Speaker 1 0:00

For the 20th of February, 2017 this is the Leptos podcasts, News, activism and culture from all over the west coast.

Speaker 2 0:13

Haka fight like call me with my old ass. [inaudible] say my own name. Why coke crack. That's full influx, right, is trying to see me put down there cause they can't get in the club. Look at me now. And they go when the south you slip. And now dark skins Asian girls with their hair down and back, their big brothers scrapping. We from war torn third World

Speaker 3 0:37

Two left coast podcast with your hosts here, Tiberius Caracas. And until you sauce, this is our introductory episode, you know, episode zero and we don't have a whole lot of news interviews and analysis to get to. So I figure what we're doing today, we'll just uh, introduce each other. So I think start off with Antonio, maybe, uh, talk a little bit about how you got into the Socialist Party of the USA Bay area chapter. Tell us your story about how you got there and maybe where you see it going in the future.

Speaker 4 1:06

I moved from Guam, um, at 26 years old. And moved to Berkeley to grant it to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. And it was here in Berkeley that was introduced to, I guess what I kind of felt, radicalize being, you know, being the other [inaudible] were ending it predominantly tomorrow. And he moved to a place where there's so much diversity, not just in terms of uh, people, but also ideas. And so it was in Berkeley that, you know, I started asking, you know, deeper questions about my world view and yeah, being held accountable for my ideas and my, and it's understanding my experience as a person of color, you know, studying, studying abroad or here in the states. So, um, and that was back in 91. I was a captain Franciscans at first. I joined the International Socialist Organization Iso. It was a campus based student group over at UC Berkeley. I was actually studying at the graduate theological union, which was on north side of Berkeley campus.

Speaker 3 2:06

And they eventually branched off into the Socialist Party USA. Right.

Speaker 4 2:10

I know that's a second group actually. Oh really? Yeah. So this is Friday is, uh, it's origins was the Socialist Party of America. It was a split back in the 70s in one branch. You know, started the Socialist Party was saying the other branch or the other group started DSA, democratic socialists of America. And so, but I, but I asked her, I asked. So initially, you know, and that's my first experience of organizing, you know, with, with an organization. Prior to that, I was introduced to Marx's analysis, uh, [inaudible] theory and phenomenon. Um, France went on, you know, psychoanalysis. I was introduced to that through my studies at the Graduate Theological Union and the setting and the breach and theology. So that's where, you know, I thought it was important to be a part of our organization. So I was my purse inchoate, a socials, politics, organizing and those back in [inaudible] 97. Yeah.

Speaker 3 3:04

Yeah. So late nineties, it was the rise of the Anti Nedo 18 globalization protests. Was there much going on in terms of actual organizing through socialists organizations or was it mostly through sort of like grassroots autonomous decisions to go out and protest?

Speaker 4 3:23

Yeah, I think that that primarily, let me, I think that the issues, the ISL was pretty much involved in at the time back in 97 almost certain issues around the death penalty, you know, abortion, death penalty. It was out of coalition building, uh, efforts with other organizations around, um, one 87 I guess just to go back and I share those. Yeah, we did some coalition building in, you know, on campus basically. We targeted a lot of US students. You know, I tried to recruit them.

Speaker 3 3:52

Yeah. Cause it seems to me that by the time you get to late nineties, early naughts pretty much, I can't really find anything relevant about labor organizations, specifically socialists, labor organizations that were really active in, in any major way at the time with the death of the Soviet Union that had pretty much died off in America as well.

Speaker 4 4:14

Yeah, I think, I think that's, can you just saw that in terms of what the issues that we, you were involved in on campus. It wasn't a campus issue that I can recall the time. That's something that the party for like I saw for about a few years. Yeah, three years I left. There were two, it was, I think we had, we vary in our politics and I think it was too much of a democratic centralist organization. You know, it was very top down and you know, there are a few of us that they really didn't appreciate that kind of organizing or that kind of reconcile, um, politics. So I had left and then eventually join the Socialist Party USA, which is a multitenancy party. So around 2001 or

Speaker 3 4:50

so. So right about the time that nine 11 happened, isn't that when you shifted over to spo? Say, so what were you guys doing with the SPU USA?

