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1:43

Hello and welcome to Cool People Did Cool

1:45

Stuff. The only podcast that I am currently

1:47

recording while sleep deprived because I fell into

1:49

a really deep research hole instead of sleeping.

1:52

I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. And with me today

1:55

is Joelle Monique, who is a filmmaker and I

1:57

Heart executive producer and a writer.

2:00

How are you? I'm

2:02

so good, Margaret. You know, sometimes

2:05

I, we, listen, to be,

2:08

to be very frank and not too excited, I

2:10

don't like when people are too happy. It makes

2:12

me feel suspect. I'm like, what's going on with

2:14

you that you have so much joy in your

2:16

life? Yeah, like hippies. They're

2:18

always pretending to be happy. For

2:20

sure. What do they call it? Toxic happiness?

2:23

With aggressive happiness, where you're like, this

2:25

is, it's too much. But I've been

2:27

doing a lot of different stuff and trying new things and things.

2:30

I was like, oh, I'm going to do this for a really long

2:32

time. For example, go on a vacation. I

2:35

keep saying I'm going to go on vacation and then

2:37

either I work through it or

2:39

it's a work trip, neither of which

2:42

counts as a vacation. So I've actually

2:44

told people you can't contact

2:46

me through these days. I'm taking

2:49

off. I have plans. I've booked

2:51

things. It's happening. I am leaving my state. I'm

2:53

only going to the next one, but it's still

2:55

happening. I'm very excited

2:57

about it. And I'm going to see

2:59

Megan Thee Stallion while I'm there. So it's just a

3:02

sea of wins. There's this

3:04

HP Lovecraft movie that's terrible called Dagon. And

3:06

I don't actually usually watch horror movies, but

3:08

I watched this a long time ago. The

3:10

scene that I remember, besides the scenes that

3:12

I couldn't watch because I'm squeamish, was the

3:14

very beginning. They're on this boat. And he's

3:17

just working on his laptop the whole time. They're

3:19

on this boat off the coast of Spain or

3:21

something. And finally, his wife is like, fuck you,

3:23

and throws his laptop into the ocean. And

3:25

I think about that scene because about

3:27

once a month, I think to

3:29

myself, what if I threw my laptop

3:32

into the ocean? Ha ha ha ha. Wouldn't

3:36

that be great? And then I remember how

3:38

much I enjoy eating food and

3:40

how much I enjoy expressing ideas and having

3:42

other people interact with those ideas. Yeah. Yeah.

3:45

You'd be upset without the word. I just

3:47

think, what if I could work and it

3:49

didn't have to be a grind? Yeah.

3:53

Like, what if you could work and people were like, that's good

3:55

enough for today. And you're like, I also feel satisfied with

3:57

the amount of work done today. I'll be returned

3:59

for more. work tomorrow. Like I'm going

4:01

to be alive tomorrow. It's just weird to me that

4:03

we're just like, just keep going. I'm done. I'm done.

4:06

I'm done for the day. I'm tired. I feel you.

4:10

Also would completely just be sometimes I'm like, I

4:12

do I need this laptop? Should I throw it

4:14

away? Do I violently

4:16

destroy it or just put it in a

4:18

drawer and close it and pretend like it's

4:21

not there anymore? All

4:23

of the different ways we dream about destroying

4:25

our phones and laptops. Well,

4:29

you may be a producer, but you're

4:32

not our producer because our producer is

4:34

Sophie. Hi, Sophie. How are

4:36

you? Hi. How's it going?

4:38

That's not Sophie. See, that's that's

4:40

that's the joke is because actually we

4:42

have another producer who's just usually not

4:44

on mic named Shireen. But today Shireen

4:46

is our producer here now. I'm

4:49

Shireen. I am here. Thank you for

4:51

having me. I'm always looking for opportunities to hang out

4:54

Shireen and then you were like Shireen could come hang

4:56

out with us and I was like, this is the

4:58

greatest day Shireen's going to be around. I

5:00

feel that way about you though. Oh my God. I feel so cool

5:02

at the moment. I love to

5:04

know so much. I feel very

5:07

loved. This is great. So

5:10

OK, other people involved in making this. Our audio

5:12

engineer is Dannell. Everyone has to say hi to

5:14

Dannell. Hi, Dannell. Hi, Dannell. Hi,

5:16

Dannell. We love you. Our theme music

5:19

was written for us by Unwoman. So

5:22

the last time we had you on, I think,

5:24

was an episode about the Black Panthers

5:26

Breakfast Program, the mutual aid program. Yes.

5:29

Oh, you know what? They're OK. I asked my

5:32

father, I was like, hey, will you tell

5:34

me about that time that you got

5:36

food from the Black Panthers? And he

5:38

was like, absolutely I would. And then I

5:40

never thought about it again. I

5:43

need to sit him down and actually

5:45

get recorded because yeah, he's got like all of

5:47

these different stories and stuff. I can maybe ask

5:49

my uncle too. But that was a great episode.

5:51

I really like learning about that program. That program

5:53

actually led me to the documentary. The Dear Mama

5:56

Tupac documentary. Have you seen it? I haven't seen

5:58

it yet. I want to do a special. I

6:00

like have a book about

6:02

the Shakur family specifically and I'm like waiting

6:05

to- Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. It's

6:08

fabulous. And one of the, and I've watched a

6:10

ton of docs about like the Black Panthers and

6:12

stuff, but one of the best about

6:15

the women behind the Black Panther movement,

6:17

about the actual organization that went into

6:20

the breakfast program and how it was

6:22

useful, why it pissed people off. Fabulous,

6:25

so good, great footage. That's

6:29

awesome. And the thing I

6:31

love about that story, the thing

6:33

that really stuck with me when people would tell me

6:35

this story when I was like a young radical or

6:37

whatever, people would be like, look, the Black Panther scared

6:39

people because they walked around with guns, but they scared

6:41

people especially because they fed people.

6:45

And this idea that the mutual aid program is

6:47

like really what scared the FBI. And we talked

6:49

about that during that episode. And today

6:52

we're gonna talk about even more mutual aid that

6:54

scared the ever loving shit out of a bunch

6:56

of racists. Ugh, my heart, okay.

6:59

And the reason I am sleep deprived is this

7:01

wasn't originally my plan when I set out to

7:03

write a script this week. Because

7:07

last week on this show, I

7:09

covered a bunch of factory takeovers in Argentina about

7:11

how workers took over their workplaces and turned them

7:13

into worker cooperatives in 2001 to 2003 or

7:17

so, and a bunch of these are still around. And it

7:19

was fun and had me on this like worker

7:21

co-op kick. And I was like, I'm gonna

7:23

talk about worker co-ops more this week. And

7:26

in that episode last week, I

7:28

made the claim that the history of the cooperative movement

7:30

in the US owes an awful lot

7:32

to black America in a way that is not

7:35

acknowledged much, right? Partly

7:37

because like the

7:40

overall, okay, the reputation of co-ops, when I

7:42

think about like co-ops, I tend to think

7:44

of gentrifying forces of

7:46

white people. Yes, sure.

7:48

I also viewed them that way.

7:50

They're large, beautiful grocery stores with

7:53

great produce where they stop you right at the front. Like,

7:55

do you have a membership? And if not, do you

7:57

have cash for that membership? Otherwise

7:59

get out. And you're just like, oh, okay, we'll

8:01

even look at your space. Sorry. Yeah.

8:05

And so I was like, okay, I want to, if I

8:08

made that claim flippantly, I want to talk

8:10

about it. And so I was like, okay, when I

8:12

do this piece on worker cooperatives, I'll

8:15

talk a little bit about how it was

8:17

influenced by the black cooperative, by black cooperative

8:19

economic thought. And then

8:21

I started

8:23

reading all the books about black economic cooperative

8:26

thought. So

8:28

black cooperative economics is not the side story

8:30

to this week. It is

8:32

the story. It is the story. A, as

8:34

it should be probably. We're about to leave.

8:37

Yes. It really is. Not only that, but

8:39

like, there's more. Like

8:41

I stopped because I ran out of, like,

8:44

one time in the week, because I'm sleep

8:46

deprived, but two, like, ran

8:49

out of episode time. Oh, wow.

