RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 391 Vincent Emanuele on the Data Center Resistance and Organizing
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Ep 391 of RevolutionZ has as its guest Vincent Emanuele to talk about the movement against data centers, the logic and methods of organizing, and movement culture. Your town’s next big fight might not be a highway or a stadium. It might be a windowless warehouse full of servers that power AI, cloud computing, and the apps you use every day, while quietly consuming electricity and water on a staggering scale. Combat veteran, writer, and organizer Vincent Emanuele unpacks what data centers actually do, why communities are packing local meetings to stop them, and what this outpouring reveals about power in the tech economy and modes of resistance.
We challenge the comforting idea that the fix is simply “using AI responsibly.” Vincent argues that without democratic decision-making, the people calling the shots are still tech oligarchs, investors, and politicians chasing profit and geopolitical advantage. That reality shapes how new technology gets deployed toward militarism, surveillance, and attention-harvesting platforms, not toward the public good. We also dig into the deeper human questions: how does AI and digital life thin out our skills, our relationships, and even our sense of what it means to be human.
From there, episode 391 move from critique to strategy. Data center fights often start organically and bring together people who don’t share politics, which makes them a rare chance to practice real organizing instead of only mobilizing the choir. We talk about democratizing knowledge so jargon can’t bully communities, identifying trusted “organic leaders,” learning from sports and military debrief culture, and building non-consumerist spaces where people can meet face-to-face and actually grow power.
Welcome And Meet Vincent Emanuele
SPEAKER_01Hello, my name is Michael Albert, and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 391st consecutive episode, and this time our guest is Vincent Emanuel. Uh Vincent, is it Emmanuel or Emanuel E? Emanuele, but that's all right. And this time our guest is Vincent Emanuele. Vincent is a combat veteran, writer, and organizer who lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Vincent testified to the U.S. Congress in 2008 about war crimes and atrocities after refusing a third deployment to Iraq with the United States Marines. Since then, he has worked with a wide range of social movements, community organizations, cultural projects, and labor unions. His writings and interviews have been featured on Zenet, Counterpunch, Alternat, Truth Out, and Versal. Vincent is also a contributor to the anthology Paths of Descent, Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars. He can be reached at Vincent Emanuele 333 Gmail at gmail.com. Let me spell that out for you. Vincent V-I-N-C-E-N-T dot Emanuele E-M-A-N-U-E-L-E 333 at gmail.com. And I can tell you for sure there are not 333 other Vincents. So Vincent, welcome to RevolutionZ.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01I'd like to talk to you about a recent article of yours I read about the expanding opposition to data centers and in particular your way of thinking about them. But more so what the opposition means and offers. But first, I'm pretty sure, in fact, I'm almost certain, that you are the first guest I have had who has included in your bio for me to use in an introduction your email address. What do you think explains that?
SPEAKER_00Well, that's pretty wild to hear that, to be honest with you. Um I don't know. I mean, I I would assume that most people writing would want to hear from the people who are potentially reading their articles and essays and listening to their podcasts. Why wouldn't one want to hear from people? Uh I would guess maybe one option would be uh that they're intimidated. Uh maybe another option would be that they really don't want to hear from people. Um I I it's hard to wrap my mind around it, to be honest with you. And it's more do you why do you think?
SPEAKER_01I think you named the reason. It's just that we don't want to admit it. They they don't want to spend time engaging in those discussions. Now it might be because they think that nine out of ten such interactions will be worthless. But that means they have a very low view of their readers. So why do they write for them if they're not gonna partly understand it?
SPEAKER_00And I've all I've always put my email in my bio for everything, and over the years I'll say it's pretty much the opposite. I would say nine out of ten emails that I receive are really thoughtful emails, and then one out of ten is from some kook who wants to talk about like you know, lizard people or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_01And I'll bet email responses are actually better than comments.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, more thoughtful. And of course, you're not like projecting something to the public. I think with a lot of these comments, people put something on there in the hope of getting a response from others, you know. As opposed to engaging in a in a conversation or a debate.
SPEAKER_01We could take this further because again, my experience is that when people read or comment, they they very rarely come forth with something that seems to invite discussion. They rather say something that they think usually quite assertively and without any inclination to discuss, which is another problem.
SPEAKER_00Sure, which is also way different than having these conversations in person, which kind of gets to one the crux of a lot of my opposition to this sort of digital culture that we live in, is that people simply behave fundamentally different when they're in person.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and better.
SPEAKER_00It doesn't mean you're not gonna have uh intense debates, it doesn't mean that people aren't gonna get upset, it just means that the quality of the conversations and disagreements, I think, are much higher. Yeah, much better. I agree.
SPEAKER_01Okay, let's get to your article. And actually, I don't know if you heard the last episode of Revolution Z or not, but I concluded that I need to find ways to communicate in hopes of greater effects aprop of what we were just saying. So, not least, because I know you well enough to know it won't deteriorate, I'm gonna try to be more provocative and challenging than I usually am with guests. It may be hard because I know we agree about so much. So I may have to adopt a devilish stance sometimes.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01That sounds good.
What Data Centers Are And Why
SPEAKER_01To start, what the fuck is a data center and why should anyone care about them?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh, first of all, a lot of people do uh care about them, which I think is a positive development. Uh, what it is is you know, gigantic structures uh that hold these computing mechanisms and processors um that then allow for the storage of this data. And that ranges from everything from the digital technology we use on a day-to-day basis, so things like streaming services, social media applications. Um, but particularly now with with AI, uh artificial intelligence, the data centers are becoming bigger because the AI requires more data processing power. Um, those centers are now eating up uh more and more natural resources. Uh, they're causing people's electricity bills to get higher and higher. Um and so, you know, we've seen people around the country uh opposing them, including I had just recently seen that Erin Brokovich is sort of taking up the cause of uh data centers as her like sole focus right now. So she's she started a website where readers of her work, uh for those who aren't aware, she's a sort of famous uh investigative journalist. Um, but she started a website where readers who are experiencing the construction of data centers can go to her website, put information in about their experience with their local government, um, and then this is all widely available to anyone on her website.
SPEAKER_01Is this the Aaron Brockovich about whom the movie was made? You sure you got the name right? So she's a lawyer. Yes. Oh, okay. I didn't even know she was well, that's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00Um again, but to me, this is wild. To me, this is wild, Michael, because even since I put out that article, I've received a bunch of comments and and uh emails from people on the left uh who are you know arguing with like sort of making this argument that uh it seems a very ideological argument that like you know, once the workers take control of the state, then we can democratically decide how we're gonna use this AI technology and that we can, you know, sort of mimic some of the things that China has done with AI technology and all these like weird arguments where someone like an Aaron Brokovic sees what's happening, she sees local communities opposing these centers and immediately takes up the cause as this is a very important issue. This is something that's animating a lot of people around the country. So let's focus on this issue, let's dig into it, let's hear from people who are opposed to this.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I said I was going to do devil's advocate at times. What would you say to someone who wonders, Vince, why do you want to forgo continued growth of not only AI, but also, as you note, streaming content and computer proliferation and cloud computing and all the rest of it? Uh, this person says, why don't we just make it all take fewer calculations and use less storage? Why not use AI sensibly, for example, and not for massive surveillance and militarism? Why isn't that the solution? Whereas cutting data centers might just obliterate all of it.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think a few things there. Number one, uh, we're not making those decisions right now. Um, so I think at the core of what I was trying to get at with that article is that uh, you know, in the lack of democratic decision-making mechanisms, most ordinary people are not determining the use of this technology. You know, it's still uh the tech oligarchs, uh Silicon Valley, their investors, Wall Street, and of course, you know, corrupt uh government bureaucrats or simply politicians in the government who think that um, you know, we need to double down on these technologies to keep us competitive with our perceived economic competitors on the global scene. So countries like China, et cetera. That that's one of the more mainstream arguments I've seen. Um and and furthermore, uh I'm not per I mean, I'm I'm speaking personally here and from the angle of an organizer, I I would actually like to see any um movement that would uh uh limit our time on these digital technologies. I I mean, I'm not uh I'm not a fundamentalist. I don't believe that we're gonna completely get rid of computing technology, nor do I think that that's um the ideal. Uh, but I do think in the in light of us having a lack of democratic mechanisms for people as a whole, collectively, to decide how, when, and where we use this technology, um, that the more we can slow it down, um, perhaps that'll give us the time to build those kinds of movements and and organizations and structures, democratic structures that would allow ordinary people uh to make those decisions. But that's not the case right now. So for someone who's arguing, oh, you know, we're gonna use this for medical technology and we're gonna use it for this and for that, uh perhaps, but it seems in my experience that a lot of the technologies that are proposed for these like more humanitarian uh purposes often take a backseat to, you know, just making a tremendous amount of profit or using them in a militarized way, of course, because our government is so militarized, the state itself is so militarized that it's only natural that any new technology would filter its way to the Pentagon. Um, or, you know, as the the big tech uh billionaires and so forth just like to keep us on these computers, on our phones, scrolling, liking, outraged, pissed off, uh, you know, because that's all money for them. The longer we're on these devices, the more they can generate money from us. Um, and the less we're spending time with each other, which to me is a prerequisite to successful organizing, which is spending more and more time together. And people are increasingly more and more alienated through spending time on these on these digital platforms.