Speaker 4 4:59

The were organized around, Oh, at least I, you know, Socialist Party was a physical on democracy and you know, radical change revolution, respecting that people have various tendencies as well. And that a, we can collaborate and cooperate. I'm to those kind of love of respect, you know, and we welcome, you know, different ideas and tactics. So it was quite different. You know, you know, we're basically a, or required to tow the party line. It just seemed to religious a religious cult, you know, they would, they would pair you up with one other senior or veteran, um, comrades who would check in with your check in with, you may see checking on your politics to show that you're, you're on the same page, um,

Speaker 3 5:42

that you don't stray too far from the party line. Right.

Speaker 4 5:45

Yeah, exactly. That, you know, we were, when we did, uh, when we went out to recruit or do outreach, we were trying to sell newspapers, you know, and, uh, you know, they have a specific tactic. Right. And, uh, my way of connecting with people was not necessarily by politics. Yeah. I just, my, my, you know, my approach has always been to check in, you know, introduce myself and, um, find out what people are, where they are and that, and connect that way, and then move into, into how, you know, how the politics of the day is affecting their daily life or their notions of the future. So, and so it's different approach. So I really thought a lot of pressure and um, with [inaudible] very differently with, so let's just party if I'm more walking and a spirit of collaboration in our, in cooperation. Right. So you were telling me that the burial local chapter of the Socialist Party had had basically died down right before I had gotten in contact with you guys. Yes. Yeah. We're trying to revive, you know, and it seems like it's, I think we're pretty fortunate on the, on the left coast, you know, on the, on the west coast of the bay area, you know, there's a lot of leftist organizations and affiliations are kind of a diamond doesn't it all sudden. Yeah. And, and up until recently it's been 60 different groups vying for 80 different people. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like it's kind of tough to really get folks it takes, you know, we're a volunteer organization, you know, people step up, you know, based on their time and availability and you know, it takes just a few folks who are committed, you know, to keep it going, leaking only tickets so far unless you build new leadership, get folks excited, whatever that looks like. Whether that means you know, it takes time and takes energy to to keep things moving. You know what energy we certainly seem to have in spades right now. Yes. Yeah. You know, and things. How do you get folks who you know will commit it to a principal, right. That takes you beyond just the excitement of the moment. Especially because it has been so long since socialism has been seen as acceptable that you know, mainly what we're trying to do is reeducate liberals who have an understanding, at least on an intuitive level of the, you know, the fundamental structural issues of the way that we run our society but haven't been given any tools to really examine that. Is that what we really need to be doing? Is educational outreach as much as we need to be doing actual organizing around issues, doing direct actions against rightwing organization's. Yeah. Speaking of which, did you, uh, uh, take part in the protests against Milo Yiannopoulos over in Berkeley? Actually, I Ellison Ellison San Francisco at the time. Actually, it wasn't aware I had a conference call. I didn't realize that was happening. Oh really? Yeah. I think when a sound was happening until after it, no, I saw reports on my knees,

Speaker 3 8:56

feet. I was actually all set, eh, geared up to go to the protest. It was going to go down there and, and demonstrate. But unfortunately I got called into work. So, yeah. Which that always sucks, but you know, you have to make a living. Yeah, exactly. And uh, you know, the thing is, it's, it's, I mean, that's the differentiator between those of us who will have jobs. So nine to five or, uh, you know, there are those who, who don't necessarily have a set hours during a day, but you need to be on call or at hand basically seven days a week. It is. Yeah, exactly. And you know, you're up north and I'm, you know, even though I'm here in the bay area's kind of not easy to get from point a to point B at a moment's notice. Um, demonstration that, um, uh, what's that outright group that has a demonstration on a March 4th Saturday? Oh yes. Yeah, yeah. I did see that in my Twitter feed. Yes. That will be very interesting in these days. I'm kind of like cautious. I'm not sure there's a part of me that feels that that could get really violent in terms of like gun guns being used by all right folks from, right, right. Because we did see in the, I want to say a couple of days after the inauguration, there was a demonstration of north where somebody wearing a Trump hat make America great again. Hat did shoot someone who has demonstrated with Antifa against Milo Yiannopoulos. No, cause I mean, you know, I remember seeing at in a photo taken at one of the, was it, was it that the rally I think were, were there were some gun toting supporters, you know, they were there with their rifles. Uh, you know, there's been quite a few sort of reactionary organizations that do demonstrations, open carrying, you know, personally. So I really don't like violence. I don't like hurting people, but there is, there is a space for political islands. I don't think it is a tactic that we should be issuing on principle grounds. But for me, like I don't know if that's something that I'm personally capable of unless it's a really shit hits the fan situation. So I, I, you know, I go back and forth on it, but when I saw it, when it's all of the, what happened in Berkeley protesting against Milo, but I didn't have a problem with uh, and uh, the guys out there doing black bloc breaking windows or shooting fireworks, I didn't have any problem with that. I think where it went too far for for me was like pepper spraying just some random schmuck who happened to be wearing a Maga hat or whatever that was. Know that for me went too far. Like, I don't care about Richard Spencer getting punched because he's a, you know, an actual neo Nazi organizer. He does this, this is basically his job. He a trust fund kid who uses his money to go out and organize for ethnic cleansing and essentially, so I don't have any problem with him being punched, but if it's just some random nobody, I, I don't think that does our cause any good. I really don't.

