It Could Happen Here Weekly 146
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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together again. This is an episode where both happen at the same time. I'm your host, Bia Wong, and we are returning to what I've realized was, I think, one of the earliest things we ever covered on this show. In the sort of misty depths of time, which is, I guess, three years ago now, we talked to some organizers and tenants from the Hillside Villa Tenant Association.

And a bunch of stuff has happened since then. A lot of it is terrible. Some of it is cool. Well, okay. The stuff you've been doing is cool. The stuff everyone else in this situation has been doing is terrible. Yeah, and with me to talk about this is Janice Yu, who's an organizer from CCUD, and Anai, a tenant organizer at Hellside Villa. Or Villa, Jesus Christ, why am I doing Villa? Oh, I know more Spanish than this. I...

I know enough Spanish that when people think that I'm Spanish and start talking to me on the street, I can kind of communicate with them. Abject failure. Yeah. Welcome both to the show. Thank you. Thank you. It's both good and bad to be back. Yeah. I wish circumstances were better.

Yeah, thank you for having us and yeah, for staying in contact with us and trying to stay updated with our fight at Hillside Villa. Diana said, unfortunately, five, almost six years in, and we're still trying to find a solution to this epidemic of housing in Los Angeles. Yeah, so let's start there. For people who don't remember this from many...

many, many eons in the past. Can you sort of remind people of what kind of organizing has been happening and the general situation of this building, of these landlords, and of the conditions of people who have to rent stuff in L.A.?

Yeah, I can kind of start with the bigger picture context and then Ana, you definitely fill in from your personal experience. But basically, Hillside Via is a building that was built in the 80s in Los Angeles, Chinatown. And it was meant to be affordable housing. It had an affordable housing covenant

for 30 years up until 2018. And as soon as that expired, as would be expected, the landlord, Tom Botts, immediately tried to raise rent to market rate, which for the low-income working class tenants that work at Hillside Villa, it was a 200% rent increase. Jesus Christ.

Right. Yeah. Which is a de facto eviction. Like folks who are paying $800 in rent were now being asked to pay $2,500, which is literally impossible for some tenants who are on fixed incomes. And so it was a huge issue for one of the largest buildings in LA Chinatown. It has 124 units.

It's multi-ethnic, multi-generational. And so as soon as that happened, I think one of the tenants, Doña Luisa, who is no longer with us, called the news channels and organizers got involved. And yeah, this was six years ago at this point. And pretty early on in the fight, I think at the time we were working with

the district one council member at the time, Gil Cedillo, who's an establishment Democrat. And he had tried to negotiate a deal with Tom Botts, the landlord, for a 10-year extension that ended up

falling through because bots reneged on it. And that was, I think, one of the first moments where tenants realized we cannot trust these politicians to liberate us, right? To actually solve the root issues. And so that's when tenants started actually demanding to use eminent domain, which is the government's power to

basically seize land for public use to actually use that power for affordable housing and to use it as a long-term solution for all of these expiring covenants, which is a citywide issue. It's not just a Chinatown thing. There's actually thousands of buildings where covenants are set to expire in the next few years. So that was...

how this fight was going. And we had actually successfully pressured our city council in 2021 in May, which was, I think, the first time we came on the show to set aside the funding to actually do that and to actually take bold action for housing. And yeah, I'll pass it over to Anai to just share from your own experience. Thanks. I don't know how I could follow that, but I'll try my best.

Yeah, so like Janice was sharing, the covenant expired in 2018. There was already an attempt to evict my family, as I shared in the previous episode. So after that is when we all started organizing together.

And then shortly after the pandemic happened and everything shut down during this time, the landlord Tom bots like wasn't stopping. He was going full throttle into his mission of completely evicting and displacing all the families living here in Chinatown, the multi-generational families that have been in Los Angeles and

Not nowhere else. You know, this is our home. Los Angeles is our home. So with this eviction, it meant that we'd have to first be houseless, be out on the street and be forced to like figure something out last minute for ourselves.

And moved somewhere in the outskirts of Los Angeles to a place where we're not familiar with. So these are some of the things that we were facing then during the pandemic. And also facing continued rental increases, which were illegal during the pandemic. And it's something that we've been dealing post-pandemic and recently in a lot of our more current meetings. So it's like bringing that to light that these were issues

illegal rental increases that had happened and that he actually had

asked the city to pay back right yeah so we had applied to erap which is basically a rental relief program to support tenants and what bots did was he asked the government to pay him the increased rent rates the 200 increased rates and the government fucking gave it to him

Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah. And yet he is still demanding that tenants themselves pay back their rent debt fully. And what happened with the recent deal that was made behind tenants back, which is what we're going to get into, is that the government basically took the extra money back and are not applying it

to the tenants' rent debt. So that's something that we're pretty pissed off about because basically they took money that was supposed to be for tenants and just gave it back to the city government, which also doesn't even make sense because it was federal funding. So that's kind of one of the issues. Yeah, so we have a situation where the landlord has stolen this money and then...

The city has now stolen it from him, which they have stolen federal money for themselves. Oh, Jesus Christ. Literally. Oh, God. Yeah, it's all just like state-sanctioned theft. You know what else is a structural problem that is causing the mass evisceration of most of the population on Earth? It is the fraudulent services that support this podcast, and we're going to go to them briefly. We are back.

So is there anything else from sort of, I guess, like the background era of this that we want to get to before we move into like what's been happening now? Yeah, I think maybe some additional context we can share is that after that May 2021 council meeting, we ended up really...

supporting our current council member, Ava Nises, in her campaign to get elected. This was November of 2021. We hosted large forums in Chinatown. We really mobilized our base in CCED to turn out to vote for her. And I think a powerful anecdote is that Richard, one of the longest Vietnamese tenants at Hillside Villa, he's been there for over 30 years,

For him, this was the first vote that he ever cast in this country. And I think that...

you know, is not a unique story. I think for a lot of our elders, it was only because of our efforts that they participated in this election. So I think a lot of the statistics show that the Asian base, the Chinatown base was really essential to getting a nieces elected. And in 2022, she officially got an office. She was able to beat the incumbent Gil Cedillo and was the first,

quote-unquote abolitionist DSA, so Democratic Socialists of America, kind of sponsored candidate to win an LAC council. And since then, we've only seen her maybe two or three times, right, Anai? To address the issues at Hosed Villa, even though during her campaign phase, she rhetorically supported our eminence

domain struggle. She made a lot of promises, as politicians do, around housing in Chinatown. And yeah, I think that kind of brings us up to where we are now. Yeah. So let's get into what is currently happening because, dear God, it's really, I don't know, things are somehow getting worse. What's been happening in the last, I guess, immediate period? Yeah. So...