Slow Tech Down Until We Decide
SPEAKER_01That actually gets us to the next question I was gonna ask, which now comes from another angle. So, okay, suppose we do manage, by whatever means, maybe democratic intervention or self-management or whatever, to avoid the nefarious uses of AI, let's call it, and we prevent misuse by bad actors or by AI itself going off the rails. Is there still reason to celebrate when students boo graduation speakers who mention AI?
SPEAKER_00Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think a few things. Uh, you know, the younger folks now, so they're graduating high school, or I'm sorry, yeah, graduating high school, graduating college. They're 18, 22, 23. They're about 20 years younger than I am. But my generation and the generations that followed, and even generations previous, but especially from my generation on, I mean, we grew up with the, I mean, we first saw this in movies, you know, uh Philip K. Dick novels and short stories that were turned into Hollywood blockbusters like Total Recall and Blade Runner and Terminator 2. I mean, I I can't tell you the amount of public posts I see about AI. And then in the comments, I just see references to all the movies I watched when I was 10, 11, 12, 16 years old. Um, I think part of this gets to something much deeper. And, you know, to this point, the Pope, uh, Pope Leo from the South Side of Chicago, so I got to give him a shout out. Um, you know, he had just uh put out an encyclical about AI. And I would encourage everyone not only to listen to some of his recent speeches about AI, but if they have the time to simply Google Pope Leo encyclical AI. Um, now, of course, most of it is framed in religious terminology, so for people who aren't religious, that's fine. You know, you don't have to necessarily buy into all of that to get the main message through. But one of his main messages, and one of the things that concerns me, is that this technology, uh, as it's being proposed by the people who are developing it, has the potential to alter the way that we experience reality. Um and our we're human beings, you know, we're made of flesh and bone and blood and and you know, this meat that surrounds us. Uh and so I think there's deeper questions about what does it mean to be a human being? Um, what is our place in this world? What is our relationship to the earth? So, further, so for instance, even if we weren't going to use AI technology, say, for nefarious purposes or to replace humanity um or to develop new weapons technologies, there still is the question: how do we want to relate to technology as human beings? And furthermore, uh, what kind of natural resources does it require to facilitate this kind of global technological development? Um, and and so those are deep questions, as it's questions about who we are as human beings, about humanity, um, but then also big questions about our relationship to the earth. So, for instance, if someone were to propose to me, hey, Vincent, what here's what the technological experts, the engineers, the people who are developing this technology say that we can use AI technology for these sorts of medical advancements. Okay, great. If we had a democratic decision-making mechanism, if people, if ordinary people had the chance and some input, you know, we could, I think everyone is capable of weighing the pluses and the minuses. So, hey, we're gonna have to use some natural resources to develop this technology, but this technology has the ability to, let's just say, uh cure this uh terminal illness or whatever it may be, you know, a disease that we're looking to cure. What maybe identify uh uh health ailments quicker than human beings can. Okay, well, what are the pluses and the minuses of that? Perhaps we can save a million lives. Is saving a million lives worth uh opening a uh lithium mine in the middle of Nevada? You know, those are these are like those are the to me the more interesting questions under ideal circumstances that we can have. Um but right now none of those questions are posed because we don't really have a say-so in how we're developing where we're getting the resources for this technology, uh, let alone how it's implemented and who benefits from it.
AI Changes What Being Human Means
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean I have very similar views. I actually go like uh half a step further, I think, because well, earlier you were mentioning social media and it interferes with interpersonal communication and it changes the way we engage with each other. Even though nobody's trying to do anything wrong or nasty or anything like that. I think the same thing is true for AI. That is, if AI is as becomes, it isn't now, but if it becomes as effective and capable as people talk about, and that's a big if, but if it does, then using it for previously human type functions writing, creating, thinking, planning, etc., etc., diminishes the amount of time and it and sort of development that occurs for humans doing those things. And that to me is very disconcerting and disturbing. Uh, I think it really is substantial also.
SPEAKER_00And the same goes for work as well. I agree, that's a good point. I mean, I think the same goes for work. You know, you have, and I know there's different strains on the left, right? There's there's people who are like deep green ecologists, they don't want to see any of this. We've got the, what do they call them? The uh techno-future utopian Marxists who want to like hoping that this technology can be widespread and it can just take up all the mundane jobs that no one wants to do. Now, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot lately too. I don't want to veer too far off track, so get me back on track if this if this is off uh from what you wanted to get to. But I was thinking a lot about, I think in in light of Memorial Day, you know, my my great-grandparents came here from Italy between World War I and World War II. My grandfathers served in World War II, um, were injured during World War II, came home from the war, worked for United Steel um Corporation in Northwest Indiana and on the south side of Chicago, uh, and built steel. Uh others worked as uh um union ironworkers, union carpenters, um, and some worked on the auto plants on the south side of Chicago. And and, you know, I've been thinking a lot about pride, um, patriotism, these kinds of things, like things that tie people into this national project. Now, of course, as leftists, we want to see the globe uh in an international fashion. We want to build international solidarity, but we still have countries and we, you know, I think those elements are still important. I think if anything, Trump's uh victory in 2016 and then again in 2024 shows that like that that idea of nationalism is still alive and well. And I think we should still um, you know, do what we can to mold what kind of nationalism we want to have here in the United States. And I don't think it's a coincidence that, you know, the people in my family, like when I would drive around Chicago with my dad, he would say, Oh, you know, we built that in 1974, we built that bridge in 1982, we built this skyscraper in 1991. There was a great amount of pride that came with that. Um, and and so when I hear people say things like, you know, we're we're just gonna get rid of all of work, we're gonna let the machines do everything for us. I do think to Bernie Sanders' point, actually, I think he makes a really good point here, that work in a lot of ways does give people a tremendous amount of meaning. Now, the problem with that, of course, is that a lot of people, I think this gets to issues and challenges around organizing, even for say um companies such as Amazon. You know, so like my grandfather and my father, uh, and other people in my family, my cousins who work at the Ford plant on the south side of Chicago and Hegwish, they take a tremendous amount of pride in the products that they're helping to build. Um, but a lot of the workers I know who work for, say, Amazon or who work for a fast food company, they're just trying to work, they're working there out of necessity in a lot of cases. And as soon as they can get out, as soon as there's a better opportunity, they're gone. They they do not want to do that job. So even when we're talking about, say, organizing workers for Amazon, um Yeah, it's true. I mean, I think a lot of those workers would say, it's that's fine if you want to get a machine to sort these packages and so forth and give me a uh universal basic income or something like that. That uh that's much preferable than me working countless hours for Jeff Bezos who doesn't care about me, et cetera, et cetera. But it doesn't even get to the deeper question, which is should we be living on a planet where we have an entity that's able to deliver a package three hours after you press the send button? Um, you know, that's that to me that it would be nice if we could get to a space where we could have that conversation, you know, because to me that's the more interesting conversation.