Speaker 4 12:23

Yeah, I know about that. Then again, it to me, it's, I feel like those kinds of,

Speaker 3 12:29

yeah.

Speaker 4 12:29

Framing of, you know, whether, whether these types of incidents of, of aggression, right. Um, playing out, I always find that's kind of a, not the place to start because it's just cause you know, we can easily fall into this whoa. You know, I meant type. I mean, I'm a past, therefore nothing happens, you know, therefore I shouldn't get involved at all. Like, you know, I know I would have debates with just members of our party about a week and Dolan, uh, you know, kind of a violent revolution. I go, you know, I, that's not how, I wouldn't even frame it in those terms because I would cross that bridge when they get there. But until then, I think it's kind of productive to engage in abstract speculation of how we would act, you know, it would be pick up a gun or not, you know, or, or would we retaliate

Speaker 3 13:17

with force when, when we know we confronted me force, you know, so in the CIC faith there is the final and saying he actually basically laid out what I think is probably the most moral stance on political violence, which is when all boats of redressing a wrong have failed. Raising the sword is Justin pious. So if you, if you can resolve it peacefully, it, then you should do that. But you can't let oppression stand. You can't let injustice stand without doing something to stop it. And if what is required is violence to stop it, then that is in itself. Just

Speaker 4 13:59

I'd like to know what a, you know, what, what your, um, what your experiences around, around, you know, your political, um, you know, in how you rat radicalized.

Speaker 3 14:11

It's a socialist politics, right? Yeah. So, you know, I, growing up, uh, I grew up in a fairly Republican household and at least my dad has been pretty staunchly Republican, very pro capitalists. You know, I, I grew up with this idea of, you know, capitalism being this, you know, I never felt comfortable with it because I, I've never been, I've never liked authoritarian hierarchies. Even if I couldn't sort of identify exactly what it was, I didn't like, you know, I didn't have the tools to say, oh, it is the right to order and the duty to obey. You know, I didn't, I didn't really have the tools to, to put it into that kind of language, but it's always been sort of an intuitive thing for me. But I saw, you know, I looked around and I saw that capitalism has built out just an immense amount of material wealth. And, you know, we were living in an age where it is very easy to be comfortable. And so, you know, I always thought, well, I don't like the way that capitalists businesses are run. You know, I don't like this kind of, I'm going to tell you what to do and I'm going to fire you if you don't do it in a way that pleases me or even, you know, just capriciously fire someone. I, I've never, it's always sat wrong with me, but I always, I always felt like this is a necessity. And so I had this weird tension between we need to allow capitalists, businesses, corporations to do what they do because they create the wealth and the benefit for society. So there's this like libertarian streak, but then there's also, if you allow capitalism to run unchecked for too long, what you get is an ever decreasing number of people who have an ever increasing amount of economic power. And so, so there is, for longest time I was dealing with this tension and you know, having my own issues in life, I always just sort of said, well, you know, social democracy is a good thing. Capitalism isn't necessary evil and we'll just leave it at that. And you know, I'll deal with my own life. I've got my own shit going on and I'll just sort of let the rest of the world and be as it may. And, and really, I think what changed for me was probably about, I want to say, you know, it was watching, uh, occupy happen and uh, realizing that, you know, I didn't grow up with a lot of wealth, but my parents worked hard and were always able to give us a certain amount of comfort. And you know, when I, by the time I got to college, my dad was successful enough, my brother and I lived a very privileged life. So I always had this like, well, you know, my, my material comfort is being met and everybody, I know their material comfort is being met. And then the financial class hit and they're talking about people being evicted from their homes. And then occupy comes around and they're talking about the 1% versus the 99%. And that resonated with me and watching the police repression and crackdown having gone out there and, and being with people who were really like horribly affected by poverty. The first job that I had ever done was working at a gas station that was right off of the train tracks where a lot of homeless people, he used to use that as their sort of like main pathway. So they weren't harassed by cops and, but they were still able to get from one side of town to the other and connecting sort of like that homelessness and the issues that they face that I always sort of wrote them off as well. That's their problem that they did that to themselves. And then you know, hearing about people who had a structural analysis why this was the case and really giving me a way to sort of take this contradiction that I'd always had in my life about this. Not Liking the, the hierarchy but sort of living with it. Like finally having like a foothold into what kind of analysis that would allow me to say this is bad and it will always be bad. And it doesn't matter like how much social democracy you do, like how much you dress it up. The fact that capitalism is structured the way it is, it will always produce this. It will always go bad. So what we need is a better system. And so, you know, from from basically 2012 through 2015, you know, being online and arguing with people and having had this a foothold into this structural analysis of capitalism, I thought the more I would engage with people, the more, um, the more I learn about it, the more sort of radical I became. And it was just this, it was for me, it was just a, a very slow process of learning to, to shed like learning to shed my own privilege blinders, learn to shed the, the blinders if ideology, and to, to really come out the other side and say we can do better. And then finally with this last election cycle and just realizing how bad it really is that people are desperate enough to vote for someone like Trump is, that really pushed me from being a closet radical. It was like, I have these radical beliefs, but don't do anything to, you know, uh, seeing that something needs to be done and it's going to require all of us getting out and doing something in order for the system to really change. And that's what pushed me out. And I think it pushed a lot of other people out too. You know, that's, that's when I reached out to you guys and spamming, uh, any anybody I can find say, you know, I'm new to this. I don't know what to do. Show me the way.

