0:01

Fol Zone Media.

0:03

Hi, this is a special message from

0:06

me, Margaret. It's not an

0:08

ad message. It's

0:10

just not related to what we're

0:12

going to talk about today on the podcast. And I'm recording

0:14

this separately. I'm recording this separately

0:17

because on June tenth, twenty

0:19

twenty four, Leonard Peltier is

0:21

going to have a parole hearing and I

0:23

want to talk about that. One

0:26

of the guests that we have a lot on this

0:29

podcast, but also just like cool Zone Media podcasts

0:31

in general, is my friend Moira Meltzer

0:34

Cohen, who is a lawyer, a

0:36

defense lawyer who is on Leonard Peltier's

0:39

court case. And

0:42

Moira asked us to read this

0:44

statement, and I just want to say

0:47

I co sign this statement. I've done a lot of

0:49

research about Leonard Peltier

0:52

for this podcast and also

0:54

on my own as an activist. Some of the first

0:57

protests I ever went to were related

1:00

to free Leonard Peltier.

1:02

So this is the statement.

1:04

On June tenth, twenty twenty four, Leonard Peltier

1:07

enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa

1:10

of Lakota and Ajibo Ancestry and

1:12

the longest serving political prisoner in the United

1:15

States, will be appearing before the

1:17

US Parole Commission for the first time since two

1:19

thousand nine. He faces staunch

1:21

opposition from the FBI and other law

1:23

enforcement due to having allegedly

1:26

killed two FBI agents in a firefight

1:28

on June twenty six, nineteen seventy five,

1:31

after the agents appeared on reservation

1:33

land to execute a pretextual

1:35

warrant. The initial

1:37

firefight occurred during the quote reign of

1:39

terror on Pine Ridge in the wake of

1:41

the occupation of Wounded Knee, a time

1:43

of extreme violence when federal law enforcement

1:46

installed a puppet tribal chair and was

1:48

arming vigilantes who targeted Indigenous

1:50

traditionalists. Everything

1:53

leading up to these events, as well as the subsequent

1:55

investigation and mister Peltier's

1:57

extradition, trial, conviction, and sentencing,

2:00

were characterized by gross misconduct

2:02

on the part of law enforcement, the prosecution,

2:05

and the courts. Mister Peltier's

2:07

co defendants were separately tried

2:09

and acquitted on grounds of self defense.

2:12

Mister Peltier was railroaded, and his case

2:14

is tainted by discrimination at every level,

2:16

ranging from the withholding of exculpatory

2:19

evidence to the torture and coercion

2:21

of extradition and trial witnesses, and

2:23

from the refusal of the trial judge to dismiss

2:26

in avowedly racist juror, to

2:28

the apologetic gymnastics of courts affirming

2:30

his conviction in the face of

2:32

meritorious legal challenges and admitted

2:34

evidence of outrageous government misdeeds.

2:37

Mister Peltier has been in prison for more than

2:39

forty eight years and is almost eighty years

2:42

old. He suffers from chronic and

2:44

potentially lethal conditions for which

2:46

he receives insufficient and sub standard

2:48

medical care. If you want to take

2:50

action to free Leonard Peltier, you

2:53

can call the U. S Parole Commission at

2:55

two zero two three four six

2:57

seven thousand. Again that's

2:59

two zero two three four

3:02

six seven thousand. Or

3:05

you can sign the petition. And this

3:07

is a string of This is

3:09

a U R L so I'm going to read it out.

3:12

N d n c O dot

3:14

C C slash us

3:18

PC dash free

3:20

Leonard Peltier. Again, that's

3:22

n D n c O dot C

3:24

C slash us

3:27

PC dash free Leonard

3:29

Peltier. Leonard Peltier is spelled

3:31

l E O N A R D

3:34

P E L t I E

3:37

R or you can follow Indian

3:39

Collective on social media, which is n d

3:41

N Collective. For more

3:43

information on Leonard Peltier, Listen

3:46

to Margaret's podcast on the Low Coda Nation.

3:48

Oh thanks Moira, and read

3:50

in the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter

3:53

Matheson. And again,

3:55

just want to reiterate, I go

3:57

sign all of this. I've done a lot of my own

4:00

search into this. You can and should too,

4:02

and free Leonard Peltier,

4:07

Magpie.

4:08

Please tell these people, why

4:10

will a mess the day this is happening?

4:12

Well, because today on

4:15

today is cool people did cool stuff.

4:17

No, I don't know. Is there anything that's happened well, okay, today

4:20

is a podcast about history and about cool people

4:22

in history. And today my guess

4:24

is prop and prop. You run a podcast

4:26

called hood Politics with Props, Yes, and I

4:28

use that when I want to figure out what the fuck

4:30

is going on in current events. As

4:33

far as I can tell, there's no current events happening.

4:35

Oh man, right now, right, well, like

4:37

not in the last fifteen minutes, the last.

4:39

Fifteen minutes that completely derailed

4:41

baits. Listen. Our mamas

4:43

used to always tell us, baby, your arms is too

4:45

short to box with God, and

4:48

you just what we just watched it happen right

4:50

now.

4:52

Honestly, we are recording this on the

4:54

day that Trump was found guilty on thirty

4:57

four fellon account for.

5:00

Unanimously, unanimously airy

5:02

body Jerry Yo Peers bigged

5:04

out.

5:05

I just really don't know if I

5:07

can be a professional today, Magpie.

5:10

It's gonna be hard, it's gonna be

5:12

very And it's funny because the news cycle.

5:14

I mean, y'all are going to hear this

5:16

four days from now. Yeah, I know, but

5:19

four days from now is an infinite We

5:21

could have had a coup between now and then.

5:24

Who knows, you could have went

5:26

to jail, broke out right. It's

5:28

just it's just like the

5:30

January sixth.

5:32

Yeah, I was trying to like do the

5:35

oh man, it's so funny.

5:36

But I was trying to do like the all right, uh,

5:39

like this is America, be rational,

5:42

nothing nothing good could come of this. But

5:45

the thing that I was thinking about, as

5:47

he is a resident of the state of Florida,

5:51

is that maybe, uh

5:53

you know, voters rights could get changed there.

5:55

So they actually did get changed, and just remembered,

5:57

yeah they did. Last the good

6:00

thing last ballot, they said the felons can vote.

6:02

So yeah, well once

6:04

they're once they're out, not once

6:07

they're done. Yeah yeah, yeah, once they're out.

6:09

Okay, is maybe voters' rights

6:11

could uh once again

6:14

get get amended.

6:17

But it's

6:20

so crazy.

6:22

I'm going to be a professional. I'm going to be a professional.

6:24

I'm mostly thinking about

6:26

how four days from now we're gonna have so much more information,

6:28

but you all can see the unfiltered Yeah right

6:30

now, three people who two people who pay attention

6:32

to curn events for a living, and one person who reads history

6:34

books for a living like this.

6:38

It's just so it's like

6:40

as knowing to

6:43

tie it all together, knowing we're witnessing history,

6:45

knowing for a fact

6:48

this is for until

6:52

you know, the the heat dome rises

6:55

and climate change finally takes us

6:57

out. This is this will

7:00

go down in history.

7:01

So so to the Secret

7:04

Service folks that are protecting him at

7:06

his home.

7:06

Are they legally allowed to have guns?

7:09

I don't know.

7:10

Shit.

7:11

They got to go to jail.

7:14

Do they sit outside

7:16

the jail if he got like sid First

7:18

of all, he's not going to go the second of all, his

7:21

jail would be like a room at mar

7:23

A Lago, because.

7:24

That's how fucked up this country is.

7:26

Yeah, I'm just excited

7:28

for Waco too.

7:30

I know.

7:30

Yeah, Yeah, we'll tell you.

7:32

About how got followed at Waco.

7:34

No, but I would love to hear that I

7:37

went.

7:39

I went on a trip recently across the country

7:41

and the person I was traveling with was like,

7:43

we gotta go see the Waco compound. And I

7:45

was like, I'm not sure I agree with you. We were

7:47

not to have to go see the Waco compound. And

7:49

so we drove by it and it's on

7:51

this like gravel road and

7:54

we got followed for like fifteen

7:56

miles by a sports car for

8:00

having driven by it on

8:03

the gravel road.

8:04

Wow, sports car, it's

8:06

pretty random.

8:08

No, And it like it turned around on the

8:10

road to follow us. It

8:13

was pretty like even it was just like, oh, there's someone behind

8:15

us. It was like, oh, I see why,

8:17

even though this is a public road, Yeah, I

8:20

see why. They don't want I get

8:22

it. I even I was like, I'm in my

8:24

fucking I refer to my pickup truck

8:26

as my Chud truck because it looks like a Chud drives

8:28

it because I got a giant Tundra,

8:31

and I'm like, oh, I'm safe I totally

8:34

me.

8:35

I like this stuff.