SPEAKER_01It also doesn't get to the to the question, should the efforts to produce or reproduce society and people be such that we can have pride in them? That is, should should the way that we do things be such that people do it, express themselves, develop their capacities, etc. etc. Have you ever read Sturst Turkle's interviews? Yes. Yes. Uh the book Working? Um, so then then you're familiar. I mean, for those listening, he interviews working people and they express a lot of the kinds of things he in this one scene where he's got, I think it's a father and a son. Son or a daughter, and he's pointing up at uh at a skyscraper, like you said, and you know, I did that. Um and if you do that and it's under your own control and you're expressing, you know, that's something that is part of a good society. It's not something that you try and erase, or so I think, and apparently.
SPEAKER_00And and just no, and just to be clear, I'm not arguing that we should go back to anything. I understand that the social, economic, cultural conditions are way different today than they were back when my grandparents or my father uh, you know, came up in those in that context. But I do think there's sort of important like elements to take away from that, uh, observations to take away from that. Uh, same with organized labor. I mean, you know, my dad had plenty of critiques of the labor union that he was a part of for his entire life, um, but it also gave him a tremendous amount of pride. Uh, it cultivated relationships that he had for the rest of his life, it built the sense of solidarity, not just among workers in the United States, but international solidarity, all of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you get rid of the subordination and the alienation and the order taking and the rote and so on and so forth, but you retain and maintain the involvement in creating the conditions of our lives. Um, expresses ourselves.
Work Pride And The Meaning Problem
SPEAKER_01All right, but back to the uh, I guess to the data centers in some sense. Um so you view, and anybody at this point can view that there is concern about data centers and that there are activists taking up the issue of data centers, but how should you? I I think what was notable about your article, and so it's what I want to get into, is okay, that's there. Now, what should activists do? What should they be trying to accomplish as they relate to the fact that there's concern about data centers? Where did that take your thinking?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, I mean, one of the things that struck me about the opposition to the data centers, from what I can uh tell from examining these protests and reading the articles, and even looking back home in Northwest Indiana, uh, where we have uh, you know, plenty of people are packing City Hall and County Council meetings in opposition to this, what I've found interesting is that these protests are largely happening organically. Now, it's not to say that in some locations there aren't existing organizations that have sort of rallied people around this issue, but for the most part, in the news articles that I've been reading and the videos that I've been watching of these protesters speaking at these county council and city council meetings, it's largely uh just happening organically. It's not people who are members of organizations. Um, and it's happening across the board: old, young, immigrants, retired people, white, black, Hispanic, uh, rural communities, suburban communities. Of course, most of these centers are going in rural and suburban communities. And so what I find uh potentially um fruitful from engaging in those uh uh battles is that we can, you know, people on the left or people who have progressive political ideals or values can connect with people who are largely unorganized and not just unorganized or who might also be uh you know sympathetic towards sort of the MAGA uh political orientation or people who voted for Donald Trump. Um this allows us an opportunity to engage with sections of the public that I think the left often doesn't engage with.
SPEAKER_01What do you think causes people on the left, broadly speaking, to shy away from, uh, let's call it, or even run in the opposite direction, from engaging with people who don't agree with us or even think that what we advocate is for some reason or another uh you know distasteful to them and are even hostile? Why are we more? I mean, it seems like it has a simple answer, but I don't think it does. Why are we more attuned to be with people who we're gonna be buddies with and we're gonna have fun with, which is okay, but we are, you know, resistant to becoming involved beyond that?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think the easy answer is that it's difficult. So, like just what you said, you know, yeah, it's gonna be a lot more fun to hang out with a bunch of people that you agree with, and somebody might not tell you to go fuck yourself because they disagree with you. You know, those are things that are gonna happen if you engage with communities that uh aren't necessarily your, you know, people who already agree who are part of the choir. I think part of it uh gets to some of Jane McAleevey's work, which is the difference between mobilizing and organizing. You know, mobilizing is largely getting the choir together, uh, protesting as much as you can, uh, doing as many public uh sort of symbolic actions as possible, but largely with people who already agree with you, you know, sort of activating the people who agree, but you know, they're just on the sidelines, or continuing to pull out the same people who agree over and over again until they get burnt out and leave. Um, and that's fundamentally different than organizing, which is the constant attempt to expand your base and specifically targeting um, you know, sections of your community, society, workplace, universities, uh, religious institutions that don't already agree with you. So I think that there's like a personal interpersonal reason, which is it is difficult to go talk with people who are coming from the opposite angle on a number of issues. Um, and it's even more difficult to then engage with them, understanding that you're not going to pull them all the way over on every single issue. Uh, you know, for instance, in the battle to defeat the construction of these data centers, you could very well develop a coalition in the short term that consists of people who have uh very reactionary views with regard to gender. Um, but maybe they agree on this issue. Now, does that mean that you shift your values, forget the cause of uh combating patriarchy and all of that? No. And hopefully, you know, and I don't think there's any magic uh potion for this, but hopefully along the way of organizing those people, you can bring them more and more to your side. Um, but in the short term, you know, these battles aren't lasting forever. You know, in some cases, these city council meetings and these county council meetings are, you know, the decision is being made within a matter of weeks or months about whether or not this construction project is going to take place. So I think people have to have sort of a nuanced view of what's, you know, what's what are we capable of achieving in that short amount of time and what are we not capable of achieving in that short amount of time and and uh you know, developing coalitions and and and partnerships with both individuals and groups of people who, again, we might disagree on 50%, maybe we disagree on 75% of our political platform.
Data Center Fights As Organizing Openings
SPEAKER_00Um, but on this issue, um, you know, we we're we're opposed to the data centers, and so people are on the same page there. And so we had that, you know, forces activists and organizers, I think, uh, to think about those issues in a more sophisticated way. And it does pose challenges. So I think it's challenging, number one, interpersonally. And number two, I think that a lot of the left has sort of retreated to this position of just mobilizing people who already agree with us. It almost seems as if, and I don't say this as like a way to get a rise out of people, but I it almost seems as if since 2016, a lot of liberals, progressives, leftists have taken the Hillary Clinton view that Trump supporters, uh, whether hardcore or on the fence, are simply deplorable people. Uh I really do believe that. Like I think anecdotally from my experience of talking with people and then just judging from what I read and see uh from writers and activists on the left, there is this sense that you know there's been a flag planted in the sand and that we're over here, the Trump supporters are over here, they're irredeemable, scumbag, racist, patriarchal, rapist supporting, you know, just scum of the earth, and and there's no redeeming qualities for them. Uh, and in fact, we should like fight them at every turn or mock them or make fun of them or cancel them or any of this. Um, and I I just I've never seen it that way. And I think perhaps part of that is uh, you know, I grew up around a lot of those folks. And I've seen some of those folks change. You know, I have friends and family members who voted for Trump in 2016, didn't vote for him in 2020, voted for him again in 2024. I've got friends and family and co-workers that I work with uh who continue to support Trump. Um, and and I still have to engage in those conversations. And even their support of Trump is more nuanced than I think people on the left give them credit for. You know, my sister, for instance, I mean, I don't want to blast her out there, but I don't think she cares. Um, but you know, she her and her husband uh support Trump, but they often will talk to me about U.S. foreign policy because they voted for Trump this time around, hoping that there weren't going to be more wars. I mean, they had two very basic hopes. You know, it's like hopefully the economy will be decent. They've got three sons, all of whom just recently graduated high school, are in their beginning or middle years of university. And then they don't want to see more wars because they've seen my brother and I deployed, they've seen their friends and family deployed to these bullshit wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Um, and so they might support Trump here, they might be critical of him there. But I think I don't think it's beneficial for people on the left to simply shut down conversation. It's like, okay, engage in those conversations. There's going to be disagreements. Maybe you can move them a little bit, you know, to our side on this issue or that issue. Maybe you could get them to ask questions about this issue or that issue. But just understanding that we're not going to like convert people overnight into agreeing with us 100% of the time, nor do I think that that's necessarily ideal.