Speaker 4 20:29

Yeah. I really appreciated you reaching out and also you're expanding your, your interest and your vision, you know, um, and some kind of plan that, that,

Speaker 3 20:38

that's how it was really amazing. Yeah. And I think that, I think that's probably something that we should sort of talk about. Um, we've, we've talked about the kind of dance around what our ideologies are and so like how we got, how we got radicalized, but, so what exactly, what's your, your Utopian goal that we should be working towards? What's the, what's the positive end for you?

Speaker 4 21:00

Yeah. For me, you know, the thing is that I see, I don't know, I've always felt that another world is possible. It may not, I may not see it in my lifetime, but that I can do the best I can to move towards that. You know, all that is still around and to impact, you know, I'm not the Kinda guy who are kind of person who wants to see immediate results. I tend to place my hope in a future. You know, I may not see it in my generation or several generations and I'm okay with that too. You know, what I do know is that, that I can't sit still and idle and watch things, you know, play out in this role that I, you know, needs to do my part. And the only way to do that with Pete to, to engage, it's what, um, you know, I've always felt that, uh, you know, it's kind of my am I, it's that kind of intuition, you know, that kind of gut sense that says, you know, we just got to keep struggling.

Speaker 3 21:52

Well, I think, I think for people like us, it's, it's, it's an abundance of empathy is what it is, is like we have an empathy that we can look out to other people's situations and say that's wrong. Like, even if, even if we ourselves are comfortable to say no, it's wrong that other people don't have sort of like their basic necessities met. It's not, it's not enough for us to be in a world where we can be living in comfort and have our material needs met. The world is not good enough until as many people as we can possibly make comfortable as many people who can be taken care of, are being taken care of and made comfortable.