8:37

Yeah, exactly. Anyways,

8:41

you go to the near future. So

8:44

today I even went more

8:46

recent than usual. Today, today

8:48

we're going to talk about the time when in two

8:50

thousand and one. See, it's even in this millennium,

8:54

after bankers and predatory international

8:56

loan funds gutted their economy, thousands

8:58

of working class folks in Urina took over

9:00

hundreds of abandoned factories, got those

9:03

factories running again, and found

9:06

work with dignity and no bosses.

9:08

Would you say that the government was

9:10

behaving very messy?

9:13

I would say that there's

9:15

even going to be politicians who get convicted

9:18

and don't serve time in this great.

9:21

I was making a Lionel Messi

9:23

joke.

9:23

Oh yeah, no, it went over my head.

9:25

Okay, do you even know who

9:27

Lionel Messi is? Magpie?

9:29

No? All right, yeah, on the level

9:31

of Pele as far as.

9:33

Like Great is either.

9:35

No.

9:37

If you've heard of the game soccer,

9:40

yeah, do you know that it's internationally

9:43

loved as like the.

9:44

Beautiful I genuinely

9:47

like soccer, and I've watched the World Cup at least

9:49

once. Whenever I'm not in the

9:51

US, people are like it's way better

9:53

in the world.

9:54

Yeah, it's way better outside anyway, Lionel

9:56

Messi, it was Messi

9:59

Argentina.

9:59

Sorry, okay, no, no, no, this is

10:01

good.

10:02

I'm glad you could borrow that later.

10:05

Yeah, all right, all right. So

10:07

one of my favorite things to do on this show is draw

10:10

wild conclusions and connections by draping

10:12

red string all over my wall, okay, or

10:14

talk about strange chains of dominoes. And

10:17

today I'm going to tell you that the reason

10:19

I have a wall, and that I'm

10:21

recording this from inside a house that I live

10:23

in, a house that I bought, is

10:26

because of those workers from Argentina.

10:29

All right.

10:31

When workers started taking over their factories, it

10:33

inspired people from all over the world. A

10:35

few of the people from the global North, like the

10:37

author and filmmaker Naomi Klein, who

10:39

alongside with her husband, went and made a documentary

10:42

about the struggle called The Take. Some

10:44

finance people from the US took note of that

10:46

documentary, including a guy named Brendan Martin,

10:49

who moved Argentina to figure out how to help

10:51

finance this cooperative revolution in

10:54

a non extractive way. While

10:56

he was there, he learned about what's called non

10:58

extractive finance, which is a way of loaning

11:00

money to cooperatives that doesn't extract value

11:02

from them, but is still a sustainable form

11:04

of finance. Don't worry, there's gonna be burning tires

11:07

and shit later in this story. I know I'm starting with finance.

11:09

Okay.

11:11

He came home, This guy, Brendon Martin. He comes

11:13

home from Argentina a couple years later, and

11:16

with what he learned, he starts a worker cooperative

11:18

finance organization called the Working World. Okay,

11:21

in proper cooperative form. They

11:23

soon federated with a shitload of nonprofit

11:25

loan funds to finance worker cooperatives

11:27

and spread this model that came from Argentina.

11:31

That federation is called Seed Commons.

11:33

I worked for Seed Commons for two years, and

11:36

it turns out that a modest nonprofit

11:39

salary is enough to buy a house if you are shopping

11:41

in West Virginia.

11:42

Got it okay, because I was like, my

11:45

wife works for a nonprofit.

11:46

And uh,

11:48

yeah, I don't know. Yeah,

11:51

yeah, no, I have a very nice house for you

11:53

know, I've been live in West Virginia though, so it's affordable.

11:56

And I got to confuse my family by

11:58

showing up as like the anarchist bad daughter, you

12:00

know, yeah, and be like, oh, I got a

12:03

job in finance.

12:04

You are quite a

12:07

pickle for that family or yours.

12:09

Yeah, so funny

12:12

dominoes. Some seamstresses took over

12:14

their factory, and now I no longer live in a twelve by

12:16

twelve cabin in the woods. We're

12:20

going to start our context with

12:23

one of my least favorite things, and one of the things that people

12:25

don't know what the word means is they use it wrong all the time,

12:27

including, and I'm not mad at them, the

12:29

word neoliberalism. Oh yes, yeah,

12:32

it's fucking messy.

12:33

It's messy. That's I'm glad

12:35

you're bringing this up because like for the

12:38

next couple of shows, like I have to actually get in

12:40

and explain what it means. So I'm glad you're doing

12:42

this.

12:43

Yeah, yeah, No, it's because I

12:45

all the time I hear people basically be like, oh, liberalism,

12:48

it's neoliberally they conflate them there, misfortunately.

12:51

Yeah. One of the most confusing and

12:53

annoying things about language and politics is the same word

12:55

means different things in different contexts. An

12:58

Irish Republican has nothing nice

13:00

to say to an American Republican. If

13:03

you ever want to be entertained, look at the comments

13:05

on like Irish Republican Army songs on YouTube,

13:07

and it's all these Americans being like, yeah,

13:10

we love Republicanism, and then Irish

13:12

people being like, we would murder you.

13:14

Yeah that is I don't think. Yeah, we

13:17

are not the socialists.

13:18

Yes, yeah, Republican

13:21

means opposite things between those two countries and

13:23

a lot of the world. Libertarian is used

13:25

by anti authoritarian socialists to distinguish

13:28

themselves from authoritarian socialists. In

13:30

the US, it means that you believe

13:32

in private property above everything else and don't

13:34

give a shit about people. Yes, liberalism

13:37

is one of these words. Classically,

13:39

liberalism was like, well, I like capitalism

13:41

and I don't like kings, so

13:44

privilege should rest not in the hands of the aristocracy

13:46

but in the hands of the business owners.

13:48

Yes.

13:49

For an awfully long time, liberalism

13:52

has now instead meant vaguely

13:55

center left politics.

13:56

Right.

13:57

This is like most people who are hearing

13:59

this, If you like yourself as a liberal, or

14:01

you complain about liberals, you're imagining

14:04

people who follow the Democrats party line.

14:07

Biden is a liberal, you know, believing

14:10

in more rights for marginalized people, a state

14:13

that you'll look after people who can't work, but

14:15

not too extreme.

14:17

Yeah, any of them that like that would

14:20

what we would call bare minimum, Like it's

14:22

just this is.

14:24

I'm not a monster, Yeah,

14:26

exactly, Like just enough to make

14:29

it so that people fewer people feel justified

14:31

in violent revolution. Yes, liberalism

14:35

is to the right of progressives in US politics

14:38

who start tying a little bit of class politics

14:40

into it.

14:40

Yeah.

14:41

So in the late nineties, a new word started

14:44

floating around, neoliberalism,

14:46

and it was confusing as shit to people because

14:49

neoliberalism, I mean it basically

14:51

means the old liberalism again, but

14:54

not liberals like we understand them today,

14:56

but free market capitalism.

14:58

Yeah.

15:00

Neoliberalism stands for shutting down

15:02

all government protections for the environment

15:04

and for workers. It stands for selling

15:06

off public infrastructure to private companies,

15:08

often to international companies, and

15:11

free trade agreements that I

15:13

think very negatively of and tend to well

15:16

we'll talk about their effects.

15:17

Yeah. Yeah, this episode the scuttle

15:20

bucket around like the policy wonks is

15:22

like, I think it's they're kind of like, it's

15:25

time to admit that neoliberalism

15:28

failed. Yeah, it did. Not give

15:30

us the promises, the NAFTA free

15:33

trade aught at just the Clinton

15:35

of it all, the boy Clinton

15:37

of it all. That's neoliberal. It's like, oh,

15:40

you know, if we will bring China, will make China

15:42

modern, you know, we'll

15:44

just like, you know, instead of just having

15:46

a factory, have factories all over the world, and

15:48

you know, we'll just trade, you know, and then everybody wins,

15:50

right, like you know, you know, we're

15:53

all making money.

15:54

Yeah, yeah,

15:56

no, And like you said, like eventually

15:58

even the realization

16:01

that it didn't work trickled up.

16:02

That's my trickle down econot.

16:04

It's good. It trickled down.

16:06

Hey, people eventually realized

16:08

that this didn't work. It took well, we'll

16:10

talk about what it took. By

16:14

the end of the twentieth century, neoliberalism has

16:16

swept across the globe for the rich and powerful.

16:18

It swept across the globe like a trend. This

16:20

is cool, We're excited for the

16:23

downtrodden. It swept across the globe

16:25

like a plague and destroyed economies and

16:27

collapsed economies everywhere. It

16:29

went through a series of predatory

16:31

loans. Groups like the IMF the International

16:34

Monetary Fund managed to start

16:36

the process of extracting more and more value

16:38

out of developing nations. Okay,

16:41

I'm kind of curious because like when I used

16:43

to try and explain the IMF to people, the

16:45

main people that you would talk about is like bail

16:48

bonds, like predatory

16:50

loans, like pay payday loans, these

16:53

things that show up and fuck.