SPEAKER_01You know, I mean, I think we should, you know, we should want to uh have it isn't obvious that we're right that 100% of the time. And they're wrong. You know, it's not obvious. You know, it's there's there's a lot of assumptions that underlie. But um But this answer your question is why yes and no. I mean, it's certainly made a case, and a case I agree with. But take the people, the subset of people who are progressive and who hate what's going on, but they're not necessarily inclined to do a lot. So one possible explanation, and you tell me what you think. One possible explanation, well, they're fucking lazy. Or they're afraid, or they're having too much fun doing something else. That's one kind of array of possibilities. But I think there's a different array of possibilities, which is them saying to me, say, You're an idiot. You know, why are you putting all this effort into something that's impossible? We're not gonna win. This is the way it is. Make the best of it. Maybe you can make it a little less bad. And so I'll go to your No Kings demonstration because, yeah, I agree, Trump is is around the bend and it's But the question of why you should put up with not put up with, why you should deal with the difficulties that you suggested exist, reaching out to new people, engaging with new people, sometimes looking dumb because we don't know, you know. Uh why do that if, and I guess here's the devil's advocate, because I certainly don't think it, but why do it if to win is impossible? If if you know what you're calling for people to do what might make sense if it could create a better world, but it's just um what it's uh self-flagell, you know, it it's uh I I don't know what word to use, self-defeating if it won't lead there. And so somebody says to me or to you, well, not to you, you're not old enough yet. But they do say to me, You've been doing this for fucking 60 years. 50 years. Sixty years. How's that going? Right, right. And it's a fair question.
SPEAKER_03I was just gonna say it's very yeah.
SPEAKER_01I don't deny that it's a fair question. How's that going? Well, when I was in college, I didn't think that 50 or 60 years later I was gonna be looking at Trump. Right? Right. So how do we deal with this? Because I think those feelings exist not only in people who are hostile to what's going on, you know, they don't like Trump, and they don't like injustice, and they don't like genocide. I mean, who, you know, obviously. But they're not getting out of bed to do something about it. So how do we deal with that is my question.
SPEAKER_00Well, to me, there's a few I think you you touch on a this is I think where we're very simpatico, which is, you know, you're getting you're getting to a point that I think all of us who are seriously thinking about this are constantly struggle with. I think it would be a lot. First of all, let me just be very honest and say that I question, you know, there it's not as if there's not times where I don't get up in the morning and go, oh my God, this is it's just gonna keep it's gonna keep getting worse. Why even bother? As you would say, the more logical, rational decision is to just go to the beach, have sex, do drugs, and enjoy as much of your time as possible before the whole shit house goes up in flames, as Jim Morrison once said. Um But but I I think, okay, a few things. I think that the extreme alienation that we face and that most people are dealing with, I think leads to a certain level of powerlessness. For instance, I do think that the less alienated people are, the more time they spend together, the more that they work together collectively and even achieve, you know, on the grand scale of things, say small scale victories, it does engender a feeling that by working together, uh by fighting back, you can actually achieve something. Um and and here, I think, you know, this is a question years ago I remember posing to uh Noam Chomsky, you know, and he had just said something, and I think people kind of blew it off as like a, you know, oh, that's just a really simplistic take. But he was saying, you know, if you're in a community, nobody's organizing, nobody's doing anything, but there's an issue in your on your block, or there's an issue in your subdivision, or there's an issue in your apartment complex. Can you get people together, you know, have some meetings, come up with a plan, strategize, and win the little thing. You know, maybe there's, you know, uh you need an extra stoplight on your road. Now that sounds so removed from like how do we defeat global capitalism and patriarchy and all of this, but it just gives people an example of working together collectively, making decisions and achieving something, which then can engender more and more of those thoughts. You know, it can it can that can produce a space where then people look at each other and they say, hey, wait a minute. Before this group formed, I didn't think anything could be achieved. After this group formed, yeah, we achieved some small things. Maybe we can achieve something even bigger. And then maybe you can achieve something even bigger than that. And, you know, to your point, maybe I believe, as you do, that we can create a radically new society that would be better for human beings and the planet. But even if you don't believe in that, because there's days where I believe in that, and I know in my heart of hearts that that is possible, um, but maybe the conditions aren't there, or maybe you don't see it. There's a I don't know how to engender this last part of what I'm gonna say in response to your question. Maybe it's sports, maybe it's the military. Um, I know in my time of being active on the left, I I once uh was having a conversation with uh Christian Parenti, and uh, you know, someone had uh posed to him during a talk that he had gave, like, you know, climate change says we're all gonna be destroyed anyway, so why even bother? His point was, well, let's say that's true. Let's say in a hundred years the planet's gonna be cooked and there's no more human beings. Okay. How do you want to live for the next hundred years? I mean, I think that's a legitimate response. And also the just to fight back. I mean, I think that there is there is like that this is something that the right gets that I, you know, I don't, you know, so for instance, on the right, it's not as if they're I mean, I guess when it comes to Trump, it is true he's actually much more of a revolutionary than he is a conservative and movement that backs him. So they do kind of want to recreate or create or recreate the world. Um, but there's plenty of people on the right who don't necessarily want to fundamentally change the world. They're just like, hey, man, I feel like I'm being screwed around and I'm not gonna take this sitting down. I don't know what the results are gonna be. I don't know if we're gonna win, but I'll tell you right now, I'm not gonna let these people in power push me around. We I think those of us on the left should be engendering that kind of uh like fighting spirit. Um, so there is something there. Now, how do you like implement that, systematize it? How do you like engender this in the culture, the culture of resistance that we're trying to build or cultivate on the left? I think that, you know, that that's the interesting question. But I do think even if you say to yourself, I'm not quite sure that we can create a whole new world, I'm not quite sure that we can defeat these people, but god damn it, we should at least fight back. I mean, what you know that there is like a part, there, there's something to that that I think, you know, um i is worthwhile exploring.