Speaker 4 22:30

Yeah. And you know, for me, every person matters. I, um, I'm, you know, on Facebook, I've been on an exchange with, you know, will this person who's a Trump supporter, but you know, we go way back to Guam. She was a religious sister of Notre Dame. You know, she was, uh, uh, an educator and little village I grew up in, you know, and um, she is here in the states, you know, I think she, she wasn't none and she left a religious life and she's married. I believe I'd on her Facebook. She's married to, to some kind of military officer, you know, as children by being a son and a little cherry. And I am just so disheartened. I mean to listen to her politics, you know, I mean to read her politics on Facebook and she's, she was fine. It's on my wall. I'm at my posts. I don't respond to her posts because I, you know, I feel like it show itch. Yeah. You don't, you don't want to start drama. Yeah, no, I think I don't go on people's walls and start an argument. You know, I told me a while, I know I like it now even, you know, command you. But I would not go in and start it. I pick a fight or do or did, do beg to differ because it's your space. It's not my space. Oh, when you come to my wall and you start to differ, I, you know, I can't save you from all my other friends who are socialists or, and our guests on the cts. You're entitled to your opinion when you, when you approached my wall, you know, you may be held accountable for your opinion, you know, and not by me, but others. So I've been just perplex at her stance or, you know, um, I guess I, being a former religious myself, I'm kind of disheartened how something has changed in terms of like, you know, she's become less Christian to my, I guess my understanding, it's just, you know, kind of tough or harden and I don't know where that's coming from it. And I just, I feel like I'm the mentoring, you know, folks who have, are willing to sacrifice their own dignity, you know, how for the sake of some of the LG, you know, they're kind of,

Speaker 3 24:30

yeah. Yeah. That's, that's my father. For me, he actually was a Trump voter. And uh, it was, it's, it was Kinda hard for me to talk about politics with my dad because he does hold some very, very reactionary views, but at the same time, he's, he's a very kind person in a very generous person. He will give so much of what he has to help people out. But at the same time, he believes that if you aren't willing to rent to yourself as a tool to another human being, to arrange yourself to their will. You don't deserve to have a house. You don't deserve to have food. It's a generosity that has been very warped by capitalism and to an extent, you know, tribalism. It's, it's hard to, it's hard to deal with that. You know,

Speaker 4 25:21

it's like, I feel like a center, like a double consciousness, you know, on the one hand there's that compassion, you know? But for me, I'm like, well, you know, this person, you're a former sister, he, you know, you espouse to the charism of the founders of, of your order, which was to Cajun as the poor at these are the education. In a edgy as educators and now that you are secular as you embody these values, you know, I mean, it's a way of life. You know, your vocation. And she was a professor person longer than I was when I met, when I moved here. I, you know, you know, this is my, you know, when I moved to Berkeley from the warm 26 years of my life and warm, and then I moved here, I was struck. I was, you know, searching. I was searching for a God that was relevant. You know, I didn't know how God was relevant in my life, how God was, you know, how God could condone or permit suffering. And those were, you know, there was a gut feeling that there has to be a god bigger than than, you know, than this. Um, and so that then caused me to, to, to really analyze my socialization and how I've been socialized in my world view are not really of my own shaping, but rather what I was conditioned to believe that I was conditioned to perceive the role and interpret the world in such

Speaker 3 26:44

a way. And so I, you know, in my, in my logistic, you know, a journey, it was the attribute of God that spoke to me was the god of ambiguity. That kind of the gray, they say you live life forward and understand it backwards, you know? So sometimes, you know, you're not certain, you know, when, let's say, when he jumped in head first, right? And that's where that leap of faith comes in. You just jumped head in, right into activism, you know, because there's a gut feeling, there's this interesting, this is the right thing to do. You know, it may not make sense, you know, uh, or maybe, you know, frowned upon by our there. So why would you take those kinds of chances or risk? But that's what life's about. Right. You know, so you go with that kind of excitement and, um, and trust that you know, that this will make sense in retrospect, but you've got to continue to move forward. You know, so you live life forward, understand it backwards. So what's the most important is what's, what's at the moment, what's real, right. You know, when you're out there, there's, there's no real substitute for face to face community. And I think that's really where for my radicalism has led me to be for decades. Uh, capitalism has really eaten away at community. It is atomized the person and said that society doesn't exist. You know, I tend to quote murder. She and Ronald Reagan really do the pyramids. What, what I'd see as the worst of capitalism. You know, they were, there were the big proponents of this neo liberalism that has really done so much to destroy our communities. Our ecology has done so much to destroy the material wealth that we had built up. We had managed to build, despite capitalism capitalism's tendency to concentrate that wealth within a small number of people. They really took that and said, what we're gonna do is we're going to use state power to prop up the corporation, prop up the capitalist, and do at the expense of the people who are already being exploited, you know? And, and so I tend to go back to them when I'm talking to someone about, you know, what the worst of what capitalism it has to offer. And one of the quotes that I use is that Margaret Thatcher believes society doesn't exist. Society as just individuals. And I think it's theirs. She says there's no such thing as the collective and it's, you know, on its face bullshit. But there has been so much propaganda over the years and there has been so much repression of leftists, leftists thought and organizing that people have to believe it. And, and I think one of the biggest things for me is to really rebuild that sense of community. And that is something that can't be done only online. It's something that has to be done in person. It has to be done in neighborhoods that we live in. And so for me, like that's the reason why I really got into a intentional community movement. I had started out being very interested in local and sustainable farming and agriculture because the ecology of it appeals to me. But you know, having gone more and more radical, I realized that it's not just ecologically sustainable. If we want our communities to be sociologically sustainable, then we have to go back to that as well. We have to be able to rebuild our communities in such a way that they are able to support themselves as much as possible to be able to grow their own food, to be able to build or repair as much of their, their tools and their necessities of life as much as possible that we need to rebuild the kind of face to face democracy that has been so, so diminished over the years. And I think that until we really get that really strong organizing at the most local level, we are going to be inherently weak at larger scales because we don't have what the capitalists have. The capitalists have economic power, they have access to state power. And the only thing that the rest of us really have our numbers and the only way that our numbers mean anything is if our numbers are organized. And really the only way to properly organize is to have thousands and thousands and thousands of strong local organizations that can reach out and connect to other local organizations to make a bigger movement.