16:55

Over environments everywhere they go.

16:59

What you I'm curious what you're

17:01

the thing you're going to talk about with neoliberalism.

17:03

As Yeah, so I'm trying to talk

17:05

about what does it mean

17:07

to be a world power? And

17:11

if you are a world power

17:14

and fail, what

17:17

does that mean? Right? So, and

17:20

like what does it mean to have a collapsed government?

17:22

Like so, so that's what I'm talking about, like

17:24

you know, essentially, like all right, so

17:29

you know, whether it's like rust Bell, it's

17:31

basically it's like I'm trying to explain voters

17:33

like in what we're working about. Like so, like,

17:36

you know, the

17:39

center of American economy was the

17:41

car until it wasn't,

17:43

you know what I'm saying, And kind of

17:45

when it wasn't, really dovetails

17:48

well with the birth of neoliberalism

17:50

because the stuff went international.

17:53

So ultimately it's like if

17:56

you're going to be mad at immigrants

17:58

for taking your job, it's like, well

18:00

this isn't really not really

18:02

a new thing, and

18:05

like you mad at the wrong people and

18:07

just kind of understanding what it like the supply

18:09

chain, the goal, the goal

18:12

of finance is, you

18:14

know, the most amount of money

18:16

for the least amount of work. And

18:19

then ultimately, so I'm kind of going

18:21

through all that and then I'm going to land in

18:23

the Congo to talk about

18:25

the the cobalt things

18:28

right there, you know what I'm saying. So ultimately that's what. Yeah, but

18:31

it's like a I have to get through neoliberalism

18:33

to even understand this because

18:36

it's like it's not it's there's a lot going

18:38

on there. But yeah, that's kind of what I'm using.

18:40

No, no, I mean, I mean, honestly, this is one of the reasons

18:42

I like your show. I think you do a lot of work showing

18:45

context and then yeah, I

18:47

don't know, thank you, Like I'm going to

18:49

need that because it's like I keep hearing about

18:51

what's going on in the Congo and I haven't like really

18:54

dived into it.

18:55

Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, and

18:57

like really it's like it's I mean the

19:01

thing is like, it would probably have got there anyway,

19:03

like, because you

19:06

know, the the global

19:08

North is propped up by the global

19:10

South and just has been for centuries, you know what

19:12

I'm saying. So eventually, whether it

19:14

was nafter or neoliberalism

19:16

or not, we were going to end up there. But

19:20

the fact that it's so exploitative

19:23

I'm putting on at the feet of neoliberalism.

19:26

No, totally. It's yeah, it's the some of the

19:28

same stuff as regular capitalism, just

19:30

like turned up to eleven.

19:32

Yes.

19:35

So, as

19:37

neoliberalism started to cross the

19:39

globe, a powerful global movement

19:41

rose up to fight it, which at the time was

19:43

called the anti globalization movement. In

19:45

retrospect, we tend to call it the alter globalization

19:48

movement because we don't

19:50

want to sound like a bunch of anti Semitic assholes,

19:52

and also we don't want to sound like nationalists.

19:54

Or Alex Jones. Yeah, I want to be all Alex Jones.

19:56

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And

19:59

one I'm gonna cover that in more detail, that movement.

20:02

But that movement didn't smash

20:04

capitalism, but it it won.

20:08

It absolutely broke the

20:10

neoliberal consensus. It showed

20:12

enough people that this is

20:15

not what people actually want, and that

20:17

they exposed the lives

20:19

of neoliberalism enough that it eventually

20:22

trickled up to the halls of

20:24

power, and

20:26

like the expansion of free trade agreements

20:28

across the world is something that had stopped. I

20:32

didn't know that until years

20:34

after the movement had collapsed. I basically

20:36

was like I wasted so much in my

20:38

fucking life, Like I got all this PTSD

20:40

fighting cops and shit, and we didn't accomplish shit.

20:43

Every you know, FTAA

20:45

still existed, we didn't shut them down, blah

20:47

blah blah. And then I read this essay by David

20:49

Graeber called The Shock of Victory that

20:52

I'm not going to get into too much, but it basically was like,

20:54

here's what we were trying to do. It

20:57

basically was like people suck at gaining

20:59

their immediate and their long term goals,

21:01

but you can also often activist movements gain

21:03

their middle goals. Our immediate

21:05

goal was like end the FTAA,

21:08

yeah right, And our medium term goal

21:10

was like crush neoliberalists consensus,

21:14

and our long term goal was like smash capitalism

21:16

and have a society of like free

21:18

association or whatever. And

21:21

we failed at two of the three. But we accomplished

21:23

a middle work. Yeah yeah,

21:25

and I I felt

21:28

way better, you know, pre rad.

21:31

So this is a wildly internationalist movement. There

21:33

were coordinated demonstrations happening all over

21:36

the globe, from Italy to India to

21:38

the US. People fought these extractive policies.

21:41

At least two people I know about died

21:43

in this fight, and I'm going to shout them out. In

21:45

two thousand and one, an Italian anarchist

21:47

named Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by

21:49

a cop in Genoa at a protest

21:52

while he was wielding a fire extinguisher.

21:55

Carlo was twenty three years old and he

21:57

was a history student, a punk, and a petty

21:59

criminal. May he rest in peace, just

22:02

to show this also shows the variety

22:05

of people who were in the streets together and

22:07

coordinating together. The other person that

22:09

I know about who died in this In two

22:11

thousand and three, a fifty six year

22:13

old cattle farmer from South Korea named

22:16

Lee Kyong Hey traveled to Cancun,

22:19

Mexico to participate in the protest

22:21

against the World Trade Organization. He

22:24

held a sign that read wto

22:26

kills farmers, and then he scaled a fence

22:29

a top the fence, he faced the media

22:31

cameras, and he killed himself with a pen knife.

22:33

Wow.

22:35

He was the president of the Korean Federation

22:37

of Small Farmers.

22:38

Wow.

22:38

He had seen farmer after farmer take

22:41

their own life because in

22:43

South Korea so many people were dying

22:46

from the poverty caused by.

22:47

The World Trade Organization.

22:49

They may he also rest in peace, And

22:52

that's the movement I got into politics

22:55

through.

22:55

Wow. I just learned a lot

22:57

about you right now.

23:00

Yeah, I'm a little moved, like wow.

23:03

Anyway, Yeah, yeah, No.

23:05

I dropped out of college and went

23:07

to every protest I could and tried to organize

23:10

things, and you

23:12

know it, I acted like it was my

23:14

full time job and got a

23:16

lot of PTSD but also accomplished some stuff

23:18

and amazing. Around

23:21

the turn of the millennia, neoliberalism

23:23

was just fucking gutting the world. I

23:25

read a statement about it recently that was like, people

23:28

talk about it as if there was winning countries and

23:30

losing countries in globalization, but

23:32

they were actually the only winners were

23:34

multinational corporations. Yeah,

23:37

but if you want to be a winner,

23:40

you can use

23:42

our ads, I'm sure, one of which is

23:45

gambling. If you do

23:47

the thing, the ad says you'll win, always

23:51

correct. That's the promise we make here,

23:53

cools and media. It's legally binding, right,

23:56

Sophie. Sophie's

23:59

nodding, Oh no, shaking.

24:01

Sorry, yeah no,

24:04

sorry, I got those confused for a second. Here's

24:06

the ads

24:16

and we're back. So now

24:19

Argentina. Okay, wait ah.

24:21

Wait, before you do Argentina, I think like,

24:24

first of all, if you're a cool Zone media listener,

24:26

you probably understand how these dots work. But

24:28

like, I'm gonna plain all this anyway

24:31

on my show. But like the

24:33

the a lot of times the question is like but how like

24:35

how is And a

24:38

good example I would give is like, okay,

24:40

so say, for example, I'm

24:42

use something light and then heavier, So like remember

24:45

Tom's shoes. I was like a

24:47

you know, a whole like thing where it's like,

24:49

oh, you buy a pair of these, like you know, denim

24:52

slippers, and then we'll send a

24:54

pair to Africa. You know, so it's like, oh,

24:56

yeah, buy one and then we give one. Okay,

24:58

Well you're saying that is as if

25:01

there's no shoemakers in Africa. So

25:05

so when y'all do this, it's cool. You feel

25:07

better about it. But you just you just put a shoemaker

25:09

out of business right now, because everybody

25:11

getting free shoes, right, So even

25:14

even if they don't like them, you just flooded the market.

