Tag: disaster relief

S1E32 – Jimmy on Mutual Aid Disaster Relief

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Episode Notes

Summary

You can find more information about Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, including the zines and resources Jimmy mentioned, a list of mutual aid networks, and social media pages, at https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

Margaret
Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I’m your host, Margaret Killjoy, and on this episode I’ll be talking to Jimmy from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. And we’re going to be talking about what is involved in setting up and maintaining a mutual aid network and also what disaster relief looks like. Because, obviously, that’s something that’s on people’s minds for some strange reason. And this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And here’s a jingle from another show on the network. Da duuuuh!

Jingle
What’s up y’all? I’m Pearson, host of Coffee with Comrades. Coffee with Comrades is rooted in militant joy. Our hope is to cultivate a warm and inviting atmosphere, like walking into your favorite coffee shop to sit down with some of your close friends and share a heart to heart conversation. New episode premier every Tuesday, so be sure to smash that subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. We are proud to be a part of the Channel Zero Network.

Margaret
Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, which I guess I already said, and your pronouns and I guess your affiliations as relate to disaster relief.

Jimmy
Yeah, my name is Jimmy. I’m with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, any pronouns are fine. Um, and yeah, I’ve been part of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief since, you know, about five years ago. Um, and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is a people-powered disaster relief network based on the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. And we work with communities especially, you know, the most marginalized, to assist folks in leading their own recoveries. And this network is a permanent network from below to respond to disasters, building off of the history and the legacy of Common Ground in New Orleans after Katrina, Occupy Sandy in New York after Superstorm Sandy, and other solidarity-based mobilizations. And we, we seek to provide some level of continuity for the larger movement of which we’re only a small part. And then also, um, you know, continue to build off of the lessons learned so that we can, um, you know, build off the successes and avoid the mistakes of previous iterations of doing this type of organizing.

Margaret
Okay, could you give some examples of situations that you all respond to?

Jimmy
Sure. Yeah. So, you know, this last year we’ve been responding to COVID. You know, before that, um, you know, a lot of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, fires, things like that. And we also, to a smaller extent, respond to what we call invisible disasters. So, you know, even though, you know, for example, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, it’s not a hurricane that knocked out power or made it so people don’t have heat to run their homes, it’s the legacy of colonialism, you know. So, um, you know, we’ve tried to respond to disasters like those as well as the very visible climate-related disasters of hurricanes and fires and floods and things like that.

Margaret
Okay, so y’all are nationwide then?

Jimmy
Yes, we are.

Margaret
Cool. Um, I guess, so, I want to ask—one of the things that comes up a lot when people talk about, well, mutual aid networks, especially ones that are, say, nationwide rather than, like, specifically rooted in the communities where the disaster is happening, what does that look like for you all—like, are you outsiders coming in? Are you invited in? How do you all navigate that kind of tension?

Jimmy
Um, so yes, we, you know, we are—we’re national, but we’re also local. You know, so all of us are from local communities and involved in local mutual aid projects and movements, you know, for justice and liberation in our own local communities. You know, so Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, rather than trying to supplant or replace local spontaneous manifestations of mutual aid, whether organized through a local mutual aid group or just, you know, the people impacted, you know, assisting each other, we try to amplify that and support that and provide, you know, this ongoing organizing and backup for those, you know, for those mutual aid efforts. So this can look like, um, you know, um, uh, you know, like getting bulk supply donations, or help with clean up, solar infrastructure or water infrastructure. Um, you know, wellness, you know, either wellness checks or setting up Wellness Centers after disasters. We try to be really flexible and adaptive to whatever the self-determined needs of the impacted people are. We borrow the Zapatista principle of leading by obeying, you know, so, you know, both to, you know—we listen to impacted people directly, and respond to their self-determined needs, and we listen to, you know, local mutual aid groups or local solidarity base, you know, justice-ro0ted efforts, and listen to them, you know, and go from there and respond to, you know, and assist however, we can. However, we can leverage our ongoing organizing, and, you know, we have a number of different mutual aid survival programs, um, you know, so we have, you know, like, the Rebuilding a Better World which involves, like, debris cleanup, or, um, you know, cleaning up flooded homes, you know, that’s our—we, with our local partners on the ground in Michigan are doing that right now, with the floods up there. Um, you know, with COVID most recently a lot of our efforts—we have been responding to impacted people directly when we’re able to, when they reach out to us. But a lot of our focus with COVID has been supporting local mutual aid efforts. There’s been a beautiful outpouring of mutual aid globally with COVID-19. And so Mutual Aid Disaster Relief has, uh, you know, supported and amplified and backed up those local mutual aid efforts whenever possible and however, we’re able

Margaret
To take a step back, what is mutual aid? That’s just charity but done by young idealists, right?

Jimmy
No, charity is top down. Charity doesn’t question—it takes for granted the unjust power relationships in our society, and it at most provides a band aid. Whereas mutual aid or solidarity, it addresses the immediate survival needs of the people while simultaneously raising consciousness and advocating and being a part of these movements for long-term structural changes. So it both meets the survival needs of the people, and in that way, you know, um, you know, we get out of our silos and echo chambers and meet the people where they’re at, you know. And also it’s connected to a long-term vision for radical social change. And so mutual aid and solidarity, it’s about sharing resources, um, but it’s also about sharing power. You know, so people who are impacted by disasters, or—you know, whether it’s, you know, climate-related, or the disasters of capitalism and colonialism—they have more at stake in their own survival and wellbeing than well-intentioned paternalistic givers of charity. And what we’re all longing for, you know, when a crisis hits, is to be part of a communal recovery. And that’s part of our healing process, part of how we cope with crisis or with extreme events. And so, you know, just because somebody is impacted by a disaster doesn’t mean that they are passive consumers who are just like empty vessels to be filled with blankets or canned goods, you know. People, you know, have skills, have networks, have, you know, a lot to offer. And so one thing about mutual aid is that it’s reciprocal. There’s no this for that, there’s no requirement, but it’s, you know, we’re giving what we can and receiving what we need. And all of us are, you know, whether it’s, you know, people who are supporting, you know, or people who are impacted. And also those two, you know, are not mutually exclusive, they’re usually overlapping. You know, so, um, you know, like, one thing that I’ll often do is drive around a box truck with, you know, pick up supplies and drop them off in neighborhoods that are impacted. And so, you know, I’ll be, you know, going all day, you know, passing out water, food, cleaning supplies, whatever I can get my hands on. But then also, you know, the local community, you know, they’ll see that I’m, you know, in go mode, and they’ll, you know, come out with an ice cold water, you know, which, you know, after a power outage and nobody has a fridge, it’s like gold, you know, and, you know, and so, you know, that kind of mutuality, is, you know, really a key part of mutual aid. And also, there’s also a component that I didn’t learn until looking into other people’s language and experiences around mutual aid and solidarity, is that, you know, with charity there’s this emotional distance. There’s, you know, like, oftentimes, you know, it’s like a traditional, you know, client/service provider relationship, you know, and with mutual aid that is overturned. That, you know, there’s an authentic relationship, there’s authentic friendships, you know, that—you know, we’re not isolated from each other and we get to know each other, we get—we become friends, we become, you know, close to each other. And when we understand, you know, that, you know, predatory landlords are, you know, evicting our friends, you know, we, you know, we join with them and resist, you know, and, you know, mutual aid is also about relationships. And so, um, you know, it’s—and relationships are where power is. You know, oftentimes people think in terms—with regards to disasters—in terms of, you know, stockpiling or hoarding, you know, that’s the popular imagination around disasters. But in reality, what almost unequivocably happens in almost every location after disasters, people come out of their houses, sometimes meet each other for the first time, and spontaneously come together to meet each other’s needs. And oftentimes building off of the relationships that already existed before the storm—or before the disaster. And so, you know, one thing that we talked about a lot in our popular education trainings is that community organizing is the best form of disaster preparedness, and disaster relief is just another form of community organizing.

Margaret
You know, one of the things that we talk about a lot on this show is that even if sometimes I can get focused on like, you know, here’s gear, or here’s skills to learn, or whatever, is that people are the best resources and relationships are, like, not only one of the most important things to stockpile or whatever, but more than that just like being around people is actually really good in times of crisis and, like, which is the opposite of the right wing prepper mindset, you know. And, with the solidarity and mutual aid stuff, one of the things that—I’ve been trying to think about things more and more in terms of—so a lot of communities are extracted from, right? In the same way that a colony is extracted from, resources are extracted from it and brought to another place. A lot of communities are extracted from on a regular basis and therefore, like, need help, right? And charity is this way of like bolstering the extractive process. It’s like this way of, like, watering the plants that you plan on harvesting, you know, it’s a way of making sure that the extractive process can continue. And the way that I’ve been more recently thinking about mutual aid is this, ideally, a method of beginning to like reverse the extractive process instead of buffering it up. I don’t know.

Jimmy
Absolutely, no, at its root mutual aid is radical care, you know, it is loving each other. And in a patriarchal capitalist colonial white supremacist and other, you know, innumerable forms of domination and oppression, to love each other, to love ourselves and to, um, you know, take care of each other is a radical act.

Margaret
Yeah. Could you talk about—I really like hearing, like, more, like, specific examples like what either, you know, like specific examples of disasters that you all responded to and how that worked, or just specific examples of when you felt like you knew that you were doing mutual aid instead of charity, like, not just like necessarily, like, gratitude of people, but in terms of what it looks like to have a mutual aid organization, if you could give more specific example.