8:52

We're not even going to run up to the modern day. The

8:55

history of early black American cooperative economics is

8:57

just too good not to deep dive. It

9:00

is even more fundamental to understanding how

9:03

kind of everything in America works than

9:05

I would have imagined. And

9:08

the origins, the origin to that

9:11

is basically black mutual aid and

9:13

black rebellion and black cooperation. Because

9:17

as far

9:19

as I can tell, every honest

9:21

story about America starts in one

9:23

or both of the following two

9:25

places. Okay. Either the violent

9:28

colonial expansion in the genocide of

9:30

indigenous peoples. Sure. Yeah. Or

9:32

the unique racialized chattel slavery system. That

9:34

was the backbone of the new world

9:37

and especially the US's economy. Seem

9:39

like important pillars to getting started

9:41

and building a class of people

9:43

who leave everyone else literally

9:46

in their dust. Yeah. Yeah. I could

9:48

see it. I could see. Yeah. They would

9:50

come back to this. It

9:52

really does. Like, anything you

9:55

talk about that happens in the

9:57

US is going to be influenced by both of these

9:59

things. We all live

10:01

in the shadow of these things. And

10:04

I'm going to argue,

10:06

because I like metaphor and take metaphor very

10:08

seriously, that we live on land that is

10:10

haunted. For some of us, it is

10:12

haunted by what our ancestors did. For others, it's haunted

10:15

by what happened to our ancestors. For an awful lot

10:17

of people, it's both. But

10:21

this show's middle name is formally, and Shireen

10:23

just make sure to make, from now on,

10:25

this show's formal name, just stick this in

10:27

the middle of the show title, is the

10:30

coolest things that have ever happened have happened in the shadow

10:32

of or in reaction to the worst atrocities the world's ever

10:34

seen. Wait, one more time, can I

10:36

get that down? Hold on. Yeah, yeah,

10:38

the coolest things that have ever happened have happened

10:41

in the shadow of or in reaction to the

10:43

worst atrocities that the world's ever seen. It's

10:46

a mouthful, but I

10:49

think it's worth it. But

10:51

accurate, oh, okay, I'm

10:53

going to listen more, and then I have potentially

10:56

some theories, wow. No,

10:58

no, give me your theories. Okay,

11:00

so before we

11:02

started recording, I was talking about how

11:04

I've been reading a ton of fantasy

11:07

books, a lot, a lot of fantasy

11:09

that, and Japanese death poetry heavily in

11:11

my rotation lately, and the

11:14

idea of atrocities being, not

11:16

necessary, but

11:19

entirely unavoidable, right, has

11:24

been lingering over a

11:26

lot of that work. I think

11:28

a lot of the fantasy I'm

11:31

reading lately almost always has some

11:33

kind of centered genocide, war,

11:37

atomic bomb, or atomic-esque weapon, the

11:39

big one. It's,

11:43

I think, haunting us. I think we're

11:45

very conscious, like subconsciously aware of

11:48

the fact that we are

11:50

constantly dealing with these atrocities, and yet it's,

11:53

it's weird how in our daytime we do not at all make space

11:55

to pause and think

11:58

or react or... address

12:02

any of the issues. Yeah,

12:04

totally. Sort of haunted by the fact

12:06

that it's coming at me and like it's just

12:08

pouring out of our art. It's just constantly

12:11

pouring out of art and being like, do you know that we

12:13

are just killing each other at like a very

12:15

large level very quickly? Yeah. Do you see it?

12:17

Is it? It's not registering. It's pretty people are

12:19

telling you, does it register now? Maybe it's packaged

12:21

in a very entertaining story. Do you see it

12:24

now? No, it's been, it's creeping

12:26

me out a little bit. I'll be honest.

12:29

No, but see, that makes sense. It actually ties into something that I

12:31

like. Folks would be surprised

12:34

to know that another Cool Zone Media host, Robert

12:36

Evans, keeps the opposite schedule that I do. And

12:39

so when I was awake at five in

12:41

the morning to keep writing this script, Robert

12:43

Evans was also awake, but

12:46

for the opposite reason. And we

12:48

were like texting each other. And

12:51

one of the things that comes up

12:53

is about we were just talking about how emotion

12:57

comes through art and sometimes how we kind

12:59

of need art, both the creation of it and the

13:01

experience of it, almost to

13:03

like let ourselves feel certain emotions.

13:06

Yeah. You know? And it, I don't

13:09

know whether it's because like otherwise we're afraid that we'll

13:11

be consumed by them or, let me,

13:13

honestly, okay, this is completely off of

13:15

being casual. We're talking about, but like,

13:18

I feel as I get older, I'd like have

13:21

my emotional reactions are dulled. They're still

13:23

there, but they're like, the sharp edges

13:25

have been like worn down by time.

13:28

Oh, for sure. Art becomes even more important to

13:31

me as I get older. Is

13:33

that why dads can only cry when they

13:35

watch movies? Yeah, probably.

13:37

They watch very emotional movies because they're like,

13:39

because I talked to my father and

13:43

father figures, men of

13:45

fatherly ages. And a lot of

13:47

times, you know, when I talk

13:49

about taking action, they are so

13:51

like, you could,

13:53

if you wanted to, they're like, it's really

13:55

honorable that you want to be organizing

13:58

her out in the street. But that's

14:01

not a thing that works The

14:03

I've seen it fail so many times.

14:05

It's it's almost cute

14:09

You're like so you're all but

14:11

yeah, they're just they're a complete Do

14:14

I think worn down by existing

14:17

maybe? Yeah Art

14:19

is important. I'm excited to learn about commerce. Do you

14:22

mean it to your realist? But no no Like

14:24

it really got me thinking and I've also been reading

14:26

so much poetry lately that I was immediately like linkedin I

14:29

was like, yes, I too. Yeah No,

14:33

no, I this is the other stuff

14:35

that I'm like I think people they

14:37

only know me through my podcast are like ah Margaret

14:40

who only reads history books Which is true because I

14:42

spend all my time reading history books but

14:44

like art and all this stuff is I like

14:47

getting to talk about it too, but to

14:50

talk about history and sociology books

14:54

I've talked a lot on the show about the 19th

14:56

century labor movement Especially how either

14:58

how annoying and racist the white

15:00

unions were or how

15:02

cool the internationalist anti-racist like

15:05

Integrated unions were I

15:07

haven't actually talked yet as much as I'd like

15:09

to about the specific black unions that

15:11

also existed but

15:14

all the good stuff that comes from

15:16

the crucible of the labor movement came

15:18

either through immigrant workers or black workers

15:20

and We've talked a bunch about

15:22

a bunch of different strikes about How

15:25

the most important strike in US history

15:28

the most successful labor action in all

15:30

of US history Was

15:32

when the black people in the South

15:34

won the Civil War by conducting the

15:36

largest general strike in US history crippling

15:39

the Confederate economy And

15:45

Oh god, no, no, no, okay. So oh my

15:47

god So there's this sociologist who

15:49

I'm about to talk about a bunch named

15:51

we be Du Bois and No,

15:54

not yeah, not pronounced a boy

15:58

Dubois, which I kept wanting to say

16:00

constantly, but it's Du Bois. And

16:04

he wrote this theory, but it

16:06

wasn't a theory. I mean, he backed it up with

16:08

facts. I guess it's like a theory in like a

16:10

science way, not in a like random conjecture way, right?

16:14

Where he lays out that

16:17

enslaved people in the US

16:19

South performed a

16:21

massive general strike. They withheld their

16:23

labor during the

16:25

civil war in a way that crippled

16:27

the Confederate economy and in many ways

16:30

won the war. And

16:32

the transfer also, because a

16:35

ton of people fled at great

16:37

risk to get across the lines.

16:40

And then they didn't just like, I

16:42

mean, I'm sure some of them didn't, I wouldn't blame them,

16:44

but they didn't just like keep going. They stuck around and

16:46

they said, well, how can we help? How can we help

16:48

the war effort? And there

16:51

was this like labor army

16:53

of formerly enslaved self-emancipated people.

16:56

And it actually like, I talked about it a long

16:58

enough ago that I'm afraid I'll get the details wrong. But

17:01

this is what I knew about Du

17:04

Bois is that he was the guy

17:06

who wrote that thing about the general

17:09

strike and like changed

17:11

my conception of the US civil

17:13

war. But it

17:15

turns out he wrote a lot of stuff. I mean, I knew

17:17

he wrote a lot of stuff, right? Yeah, I

17:20

didn't know what it was. So

17:23

Du Bois spent his incredibly long and influential

17:26

career throwing proverbial dynamite. I guess, okay, so

17:28

like part of the reason I think that

17:30

we don't hear about him much, right, is

17:32

because by the time at least of like

17:34

my white education, there is

17:36

only two black people in history and there's

17:39

the good one, Martin Luther King, and then

17:41

the bad one, Malcolm X. For

17:43

sure. The way it was, I

17:45

went to an all white elementary school. And

17:49

so yeah, that was definitely the messaging

17:53

across the board there. Yeah. And

17:56

so we didn't hear about him as much

17:58

or any of the like... really influential

18:00

thinkers that came before the 1960s. Wait,

18:06

was the, okay. Paris

18:08

had a world's fair at some

18:11

point. I

18:13

think he was at it. I

18:16

wouldn't put it past him. That sounds like

18:18

something he would do. Okay, if it's,

18:20

I have this incredible book that

18:22

is, highlights all this

18:25

detailed information that he brought there about

18:27

like what the African

18:29

American was doing like at that time. And there's

18:31

like all of these beautiful photographs

18:33

of folks like dressed to the nines.

18:35

And then there's like talk of their

18:37

businesses and stuff. And just that he

18:40

had sort of like was recording

18:42

and preserving our history as it was happening

18:44

in a way that wouldn't be biased later,

18:48

which I think is kind of incredible. That sounds

18:50

like this guy. Yeah. Because that's what

18:53

he, he's a sociologist and he was

18:55

really fucking good one. And

18:59

another thing that he talked about a

19:01

lot that we take for granted today, but

19:03

was a revolutionary idea at the time. Even

19:06

my weight education talked about how the

19:08

failure of reconstruction, right? Like after the

19:10

civil war was one, how

19:13

the failure of it was because of

19:15

racist white people. Right? It

19:17

was because of Jim Crow laws and the KKK and

19:20

like not like black

19:22

people are lazy. Until two

19:25

boys proved it. The

19:27

general hypothesis was black people are lazy

19:29

and that's why reconstruction failed, which

19:33

makes me very annoyed. This

19:36

is Tony Morrison has a quote I

19:38

will paraphrase about sort

19:40

of being forced to waste time explaining racism

19:44

away to be like, hey, that's just racism. Yeah.

19:47

Not talking to facts. You're just talking to me racism. And

19:49

now I have to take my time to explain why it's

19:51

racist to you instead of doing the work that I should

19:53

actually be doing one exhausting situation. Our poor

19:55

guy, Du Bois, he was really suffering.

19:59

That's what he did. over the course of his like, this guy

20:01

lives to be 95 and he keeps

20:03

working his entire life. Oh, I saw a lot,

20:05

sir. And like, I think about,

20:07

I don't remember this guy's name a

20:09

long time ago. My ex-boyfriend

20:12

was telling me this story about like, yeah,

20:14

there was this scientist and he had to

20:16

spend his entire career measuring skulls because

20:20

he was the guy who proved that black

20:22

people's brains aren't smaller. And

20:25

like, imagine, I mean,

20:28

I guess that's an important thing to do with

20:30

your life. Imagine having to do that with your

20:32

fucking life. I have to put so many numbers

20:34

down on paper that you finally see what's just

20:36

right in front of your face. That is, yeah,

20:38

that's, it's

20:41

trying. It's just trying existing in

20:43

space. So that's crazy.