25:16

So that's one way. Now you now scale that and

25:19

say if you're if you're

25:21

growing wheat, and you know outside

25:23

of Kenosha, Wisconsin, right,

25:26

you're next to a farm you know,

25:28

also growing wheat. But but they

25:30

got like seventy nine hectores owned

25:32

by Walmart, right, So that

25:34

means that in they're and they're getting

25:37

their machines from China, they're

25:39

getting their seeds from Mexico. They're

25:41

getting there so they have the

25:44

first of all, the connection the

25:46

clients, the and and are

25:49

just able to do things at a scale

25:51

that are completely impossible

25:53

for anyone to compete with. And

25:56

and you have entire countries

25:58

in entire government desiring

26:02

for this to work. So you just it's like there's

26:04

no competition, like there's just there's

26:06

nothing you can do except

26:08

for sell your land to that corporation.

26:11

And so then so

26:13

essentially what we're saying is like from

26:16

the government perspective, it is like, what are you talking about?

26:18

This is dope, man, all the costs go down. Everybody's

26:20

happy. We're connected world. It's one country,

26:23

this is one world, like and it's truly,

26:25

we truly are sharing this one rock. You know what

26:27

I'm saying, it spinning through space. But

26:30

in a way that says, oh,

26:33

but but but this is better

26:35

for everybody, But it's not. It's better

26:37

for y'all. Yeah, it's not better for

26:40

your neighbor who now like used to have could

26:43

be able to grow wheat and then sell it

26:46

like that is now impossible.

26:49

No, totally. And this, yeah,

26:51

the the buy one

26:54

give one to Africa plan is like such a

26:56

perfect example of a false solution to

26:58

this kind of thing. And like what

27:01

actually enriches areas is

27:04

to bolster instead

27:06

of gut their economies, you know, and like going

27:08

in and saying like how do we foster

27:12

small businesses? In my mind, especially cooperatives,

27:15

but like how do you actually like

27:17

what? And you know, and this is the era that

27:19

you get the fair trap from,

27:21

right, you get this response to it being

27:23

like, well, how do we make sure that the coffee

27:25

growers we're getting a coffee from aren't fucked over

27:28

by the fact that we drink coffee because we're not going to stop drinking

27:30

coffee, you know, and we're not going

27:32

to start growing it in the US.

27:36

Yes, not possible at scale unless climate

27:38

changes, which it might eventually.

27:40

Yeah, yeah, but right now we can't anyway,

27:42

you're correct.

27:43

Yes, Okay, So in Argentina,

27:46

we did an episode a couple months back about a rebellion

27:49

in Patagonia's huge wave of strikes across

27:51

rural Argentina in the early nineteen twenties. If

27:53

you ever want to hear me do early Argentina context,

27:55

listen to that one. I'm not going to go over it all again. Then

27:59

the stuff that Argentina's most famous for that

28:01

I know the least about, happened like

28:03

decades of various dictatorships. One

28:06

day we'll probably talk more about the people who fought against

28:08

that, But it's not what Argentine

28:10

has been famous for in my circles. Instead,

28:13

it is famous for what we're going to talk about today, an

28:15

incredible bottom up labor movement.

28:17

At the turn of the twenty first century, Argentina

28:21

proved the neoliberal order wrong and showed

28:23

the cracks in the IMF and the World Bank, and

28:25

specifically and concretely, a

28:28

fuck load of workers took over their factories

28:30

and ran them more efficiently than they were

28:33

under bosses.

28:34

Amazing.

28:35

It's worth understanding that Argentinian

28:38

politics in the twenty century they

28:40

don't map very well to most

28:42

other countries politics. For

28:44

years, you have Perhonism, which

28:47

is like right wing and authoritarian, but

28:49

complicatedly so it was

28:51

sort of a right meets left. It gets called

28:54

centrist, but it's like way more horseshoe

28:56

theory than that. It's like way more both. Okay,

28:58

you know, like Biden is a

29:01

centrist, this man is the inversion of

29:03

that, all right. Paranism

29:05

is the ideology that ruled for a lot of this

29:07

time after a guy named Peron, who took

29:09

power after a coup nineteen forty three. It

29:12

is fiercely nationalistic. It is anti

29:14

communist, It is pro corporatist, but

29:17

it's nationalism. Embraces ethnic diversity

29:20

and believes in building a strong local economy

29:23

and keeping foreign companies

29:25

from stripping the economy.

29:26

Yeah yeah, yeah, keive them money local.

29:28

And believes in keeping class stratification to a

29:30

minimum. There was a more proper

29:32

dictatorship later, which was further right wing

29:34

and anti pirnist, and I don't understand

29:36

that show well enough to tell you about

29:38

it. None of these tendencies

29:41

that existed throughout the twentieth century were anything

29:43

like neoliberalism. Neoliberalism

29:45

is a different kind of conservativism. It's one that

29:47

sells the country to the highest bidder. Yeah, but

29:51

paronism was a really

29:53

popular stance for politicians to take.

29:56

In nineteen eighty nine, this guy, Carlos

29:58

Menim was voted into all office as

30:00

a peronist. He immediately

30:03

dropped the peronism. Politicians famously

30:06

don't actually care about the values that are embedded

30:08

into labels. They care about what they can get out of those

30:10

labels. Correct, he was a neoliberalist.

30:12

Fuck.

30:13

He was also corrupt as fuck. He eventually

30:16

was sentenced for arms trafficking and embezzlement,

30:19

but he was like a politician still

30:21

at that point, so he had immunity from actually

30:24

going to jail, and he never went to jail, which

30:26

is totally unrelated to oh, we successfully

30:28

stopped thinking about today.

30:31

But yeah, I was actually transfigurated

30:34

into another place and then it was like, oh, yeah,

30:36

no, never mind.

30:37

Yeah, still Earth, nothing changes, still

30:39

Earth. Yeah,

30:41

Although what's interesting about actually Argentina

30:43

collapsing, specifically Argentina,

30:47

despite being like a globally south country,

30:49

both in terms of physically and also

30:51

like seeing as part of the developing world in a

30:53

lot of contexts, was like by a lot

30:56

of other contexts, it was like an

30:58

up and coming economy like Canada

31:00

or Australia.

31:01

Yeah, it's quite a comfortable place to be with

31:03

the incredibly beautiful humans

31:07

Argentina.

31:07

Like, yeah, everything I read about Argentina, I'm like, I

31:09

want to go to Argentina.

31:10

That sounds amazing.

31:11

It's pretty rat I mean there's yeah, there's certain

31:13

places and times that I don't want to be there because I

31:16

get killed.

31:16

But most of the time, yeah, I mean the colorism

31:19

runs incredibly deep culturally. Like

31:21

I don't know a lot about the politics. I just know like

31:23

of like the Latin countries, they're

31:26

very they're they're a little more fair skin

31:28

than the rest of them, and they

31:30

take a lot of pride

31:32

in that.

31:34

But that doesn't surprise me.

31:35

Yeah, but they are.

31:38

During economic collapse. Yeah,

31:41

they're in the economic collaps We're going to talk about

31:44

a lot of the other countries, including like Uruguay, which

31:47

is right next time we're like, yeah,

31:49

fuck you, you had it coming. You thought you were better than us.

31:51

Yeah, basically, yeah, because you think you better

31:53

in all of this.

31:54

Basically, it's like they thought you were white. You thought you

31:56

were exactly what happened. Turns out your nose, That's exactly

31:58

what happened to them.

31:59

Yep.

32:00

So once this guy met him, he takes

32:02

power, I mean, he gets elected

32:04

into office, he turns back

32:07

on Peronism and adopts what's called the Washington

32:09

Consensus model, which is basically, saw

32:11

your country to Washington, and

32:14

so he did, and this fucked the country

32:16

up, just crash the fucking economy. Eventually

32:20

for a little while, like Time magazine

32:23

was like this is amazing, and they had like Time

32:26

had him on the cover with the headline Menem's

32:28

miracle.

32:29

You know.

32:30

By nineteen ninety eight, Argentina started

32:32

into a depression. And this was because the Russian

32:34

and Asian markets were starting to crash, so

32:36

foreign investment had dried up in quote

32:39

unquote emerging markets, and Argentina

32:41

has hit hard and the IMF, the

32:43

International Monetary Fund, demanded its

32:45

debts repaid. There's one hundred and thirty two

32:47

billion in debt, but

32:50

they would like making up their own interest rates whenever

32:52

they wanted. I don't entirely know the mechanism, but I

32:54

was like reading it was like and then one month they jacked

32:56

the interest rates from nine percent to fourteen percent.

33:00

Like, but why man, I wouldn't.

33:03

Sign that loan.

33:04

That's like, and we could just change this whenever we want.

33:06

No, I need a fixed rate, and you just just

33:08

make it in numbers up.

33:09

Yeah, exactly.

33:10

Yeah.