Wow, so much has happened. And it's really hard to actually keep track of all of the big things, whether they're positive, mostly negative things happening. Just so much has happened over the last...

Three years. We've been in the fight for six years. So as we were mentioning in 2021, there was a vote that happened at City Hall where there would be an evaluation of the building in order for the city to purchase a hillside villa.

last resort would be expropriate through eminent domain. Although that was never something that the people in power at LAHD or that politicians really stood behind and like always wanted to

to try something a little less radical. Therefore, going into negotiations, working with the landlord, and having these conversations with the landlord, with L.A.H.D., with us, somewhat in the picture, but mostly not in the picture, and that was done on purpose on behalf of L.A.H.D.,

and Tombots and the politicians at CD1. So because we were waiting for this evaluation to happen at Hillside Villa, I believe LAHD needed to do that evaluation. Well, the landlord, Tombots, didn't allow them to come into the building to do that evaluation. What?

Because it was private property and they needed some kind of court order, like permit or paperwork to allow the city, L-A-H-T, to come into the building to evaluate. That actually halted the process of evaluating in order to purchase the building and actually had tenants...

Waiting for this evaluation to happen for months, if not over a year. And you can imagine how tenants felt like if they were like suffocating under these circumstances of waiting for the city to act.

for Tom Botts to allow and there was always this resistance with the landlord and with getting L.A.H.D. to get up off their ass and actually do something unfortunately the chair of L.A.H.D. her name is

Her name is Ann Sewell. I'm sure a lot of people have heard her name by now. She is not our friend. She's wicked and like in not a cool way. She's actually has like some conflict of interest, in my opinion, that shouldn't have allowed her to even be in that position that she's in and to...

have such power over a case like ours at hillside villa where she was going into negotiations with tombots and she's also a landlord and a white woman oh jesus christ so it's a double whammy there and yeah she became really buddy buddy friendly with tombots and that is when negotiations they

began between her and Tom Botts behind the lucha, the fight for housing, behind the organizers' backs, behind communities' back. And so we rallied, we protested, we did phone banks for over a year and things were so stagnant, like I can't even express to you

how that at least that one year was and that's part of like since the last time we were here on this podcast was three years ago well a year or more of that was us just waiting around for the city to actually do their job and we can't get them to do their job but we can protest and we can do direct action and so we did and we pulled up to Ansel's house not once not twice we

we rallied the housing community to go protest at her home and to make her uncomfortable because

At any moment, any of us can get kicked out of our home. You know, there's no sense of security here. And we're never there to cause harm, you know, to anyone. No physical harm or anything. But we're there to also like kind of get her to understand how uncomfortable it is and how like safe she is in her own home. Right. So.

She called cops on us. She targeted organizers by name. It was really sloppy on their end. And yeah, so I think I'll stop there. And Janice, if you want to kind of add anything, I'm sure you have a lot to add. No, yeah, that was a really thorough summary. I think all I want to add is that while...

bots was denying the city access to the building, which we, you know, questioned deeply because why couldn't a tenant just give them access to the building? Why do they need special permission from the landlord? It's all just smoke and mirrors, right? Delay tactics.

put on by this trifecta of LHD, which is the LA Housing Department, so the bureaucrats, and then CD1, City Council District 1, the politicians, and then...

bots they're all completely aligned with each other in their end goal of essentially protecting capital protecting landlords right so as he was doing that he initiated the eviction process he started evicting tenants the you know 35 plus families that are deeply involved in

the tenants association, he sent eviction papers to all of them. So Anaya, maybe you can speak to a little bit of like what that experience was like to get those papers while the eminent domain process wasn't moving forward. Like it was supposed to. Definitely. Well, speaking on behalf of like my mom who I live here with and who's lived here for over 12 years, um,

And speaking on behalf of other tenants, a lot of them are elders over 50 years old, have lived here for over 20, 30 years.

They definitely felt the burden of those eviction papers and the anxiety, the heavy emotions that comes with being at fear of like losing your home at any moment, the health issues that come up with that. So they, they definitely felt a lot of that. And as much, as much as we've been fighting, um,

As much support as we have from the community, they still felt that insecurity of their housing. For me, as someone in their 20s and where we've been in this fight for over six years or about six years, I felt like we've gone through the eviction process and I don't fear Tom Botts and I don't fear his tactics anymore.

or his eviction papers. So there's definitely a difference in the way that like a lot of our elders feel, but I do have a lot of trust in the organizing that we're doing, the solidarity, although things haven't necessarily been

all happy and we're still not really getting the things that we've been demanding for. I have a lot of trust that we're going to be able to win those evictions. And we know how weak Tom Batz is, his way of thinking, and how weak their lawyers are. So we must keep pushing. There's no other way. And we will...

until this is over if it is ever over unfortunately we need to go to ads then we will come back with not ads and instead more incredibly beautiful stories of struggle

We are back. I guess I promised struggle and I didn't... I should have added and also betrayal because that's kind of the next part of this. Absolutely. Let's talk about that and the deals that are being cut. Yeah, so at the beginning of...

This year, we learned that a deal had been negotiated between LHD and bots completely behind tenants' backs. And we had frustrating meetings with Aeneas, our council member, where she was not willing to take a public stance against these backdoor negotiations. And so in...