20:46

So Du Bois said a lot of

20:48

stuff, some of which was mind blowing at the

20:51

time. It seems obvious in retrospect and some of

20:53

which isn't talked about now, like

20:55

this general strike theory of the

20:57

US Civil War. And people have pushed back on that

20:59

a little bit. Like it wasn't the only thing that

21:02

once there was this whole war part of it too,

21:04

you know, and like, but it

21:06

was a really important part that is still

21:08

left out of that conversation. He

21:11

was also the first person writing

21:13

about black cooperative economics, at least

21:15

that I've found. And

21:18

in 1907, he edited

21:20

a book called Economic Cooperation

21:22

Among Negro Americans, which

21:25

had an excellent and evocative subtitle.

21:28

Reports of a social study made by Atlanta University

21:30

under the patronage of Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC,

21:32

together with the proceedings of the 12th conference of

21:34

the study of the Negro problems held at Atlanta

21:37

University on Tuesday, May the 28th, 1907. Wow.

21:42

I know, just really draws you in.

21:44

Rolls right off the tongue. Yeah. Okay.

21:47

I had two epiphanies while reading this. One, people

21:49

knew how to subtitle books back in the day.

21:51

Just really, just lays it out. Just real explicit.

21:56

No shock about what's in here. We're not trying

21:58

to build mystery. This is a text. Just please

22:00

find us. Yeah. Two,

22:04

my second epiphany was that I have

22:06

become someone who reads books with subtitles

22:08

like this and finds them riveting and

22:11

loses sleep because I read more of

22:13

the 1907 book that's incredibly

22:17

hard to parse than the

22:19

2014 book that explains

22:21

it all very rationally and in a way

22:24

that's easier to understand. That's because

22:26

you're an academic and you're like, this is the

22:28

first source. This is the good

22:30

stuff right here. This is not filtered through anyone

22:32

else's opinions or thoughts. I

22:34

know. Yeah, that's delicious. I'm

22:37

an art school dropout. I can't be an academic.

22:39

And then I'm like, no, I

22:42

participate in the academic study of these

22:45

books. And yeah, exactly. The

22:47

1907 book has a lot more of

22:49

the really interesting details and a

22:51

lot less of the here's how

22:54

to explain it to someone 115 years from now. Right.

22:58

The more readable book I just want to shout

23:00

out is called Collective Courage. It's by Jessica Gordon

23:03

Nemhard and it's from 100 years later in 2014.

23:06

That's the one I'll be reading. Yeah.

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23:12

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25:00

And we're back. I

25:02

also want to talk about the historian. I want

25:05

to talk about W.E.B. Du Bois

25:07

or as his friends called him because

25:09

he insisted, Dr.

25:12

Du Bois. Listen,

25:14

he said I have the education, I'm not dealing

25:17

with these white people. Yeah, no, totally. He's

25:19

like, this is exhausting. Y'all

25:22

see me. You know what's up. Please call me

25:24

the proper way. I respect the hell out of me. Even

25:28

his best friend had to call him Dr.

25:30

Du Bois. However, his best friend was white.

25:32

So it's like, according to

25:34

one article I read. Okay,

25:36

this is so, he said I can

25:38

be best friends with you if you show me

25:40

proper respect and deference at all times. So I'm

25:42

not caught out tripping. Seems

25:45

reasonable. See, instead of pro, we're

25:47

gonna risk friendship in this era.

25:51

And if you're gonna be a guy who's like,

25:53

even my best friend has to call me Dr. Du

25:55

Bois, then you're gonna be five

25:57

foot five and carry a

25:59

cane even when you don't need it and

26:01

wear like dress to the nines at all

26:03

times, you are either an

26:05

asshole or one of

26:07

the coolest and weirdest, most interesting intellectuals of

26:10

your time. It's really a

26:12

50-50 split here because I'm seeing

26:14

red flags, but also like, you

26:16

know what? Yeah. The

26:19

truth is always a little murkier. I really want to put him in

26:21

a category. I'm sure he was

26:23

a complicated human being, but there's definitely a

26:25

lot of those who are just like, wait, what now? Yeah.

26:28

But yeah, you know, okay, guy had personality.

26:30

You would not soon forget him. No.

26:35

I find him charming. I haven't

26:37

read as much about his personal life, you

26:39

know, is that some people have pointed out

26:41

that he wasn't necessarily the best husband or

26:43

father, but that is outside the scope of

26:45

this podcast and I don't know enough to

26:47

really talk about it. But

26:51

besides all these things, the thing you need to

26:53

know about Dr. Du Bois is that he was

26:55

the first black graduate with a PhD from Harvard.

26:59

I assure you the pleasure was Harvard's.

27:02

That's what I was asking him about. What

27:04

was your time at Harvard like? I'm

27:06

not sure the pleasure was Harvard's. I'm

27:09

a fact check that, but I'm pretty

27:11

sure that's accurate. That rules. Okay,

27:13

which is awesome because later in his

27:15

life, he's going to reference Oscar Wilde and Oscar

27:18

Wilde was exactly the kind of guy who would

27:20

say that kind of thing. Right? For

27:22

sure. Like I found at least one thing

27:24

that referred to him as a dandy and I really like putting

27:26

him in the Oscar Wilde category in a lot of ways. That

27:30

makes sense. That makes sense. Spiffy Fitz,

27:32

well-groomed mustache. You can see it. Yeah. And

27:35

like real fucking

27:37

good takes on politics actually. Yes,

27:39

Harvard Gazette confirms. Okay, that's a factual

27:41

quote from W.B. Hell yeah. So

27:44

the second thing you need to know about Dr. Du Bois is

27:47

that he was born in 1868, which is

27:50

famously only three years after

27:52

the first Juneteenth, the day when the

27:54

Emancipation Proclamation finally hit

27:57

Texas. Okay, not to stop you too much,

27:59

but I. recently found out

28:01

my great great great

28:03

possibly a fourth great in their

28:06

grandfather at the initial one in

28:08

Austin. We owned a

28:10

store called the Lions convenience store part

28:12

of the founding family like black families

28:14

of Austin. I was

28:17

very excited about it. I had no idea

28:19

we're the first Juneteenth. That's amazing. I've been

28:22

learning a lot about this space and time.

28:24

It's an interesting period for black people that I

28:26

think we're sort of only just now uncovering

28:29

as a yeah consciously like in

28:31

the in a more zeitgeist way.

28:33

That that makes sense to me.

28:36

I think that there's a lot of like it's

28:38

been really interesting to me to learn that we

28:41

know more about things that happened a long

28:43

time ago now than we did like closer

28:46

to those events. Yes, 100%. That

28:49

is wild to me. So

28:52

he was born only three years after the

28:54

end of legal chattel slavery in the US

28:56

and I'm adding all those qualifiers because there

28:59

is still legal slavery in the US. It

29:01

is in prison systems and there's still chattel

29:03

slavery in the US. It happens to undocumented

29:05

people. Yeah, but the end of

29:07

legal chattel slavery in the US is a big **** deal.

29:09

One of the biggest deals in the history of the

29:12

world. Honestly, he

29:14

lived for 95 years and he

29:17

died in 1963. He

29:19

literally died the day before the

29:21

March on Washington from the 1960s

29:23

civil rights era. Okay, way

29:25

to mark history with just your

29:27

entrance and exits. That's incredible. It's

29:30

a reminder that the space between these

29:32

two events is one guy. There's

29:35

one guy between those events. Yeah. Wow.

29:38

He wasn't there for either of them.

29:40

Right. He just missed. Yeah,

29:42

that's intense.

29:46

Yeah. Time is much shorter than we think it

29:49

is. Yeah. So,

29:52

Du Bois, before he was Dr. Du Bois,

29:54

when he was just WEB, he probably

29:56

didn't go by WEB. He probably did. He's the kind of kid who

29:58

would have gone by WEB. Someone

30:01

knows more about this than me. There's hundreds

30:03

of books written about this man. I read some

30:07

of his writing and some writing about him. He

30:09

was born in Massachusetts in a black

30:12

community that he described as a fairly

30:14

idyllic setting. Like local white churches helped

30:16

pay for his college. And

30:18

he says he didn't experience a ton of racism as a

30:20

kid. Then he went

30:23

to an HBCU, a historically black

30:25

college in Tennessee. That

30:27

place is called Fisk. You will

30:29

be surprised to know that between his

30:32

idyllic black community in

30:35

Massachusetts and Tennessee

30:38

in whatever, he suddenly had

30:40

to experience an awful lot of racism. Culture

30:42

shock when you come from

30:44

Mason Dixon, it's different for sure. Yeah.

30:48

He went on to become the first black person in history to

30:50

get a PhD from Harvard, like I was saying. And

30:52

then he just went on to write some of the most

30:54

influential shit about race the world has ever seen. In 1903,

30:57

he published his most famous book, The Souls of Black

30:59

Folk. By

31:01

1935, he wrote Black Reconstruction,

31:03

which is when he laid out

31:05

about how reconstruction was a failure

31:08

of, wasn't a

31:10

failure by black people. And

31:16

the classic black civil rights dichotomy that

31:18

I grew up learning about, of course,

31:20

is Martin Luther King, the reformer, and

31:22

Malcolm X, the radical, right? Yeah.

31:25

This sells MLK short.

31:28

He was way fucking cooler than my white

31:30

liberal education taught me. Oh,

31:32

for sure, for sure. I

31:35

think when MLK

31:37

is like the, one of

31:39

the most amazing organizers, like guy

31:42

on the ground who understood what

31:44

it meant not just to be the

31:46

face, but to structure the way

31:50

movements were captured, right? Yeah.