33:12

And in order

33:14

to allow for repayment, the

33:16

IMF basically imposed austerity

33:18

measures on Argentina. And this is what's happening

33:20

all over the world. So

33:22

pensions are cut, unemployment benefits

33:25

are cut, education is cut, healthcare

33:27

is cut, state employee salaries

33:29

dropped wildly, and

33:32

it's basically strip mining the country. They're

33:34

like, okay, give

33:37

us all your money, and they're

33:39

like, oh, we need that money so that we can eat. And they're like, that's

33:41

not what we asked. In

33:45

two thousand and one, the economy

33:47

collapsed. Fifty eight percent of

33:49

the population was below the poverty line

33:51

by that point. Wow. By two

33:53

thousand and three, unemployment hit thirty

33:55

eight percent in Argentina.

33:59

The election of nineteen ninety nine before

34:02

the economies totally collapsed, but at depression

34:04

has hit. Menem's position was weakened.

34:06

He'd abandoned peronism for neoliberalism.

34:08

He'd guided the country and things were in decline.

34:11

He was voted out. This

34:13

didn't turn the country around. It had already

34:15

been sold, and the depression worsened.

34:19

And so the working class got

34:21

real organized and got real militant, and

34:23

in particular, the unworking

34:26

class got really organized. Okay,

34:28

the unemployed workers, which was twenty

34:30

percent of the country, is unemployed by the turn of the

34:32

millennium. It goes up to thirty eight percent a couple

34:34

of years later. Yeah, plus

34:36

another twenty percent that's underemployed. They'd

34:40

start what's called the unemployed workers movement,

34:43

and they were called pikateo's for

34:45

like picket picketers, and

34:48

they would set up pickets, but they

34:50

didn't have a union workplace to complain

34:53

about scabs, so they were just blockade

34:55

roads and demand

34:57

subsidies for the unemployed

35:00

be outside. Yeah,

35:02

and they would go and

35:04

they would blockade roads with burning tires

35:07

and shit. There's a lot of early evocative images from this

35:09

time, and these

35:11

were horizontal movements. The government

35:14

would like show up and be like, who's the leader

35:16

here and they would all yell back all of us.

35:19

Most of the there's like one hundred thousand a month. Two

35:22

sixty percent of them were women, most

35:25

of them were young. Whole families would

35:27

come out and join these protests. They would

35:29

like set up like kitchens and shit

35:31

in the middle of the road and start feeding everyone, which

35:33

is good because people are literally starving.

35:37

Their signature weapon, because what protest

35:39

movement doesn't have a signature weapon?

35:40

I mean, come on, was a.

35:42

Three foot wooden club?

35:44

Oh word?

35:45

And okay,

35:48

yeah, they're not around heavy. Yeah,

35:51

I know, I think

35:53

it's a I don't think it's like I

35:55

don't think we're imagining like a caveman club that's

35:57

like a huge you know.

35:59

I mean, it's like more like a three foot

36:01

dowel rod. Thinking for my own nevermind.

36:04

It still sounds big. Yeah,

36:06

bonkers.

36:07

Their signature uniform was a black and red

36:09

bandana around their neck, and

36:12

I love them. Women with black and red

36:14

bandanas, burning tires and declaring they had

36:16

no leaders.

36:17

This is like my.

36:18

Shit, Yeah, it's

36:20

pretty dope.

36:21

They started setting up basic neighborhood

36:23

assemblies and mutual aid networks. The government

36:26

is collapsing all the economies collapsing, They're

36:28

like, well, we still got to take care of it ourselves and take

36:30

care of our neighbors. And they

36:33

started negotiating with clothing manufacturers

36:35

to get clothes to kids. They started

36:37

building childcare centers. They

36:39

set up education workshops. They taught

36:41

people like health and nutrition at different classes.

36:45

They set up a network of pharmacies, a

36:47

bakery, and a cement brick factory.

36:49

I don't know as much about that.

36:50

Last time.

36:52

Through their bakery they managed to undercut

36:55

I think bread was nationally subsidized at

36:57

this point, where like you couldn't charge more than a certain amount

36:59

for a lot of bread. That amount

37:02

was still a lot by a person

37:04

who has no money standards. So

37:06

they the Pikataros, were able to sell bread

37:08

for a peso for a kilo

37:10

loaf, which is the cheapest

37:13

that the government subsidies ever got was a buck

37:15

sixty. But that was only three days. I don't know what they

37:17

averaged, and

37:19

so there's growing unrest in

37:21

the parliamentary elections of October two

37:24

thousand and one. The blank

37:26

ballot one. I

37:28

believe this means that people

37:31

showed up and got their

37:33

ballot and then wrote nothing

37:35

on it. To blank and then turned it in

37:37

hard. Yeah.

37:40

I don't think

37:42

they feel like they got much to lose at this yeah point.

37:44

I mean, we're burning tires in the streets, dude,

37:47

bread is to experience, like d

37:50

none of the above.

37:52

Yeah, they're probably like, Oh, the neighborhood

37:54

assembly that actually feeds me, that's what I'm bout

37:56

actually voting for.

37:58

Yeah.

37:59

Yeah.

38:00

So meanwhile, there's

38:02

a clothing manufacturer named Brookman,

38:06

and the seamstresses who worked there had the lives

38:08

of seamstresses and factories everywhere, which

38:10

is that it kind of sucked. They

38:12

had fast turnaround deadlines, there was no talking,

38:14

no music. I

38:17

don't know how much worse than that. It was obviously

38:19

seen. Some sweatshop factories

38:21

are like the worst places in the world. I get

38:24

the impression that this one like sucked, but wasn't

38:27

like murder Land. Yeah,

38:29

I don't know whatever. As

38:32

the economy started to sour, the

38:34

company fell deeper and deeper into debt,

38:37

and the workers' salaries were cut

38:39

so low that they couldn't afford bus fair to go to

38:41

work. Like, they're basically volunteering to

38:43

go to work at that point, right, because you're like, I

38:45

don't get paid enough to get here.

38:47

I can't Yeah, yeah, if I can't

38:49

afford to get to work, Like

38:52

then what am I doing? Yeah, I'm paying you to

38:55

be there? Yeah.

38:56

Basically, yeah, most

38:59

of them had been. I've read from one

39:01

source half of the three hundred employees were fired,

39:03

but I've also read that there's only like fifty eight workers

39:05

left at the time of the takeover the factory, which

39:07

is like, you know, a

39:09

sixth or a fifth the

39:12

women who started this revolution, because

39:15

they kind of started

39:17

they at least started the factory takeover part

39:19

of it. As best as I can tell,

39:22

they didn't do it through like anger. They

39:24

did it through stubbornness and resourcefulness.

39:27

On December eighteenth, two thousand and one, they

39:30

went to the factory owners. They like went to the factory,

39:32

went to the owners and were like, hey, you're going to

39:34

subsidize our bus fare or we can't afford to

39:36

work for you anymore.

39:37

Sorry, Like you know, the.

39:38

Handouts from us to you are going to stop, yeah,

39:41

you know, And the owners

39:43

were like, all right, you wait here and we'll

39:45

be right back with some money. We're totally

39:47

coming back, right, don't go nowhere. Definitely be

39:49

right here.

39:50

Yeah.

39:50

Yeah, they

39:53

just never showed up, right, They just

39:55

like they went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back.

39:58

And so the women wag and

40:00

waited and the owners never showed. They

40:02

just abandoned the factory and the workers

40:04

and all the unpaid wages entirely.

40:08

So the workers were like, well, we

40:10

know how to run this place. It's our place

40:12

anyway, and so they

40:15

ran it more efficiently

40:17

than ever. They paid down all

40:19

the debts that the company had accrued,

40:22

they found new customers, like in

40:25

the middle of this like massive economic crash.

40:27

They were just like, all right, we

40:29

can just do this. I mean, one

40:32

worker, Yeah, no, they just I

40:34

love it.

40:34

It's so fucking cool. Yeah.

40:36

One worker named Celia Martinez said,

40:39

quote, I don't know why the owners

40:41

had such a hard time. I don't know much about

40:43

accounting, but for me, it's easy addition and

40:45

subtraction.

40:48

Like you notice, most people

40:50

when they say man, I could do your job's

40:53

not that hard, usually are just being arrogant

40:55

and dumb. But in this situation today, it was

40:57

like, I don't understand what the product. You

40:59

just here go to money, Like you

41:01

said, that's so funny. Yeah, you just yeah,

41:04

you just you give the workers the money

41:06

for the hours that they worked. Yeah,

41:10

I just don't understand what's so hard about that. That's

41:12

funny.

41:13

Yeah, you've ever seen the chart of

41:15

theft in America where it's

41:17

like all of the different categories

41:19

of theft and they are all lined up, and all

41:21

of the like burglary and robbery

41:23

and like muggings and all

41:25

of that or this like tiny percentage

41:28

and then I think a bigger percentage than that is like asset

41:31

forfeiture from cops. Yeah, but then far and

41:33

away the majority like is

41:36

unpaid wages, Like

41:38

that is most of the theft that happens

41:40

in America. Wow, because there's no

41:43

criminal prosecution.

41:44

Yeah, it's like who do you? Yeah, how do

41:46

you prove it?