April of this year, about four months ago, there was another motion that was heard in LA City Council when the kind of details of this deal were actually revealed. And they are just obscene. Basically, Tom Botts is being paid $15 million by the

the LA government and having a $5 million loan that he has owed the city for, I think the 30 years, um, since Lucidio was first bill, he's having that loan forgiven with 0% interest. And all of that is just to extend the affordability covenant for a mere 10 years. Um, which might sound like a lot to some folks, but in reality is, um,

not a lot at all. It just means that the children who are in middle school now will be in college and have to fight this fight another time, right? And so that happened for bots. Great for him. Whereas Tenants...

are being asked to pay back over $1.5 million collectively of back rent with 3% annual interest added on. And yeah, their eviction cases were not being dropped. They were promised to get their eviction case dropped.

But what happened was that this month, one of our key tenant leaders, Adela, her case was moved forward in the courts by bots. And we believe it was basically like a test case to...

basically pressure tenants to sign the new contracts, you know, threatening if you don't sign, this is what's going to happen to you too. And she is supposed to have a court date in September or October. So the timing is very obvious, right? You time this so that tenants would sign these new contracts that we were told would come out last week. It ended up being that they didn't come out till a little bit later and they

When we actually received the details of the new lease, we were even further taken aback because some of the details of this lease are just really wild. It's a complete regression from...

any kind of tenant law or tenant protection against harassment. Some of the things that this new lease includes is that there are behavioral stipulations is what they're being called. Yeah. Just that term itself is so cursed, but the stipulations say that if a tenant merely plays amplified sound,

in any of the public communal spaces of the building or records

slash slanders slash harasses the landlord or management, they can be immediately evicted without a jury trial. Jesus. Like that is, that is insane. You know, these are clearly anti-organizing policies because these are some of our tools are to amplify sound,

And it's our right to be able to record landlord or management when they are usually the ones harassing us. They are always the ones harassing us, right? So that's one of the key issues with the new lease. Also, the eviction cases are not even being dropped after tenants sign this new lease. They're merely being suspended. And the court actually retains jurisdiction for six years over the eviction cases, which is

not something that any of the tenant lawyers we have worked with have ever seen before. And what this means is that

if the tenants are late just one day on the rent plus the debt repayment that bots is asking for, they can also be immediately evicted without a jury trial. And then finally, this one is one of the kickers is that in the lease bots also wrote language saying that the

the tenants are responsible for paying his lawyer fee, which are up to, are up to $30,000. And he is also demanding that the tenants pay his lawyer fees with 3% interest. So he's asking tenants to pay for their own evictions. And one of the most wild facts,

parts of this whole thing is that A. Eunice is doubling down on calling this a good deal. She is caught on recording at a recent protest that we did at her house saying that she would recommend that one of her family members

signs this deal, which essentially signs their rights away and commits them to paying an exorbitant amount of money to get evicted. So yeah, this is what we're dealing with. Yeah. And I want to kind of focus in on that last part because that is a DSA elected election.

Like that is one of the people that she ran. That was also very specifically was, you know, someone who was elected off of your organizing and is now instantly turned around and gone. I would tell my own family to pay this guy's lawyer to evict you, which is nuts.

Yeah, hardly socialist, hardly progressive, hardly even liberal at this point, right? It's just such naked, blatant protection of neoliberalism. And she not only called this a good deal, when we brought up the behavioral restrictions, she referred to those as simply good neighbor policies.

that we all have to abide by. Yeah, which is ridiculous. What?

So just completely normalizing the landlord, you know, maximizing his power, gaining more power than any landlord has ever had in the city and completely restricting the tenants right to organize and to fight against harassment. Yeah. Yeah. And I think this raises a really important question about what are we actually doing as a movement for people who aren't involved in this movement?

Like who are involved directly in the tenants organizing. Like if the thing that you're doing is putting people like this in power who get elected off a movement and immediately turn on them inside with landlords, what is, what is your political project supposed to be doing? Right. And if this is something that you're okay with, you need to sit down and reevaluate what you actually believe. And it's something that you're not okay with.

You need to sit down also and ask yourself, how did it come to this? And why is this something that you think is acceptable? Yeah, a thousand percent. So far, even though we protested Aionisa's last weekend, we haven't really heard from DSA folks in terms of actually publicly supporting us and publicly holding Aionisa's accountable. So that's something that we would consider.

like to see, ideally. Yeah, it's like, again, I know there are DSA people in LA listening to this show. Like, please come collect your trash. Like, this is your problem, and you also have to be part of the solution to dealing with it, because right now, what you have is a situation where a bunch of tenants and a bunch of tenant organizers are fighting your people at the same time as they're also fighting the landlord's

and the rest of the city government and the city bureaucracy and this is this is a situation that i think is just absolutely unacceptable and that can be intervened in by people who are supposed to be doing this and haven't been yeah speaking on that i have a lot of feelings around that and um

as someone that has experienced a lot of displacement in Echo Park and now happening in Chinatown, it's something that's followed me my whole life and dealing directly with the problem of like gentrification and the people that

coming into our neighborhoods or mostly like, like liberal folks. I know a lot of them benefit from the displacement and gentrification and it's really easy for them to look away or just kind of like shrug their shoulders and just go have brunch at a new Echo Park or Highland Park cafe. So definitely, um, thank you for calling that out. And yeah, we really need to like,

radically and reimagine what it would look like to find a different solution where we're not relying on these politicians or yeah the city to to find those solutions because it's evident that six years into our fight at hillside villa it's been cyclical with their with

we're asking our council members to represent us. And again, and again, they give us false promises and disappoint us. And there's complete hypocrisy and backstabbing on behalf of the politicians. And, you know, all of these are tactics with the LHD making us wait for so long and

with Tombots, working with them. I think that's a tactic is making the people, the community wait for so long that they get tired. They get tired of fighting. They get tired of waiting. And unfortunately that has been a tactic that I've seen, like has gotten to a lot of our elder folks or people that are just fed up having, um,

to deal with the bureaucracy of it all that a lot of them kind of not everyone for example me i'm

still believe eminent domain could have been like a more radical solution and a way for us to take that power back from the city and the way that they use these laws to benefit them and that we could use like eminent domain to help us for once. But eminent domain was completely given up on, on with like certain tenants that were tired of fighting and wanted to reach an agreement and wanted to reach a deal with

So then we have this 15 year deal that is then turned into 10 years because those five years that we had been fighting is included into that 15 years deal.