Despair Small Wins And Fighting Spirit
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I used to I used to think about these questions a little a long time ago and have a similar view to what you just described, and then my view changed. So that is, I used to say to myself, okay, if we're totally fucked, what do I want to do? Go out fighting. Um in 1969. Okay, and that's what you're you're talking about. That sentiment, that's you know. And then later, I decided that's not good enough. It it that's that that feeling is you know, wanting to engender that's pretty much impossible for the reason, and here's an example, a guy's come to our house, not the house, not where I am now, you know, in the past. This was during the uh after 9-11. Um, he came to fix some computer stuff, and we got to talking because there were the posters on the wall and stuff. And, you know, we talked for a while, and uh I told him what I thought about what was happening in Afghanistan and you know what it meant to the leaders and anyway, all sorts of stuff. And he disagreed with he agreed with everything. You know, he he uh of course they're evil, you know, etc. And then he said, but what do you want me to do? I can't do anything. I myself can't impact that, but I can make the life my kids' lives a little better. You know, I can make my spouse's life a little better, my friends. I can have an impact there. I can't have I can't do anything that's gonna be measurable or make a difference in that other realm. And I heard that and sort of felt to myself, all right, to just tell this guy, fuck up and fight, is not handling what's stopping him from doing it. To tell him, here's how you can have an effect, and to converse with him in such a way that he comes away feeling, you know, I can. Uh those are things I can do, and they don't lead right back to where we now are, they lead to someplace new. So that's what's you know affected uh. And I think it's it's compatible, and yeah, that's the focus on strategy and vision. But let me ask you another strategic question. Um you've already said it's crazy if we want to win, even in the short term, much less a new society, a new world, to ignore a huge part of the population because they disagree with us or we don't like them. That's exactly what organizing is. You have to reach those people. You said that. Okay, let's extrapolate that. You're a vet, you work with vets, uh, veterans, or you know, people who have been in war or who have been associated with the military, etc. Should or should activists be organizing in the military? And what about police force?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes and yes. Um, I mean, of course, I'm a little bit biased because I, you know, come from a family of veterans. I'm a combat veteran myself. Many of my friends are, and a lot of people disproportionately serve. In the communities I'm from. My brother's also in law enforcement, has been for many years. Okay, there's a few different ways to take this. I don't think you necessarily need to know everything about the history of revolutions and counter-revolutions to understand why this is important. Though it's surprising to me that there's a that there's so many people on the left who are aware of that history and who've read that history and explored that history and yet still don't come to this conclusion. Or you just, you know, sort of look at it by observing things and say, okay, wait a minute. We have a strike at our local plant. And when we have this strike, the local police and the sheriff's department shows up to make sure that we don't take it overboard. Okay, so like what is the barrier to us taking an even more radical action at this uh, let's say, oil refinery? You know, there's a strike going on back home at the at the BP oil refinery. Well, the entities that are allowing this what they call scab workers, non-unionized workers, to go into the plant to make sure the plant's running while the strike is happening, um, is the police and the sheriff's department. So it's not as if the corporate executives are standing out there with baseball bats making sure that the union workers let in the non-union workers so the plant can keep running. Uh, it's the police and the sheriffs. So you don't need to know everything about the history of revolutions and counter-revolutions to look at the situation and go, oh wow. So maybe this is an element of society that would be worthwhile to organize because they're the ones with the guns and the handcuffs and the jails and the ability to really disrupt, overthrow, repress, throw us in jail, make our lives miserable. And if they feel empowered and they feel sympathetic to our cause, uh perhaps they'll allow us to take this a step further. You know, perhaps they won't block us from taking over corporate facilities, et cetera. Um, and the same goes for the military. You know, in order to launch all of these strikes, even though there haven't been ground troops as far as we know, although, you know, many people, uh, military analysts suggest there have been CIA operatives, special forces on the ground in Iran operating. Even without that being the case, without a ton of ground troops being on the ground, all of this still requires individual human beings and groups of human beings in the military to do supply runs, to man the ships, to man the missile systems, to man the computers that man the missile systems, to load the missiles, to transport the missiles. All of this requires human beings that are in the military. Um I think beyond policy and so forth, it would be, again, on the surface, you don't need to know anything about history of revolutions or counter-revolutions, to look at the situation and say, well, if we organized within the military and less and less members of the military were following orders and taking it upon themselves to sort of, you know, symbolically or literally throw a wrench into the system of the war machine, uh, then it would be a lot more difficult, if not impossible, uh, for those in power to conduct these wars, um, or or any number of things, you know. Uh, but historically as well, I mean, it's very clear. It's like how many revolutions and coups and counter-revolutions take place uh because the military and the police hold a tremendous amount of power in society, so the political entities that are conducting those revolutions or counter-revolutions are always sure uh to organize or to make sure that those people and those entities are on their side because they understand the tremendous amount of power that those entities wield in our society. Now, that's not to say that if we're creating a new society, we would necessarily want those institutions to have the kind of power that they have in this current system. But the current system being what it is, uh, it makes a lot of sense to me, and I haven't heard a really legitimate counter argument to why we wouldn't want to organize the police or the military, but this gets back to your point about trying to organize Trump supporters or the MAGA base, and that is, you know, it's not necessarily natural to the left. But then that also brings into question what is the composition of the left today. You know, a lot of, I think it's a really legitimate critique of the Democratic parties, the modern Democratic Party that people are making in pop culture, which is that it's like far too refined, sort of Ivy League educated people who are smug and kind of look down on the masses. Uh, I think there's a lot of truth to that. But also, I think we can extend that to the nonprofit industrial complex. I think we can extend that to a lot of existing left organizations, not all of them, but I think there's a lot of leftist progressives, nonprofits that operate the same way as the modern Democratic Party, where they come from these cosmopolitan urban communities. They go to the best universities, they get out of those universities, they find a professional position, they see themselves as being better than the masses who work these bullshit jobs and that they can make the decisions and so forth. Um, so I think that's a big part of it as well, is that like culturally, what the left has has turned into in a lot of ways, and and again, this isn't to like revitalize or fetishize industrial workers or blue-collar men who work with their hands. We know that the working class and poor people are much broader than that. Um, but at the same time, uh I find it uh really repulsive the way that a lot of people on the left and also liberals, Democrats, uh sort of view ordinary people, interact with ordinary people. Uh, and I think that's a that's a big part of
Organize The Military And Police
SPEAKER_00this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Uh obviously I agree with you and you know, have forever been pitching the same kind of thing, including saying that there are real class interests at stake and so on. Um but I uh when you I mean two things that you said had me thinking about another question. So one was easy to come up with the question. You used the word obstacle and uh you used it in context of well, the the police are obviously a kind of an obstacle, they're an impediment to our agenda and an important one, or the military. Um and it's that way of thinking that I think is constructive and was evident in the article that kicked this off. But the obstacles aren't all out there, which is what you're now pointing out in some sense. So the obstacle is okay, the banks and the so on and so forth, or institutions, and then it's these various um collectivities, it's people who have contrary interests, but they're also inside us. Because after all, we have grown up in this society, and we have assumptions and we have behavior patterns that are conducive to doing well in society or getting by in society, but not conducive to getting rid of obstacles, including inside us. Um and that's the the part of strategy that I think somebody like you pays attention to, and a lot of people who, like you say, are well versed in the history of everything, uh, you know, down to the 14th decimal point, pay no attention to. And so they don't realize, okay, you have to organize. I'm not sure, you know, I don't really know. During the Vietnam era, there was high sensitivity to setting up uh organizing projects around military bases and and communicating with the the soldiers. And I don't know what the composition of the people who did that as compared to the rest of the movement might have been. I uh it would be interesting to know. But what you're suggesting is that it might be that the people with less elite backgrounds, with less what I call coordinator class aspirations and backgrounds, were probably the ones who were doing that work on those bases.
SPEAKER_00Um a lot of them were veterans. I mean, the Vietnam Veterans program of setting up GI coffee houses in in various bases was in a lot of ways primarily led from Vietnam veterans against the war. So you're dealing with a lot of working class veterans who then felt comfortable setting up a GI coffee house in a military, you know, uh in the same neighborhood, in the same town as a military installation. To your point about things internally that keep us unactive or intimidated, which is something having grown up, lived around, and continue to be friends with, you know, 99.9% of my friends are, you know, uh not necessarily like died-in-the-wool leftists and don't have some kind of like fancy education. But one of the challenges that I've always seen and why I brought up the issue of democratizing knowledge, especially when it comes to uh issues such as, say, uh AI data centers or another issue that came up in our I was been recently reading this book by Michael Hart called The Subversive 70s. And in one of the chapters, he highlights uh anti-nuclear activists in the 1970s and 80s who are trying to stop the development, obviously the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but also the development of civilian-use nuclear technology in their communities. A lot of them came to the table initially opposed to the project, but simultaneously somewhat intimidated by the highly technical knowledge that the so-called experts uh were wielding in these public meetings. You know, so you had corporate executives and government bureaucrats who were using terminology that a lot of poor and working class people who in their heart knew this is wrong, but man, these people keep hitting us with these technical terms and technical ideas that I just feel intimidate. Like, do I, you know, it starts to get people to question themselves. Like I know I was kind of opposed to this, but man, this person who's up here with 18 degrees and spent 50 years at university is telling me something way different. And this culture, of course, uh sort of produces that within poor and working class people, you know, that that sense of maybe I'm maybe I'm not smart enough to get this. Um, so part of what I think is important is this idea of democratizing knowledge, which is a a um a term that Hart used in the book that I thought was just really good and it explains a lot of what our challenges were as we've done community organizing efforts in places like Northwest Indiana, where it doesn't have to necessarily be a data center. It could even be a simple redevelopment project. You know, we've been in plenty of city meetings where we'll bring poor and working class people or we'll have government bureaucrats used to come to our community center and we'd have them sit in front of a group of 30, 40, 50 people from the public, our neighbors and folks who came to the community center and who were interested in, say, a development project. And even something that's not particularly that technical, like redeveloping a brownfield or, you know, some other area in the city for a new economic development zone or whatever the case may be, a lot of people, even in that context, felt intimidated. So a lot of what Sergio and I had to do was sort of take that technical knowledge, take that all those technical terms, and then find a way to distill this down in a way that anyone could understand and get the basic concepts and wrap their minds around it, and then empower them to then feel like, hey, no, you know what? I do have a grasp on this issue. I'm not going to be intimidated by these people in power who are using language that I don't understand. Um and I see this happening with the data centers, you know, where you'll get people who, you know, farmers and people from these suburban communities who are standing in front of podiums and city council and saying, my electricity bills are skyrocketing. And I know that this data center is using a tremendous amount of our fresh water. Um, it's also polluting our groundwater because there's, of course, runoff and waste that comes from these facilities as well. Uh, and I'm opposed to it. And then you'll get a government bureaucrat or a corporate official up there, and then they'll start speaking in economic or technical terms that then sort of, you know, you get people going, well, wait a minute, like what's this person saying? I don't quite understand. And yet, even with all of that, uh, you know, the recent polls show that seven out of ten Americans are opposed to the building of new data centers. And then, you know, what's crazy to me is you've got people like Aaron Brockovich, you've got seven out of ten Americans right now are opposed to the data centers. Um, and that's without access to like, you know, great collective information and existing organizations. You know, what would that number be if people really understood the issue? Maybe it'd be 80, 90 percent. But right now, as it stands, seven out of ten Americans are opposed to this, and I'm getting emails from uh like hardcore ideological Marxists who are saying, oh, you just don't understand the history of dialectical materialism.
