Speaker 1 0:00

The kids are good. I want to find out how good. Want to find out about the dictatorship of the team. Already know about the dictatorship of the team, but just want to see Malloy from the discourse collective. Join left coast podcast for a live event in Vallejo on November the fourth for more information and to get your free tickets go to bit dot l y forward slash Malloy underscore in underscore Vallejo. That's bit dot l y forward slash m a. L l o y underscore in underscore v A. L. L. E. J. O. I'm going to go and wave at the lights again. Aaron's vampire, he prefers you want to start? What was his artificial light? Yeah. You don't get the, I'm presuming you don't get affected by that because you are currently here in front of me and a few one form rather than as a pile of ash. Hi, welcome to North Bay. I know that might be a little bit of a surprising name to hear from me, but this is North Bay. I am communal source and I am here with

Speaker 2 2:03

February's Caracas. I am Aaron

Speaker 1 2:05

and we have guests here today. If you could go ahead and introduce yourselves and Maggie and I'm a North Bay wobbly member of the industrial workers of the world.

Speaker 2 2:16

My name is Martin and I'm also a North Bay wobbly. This is a very, a wobbly oriented crowd. I think. Actually I'm the only one here who is not a member of the wobblies. Oh, you're not? Okay. But we're definitely out numbered. Uh, anybody started many shit. Exactly. Yeah. And popping up on these will we all over my ass. I already know better. You just bring you snacks. Yeah. Until you too bloated to chase this down. Radical Sandwich. Praxis snack block. Yeah. So, so we're here to sort of discuss the recent tragedy of the Santa Rosa tubs, pocket fire nuns, all those terrible things that happened to us recently talking about, you know, the immediate response, what happened, what we saw as, as going right and wrong, and then sort of the, you know, how we want to see the recovery efforts going forward. And I think that some of us have some sort of, something interesting to say about that. I'm sure. So let's, let's get right into it. Maggie, if you want to talk about the immediate response and in particular focusing on the, the communities that tend to get left out in liberal responses to disasters.

Speaker 3 3:35

Sure. So the most immediate responses that way that we could see. Whereas shelters that being set up often by members of the community and then in conjunction with a local government, then the Red Cross came in and with the Red Cross came national guard and they were a presence in the shelters. National Cross started to consolidate shelters, ask more independent shelters to shut down and move people over to the Red Cross shelters. And so what we started to hear was that there were people who are uncomfortable who were evacuated or her who, um, who have lost their homes, who are uncomfortable being in shelters with national guard. It's important to note that at day prior to the fires breaking out, I said, sent a document saying that they are going to, I'm not sure on the specifics of the document, but, but that they were going to increase their, that deportation efforts and so that people should be aware. So that was on people's minds. And so we started to hear and reach out to areas where undocumented families and other families had high decided to, to say as an alternative to the shelters such as the dunes that have campgrounds or near the beach. And we also have heard that people chose to stay in parking lots outside of shelters. So that was the, that was a shelter response that was probably the most visible.

Speaker 4 5:10

So also we heard the stories from people who weren't even necessarily undocumented, who for a lot of different reasons, didn't feel comfortable in the shelters. Mainly the, there was like a lot of fluorescent lights or anyone who had pets wasn't allowed to bring their pets in and they're not going to leave those like members of their family behind. And, uh, so, uh, a lot of people actually opted to just go and stay with friends and family in the area. I'm, most of the people I know who are directly affected did not go to the shelters. Um, and uh, so yeah, there's a lot of reasons why people didn't feel comfortable at the shelters. And even to the point that we went to one place where they had actually asked the Red Cross in the National Guard to leave the shelter that they were working at because they were just getting in the way and also scaring people off in that was very counter to what

Speaker 1 5:58

they were trying to do there. That was also one community that tends to not be thought of in the situation is people who before the fire didn't have homes because the shelters were set up for the people who were either evacuated from their homes or had lost their homes due to the fire. But then there are people who are living in encampments or who were staying in homeless shelters that then all of this, all of these resources we're going to recently unharmed people rather than,

Speaker 2 6:33

and just to give a, for those who don't really know, just to get a scale of what happened, I think on the order of 40,000 acres were burned between Napa and Sonoma counties. Uh, there are still counting, but it's probably going to be somewhere around 5,000 to 5,500 structures burned. And about 3000 of those are homes in the Santa Rosa area. So, and we are already a chronically under homed community. Like there, there's a ton of building that needs to happen. And

Speaker 1 7:11

I would gently correct you that we're not chronically W, we're not chronically short on housing, we're chronically short on affordable housing. There are so many empty units that are not affordable or being kept as second homes, third homes, airbnb.

Speaker 5 7:29

Yeah, true, true. But apparently if you're looking at just the market, like if we're all normies, we actually do have less than the average area of homes available. And now considering that the market is going to squeeze and it's going to be much harder, the demographic shift is going to be staggering in like I am trying to picture how it's going to affect communities and people that have, I mean, so many people I know are getting evicted or

Speaker 1 8:03

landlords raising rents, which is just in what is designated to be a disaster area is illegal, but adults don't care. I'm sorry. We, we kind of got off the topic of, of those who are underserved by shelters.

Speaker 2 8:17

Yes. Until we will topic of housing back to that. Yeah.