Jimmy
Yeah, um, so one thing that I want to highlight, you know, just to begin with, is you don’t have to have it all figured out all in the beginning. You know, so, um, you know, there’s a story that Rebecca Solnit talks about in A Paradise Built in Hell, her book, that, you know, after the San Francisco earthquake, people started a community kitchen with one can and one spoon, you know, and then it just grew from there. Similar to that, you know, we, um, you know, sometimes it can feel impossible to start a hospital or a whole Wellness Center. But if we just set up a first aid station, and then have people rolling in and out, and then somebody says, “Oh, yeah, I’m a massage therapist.” “Oh, yeah, I’m an acupuncturist.” “Oh, yeah, I’m a nurse.” “I’m a medic.” You know, then it snowballs and takes on a life of its own. Same with, you know, like, maybe the idea of a whole warehouse of supply distribution seems far off, but if we start with a community fridge, or community pantry, just, you know, taking what’s in our cupboards and sharing them with our neighbors and then giving, you know, making sure people have the awareness that they can put in too, that they can share as well, you know, that can easily you know, blossom and grow into something a lot larger. You know, Hurricane Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico, pretty bad. And, um, you know, there was this colonial occupation that—I mean, Puerto Rico’s been occupied for, you know, a long time—but it was ramped up, you know, after Hurricane Maria. And there was a beautiful explosion of mutual aid organizing throughout the island. There’s [inaudible] that are still active that, you know, they took over a governmental buildings that were part of the Oversight Board, the Promesa. Former schools, former government buildings, and they turn them into mutual aid community centers. And out of these centers they have acupuncture, they have computer access for the kids, they have food kitchens, and one thing that we have assisted with for the last couple of years is the solar and water infrastructure. So especially solar, we’ve been able to access, you know, solar panels, and then, you know, the inverters, charge controllers, battery backup, and help install solar infrastructure at these mutual aid centers to bring them, you know, with, you know, our partners down there, to help with autonomous infrastructure and sustainability. And so one thing that we did in the beginning, um, you know, soon after Maria hit, you know, we were in Florida, we had already had active mobilization for Hurricane Irma in Florida, and so many people who were involved in that mobilization, you know, some of them had family ties and friend ties down to Puerto Rico. And so a delegation went down there. And one thing that we noticed real quick was, you know, our teams down there, was supplies were sitting in FEMA warehouses and not getting out to the people. So one thing that our folks did was they rolled up to the FEMA warehouse and said they’re here for the 8am pickup. And the person that the the windows said, oh, we don’t see you on the list. And they just insisted, we’re here for the 8am pickup. And eventually they were allowed in, they flashed their Mutual Aid Disaster Relief IDs, and they were allowed in and were able to pick up a box truck and carloads full of supplies, and then get that out to the people. And then also, you know, before they had—before they left the island, we made Mutual Aid Disaster Relief badges for local community organizers so they could continue that supply hook up and, you know, continue to try to, you know, liberate those supplies, you know, from sitting in warehouses, to get to the people where they’re actually supposed to go. That’s one example of how, you know, through our ongoing organizing and just being willing to take risks, we can leverage, um, you know, our access to resources or status as Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, to support survival of the people, but also the local mutual aid organizing of the people as well.

Margaret
Okay, and welcome back, which you all won’t even notice as a cut. But we lost connection for a moment. And it’s funny, because one of the reasons that I don’t know how the sound quality is going to be for the listeners, we have a good audio engineer, but I’m no longer—I recorded most of these at home. But now that the trees, now that the leaves are really coming in it blocks my antenna on the top of my house that boosts my cell phone signal enough to do a hotspot enough to do interviews. So now instead I have to go into town near a noisy office and road. So I just think it’s ironic. There have been a couple interviews that I haven’t been able to do because of my internet at home getting suddenly so much worse. But anyway, so that’s why there’s a strange break in the conversation. Do you want to talk about the history of mutual aid, whether the history of it like using that word, or the history of it as like a concept, and/or where ya’lls specific lineage comes in. I suppose those are three different questions, but if one of those appeals to you.

Jimmy
So mutual aid is—there’s, um, I think—called Kropotkin who wrote a book called Mutual Aid. And it was kind of written in opposition to the Darwinian theory of, you know, like, survival of the fittest, that was misused by people. So what Kropotkin did was articulate and give voice to an organizing principle of life. Um, you know, like, what Kropotkin saw with plants and animals, with, you know, like indigenous societies, was that how people survived and thrived was not through competition, it was through cooperation. As far as Mutual Aid Disaster Relief. Um, you know, I personally, and other people who are also involved and helped found Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, were part of the organizing in New Orleans after Katrina, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and surrounding areas. And there was a call from Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther, in the neighborhood of Algiers. There were white vigilantes that were roaming the streets shooting and killing unarmed black men. And Malik Rahim had a history of organizing in that community, you know, through the Black Panther Party, and then later through other, you know, movements for peace and justice and environmental justice. And, you know, so at this time it was, um, you know, there were these white vigilantes and also, you know, people stranded out the Superdome. People were trying to cross the bridge to safety and dry land from the east bank to the west bank and they were stopped by Gretna police to turn them back with rifles. And in this context, Malik sent out a call—Malik, you know, and Scott Crowe and others—you know, sent out a call for solidarity and support. Many of us who were involved in movements like Food Not Bombs, or street medics at global justice demonstrations, or indie media, radical independent movement-based media, um, you know, we had some experience with setting up community kitchens, we had some experience with, you know, doing medic work at demonstrations or setting up media centers, you know, for these, you know, big mobilizations against global capital. And many of us responded to that call. There was a blending of the wisdom and legacy of the Black Panther Party, you know, through Malik Rahim and the survival programs. You know, there’s the most famous of their programs was the free breakfast program, but they had numerous survival programs. They were doing pest control—community-wide pest control—they were doing a free ambulance program. They did sickle cell anemia testing and education. You know, across the board they were meeting the survival needs of the people, and that’s actually what made them the biggest threat to the FBI and to colonialism. They did have an armed component, but what was really the threat was that they were mobilizing the people in a mass way. And Malik Rahim continued that legacy and and then that was translated and melded with the legacy of the global justice movement, you know, where, you know, we were active with, whether it’s Food Not Bombs or street medic organizing, and, um, you know, that coalesced in New Orleans after Katrina with, you know, a lot of vibrant mutual aid efforts, and it gave our movements some cohesion. You know, so even people as ideologically far apart as say, like, Michael Moore, the documentarian, or the writers of The Coming Insurrection, they could see what was happening in New Orleans after Katrina and be like, that’s actually what we’re for. That’s what we’re about. That’s what the world that we’re trying to build. And, you know, there were, you know, there was a at least one agent provocateur FBI informant who used his position of power to undermine the organization and take advantage of women. You know, there’s a lot of conflicting feelings for many of us who were involved in that in that effort. And we saw again after Superstorm Sandy, you know, where Occupy Wall Street transitioned to disaster response. And again, this solidarity-based network model outperformed the top-down charity model.

Margaret
Can you explain that? Like, in what ways does Mutual Aid Disaster Relief do better than than top-down intervention?

Jimmy
So Naomi Klein talks about this term disaster capitalism. Disaster, capitalism refers to this idea of how the powerful will use shocks or disasters or crises to reinforce their privilege and power. They put in transformations to the economy or society that reinforce their privilege status. And in parallel to this, there’s disaster colonialism. So after a disaster, there’s a lot of guns that show up. And, you know, there’s, you know, authorities, you know, with guns, the army, the National Guard, Blackwater, you know, similar mercenary type groups, and their general response is not, how can we help the people survive? Their general response is, how do we maintain order and keep people in their place? The nonprofits, the top-down nonprofit industrial complex, goes hand in hand with that militarized authoritarian response. The nonprofit’s, they undermine local spontaneous manifestations of mutual aid and make it into this thing that is not reciprocal, that is not participatory, that is not power sharing, where people just wait in line and receive a few items and then, you know, are, you know, go back to being oppressed by their landlords or, you know, the, you know, police or the, you know, the state authorities.

Margaret
But what would you say to someone who, like, isn’t ideologically committed to mutual aid and is looking for the most efficient response to disaster. Like, regardless of the—I mean, I believe ideologically in mutual aid, but I think that it’s worth pointing out the ways in which the the actual just like straight up efficiency of decentralized movements can be so much greater and I was wondering if you can talk on that part of it.

Jimmy
Yes, absolutely. Um, a story I heard about with Occupy Sandy, that, um, you know, there were some people involved with FEMA that, you know, they got—they heard about this elder And they didn’t have heat, they, you know it was getting cold and um, you know, these people, you know, in the FEMA organization had their hands tied because it’s, there’s so much bureaucracy, so much red tape, so much hoops to jump through. Even though they wanted to help this person, they could not do anything because the top-down nature of it is not participatory, is not liberating for those impacted or those, you know, involved in the relief efforts. So what they did, these people involved with FEMA, was they reached out to people with Occupy Sandy and people with Occupy Sandy weatherize the house, got them—got the elder situated and, you know, what they needed to survive. And then also, after that mobilization, the Department of Homeland Security issued out a report highlighting how movements like Occupy Sandy that are decentralized, that are people powered, network based, solidarity based, are actually more effective than their command and control top-down model. And these are the same people who regularly infiltrate our movements and undermine almost everything we try to do through infiltration, through agent provocateurs, you know, and even they, you know, have owned up to the fact that their top-down model is not as effective as our mutual aid model.