SPEAKER_01Well, I just want to say uh two things about the stories that you're telling. One is that second thing, since you brought it up at the end, it isn't only scientists and engineers who can hand wave uh in front of people to intimidate them, word wave, let's call it, in front of people to intimidate them. It's also leftists. Uh that is, it's possible for people who have a whole lot of ideological background and verbiage and all the rest of it uh to put on a similar show. You know, the difference is, I hate to say it, but the difference is that nine times out of ten, at least the science and the engineering is accurate and substance. On the left, nine times out of ten, the intimidation is purely words and not substance.
SPEAKER_00How I mean just presumptuous and patronizing. I mean, this is when I when I got those messages, I just thought to myself, so wait a minute, you have all of these people, ordinary working class, poor people, middle class people just trying to make it. They're seeing something, they're opposed to it, and then the response to that is to hit them with some like patronizing message about you just don't understand Marxism.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that that is just and say the working class will lead us all and it knows everything. So simultaneously it knows everything and it knows nothing whenever it conflicts with me. Right? Yes. That's the the the no nukes movement. I mean, you know, I was there. It was right about many things, to be sure, but it was, in some real sense, I think, the place where I became highly sensitized to all this, uh, to the other stuff that we're talking about. And the reason was because the no nukes movement would say, you know, well, your plant um generates this radioactive waste, and the waste can hurt us. And if you got rid of the nuclear plant, somebody might say, you'd be using coal. And not only would the coal also be generating waste that can hurt us, but the coal would be generating black lung disease. And I began to realize that a lot of people not everybody by any means, I don't want to be misinf, you know, but a lot of people in the no-nukes movement simply couldn't see something like black lung disease. You know, that coal miners would get. They that isn't part of the calculation. They were literally blind to the impact on the group of people who had most at stake. And that was just very troubling, and it began to sensitize me to the question, you know, people would ask, well, why aren't there that many blacks in some movement? And the answer would be, well, the movement is racist. You know, the internal dynamics of the movements feel to people like society feels to people, sometimes even worse. And so of course they're not here. Same thing with gender. It was never said about class. It was always, well, the reason that workers aren't here is because they're tricked or something. Not because this feels like the Yale, you know, law school, not like something congenial to and welcoming to and empowering for working people. And we still haven't gotten over that, I don't think.
SPEAKER_00No, not by any means. I mean, that but one of the challenges we had, and it's difficult work. See, this is the other thing, too. I don't want us, because I agree, we agree with all of the critiques, and this is a, I still think, an underexamined element of what's going on on the left. But uh I also don't want to give yeah, I do not want to give people the idea that that's easy to do. I mean, even when we were in Michigan City, Indiana, and we had our community center and we're doing community organizing. I mean, we're bringing in elements of the community and people in the community who are coming from widely different backgrounds. And some of the challenges aren't necessarily sexy or interesting intellectual debates as much as it is just getting people in a room with other folks who say, wow, this person listens to different music than I do. They come from a completely different background. They speak in ways that, you know, maybe some more educated people might find uncouth. Some of the ways people were speaking were just straight up offensive. And we had to have those conversations. You know, I mean, there were all these assumptions that people on the left had brought in, like, oh, we're going to bring in these white workers and they're going to be racist. What they didn't expect, I think because they don't spend time around a lot of poor and working class people, were that when we were bringing in, you know, one third of Michigan City is black, the population. So we're bringing in, and it's a very small percentage of uh Hispanic population in the city. But when we were bringing in some of the people from those communities, um, you know, a lot of the white leftists and progressives didn't expect for the black people that we were bringing in to be like, you know what, I don't want any more Mexicans in the country. Oh, well, people's head people's heads almost exploded. They were like, wait a minute. I I was expecting the white guy from down the block to say this. I wasn't expecting the group of black people from the local black uh church to come in and say that they don't want more immigration. Or my God, I wasn't expecting when we brought some of these Mexican workers in from the farms uh uh who worked in LaPorte County, Indiana, largely seasonal workers, that when we brought them into our organizing spaces, uh some of them would say things to us like, well, you know, these black people are lazy. Um, you know, I mean, those were the kind of real world challenges that we faced in those spaces, which again, it's just to make the point that it is difficult and that it it you are going to confront and deal with things that I think on the surface for a lot of leftists, liberals, progressives, they just go, oh my God, I I mean, how do you how could you say such a thing? Or what, you know, are immediately personally offended by this to the point where they're not willing to then take the next step, which is to say, okay, let's examine what you just said, let's have a conversation about it. You know, I mean, no, I have to call you.