Speaker 5 8:21

Um, yeah, uh, Conrad made a really good point about the homeless and folks that were living in, you can't miss just, um, a lot of them rely on support networks, um, for supplies, food that were disruptive. They also had to breathe the air and they couldn't just go inside and, and yeah, it really, uh, I think made a difference to those, uh, members of the community that reached out to them because you typically think someone lost their home then they're the ones that need help. But you look at the whole of community, also the national guard. Um, a lot of people that I talked to saw it. Okay. It makes making people feel safe, but it just looked to me like such an act of intimidation and it just puzzled me. I saw a local supervisor say that everyone, the shelter feels safe because the national guard standing out there with their rifles and was, I just couldn't understand like where one, like how those two things connect. Like why would you feel safe?

Speaker 4 9:25

Oh yeah. Fire is nothing against the rifles and just blast as far as the way.

Speaker 1 9:30

Okay.

Speaker 2 9:30

Well and even in the, when, when the, uh, the, the media, which is by and large, very, very liberal out here when they were talking about the cordoned off sections that were, you know, cordoned off because of threats of fire or because they weren't safe. Like the first thing that they always talked about was that they're protecting homes from looters to the fire. And as always, they always talk about like looters first. They always talk about the, you know, people who like want to just there waiting for any opportunity scheming to go steal your shit. Like oh to go redistribute Yo shit. Yeah.

Speaker 1 10:08

A lot of these areas that were cordoned off a Boujie is hell expensive houses. It, you can see a line from protecting against looters versus protecting against people who don't have this stuff, who probably deserve this stuff but we won't let them have the stuff. Yeah.

Speaker 4 10:30

We actually saw the interim acting sheriff of Sonoma county because the previous one was forced out. So your community action, the interim sheriffs has explicitly said like looting has not been a major problem. Um, well one of our friends told us recently that they had come up with some dollar figure for the amount of money of stuff that has been stolen apparently. But um, I don't have a high level of trust for how, who made those valuations in. And so personally I haven't really even like reading the like press Democrat is your local like super liberal media outlet around here. Hasn't had a lot of information about that. So I think it really is not that big of a problem.

Speaker 3 11:13

And then as it's true in any other situation that law enforcement protects people on an unequal, like, yeah. On an equal level and, and doles out, um, consequences on a, on a racialized in a racialized way. Um, I, in conversation with a friend who's been a first responder this morning, she's shared that she had talked with someone who, who had been,

Speaker 1 11:41

mmm,

Speaker 3 11:42

let's see. She must not have lost her whole home because I think she was evacuated and then returned to find that her home had been looted and is undocumented and does not feel comfortable. I'm going to the police to talk about that. And so, you know, national guard makes some feels safe and others feel unsafe and you know, theft impacts people in a very differently. I shed no tears for the wine sellers that were lost in the fire or the wine cellars and looted from. And, but I, I do feel for the people who, who have lost their homes items, you don't have recourse,

Speaker 5 12:22

especially since even if you had insurance, you would need a police report in order to file with your insurance, which if you are not comfortable going into law enforcement, which is an incredibly sane feeling to have. You all left.

Speaker 6 12:39

Nothing.

Speaker 2 12:42

Yeah.

Speaker 5 12:43

It's funny, just in my everyday life I'm surrounded by just the average Sonoma county liberal that when we talk, when we say the word liberal we mean right wing. It's so funny. And to the right of us. Yeah. But there is, and then also you look on Facebook and like your uncle and shit and it's like there's this rage towards the imagined looting scenario and you see all this like murderous language. And I've just had conversations with people that are like, oh my God, if that happened to me. And it's like how much of this is actually happening versus that thing that people do where they create a situation in their head where they're justified to like murder. It's distressing and it's a very right wing, reactionary impulse.

Speaker 3 13:30

We got the cops called on us for going to water our neighbors plants while they were evacuating themselves. That's a good example. I feel like of people's, just like knee jerk, a distrust of dare on neighbors.

Speaker 2 13:45

Yeah. And, and the other, the other population that tends to be overlooked because there's this, this history of just really wretched. The humanization of them are, are people who have been put into jail. And you know, I was working at a gas station. You meet all kinds of people all day long. One of the guys said, I, I just met a couple of days ago. He, um, he just got out of county lockup, which is down in the Sonoma County Administration Center, which was right, like just barely, uh, the fire just barely missed them. And you know, he said that when, when it happened, the entire jail just filled up with all this smoke and they were, uh, because it happens so fast. The, uh, the warden said that they couldn't or wouldn't evacuate anybody. And so, you know, for a couple of days they were just sitting there in this horror, perfectly smoke-filled toxic smoke filled environment until I think it was three or four days. And they finally got these massive air cleaners to air purifiers to, to suck in all the, all the terrible air or push it out or something like that. And to, at the, at the county jail there is, and it was, their primary goal was obviously not to save people's lives. It is to make sure that these people stay locked up, you know, over over the, the potential of the entire thing burning down and having, what is it, like a thousand people or something like that in that jail. So there's a, there's also those folks who are, are pretty like on a good day, they're being mistreated.