Margaret
Yeah, there’s a—it’s been going around Twitter lately—a leaked or, you know, declassified document about how to infiltrate leftist organizations and, you know, the behaviors that make leftist organizations less effective. And one of them is like, basically, like, put everything to committee. And like, basically try to stop autonomy within the organizations, try to stop people from acting on the organizations without, like, putting everything to the larger organization and everything to little subcommittees and shit like that. And I thought that was really interesting, not that the people who do that thing are inherently, you know, agent provocateurs, or whatever. But we always have this conception of infiltrators as these people who are, like, go there to like break things or instigate or escalate, right? And that does happen. But it really was telling to me that the main way they know how to fuck us up is to go in and get us stuck in endless meetings and get people to not just do things. And the thing that is our strength as people who practice direct action and people practice mutual aid is our capacity to just do things and then coordinate about the things we’re doing rather than centrally plan all of the things that we’re trying to do.

Jimmy
And that is the organizing principle of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is almost everything is done through affinity groups, through working groups, rather than through centralized planning or organizing. We have, you know, regular, you know, signal threads and conference calls and things like that. But it’s mostly to provide updates with each other, um, rather than to do the nuts and bolts organizing. We, similar to the Zapatista principle of leading by obeying, there’s this idea of subsidiarity, which means you devolve decision making to the localest scale possible. And so, with our organizing, we encourage everybody to be involved in, you know, affinity groups and local collectives and local mutual aid groups, and then partner with Mutual Aid Disaster relief. And, you know, oftentimes, you know, like, if your local affinity group or your local mutual aid group is unable to cover something after a disaster, maybe Mutual Aid Disaster Relief could, or vice versa. You know, there’s some things that a local collective or affinity group or mutual aid group could do that Mutual Aid Disaster Relief couldn’t. you know. And so, we kind of work in tandem and hand in hand, you know, and we combine both collective decision making and checking in with each other with respect for autonomy and direct action and self determination.

Margaret
I mean, it sounds good. And I’ve seen some of the work that folks associated with you all have done in eastern North Carolina and have always been impressed by, yeah, the non top-down structure organizing, but still the ability to get a lot of stuff done. To go back, there was like thoughts I was thinking about—I was like taking notes as you’re talking about mutual aid and, you know, I remember reading this article in a science magazine in probably like, 2008 or something like that about mutual aid and gay birds. And it was—there had been this like thing that—I actually, as far as I understand, Darwin would not have appreciated social Darwinism, or maybe even didn’t appreciate social Darwinism, like, the like, survival of the fittest thing, like, wasn’t even the Darwinian concept of evolution. But then Kropotkin was, you know, most famously an anarchist. But well, at the time, he was also very famously, I believe, a naturalist and a scientist. And, you know, all of his work was around saying, like, oh, no, animals just take care of each other. Not always, right, there’s like, you know, I mean, obviously, animals eat each other and shit too and like, there are animals that fuck up each other’s like chances of reproduction or whatever. But people would sit there and they’d be like, why gay birds? Like, why are animals gay? And, I mean, I think, me as an animal know I am gay. But, you know, this is the kind of thing that rightwing thinkers will bring up all the time, right? And like Alex Jones, like, always freaks out about the gay frogs or whatever. And this article basically points out that it was like, well, the gay birds like do an incredible amount of service for the larger community of the animals and therefore, like, continue to propagate the species as a whole, even if they don’t individually reproduce. And it was basically this realization that science was finally catching up—and maybe it had—pop science, at least, was finally catching up to the fact that Kropotkin was right about evolution and the, like, mutual aid theory of evolution is, like, as far as I understand it, predominantly the theory within evolution at the moment, and that it’s not this, like, you know, war of one against all that people present. But—sorry, this is a rant I’ve been thinking about for a while. I do appreciate that it’s like, mutual aid wasn’t invented by kropotkin, right. And like, Kropotkin didn’t think mutual aid was invented by Kropotkin. He was observing it, and he was observing it in, you know, the animal kingdom, plant kingdom, and also in the human, like, all, you know, different human societies all over the world have been practicing mutual aid largely before, essentially, like, various forms of colonization including, like, the internal colonization of Europe and things like that.

Jimmy
Mutual Aid predates anarchism. And it also is not a European ideology. It’s how life survives and thrives. And it’s something that, you know, mutual—Kropotkin noticed and gave voice to, you know, in his book. But also, you know, like, um, there’s also a vibrant indigenous mutual aid network that has been growing, you know, over the last year plus. And I feel like their approach to mutual aid and solidarity organizing is also somewhat an antidote to the Eurocentric or ideological-based, you know, European-centric, you know, mutual aid organizing, you know, more broadly, that all of us, you know, involved and devoted to mutual aid and a better world, you know, should be engaging with and learning from and communicating with. Because, you know, indigenous people on this continent, Turtle Island, have centuries of experience surviving catastrophes and living through apocalypses. And there’s a lot of wisdom there that those of us, you know, in the cities or, you know, involved in, you know, mutual aid that doesn’t have that focus, you know, there’s a lot that we can learn from, you know, there’s a lot of interchange that can be, can be had there, that we can be attuned to.

Margaret
Yeah, and even anarchism as a concept. You know, one of the things that really interests me about this mutual aid revelation from Kropotkin’s point of view is that anarchism, as a concept, as a Western concept, was basically just Western people figuring out, like, rediscovering something that so much of the world already knows. And so it wasn’t like—anyone who presents like anarchism or these ideas as invented by the people who called themselves anarchists in France and Russia or whatever, right? It wasn’t an invention, it was a rediscovering and an applying of things. You talked at the beginning about lessons that you’ve learned. So I’m really interested in how you all are providing continuity across—hm, how to I want to say this? It’s like there’s been this huge explosion in mutual aid groups in the past year since COVID started, right. And that’s actually the most hopeful thing about the whole fucking crisis, from my point of view. And, you know, it’s like the only thing at the beginning of it all that was giving me hope, was watching this mainstreaming of mutual aid. And obviously, with mainstream comes a lot of danger and a lot of people calling things mutual aid that might not be mutual aid. But on the other hand, that also seems to me the only hope because, I mean, I believe in a society that the economic system is essentially mutual aid rather than, you know, anything else. But you—I—one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you all is because you all predate this current explosion of mutual aid. And I was wondering if you could talk about what that explosion means, and like lessons that you’re able to bring to people who are coming in this, like, newer group of mutual aid organizers, but also things that you’ve learned from the newer people who might be coming from a less ideological position, or just are younger,

Jimmy
We’re totally inspired. And we’ve been, you know, sowing the seeds, you know, of mutual aid and watering them these past several years. And we all—we would always talk about how, you know, like, if we have a hope for survival, it’s not gonna come from the state, it’s not going to come from the nonprofit industrial complex, it’s going to come from each other and these relationships of support, you know, that are horizontal, and participatory and, you know, from below. And I think still, though, even though we were already responding to disasters, and, you know, there’s still an element of, you know, like, that, you know, we’re talking about the future survival of humanity, you know, with this explosion of mutual aid with regards to the COVID, there’s been over 600,000 people killed just in the United States alone, you know, from COVID. And, um, you know, there’s evictions looming, mass evictions looming right now, I feel like we’ve all lost loved ones or lost, you know, or have friends or have family who have lost loved ones, and for both the climate and, you know, the pandemic, the future is now, you know. There’s overlapping constant disaster, one crisis after another and, you know, these local mutual aid groups are, you know, they’re carving out laboratory spaces and coming up with new ideas about how to meet people’s needs, articulating their vision for social change. And it’s hard work. So there is, you know, some stumbling in the dark while we—while people figure it out. And that’s normal and that’s to be expected. You know, with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, one thing that we’ve, you know, oftentimes—you know, previously with a hurricane, or a flood, or a fire or tornado, a lot of our efforts were in person, direct to people impacted, um, you know, face to face. You know, going to the neighborhood that was impacted and, you know, dropping off supplies, and then seeing what else they need, you know. And then, um, you know, with this explosion of local mutual aid groups it’s, um, you know, shifted things somewhat of how Mutual Aid Disaster Relief has responded in that we are still meeting people’s needs directly, you know, when needed or when we are able, but these local mutual aid groups are rooted in the community and they are able to respond in ways that, you know, sometimes a national network is not able to. You know, we’ve learned a lot, and one thing that we try to do to provide some level of continuity for this larger movement is be a clearinghouse of information and resources. So if people go on the website mutualaiddisasterrelief.org you can see a ton of resources, both about mutual aid in general, how to start a mutual aid network, what is mutual aid, you know, disaster response, and, you know, report backs from different mobilizations, different zines, news articles about the mutual aid responses for disasters. And so, you know, there’s 1000s of different resources on there, and some of them we created, but many of them, you know, others, you know, local mutual aid groups, partner organizations and networks created and we, you know, help share because we see that that wisdom is valuable and needs to get elevated and out there more. So we try to, you know, offer a library online about disaster response and mutual aid, you know, for the larger movement. On there, one resource specifically that we put out last summer is our Lessons Learned zine. And so people can visit that, there’s a dozen different lessons learned both, you know, like, ideas like moving at the speed of trust and at the speed of dreams. Um, you know, and also things to be aware of, you know, such as the savior complex or disaster patriarchy, and ways to, you know, maintain our principles and values while being responsive to the needs on the ground of those most impacted.