31:53

Like I just recently learned that he chose

31:56

pretty women to be arrested with in Georgia. He was

31:58

like, listen, if they're arrested. gorgeous

32:00

young women, people are gonna be upset about

32:02

it. Me, black, I don't really care about

32:04

me. They'll care that these women are getting

32:07

arrested. Now that can be like, show

32:09

this weird, knowing also what we know about the man

32:11

as a full human being. But I

32:13

also think it's just like, that

32:16

kind of thinking is necessary in

32:19

order to make movements, gain

32:21

traction with folks who might otherwise just, you know,

32:24

chill in the middle, be comfortable. Um,

32:28

and yeah, yeah, a brilliant

32:30

thinker, not just the guy who was like,

32:32

no fighting back, which I think is often

32:34

how he gets painted. No,

32:36

totally. And it's, he's easier

32:38

to misrepresent and recuperate into capitalism

32:41

and like whiteness than the man,

32:43

than Malcolm X, who was just,

32:46

it's very hard to do that to Malcolm X,

32:48

right? Yeah, well, cause

32:50

you get to, whenever you see Malcolm X, you're like, oh, that guy

32:52

took no shit. Like he would not fuck anybody

32:54

in this room. He would be like, pretender, fake,

32:57

get out of my face. Like, no, there's no, this

33:00

is not a guy who was interested in being a politician

33:04

necessarily. Yeah. And

33:06

to be clear, I wouldn't fuck with either of them by selling

33:08

them on the street. No, okay, MLK would just take

33:10

you by surprise. MLK has the type of like

33:12

sweet face, like pastorly voice where you're

33:15

like, oh, okay, like this guy's chill. And then

33:17

he starts speaking to you like, I'm dumb. I'm

33:19

stupid. And why did I think I could take

33:21

this man as brilliant? Like, oh God. Yeah. No,

33:24

totally. So at the

33:27

turn of the century, you had a

33:29

different dichotomy of black intellectuals that was being

33:31

presented to everyone, right? You had

33:33

Booker T. Washington, who is more moderate.

33:36

His position gets called accommodationism. And

33:39

basically Booker T. Washington, this sells him a little bit

33:41

short, and I'll talk about it in a second. Booker

33:43

T. Washington said, folks should compromise

33:45

on their rights in order to get the bare

33:47

minimum out of white society, basically. Dr.

33:51

Du Bois comes on the scene and he's

33:53

like, we are intellectually the equal of whites

33:55

and we demand equality now. But

33:58

it's not just like Du Bois rattles. Washington

34:00

boring Compromiser. It

34:02

was actually about also how

34:04

they positioned themselves around class. Washington

34:07

was like, we want to focus

34:09

on our working class power. I'm paraphrasing here. I'm

34:11

a little bit putting words in their mouths. We're

34:14

going to focus on working class power by

34:17

educating ourselves as laborers and will become the

34:19

economic equals of white people by like doing

34:22

manual labor and stuff. And then we'll be in a

34:24

better place to fight for our rights. And

34:27

a lot of people don't like this because it's

34:29

like, well, that's the work we're already expected to do

34:31

within white society anyway. Du

34:34

Bois came in and he believed in

34:36

what was called a classical education. He's

34:38

a Harvard man. He wants

34:41

to focus on intellectual quality. He claimed

34:43

that a, a quote talented

34:45

10th, a sort of intellectual

34:47

class of elites that made up about 10%

34:49

of the black population would

34:51

lead the black people to a quality. And it

34:54

is not surprising that he ends up pretty

34:56

Marxist. Right? Yeah. The

35:00

talented 10th is the

35:02

belief there within is still held strongly

35:04

amongst African-Americans

35:06

and in concerning what

35:08

I find to be somewhat concerning ways. Yeah.

35:12

And Du Bois, so Du Bois didn't coin

35:14

it. It was actually coined by a white

35:17

Northern liberals who used it to describe their

35:19

plan. This makes sense. Yeah, right. They

35:22

were like, oh, we're going to establish black colleges in

35:25

the South and make a, make

35:27

a talented 10th. You can probably

35:29

guess by the way in

35:31

our tones, I have no

35:34

interest in offering strategic advice.

35:37

This is not a plan that specifically appeals to me.

35:40

Yeah. I think any class or

35:43

any plan for improvement

35:45

that requires selecting 10%

35:48

of the people to move on while everyone else sort of waits

35:50

for them to open the door is immediately

35:52

suspect. Wait, what's

35:54

happening here? Who's doing the choosing? Would define

35:56

talent. Talent in what way? Like it just,

35:58

it's all, it's. Yeah. Not great. Well,

36:01

what's interesting, Du Bois is such an interesting

36:03

thinker. He develops as he gets older, and

36:05

I'm cutting ahead to further my script. He

36:08

changes his position on this, and he stops being

36:10

like, by the end of his life, he's not

36:12

like, oh, we need the smart 10%. He

36:15

kind of is like, we need the

36:18

moral 10%. And

36:20

we also need people to like

36:23

integrate our struggle into broader struggle

36:25

of other marginalized people. And like,

36:27

he's actually... He's

36:29

hard to pin down in some ways. We

36:32

change so much over the course of our extremely

36:34

long lives. What? I know,

36:36

right? Like, what? Like, I don't think the same

36:38

shit when I was 20. No, thank God. I think it

36:40

was 20. I've experienced so much.

36:43

So this more radical thinker actually still

36:45

had more in common with MLK than

36:48

Malcolm X, at least tactically. Du

36:50

Bois in the early 20th century, he

36:52

was not super stoked on black

36:54

insurrection. He was like, I get it. I'm

36:56

not anti. I understand why people do it. Like

37:00

he's not mad at Nat Turner, for example, like the

37:02

most famous slave revolt person

37:04

during this period, and well, probably still. All

37:07

that stuff comes from the right place and it

37:10

maintains our dignity, right? It's better than just sucking

37:12

it up. But it is

37:14

politically misguided because with the white power structure is

37:16

more powerful than us, is his argument. But

37:19

the opposite position, the accommodationist position

37:21

destroys our dignity and undermines us

37:23

as people. He presents this idea.

37:26

So he believes in this third tradition,

37:28

a nonviolent defiance, which he connects to

37:31

Frederick Douglass's legacy. And

37:33

what's interesting about this, from my point of view, all

37:36

of these people are so, you

37:38

know, like when you simplify them to be like, oh,

37:40

Booker T. Washington's like boring liberal or whatever, or like

37:43

Frederick Douglass, totally nonviolent. Like first of all, I

37:45

mean, like the civil war

37:47

wasn't a nonviolent protest. This is literally a war. His

37:49

like sons were fighting in that, you know, he was

37:51

a little bit old by that point. I'm sure he

37:54

would have been. Frederick

37:56

Douglass was no pacifist. I

37:58

like this quote by him. because it,

38:01

well, whatever. He says, if the

38:03

Southern outrages on the colored race continue,

38:05

the Negro will become a chemist. Anarchists

38:08

have not the monopoly on bomb making and

38:10

the Negro will learn. A

38:17

Czech animate just don't push us

38:19

too far. I really appreciate when

38:22

people just kind of lay it on the line, just

38:24

feel like, you know what, actually we do. But

38:27

I think that's also, it's irritating.

38:29

And again, I would say

38:31

with my education

38:33

in black American history begins in

38:36

college because I was gonna start hanging out

38:39

more, black kids my age. It's

38:46

somewhat perplexing, but also you understand

38:49

the intentionality of it, the older I

38:51

get of just how things we

38:54

think are understood and buried

38:57

are constantly re-brought up as being

38:59

factual, like the idea that, oh,

39:02

black folks just lack education. And

39:04

if it's just education, then that would be what

39:06

would give them a head or, oh, they're

39:09

lazy. If they would just work harder, then that's

39:11

how. It's just like, it's

39:16

wild to me that people can still be distracted from

39:19

the fact that like, these are systems in place that

39:21

are concrete and they're here and we

39:23

have to fix it. I mean, we have to

39:25

tear down and rebuild the system. But

39:29

there are steps, I don't know, it's just crazy. Yeah. It's

39:31

crazy. No, you're right about how like,

39:34

yeah, watching these things, like of course everyone

39:36

understands systemic racism and then we've like slipped

39:38

at remembering systemic racism, you know? Yeah.

39:42

So Du Bois was

39:44

into a sort of less violent defiance.

39:47

To quote author David Haekwon Kim, Du

39:50

Bois' third way of political self-assertion,

39:52

quote, inherits the moral

39:54

and spiritual legacy of black insurrectionism

39:56

without advocating violent mayhem or a

39:59

cast submission. And

40:01

so basically he's like, well, we're going to stand up, but we're

40:03

just not necessarily going to do it in these like kind of

40:05

one off ways. But he

40:08

gets really interesting with all this shit. I, okay. Well,

40:11

so hear me out. So

40:13

tactically and strategically, he's sounding a little bit

40:16

more Martin Luther King, right? Nonviolence is

40:18

not the same as submission. It's the opposite

40:20

is a form of rebellion. But

40:23

the other thing about Du Bois is that

40:25

he also presaged black nationalism in some ways,

40:28

according to at least, you know, some

40:30

of the authors I was reading, Frederick

40:32

Douglas was about black folks integrating into

40:34

white society. Du Bois insisted that black

40:36

people should embrace their African heritage even

40:38

while living in the US. Yes,

40:41

everyone else is allowed to, but

40:43

we also enjoy it. And

40:50

he gets more radical as he gets older. Later

40:52

in his life, he talked about how this

40:54

negative view he had of the insurrectionist, like

40:56

when he was writing in his youth, he

40:58

wrote about black insurrectionists being like, look, I

41:00

got where they're coming from, but it wasn't

41:02

like the right plan. And

41:04

the white insurrectionists like the labor movement and the

41:06

anarchists and stuff like that. He

41:08

writes about them and he's like, I don't know. It's just

41:11

weird flash in the pan stuff. It doesn't matter. Right?