41:48

Yeah? And so Celia

41:51

Martinez also said, quote,

41:53

they are afraid of us because we have shown that if we

41:55

can manage a factory, we can also manage a

41:57

country. That's why this government decided

42:00

to repress us.

42:01

M hmm.

42:02

Because eventually the government's going to repress them.

42:04

Although spoiler alert, they

42:07

win and they still exist. This is

42:09

still a cooperatively run business. All

42:11

three of the examples that I'm going to use today

42:14

still exist and they're still run by the workers.

42:17

So now that the women ran their own

42:20

place, they worked harder than ever because

42:22

they had an equal ownership stake in the success

42:24

of the business. They're like, oh, well, you

42:26

know it's like if you're like washing dishes for McDonald

42:28

do you have kind of like a duty to slack off as

42:31

much as.

42:31

You Yeah, like the bare minimum,

42:33

that's your your job is to do the bare minimal.

42:35

Yeah, they're paying you minimum wage, so you do minimum

42:38

mappter exactly.

42:39

You know.

42:39

But when a business succeeds

42:41

or fails and you succeed or fail

42:43

alongside of it, you

42:46

care about it.

42:47

Different story.

42:48

I mean, you're a small business owner, you know that.

42:50

You know it's your life. Yes, Like

42:53

like people are like time off and you're like, oh, that sounds

42:55

like an interesting.

42:57

Yeah it was that. Yeah,

43:00

But.

43:02

While they're working, their lives don't suck

43:05

the same, right, because they're doing something that they

43:07

care about and they're trying to do it well. Because

43:09

they care about their craft, they get to listen

43:11

to music while they work, and it became a culture of

43:13

helping one another learn. Like the older women would

43:15

come by and like teach stitches over people's shoulders

43:18

and all this stuff that was like not allowed.

43:20

Before, you know.

43:21

Yeah, and they made all their decisions

43:23

and open assemblies.

43:26

Like a democracy, like what

43:29

could have been. Yeah, we sit

43:31

down in discussion the.

43:32

Whole, one of the whole. Like things

43:34

that people talk about in the cooperative movement that kind

43:36

of blew my mind when someone first brought it up, is like, why

43:38

do we claim that we live in a democracy when like you

43:40

spend forty hours a week in an autocracy?

43:43

Like yes, So, while

43:46

working at this factory, end of the bosses, one

43:48

woman had her pay deducted whenever

43:50

she would go to chemotherapy. They're like, oh, you didn't come into

43:52

work, you don't get paid. When

43:54

the workers took over, she didn't

43:57

have to come into work anymore because she was sick

43:59

with canvas.

44:00

Had cancer.

44:00

Yeah yeah, all the

44:02

rest of her co workers supported her and paid

44:05

for all of her treatments.

44:08

Just you, we

44:10

shouldn't be so

44:13

floored by, right,

44:15

such a human Yes

44:19

yet duh, Like you got cancer? We I got

44:21

you girl, like you good?

44:23

Like we got you? Yeah

44:25

yeah, you've worked here forever forever.

44:28

It's fine.

44:29

Yeah, yeah, like could

44:31

have been any of us. Yep, Naomi

44:35

Klein wrote about the Brookman women in

44:37

two thousand and two, quote, if there's

44:39

anything to be learned from these surprising Brookman women,

44:41

it's that the working class already knows how to organize

44:44

and fight. In Argentina and around the world,

44:46

original, creative and effective direct action

44:49

is way ahead of intellectual leftist theory.

44:52

Correct.

44:53

And the very next day after

44:56

the women occupied their factory, the country

44:58

exploded into protest, not

45:00

as a result, but just

45:02

as part of the same thing. And

45:05

if you want to explode

45:07

your wallet all

45:09

over.

45:10

There, you go, goods

45:12

and services, just pop

45:14

a load right on your services.

45:17

Yeah, yeah, that's yep,

45:20

here's the ads and

45:31

we're back.

45:31

I'm sorry about the popping the load guys.

45:33

No, no, I set you up for You did set

45:35

me up for it. Yeah, you're

45:37

not the only one who sullid yourself

45:40

there. So

45:42

these protests pop up

45:44

all over the country, especially in Buenos Aires in the

45:47

capitol. And these are called, I mean,

45:49

there's a lot of different names for different parts, but these are called

45:51

the Cassalaza pop protests,

45:54

the stewpot protests, or the saucepan

45:56

protests, compending on your translation. Yeah,

46:00

some places will say, it's like casserole, like casserole

46:02

dish. I'm under the impression

46:04

that that's not the case, but my Spanish is like pretty

46:06

mediocre. This is a

46:08

classic form of protest where you get pots and pans

46:11

and you march around banging them.

46:14

I think of like the kid's book. It's like, is it where

46:16

the wild things are something? It's like some kids book I have

46:18

where someone's just like walking around the pot and pan banging

46:20

on it. It's like the classic, like annoying kid

46:22

thing to do to piss off your parents.

46:23

Yeah, I don't know.

46:25

It's a cool form of protest. I've only been around it,

46:27

like once in Italy when they

46:29

were mad at the prime minister or something.

46:32

Most famously, this method has been used in Chile,

46:34

but it's also been used all over the world. These

46:38

protests were spontaneous in

46:40

that they were not like organized or

46:42

called for by a labor union or

46:44

by any other specific organization. Later

46:47

the government is going to be like, ah, it's the peronists

46:49

they organized it.

46:50

That is, of course.

46:51

No, Yeah, there's nothing to

46:53

that as far as they can tell.

46:56

One participant said that it just started that someone

46:58

like went out to their they just like walked

47:00

outside of the pot and pants started banging, and so

47:02

their neighbors started banging, and so then people all

47:04

down the street did it. So people who saw it

47:06

on TV did it's dope, and soon

47:09

enough, yeah it's super organic. Yeah

47:12

yeah, soon

47:14

enough. Basically, the entire country was mobilized

47:16

under the slogan kisevan

47:18

totos they all must go or

47:22

out with them all to be more libal. Yeah

47:26

okay, yeah yeah,

47:29

And and this was a slogan

47:32

that then spread to the rest of the anti globalization

47:34

movement.

47:34

This was like.

47:35

Argentina was like our shit, this is like this

47:38

is our high water mark, Like, holy shit, people are going

47:40

to fucking do something with this, you know, because

47:44

the people of Argentina basically demanded the

47:46

end of their entire political and economic system,

47:48

which they blamed correctly for gutting

47:51

their economy. And it wasn't like

47:53

we demand communism

47:56

or anarchism or anything out there.

47:58

They're like, they're like, we don't like what's fucking

48:00

happening.

48:01

Yeah, simple, you know.

48:05

And this was both the working class and the

48:07

middle class in the streets together, which is

48:09

frankly a rare thing. Most

48:12

of the working class was organized into unions

48:15

and grassroot networks. So interestingly,

48:17

the middle class elements actually

48:20

had some of the more spontaneous rebellion vibe.

48:22

Although then also you had the unemployed Picutari's

48:25

right, who were working class and very

48:27

rowdy. But you have all of these crazy,

48:30

rowdy middle class people. When we

48:32

whitewashed the history of this, it's like, oh, they all

48:34

went out in pots and pans, and then the government decided

48:36

I didn't want to be the government anymore. Yeah,

48:40

there's there's video footage of like middle

48:42

class people sipping their mate while kicking

48:44

in the glass panes of banks. Yes,

48:48

it's so good.

48:51

Hey, you guys want to smash this bank right now?

48:53

Like, let's go get okay, listen, let's go get a couple

48:56

of lattes. Oh mate, yeah

48:58

yeah, being silly, Yeah yeah,

49:01

I know. Mates. Yeah, they yerba yerba,

49:04

so they go through yerbra mate, you

49:06

know. And uh and then

49:08

let's go let's go do some uh, let's

49:11

go do some direct action. You guys down, Yeah,

49:13

I'm down. I love it.

49:15

Yeah, why not?

49:16

Yeah?

49:18

And as best as I can tell, the

49:20

protest didn't start off specifically

49:22

destructive, but they got

49:24

more routy more destructive when the state started

49:26

shooting them with shit and killing a bunch of them,

49:29

which is a common enough pattern.

49:33

The reason the middle class was in the street was

49:36

because the middle class was being robbed.

49:37

Two.

49:39

The IMF cut funds off to Argentina

49:41

in December two thousand and one, and

49:44

all the rich business owners were like fearing

49:46

a crash and causing a crash,

49:49

so they converted their pesos to dollars and started

49:51

taking them out of the country almost

49:54

overnight. Multinational banks took forty

49:56

million dollars out of the country.

49:58

What yeah, damn.

50:01

So it's like it's one of these things where, like a lot of stuff,

50:03

it's like collapses slow

50:05

until it's.

50:06

Fast, yes, yeah, until you hit the

50:08

cliff.

50:10

And like right now in the US, we're

50:12

in like slow mode, although we might not be the

50:14

time you hear this, you probably we're probably still.