Not only that, but yeah, he gets $15 million plus his debt to the city forgiven or extended. I forget which one it is, but this fool's a millionaire. He has a bunch of houses in Malibu. He doesn't need any more money. And it's just really disappointing that in a time like this,

where we know that things aren't working anymore and that things need to change, that again, the city and the politicians are continuing to side with the landlords and continue the cyclical oppression of lack of housing and lack of accessibility to housing that affected me as a child.

And that is going to affect the children that are around me now and the teenagers and the single parents. So that's why we need these better solutions. And yeah, like Jenna said, for the two or three years that Eunice has been around in office, we've only seen her two or three times.

She doesn't know what's going on half the time. And she is actively supporting shops here in Chinatown that are gentrifying the community. Not only herself, but her office is actively trying to divide our organization and our tenant association. Yeah, I think even during her initial meetings with us, she would kind of use this line of

I don't want to hear from organizers, especially one of our most committed organizers is a white male lawyer. He's there with us every single week. She would specifically scapegoat him and say, oh, I don't want to hear from a white lawyer. I'm here to hear from the tenants. And that dynamic...

actually like really got entrenched in our organizing where some tenants then began to weaponize that and so division and she continues to use that as a talking point like we saw during the most recent protest at her house where

She continued to use both of these tactics, weaponizing identity politics, which was really ironic because as she was saying that, you know, from one side of her mouth, on the other side, she's receiving advice from this white hipster musician that she appointed to her office, who's literally telling her every two minutes, like what is actually on this contract because she clearly has not read.

So it was just really ironic to see that play out in real time. She continued to say that she only wants to hear from tenants, even though tenants are saying the same exact things that the organizers are. But she's infantilizing them, right, by saying like, oh, you wouldn't believe these things if these organizers weren't putting them into your brains.

no, these tenants very much have the ability to make their own decisions and their own critical thinking. And we're offering them information that they are then, you know, taking in themselves. And then ultimately with the most recent protest, she, um,

just completely gaslit us for demanding more than she's giving. The whole vibe was basically like, why aren't you guys grateful for the 10-year extension? Why aren't you grateful to me for finding $250,000 to help you repay your debt? Maybe we're not grateful because when that $250,000 runs out,

tenants who are on fixed incomes are immediately vulnerable to eviction. And they're vulnerable to eviction even before that, if they even just blast their music too loud in the patio based on this lease. So yeah, we are very, very pissed off at

at CD1 right now. Yeah, and I think people listen to the show a lot. You should all recognize these tactics because these are all incredibly standard union-busting tactics. The whole dragging out the first contract negotiation, trying to do divide and conquer between the union, and doing the, oh, these are outside organizers, the union is an outside organizer. This is all just straight-up union-busting 101 stuff. Exactly.

Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that word up because that's what we've been calling it the past year. Exactly. Like you said, third partying the union, dragging out contract negotiations,

And I think the sad thing is that tenant organizing has a lot less protections than labor organizing or a lot less formalized law. So we don't have things like the NLRB that can maybe give us a little bit more teeth in fighting against unfair labor practices. So that could probably be a whole other conversation, a comparison between tenant and labor organizing. Yeah.

But so many parallels as well. And then like also she made so many promises and sweet talk so many of us. And there's this like

respectability, politics, that a lot of even tenants became divided within our movement because they put so much trust into her office and into the, in their hands. Whereas other tenants were,

were still very critical and very hard on Eunice's anytime she was around. We really questioned them and a lot of

The tenants didn't like that. And they, you know, demanded that we not question them and that we behave in an educated manner. But look, look at what we have now. We have a contract that is completely has sold all of us out. Yeah. And what for, you know, for these promises and, um,

fooling the people into believing her into trusting those promises or that she would actually have our best interest. So here we are. And these are some of the things that we've also been dealing with in the association. Yeah. And just to quickly add on to the point you were just making, Anai, I think we've really learned these past few years that,

about the insidiousness of these so-called progressive electeds, right? Who come from some kind of left-leaning background. A.N. Euses comes from La Defensa, which is a nonprofit that,

has organized for, you know, certain kinds of reforms within prison spaces. And so she would constantly refer to herself as an organizer and weaponize that, right? Like as an organizer, like I know what I'm doing and you guys can trust me. Whereas with Sadio, the previous council member, the contradictions were just obvious. Like we knew this guy was bullshit. Um, and,

And we would just be openly fighting him all the time. But in a lot of ways...

us getting her elected, I think made our organizing harder because of the way that she would, you know, call us her fam, which should have been a red flag from the beginning. Right. That's also another word. Yeah. Yeah. Call your co-workers, your family. Um, but yeah, I think, um, that's definitely been a huge lesson the past few years.

Yeah, and that's, I think, something that's not very well understood about the way that sort of campaigns are destroyed is that, like, someone who is nominally on the same side of you is significantly more dangerous of an opponent than someone who isn't, right? And I mean, like, you can look at immediately after World War II in Italy. In 1919, 1920, there's this thing called the Bene Oroso. This is the two red years. The two red years culminate in what becomes known as

The occupation of the factories is these mass sort of workers movements sort of accumulating from all of the effects of the war and all of the sort of oppression that's been happening for centuries in Italy. And what happens is instead of calling a conventional general strike in which, you know, workers leave the factories and allow bosses to hold on to them, workers instead just seize control and occupy the factories they work in. This is why it's, you know, it's called the occupation of the factories.

And in this period, right, these workers have the capitalists on the ropes, right? Without control of the factories, the bosses can't restart production with scabs. And more importantly, it puts the workers in the position to simply drive the bosses out entirely and restart production under the control of the workers who work in these places and who literally built the entire economic system that these capitalists have been profiting from. And this was the best chance, right?

