities in a way that state cannot
and in a way that capitalism cannot. Right, because fucking
(37:01):
hurts rent Car doesn't care or know about its employees
in a way that we who organize with people and
care and love one another do, And like that's why
our organizations will always be stronger than those created by
capitalism or the state.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
Yeah, unfortunately, speaking of capitalism of the state, we're taking
our last ad break where.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
You yeah, hopefully it's Hurts Renticr.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
We are back.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
So I want to wrap things up by doing a
couple of doing a few things. I want to talk
about some kind of basic organizing things that you're going
to have to do that are not very difficult but
are extremely important. And second, I want to talk a
bit about how we did the first organizing project that
I ever was involved in, which was tenants organizing, Because
it's really not that hard, right, you just go do
(38:01):
the thing, it will happen. Yeah, and suddenly it ceases
to be this like, oh, this domain of expert knowledge,
and there's like, oh, this is a really difficult thing.
If you just I don't know, you go give food
to someone and suddenly you've done that and it's happened.
So there are things that are important to like basic
organizing stuff. Knowing how to book rooms from like churches,
(38:24):
from libraries, from whatever meeting spaces, and also knowing how
to book rooms in places that like accommodate disabilities is
a huge thing because a lot of people book meetings
in places are a wheelchair accessible and it's a fucking fiasco.
And you can avoid that very easily, but you have
to put a little tiny bit of work into it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Literally, I reached out to a friend to book a
room last night because I knew they would get at
that stuff.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, you know, there's arranging people's schedules, getting people show
up for stuff, things you can do to prepare if
what you're doing is basically all the things we've been describing, right,
getting together a bunch of people to do a thing
that is technically forming an organization. Yeah, Now, how formal
or informat you want it to be, or just you know,
maybe it's just your organizing project or whatever. There's things
you usually want. You want some kind of email so
(39:12):
people can contact you in tandem with the email. Something
that's very helpful that I think younger people tend not
to think about. Is getting Google Voice. Yes, when Google
Voice lets you set up a voicemail account so people
can call you and leave phone messages. I mean, everyone
should just do this because this is the way that
a lot of older people communicate.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Right.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
They won't send you an email, but they will leave
you a voice message. And it's very, very useful for this.
Childcare is something that's important. I did, I mean a
lot is probably too strong of a word, but like
I did childcare when I was organizing, and it wound
up being really helpful because there's a lot of people
with kids, and so you know, there's a couple of
ways that this could work. One is that you know,
you have everyone bring their kids. You have like a
(39:51):
little space, you bring them like coloring stuff, you bring
them toys, you bring them games, and you just sort
of watch everyone for a while. And as an organizing thing, again,
if you're good with kid that's very useful staggering or
useful organizing skill. Yeah. Another way this stuff happens is
you know, everyone pulls together ten bucks and you hire
a babysitter, yeah, for a bunch of kids. And that's
(40:12):
a very useful organizing a thing.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, I organize with people who have kids. I remember
four years ago, fuck me twenty twenty, a long time ago,
and also yesterday, but like we were organizing to feed
and house people and we were having a big Thanksgiving dinner,
and like some of my friends have very young children
and they bought them and I think it's actually really
(40:34):
cool to do that. A like for those kids, it
is normal that, like we look after people in our community.
This is what we do, and ever since I've been little,
this is what we did. And like it's also very
nice for people. Like a lot of my friends also
brought their children down to the border, especially last year
when we had because there were children there anyway, right, Yeah,
(40:56):
some of my friends who bring their children down and
their kids would play with the other kids, and like
it doesn't matter that some of the kids are Kourdition
and some of the kids are from China and some
of them are from Columbia or whatever. They'll get along
just fine. When they're four or five years old, they
don't care. They just want to kick a ball or
see a Teddy Bear or something. And I think it's
really good for your children to you know, you're bringing
(41:17):
them into a world which is cruel and at times unequal,
and like your kids seeing that, like we can make
a difference and we can do this. I think it's
one of the best educations you can give your children.
Speaker 3 (41:29):
Yeah, and it's something that's good for everyone involved.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, exactly. And it's also very I think one of
the things I see a lot and people are organizing
thing with refugees of the en housed, is like they're
just people, Like you don't need to be afraid of them,
Like they don't want to hurt your children. And having
your children around shows that, like you have grasped they're
just people, and that you feel safe and your children
are safe around them. And I think that that's valuable too.