50:16

In slow mode.

50:16

Yeah, and often

50:18

just stays in slow mode. But then sometimes

50:21

cliff. So the

50:23

government instituted what one

50:26

journalist called uh cortolito, the

50:28

children's playpen, or more literally

50:31

the small enclosure, and

50:33

they froze bank accounts, not

50:36

just of the multinationals that were like robbing the country, and

50:38

taking all the money out. They froze it all, so

50:40

middle class people were suddenly frozen out of

50:42

their life savings. You could only withdraw

50:44

two hundred and fifty pasos a week. You

50:46

could only do that if your account was pesos

50:48

not dollars.

50:49

So you can't pull your money out.

50:51

Yeah okay wow, and

50:53

soon enough as the crisis pulls on, you can't get any

50:55

money out.

50:56

Damn.

50:57

So people have just been robbed

50:59

of their life saves by greedy, fucking corporations

51:01

working hand in hand with their government. So

51:04

they rioted. They smashed up banks while

51:06

sipping mante. And I don't

51:09

think sipping mante is not a middle class thing

51:11

in Argentina. It's just such an evocative image.

51:13

Yeah, it's pretty normal. Yeah yeah,

51:15

yeah, it's like coffee here, like everyone

51:17

drinks it. But yeah, I just

51:19

I like, what did what

51:23

did y'all think was gonna happen? If you, like

51:26

you shut down the bank, like you telling

51:28

me my money in there? I just can't have it, Like

51:30

who's not fighting? Like

51:32

who not gonna fight for that?

51:34

Like?

51:34

Yeah, yeah totally. I

51:36

have worked my entire life for the money

51:38

that.

51:39

Is in that bank.

51:39

Yeah, they can't have it.

51:42

It's mine.

51:43

Yeah, even if it's as simple as like I

51:45

just let's let's be as middle class as possible.

51:48

I got Yeah, I got a direct debit

51:50

for my light

51:54

build. Yeah you're telling

51:56

me I can't. So now I'm gonna have a late fee. It

51:58

is not that I don't have the money. They gonna

52:00

turn off my lights. Yeah, not because I can't pay

52:02

for it. Yeah, because you won't let

52:04

it go. Nah, fam we fight them.

52:07

Yeah yeah, and so they

52:09

all you know, they chanted they almost go

52:11

another banner read we are nothing.

52:14

We want to be everything. I

52:16

think they allowed credit card

52:18

transactions. Oh, but

52:20

you couldn't get cash out, and you couldn't

52:23

convert the money out of paesos.

52:25

There's like a million different things you can't do.

52:27

Yeah. It's kind of shady though, to be like what you

52:29

can do credit because it's like, okay, yeah,

52:31

I see what y'all doing. Yeah, that's

52:34

even more shady. Noah, I want to pay cash. No, you

52:36

can't have cash, you know what. Yeah, burns

52:38

place down.

52:39

And most of the economy at that point was running

52:41

on cash for most people as best as I can tell.

52:43

Yeah,

52:46

whack.

52:46

Soon enough, the unions call for general strikes.

52:49

The government called for a state of emergency.

52:52

So you know, both sides do what both sides do. Yeah,

52:55

And it's like if you read the like Cliff's notes, they're like,

52:57

and thirty nine people died in the riots. Cops

53:00

killed thirty.

53:01

Yeah, yeah, say it right, say it correctly. Yeah.

53:03

Yeah, nine of them were kids.

53:08

Many of them were looting, mostly

53:11

for food. Shop owners

53:13

and security guards killed another seven people.

53:15

I would love I would love to pay for this.

53:17

Yeah, no, totally, yeah, exactly, I would.

53:19

Absolutely love to buy this. Yeah.

53:22

I don't know if you knew this, but we all got robbed

53:24

just now, of all of our money.

53:27

Yeah, go check your account, Go check your account

53:29

right now, shop owner.

53:30

Check, you take some cash out?

53:31

Yeah, don't take some cash out your

53:33

cat, right, just to kind of low go get some twenties, try

53:36

it, right, I'll wait here, I'll wait Yeah.

53:41

And what's interesting is even still with all of

53:43

this, these protests weren't just like

53:46

everyone running around losing their mind.

53:48

They weren't like there was like puppets

53:50

and street feater and this like celebratory

53:53

like we are coming together to do this

53:55

thing, vibe the

53:58

president. It was not manim at this point, this other

54:00

guy who's just to not throw in too many

54:02

names, I'm not gonna includ him because he's not he's not gonna

54:04

last much longer. He

54:07

tried to get the military to intervene, and

54:09

the generals were like, not fucking

54:11

up, We're not doing that.

54:12

You are on your own, homeboy. Yeah,

54:15

we did not sign up. But it is, yeah,

54:17

exactly similar to the US.

54:20

They have laws about how the military is

54:22

only allowed to be used for domestic policing in

54:24

like really specific ways, you

54:26

know, and they probably

54:28

could have claimed that one of those

54:30

was happening. And the generals were like, we're not fucking touching it.

54:32

It looks like a parade to me, homeboy.

54:34

They yeah, totally.

54:36

You shouldn't making the fall for this,

54:38

Like, yeah, shouldn't have fun with day money, you understand, ask

54:41

people get like that you messed with day money.

54:43

Yeah, you know, I tried to get some money out of earlier

54:45

today and.

54:45

It didn't work exactly. I should look, my son

54:48

needed twenty dollars for his field trip. I couldn't

54:50

give it to him. Yeah, it

54:52

sounds like a U problem.

54:55

And so it was the it was the Federal Police,

54:57

the Border Guard, and the coast Guard out there killing

55:00

protesters. So next

55:02

the president goes to censor the news, of

55:04

course, and the media secretary of the government is

55:06

like, I'm not fucking the

55:09

hell you got. Everyone

55:11

is like this boat is sinking. I love

55:13

it, Like, get away

55:16

from me. You've got a fucking plague.

55:20

So the whole time the president assumed it's

55:22

the Peronists, so he he goes

55:24

to the like Pironists, and

55:27

he rather he goes on the news to

55:29

beg the Pironists, this

55:31

is fucking embarrassing. He

55:34

gets on the news to beg the Pironas, who are

55:36

not behind it, to please stop

55:38

the protests. He will put them into the

55:40

government as well if they will just stop

55:42

the protests, and

55:44

the Pronas are like, we're not fucking.

55:46

Joining you either. I look like Drake, Like,

55:49

bro, you done lost this one. Fam like there's

55:52

no one you can call. I

55:54

know that reference, all right, magbe

55:58

I'm online enough for that, Yes, BBL.

56:02

Pironis has already went viral. Man, there's

56:04

nothing you can do.

56:05

Hilarious.

56:06

Yeah, And so the president

56:08

resigned and had to be evacuated

56:11

by helicopter because he couldn't get out by car,

56:14

and so the the news footage

56:16

of him fleeing by helicopter is just

56:18

like it's two thousand l.

56:20

Right, yes, just coward puss as.

56:23

Like if we was in a like we was in New

56:26

Orleans, yo, puss as.

56:28

Yeah, like we were not fucking Yeah,

56:32

They're like, yeah, we knew he sucks. Now

56:34

we know you suck.

56:35

Knew he was a coward.

56:37

Argentina went through five presidents in three

56:39

weeks. Oh wait, I

56:45

don't think they were either.

56:47

That was that was it?

56:49

Listen, Margaret. That was

56:52

a natural, guttural,

56:54

realcity like everything is, but that was really

56:56

natural, Like what yeah?

56:58

Yeah?

56:59

Wow.

57:00

And then importantly, and I

57:02

actually think they did this. I think this is actually why I have

57:04

pulled out, but I've read it in different confusing

57:06

ways. They defaulted

57:09

on their debt to the IMF. They were

57:11

like, we're not going to fucking pay you and

57:13

the rest of the world who's in debt as the IMF

57:15

was like taking notes, they were like, wait, we can just

57:17

wait.

57:18

You could just tell them ukpay.

57:20

Like what the fuck? That sounds amazing. Yeah.

57:27

And the thing that I'm most excited about about

57:29

these protests, if you ask me, is the alternatives

57:31

to government that the people formed these neighborhood

57:34

assemblies, which is what seems to happen

57:37

all the time during these kinds of crises.

57:39

We've talked about it extensively during our episodes

57:41

on the Russian Civil War. For example, during

57:44

the uprisings in Argentina, millions

57:46

of people formed into neighborhood assemblies

57:48

to make decisions and get things done in their

57:50

areas in a bottom up fashion. The

57:53

occupation of factories spread across

57:55

this country at this time because

57:57

hundreds of factories, well I thinks

58:00

of factories had been abandoned by the bosses

58:02

who were like, oh I'm in debt, everything sucks, I'm leaving,

58:05

you know, And so hundreds

58:07

of factories with hundreds of workers each start

58:10

becoming occupied. Mutual

58:12

aid networks are spreading too. Basically,

58:14

the Piccateo model exploded

58:17

across the country. One

58:19

assembly put out a manifesto that I want to

58:21

read because this is their like, it's just like up

58:23

on their bulletin board. It's not even a like we

58:26

published this manifesto for the world or whatever,

58:28

right, and it's still fucking poetry.