Any country in Europe was ever going to get to defeat the capitalists once and for all, right? This was the best they were ever going to have. But the workers' oldest allies, these are the socialist and social democratic politicians in the socialist party, opposed the occupations.

And these socialist party politicians, these are their friends. These are their comrades. These are the people who lead their unions. I mean, these are people who, you know, a lot of these people have spent 30 years organizing with these people to carve the workers' movement out of sort of the stone of history. These are the people, you know, who in a lot of cases, like, they had gone to war with. So when the social democrats told them to mobilize and told them to go home and told them to, you know, just give the factories back to the capitalists,

and give up all of their leverage, the workers listened.

And once they've been totally demobilized, there was no way for them to resist the fascists. Mussolini marched on Rome the next year. And in the wake of the socialist betrayal, the fascists would rule Italy for 25 years. You have to be incredibly weary of, of these people who, who take power from, you know, like the most personal example to me is we have this with Brandon Johnson, who was like a, you know, the, the, the big, he was the mayor of Chicago where I, I guess technically now I don't live there, but I lived there for ages. Um,

Who was, you know, quote, our quote unquote movement mayor. And then immediately started just fucking putting migrants that had been like bust up in just like these fucking horrible conditions in camps. People were dying. People are getting fucking terrible diseases, like buildings with mold in them, like stuff that was been condemned. Like all of this stuff happens. And,

And it really kind of, in a very similar way, because this was supposed to be one of us, the resistance to it has been really neutered. And that's a dynamic that we haven't had as much in the US because there hasn't been a left movement.

in this country until really the last maybe decade and that's stretching it. And now, you know, we need to actually get back to understanding how this kind of stuff works because more and more of the people who are going to be arresting you are people who, you know, you used to be organizing with, people who you used to know and people who...

even when you put a mic in front of their face will claim to be on your side. Yeah, no, those are some really great comparisons to draw to. And yeah, I think we've definitely learned to be more vigilant collectively this year. Yeah. Is there anything else that you two wanted to say before we wrap up?

Yeah, I think it's really important to hold people accountable always as much as they don't want to be held accountable. They still, they probably won't, but they still have a responsibility to the community.

And yeah, I think we need to do stick to direct action and less working alongside of politicians because at the end of the day, the same thing will happen again and again. We'll be sold out.

And it'll be a big waste of time. So I think the collective power of community in doing direct action always will be the solution. And that's something that I've learned more recently in the way that things have kind of unfolded with Hillside Villa. And lastly, I know there are some key demands for CD1.

that we can share too. So yeah, I think picking up on what you were saying, Anai, direct action has always been our bread and butter to actually get meaningful results. And we're already seeing it after this recent protest at A. Eunice's house, where CD1, the city council district, is now completely changing their tune and saying, oh, this lease was just a draft. Right?

Like, you don't have to feel pressured to sign it. You can put together a counterproposal. And that is completely not what they were saying at all before the protest. They were really, really pressuring us to sign the lease. And even at the protest, right? AUNICE is recommending that.

a family member would sign it. So we're already seeing the results. And in our counterproposal, we plan to really highlight a few demands. First and foremost, that the rent debt is turned into consumer non-evictable debt, no behavior stipulations. Those are bullshit. The eviction cases actually get dismissed and not suspended in court for six years.

And finally, no $15 million for bots until a fair deal is reached. And that's a key point of leverage because CD1 is acting as...

the escrow of the 15 million, meaning that they're supposed to, yeah. See if, um, both parties. So us and bots quote unquote, like fulfill what we're supposed to with the deal before giving bots the 15 million. And so they have so much power over this situation. They keep throwing their hands up and saying they don't have power, but they can withhold the 15 million from him.

until he actually responds to some of these demands. So that's what we really want to highlight in this moment. And for folks who want to kind of stay updated on the struggle, our handle on both Twitter and Instagram, I believe, is hillside underscore via. So feel free to check us out there and stay updated. Yeah, we'll put the link down in the description too.

And on that note, thank you two both so much for coming on. And yeah, fuck them. Fuck the DSA electeds. Fuck the landlords. Fuck the housing department. Hope you crush the wall.

Absolutely. Fuck them all. Thank you so much for having us. And yeah, definitely the city, a lot needs to be dismantled and re-imagined and reconstructed, starting with housing and so much more. But thank you again. Yeah. And I encourage everyone listening to this show, give them hell. Whoever them is in this scenario, give them hell.

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The 2024 presidential election is here. MSNBC has the in-depth coverage and analysis you need. Our reporters are on the ground. Steve Kornacki is at the big board breaking down the races. Rachel Maddow and our Decision 2024 team will provide insight as results come in. And the next day, Morning Joe will give you perspective on what it all means for the future of our country. Watch coverage of the 2024 presidential election Tuesday, November 5th on MSNBC.

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Welcome to It Could Happen Here, I'm Andrew Sage of the YouTube channel Andrewism and I'm excited to discuss yet another facet of anarchist history from another part of the room. This time we're taking a look at the history of anarchism in Chile.

In my discussion of Peruvian anarchist syndicalism, I mentioned the cross-border contacts between Peruvian and Chilean syndicalists, particularly of the IWW variety. So what else were they doing in that time? How did syndicalism get started in Chile? Let's find out. All credit due to the work of Larry Gambone's Anarchism in Chile, and especially José Antonio Guterres Danton's 1872-1995 Anarchism in Chile. Without further ado, nos comencemos.

During the French Revolution of 1848 that founded the French Second Republic, which was part of the so-called Springtime of the Peoples where revolutions swept through Europe, two notable figures of Chilean liberal revolutionary history happened to be at Paris at the time: Santiago Arcos and Francisco Bilbao. Santiago Arcos was a Chilean liberal who lived in exile in Paris because of his father's involvement with the independence government.

There he rubbed shoulders with French socialists and liberals alike, and also met Francisco Bilbao. Upon his family's return to Chile, they tried and failed to start a bank due to government pressure, so his father returned to Europe. But Arco stayed in Chile, and after his father died, he got a hefty inheritance and would go on to take part in various struggles around Latin America.