Margaret
Okay, let’s like take some of those. You know, the moving at the speed of trust and the speed of dreams, what is what does that mean?

Jimmy
Yeah, so the speed of trust, you know, refers to this idea of, we need to be building bonds with each other. One of the most revolutionary things that we can do is find each other and build meaningful relationships, you know, that are, um, you know, based on care, based on mutual respect and a shared vision and affinity for that better world we know is possible and are trying to build. Um, it’s hard to, you know, as a mutual aid network, whether local or national, to act if you don’t have a level of trust and a level of connection, and affinity and love for each other. That basis of trust, um, is the foundation, you know, that we can build off of. We encourage people, mutual aid groups, to, you know, if you don’t already have core values or guiding principles or foundation, like principles of unity, something like that, to take the time to come together and articulate that collectively. You know, there’s so much that is, you know, adaptable and, you know, flexible, you know, in disaster response, oftentimes we need, you know, some principles or some core values to go back to ground ourselves. And, you know, like that, for us in Mutual Aid Disaster Relief that was, you know, a key part of building that trust initially, um, you know, so that we are coming at it from—we know that we are coming at it with a shared vision of what we’re doing and where we’re going. And then also this idea of the speed of dreams, it comes from, you know, the Zapatistas. It’s this idea that when we put our hands and hearts and bodies in service of our dreams, they can manifest themselves exponentially. Far from being, you know, something that, you know, like, we plant seeds and then, you know, generations, they sprout and grow, we see the effects by moment to moment, you know, day to day and year to year when we are true to our principles and values and we, you know, are devoted to an ethic of solidarity and justice, it can be almost disconcerting, you know, how quickly our dreams can manifest into reality. It’s that, you know, snowball thing I was talking about earlier is, you know, we can start with just the tiniest bit of liberated space or mutual aid, you know, organizing, and then as we cultivate it, it’s amazing, you know, how quickly that can grow and blossom in 1000 different directions.

Margaret
Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting that—one of the reasons I’ve always loved direct action as an organizing principle—sorry about the siren in the background if you all can hear it. One of the things I’ve loved about direct action as an organizing principle is that it involves actually like starting to solve problems. Like, you know, thinking of these examples that you talk about, about like Occupy Sandy going and winterizing someone’s house. We often get so caught up, like, especially right now, when all of this bad shits happening, right? When we think, how do we stop climate change? And in some ways, how do we stop climate change is the wrong question because, while we need to stop climate change, it probably looks like solving specific problems along the way. It might be, how do we create a microclimate in this environment that is more resistant to the fires that are going to come? Right? Because we’re not going to actually stop climate change. You know, we can stop the worst of it. And so it reminds me of one of the problems that I see lock up a lot of people in general is any given thing that you have to do, it’s really hard to be like, well, I’m thinking about the entire problem and how do I solve the entire problem? So you just don’t do anything. You know, whenever people are like, well, how do you write a book? And like any writer who’s written books is like, I don’t know, you start writing a book, and then it’s shit so you go back and change things. And then the third time you write a book you, like, plan it out ahead of time better because you know what you’re doing. But it really just starts with doing it. You know, there’s the whole anarchist cliche that the secret is to begin. And that’s one thing I’ve always loved about mutual aid organizing is like, yeah, I don’t know how we—you know, people are always like, oh, what do you anarchist want or whatever. I’m like, look, I can’t tell you everything about the economic system of the society that I want to create. I don’t even think that would be a good idea. Because what I want to do is feed myself and feed the people around me who I care about, and then build up from there. And so that’s one thing I really like about the work that you all do is that focus on, you just start doing it. And it’s what, as you were saying, that’s what people do is they’re like, oh, shit bad’s happening, I guess we should do something, you know?

Jimmy
Absolutely. And our mutual aid organizing his movement infrastructure. So, you know, there’s this idea of dual power, to be simultaneously, you know, building up our own prefigurative resources and institutions and, you know, power from below, while also challenging, you know, the forces of oppression and occupation and colonialism and capitalism and contesting. You know, there’s an element of mutual aid organizing that is, you know, all of us are involved simultaneously in mutual aid organizing and the other movements that are contemporaneous for, you know, the movement for Black Lives, or for the Stop Line 3, or the Dakota Access Pipeline, you know, and so, you know, when we build power from below for mutual aid, we’re also building power from below to resist extensive resource extraction or, you know, attacks on indigenous sovereignty or on, you know, homeless sweeps. Mutual aid organizing is fertilizing, you know, the movement of ground beneath us to be stronger the next time, you know, we need to be out in the streets or be in front of the bulldozers at a pipeline camp.

Margaret
Yeah, and they all tie together, right? Because the only way that we can like really consistently save ourselves is by also stopping the machinery of destruction that is destroying the climate and destroying communities. Because it’s like, well, we can, we can provide tents, to people who are currently without houses, but we also need to, like, stop the people who are stealing their tents and stop the system that leaves them without housing in the first place.

Jimmy
Exactly. And, you know, one thing that we talked about in our popular education is audacity is our capacity. You know, so, you know, oftentimes we’re just limited by our imaginations, you know, we think something is not possible, so we don’t try it. You know, but as soon as we shake off that sense of powerlessness and act, then, you know, we’re filled with the sense of possibility and then, you know, things that were impossible, or we thought were impossible, are no more.

Margaret
I really liked that. And I think that might be a good note to end on. Besides, of course, the obvious joke about audacity as the primary thing that podcasters use that is suddenly spyware. So I’m avoiding making that joke. And you all should be very appreciative of this inside joke I’m not making that only—anyway. What—how can people find out more about your work or support you? Or are there other things like either final words, or, you know, plugging all this stuff that you all do and how people can support it?

Jimmy
Yeah, so people can go to mutualaiddisasterrelief.org to check out our website. We also have on there links to many other local mutual aid groups that you can also be involved in, we encourage people to do both—be involved in Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, and be involved in other locally-rooted mutual aid projects and organizations in general. We have a Facebook page, we have a Twitter, we have Instagram, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, you can find us on all of those. And also, um, we often share a quote from Buenaventura Durruti. Durruti was an antifascist during the Spanish Civil War. And one thing that he said was that our opposition might blast and ruin its world before it exits the stage of history, but we’re not in the least afraid of ruins because we carry a new world here in our hearts. And all of us who dream of a better world are carrying that new world in our hearts. And we’re going to create it, it takes takes lifetimes. Um, but you know, we’re a part of that growing world and we know your listeners, you know, everybody listening to this is part of that growing world. And we’re excited to see what we’re able to build, you know, together.

Margaret
All right. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. And I hope you enjoyed this episode. And also, you know, after we hung up Jimmy pointed out that basically everyone doing, you know, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief is not as much an organization as it is a movement and that all of you listening who are working on preparedness and are working on mutual aid and things like that are all part of this thing we’re all doing and just wanted to extend that thanks. And I would also like to extend that thanks. Not just for listening, but for talking, not just about this show, right, that’s a tiny part of it all, but but talking about this stuff with people around you. So thank you so much. And if you’d like to support the show, you can do so by supporting me which will soon be supporting Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness which is an old zine collective that is now kind of rebooting to also do podcasts and YouTube channels—YouTube shows and all that shit. You can do so by supporting me on patreon@patreon.com/margaretkilljoy. And in particular I guess I’d like to thank Nora and Hoss the dog, Kirk, Willow, Natalie, Sam, Christopher, Shane, The Compound, Cat J, Starro, Mike, Eleanor, Chelsea, Dana, Hugh, and Shawn. And also tell people that there’s now a YouTube show of Live Like the World is Dying. So far there’s only one episode, if you want to see me talking about the emergency kits that I make and distribute, I determined that video would be a better format for that than doing a whole podcast where I just like talk to myself or Jack or someone about, you know, and then in my kit is a whistle. And, you know, like, I think that the video format worked better for that. And it’s been a good reaction. So don’t worry, I’m not gonna abandon the podcasting format. I personally listen to podcast more than I want YouTube because I like listening. Everyone’s always like, “Oh, I don’t have the attention span for podcasts.” And I’m like, “I don’t have the attention span for video.” It just depends on your own mindset and also like where you like to consume content, I think, which is definitely stuff you were wanting to know my opinion about. You really wanted to know my opinion about the difference between podcasts and YouTube. So let me tell you more about—no, I’m not gonna tell you more about it. I instead want to say, again, thank you, and do as well as you can. And I hope that all of the things aren’t so overwhelming. And if there’s one lesson I’m going to remind myself from this conversation, it’s that start with the small things, you know. We—it’s so easy to get overwhelmed thinking about the magnitude of crisis that we’re all in, everyone on the planet Earth is in and to various degrees, of course, I’m not trying to claim that my position is as bad as many, many other people’s positions. But all we can do is we can take something we can do, we can think about what can I do? What can I do today? You know? I can go get hot hands, like hand warmers, and have them around or distribute them. Or I can learn how to build a campfire, or I can go talk to my neighbor that I don’t talk to much and kind of get a sense of who she is and how we could support each other if things go wrong. Or we just do things one at a time and hope that collectively—because there’s a lot of us on this planet, and if we all do things—well, we all did lots of little things and that caused the destruction of everything. So what have we all do lots of little things in the other direction? And I’m not talking—god, this sounds like I’m fucking talking about straws and shit, like fuck straws. I don’t care one way or the other about individual consumerism that causes this issue. Anyway, I guess I’m done with the podcast. Thank you for listening and I will talk to you all soon.