41:15

Later, he writes explicitly about

41:17

how this was his Harvard

41:19

education talking. This is

41:21

what they taught him to believe about

41:23

these movements. And

41:26

he started seeing labor uprisings as part

41:28

of a lineage of struggle, not as

41:30

just like sporadic uprisings into chaos. He

41:34

started adding class more actively to his critique

41:36

and he started seeing all of these struggles

41:38

as connected. And he

41:40

didn't drop race. This

41:43

is his primary thing for understandable reasons,

41:46

but he became more of a racism

41:48

deeply informs capitalism and the two are

41:50

intertwined, which is to say, I

41:53

really like this guy's thinking. Yeah. Well,

41:56

and you put a picture of an

41:58

evolution, right? you grew up

42:01

in a sheltered, comfortable town where everybody

42:03

looks like you and y'all are

42:05

happy and life is good. Like that's

42:07

how you perceive the whole world because you were

42:09

young and you know nothing else. And then you

42:11

get to college and you learn a little bit

42:13

more. And then it sounds like what should be

42:15

the obvious and maybe the main lesson and takeaway

42:17

for folks is I've start speaking to

42:19

more organizers of something I've certainly been checked

42:22

on a lot, which is like you come

42:24

from a class that has a lot of

42:26

privilege that you've not acknowledged yet. And if

42:28

you do not acknowledge your class privilege,

42:30

and then if you do not engage

42:32

people outside of your class, you are

42:34

not actively doing the work. You're

42:36

missing such a large picture of

42:39

what's actually going on. And it just sounds

42:41

like he got out in the world and was like,

42:43

Oh, there's

42:46

a lot. The workers are angry for a reason.

42:49

It's not random. No,

42:51

absolutely. But you know, what's

42:53

a good steam valve for class aggression

42:55

is ads and stuff you

42:58

can buy. And that way

43:00

you don't feel as bad

43:02

about capitalism because you can

43:04

participate in it through. Here's

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we're back. Hey. So

45:40

he actually helped form the NAACP in 1909

45:43

and then he edited its paper for 25 years,

45:45

which was called the crisis, which

45:48

is a fucking sick name for a newspaper. It

45:50

really is. It's attention

45:52

getting. Yeah. And

45:54

I'm not going to get into like, there's a lot of

45:57

other folks like Marcus Garvey comes on the scene shortly after

45:59

this and. is pretty critical of Du

46:01

Bois. They have a lot of conflict and

46:03

they're both involved in the Pan-Africanist

46:05

movement, which is a movement to

46:07

unite Africa and also often African

46:09

people in the diaspora into one

46:11

identity and or nation to unite

46:14

against colonization. But

46:16

there's a lot of splits within that. And

46:18

Du Bois, understandably, people were

46:20

critical of some of the things that he said in

46:23

the text. Sure. But

46:25

whatever, did all this cool

46:27

shit. His actual political

46:29

beliefs were pretty consistent throughout his

46:31

life. He started off, even before

46:33

he figured out all this other shit, believing

46:36

in economic cooperation. Like it's not

46:38

even like 1900 yet before he

46:40

starts writing about economic cooperation. He

46:43

also believed consistently throughout his life that black

46:45

people should demand their rights directly and immediately.

46:49

And he was basically a democratic socialist for

46:51

most of his career. How

46:53

he actually carried himself politically varied.

46:57

Basically he did whatever he thought was

46:59

pragmatic at any given point. He would

47:01

sometimes vote Republican, sometimes Democrats, sometimes third

47:03

party, sometimes refused to vote depending on

47:05

the candidates at the time and basically

47:07

like what they specifically offered to the

47:09

black community, which makes sense.

47:11

Whatever. That's a logical way to vote

47:13

and move through life. No

47:16

party loyalties. I'm about this. He

47:19

would join and leave the Socialist Party and

47:21

the Communist Party. He would pick fights and

47:23

men ties between the NAACP and the Communist

47:25

Party like all the time. He

47:28

started off against US involvement in World War

47:30

I. This is a common sort of anti-imperialist

47:32

position. Then he ended up in favor of

47:34

World War I. Then he

47:37

regretted being in favor of World War I. He

47:39

was opposed to US involvement in World War

47:41

II, especially in the Pacific theater because he

47:43

figured that the US would probably use that

47:46

opportunity to just do more imperialism. Which

47:49

yeah, you know, that makes sense.

47:52

There's very few wars that the US as a

47:54

government was involved with, which I'm like, we were

47:56

solidly on the right side, and World War II

47:58

is one of those. But I

48:02

still completely understand the critique of the

48:04

Pacific theater will just expand US interests.

48:06

I mean listen you Do

48:09

things can be true? We

48:11

could join late and fight Nazis

48:13

and also Ravage countries

48:16

that were like completely unnecessary. We

48:18

take advantage wherever we go. So,

48:20

you know, yeah, I know So

48:26

Compromising in ways that seemed pragmatic and then

48:29

regretting it was a hallmark of his life

48:31

It seems I'm making that because

48:33

it happened at least twice Okay There

48:35

was the World War one one and then

48:37

in 1928 one of Du

48:39

Bois mentees was a fellow

48:41

black Harvard man named Augustus Granville

48:44

Dill and He was

48:46

caught by the vice squad doing

48:48

homosexuality in a public bathroom Oh

48:52

Du Bois fired him from the crisis boys

48:55

now and Augustus

48:57

retired from writing and then spent the rest of

48:59

his life like as a piano player and teacher

49:02

Well, Du Bois regretted this for

49:05

the rest of his life as he

49:07

should in his autobiography. He wrote

49:10

quote I Had

49:12

before that time no conception of homosexuality.

49:14

I had never understood the tragedy of

49:16

an Oscar Wilde I dismissed

49:18

my co-worker forthwith and spent heavy days

49:20

regretting my act Amazing

49:24

of you to say so

49:26

sir. Yeah, I mean, I think

49:28

a lot of people would just Take

49:31

it to their grave, you know, I know

49:33

it's wonderful for him to set

49:36

it out loud because it is really tragic That's

49:39

the thing I find really

49:42

compelling is this sort of intellectual honesty where it

49:44

seems like he's like not Specifically

49:47

committed to an ideology. He's like committed

49:49

to trying to do right and sometimes

49:51

he slips up really dramatically and is

49:54

Inconsistent and he feels really

49:56

human. I mean and

49:59

that's a rarity, I think,

50:01

especially for people who are lifted

50:03

onto such pedestals. Yeah. When

50:05

the work is very good, people are like, hero.

50:07

I'm like, well, human being. Yeah,

50:10

totally. Totally. As

50:14

he aged, he became more and more radical. During the

50:17

Cold War, he remained critical of the USSR for its

50:20

despotism, but overall, he backed them

50:22

against US imperialism. And

50:26

the US didn't like him for this.

50:28

He's absolutely caught up in the red scare time and

50:30

time again, even though he kept being like, I'm

50:32

not with the communists, but he would like, as

50:35

the US government goes after him more and more, he's

50:37

just hanging out with his communist friends. He's like, fuck

50:39

the US government. He's like, I'm not one of them, but

50:41

I like it better over here. Yeah.

50:45

And he deepened his analysis

50:47

of how all sorts of marginalized people need

50:49

to work together. He shifted his belief about an

50:51

educated vanguard leading the way to

50:53

a sort of moral guidance where being

50:56

a good person and specifically selfless was

50:58

far more important than specifically their education.

51:01

The US revoked his passport for him being a

51:03

commie. And when he was like in his fucking,

51:06

in his eighties, they were like, oh

51:08

no, you're a sketchy commie. Uncle

51:10

Sam's never not petty. I

51:12

know. It took a 1958 Supreme

51:15

Court decision to get him his passport back.

51:18

Y'all were extra petty. Wow. You

51:20

do this running around with some paperwork a little extra

51:23

long. Supreme

51:25

Court. God damn. So

51:28

he moved to Ghana in 1961 at age 93. I

51:31

love that man. He says, and peace out. No

51:33

one talked to me ever again. Before

51:39

he moves to Ghana, his final fuck

51:41

you to the US government, he

51:44

formally enrolls and gets his membership card

51:46

in the Communist Party of the USA.

51:49

Slow clap. And

51:52

most analysis I've seen isn't because like suddenly

51:54

at 93, he suddenly becomes a

51:56

committed Communist Party communist. He's been doing it the

51:58

whole time. It's a fuck you.

52:01

It's a fuck you the Red Scare. It's a

52:03

fuck you the US government. That is amazing.

52:05

I really, I enjoy that.

52:07

Yeah. Yeah, you helped

52:09

this man prisoner. I mean, like the

52:12

United States is large, but there's no

52:14

reason he should be confined to its

52:16

borders. That's crazy. Yeah. He

52:18

died in Ghana two years later. Not suspiciously.

52:21

I mean, he was fucking 95. And he

52:24

died the day before the March on Washington. Wow. And

52:27

the Communist Party in the US honestly

52:29

being pretty clever. They started

52:31

a youth organization called the Du Bois

52:33

Club, which was

52:35

a reference to the patriotic boys clubs of America.

52:37

Yes, that's amazing.

52:40

Cattiness all around.

52:43

I know. I know.

52:45

I am on mute,

52:47

but I did laugh

52:50

really hard when I

52:52

heard that. So that's

52:54

incredible. Du Bois

52:56

is one of America's most important public intellectuals.

52:59

And why do I want to talk about him?

53:01

I did all this research talking about him because

53:04

of a paragraph he wrote in

53:06

the introduction of his book about economic cooperation,

53:08

the 1907 book. And

53:11

I'm going to quote this paragraph. Quote,

53:15

the conference, the conference that produced this

53:17

report, regards the

53:19

economic development of the Negro Americans at

53:21

present as in a critical state. The

53:24

crisis arises not so much because of the idleness

53:26

or even a lack of skill, as

53:28

by reason of the fact they unwittingly

53:31

stand hesitating at the crossroads. One

53:34

way leads to the old trodden ways

53:36

of grasping fierce individualistic competition, where the

53:39

shrewd, cunning, skilled, and rich among them

53:41

will prey upon the ignorance and simplicity

53:43

of the mass of the race and

53:46

get wealth at the expense of the

53:48

general wellbeing. The

53:50

other way, leading to cooperation and

53:52

capital and labor, the massing

53:55

of small savings, the wide

53:57

distribution of capital, and a more

53:59

general quality of wealth and comfort.