Arcos also famously wrote Frontiers and Indians, A Question of Indians, in which he advocated for killing off of the indigenous people because it was cheaper than maintaining a garrison to protect the settlers from attacks. Bit of a record scratch moment, but unfortunately typical of the time.

Francisco Bilbao was another Chilean liberal who lived in Paris. Prior to his migration, he published a rather controversial article to Chilean sociability, La Sociabilidad Chilena, which was condemned by Chilean authorities as blasphemous and immoral for its critiques of the church and state.

After his condemnation, he moved to Peru, where he was condemned for criticizing the Peruvian president. So he left for Paris. And in Paris, he met Arcos. And upon their return to Chile, together, Arcos and Bilbao founded La Sociedad de la Igualdad, or the Equality Society, which was marginally influenced by mutualist thought.

You see, anarchism first came to Chile by way of the mutualist strain. Unfortunately, it was quickly suppressed by the Conservative government, but not before the establishment of the country's first mutual aid society of as many as 100 artisans. Those artisans would take part in the 1851 Chilean revolution against the Conservative government, which unfortunately didn't succeed.

After the failure of the revolution, the Conservative government began a program of political persecution against the instigators of the uprisings, which included arrests and deportations. Bilbao and Arcos were among those exiled.

Other mutual aid societies were formed in the late 1850s as mutualism was gaining influence among artisans like printmakers, shoemakers, and tailors. In 1862, the mutual aid society La Union was founded as a general mutual for all artists of all trades in Santiago and offered both workshops and medical services, and established a school for artisans and their children.

By the early 1860s, there were some 70 cooperatives, both consumer and producer. By 1870, there were 13 neutrals which served to alleviate misery in spite of economic depression. La Union branched out to over a dozen cities. And in addition to education, health, and welfare, it formed a philharmonic society. So why do you think these orgs became influential?

It's probably because they were practicing what they preached, showing the proof of concept of their ideas through practical application of the principles of liberty, neutrality, solidarity, and self-education. In 1872, the Chilean section of the International Workingmen's Association was established in Valparaiso, which was a major coastal city in Chile. 1872 was also the year the anarchists were kicked out of the Internacional, so the Chilean section didn't last too long. But it did plant a seed.

Libertarian ideas were spreading, particularly among the nitrate miners. Keep that in mind for later. Then boom, 1879, Chile goes to war with Bolivia and Peru and actually wins, which makes Bolivia landlocked. That's why it's still landlocked to this day. The war profited the Chilean and English nitrate mine bosses and the Chilean state. But of course, the workers themselves suffered. By 1880, there were 39 mutual aid societies responding to those needs.

After the war, in 1887, the Unión Republicana del Pueblo, or People's Republican Union, was formed with an anarchist platform.

Not long after, with a series of strikes by rail workers, miners, and others, the workers launched the first national general strike in 1890. And it was brutally crushed. And followed by further brutality, as in 1891, the president, Bamaseda, tried to press through reforms against the wishes of both Congress and foreign capital interests, which led to a civil war. The workers suffered, same old, same old. And Bamaseda was defeated and deposed, and then committed suicide.

Truly revolutionary anarchism came to Chile in the 1890s through an anarchist immigrant from Spain named Manuel Chinchilla. Chilean anarchist Carlos Horquera was influenced by Chinchilla and together they formed the Centro de Estudios Sociales, or Center for Social Studies, in 1892 and published the paper El Oprimido, The Oppressed. Another group of anarchists from El Centro Social de Trabajadores, or Workers' Social Center, founded the journal El Grito del Pueblo, The People's Scream.

Among the other societies and papers forming during this period included Sociedad de Protección al Trabajador y Mutuo Apoyo, or Society for Workers' Protection and Mutual Aid, and El Proletario, the Proletariat.

In 1894, the Chilean mutualists formed the Federación de Trabajadores de Chile, or Workers' Confederation, the FTCH, which was the first national federation of workers in Chilean history. It wasn't all that radical, outside the context of conservative government, that is, as it fought for social reform, as well as the usual activities of education and health insurance, but it was influential. By 1925, it had more than 100,000 members.

In 1898, there was a general strike in the coastal city of Iquique, and new societies were formed like Partido Obrero Francisco Bilbao, which became an anarchist group in 1899. And resistance societies were also formed for railway workers and carpenters, which would go on to play a major role in the Santiago general strike of 1907. Magazines, as always, were also founded, like La Tromba, El Rebelde, and La Antorcha.

We also got to see the first demonstrations against military service and the army in Chilean history. Under the slogan, "The Army is the Academy of Crime." From 1900 to 1910, anarchists were the best organized of all the radical groups, according to Larry Gombone, particularly in printmaking, baking, shoemaking, and the docks. In 1900, there were 30 resistance societies concentrated in central Chile among industrial workers.

The resistance societies were decentralized, rotated positions, acted autonomously, and were active in strikes. By 1910, there were 433 resistance societies, with a total membership of 55,000.

The year 1900 also marked the establishment of Mancomunales, or brotherhoods, within the Mutualist movement, which fused the mutual aid societies with trade unions. The first Mancomunale, organized in Iquique, ballooned into a movement of 6,000 members, which was the majority of the nitrate and maritime workers in northern Chile. The Mancomunale movement favored direct action and a much greater level of organization and solidarity than the resistance societies.

The resistance societies were local. Grand Communales spanned large territories, uniting different trades on a city, then provincial, then national level. One of the accomplishments of these movements was the growing presence of worker strikes empowered by solidarity. In 1902, harbor workers staged a 60-day strike and in 1903, there was a general strike in the port city of Valparaiso, resulting in the murder of more than 100 workers by the state.

That rebellion spread to the cities of Antofagasta, Iota and Coronel and lasted for 43 days. When the Mancomunales federated in 1904 as the Gran Mancomunal de Obreras, they brought together 20,000 members. A year after their federation was the Red Week of 1905.

Tired of the inhuman conditions, the cost of living, the high taxes, a workers' committee known as Centro de Estudia Sociedad Ateneo Obrero called all workers to join the strike and to support the cause.