Speaker 3 15:30

Yeah. I think looking into the future and to communities who have not experienced a natural right natural combo, manmade disasters, I would say get two weeks out. What can we, what can we expect or what can we look for? Um, we can, um, look for unsafe practices around jails or neglects of inmates. Um, and so people who have family members in jail, um, should just have that in mind. But if there's a natural disaster, they might not be safe as well as well as translation. Any like language, um, language accessibility on the part of the local government, federal governments and nonprofits or NGOs like the Red Cross has failed to provide. So if you walk into the local access center, um, that FEMA has set up at the old, um, press Democrat building downtown, you are not guaranteed to have your in for, to have translation. I was talking with someone who had been working with someone who um, spoke to colleagues. I mean people who, who speak, who had their first language is not English or Spanish and we'll have even more difficulty. She was actually on the phone with a member of the government agency and said, you know, I can help this woman for now. I speak like very basic to Gallog but um, in the future, how can she, she lost her home, how can she get help with like insurance and all these documents? And the person on the other line said, can you stick with her and help her if she said, no, this person is a stranger, I work and I am not, I, I don't speak the language adequately. Anyway. So, um, I also spoke to people who were at the local access center and just volunteered to translate. So what we're seeing is that these government agencies team, I'm more than willing to take advantage of people who are scrambling to meet those needs, but I'm not prepared to meet those needs themselves. The federal government and Red Cross might a bit of a pass this time. I mean not a pass, but we can understand that many of their Spanish speaking workers are at in Florida and Puerto Rico right now. But, um, Sonoma county has, has been, uh, it's had time to protect plenty of time to repair. It's been accountancy full of people who require, um, language access in language other than English for a very long time. And so I think that's something to look at going forward.

Speaker 2 18:21

You know, a lot of people have been praising the, the work that the Red Cross and other organizations have been doing. But from, from what I have been able to see, the vast majority of work was done spontaneously by people in and around these affected neighborhoods and communities. And really it was the Red Cross essentially came in and took over those spontaneous mutual aid networks and basically imposed a very like centralized top down structure upon them. Whereas I, I really don't think that that was really all that useful, uh, for them to have done that. If, if the Red Cross, if that organization wasn't here, all these people who came out to help out their neighbors would have been just fine and, and in fact might've been a little bit easier to, to get resources from one place to another because the Red Cross is essentially taking all of the resource distribution and into themselves so that you basically need to go through them in order to get stuff to another shelter. And like you were saying, we had people who, who came down off the hill and we're staying at our hotel as a temporary shelter until uh, until uh, other shelters were established and you know, the um, police and first responders said, okay, these are the, these are the official shelters you guys need to go here. And so as I think that, you know, that that sort of like liberal need for centralized authority, it didn't hamper us all that much, but at the same time really wasn't all that effective at doing things that we weren't already doing ourselves.

Speaker 5 20:11

There was a sort of unaffiliated support network donations drop off in my town. And when I spoke to the people that were there, there were all volunteers. I got a lot more information about the needs in other areas. They were mostly truck and stuff up to Mendocino county, Ukiah, Willits and versus speaking to the sort of Red Cross and the federal employees, you didn't really get a lot of information. Um, it was sort of like, don't, we're discouraging dropoffs at this point. We fill these forms and come at this time if you want to volunteer, but just sort of people that have been talking to other people, it was much more informative. And also I think more effective. And I know you can speak to receiving donations and then distributing donations on a nongovernmental nonstate level. Would you like to speak a little bit about what the local wobblies have been doing?

Speaker 4 21:16

Oh yeah. So that's, that's been the most of what I've been up to. So I was already in sort of like community support network prior to when this happened. And so it was really lucky that we had something in place and connections to roll with it. And so we've been doing a lot of coordinating supplies coming up from the lower bay area and then getting them as directly as possible to the people that are in need so that they're not getting tied up in different, you know, warehouses in places. Because even just trying to interact with people, it's like they're, they don't always have access or a car to drive to the Salvation Army or Red Cross area where they can get stuff. And so I've been, uh, up as far as Ukiah distributing supplies to like reservations or between shelters in the area and I'm just kind of passing stuff out. And I mean, up until this morning, our house was just like, our house was piled with supplies like diapers and water and food and all of, you know, whatever, you know, people needed. And I think that's all, it was also really effective in the way that when we would go to like the salvation army for example, there would be a lot of things that people dropped off, like wedding dresses that maybe weren't necessarily important for people in fires. And so we were able to go to people and talk to them face to face and say, what do you actually need? What is it that's really important to you? So that, you know, we weren't taking all kinds of whatever people's like spring cleaning that they were things they were just sort of getting rid of. And I felt like that was really important and effective and it didn't just clog up with unnecessary stuff. So yeah, we've been doing that. Uh, we have friends that are out right now doing that stuff. Um, we just kind of consolidated things into a more central location so it wasn't like at people's houses and, um, you know, putting people at whatever risks are associated with that and just making it more accessible as well. And so if anyone is interested in getting in contact with us about, um, gathering supplies, um, you can visit our, we have a Facebook page, which is facebook.com/soko while a IWW or we also have an information hotline, which is seven Oh seven 809 four, seven eight. And you can call in. We have actually been getting a lot of, uh, support people trying to volunteer and it's, it's a, it's almost a little bit more than we know what to do with people right now. I think the most, uh, important thing is trying to get in contact with people who are in need. Find out what they need so we can get it out to them. Because at any given day we have, I don't know, two to five volunteers with cars who are ready to stuff to you. So, uh, if you are in need of stuff or you know, people are who are in need and stuff, getting contact with us, if you would like to organize like donation drives or whatever in your area, you can contact us too so we can let you know exactly what it is that would be most necessary. And so, uh, there's that, uh, shout out to everyone who volunteered. Sorry we haven't got back to you, but we're just, you know, it's very moment to moment with us right now.