Find out more at https://live-like-the-world-is-dying.pinecast.co

S1E30 – Parks on Disaster Relief

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Episode Notes

Margaret talks to Parks from Appalachian Medical Solidarity about disaster relief, what kinds of medical interventions are often needed after a disaster, and how to both respond to and prepare for them.

Guest info and links

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

49:54

SPEAKERS
Margaret, Parks

Margaret  
Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. I’m your host, Margaret Killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. This week I’m talking to Parks, who is a medical professional who works with Appalachian Medical Solidarity. And when I say this week I mean I recorded this interview at the very beginning of starting this podcast, which was just before the pandemic. I started this podcast in early 2020 when I had no real reason to think that COVID was going to become COVID in the way that it did. So this episode about, you know, medical things and disaster situations didn’t really seem like it made a lot of sense. It’s not what a lot of people were thinking about when it came to disaster and medical issues throughout all of 2020. But I actually, I still think this information is really important. And there are so many other crises that are happening now and will continue to happen. And so we talk a lot about, well, just what it means to be a responder to disaster, especially from a medical point of view, and I hope you get a lot out of it. I know I did. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts and here’s a jingle from another show on the network.

Jingle  
One to two one two, tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth black radical podcast for the people. Our host hip hop anarchist, Sima Lee the RBG, and sex educator and crochet artist, KLC, share their reflections on Maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trap liberation, and everyday ratchet. They deliver fresh commentary with the queer, transgender non conforming, funny, Southern guls, anti imperialist, anti oppression approach, poly add and bullshit. Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero Network, Buzzsprout, SoundCloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.

Margaret  
So, welcome to the podcast. 

Parks  
Thank you. 

Margaret  
Do you want to introduce yourself with whatever name, pronoun, and affiliations that you would like to be known for for this podcast?

Parks  
Sure. So my name is Parks, I use he/him pronouns, and I’m affiliated with Appalachian Medical Solidarity.

Margaret  
Could you maybe start by talking about what Appalachian Medical Solidarity is, like what you all do?

Parks  
Sure. Appalachian Medical Solidarity is a group that is centered in Asheville and the southern Appalachian area. And we provide disaster medical interventions, particularly after hurricanes and things of that nature. And we’re working on other projects around the area, we do a lot of education in the area. For example, we taught a CPR certification class this weekend, and a Naloxone class.

Margaret  
So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you told me once—you went through the list of how people design die and natural disasters and how it’s not what people think it is. And clearly preparing or understanding how natural disasters work is, like, comparable to understanding how larger disasters work and things like that. So I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little bit about disaster and what the actual, like, kind of threat models are?

Parks  
Sure. So there are several kinds of disasters and natural disasters, as you and your audience are likely aware. One that my group deals with specifically based on our geographic location is hurricanes. In developed countries, or countries with well-built infrastructure such as buildings and roads, deaths from hurricanes tend to come after the event itself. So the hurricane may kill less than 10 people—I’m not, I’m making up numbers there—but a small number of people will be killed by things like wind and falling trees and powerlines coming down and, you know, maybe a tree falling through their house and hitting them, that type of thing. More people die in flooding during the event than anything else. So most people don’t die from being hit by a tree or blown away. They die from drowning and flooding, particularly when trapped in houses or when trapped in their cars, situations like that. So in places like the United States, those fatalities tend to be low. More people die in the few days after the hurricane. So as the power is out and infrastructure is down and people start to do things to cope with the infrastructure being down, part of the issue in developed countries is people are not accustomed to the infrastructure being down, so they’re not necessarily aware of safety precautions to use when using things like grills or propane heaters or other non-conventional items, or in non-conventional areas. So people tend to die of carbon monoxide poisoning when they’re using devices that need to be used in a ventilated area indoors, such as propane heaters, gas grills, things of that nature. They also tend to die after those events from chainsaw injuries, that’s pretty common one, or from improper use of chainsaw, so trying to cut down trees and people being untrained to do so and having the tree fall on them. In that scenario, that type of thing. That’s a much more common way to die in developed or over developed countries after disasters. People also die from food poisoning after disasters as they eat things out of their refrigerators and freezers that are going down. That’s not as common, but it does happen. Sometimes people have issues with the spread of contagious illnesses inside of shelters. But here again, that’s not usually causing a lot of people to die, it’s causing a lot of people to have colds.

Margaret  
So would you say that one of the better ways to prepare is more about, like, knowing how to use your emergency equipment—like knowing, like, chainsaws and propane and all that or?

Parks  
I would—yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Knowing how to use equipment without, you know—knowing how to properly use a chainsaw, knowing when and where to properly use a propane heater. The other thing I would suggest is simply not using those items if you’re not trained or unsure. You know, after a hurricane event, if you’re a little cold, you know, put on extra layers if that’s an option. If you can eat crackers and peanut butter instead of trying to, you know, make some kind of makeshift stove inside your house, then do that. You know, wait till it stops raining and you can move your grill outside. So use a little bit of common sense and forego small what are, you know, small luxuries essentially like cooking your food indoors or heat if you can, if you can live without it. 

Margaret  
I want to ask you about Appalachian Medical Solidarity and your experiences with it and like what you’ve seen, or what people who are part of AMS have seen or like, I know, for example, when we had the conversation before we did this interview that you talked about while you’re a medical professional, and you’re often not using your, you know, surgery skills or something like that on the ground.

Parks  
That’s true. You know, with Appalachian Medical Solidarity, I am a medical clinician and I don’t end up using my medical skills very often after disasters. We occasionally will see things like people having to use insulins—types of insulin they’re not accustomed to and they don’t know how to do the calculation to identify the proper dose. So sometimes people need help with things like that. And upper respiratory issues. They’re not usually—what we’re seeing at as a volunteer community group are not the kind of issues that people are going to the hospital for. The hospitals tend to still be in place, people go to the hospital. So the things we’re seeing are relatively minor as it comes to medical issues. What we’re seeing more is people needing help mucking out their houses, needing help cutting out drywall, needing help getting trees out of the road or off their houses. So mostly what we’re seeing is a great need for cleanup and also a need for supplies to get into certain areas. So it can be difficult with trees down and powerlines down and flooding and roads washed out to get things like clean water to certain areas or food that people can eat. So a lot of transporting supplies and the, you know, one to three days after a disaster before FEMA is able to come in ends up being something that we see a lot.

Margaret  
That’s one of the kind of advantages that I found that—or at least people talk about, like autonomous and anarchist disaster relief and mutual aid—how this is about like the ability to mobilize quickly and maybe, like, without some of the inefficiencies of large organized structures. And I’m wondering if you want to talk about how you all organize, to get supplies and aid to crisis areas?

Parks  
That’s a great question and it’s one that we’ve been working on. I think we can improve our dispatching capabilities and how we identify different areas and need. At least in our recent experience, one of the things we’ve run into is a need to pre stage before disasters when we know a disaster is coming. So that’s not always possible. But with hurricanes, we tend to have a sense that that’s maybe going to hit, so getting closer to the area—or as close as you can to the disaster zone and stay safe so that you’re not just adding to the, you know, people that need to have supplies brought to them. So staying in an area that’s near the disaster area where you’re still safe. And so you’re able to quickly mobilize supplies and able to mobilize personnel into areas that are hardest hit is an important thing. We mostly do it through cell phones and, at times, driving around randomly, honestly, and looking for people. We’ve also watched flood maps online to see where flooding is the worst and where places might be isolated. News media pretty quickly starts to cover and tell people where isolated pockets might be, like this town is cut off, or that town is cut off, or, you know, these highways are washed out. So you can use that information to try to dispatch your personnel to those areas and to dispatch supplies to those areas. But I think that could be improved upon. So pre planning is certainly a helpful thing, you know, trying to come up with who is going to be a dispatcher, who’s going to watch the news, who’s going to watch the flood map, who’s going to be pre staging, all of those things are important. And one of the points I think, also is that specialized personnel aren’t necessarily needed in these cases, you know? Just having people who can drive, having people who have vehicles that, you know, like trucks or trailers that can move a large quantity of water. And just having people that can drive back and forth supplying water and food to certain areas is invaluable. You know, it’s nice to have a nurse, it’s nice to have someone who can use a chainsaw. But it’s, that’s not the majority of people that are really needed.

Margaret  
How do you get into isolated areas?

Parks  
That’s a great question. There was one hurricane in which we teamed up with some private pilots to be airlifted into those areas. I’m not sure if airlifted is the right word, we weren’t jumping out of the planes, but small planes that could land and fields or could land in small airports and rural areas would take two or three personnel and a quantity of supplies, and they were able to fly back and forth and bring supplies into places where roads didn’t have access for several days. And that was invaluable. So that’s one of the more fancy ways that we’ve been able to access folks who are cut off. Other ways are, you know, tall four wheel drive vehicles. So just having the kind of equipment or having the kind of vehicles that can withstand those kind of conditions and get into places. You know, if you have a small two wheel drive hatchback car, it’s not going to make it. So having somebody available, who has the type of vehicle that might be able to get into more challenging environments. 

Margaret  
One of the things that I’m interested in is sort of the cultural bridging that happens during disaster and crisis. And I’ve heard stories that there was kind of an interesting cultural difference between the types of folks who own small airplanes and the types of folks who organize anarchistically bring supplies places, is that something you feel like you can talk about it?