54:02

The latter path of cooperative effort

54:04

has already been entered by many. We

54:06

find a wide development of industrial

54:08

and sick relief, many building

54:11

and loan associations, some cooperation

54:13

of artisans, and considerable cooperation

54:15

in retail trade. He

54:20

was ready. He was like, I have a

54:22

plan. Please follow it. It

54:24

sounds like

54:26

a dream. I mean, it

54:29

nobody took note. No one was like,

54:31

wow, maybe that could, that could be a thing

54:33

that would work for us. That would have

54:35

been a better plan overall. And that's like even

54:37

like he's always waffling on like party politics or

54:39

whatever. I mean, these are white parties. The

54:42

Communist Party US was like actually fairly black

54:45

during this time period, because they're

54:47

the only political party in the US that was

54:49

like consistently good about race issues during that time.

54:52

The whole like 1920s, 1940s era, they

54:54

were like, anyway, whatever

54:56

that's besides the point, because I'm like, people

54:59

probably know this about me. I'm like not a big fan of the

55:01

USSR, but I'm

55:03

also not a big fan of the US government. So whatever. And,

55:07

but it's like, why does he need specific

55:10

party politics and ideological lines? He

55:12

laid out exactly

55:14

what he's hoping will happen. Yeah. And

55:17

it comes from the black

55:19

experience in America, not

55:22

European ideology. Yeah.

55:25

Yeah. It's again,

55:28

and incredible to me.

55:32

The absolute choke hole power has to be

55:35

like, oh

55:38

no, we have, we have the solutions. We're

55:40

pretty clear on what would work and

55:42

be most beneficial for most people. That's

55:45

not a mystery. We don't need to solve it. We have the

55:47

answers, we're just, we refuse to do it.

55:50

Just not, not going to even try it.

55:52

No. Yeah. Haven't forbid

55:54

they see it works. It's

55:57

just crazy. And we're

55:59

going to get to that. probably on Wednesday's

56:01

episode, where they do, they prove a lot of

56:03

this stuff works. And then, of course, reaction

56:06

comes and white supremacy comes and shuts a lot of

56:08

it down. But so

56:10

basically, he lays out a challenge

56:12

to all of us because he saw

56:14

how black Americans were absolutely the leaders in

56:16

the realm of economic cooperation in the US.

56:19

And it's possible that no group in

56:21

history has ever pulled itself up economically

56:23

from worse conditions against such fierce odds

56:26

as black America did after the Civil

56:28

War. When I

56:30

think about an America without Jim Crow and

56:32

the KKK, it would

56:35

just be fucking unrecognizable today. Oh, for

56:37

sure. There's a reason

56:40

that white people end up literally bombing a

56:42

place called Black Wall Street. Yeah.

56:44

Because black

56:47

Americans organized and fought in a thousand ways.

56:49

And one of those ways was economically. Author

56:53

Jessica Gordon Nemhard lays out a bunch of shit about

56:55

how black cooperativism worked in the US. That had existed

56:57

since the beginning, like actually goes back before the beginning

57:00

of the US, that

57:03

women have consistently taken the leading role in most of

57:05

its organizations. Wow. Oh,

57:09

yeah. The numbers aren't even close. We're going to

57:11

talk about it next episode. That

57:15

many of the organizations were specifically cross-class in

57:18

a way that greatly strengthened them

57:21

and that basically all of them

57:23

throughout time have been opposed often

57:25

violently and destructively by white supremacy.

57:29

And yet despite that, they've done so

57:31

much. And so we're going

57:33

to talk a little bit about what they did. Women

57:35

are so great, y'all. I love women. I

57:37

know. Yeah, like the

57:40

black women organizing in this era just

57:44

held down entire

57:46

economies of- Yeah. Like

57:49

it was just fucking incredible. The

57:51

history of black economic cooperation and resistance to racism

57:54

and slavery in the US is older than

57:56

the US itself. I think I've brought

57:58

it up before on the show because it like blew up. blew my mind

58:00

when I first found this out. You

58:02

know, like when you think of insurance companies, you

58:04

largely think of like evil capitalist things, right? Yeah,

58:07

for sure, yeah. You know, they have radical

58:09

roots. Insurance has radical

58:11

roots. You know what, it would because

58:13

insurance, here to ensure that you are

58:15

taking care of in difficult

58:17

times. And someone said,

58:19

I can make coin off of that.

58:22

We're a horrible human being suck. I

58:24

know. Insurance companies

58:26

have their roots in mutual aid. In

58:29

some ways, you could say mutual aid has

58:31

its roots. Mutual aid is like a recognizable

58:33

name practice. It has its roots in

58:35

old insurance companies, or like not

58:38

companies, insurance associations. Du

58:40

Bois traces the history of this legacy

58:42

of cooperation back to Africa itself. He

58:45

argues that despite the claims of the anthropology at

58:47

the time, enslaved people, this is another one of

58:49

those things that I think is common knowledge now,

58:51

but like wasn't then. Basically

58:53

at the time people were like, oh no, black

58:55

people, as soon as they got to America, they

58:58

don't remember Africa. There's no connection

59:00

to any cultural or religious

59:02

traditions. That's so funny. Total

59:05

blank slate. Instead, Du

59:07

Bois argues that people brought an awful lot

59:09

over with them since they were people

59:13

who had memories. Full

59:16

lives, remember their stories. Yeah,

59:18

I've been watching and

59:21

learning a lot about black

59:23

culinary traditions that have been over

59:26

from West Africa to here. They're

59:30

interesting maps where they lay out soil

59:33

conditions in different parts of West Africa. And

59:35

they're like, you'll see here, they were growing

59:37

rice and then the rice grown the same

59:39

way here. And then in the architecture of

59:41

a lot of Southern buildings, you can see

59:44

similar designs in like ancient African

59:47

architecture, specifically West

59:49

African architecture, where like the way

59:51

they're low and flat so that wind

59:53

can blow across the top and keep

59:55

the lower parts cooler, features like that.

59:58

And so yeah, it's everywhere. Again,

1:00:00

it's wild to think how

1:00:04

intensely woven

1:00:07

enslaved people were to

1:00:09

everyday culture and society. People were like, they're not

1:00:11

doing anything here. You

1:00:14

couldn't get dressed, you couldn't feed

1:00:16

yourself, you couldn't find your lands.

1:00:18

Literally, over here doing everything, entertaining

1:00:20

your damn children, making sure they

1:00:22

don't get killed so

1:00:25

much and then the

1:00:28

willful arrogance to be like, but they've

1:00:30

had no effect. It

1:00:32

just is my point. And

1:00:35

also that those people are lazy. You mean the people

1:00:37

who built your house and feed you and take care

1:00:39

of your children and brush your hair? Literally,

1:00:42

swim out in the fields while you're chilling

1:00:44

on the porch, like, God, it's hot. These

1:00:46

lazy assholes making sure my life runs

1:00:49

well. Y'all were crazy. So

1:00:53

much. Yeah. And

1:00:55

so once people got here, got

1:00:58

here and once people were

1:01:00

stolen and fucking trafficked, a

1:01:04

ton of people started organizing to help one another

1:01:06

out in all kinds

1:01:08

of different ways. Enslaved people

1:01:10

on a plantation might collectively tend to

1:01:12

small garden plot for themselves. They

1:01:14

organized to buy one another freedom. Maroon

1:01:17

communities started popping up everywhere. This is like

1:01:20

one of my favorite things to cover. I will

1:01:22

always, when I find out about new maroon community,

1:01:24

it's an easy, maroon communities are amazing. There

1:01:26

are these, they're

1:01:29

gorilla societies, like gorilla

1:01:31

with EU or

1:01:33

UE, populated mostly

1:01:35

by self-free black people and indigenous people

1:01:38

with the occasional poor white family. And

1:01:40

these maroon communities, many of which lasted

1:01:42

for generations, would have

1:01:44

totally different social orders than the societies around

1:01:46

them. And a lot of these societies were

1:01:49

very cooperative. Also,

1:01:51

they sometimes go raid slave society and

1:01:53

that's cool too. Okay.

1:01:55

Oh my gosh. I literally

1:01:57

touched the hem of this in my

1:02:00

research. I saw a report before that I've

1:02:02

been doing a lot of research on who

1:02:06

to practicing enslaved folk,

1:02:10

like pre-civil war. And

1:02:13

what I learned is like typically a

1:02:16

lot of these, wait, what was the word you used for

1:02:18

it? Because that was not in my, it was maroon towns.

1:02:20

Maroon societies. Societies. Maroon

1:02:23

societies. So apparently. Or

1:02:25

communities or colonies or yeah. Yeah.

1:02:27

Maroons. I read about a couple of them and

1:02:29

they were saying that they would specifically choose like

1:02:32

difficult territory to live with like deep, deep,

1:02:34

deep with a swamp on the

1:02:36

island that you'd have to like swim or like

1:02:39

have a boat to get to. And that was

1:02:41

like, this is so, it's legit how I script

1:02:43

it. Okay. I can't even talk about it, but

1:02:45

I'm so excited. When you do an episode on

1:02:47

them, will you please invite me? Cause I am

1:02:50

so curious to learn more. I think it's the

1:02:52

coolest thing to just be like part

1:02:55

of the reason I, cause you know, when you think

1:02:57

about, when I think about my

1:02:59

black friends who have a firm grip

1:03:01

on the history of our people

1:03:04

in this country, they're folks who grew up

1:03:06

like in deeply embedded black

1:03:08

cultures. Right. So like, yes,

1:03:11

church, but also school, like they had black teachers

1:03:13

growing up, which a lot of black kids,

1:03:15

like I have my black teacher until my

1:03:18

third year of college. Yeah.

1:03:21

Like outside of my

1:03:23

immediate family.