By October 22nd of 1905, 30,000 people had joined the uprising, including bushers, shoemakers, tanners, cigar makers, truckmen, tapestry makers, typographers, telegraphers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, bakers, and railway workers.

The mere 1,800 police officers tried to kill the energy on the streets, as did the ruling class-funded White Guard, but despite their massacre of 250 workers, the movement continued to grow. By 1906, workers were active in the Federación de Trabajadores de Chile, or the FDCH, and students had organized the Federación de Estudiantes de Chile, or FECH.

Unfortunately, the Mancomunale movement almost died after the 1907 depression and severe military repression, the worst instance of which was the Santa Maria massacre of Iquique, where over 3,000 nitrate miners and their supporters were killed by machine gun fire after going on strike for better living conditions in the company towns built around the mines.

The company towns were run by the mine owners, who owned the workers' housing, owned the company store, monopolized all commerce, employed a private police force, and paid workers in tokens instead of money. The strikers were joined by their wives, children, and other workers in the city of Iquique, and had set up strike headquarters at the Santa Maria school.

they were given an hour to disband or be fired upon. When they stood firm, a certain General Silva Renard, known as the Butcher of Iquique, gave his troops the order to fire upon the strikers, their wives, and their children.

One eyewitness said, quote, On the central balcony stood 30 or so men in the prime of their life, quite calm, beneath a great Chilean flag, and surrounded by the flags of other nations. They were the strike committee. All eyes were fixed on them, just as all the guns were directed at them.

End quote.

Estimates vary, with conservative estimates placing the death toll at over 2,000, while José Antonio Guterres Danton's account reckons as many as 3,600. In any case, if all 3,000 of those minors were members of the Gran Man Comunal de Obreras, that'd mean roughly 15% of the movement was slaughtered in one massacre. A significant tragedy for sure.

Following the massacre, the movement formed the Federación Obrera de Chile, or FOCH, which aimed to pull together all the organizations involved in the struggle, whether anarchists, Marxists, or liberals. It was co-created by the once faltering Mancomunidades and grew in militancy until it had fully adopted anarchist-syndicalist principles. Even the trade unions outside of the FOCH were anarchist-syndicalist.

But eventually, the syndicalists and FOCH were overtaken by the Marxists, following the rise of the Soviet Union and the deepening tensions between anarchists and Marxists. Also in the 1910s, the famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was rubbing shoulders with the anarchists, though he eventually became a communist of the Marxist variety. Meanwhile, the student org FUCH established a popular university to link workers and students and develop popular education.

In 1912, the Federación Obrera Regional de Chile was formed, while 1919 marked the launch of the Chilean IWW, which expanded to 19 cities and a 10,000-strong membership. All the while, the strikes continued. 1919 marked yet another general strike. The nitrate mines weren't as profitable as they once were, creating more tension as workers were laid off.

The state was in debt, and with domestic disarray, it needed a distraction, so it tried to spark yet another war with Peru. Thankfully, the war never happened, but when it looked like it would be, it was wrongly condemned by the FECH, as they should.

But 1919 was also the year that reactionaries broke into the FECHS headquarters and burned down the building, while activist workers were being jailed, tortured and murdered, all the way into the 1920s. Still, by 1925 there were 214 syndicates in Chile, boasting the active participation of more than 200,000 people. And it was the first year where a Chilean delegation of the IWW was able to participate in an IWA congress.

Santiago had a rent strike, and yet still, worker blood was being spilled and tortured. And then a coup happened in 1925. Colonel Carlos Ibanez took power and by 1927 sought to fully abolish the labor movement. Union officers were raided, anarchist groups disbanded, and journals shut down. The labor movement persisted, the ideas lived on, but the anarchists were hit particularly hard.

Next, we'll find out what happens in the rest of the 20th century for the anarchist movement in Chile. We're back talking about the history of anarchism in Chile. Veamos que van a hacer en el resto del siglo XX. Let's see what they get up to for the rest of the 20th century. In 1930, the industry that Chile had been relying on for years, the one that had caused so much strife for workers across the country, had suffered a major blow.

German scientists discovered a synthetic nitrate that was far cheaper than the natural one. Nitrate is used in both fertilizer production and munitions manufacturing. So with a cheap alternative to the form found in the ground, the meager livelihoods of thousands of workers was now under threat. The mine owners may have had to reshuffle their finances a bit to recover from the loss of the booming industry, but it was the workers who dealt with the worst of such a crisis.

They faced famine, mass migration and overcrowding, compounded by the existing economic pressures of the worldwide recession. The 1930s crisis hit the population hard, but they kept striking regardless. The dictatorship of Colonel Carlos Ibanez fell in 1931 due to all that popular unrest. Then things went from bad to worse.

The Center of Workers' Struggle in the city of Santiago, the headquarters of the Federación Obrera de Chile or FOCH, where organizations of all flavors had worked together, came under attack in April 1934. The police and the White Guards, which were a group of capitalist-funded meatheads, opened fire on the compound, killing seven workers and a child, while badly injuring around 200 others.

In June of that same year, 1934, 477 peasants were slain in Alto Biobio, Ranquil, and Lonquime, all fairly small towns in the countryside of Chile. Two years later, in December 1936, the Federación Obrera Regional de Chile, or FORCH, and the Chilean IWW worked together to form the Confederación General de Trabajadores, or CGT.

It was their anarchist alternative to the communist and socialist-founded Workers' Confederation of Chile, or CTCH, which they saw as more reformist. Together, they fought to achieve the eight-hour workday, Sundays off, indemnity for accidents at work, monetary recognition for years of service, the right to retirement, and the right to an old-age pension.