Parks  
Sure, that’s absolutely the case. And I think that’s a major issue in people signing up to be personnel after disasters, you know? I think people who initially are going into these areas in the first two or three days need to be people who can interface with all kinds of people, who can withstand being insulted, who can withstand, you know, different things like that, like it’s not a—it’s not as safe and supportive working environment in any way. You know, socially, the people who were operating the private airplanes, for example, tended to be wealthy individuals, often were white males who were wealthy, a lot of them—or possibly all of them—were Republican, these kind of things. So folks who feel uncomfortable interfacing with those folks, or feel uncomfortable building bridges with those folks, you know, there’s a need to be polite, there’s a need to reach out, there’s a need to work together, there’s a need to problem solve with people who are very different from yourself, who, whose ideas of, you know, even who should deserve help are very different than yours. So, being someone who’s very diplomatic is very valuable in those scenarios. And folks who aren’t as diplomatic or who don’t want to interface with people, you know, that are very different than them, are possibly better suited to roles like doing dispatch, or gathering supplies, or, you know, there are plenty of roles to do. But it’s important to consider that folks are going to have to interface with a lot of different people who are not necessarily being their best selves, and who are very different than them and have a different idea of reasonable politeness than they do.

Margaret  
Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of one of the things that sort of interesting about disaster scenarios and apocalypse and all that kind of crap is that you get into this idea of a lot of different types of communities having to pull together in order to survive. And one of the things that I’m kind of trying to explore with this podcast is the sort of idea of the opposite of—instead of like a nationalist approach to disaster, where you like bunker up with your friends and you have yours, fuck you—like this, like, internationalist approach of, like, working together with diverse communities and things like that. And so it’s just fascinating because usually when I think about, like, working with diverse communities, I don’t think of, like, right wing libertarian types, you know? And yet, I mean, there’s a certain amount of, like—and maybe I’m being overly generous—but like, okay, yeah, they may be a rich Republican, but they’re willing to fly into storms and small planes in order to give people things for free. So that’s kind of what we want from people. You know?

Parks  
I absolutely agree. You know, there’s something called the disaster bug, which is where people go into disaster zones, and they, they get really fixated on it, or they really enjoy it, and they seek out that scenario again. And part of the reason for getting that disaster bug in my opinion is, you know, people are at their worst at times, but really overall people are at their best. You know, people are ready to collaborate, people are willing to do things they wouldn’t normally do, like, help people, they wouldn’t normally help, things like that. So watching communities draw together, watching people, you know, go to their neighbor’s houses and see if they need anything, is beautiful and a wonderful thing. And, you know, you get to meet all kinds of people that you wouldn’t normally get to meet—or I get to meet all kinds of people that I wouldn’t normally meet. And I really value that and my experience. You know, I think it’s interesting to meet the rich Republican dude that wants to fly people into a difficult flight situation and deliver food to people they might not normally think about. I think that’s great. You know, it expands their horizons potentially, it expands our horizons, and, you know, ultimately it helps people and that’s really the purpose. But I personally think that’s great. But I also recognize that that can be a challenge for some folks.

Margaret  
Yeah, that makes sense. I want to talk about how have you—and if you don’t we can cut this part out—have you had to do sort of disaster triage or like—like, in what way has like your—as a medical provider or whatever, how do you plan for medical care, specifically in disaster situations, or especially if you’re preparing for a situation in which hospitals weren’t available, but even in preparing for situations in which hospitals are harder to get to and things like that?

Parks  
Sure, that’s a reasonable question. And I don’t have a great answer to it, actually. You know, hospitals and paramedic teams and those kind of groups already have triage processes in place. So there are, for example, toe tags or tags that medical personnel will put on individuals indicating the severity of their illness. And then they will decide based on the number of casualties and the number of people needing medical care what order to treat people in when they can’t treat everyone at once. So those kinds of organizations already have a system for that. I can’t say that my group has had a need to triage people in that way because we simply haven’t seen large numbers of injuries at once, which is fortunate. 

Margaret  
Yeah.

Parks  
It would be good for us to prepare for that perhaps I haven’t really taken it into consideration. But, you know, a lot of what we’re seeing is needing to assist people using their own medications. So needing to help people find their inhaler in their ruined house, or find a neighbor who uses an inhaler that they can borrow, or calculate a new dose of insulin based on what insulin might be available to them. So getting people supplies, getting people on medications that they already take, you know, having people—helping people to find the medical equipment that they already have that they need, those things are helpful. And prior—you know, certainly prioritize people with medical needs in terms of transporting them to shelters or transporting them to hospitals, things of that nature. But we have not been responding in the—well, I should say, I have not been responding in the minutes and hours, you know, few hours right after a disaster during which time people may need things like swift water rescue, or may need things like airlifting out situations, where there may be people who are injured enough that they require getting to a hospital within a few minutes or within an hour. Those would be done by—those kind of rescue things will be done by specialized teams and we’re certainly not trained to do those.

Margaret  
Okay, and maybe also the people who are more immediately already on the ground?

Parks  
Correct. So not only people with specialized training, but people who are already on the ground, you know. I would certainly advise any group to be well aware of what I would call scope of practice. So be well aware of what you can safely offer and what you cannot safely offer. And don’t go outside of that. Don’t try to offer something that you aren’t trained to do, don’t try to offer something that you’re not prepared to follow up with, that you’re not able to do all the way through. You know, don’t offer someone transport to the hospital if you’re not sure you can get them there, or if you’re not reasonably sure you can get them there. You know, because you’re delaying their getting into an ambulance, you’re delaying their getting into a medical fight helicopter if you’re offering something you can’t follow through with, if that makes sense.

Margaret  
Yeah, that’s actually a really interesting concept. And, like, could apply to a lot of situations, but even gets back to the, like, the chainsaw use for example of, like, you know—I’ve only recently started actually training with a chainsaw and I always thought it was just a matter of, like, making sure you’re not in the way of the blade. And like making sure that, you know, if it bucks back, the blade won’t hit you. And that’s, like, that’s a big part of it. But then I’m like learning that there’s, like, a lot of stuff about the way trees hold tension and that apparently what kills a lot of chainsaw operators is just, like, releasing the tension on a tree and having everything go crazy. And so the scope of practice, that’s a useful phrase I hadn’t heard before.

Parks  
Absolutely. And I would say, you know, do what you can. A lot of people don’t do what they can, you know? Step up, do what you can, decide you’re going to help. That’s the first thing. You know, assess the situation, decide you’re going to help, and then help in a way that you’re able to. And of course if you set up in a truck, you don’t know if you’re going to come up to a washed out road. And if you do, that’s okay, you know, turn back, don’t try to cross, you know, a flooded area you can’t cross or anything like that. Don’t try to offer medical care to someone who’s more hurt than you can really help them with or—or do what you can, you know? If what you can do is hold their head still while the EMS gets there, great, do that. You know, do it, you can. Absolutely step up and do what you can. But don’t try to do things that are outside of your abilities. And don’t take risks. In a scenario where it’s difficult to get people in and out of a situation, if you are a relatively healthy person who’s going in to help and you get hurt, you are delaying care for people who are already hurt, you know, you’re clogging up the system. And, you know, you’re also getting hurt, which is a problem. But not only that, but you know, you’re clogging up the system, you’re making one more casualty for medical personnel to deal with, you’re making it worse. You know, one of the first rules in medical care is do no harm, right, don’t make it worse. And it’s really easy to make it worse. It’s a lot easier than you think to make it worse. You know, don’t go in and say you’re going to sterilize water and you don’t know how and you poison someone. You know, don’t go in and think you’re just going to figure out a chainsaw and get hit by a tree. You know, there’s lots of things that might be trickier than you think. 

Margaret  
Yeah. 

Parks  
So go and help but sit and think a while before you take on a project that you might be unprepared for and might be dangerous.

Margaret  
What are some—if people are interested in doing either disaster response or preparedness within their own communities for potential disaster, what are some of the skills—especially like first aid or medical type skills—that you think people can and should develop? Like in a more generalized sense, like what should people be learning and focusing on?

Parks  
Basic medical care at home is a good thing to focus on. So the number one thing that I see people not doing enough of is washing their hands and washing their hands properly. That sounds really basic, but people really don’t do it enough. So learning how to wash your hands, washing your hands for an adequate amount of time with clean water, with soap, and doing it consistently when you need to. You know, if you’re touching a person and you go touch another person and you haven’t washed your hands, you’re spreading, you know, potentially you’re spreading all kinds of pathogens from one person to another and to yourself. So learning how to wear gloves, when to wear gloves, how to take them off without contaminating yourself, you know, how to wash your hands in a way that’s effective. I would start there. I think those things are really important. Recognizing an infection is a helpful thing. You know, being able to look at a wound and say, within reason, if it’s obviously infected or not. I mean, that’s—that can be a specialized skill, but there are some things that, you know, a regular person might be able to learn in advance that may be helpful. So those things are important. I would say also water is a big thing after any kind of disaster that’s gonna affect infrastructure. So focus on getting enough water, storing enough water, knowing how to sterilize water, knowing water from—knowing what source to get your water from, you know, you don’t want to use flood water, for example, that’s very difficult to impossible to sterilize in a way that’s going to be accessible after a disaster. You know, there might be people out there with specialized skills who know how to do that, but most people are not, you know, that’s not a good idea. You know, finding a stream is going to be better, collecting rainwater is going to be better. There’s lots of different, you know, water sources that you can identify that might be better choices for you. So if you want to get fancy or do a little more, you might identify water sources near your home, for example, you might find out where your nearest stream is. If you’re, you know, if you’re living in a place that might have the kind of disasters where your water infrastructure might go down, and that’s more likely in some places than others. But first and foremost, I would say water. 