1:03:26

And then when we go visit extended family,

1:03:28

just wasn't there. And so I

1:03:30

say all that just to say like, it's, it's interesting

1:03:34

to think that a lot of the reasons this information

1:03:36

isn't getting passed over to like white kids, like a

1:03:38

lot of that information is like, this is for, don't

1:03:40

know if this is for us. We're over here. It's

1:03:43

like the first time, um, I saw

1:03:45

Daughters of the Dust, which is essentially about a

1:03:48

maroon community society of

1:03:51

people like slipping out there. I, I

1:03:53

think they're beautiful. I'm really excited to learn more about them.

1:03:55

I've got really guessed. I didn't know. that

1:04:00

they were so prevalent. Like I first heard

1:04:02

of this one called the Great, in the

1:04:04

Great Dismal Swamp in Northeast North Carolina. And

1:04:07

frankly, I first heard about it because like, white

1:04:10

radicals love when there's like white people in the

1:04:12

story. You know, like we

1:04:14

talk a lot about John Brown and shit like

1:04:16

that. Yeah. And the

1:04:18

Great Dismal Swamp, there's like this version of the

1:04:20

story that there was like also poor white people

1:04:22

living there. And that's probably true. But

1:04:25

if so, it's like way less important

1:04:27

than people talk about. So

1:04:30

then you're like, oh, there was this one maroon society.

1:04:32

Or you hear about these ones in other countries or

1:04:34

things like that. And slowly you're

1:04:36

like, these were fucking everywhere.

1:04:40

Like this is like not,

1:04:43

you couldn't have a slave

1:04:47

society without it

1:04:49

being interspersed with pockets of

1:04:51

freedom. Yeah. No

1:04:53

matter how hard they tried and they literally invented

1:04:55

policing in order to try and stop this kind

1:04:58

of thing. They sure did. But

1:05:02

the other thing that gets kind of played up in

1:05:04

a lot of the versions of this is like, and

1:05:06

then they would go raid slave society and bring and

1:05:08

declare war on slave society. And like, that's like kind

1:05:11

of true, but also a lot of the maroon communities

1:05:13

were like, don't go fucking raiding. Well,

1:05:15

like fucking they'll come shut us down. Like,

1:05:17

no. First of all, like, let's

1:05:19

be smart about it. Okay, we gotta protect everybody

1:05:21

here. Like for sure, let's get some people out.

1:05:23

But like also the ones

1:05:26

who can handle their shit. Because again, there are

1:05:28

so many people here already that did protect.

1:05:30

Yeah, I imagine it would be a

1:05:33

highly selective, highly organized operations and

1:05:35

not just pitchforks.

1:05:39

Yeah, the raiding was like

1:05:41

pretty, but a lot of the actual organizations

1:05:43

of them were somewhat informal. But then again,

1:05:45

we did an episode about, oh,

1:05:47

I don't remember what the main topic was. It was probably,

1:05:49

it was about Brazil. And there was this like king,

1:05:53

a black king living in the mountains in

1:05:56

a maroon community in Brazil with

1:05:58

like. an army, a

1:06:01

palace, and it was like, I don't

1:06:03

know, it was kind of wild. So there's that one.

1:06:05

And then another for anyone who's listening, he's like, I

1:06:07

want to already hear episodes. We did an episode about

1:06:09

Fort Negro in Florida, which was not part of the

1:06:12

US at the time, which was a very

1:06:14

militant society that started

1:06:17

from black British soldiers. Okay.

1:06:21

So much listening to do my great. I

1:06:23

know. I'm like, I'll probably have you on for great dismal

1:06:25

swamp that I've been planning to do that one for a

1:06:27

while. So in

1:06:31

addition to these maroon communities, you also

1:06:33

have entire secret societies that formed about

1:06:36

which we know very little because they're

1:06:38

secret societies. But

1:06:42

we know a little bit about them partly

1:06:44

because there's that not actually secret

1:06:46

societies, the masons, the Freemasons, they

1:06:49

get tied into this story too in a positive

1:06:51

way. But the

1:06:53

conspiracy theorists are going to be clocking a lot

1:06:56

of things. I

1:06:58

know. Well, conspiracy theorists, black

1:07:00

Freemasons in the US are older

1:07:02

than the US. On

1:07:05

March 6th, 1775, a year before

1:07:07

the US, 15 free

1:07:10

black men were initiated into

1:07:12

Freemasonry, soon forming the African

1:07:14

lodge number 459. Then they

1:07:17

formed a national grand lodge of three

1:07:19

other lodges. Wow. One

1:07:22

of the biggest, the two biggest centers of

1:07:24

the cooperative organization that we're going

1:07:26

to be talking about, one

1:07:28

of them is the secret societies and the other

1:07:30

is churches. Du

1:07:33

Bois writes, oh, this ties

1:07:36

into what you were actually talking about. He's going to

1:07:38

use outdated terminology for this. Du

1:07:40

Bois writes, it was not at

1:07:42

first by any means a Christian church,

1:07:45

rather an adaptation of those heathen

1:07:47

rights, which we roughly designate by

1:07:49

the term OB worship of voodooism

1:07:52

association and missionary effort. Soon gave

1:07:54

these rights of veneer of Christianity.

1:07:56

And gradually after two centuries, the

1:07:59

church became Christian. with a Calvinistic creed

1:08:01

and with many of the old customs still

1:08:03

clinging to the services. It

1:08:05

is this historic fact that the

1:08:08

Negro church of today bases itself on

1:08:10

one of the few surviving social institutions

1:08:12

of the African fatherland that accounts

1:08:14

for its extraordinary growth and vitality.

1:08:18

Yes. Yes. I mean, if you

1:08:20

think of all the things that stereotypically you think of coming out of

1:08:23

a church and then you distill it down to

1:08:26

who do this, which is

1:08:28

essentially a practice of non-faith-based

1:08:30

rituals that are meant to

1:08:33

invoke either healing or inspiration

1:08:36

or protection. Okay.

1:08:39

These were, again, women, again, the

1:08:42

protectors, again, the organizers and

1:08:44

base of the community. These were people

1:08:46

often bringing children into the world as

1:08:49

duels or midwives. And it's,

1:08:52

yeah, it's fascinating to

1:08:55

consider. I

1:08:57

had the link of, as

1:09:01

Christianity was forced on enslaved people,

1:09:03

the rituals and traditions of the

1:09:05

Christian church were intermingled with who

1:09:07

do by linking that

1:09:10

then to organized movements.

1:09:13

I hadn't had that chain link yet. No,

1:09:15

and it's, he makes it, like

1:09:18

it's one of the main things that Du Bois ends

1:09:20

up writing about in this piece is about, partly because

1:09:22

there's more information about how the church groups did it,

1:09:24

right? But it's like, like

1:09:27

syncretic Christianity is something that is

1:09:30

really interesting as relates to, I've studied

1:09:32

more about colonization, like Ireland, right? You

1:09:34

have the Irish Catholics that are a

1:09:36

syncretic faith that is still, believes

1:09:39

in fairy wells up until like the

1:09:41

1800s, which is like 1400 years after

1:09:43

they all supposedly became Christians. And

1:09:46

this isn't to say that the black churches today

1:09:48

are not fully Christian, just that syncretism and the transition

1:09:50

of religion is like a more

1:09:53

complicated and interesting process than people

1:09:55

give it credit for. Absolutely. one

1:10:00

of the centers of black cooperative life, and through that,

1:10:02

one of the centers of revolt and

1:10:04

also building cooperative economies, which are not

1:10:06

wholly separate things. Several of

1:10:08

the most ambitious slave revolts in the US grew out

1:10:10

of black churches. Take for

1:10:13

example, Denmark Vesey. Denmark

1:10:17

Vesey was a black man who bought his way

1:10:19

out of slavery in South

1:10:21

Carolina. He literally won a lottery and

1:10:23

was like, sweet. I'm a buy me,

1:10:25

that's what I want. Holy

1:10:28

moly. That

1:10:30

would be the luckiest day. Oh

1:10:33

my God, wow. I know. And

1:10:35

also how chat, it's like watching kids try to

1:10:37

get into schools by winning

1:10:39

a lottery. You're like, this probably shouldn't be

1:10:42

how that works. That's right. I'm probably not

1:10:44

a good sign that we need a lottery.

1:10:47

Oh my God. So

1:10:52

he's free and he starts an

1:10:54

African Methodist Episcopal congregation in South

1:10:56

Carolina and immediately starts illegally teaching

1:10:58

enslaved kids how to read, which is a

1:11:00

fucking cool thing to do. It's fucking awesome.

1:11:04

Then he wasn't able, he's

1:11:06

a carpenter and he makes enough money

1:11:08

that he should be able to buy his wife

1:11:10

and children their freedom. Their

1:11:13

owner won't sell. Bitch,

1:11:16

okay. So he did what any

1:11:18

reasonable person would do and

1:11:20

tried to overthrow the slave empire of the United States

1:11:22

of America. What other options have you left me?

1:11:25

I tried to pay and you said no.

1:11:28

I know. Not to fight you. I

1:11:30

genuinely, like I would watch this movie, like

1:11:32

that is a perfectly natural

1:11:35

and worthy conclusion to

1:11:37

reach. Yes. He planned for

1:11:39

a revolt on the steel day. And

1:11:41

this is okay, so it's like been proven in court.