SPEAKER_01There's the flip side of those people arriving in a movement space, whatever you want to call it, right? And uh encountering, let's say, us. Um, and encountering the thing is they probably are are a little bit more aware of it, but encountering the elitism and the assumption, you know. I taught in prison for a while, and um I I don't know why. Uh it was a medium security prison, and I was free to teach whatever I wanted. So I taught like I teach, you know, I taught about uh the system and capitalism and so on and so forth. And when I described owners and their prerogatives and what they do, the the class was calm, you know, there was no passion in it. Um I was, but they weren't. Um when I described doctors and lawyers and engineers, and I described, you know, uh the the class just went berserk. You know, people were were were totally aroused by it. And it's cool, I realized that well, it's because they encounter that. And, you know, neither they nor I have ever encountered a billionaire, right? And so we don't get personally dissed, but they do. And you know, these kinds of things are uh going back to that word obstacles, right? These are big factors in being able to develop a movement that that can win and therefore have to be dealt with, comfortable or not.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I I will say, I mean, this is trying to be somewhat uh funny here, but I do I mean perhaps one of the reasons why a lot of these uh public intellectuals, people who write about these issues and so forth, don't want to hear from their readers, or or maybe in the back of their mind they're hoping that poor and working class people don't get organized is because they could very well be some of the first ones put up against a wall if poor and working class people do get organized. And that's not to say that I advocate any of that. That's not none of that. It's just to say that I think that there is a simmering underlying anger at the professional managerial class that a lot of people from that class do not want to identify. They don't want to, you know, it because it threatens their position as being the sort of you know piepers of these movements and ideas and institutions and think tanks and all the rest. So I think that there's that that's a very real part of
Democratize Knowledge Against Expert Intimidation
SPEAKER_00it as well. And then also, you know, uh just to Wrap up about the article, you know, part of what's the more the most interesting and how I like to view a lot of these issues is like, what are the opportunities that this allows us? You know, so if you're going into a data center fight and you're not a part of an existing organization, can you use that struggle to build a local community organization? Can you use it to develop a network uh with other organizations that are forming in other parts of your state or county or throughout the country? There's obviously a lot of people opposing these data centers right now. This is a great organizing opportunity. Let's say you come from a you are a member of an organization and you've been looking for a fight or a struggle that can help build your numbers, uh, develop your base, bring more people into the mix, uh, create partnerships with other activist groups that are fighting similar battles, uh, potentially reach out to people in the community that you've always wanted to organize, you know, i.e., say rural folks, um, uh, this allows an opportunity for that. Um, so I think every challenge that comes along, if you're thinking about it or viewing that challenge through the lens of an organizer, you're saying to yourself, yes, this is a challenge. However, it also is a tremendous opportunity. Uh, how do we capitalize on that opportunity? How do we use this momentum? How do we use this sort of underlying anger people are feeling about the tech industry and AI and all of this to help build our organizations, develop coalitions, and um, you know, through doing so, hopefully practice different forms of democratic decision making. You know, so I mean, this was part of what we tried to experiment with with the community center. You know, we would lay out a map of the city. We'd say, okay, we've got 30 people in the room right now. What ward our city was broken down into five different wards? Um, so we would, or I'm sorry, six different wards. So we would, or these could be precincts, whatever you want to call them. Um, but you know, we'd look at the map and we'd say, okay, we've got 15 members here tonight that are in ward four, that's where you live. Where do your kids go to school? Okay, six of them have kids. Your kids go to school at this school. Uh, these six members live in the second ward. Uh, what are the most important businesses in that ward? What are like the long-standing small businesses that have been family-owned for generations? Okay, if we're well respected in the community, people love the small business. Um, is there a teacher in the community? Is there an organization, a coach in the community that's widely respected? If we can get, and this is sort of identifying what McAlevy calls organic leaders, in other words, people who you bring, when you're bringing them on board or when you're trying to get them to be a part of your cause or your organization or campaign, that they also bring with them a tremendous amount of respect and trust from the community. So when Michael, the local football coach, says, you know what, guys, I'm on board with this campaign to stop the data centers, well, it's not just Michael bringing himself or his family or a couple of friends. It's Michael bringing with him also the reputation amongst the community of, like, hey, if Michael says this is wrong, I generally trust where Michael's coming from. He's been a respected, trustworthy member of this community for a long time. And if he's opposed to it, you know what? I'll sign my name to that as well. Those are the kinds of things we were trying to examine and then develop bodies within each of those wards. Uh, you know, hey, can you develop a workers' assembly or a community committee? Um, you know, can you structure it in a way that's democratic, uh, that's at least hierarchical as possible, where you guys are making democratic decisions collectively, bringing those uh decisions and conclusions back to the larger group. Like those were the kinds of things that we were trying to experiment with outside of the structure of simply electoral politics or existing unions or existing nonprofit organizations. You know, it just allows it. I mean, I think part of what could be exciting for people is to allow for a certain amount of experimentation and almost seeing this as like a laboratory, you know, where it's like, all right, like we have these different elements, we we can let's try this out, let's try that out, let's see if it works. If it doesn't work, let's readjust. I mean, I think part of this for me also comes from experience in with sports for my entire life and also the military, where like you don't ever conduct an action in the military or you don't ever play a game in sports. And then if you lose the game, you go home and you just say, Well, you know, the fans weren't with us tonight, or you know, the moon cycle wasn't on our side, or oh man, the referees. That's always looked down upon in the sporting world, and it's the same in the military, you know, where like if you don't accomplish the mission that you were sent out to do that night, you immediately go back and you have a debrief. Okay, what worked tonight, gentlemen? What didn't work? Um, where did we fail? Where did we achieve? What kind of assumptions were we operating on that were wrong, which ones were right? You know, these like that.
SPEAKER_01But but the reason you did that is because you wanted to win. And because you believed if you did that, you could win. And that's what I think, you know, it when you describe the process, it's so obvious. And it's I'm not belittling it, right? Is because it's outside the box that everybody is in, it's not obvious. But if you in sports or in military, it is obvious, right? You you you try to get better. You evaluate, and if you find something wrong, you try to get better. If you're not sure, experiment with two different things, you know, with two different paths. See which one is better, travel that path. This is the kind of stuff that the left doesn't do. And no, and I I feel slowly saying these things are. Yeah, in in certain audiences. Uh give it a break. Give it a break, please. You know, but uh it I I try hard to figure out what's the impediment that blocks that kind of mentality, that kind of approach. Uh, and I can't come up with much other than something that's really disparaging. Um you know, I don't really want change or something like that. Um, or well, I just think it's a waste of time because we can't do it. Um, you know, you can't win. It's the other side is too big, too strong, to this, to that, and we cannot win.
SPEAKER_00And well, you're taking a stab at that with your recent book. I mean, and I think what's interesting about your book, um, and part of what why we tried to implement so many cultural programs uh at the community center as well, is that I don't think simply by giving people all of the objective facts that that's going to lead people to then taking action or breaking down that barrier of feeling powerlessness, of feeling alienated. And so here I think culture plays a significant role. And so, you know, you writing your book in a way that's sort of a fictionalized looking back from the future of a successful revolution, um, I think stuff like that's important. I think music, art, movies, and so forth. I don't think that means you retreat from politics. I simply mean that in a way that's like, how do we develop different cultural avenues, different cultural projects that broaden our political horizon? Um, and and there I think culture plays a significant role. And this is somewhere that I think the left hasn't been good at. But then again, I think the right has been really good at it. If you see some of the really, really successful podcasts, uh, movies, TV shows, and so forth, like they're touching on these topics. You know, they're constantly talking about these these sorts of issues. Um, and and I think that that's a that's a place where uh we could potentially uh open up people's horizons and and give them another sense of what's possible. But I don't think it's gonna come through like uh, you know, if you just give the best speech or the best lecture or you write the best article, I think you do have to tap into that creative mind that everyone has. Yeah.
Movement Culture And The Missing Youth Scene
SPEAKER_01I mean, I'm tempted to bring up another topic, although we're well over an hour already. The other topic I would bring up, you can tell me if you want to try and deal with it at all, is something that it's basically young people now. Um and you know, my experience of young people is when I'm young, uh when I was young, way back. And I contrast what we were like the the sector of youth who were aroused and who became politically involved, and I look at now and I have a hard trouble time understanding. I even have a hard time understanding the past few years. I mean, you had the encampments not that long ago, and they were uh very substantial, they were significant, people were were, you know, engaged, spirited, taking risks, expressing themselves for other people. Solidarity, all that was there, and now uh you've got Trump and you've got universities selling out their students, and you've got all these things that are more than sufficient to warrant, you know, large proportions of a student body being furious rising up and taking over the campus. But it's not happening. And uh, I think part of it might be cultural, it might be what has happened to so-called youth culture. There was one, there isn't one now. You know, there it's something is dramatically different about the lives of young people because of COVID, I guess, because of social media, but there's just something about their mindset, right? It's it's uh the idea that you could join with other students and protest, that you could join with other students and fight for your campus, much less the world, just seems absent.
SPEAKER_00And I don't get it. I mean, specifically, uh, as far as the encampments are concerned, you know, and and we had talked about this in a private phone conversation as well, but you know, one that was happening in the 1960s, uh, you know, and and I had mentioned to you that there was at least a bigger context of people being engaged generally. And that's not to say that the anti-war movement was in full effect, but the civil rights movement, uh, there were organizations that existed. So people were just generally more organized, you know.
SPEAKER_01There's 10 million people on the street now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right. Yeah, right. But those people aren't coming, but they're not coming from organizations, and this is this seems to be the problem. So people are showing up to these No Kings protests, for instance, but they're not going back home to an organization. Agreed. They're they're just showing up to an event that had been organized from you know this bigger sort of umbrella group. And that's not to that's not to downplay any of that. That's not to like, but it is to say, you know, but they're not going back to organizations. So those can't so but to the campus, let me just make this point.