Margaret  
What, um, can you talk more specifics about, like, for example, what kinds of places the water infrastructure is more vulnerable and also, like, how people might, yeah, get water, filter water, sterilize water, whatever they need.

Parks  
The CDC has some good guidelines on that. As does as FEMA actually, so FEMA’s website has good instructions on what kind of sources to look for after a disaster. Firstly, knowing about storing of water is helpful. It’s not great to store water in your empty, you know, gallon water jug that you got from the, you know, from the store, unless you’re able to sterilize it. And you can sterilize it by using a mix of bleach water, I don’t remember the ratio, but shake that around in your container, empty it out, rinse your container, and store water. So prior to events know how to store water if you’re going to use your own containers and know how to store it properly. And, you know, be wary of glass containers because they can break. And if your water supplies on glass containers and it breaks, you know, you’re out of luck. So first of all know how to store water beforehand. And if you’re able to do that, you can avoid having to find sources of water afterwards, which is ideal. You know, sterilizing your tap water is something that may be accessible to you if the tap water is not contaminated. The other thing to do is to know how to turn off the main—the water mains to your house. So if there’s an announcement that the water is contaminated, you would turn off the water main to your house, empty the faucets, and you can typically still use the water that’s in your hot water heater if you have one. So—and a lot of this is geared toward people who live indoors, obviously. So if you don’t live indoors that’s going to be a different scenario. But if you do live indoors, using the water and your hot water heater can work. And there’s a, usually there’s a way to empty it. There’s like a faucet at the bottom of the hot water heater or something like that. You can use the water in there. You’d probably want to add bleach to it. But look up the proper ratios of bleach to water and, you know, have some bleach in your house that’s fresh. Bleach goes bad after about maybe six months or a year. So make sure you have something that’s unopened and not flavored or scented or—I guess not flavored, but whatever. Not scented and without like additional cleaning agents. You don’t want to use, like, a tile cleaner with bleach. You need to use, you know, the regular bleach in a bottle that that’s all that’s in there.

Margaret  
What about like the kind of water purification tablets and things like that?

Parks  
Iodine water purification is not generally recommended. Generally bleach is recommended because it kills more of the pathogens that you’re going to be encountering after that kind of disaster. You know, if that’s all you have, then that’s all you have. But in terms of pre planning and what to get, I would recommend bleach.

Margaret  
Are you talking about, like, maybe you’ll get Giardia or like maybe you’ll, like, die immediately? Or like what’s the—what’s the threat model from contaminated water like floodwater or whatever.

Parks  
That depends. I don’t have a great answer for that. You know, in eastern North Carolina, in floodwater, there are millions of dead animals floating, you know, stuff from septic systems can be in there. So any kind of fecal oral type pathogen could be in there and, you know, think of water with, you know, human waste in it as well as rotting pigs. You know, sometimes the wastewater pits overflow, like from coal fired power plants have wastewater pits, and those can get into the groundwater or into the floodwater. So there’s not just bacteria in floodwater. There’s also toxic chemicals that can’t be filtered out, that can’t be removed with bleach, for example. So that’s one of the reasons why flood water is not going to be a good option. If you can find a stream that’s not contaminated heavily, you know, that’s not a strange color, that’s not covered with floodwater, that may be an option. Collecting rainwater is an option. You can remove salt from salt water by like taking a large pot with a—that has a lid with a handle, turn— flipping the lid over so the handle is facing inside the pot, suspend a mug or a cup from the handle inside the pot on a string. Put saltwater in the bottom of the pot, boil that for 20 minutes or so. The condensation will collect on that upside down lid, drip down the handle, and drip into your mug. You can probably find diagrams of that and your listeners might already know how to do this kind of thing. 

Margaret  
Home distillation. 

Parks  
Right. But some some knowledge of home distillation might be helpful. You know, I’ve never been in a situation where that was helpful, but I’m sure people have been.

Margaret  
Yeah. You mentioned how some—a lot of the advice that goes around is more helpful for people who live indoors. Do you want to talk about—do you have any information about either how to help people who are, or people who are themselves not living inside in disaster situations?

Parks  
If you know does that stress coming, it’s good to let people know who might not already know. So some folks who live outdoors are certainly going to be in the know about, you know, things that are happening in their community. But it can be helpful to spread that information. So let people know that there’s a hurricane coming, let people know that flood—flooding is going to be happening so that people can, if they have encampments, they can move them uphill, you know. I live in a mountainous area so, you know, in this area moving uphill as an option. That’s not necessarily going to be an option in a lot of places. But seeking shelter, securing whatever, you know, materials that you have for housing or trying to keep dry, all of those things are going to be important. Letting people know where security—or where like emergency shelters are in case they want to go to emergency shelters can be beneficial. Just making sure people are aware in advance. You know, somebody who—I live inside, so somebody who lives outside might be able to—might be better able to provide information on preparedness and that scenario.

Margaret  
Off the top of your head—or, what are some of the common myths about disaster survival that that irritate you?

Parks  
I don’t think this is a myth. But I think people are both underprepared and over prepared. Okay.  Sometimes people prepare for like situations that sound more interesting, rather than situations that are more likely. For example, people might have wilderness survival skills that involve starting a fire with sticks or, you know, distilling water in strange situations or, I don’t know. And while those things might come in handy at some point, things like washing your hands and knowing how to store your water reasonably safely, you know, knowing that expiration dates of foods or how to tell if your meat is spoiled or not, you know, those like less romantic, I guess, skills are actually going to be far more important and far more useful and far more likely to be utilized. So I think it’s easy to prepare for, like, what are we going to do if civilization collapses? And while living in the woods, like we need all these skills on like, you know, do you—like, do you really—like in what situation are you going to, like, need to go and kill a deer because you really can’t get literally anything from the grocery store?

Margaret  
Yeah.

Parks  
You know, that might, I don’t know, maybe that happens. But you know, in the United States that’s really unlikely to be—depending on where you live. You know, maybe if you live rurally and you already depend on killing deer or killing animals for your food then, of course, you know, you’re going to continue to rely on that food source. But for people that don’t already rely on that food source, you know, developing those more specialized skills is interesting and cool, but don’t neglect the less interesting skills and preparations. Like it’s good to have a radio that runs on batteries. It’s good to have extra batteries. Do you need 100 guns? Probably not. You know, guns are really overrated. I think after disasters, you know, most people are very kind to each other after disasters. You know, if people are looting, it’s generally because they need the stuff. And if you’re the kind of person that wants to shoot people because they’re stealing items from a store, I don’t know what to tell you other than, you know, you might reevaluate your life. But, you know, I don’t know how useful it’s going to be unless you’re planning on hunting because that’s something you already rely on. You know, for a lot of folks like myself who don’t rely on hunting, live indoors, you know, a gun is not actually going to be helpful. I don’t think, you know, having social skills, having the ability to talk to people that aren’t like you, you know, knowing how to wash your hands, I really can’t say it enough.

Margaret  
That’s gonna be the title of this episode: Wash Your Fucking Hands.

Parks  
Wash your hands and do it right. You know, using hand sanitizer—this is an important one—using hand sanitizer after you go to the bathroom is not effective. You need soap and water. 

Margaret  
Okay.

Parks  
The kind of pathogens that are spread from the oral fecal route, so to speak, are not cleaned off your hands by hand sanitizer.

Margaret  
What is hand sanitizer good for?

Parks  
Hand sanitizer is good for anything that gives you a stuffy nose. Anything that gives you diarrhea, you need soap and water. 

Margaret  
Okay. 

Parks  
Not anything in the world but, you know, that’s a rough estimate.

Margaret  
Well, okay, so you talk a bit about risk analysis. I’m really excited about what I think hackers but maybe other people coin threat modeling. And like people talking about, like, you know, okay, your internet security might be really good, but based on the wrong threat model. And, you know, a gun for example is a good tool for certain threat models, like someone specifically trying to kill you.

Parks  
Right.

Margaret  
But a very bad tool for a lot of other threat models. And so it sounds like kind of what you’re talking about is that people have sort of poor threat modeling when they think about preparedness in general.

Parks  
I think that’s a great way to put it, you know, just like if you’re writing and knowing who your audience is, you know, know what you’re preparing for and be fairly reasonable about that and don’t, you know, skip things that you think are obvious or skip things that you think are boring. So, you know, if you’re preparing—I don’t know, if people prepare for earthquakes, I’m not sure how on earth you would do that. You know, they hit randomly and horrible things happen. But if you’re preparing for a hurricane, if you’re preparing for flooding, you know, prepare for that in a way that makes sense. And do some research, you know, it doesn’t take very long if you have access to the internet or a library to do a little bit of research, and don’t discount, you know, government websites. Really, the CDC offers good information and FEMA offers good information on preparedness. You’re going to have to tailor that to your own specific needs of course. You know, if you use insulin and needs to be kept in a refrigerator, you need to focus on being able to refrigerate that. 

Margaret  
Okay.