58:32

What is your dream? Do you remember? The nineteenth

58:34

of December? That night you said enough

58:37

of thieves. Yes, you shouted it.

58:39

I heard you, We all heard you. We also

58:41

heard you when you said, I no longer want

58:43

to be who I was. I don't want them

58:46

to decide any more for me. I don't

58:48

believe in any political leaders anymore, nor

58:50

in judges, nor in union leaders, nor in

58:52

bankers, nor big businessmen, nor policemen.

58:55

I felt so much pride to see you and me.

58:58

It's just that I did not expect so much of you,

59:01

even less of me. You surprised

59:03

me because of that, because you pushed

59:05

me. I am walking to find

59:07

a way, banging pots, thinking

59:09

out loud in assemblies with my neighbors.

59:12

Where are we going? You ask, Well,

59:14

we are trying to create, with neighbors a democratic

59:16

and assembly based system from which our representatives

59:19

can come forth. The majority express

59:21

a firm refusal of political parties.

59:24

There is no space for them in the assemblies.

59:27

It's gorgeous. I

59:30

know, man, we need that. Yeah,

59:33

oh my god, we have this. I

59:35

just got like butterflies. I'm like, god,

59:38

damn, America needs that?

59:42

And how And there's actually this thing about

59:44

because Americans, especially white Americans,

59:47

I think, see Argentina as like global South,

59:49

it's all the same. It might as well be Mexico.

59:51

And not that any of these places

59:53

are replaceable or each

59:56

other. But Argentina

1:00:00

absolutely was like like we were

1:00:02

saying earlier, it was it saw itself

1:00:04

as like a Canada in Australia.

1:00:07

It also had a really strong

1:00:09

protection of private property. Like

1:00:12

and so I think sometimes people see this and they're like, oh,

1:00:14

well, people from other cultures are like just better

1:00:17

at taking care of each other, and like,

1:00:20

okay, sometimes that's true,

1:00:24

but like this is still

1:00:26

a country that like does it. You're

1:00:29

not supposed to do this there. No,

1:00:31

you're not supposed to create your

1:00:33

own network of things. If they

1:00:35

can do it there, it can be done, you

1:00:37

know.

1:00:38

Yeah, it's very They really

1:00:40

take pride in their Spanish

1:00:43

like European ancestry.

1:00:47

So yes, yeah,

1:00:50

And so every neighborhood in Buenos Aires

1:00:52

had an assembly, and then soon it spread

1:00:54

to the suburbs. There's two hundred assemblies

1:00:57

in Buenos Aires alone, with an average of two hundred

1:00:59

participants at their Every

1:01:01

Sunday they had an assembly of assemblies

1:01:03

with four thousand people meeting for like four

1:01:05

hours. This is the downside to this particular

1:01:07

style of vav coach and it takes.

1:01:09

To go to meetin's time, and there's a lot of yeas.

1:01:12

Yeah.

1:01:14

And they would break up into committees to address certain

1:01:17

issues like health and media, and they would

1:01:19

throw parties to bring the community together

1:01:21

and help people in neighborhoods like find

1:01:23

each other. Each assembly

1:01:25

works differently. Most are open

1:01:27

to anyone in the neighborhood. One band,

1:01:30

bankers and political parties, another

1:01:32

band media. One

1:01:34

older guy, a shopkeeper said about

1:01:36

them, quote, never in my whole life

1:01:38

did I give a shit for anyone else in my neighborhood.

1:01:40

I was not interested in politics. But

1:01:43

this time I realized I've had enough and

1:01:45

I need to do something about it.

1:01:47

Wow.

1:01:47

And so it's not like this wasn't just like

1:01:50

waiting under the surface that everyone was just

1:01:52

like really close friends with all their neighbors.

1:01:54

Yeah, they just made

1:01:56

it happen.

1:01:57

I do think too, to your point, there's even

1:02:01

even among you know, more

1:02:04

progressive kind of people of color. We

1:02:07

often romanticize our

1:02:10

ancestral lands are ansenstral people's

1:02:13

as if they were as if like you

1:02:15

know, being power hungry is like modern

1:02:18

like no, like you

1:02:20

know, like there were people roaming

1:02:22

the African Savannah, you

1:02:24

know, lobbying for power against

1:02:27

their chieftains, you know what I'm saying, Like, so

1:02:29

this so to think that, like you said,

1:02:31

like under the surface, they all wanted to go back

1:02:34

to this sort of you know, communal

1:02:36

lively like, no, this was hard fought, and

1:02:38

it was. And if you're pressed and

1:02:41

when pressed to a position, you

1:02:43

have people like this shopkeeper that was like oooh,

1:02:45

I was out here getting mine. It just the

1:02:47

system failed me and I realized

1:02:49

I needed each other. We needed each other, you know.

1:02:53

And for me, that's actually a huge sign of hope,

1:02:55

yes, is that you look at this and you're

1:02:57

like a lot of people you could like look around and be like

1:03:00

those that's my political enemy. Oh that's my political

1:03:02

That guy voted for Trump, Oh that guy vote for Biden.

1:03:04

I hate both of them. So I hate everyone, you know, Yeah,

1:03:07

only I am like pure and radical.

1:03:09

Yeah.

1:03:09

And you're like the people

1:03:12

who did this revolution

1:03:14

in Argentina were

1:03:17

the shopkeeper who hated every.

1:03:18

Yeah yeah, yeah, this is

1:03:21

Karen and Chad Man. Karen and Chad you

1:03:23

got radicalized, you know. Yeah.

1:03:25

Yeah.

1:03:27

And some

1:03:29

of the stuff is going to stick and some of it is not.

1:03:31

And the neighborhood assemblies are not going to stick,

1:03:34

but like it's a fucking start.

1:03:36

Yeah, And so these assemblies were split.

1:03:38

Some assemblies wanted to put pressure on government and

1:03:40

reform it. Others wanted to restructure society

1:03:43

around the assemblies themselves. But they were getting

1:03:45

shit done and they were taking care of themselves

1:03:48

and the you know, their neighborhoods, and

1:03:50

they were taking over factories. And we're

1:03:52

going to talk about those factory takeovers on

1:03:55

Wednesday. The first we're going to talk about

1:03:58

your show, which people probably probably

1:04:00

already listening to. I hope, so they're not they're missing

1:04:02

out, but I hope.

1:04:03

So that's about.

1:04:03

Anyway, every Wednesday, hood Politics

1:04:05

will prop We really try

1:04:08

to like step our game up. We're doing video

1:04:10

ones now hood politics with eyeballs

1:04:12

or four eyeballs where there's

1:04:15

like zero potty

1:04:17

words and so you can, you know, play

1:04:20

it around either young or old ears. Yeah.

1:04:22

So proptpop dot com hood

1:04:24

politics a prop that's really the focus right now.

1:04:28

And uh yeah, check me out there.

1:04:31

And I have a substock

1:04:33

you can read all the things I write a weekly

1:04:36

column basically at this point of trying

1:04:39

to spread hope

1:04:41

in the face of darkness

1:04:43

while also acknowledge while trying

1:04:46

to make people acknowledge the goddamn darkness.

1:04:50

And you're like, look, you're

1:04:52

a good ass writer. I

1:04:55

like, I like, like like full

1:04:57

stop.

1:04:59

Just got got my copy. I just

1:05:01

got my copy of your book in the mail ship.

1:05:04

Oh that's the other thing I'm supposed to talk about is I

1:05:06

have a book that kickstarts like next week. If you're

1:05:08

listening to this, called a Sapling Cage, Sophie

1:05:10

has a copy. Why don't you have a copy? I

1:05:14

got to get prop up guy didn't get well.

1:05:18

We're going to fix the friends of yours that get

1:05:20

advanced copies and feel really special.

1:05:25

But if you want a copy, you can back

1:05:27

it on Kickstarter, unless you're a problem, which case I'm

1:05:29

going to give you.

1:05:30

One courious and I'll still back

1:05:32

it on Kickstarter.

1:05:33

Oh thanks, We'll

1:05:35

see you on Wednesday, when we

1:05:37

won't have two more days have gone

1:05:40

by in the saga. Yeah, Trump, but we will.

1:05:42

We're recording it in ten minutes from now, so we'll

1:05:44

still be still won't have any more information that you.

1:05:46

People in the future do.

1:05:52

Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production

1:05:55

of Cool Zone Media, a more podcasts

1:05:57

and cool Zone media, Visit our website cool

1:05:59

zone dot com, or check us out

1:06:01

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

1:06:03

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,

1:06:10

M