Speaker 3 24:09

I've heard people request that people who are out of the county and are looking to support move from buying things to, to donating money to giving like gift cards to places so that in the future, people who are currently on how and or, you know, staying at a relative's home, staying in shelters in the future when they move back into a home and have this space can, um, buy the things that they need. Also places where people can donate that do not discriminate against undocumented people are discriminated for. Citizenship status are the UNDOCU funds specifically for undocumented families. Um, who would be excluded from Fema. And I know the Redwood Credit Union, I just learned the Redwood Credit Union fund as well as the United way fund United way. That's it. Big Ngo. And they also do not discriminate on the basis of citizenship.

Speaker 1 25:08

Um, one of the things that we're going to do is in the show notes for this episodes, we'll have links to all those and also to something that, uh, you very self effacing. We did not mention, which is that the Sonoma County, uh, wobblies also have a rebuilding fund that is up on generosity. I know that during the fires there was a they relief fund for covering those costs. But now you've transitioned to, uh, to kind of funds for recovery work. Yeah.

Speaker 3 25:35

And we're looking to possibly move to a free store model and that requires a warehouse or a place where, you know, a more public place where we could volunteer or have, you know, people sitting there sort of just encouraging people to be on the honor system. Um, but not asking questions. And that would be free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the vision is free to people who need the staff, not necessarily people who are impacted by fire. Also people who are adversely impacted by capitalism or any of the other disasters that that impact our lives. And so I'm wearing contact with people who buy with someone who is trying to secure warehouse for us, but if others have a space, it's summary Central in Santa Rosa, like be great. And then we could do more of the offering rides to people who don't have cars. And then we could just give them rides to the free store and say, please take what you need to be a more direct routes rather than this sort of us being the gatekeepers of the between, you know, between we be the gatekeepers between the funding or the supplies and the people who need it. So to try to break down those barriers.

Speaker 2 26:49

Yeah. Because we do have to remember that a couple of thousand people lost their homes, but that is on top of the, a couple of thousand people who are chronically without homes in this, in this county.

Speaker 3 27:01

And people whose family members have been deported, met a family who was impacted by deportation as well as a fire. And so these are the crises that are ongoing, that also deserve attention support.

Speaker 2 27:16

So it sounds like we're, we're already starting to kind of get into this, but if you guys could talk about, um, the vision for what you want to see us as the left in this area doing to, to recover and then you know, where you see potential threat from disaster capitalism essentially.

Speaker 7 27:39

Okay.

Speaker 4 27:39

All right. Um, so I guess for things that I or we think are important for moving forward is, um, so the, the IWW industrial workers of the world actually is not an organization that focuses on disaster relief. And what the IWW actually does is provide tools for workers in workplaces to organize unions to have more control over their workplaces. And I think that that is a really good step for people to actually have control over their ability to distribute goods or just their lives in general. And so I think that that could be a really good step in moving forward in protecting ourselves from the problems that essentially brought this disaster about. And then I think it's also really exciting seeing all the connections that are being made. A lot of people are now suddenly being faced with the problems that were sort of under the surface, um, in our society before. And, uh, people are directly working on those things. Um, so like providing support for undocumented people or people who are houseless a, we had one guy made a joke to us like, oh, I wish there'd been a fire before because now people actually care about me. Um, and uh, so, you know, doing that, making those kinds of connections, getting involved, having a direct interactions with your community are really good.

Speaker 3 29:02

Um, yeah, I think that two of the greatest threats to accounting now post fire based on what we've seen under capitalism when natural slash manmade disasters roll through it are dangerous cleanup.

Speaker 7 29:19

Um, kind of, um,

Speaker 3 29:23

uh, policies or I don't want to say, um, workers, um, being hired to clean up that toxic waste that as a result of the fire and not receiving adequate, um, equipment or training and, and getting sick as a result. And then the, the monstrosity that is gentrification, just going nuclear and, um, I, I was, what was that? It's like the barrel baron. You know what I'm saying about,

Speaker 2 29:55

yeah, it's the, it's the, it's essentially the bourgeois who comes in and basically sits down at a table in the middle of a disaster zone and says, I will give you, I will give you a small amount of cash right now for your land. And basically in basically in that way sort of like takes over, um, large sections of a city or you know, uh, some region and, and actually, so that actually is how bank of America got it. Start it. Got It. Start by an Italian immigrant who in the wake of the 1906 earthquake essentially did just that. He, he sat down in, uh, the immigrants Italian neighborhood at a table with the, you know, a briefcase full of money and said, where's your house? I'll buy it from you right now. And then that, that, that became the seed money for Bank of America. So Bank of America has never been, you know, as, as, as vampiric as banks typically are. Like, this is like the way they even just got their start was pretty bad.