SPEAKER_01They weren't going back to organizations either. That is, on a campus, you had 20 to 50 people in SDS. You had half the student body showing up for demonstrations.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_01So there was that same gap then, which of course you want to reduce over time, but that gap was there. On the other hand, you had the doors and the Jefferson Airplane and Dillon and all the rest of that, and you had hippies and all the rest of that. I just think but why isn't there youth culture now? I mean, young people generate that kind of thing, beating it all the way back. It doesn't seem to be there now, except for Jesse Wells and a few others. Sure. I mean, there are some, but they're isolated from each other. You know, it does I don't know how to explain it.
SPEAKER_00Uh, this to me is a topic of an entire uh like a whole different podcast because I think it's a really interesting and important question, and one that I constantly am thinking about. Um, because I was fortunate enough when I first came up uh and got involved with the anti-war movement. A lot of my mentors and people I looked up to, and I would include you as part of that group, but also others, you know, I there were there was enough remnants from that 68th generation that in the early 2000s were still engaged. So I was constantly like peppered with these stories, whether they be anecdotal or documentaries or books, that people from that generation, from your generation, were handing to me and saying, hey man, let's talk about this. Let me tell you about my experiences, let me tell you about what we did, let me show you this movie, let me show you this book, let me show you this song or album uh that illustrates these struggles uh that were happening back then. I mean, um so yes, the you had said it while you were sort of answering your own question, but I think what was swirling around in 1968 was a lot different than today. So I think, you know, to just get specific about those campus protesters uh who were opposing Israeli uh genocide in Gaza, um, you know, what was swirling around at that moment? I mean, it's not as if there, you know, they I give those activists actually a tremendous amount of credit, those students, because they were doing that not in a context of broader movements happening. They they sort of just did so on their own. It wasn't like the there was a huge countercultural movement. It wasn't as if they were also like Black Lives Matter was active and this group was active and that group was fighting this issue. I mean, they, you know, there wasn't much that happened um social movement-wise uh while Joe Biden was in office. Um, and and yet these students still took it upon themselves to to engage in that kind of uh resistance, you know, and and to be fair too, you know, to the to the degree that they haven't come back and done so, I mean, uh, you know, the the way that they were put down was in some cases quite quite brutal. I mean, they just went through these encampments, beat people up, pepper sprayed people. Some people got kicked out of university, some people got sent back to the countries that they had migrated to the US from under a green card so they could go to school. So, I mean, you're not talking about like a slap on the wrist. You're like, hey, if you show up to this encampment, we could very well uh X out your visa, send you back home, destroy your life. Um, that's you know quite a risk to take, you know.
SPEAKER_01I think all that is right, but what it what it raises is since success depends upon the involvement of young people, partly because then they become older people, but partly because they're the backbone of movements, generally speaking, um somehow we have to think about what we have to do, given that all that you just described is there, and given the absence of a counterculture and and uh you know all kinds of cultural dynamics, what do we have to do to help them? I don't know.
Build Real Spaces Beyond Screens
SPEAKER_00I mean, to me, to me, and I hate to, you know, I'm I don't think there's one magic bullet, but I do think one of the things and one of the reasons why we opened a community center was because it was clear to Sergio and I, and we did so on the heels of coming home from Standing Rock, you know, which was also disproportionately a lot of younger activists in North Dakota. But when we got to North Dakota, the 10 days or so or two weeks that we spent wandering around the encampment, Sergio and I just kept striking up conversations with people. And mostly what we were asking them is like, hey, what are you doing when you get home from here? We're not going to stay here forever. So once this struggle, this encampment, this occupation is finished, what what are you going home to? Are you a member of any organizations? Are you, do you guys meet any? Oh, well, I'm just kind of on my own back where I live. And I, you know, so it really hit us where it was like after years of just mobilizing, we were like, wow, before we even had the terminology, we were thinking to ourselves, well, we have to have physical spaces for people to come so that way you can cultivate the kind of culture that we're talking about. You know, I don't think those things are going to just happen in these digital realms, you know, where people are isolated and fragmented and alienated. But the the positive thing, not only not just on top of these stories we're getting from commencement speeches where students are booing the commencement speaker when they bring up AI, but recent polls show, uh, and then I'll bring it back to a personal story to kind of wrap this up, but you know, recent polls show that a lot of um younger people are actually rejecting uh tech culture. You know, they're so in other words, the the youngest of the young generations are actually spending less time on their phone. Uh they're looking for ways to engage outside this is apparent apparently this is the the case. So I'll send you I'll send you a couple of uh articles about this. Um Liza Featherstone had recently, who's who's uh, for those who aren't uh aware, is a really good writer and and union activist in New York City. People should check out her work as well. Um, you know, I had sent her an article the other day about young people in Chicago and New York who are having phone-free parties. So they're throwing these underground kind of raves, dance parties, where people are not allowed to bring their phones into the venue. These are like 18, 16, 20-year-old kids. Um, you know, so there is this sort of nostalgia for a day prior to when they're just so inundated with this technological stuff. And, you know, potentially one of the benefits we have as well is that they identify it with the older generation. You know, so if they identify like holding your phone and scrolling or getting angry on a social media post with their grandpa or with their crazy drunk uncle at Thanksgiving, you know, it's like that's better for us because then the youth identifies that as like, oh, that's part of like what older people do. Um, but I do think you have to give people a space. So in other words, I don't think it's just about this like making arguments or making a position or putting out the right paper or the right book or the right like you have to get people in a space physically and then give them enough freedom, maybe some prompts, some ideas, some alternatives. Um, but you have to give people a space. First, get people together face to face, which breaks down some of that alienation. But then, you know, putting people in a space and saying, hey, what do you want to do? Like now you have this space. What kind of what kind of party, what kind of cultural thing, what kind of concert, what kind of stuff would you want to do if you just had this space to yourself and allowed uh to use it on your own accord, you know? Um, I I think that that's a key element. Like, I do think we have to have spaces. It would, there just aren't public spaces, Michael. So, I mean, if you ask people, even organizers and activists, like, hey, where are you meeting from? You know, they'll say, Oh, and we're meeting at the local coffee shop. And it's like, wait a minute, again, that's better than not meeting. But if you're someone who doesn't have enough money for a six dollar latte or whatever, it's like even that can be intimidating, where it's like, okay, you're still in a space where you're required to spend money in order to be in the space. We started to call it over time a non-consumerist space, even though we didn't go into the project with that idea. We just wanted a space where people didn't have to spend money to come in. But it really breaks down another important barrier, which is people just coming into a space in an organic social way to say, hey man, this is a place where I could come hang out, get interesting uh information, get important information, strike up interesting conversations with neighbors and people in the community that I don't usually get to interact with.
SPEAKER_01The space that I think of when you describe it is public schools at night taken over by communities. I like that too.
SPEAKER_00And that it's because there's no fees, there's no rent, there's no my my only pushback to that, Michael, is as a kid who absolutely hated everything from K to 12. I don't know if I want to go back to the place that I was so keen to get out of during the day. So that's that's my only my only my only pushback would be as someone who hated school, and so I got you know, but remember you're going back to take it over.
SPEAKER_01Sure. You're going which is a little different. And that actually raises, I mean, this could go on forever. That raises, I also find it hard to conceive of what the personal strains must be on, say, for example, a high school social studies teacher. Um, you know, who hates Trump, because they probably do, right? Who hates racism, who hates all of it, and talks about things in history that you could draw the analogies and you could make the points, but they're not allowed to. You know, incredible.
SPEAKER_00One more part of why I think opening the space is important, uh, an independent space separate from any existing institutions, is twofold. Number one, um, it gets that the challenge is opening up a space, the opportunity is organizing people in the goal of opening that space, which then allows people to create bonds, relationships, sure, you know, and and then also is separate from existing institutions, you know. So and I get your point, which is kind of like how do we repurpose, occupy, take over an entity that's uh supposed to be a public entity, but is largely controlled by you know state governments and so forth. So, all right, thanks for doing it, and uh thanks for having me.
Final Thoughts And Sign Off
SPEAKER_01This is Mike Albert signing off for Revolution Z. Until next time.