(41:54):
You're giving both parties some dignity in that moment.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
Yeah, there are some other very basic things that I
think are very important. If you've never done this before,
I'm going to talk a little bit about how you
run a meeting. Yeah, and you would think that this
doesn't matter, and until you watch a group of one
hundred people who don't know how to do this attempt
to get anything done and they it just is a fiasco.
And this is even true sort of smaller groups. Yeah,
(42:19):
so I'm going to give you how to run a
meeting one oh one, Okay. A very common way to
organize meetings that people use all over the world and
it's very effective is you have two things. You have
an agenda and you have a stack, and those are
like the technical terms for them. The agenda, I mean,
is an agenda, right, you know what an agenda is.
You put the things that you need to do on it.
And another thing that's very helpful with these is you
(42:41):
know you're going to be operating at our time constraints
because people don't have forty five hours to be in meetings,
and my god, you don't want to be in a
meeting for that long. Yeah, you know, knowing how long
roughly you want to talk about these things is very
very useful and making sure that you're sort of moving
the conversation through the stuff on the agenda because you
have more stuff you need to talk about. All of
(43:01):
this again, like this all sounds very obvious, and again
you know how to do it, but until you've been
in a room where people have not realized they need
to do this, you don't understand how I put on.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
This stuff gets the pain of it not happening.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
God, I have watched rooms full of like sciet these
are like professional scientists.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
This is an entire room of one hundred feet of
people with physics PhDs who don't know how to run
a meeting, and it's a shit show. And all of
this stuff could have been avoided with some very very
simple things. Yes, the other thing, and this is genuinely
a piece of social technology, right, it is the stack.
It is very simple, right. You have one person who
is the stack keeper, and whatsone wants to talk? You
have one person talking at a time, and what someone
(43:41):
wants to talk, they raise their hand, they make some
kind of signal to the stack keeper, and that person
writes their name down. And so you now have a
list of who gets to talk in what order. And
so you go down the list and people get the
say things, and again you know how to do this.
This is not like a complicated thing. But again I
have one watch people who collectively have like more PhDs
(44:03):
than like I earn money in a week, like who know?
I cannot be able to pick this out, and you do.
I believe in you.
Speaker 4 (44:12):
I believe in you, dear listener. That you could do this.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, there's a very common Sometimes this is one person
and sometimes this is two people. A very common way
to do it is to have a stack taker and
then have someone who's the facilitator. And the facilitator's job
is to like call on the people and to try
to like move the conversation forwards and get and make
sure make sure everyone's involved. And also another important part
of this, and this is again something you'll you'll know
from your stupid work meetings, is you have to get
(44:37):
people like me to shut up. Your meetings can't just
be one person giving a speech. You have to cut
them the fuck off and you have to get to
the next person.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, and doing that courteously is a skill.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Yeah. Yeah, And finally, on this note, there's a lot
of if you want to go into the like more
technical stuff. Part of the things that facilitators use and
part of you know, the formal name for this is
like the progressive stack, but it's just a thing that's
very useful in organizing is you want to make sure
everyone in a room is engaged and talking and that
(45:10):
it's not just three people who talk all the time.
And you know, and so the idea of the progressive stack, right,
is you're trying to find the most marginalized people in degrees,
people who are least likely to speak, and you're trying
to get them in first. And sometimes this is literally
just like, hey, someone hasn't been talking in a meeting
this whole time, and you can like ask them what
they think about something, or asked if they have anything
to say, and a lot of times they will, but
(45:31):
they just don't feel confident enough to say it. And
this is a very very important skill for a facilitator
or just even you could just do this in a
meeting too, right, Like you can be the person who
goes like, hey, do you have this this person have
anything to contribute? And that is an enormous thing. Sometimes
it can be you know, sometimes it can be a
little bit awkward, but it's a very important thing because
you're just losing out on people who have really really
(45:54):
valuable ideas and contributions and plans. And if you just
let the same three people give speeches, you can't get
to the stuff that's actually useful.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Yeah, definitely, if you've been a teacher or in any
way what you know, you probably have had you have
this skill. You might not consider it a skill, but
even if you've been a TA in grad school something
like that, you probably know how to do this.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
Yeah. So I'm gonna put all of this together one briefly,
and I'm going to run through basically how we started
the first organizing project I ever day, which was a
tenants union in Chicago. Okay, so this is based on
my memory. It's been a long time since I did this,
but my basic memory of what we did was. Okay,
so one of my friends is an experienced organizer. I
was like a tiny baby, right this this was my
(46:41):
first offline organizing project ever. Right, I had no idea
what was doing. I thought I was a guy, which
like that, that's how much of a fiasco, Like little
tidy baby bea who doesn't know anything? This was, you know.