Speaker 3 31:04

I've, from what I've heard, that people who own homes in Sonoma county, all the reports I've heard of it, they want to rebuild. You know, my coworker wants to rebuild her home in coffee park. It's going to take a long time. Some people are not going to be able to stick around for the two to three years that it'll take to rebuild their homes. But, um, my biggest concern as far as I can tell are the people who rented and who's landlords aren't necessarily going to rebuild the same poems and charging the same price. Currently I heard of an apartments at two room apartment or maybe home that went from 2,400 to 6,000, I think. Anyway, they just, they're just amazing. Yeah, that's an anecdotal story. They're probably not as exaggerated as that, but we know that there's rent gouging going on. Um, that's, yes, some of it is illegal and no, it will not be, um, law will not be enforced. And the timeline that is necessary. It takes months to get to, you know, you can imagine if your rent gadgets, do you have to talk to the attorney general of California and try to get them to do what to the landlord. I mean there's just, we know that there's, there's not legal recourse, so we're going to need to come up with another way to, um, to, to protect ourselves as renters.

Speaker 4 32:27

And I think all of this is coming actually in the midst of the previously mentioned housing crisis, uh, I've heard people call it, but, um, last year there was the city council in measures to actually protect residents who were living in apartment buildings. I think it didn't apply to like, um, single family homes or, but in apartment buildings to prevent them from having their rents raised by a certain amount. And it stood for a while until an association of renters, people who manage these apartments spent like a million or some ridiculous amount of money to put a, um, a measure on the local ballot. And then I heard it was like 15% of the county voted it down. So there's, that was recently, this rent control measure was defeated. I'm not sure if the city council, maybe we'll try and put something they can use some emergency power or whatever to make that happen. Uh, but also another point of interest regarding this is that there is a large working class area of that was previously held by the county known as Roseland, um, where a lot of Latino like working class families lived that was already being gentrified with like they're getting new roads and all of this stuff him and that the city of Santa Rosa is planning to annex it. And that's, I think just starting this year, I think. Um, and so I think it just, you know, living near that area, I already am seeing housing development projects that have been stagnant for the last like five years or so, are now suddenly being bought up in construction is going through now. And I wonder what kind of housing is actually going to be put on there and how that's going to affect the communities that have lived in that, those neighborhoods forward, I don't know, 2030 years. Um, so I think that's another interesting thing that we should be paying attention to.

Speaker 5 34:18

Just, it's funny the, whether the story of the rent tripling his anecdotal or not, it's definitely things like that are happening in the rage that I mentioned earlier that you see when people imagine someone taking their TV out of their house when they've been evacuated and then they want to blow their head off. You don't ever see that rage towards someone who is putting so much a family on, on the street. Uh, the damage to someone's life when people are evicted and the housing shortage is closing in and they have to move to places like grass valley or out of state, um, is way, way worse than people stuff being taken. The Rd half stuff. And just that sort of disparity between, it's like while they're playing by the rules versus they're not, it's kind of like sub subjective violence versus structural violence.

Speaker 2 35:23

Yeah. And, and liberals don't see structural violence. It's, you know, it's it being enacted and protected by the state and is therefore a moral good thing. And is there for

Speaker 5 35:32

not considered violence. Shout out to rip Marcus J who's

Speaker 1 35:38

tweet thread. I will make sure it gets put in the, in the show notes we had a thread about watching one of his neighbors in the apartment complex being evicted, children crying as it was raining outside. And then days, weeks later, the apartment from which they were evicted was still empty. If you are somebody who rents a talking directly to a landlord, not, not to the people that they hired to be a level between you and then, well, not to the lawyers behind the property management company, talking to an actual landlord is a sure fire way to stoke some of that socialist rage at the entitlement and rent seeking bullshit. The you will see that you will hear and that you have to put up with if you want so much to live.

Speaker 3 36:34

Yeah. I think again, learning from people who have, uh, from movements that have formed in the wake of disasters, we will continue to, to choose between taking up with a governments, you know, what the state fails to do at the, the services the state fails to provide. And then also pushing, putting pressure on, forcing the state to enforce laws or to, um, to create laws to, to protect renters. So I think both of these things are necessary that taking it into our own hands and doing direct action to ensure, to put pressure on landlords and then also, um, you know, putting pressure on, for example, the county government to take action,

Speaker 1 37:24

just making it so the police don't get involved in evictions would also be an amazing start because when you have the sheriff or the local police that as part of an eviction neck shunt, that's, that's a whole other layer of, of fear and anxiety. And especially if you are not documented and you're being evicted, having the sheriff, a sheriff that's coordinated with ice and assisted in deportations, like that's one more layer to the monstrous hell cake.

Speaker 3 38:05

Yeah. I mean it's, and it's also just literally losing your home at gunpoint and that, that in and of itself is stressful enough and, and is, is awful enough that you add on, you add on, like you said, and it just gets that much, yeah.

Speaker 1 38:19

Worse. Anything that you count take with you and they just toss them to the dumpster.

Speaker 8 38:23

Yup.

Speaker 1 38:24

And then you have to start over from zero from having been evicted it.

Speaker 8 38:30

Okay.