1:11:43

He did this, but there's like, like if you read

1:11:45

the Wikipedia about this, for example, it's all written in

1:11:47

the like was accused of, not

1:11:50

like totally, absolutely did. But

1:11:52

I think all this is cool as shit. So I'm

1:11:55

just going to say did, because he like, you

1:11:57

do the crime, you do the time, you can brag about it, whether you did

1:11:59

it or not. or not. You know what? I like this

1:12:01

rule. Okay. Yeah. I have

1:12:03

a friend. I probably brought this up before. I have a friend who was like

1:12:06

convicted of all of the property destruction

1:12:09

out of protest in Pittsburgh. Like they

1:12:11

were like, you smashed every window that was

1:12:13

broken, which was like physically impossible for him

1:12:16

to have done. Sure. And then

1:12:18

he like went to prison about it

1:12:20

for a while. And now I'm like,

1:12:22

yeah, you could tell people you broke

1:12:24

every window. He they

1:12:26

absolutely could. Yeah, absolutely. I

1:12:28

did it. I did the

1:12:30

time. It was me. I teleport. I'm

1:12:33

amazing for having done it. Yeah,

1:12:35

exactly. You're welcome. Well,

1:12:39

so he planned a revolt

1:12:41

for Bastille Day, July 14th, 1822. Thousands

1:12:45

of people enslaved and free alike, almost

1:12:47

all, but not exclusively black were in

1:12:49

on this plan. Wow. Two

1:12:52

fucking people out of those thousands

1:12:55

snitched them out. Now,

1:12:57

who was it?

1:12:59

Bring them forward. You got to

1:13:01

take this beating because white. Yeah.

1:13:06

And everyone gets rounded up.

1:13:08

Thirty five people, including Vessi, are hanged.

1:13:11

Of course. The four white

1:13:13

conspirators were let off way lighter.

1:13:16

They weren't the snitches. Oh, yeah, I know for sure.

1:13:18

They were let off way lighter. I mean, just literally

1:13:20

because they're white, right? And they get a few months

1:13:22

in prison each. I think they're in court. They're able

1:13:24

to be like, oh, I was totally doing it for

1:13:26

money. You know, and

1:13:29

so therefore it's it's a

1:13:31

job. It's more. Yeah. You

1:13:33

could understand the money. What else

1:13:36

could I do? What? Oh, God,

1:13:38

capitalism. You wild. You

1:13:40

wild. This whole system. Trash.

1:13:43

Wow. Yeah. But

1:13:45

I will say one. OK,

1:13:48

clearly this uprising did not destroy the slave empire

1:13:50

of the United States. But his

1:13:53

kids lived became free

1:13:56

because they survived long enough to see

1:13:58

the end of legal chattel slavery. in

1:14:00

the United States. And these

1:14:04

insurrections, you throw enough

1:14:06

sparks and eventually fire catches and

1:14:09

that's what ended slavery. So

1:14:12

that's one way the church was involved, he ran

1:14:15

a church. Nat Turner, probably

1:14:17

the most famous rebel in Southern history, and I'm not

1:14:19

going to talk about him because I'm planning to do

1:14:21

the whole thing about him. He was a

1:14:23

preacher also. But because the church

1:14:25

was where people would meet and try and overthrow the

1:14:28

slave empire, it was under constant

1:14:30

scrutiny from the evil empire, the enforcers of

1:14:32

that evil empire, and

1:14:34

still people organized despite all of that.

1:14:38

And we'll talk about what they organized on

1:14:41

Wednesday. But

1:14:44

first, we could talk about the stuff that

1:14:46

you do. And I mean, producing is literally

1:14:48

a form of organization, but you know, it's

1:14:50

not the only thing you do. Yeah, it's

1:14:53

not even, yeah,

1:14:56

I think mostly right now I've been

1:14:59

working with a friend to get her film

1:15:02

production company up. She has this radical

1:15:05

idea of how to make

1:15:08

filmmaking a mentally healthy and safe space

1:15:10

to work, which it is currently not.

1:15:13

It is both for passion. She comes from

1:15:16

a poor background. I come

1:15:18

from a middle

1:15:20

class background, but neither

1:15:22

of us have money to start this career. It

1:15:24

took a long time. And so we're working on

1:15:26

like, how do you create ethical hours and

1:15:29

still make your day and get your

1:15:31

shots? How do you film

1:15:34

difficult scenes in a way that both

1:15:36

protects the performers, but also everyone working

1:15:38

around that scene? And it's been a

1:15:41

great honor. And so our film is,

1:15:44

we're applying to festivals right now. And it's

1:15:47

something I hope to be doing more of and bringing

1:15:49

more of that into some of my

1:15:51

other spaces like my program here at iHeart,

1:15:53

NextUp, where we train and develop

1:15:56

folks who've never made podcasts before, but have

1:15:58

interesting stories to tell. You know,

1:16:01

I think that's sort of the form

1:16:03

of organizing I found I can take

1:16:05

on right now is helping people who

1:16:07

want to have careers in the arts

1:16:09

find ways to do

1:16:11

it in a way that's financially reasonable. Money

1:16:14

is keeping people out of the arts and it's really bothering me.

1:16:17

So, I have this my one little

1:16:19

way in, but yeah, yeah, I guess

1:16:21

that's kind of what I do outside of work.

1:16:23

But again, always, it's just more work. I

1:16:27

mean, that stuff matters and like the idea of like,

1:16:30

you know, we complain a lot about how tech culture wants

1:16:32

to like work everyone to death, right? You know, tech

1:16:34

culture is like, oh, if you don't work 80 hours

1:16:37

a week for my tech startup, you don't care about

1:16:39

it. And like, where did they get that

1:16:41

idea from? Well, nonprofits and the

1:16:43

arts are the two places where that

1:16:45

has been the norm forever, where everyone

1:16:48

working on a project is expected. Like, well, since

1:16:50

you care about it, you're going to

1:16:53

work yourself to death over it. Yeah. It's

1:16:56

so unnecessary. You can make beautiful, impactful

1:16:58

art without having to feel

1:17:00

like shit, without missing out

1:17:02

on important life events, without

1:17:04

stressing yourself into like an

1:17:06

unrecognizable shape. Yeah.

1:17:09

Yeah. So, yeah, more of that, if you can find

1:17:11

spaces to do it within your own life, I say

1:17:13

tackle it. It's been rather rewarding.

1:17:17

Hell yeah. My

1:17:20

plug this week is that

1:17:22

today, if you're listening on

1:17:24

the day this drops, which

1:17:26

is June 10th, 2024, the

1:17:28

Kickstarter for my book, The Sapling Cage, my debut

1:17:30

novel, I've written a ton of novellas and short

1:17:32

story collections and all kinds of other books, but

1:17:35

I've never written a novel that, well,

1:17:37

okay, I ghost wrote some romance novels, but I'm not allowed to say

1:17:39

that I did that. Well, I'm not allowed to tell you what they

1:17:41

are. My debut novel,

1:17:43

The Sapling Cage is being Kickstarted as of today,

1:17:45

and you can find it on Kickstarter and you

1:17:47

can pre-order it there. And I'm

1:17:50

really excited about it. I'm trying to make this the

1:17:53

biggest book debut of my career and

1:17:55

you all can help by backing

1:17:58

it. Hell yeah. For my

1:18:00

own book, I didn't write this blurb. Another

1:18:03

author, Nisi Shaw, wrote this blurb. Simple,

1:18:06

strange, and elegantly effective, The Sapling Cage

1:18:09

begins Margaret Kiljoy's anarchist fantasy series with

1:18:11

an engrossing story of the struggles between

1:18:13

tax-collecting knights, barfly thieves, and apprentice witches

1:18:16

still too raw to use the magic

1:18:18

they can barely see out of the

1:18:20

corners of their eyes. There

1:18:23

are goodies and baddies of all genders.

1:18:25

There's bullying and monsters and healing rainbows

1:18:27

and rotten scheming nobles. This

1:18:29

book was so gripping that though I tried my

1:18:32

best to slow down as the end came rushing

1:18:34

nearer and nearer, I just couldn't do it. Now

1:18:37

that I've reached the last page, the only thing

1:18:39

keeping me from crying about it is the knowledge

1:18:41

that there's more of Kiljoy's glorious epic to come.

1:18:45

I'm so, that's a really good one. Thanks.

1:18:48

Margaret, wow, okay. Got some

1:18:50

chills and very excited. That's gonna

1:18:52

be fun. Thanks.

1:18:56

And you all can hear more

1:18:58

about the story of this podcast.

1:19:01

Well, not the story about the podcast. Whatever, come

1:19:03

back. We're gonna have another episode of this on Wednesday.

1:19:06

Talk to you then. Hi, Margaret here

1:19:08

just with one more plug. If you're listening to this

1:19:10

episode on the day it came out on June 10th,

1:19:12

2024, then this will

1:19:15

be timely. And if you're listening some other time,

1:19:17

you can still hear it. It'll still

1:19:19

sadly be timely because tomorrow

1:19:22

is June 11th and

1:19:24

I'm gonna read a statement about

1:19:26

what that means. June

1:19:29

11th is the International Day of Solidarity

1:19:31

with Marius Mason and long-term anarchist prisoners.

1:19:34

This day seeks to strengthen the connections between

1:19:37

those behind the prison walls and those of

1:19:39

us on the outside through benefit events, actions,

1:19:41

and spreading the names and stories of our

1:19:43

friends locked away. Since

1:19:45

2011, this day intends to address the

1:19:48

specific issues facing long-term prisoners and strives

1:19:50

to build a network of solidarity that

1:19:52

has built on memory, action, and remaining

1:19:55

unyielding in the face of oppression. To

1:19:57

learn more about the history of June 11th, the prison walls are open.

1:20:00

or to get some ideas for organizing a

1:20:02

June 11th event where you live, visit

1:20:05

june11.org. Cool

1:20:13

People Who Did Cool Stuff is a

1:20:16

production of Cool Zone Media. For more

1:20:18

podcasts on Cool Zone Media, visit our

1:20:20

website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on

1:20:23

the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1:20:25

you get your podcasts. Hey,

1:20:55

John. Why so glum? I just got let go.

1:20:57

The company's downsizing. This is the third

1:20:59

time in the

1:21:24

last two years. I'm done with this.

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Have you thought about My Computer Career?

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I've heard they can train you for

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1:22:05

city for beer like this one. Or

1:22:08

home to vibes like this. And

1:22:11

this. It might surprise you

1:22:13

that we're top ten for immersive art that's like... Whoa.