Parks  
You know, if that’s not with a cooler, ice, or whatever, you need to prioritize ice if that’s your situation. Other people are not necessarily going to need to prioritize refrigeration after that kind of event, for example. Or, you know, as I was saying, if you’re planning to live in the wilderness with no contact with any kind of “civilization”, then, like, your skill set certainly needs to be different than if you’re trying to survive, you know, an urban setting that suddenly has no infrastructure. You know, one of the main issues—well I don’t know about main issues—but one of the issues after Hurricane Sandy in New York City was people in high rises who couldn’t flush their toilets and didn’t—and lived, you know, on the 10th or 12th floor of a building and were unable to haul water up and down the stairs because of physical issues. And that quickly became a very, very dire problem. 

Margaret  
Yeah.

Parks  
 So, you know, and that’s a problem that’s specific to a certain physical scenario. 

Margaret  
Yeah. 

Parks  
So preparing for your physical scenario and preparing for the actual threat and having some sense of, you know, maybe over prepare slightly. But you don’t necessarily need, like, a year’s worth of food for an event that’s probably going to take a week or two to stabilize.

Margaret  
Right. Well, if you have a year’s worth of food than you have, you know, 300 peoples’ day’s worth of food.

Parks  
That’s true. And there may be, you know, scenarios in which that makes sense. But in that scenario, it’s still a week’s worth of food, you’re taking into consideration the number of people. Yeah. And if you want to be able to feed your whole town, that’s awesome. You know, is it necessary? I don’t know. 

Margaret  
Yeah. 

Parks  
You know,

Margaret  
You once said something something to me that was one of the best examples of risk analysis that I actually use fairly often—I came to you with a medical concern and I said, am I going to die because of this or that thing? And you said to me, well, I can’t tell you that—because you’re honest to a fault—you’re like, I can’t tell you that you won’t die because that’s completely possible, you could also be eaten by a shark today in Asheville.

Parks  
Right, I remember that. Yeah, and I think those things are reasonable to keep in mind, you know, you’re not likely to be killed by a chainsaw if you’re not using one after a disaster, so I don’t know.

Margaret  
So I’m not gonna wear my chops all the time.

Parks  
Right, so you don’t need to wear your chainsaw chaps all the time necessarily, unless you’re just like them maybe, look, I don’t know. But yeah, you know, think about what’s likely and think about what’s important. So if something is unlikely to occur but will definitely kill you, if it does you may want to be—have some preparedness for that, within reason. 

Margaret  
Yeah.

Parks  
You know, if something is not likely to happen and not going to be a big deal if it happens, you don’t necessarily need to prepare for that. Like, how much do you need to prepare for boredom, you know, maybe a little bit, but that’s not super important. You know, it’s not that likely that you’re going to be stuck in your house more than a week. But if you were and you didn’t have water, you could die. Humans can survive a fairly long time without food, but we can’t survive more than a few days without water. So, you know, that’s why I emphasize that too.

Margaret  
So eat peanut butter and crackers rather than tainted meat if you’re only stuck for a week?

Parks  
Sure, yeah, you know, if you have the ability to cook, you know, if you have a grill, if it’s not raining, you know how to use the grill, it’s the first day after your freezer has gone down, absolutely cook all your meat, you know, and eat it and share it and all those things, that make sense. But if it’s been a week, and your freezer has been off for a week, and you’ve got meat left, you know, and that’s it, don’t eat it. If it’s been sitting out, you know, unless it’s jerky or something like that, you know, you don’t want to risk a diarrheal illness or a vomiting illness if you if your water supplies are scarce, particularly. 

Margaret  
Probably final question: So we talked a little bit about the the kinds of people that you’d be working with to go into disaster areas. But in terms of going into communities, often as outsiders, what does that look like in terms of not been more trouble than you’re actually worth, in terms of making sure that it’s like sort of a consensual relationship with the people? I know, I was talking to someone who’s from a Caribbean island and he was talking about how, you know, non official organizations showing up to help are often just in the way and doing all the wrong things. While, of course, also most people I know are also very critical of the official organizations who go into help because then they take resources and centralize them and disempower people and cut people out of agency and things like that.

Parks  
Yeah, don’t go to a disaster area unless you have truly something to offer and you’re able to get yourself in, supply for all of your needs the entire time you’re there, and get yourself out. If you can’t do those things, don’t go unless you’re already there in your chapter with other people, then respond accordingly. But, you know, if you’re not already in a disaster area that hit where you are living, don’t go on vacation to see how bad it is, you know, don’t drive around in an area to gawk at the damage. There’s, that’s rude. Don’t do that. And it’s not helpful. You know, if you have, like, two power bars and one 16 ounce bottle of water, don’t go into a disaster area and think you’re prepared because you’re not. You’re going to be a drain on resources. You know, there are going to be a lot of people who already have skills in an area, you know, if an area in the United States is hit by a hurricane or, you know, some kind of disaster, there are already medical personnel there. You know, there are already people there who know how to use chainsaws, there are already people there who knows how to hunt or, you know, various things. So, to some extent, you know, keep your ear to the ground, see what people need. If you can, you know, ferry water to the edge of a disaster area and give it to someone who is already networked to distribute it or something like that, that may be very helpful. And it may be boring to you to drive, you know, 100 gallons of water from, you know, where you live to the edge of a disaster zone and then go home again, you might be tempted to like, dive in and drive around, go be helpful. But you know, driving water to the edge and going home is really helpful in certain scenarios. You know, driving in with a bunch of food that you don’t know where you’re going to leave it, and you’re just driving around trying to give it to people who don’t, you know, you don’t, I don’t know, you don’t know where the need is. That’s not necessarily as helpful. Yeah, don’t become a drain. Don’t go and need to be fed or housed or clothed or need water in an area that’s already strained. You know, the more people that there are in a strained situation with limited resources, the less those limited resources are able to go around. So be realistic about what you can contribute and be realistic about whether what you can contribute is going to be better than what you know the people—the skills that people already there have, if that makes sense. 

Margaret  
That does. If someone wants to learn more about either Appalachian Medical Solidarity or other mutual aid disaster relief organizations, do you have a place to point them to or anything like that?

Parks  
I’m not sure. I think AMS has a Facebook page. I don’t actually know. 

Margaret  
Okay. 

Parks  
Yeah, I’m not sure. If you’re in the Asheville area, you know, we do put out announcements for classes and things that, you could certainly come and talk to us. There is a team with AMS, with Appalachian Medical Solidarity, that does stuff on computers and social media. 

Margaret  
And you’re not on that team.

Parks  
I’m not, and I’m not on that team. And I don’t use computers outside of work if I can help it because I don’t like them. So I’m sorry, but we could probably find that information and add it.

Margaret  
I’m going to add it, yeah. I’ll do an aside.

Parks  
Thanks.

Margaret  
Okay. Well, thank you so much for doing this interview. Is there any—Is there anything I missed, any like final takeaway, besides wash your hands?

Parks  
Just have water, wash your hands. Those are really important. Decide to help, you know, I think is what I would say, decide to help and realize what helping is and realize what not helping is in any given scenario. You know, don’t let your worry about, you know, being a burden or not knowing how to help or not having specialized skills, don’t let that stop you from helping. Decide to help, but help within reason. Usually—you know, find out what people need, find out what people don’t need, don’t guess what people need and just start sending a bunch of crap to an area, it’s not helpful. You know, but find out where you can plug in, try to get reliable information on what’s needed. And if you have the ability to meet any of those needs, then do it. Absolutely. But don’t go outside of your scope of practice, don’t go outside of what you are actually able to contribute. Contribute what you can, don’t try to contribute what you can’t. Okay.

Margaret  
Okay. Thank you so much. 

Parks  
Yeah, absolutely. 

Margaret  
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell people about it. Please tell the machine overlords about it—or rather, tell them to tell other people about it by liking and subscribing and posting and following us on social media. We have—you don’t even have to just follow me on social media now. Live Like the World is Dying has its own Instagram page and Facebook page, although Facebook is, besides being terrible for the world is also really terrible in terms of engagement for projects. It’s actually just a garbage fire that is trying to get me to buy advertising. And then turns down my advertising? I finally like gave in and tried to give it some money to, so that people who like the like the redesign page actually see Live Like the World is Dying posts, and I was rejected. And well, fuck you, you don’t like me, I don’t like you either. And clearly, that’s my only problem with Facebook or the algorithms that run the world is that they didn’t like me personally. Anyway, you can also tell about it in person, that’s even cooler. And if you want to support this podcast more directly, you can do so by supporting me, which will soon be supporting the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness publisher. But you can support us on Patreon—or currently me on Patreon—later us on Patreon, depending on when you’re actually listening to this, at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy or patreon.com/I-don’t-know-what-I’m-going-to-change-it-to. But I’m sure you can find it, you clever people. And there you can support us. There’s a zine that goes out every month. It’s very behind, but it’s going to become less behind now that it’s a collective project, and all kinds of good stuff. Also, if you don’t have any fucking money, don’t give me any fucking money. It’s totally fine. We’ll give you all of our ship for free. If you message me on any social media platform, I’ll give you access to all of our content for free because money should go from the people who have more money to the people have less money and not the other way around. In as much as money is a useful construct, which is a different argument for a different time. In particular, I would like to thank Sean and Hugh and Dana and Chelsea, Eleanor, Mike, Starro, Cat J, The Compound, Shane, Christopher, Sam, Natalie, Willow, Kirk, Hoss the dog, Nora, and Chris. You all make this possible and I am endlessly grateful. And I also am grateful to everyone else. Because now that people actually like pay attention to this shit we have a fucking chance, right? Like, we can all like take care of each other and like live happily ever after unless everything’s on fire—we’ll figure it out. Right? We’ll figure it out. Okay, be well.

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