Speaker 3 38:30

Yeah. You know, I was actually, I was actually involved in that, um, the, the rent control measure campaign

Speaker 2 38:36

and you know, it was, it was a really tough thing to see that, you know, go to the ballot on such, I mean it went out to the ballot in June I think, which is just such an off time. And it is so, it's so awkward and really is designed specifically to get only the people who are most plugged in, most politically active, most enfranchised to get out to the ballot. And in a place like that, this, that means the, the most bourgeois of, of the, um, the voting population is going to be, uh, is, is actually going to be participating in it. And that's, that's the reason why it failed, you know, as it did. Um, you know, and we're, we're moving forward on, on the, the fight for 15 campaign. You know, we trying to go forward with a, a, you know, a countywide, um, zero waste initiative and, and greening the county. But what should we be in terms of electoral politics? Like obviously like that can't, we all know here that electoral politics are not where our actions end, but you know, at some point, given that we, we live in this, you know, liberal dominated capitalist system, electoral politics have to be at least on our radar, which should we be doing? How should we as radical leftists be sort of interfacing with the more liberal activists who are trying to get at least some of the things that we want.

Speaker 4 40:16

Um, I know personally, like I have very little faith in the electoral system, but I have a lot of friends who have been definitely got very good arguments of how it is important to pay attention to those things and how it is important to try and interface with them as much as possible. So at least you know, um, what they're going on. And I, I guess I would encourage people to like still try and pay attention. Do what you can, don't put your faith in them, but you know, you try and use them. Yeah. To their advantage. Like you were, you were saying, uh, I think one thing right now is that, uh, at least while the cameras are rolling, disaster relief sounds sexy. And so you can get money or donations or whatever from these people, they will maybe pay you a little bit more mine than you than they normally might. And so maybe, um, I don't want to say exploit that, but use it to your best. You know, you have their attention right now, so use it.

Speaker 2 41:11

Um, yeah, absolutely exploit them. They will exploit us. So

Speaker 3 41:16

there, I know they're, um, north Bay organizing project took the lead on the rent control, um, campaign and um, they are, they like a few days after the disaster started talking about rent gouging because again, this is nothing new. We've joined w you know, tragically join the ranks of, um, of working class folks across the world who are, who are in the wake of disasters. And so we know what's coming and they are preparing. Um, I will say what matters to me probably as much as the, um, whatever reform is one is how it's one. So if it's one through lobbying, then that doesn't raise consciousness. It doesn't prove to us that we can work together and that we can, that direct action works that we can win what we need. Then the contrary, you know, grassroots, I'm mobilizing of people who were affected by rent, mobilizing of renters, I'm into like tendons union style, um, uh, Sao organizations. I think I'd put a lot of weight behind that because then, you know, after the reform is one also one these, um, relationships and, and um, capacity that can move forward. So I would say as radical as, as, as leftists, we should have in mind, um, what, what vision we have for the future in Sonoma County, how we are going to need to come together, um, to protect whatever is one on our behalf.

Speaker 1 42:46

If you are going door to door canvassing for a ballot measure, canvasing for, to vote for and again or against something, you are contacting them as an individual and you perhaps get the contact information. So that you can try and loop them into something later, but you're not immediately connecting them with the neighbors, with the peers. You're not forming relationships in that moment. And I think when you talk about tendency unions and local community organizing groups, the ability for individuals to connect with each other through that right from the very get go, rather than

Speaker 8 43:31

being

Speaker 1 43:32

leveraged as names on a list that someone holds in a Google doc somewhere, especially at this time, I feel it's much more powerful and important, much harder,

Speaker 8 43:46

hmm.

Speaker 1 43:47

To build these connections and facilitate these connections. But more powerful in the short and long term.

Speaker 2 43:53

To be fair, it's probably a little bit easier than it would have been before the fire, just because there's, there's a lot of consciousness that has been raised just by the disaster. I mean, you know, I, I was listening to Ksr row during the, during the entire, you know, fire episode and, you know, they, they were talking about mutual aid and solidarity

Speaker 3 44:18

and these are very liberal people. Yeah. I heard stories about that study by Houston that, um, that when a radical groups started to, uh, facilitate neighborhood, um, like assemblies that they really took shape in other places, that people like jumped on to that idea and they just, it, it seemed like they just needed to see that model and, and, and see how it worked. So I think, um, that's one thing that we can do is, is have that connection, you know, I putting the message out that I, for one really want to learn from people and these others disaster zones and then, um, so we can have that connection and then show a little bit of vision there and then hopefully that people will want to organize on a more horizontal grassroots level.

Speaker 2 45:14

And you know, and definitely having these, you know, nonstate institutions like cooperatives and unions really makes that possible. Uh, and so, you know, the, the Iww is, is sort of person foremost a, it is a revolutionary labor union. And in this, you know, even even before the fire, there's been a kind of a dearth of local available labor in large part because of the high cost of housing and living expenses. Do you guys see as you know, a possible way to, to sort of like grow, uh, uh, left power in this area as a construction cooperative or, you know, something, something along these lines of, you know, being able to actually have less of a bourgeois sir of reconstruction?