Speaker 4 31:49

I find interesting too is that, um,

Speaker 3 31:52

yeah,

Speaker 4 31:53

yeah, that kind of atomization that we see, you know, um, as a, as a this kind of neo liberalism, you know, I'll take a set, we see that also kind of playing out, you know, on the left some degree with kind of the issues. So we, that we, that we didn't take on, for example, you know, this kind of identity politics just rubs me the wrong way. Even that'd be an amino being a person of color. You know, I feel like I don't feel we need racial diversity, you know, in capitalism, you know, uh, you don't have any capitalists, you know, or our representatives or representatives or perpetuated in the years of capitalism, you know, and to tell us in Seattle need to see a Chamorro, you know, who's out for their own self interest, you know, and at the, at the, at the expense of everybody else, it's just wrong. I don't think, you know, so gays in the military just, I just find that very confusing, you know? Uh, yeah, it's, it's,

Speaker 3 32:55

you know, groups that have been historically marginalized and oppressed who without a sense of class solidarity, say you need to stop oppressing us and allow us to enter the upper echelons of the hierarchies of oppression. Back in the early days of feminism, you had Emma Goldman, I think one of the best radical feminists that have ever lived. She opposed suffrage for women because of what she said was, there is no real difference between men and women when you give them power. So what do you, what, what's going to happen when you give women the right to vote is that they are going to be every bit as oppressive and they will take part in the oppression of others just as men will there. There's nothing inherently softer or more loving about women than men. It's not enough to identify systems of oppression and to look to dismantle them if you don't recognize the connection to class. If they have, we'll never have a classless society if we don't understand white supremacy. If we don't understand the heteronormative supremacy, supremacy, you know, and if we don't seek to consciously dismantled them, if we have, you know, social revolution that doesn't include those other systems of oppression, of racial, sexual, ethnic oppressions, then really what you're just, you're swapping, you know, you're, you're, you're swapping one set of hierarchies for another. Having the means of production shared democratically doesn't mean suddenly all of the other oppressions magically disappear there to some extent. Orthogonal. Yes, capitalism has used it and exacerbated them because it is beneficial to have the exploited class fighting itself instead of the exploiting class. But you still have to have, you still have to be able to recognize racism and fight racism in order to have an actual egalitarian society. It's not just class, it's race. And it's not just race, it's class. You have to have both. And I think that's where, um, identity politics really fails because liberal identity politics is still fundamentally capitalist. It is still a, it's still accepts the, the class structure that is inherent to capitalism. And so when you see the election of Barack Obama, I mean, it's good, don't get me wrong. But he basically went the halls of power without a class analysis to, to deal with what's happening at the economic level and what good did that do? The black community that didn't help the millions of black folk who are targeted by police oppression and sent disproportionately into prisons that are a little better than sardine cans of torture. And it didn't help them any, you know, you have a Bobby Jindal down in Louisiana, he's a, he's a South Asian, um, and when it's considered a of fairly redneck racist area of America, but that doesn't mean that the structural systems of racist oppression have the diminished under his rule. You know, it's, it's, it doesn't matter who, what the skin color of the boot that stomps on your neck is. We kind of rat hope there. Where are we going? Well, you were talking about our vision, right? For, Oh yes. Yeah. So, you know, to, to bring it back to, um, you know, where, where I see us needing to go and what I think we need to do is, you know, bringing it back to the intentional community movement, the intentional community movement, the ecovillage movement, these aren't inherently anticapitalist. They don't have an inherent economic politics within them, but I think they're very useful tools to moving towards face society that is much more decentralized, where communities can support themselves without centralized systems of power that can be overtaken by those with a stronger, uh, economic power to be a tool of liberation. I think, you know, in, in the sense that the Soviet workers' councils, we're a decentralized way of woodworkers in Russia to manage their own affairs, uh, in, in the way that the, the syndicated trade unions of Spain allowed the anarchists there to have a decentralized way to manage and to manage their economy. I think that in the same way, you know, borrowing from American political history, um, and the idea of participatory democracy, uh, and individual self governance that we for centuries in this country have professed to want, I think that having intentionally founded communities with participatory democracy at the most local level is the sort of natural extension of that. You know, as Marie Butch and said, you can't, to Americans in the language of German referring to Marxism, they're not going to hear you if you talk to them in Russia. They're not gonna understand what you're saying. If you speak in Chinese or Vietnamese or Spanish, all of these leftist communist socialist traditions have a lot to offer us. But until like you translated into American English until you, until you bring it into a form that is recognizable to Americans, that that fits into our cultural history, you're not going to get a viable form of socialism. And I think that he very butchering was absolutely right. And I think that what we need to be looking at are these municipal structures, the very local communal structures, you know, down to the apartment building. Even