And so my friend talked to some people that he knew,
and he knew that I, you know, I was interested
in getting involved in tennis organizing, and we we like
went to a cafe and we sat down and we
(47:02):
ate and we just talked about what we wanted to do,
what our plans were, what things we needed to do
to get this organization set up. We talked about ideological
stuff and that's actually is something that's important too. Is
part of organizing is getting people to think intentionally about
their actions and think politically about their actions. Yeah, and
that's something that's very useful. You also have to make
(47:23):
sure that you're not forming a book club, Like book
clubs are fine, but you need to make sure you're
organizing group. If you try to do a thing, has
it just become a book club. But that's you know
that that was something that was very useful to us.
And you know, we started making a plan. And our
plan was, Okay, we made a bunch of flyers and
then we went out and I did this and I
walked around through a bunch of streets and put them
a light post or whatever, and then we put them
(47:44):
like we hung them up in the buildings of tenants,
you know, because you can just like walk up the
stairs right and need to put them on the walls.
And you know, we had this flyer, this firehead information.
This flyer said, Okay, we're starting a tenant's union. If
you have tenant, if you have issues with your landlord,
or you want to talk about tenants stuff like, come
here at this time. We had an email you can
send us stuff. We had a phone number that you
could call. Yeah, you know, and so okay, and so
(48:06):
parallel to this, we like, I forget if it was
a church or if it was some building, some center
or something. We booked a room. We were kind of
lucky in that we had like local press people nice
who we sort of knew. And this is another useful
like if knowing a journalist can be a very useful skill,
because one way to get a project off the ground,
if you're trying to get to a bunch of people,
(48:28):
is by finding a journalist who is willing to cover it.
Because you know, we're we're finding founding like the first
tenants union in this place, right yeah, and you know,
so we had media coverage and we got kind of
screwed when this event eventually came together because there was
like three feet of snow that night, but people still came,
like people still came in the blizzard, Like a lot
of people showed up for this. What are things that
we do? We also, like, you know, we just we
(48:49):
just started talking to people, right, We started talking to
tenets about their problems. We just you know, we talked
to our friends. We talked to the people they knew.
We ended up talking to someone you know, And this
is the thing that just happens as a spreads by
word of mouth, right, people start contacting you. We ran
into a really long time tenants organizer in the city
who had a bunch of incredible stories about how our
corrupt politicians got their jobs by portraying the old tenants organizers, right.
(49:13):
And like I said, the thing is, you know, another
thing that happens in projects is you'll you'll sometimes you'll
just you'll just pick up someone who's you know, has
been doing this since like the sixties. Yeah, and it
rules because they have a wealth of experience and they
want to do stuff. We plotted out what we were
going to do at our meeting. You know, we were
going to do some political education. We were gonna have
a bunch of time for people to talk about stuff,
and we were gonna, you know, get get people to
(49:35):
understand what we were doing, how they could start organizing.
And then we did it, and I unfortunately don't remember
much of what we talked about because I was off
in another room taking care of a bunch of people's kids,
which was very nice, but I don't remember what we
talked about. But like that, you know, but like you
all of those things, right, all of those steps from
the start of you get five of your friends to
(49:55):
go eat dinner and you talk about what you want
to do through someone makes a flyer in like Microsoft
or whatever you make it in like PowerPoint, and that's publisher.
What's what's what's the one I'm blinking, I haven't used
it in so long? The one you make greeting cards
in I really program and I've forgotten it is you
(50:18):
see this to make Christmas cards? But like, you know, okay,
so we made a flyer and then we walked around
and put the flyers up and we made it. We
made an email, you know, we got a space together,
we figured out what we wanted to do, and then
we did it, and you know, and there's a bunch
of organizing from there, right, But like we had started
a thing, and you can do every single one of
those steps. And if you can't personally do one of
(50:38):
those steps, you can think of a person who you know,
who you can bring in to help you do these things.
Because organizing you already fucking know how to do it. Yeah,
you just have to go out there and do it.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yep, you can have faith.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
Yeah, and this has been It can happen here? Go organize.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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now find sources for it could Happen here listed directly
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It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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