Speaker 4 46:12

I think so. Yeah. Um, and actually this has been something that's been on my mind for a little while. Um, I do, I work in manufacturing in a, I've had several discussions with different people who were interested in forming co-op's of, uh, industrial nature. Um, and I think that now this opens up, uh, yeah, just knew there's this vacuum that's been created and so we can, you know, maybe use that to our advantage. I know one, one place that burned down in near my work was a gun store. So maybe that's another thing we could get into a, there's all kinds of,

Speaker 3 46:47

yeah, we are not advocating that the IWW become arms traders, uh, to the NSA people monitoring this. We are in no way talking about that. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But one thing that I love about the Iww is that, um, they, we will not go in and organize people that the Iww is, um, a set of tools and a set of people who will support people to organize their own workplaces. Um, I know in terms of cleanup that the people from the National Day Labor or organizing network Endelon who have been working in Houston and saw, oh no, sorry, in Katrina, the Katrina aftermath in that, that cleanup efforts and saw how day laborers, where it like, it's like systematically, um, lost our, if that had their wages stolen, um, from, from con by contractors. And then also we're putting in really unsafe, um, work environments. And so they came out to the great and day Labor Center and have started training workers on safe practices anyway. In the future, I'd hope that Iww can, can just serve that kind of needs, you know, for a Borchers feel like they're being exploited and want to do something about it. Then we will support them. We are getting kind of close to an hour. Do you guys have other questions that you want to ask?

Speaker 5 48:19

Sure. Maybe one, cause I haven't talked to a lot of other wobblies besides the few. I know and I work in the food industry and um, there's a lot of talk about how the agriculture and wine industries are being affected and among like owners that I know, but not a lot about how it's going to affect labor practices. Are y'all like plugged into at all the sort of, um, I, I did see an article about the Mondavi, um, forcing workers to harvest grapes on the Friday of the week of the fire with no masks. And I mean they got docked by the, um, whatever labor board pretty badly. But um, I imagine it's going on everywhere. How

Speaker 9 49:04

cool.

Speaker 5 49:06

I guess in general, how well organized are the farm workers and grape workers and d, how do you see this fire affecting, I guess their ability to organize or at least the workplace conditions? Are you plugged into that at all?

Speaker 9 49:22

Cool.

Speaker 3 49:24

I know people who have worked with the United farm workers, um, no people who are connected with that. Um, but again, I think I, to our, to our credit, this organization is not a about advocacy. And so we, um, we wouldn't serve the role of, of advocating on behalf of workers. We would be supporting workers. No one has reached out to us. We're very new. And so honestly on the work place end of things you should expect very slow, careful, deliberate because workplace organizing is risky for people who do have documents.

Speaker 4 50:05

And actually we, we are moving forward and we have a space officially reserved for a workplace organizer training in Santa Rosa. I'm coming up, keep an eye on our Facebook page for more information on that. Um, but yeah, we have that in motion. So if you work in a place where you are being mistreated or you are unsafe practices, having stolen any real grievance against your employer, come to the training and we, it's a two day thing and we give you some skills for helping you to organize your workplace. And then if, uh, you know, we will support you as best we can and your efforts. Um, and so yeah, please share that around. Again, keep an eye out on our Facebook. We'll be posting more about that when we have more things concrete.

Speaker 1 50:47

And when you do get an event pinned down, uh, let, let any of us three know and we will pop it up on our Twitter and um, so people can find it, find it that way even if even if they don't have Facebook or don't follow you on Facebook, Huh?

Speaker 2 51:05

Put it out to the other DSA, northbay members and make sure that everybody who, everybody who would be interested in coming knows about it. At least

Speaker 1 51:14

I, I appreciate your saying. Expect very slow because we've seen what happens when you expand too fast, too big leak. Two big things.

Speaker 3 51:28

Keep it, keep it

Speaker 1 51:31

into much of a hurry. You get too big, too fast and the cracks. So not very much sooner than you would expect. But that's me talking from a place of his disillusionment and a cynicism that I only occasionally allowed to come out. So I apologize in advance for anybody who has heard that and been so disappointed to hear it coming out of from me,

Speaker 2 51:53

we probably will have a show about it because it is an incredibly important topic that sort of desserts its own.

Speaker 1 52:02

Yeah. Give it a content warning for people crying because I might cry. Yeah. I'm really curious to hear about the sections. I mean not to you

Speaker 3 52:09

cry but I will not kink shame right at the moment for that check. Um, I just on the, on the note of, of speed, I think we have been in the last two weeks reacting quickly as we needed to. Um, the disaster moved quickly and the rebuilding will be slow and I think we can, we can now take a breath and make sure that our efforts are a careful yeah.

Speaker 1 52:41

And deliberate as well. We are in a a constant hell world of crisis and disaster. But once the fire is done, we returned to the quote unquote normal level of crisis and disaster,

Speaker 10 52:59

which

Speaker 1 53:01

still feels like you have to do something immediately now, now, now. But we can't necessarily without doing it wrong

Speaker 2 53:10

or burning out very, very quickly.

Speaker 10 53:12

Hmm.

Speaker 2 53:14

Oh, so I think I, I think this is a pretty good place to sort of wrap up the conversation, just to throw it over to you guys, you know, what are you, what are you optimistic about and, and you know, what are you, what do you sort

Speaker 1 53:26

of afraid of in the coming year, two years, three years, however long we go through this recovery process and then anything else that you want to kind of plug, we'll talk about that you haven't already?