Speaker 4 39:37

interesting. I should probably, you know what I should do, we should connect with my friend. He goes up there in Sonoma.

Speaker 3 39:44

Well and that's really, you know, that's really where I think that we have something to offer as a podcast, you know, to, to go out into the community and to look for people who are being active. If you are interested in being involved and you don't know where to go or who to talk to, here are some people you should get in contact with. These are the organizations that you should look into. For me, I think that this is really, we should really see this as part of our activism. Yes. Excellent. Yeah. So I think that's a, I think it's a pretty good place to wrap up, uh, at least for our personal introductions. Um, do you, uh, do you know of anything interesting happening that's going on, uh, either in the bay area or anywhere else on the west coast that people should be looking out for?

Speaker 4 40:35

Well, I mean there's that, um, you know, international women's Day is coming up in March. Um, I know we're trying to organize, I was trying to get at least the daily local members to get together in person. So we're trying to do that instead of a, a video conference call, we want to try to be able to get together at least, and doing an in person meeting. And as you were saying, connect, you know, as a community that we're gonna try to organize that soon. Um, I think we meet the second, uh, I think this is the second Monday or Wednesday of the month, so, so we should look up on me the third 13 or something like that. Um, but you know, we're always trying to get together for international women's Day. You know, the peace and freedom has that forum every first as the first Saturday of the month. And that first Saturday happens to be the same day as that. Um, that, that, the demonstration of that to outright group in Berkeley. So,

Speaker 3 41:31

yeah. Well, and I know that I'm, the last meeting that we went to that was all about black history and struggle for black liberation, which I'll put a link in the show notes too. Um, information about the presenters there.

Speaker 5 41:46

Yeah.

Speaker 3 41:47

But how can people get, get in contact with the Socialist Party of the USA, at least in terms of the a west coast, the various west coast chapters and the bay area chapter in particular.

Speaker 4 41:59

So folks want to know more about the Socialist Party. Um, maybe I'll call, you can find us on the web actually. So it's just part Socialist Party Dash California that work. Yeah. You see that there are various locals on that, uh, of those party of California. And then we're one of those locals, the site,

Speaker 3 42:17

the others. That's the best way to reach us or tries to me also. I'm there. Yeah. Uh, so you can find us on Twitter at left pod. L. E F t p. O. D A. We're also on reddit at reddit.com/bar/left coast.

Speaker 5 42:38

Okay.

Speaker 3 42:38

And if you want to contact us directly by email, our email is left coast podcast@gmail.com. All right. So that's, that's a wrap on the introductory episode.

Speaker 2 42:53

Go in peace and being seller. Their comrades. Take this shit from me. Ah, yeah.

Speaker 3 43:08

Chops.