Speaker 4 53:39

Um, I guess in that order, I think the things that I'm most worried about is a state organization stepping in and doing what they do, which is giving people a false sense of security and then pulling the rug out from under them. And I think, you know, we are already seeing people are a little bit, where are you about that? And uh, and so that's what I'm most most worried about. The thing that I'm most excited about is people like already from the get go, having that awareness and then forming their own um, community groups in responding to things in ways that are actually valuable to them. And then if I was going to plug something, I would say, yeah, check her Facebook. Any other, uh, wobblies in the area who we haven't hooked up with already. Pay Your dues and give us a call so we can, you know, keep things rolling. Um, uh, I apologize to all the people who have reached out to us and we haven't been able to get you directly plugged in. Again, like a Maggie mentioned, we've only really been operating as a group in Sonoma county for a like a month and a half, two months, a very short amount of time. And we're just, you know, we're working to the backend bureaucracy so that we can make things easy for people to get in there. And it's, and we're doing it, it's going forward. I'm really excited about that too. So, uh, yeah, onwards and upwards

Speaker 3 54:49

I'm worried about and, and optimistic all rolled into one. Um, we are, we are learning what we already knew, which is that the state does not, will not save us. Um, cannot meet our needs. Capitalism cannot meet our needs and we can, we can meet each other's needs and we have to think, well, we'll just, we'll see more of that going forward. We'll see again, when the, when the state pulls the rug out from under people, um, we will be those people and we will be there to, um, to support each other. Um, oh, I w okay. So, so we're responding to the reality that wow, IWW is mainly about workplace organizing workers and the working class in general, including those who are unemployed still members of the working class. Um, yeah, um, are exploited and so many ways outside of the workplace. And so I, ww has formed a case that it historically forms, um, has formed at General Defense Committee, um, to do outside of work place. Like, um, defense of the working class when it's attacked. And we've sort of expanded that, not just attacked by, um, by like corporate interests but also just attacked by capitalism in general. So, um, so we will be organizing on that front as well.

Speaker 1 56:12

I do not know if the mics will pick this up, but high five on both of those things, the, the state will not save us. We have to save ourselves. And the, um, Bay Area San Francisco, GMB of Iww has just formed it's GDC. So excited to see,

Speaker 11 56:34

mm.

Speaker 3 56:34

Popping up up here as well. Okay. Uh, yeah, that's a,

Speaker 2 56:38

I think that's a really important conversation to, to start. I don't think that, I don't think we covered nearly everything today, uh, or you know, been able to sort of see and the kinds of things that we will have to be covering, you know, going forward. So this is obviously, you know, it'd be one part in a long series of conversations that we can hopefully have. Uh, but I, I just really want to thank you guys not just like for being here today, but like for the actual work that you guys have been doing has been, you know, from one, from one comrade to another. It's, it's been really awesome.

Speaker 4 57:17

Yeah. Likewise. Thanks for having us on. It's really cool to be able to get the word out to as many people as we can. Um, and uh, I, you know, there's also been like Dsa, people who have been showing up that like we've never met before, who have been helping us out with like, oh, you need this. Here you go. Or like you need somewhere to keep all of your stuff. Yes, you can keep it in our building or whatever. So yeah, there's been a lot of reciprocation, which is,

Speaker 3 57:37

let's see everything. Can you make one last plug and a comrade is organizing what will be and national, that's what they're going for. A national general strike. They're going for a three day general strike that they say, well, they hope will cripple the economy. What's another word that's not, it's not an evil. If uh, will, will damage, will harm the economy. Anyway, I'm trying to, the gears of capitalism screeching halt. Yes. Um, my apology thing. Um, yeah. So February 5th and this is, this is a general strike for immigration reform. It was originally about Daca but that um, but this person has realized that it needs to be just about immigration reform in general.

Speaker 1 58:28

Where could one find out more information about that? Could you maybe email us a link so that

Speaker 2 58:33

I could find out? We'll follow up on that. Yeah. But uh, yeah. Um, thanks everybody for joining us for listening to us today on the first episode of the new name for the show. So a little bit of administration here. We in the, the left coast podcast here we are trying to do some more in different projects. Uh, trying to maybe keep searching,

Speaker 1 59:00

draw a line between what is DSA North Bay and what his podcast and what is, what is official communication, what is non official communication, what is just us as individuals,

Speaker 2 59:13

right. So we're still going, we're still going to retain the left coast media name. Um, you know, we are still the left coast media, uh, but the, the show title is going to be different. You expect to see a couple of different shows on this feed and in their own separate feeds. If they get popular, if we keep them going forward. Uh, for example, a cooking show, that one's probably going to be a, you know, a video show that we're going to be posting on Youtube, but a lot of exciting changes. Um, but you know, don't, don't worry, we're still, we're still the same comrades, you know, and love or love to hate. Listen to, I don't really care which one vaguely tolerate talk shit about you or whatever. I mean, as long as some tiny part of our message gets through to you. Yeah. So, you know, in, in that sense, you can still, you can still reach, uh, the collective at left-pad, which that handle might change in the future. It might not. Um, but if you want to contact the show directly with, um, with tips, with questions, uh, you can reach us on Twitter at North Bay and o r t h underscore e. We'll go ahead and we will wrap it up here and then you guys can go have fun.

Speaker 8 1:01:14

Okay.