Meanwhile, the Chilean Anarchist Federation got active and sent some brigades to support their comrades in the Spanish Civil War. During the Civil War period, anarchism had another upswing of popularity in Chile. But since the reformist union had legal and institutional backing, since the anarchists were being heavily repressed, and since there was some disorganization among them,

the anarchists had started to lose their popularity. Anarchist syndicalism had declined significantly going into the 1940s, while reformist syndicalism stayed strong, under the control of the socialists, communists, and Christian Democrats. In 1946, eight workers were murdered and many more were seriously injured by the police dogs at Pulmes Square in Santiago. The persecution of workers, and particularly anarchist workers, continued into 1947,

As Pisagua, a notorious internment camp once used to detain gay folks during the Carlos Ibañez dictatorship, was transformed into a concentration camp for socialists, communists, anarchists, under President Gabriel González Fidela. The notorious Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet had a stint running the camp in that time as well. So of course, fearing for their lives, anarchist organizations had to go underground. Yet even underground, they were able to accomplish some radical work.

For example, the Louise and Michelle Cultural Centre, renamed in 1953 the Louise and Michelle Libertarian School, which sought to educate female workers and later children as well. It had, at a time, over 70 students. It was able to last for a decade, up until 1957, despite authoritarian repression.

In 1950, the anarchist syndicalist Ernesto Miranda brought together 12 federations and several syndicates into the Movimiento Unitario Nacional de Trabajadores, or MONT, or Movement for Workers' Unity. Prior to the formation of the MONT, Miranda got started in the workers' movement at the age of 20, way back in 1932, while working in the shoe industry.

He fought local Nazis and the police while taking part in various unions and unitary committees. Following the formation of MUND, 1953 saw the formation of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, or CUT, Chile's United Labour Centre. The initial aims and principles of CUT were drawn up by members of the Confederación General de Trabajadores, or CGT.

and anarchist-syndicalists filled the shoe worker, printer, and maritime unions. In the Cuts Declaration, the workers proclaimed that the emancipation of the workers is the work of the workers themselves, and that "the present capitalist system, based on private ownership of land,

Instruments and means of production and exploitation of man by man, which divide society into antagonistic classes, exploited and exploiters, must be replaced by a social economic system that abolishes private property until a classless society is reached in which man and humanity are assured of their full development. The Central Workers' Union will carry out a revindicative action within the principles and methods of the class struggle, maintaining its full independence from all governments and partisan political sectarianism.

However, the Central Workers' Union is not an apolitical union. On the contrary, representing the conjunctions of all sectors of the working masses, its emancipatory action will be derived above the political parties in order to maintain its organic cohesion. The trade union struggle is an integral part of the general class movement of the proletariat and the exploited masses, and as such it cannot and must not remain neutral in the social struggle and must assume its proper leadership role.

Consequently, it declares that all trade unions are organizations for the defense of the interests and goals of the workers within the capitalist system. But at the same time, they are organizations of class struggle that points to the economic emancipation of the workers as their goal. That is, the socialist transformation of society, the abolition of classes, and the organization of human life through the abolition of the oppressive state." The Cut tried and failed to call a general strike in 1955.

Partially because, unbeknownst to them, the communist and socialist groups within the CUT had reached their own agreement with the government. By 1957, the CUT was severely split. The anarcho-syndicalists abandoned it in protest of its involvement in an electoral pact with the FRP, the Frente Amplio Popular, a left-wing party, during the lead-up to the presidential election in 1958.

The anarchist syndicalists rightfully believed that the cut getting involved with the political party would compromise working class independence. However, that act of protest would also diminish the influence of the anarchists in the union movement. 1957 also marked the rise of El Movimiento Libertario Fiete de Julio, or the 7th of July Libertarian Movement.

that brought together the anarchists and trade unionists from Osorno, Temuco, Concepcion, Linares, and Talca, were disposed after leaving the cult. It unfortunately dissolved a decade later as its participants got involved in other organizations. Ernesto Miranda, one of the co-creators of MANT, went on to create the Comité de Defensa de la Revolución Cubana. Although by 1960, the Anarchist Federation, FACH, was already warning of the Cuban Revolution's involvement with Russia.

Miranda later went on to form the MIR, the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, the Revolutionary Left-Wing Movement, in 1965, alongside anarchist-syndicalist Clotario Blest and Trotskyist Enrique Sepulveda. Clotario Blest had previously visited Cuba, which had impressed upon him the need for insurrectionary action.

Upon his return to Chile, Blest formed the 3rd of November movement, M3N, to promote revolution and unite the revolutionary left against electoralism. Before the MIR was founded, there was the MFR, the Movement of Revolutionary Forces, in 1961, which brought together non-aligned anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists, socialists, and communists in the trade union world. With the growing involvement of communist parties that eventually took over,

The anarchists were eventually sidelined in the MIR, and it was quickly known as a fully ML org. The MIR persists to this day. Another organization was also founded in this time, the VOP, Ovantgardia Organizada del Pueblo, which rejected the authoritarianism of the MIR with an ideological blend of anarchism and anti-authoritarian Marxism.

Both MIR and VOP were doing their thing in workplace struggles and getting their financing through bank robberies. But this wouldn't last, and both groups would also face repression and reaction from the authorities. Then came 1970, with the election of popular unity candidate Salvador Allende to the presidency. Allende was considered a democratic socialist, the first Marxist democratically elected in Latin America.

Allende declared an amnesty for all political prisoners and even took on members of the V.O.P. as part of his personal guard or Grupo de Amigos Personales . By 1971, they already warned the president that the riot was plotting to overthrow the government, but the president didn't take them on, so they took matters into their own hands and executed one of the key plotters in the coup plans. For that, they were punished.

In 1972, workers began to take over their workplaces, as the US had imposed a trade and credits embargo in retaliation for the nationalization of US-owned copper mines. Neighborhood committees took goods from the worker-controlled factories and distributed them amongst the communities.

The FDR, or Frente de Trabajadores Revolucionarios, or Revolutionary Workers Front, played a major role in this process, proving that workers were quite capable of running a factory by themselves, and that government and bosses were no longer necessary. But for all his alleged socialist credits, Allende couldn't believe this was possible, so he sent observers to give orders within the affected factories.

Meanwhile, peasants were taking over land and organizing through the MCR or Movimiento de Campesinos Revolucionarios or Revolutionary Peasants Movement. The government was feeling the pressure, applied from without and within. By 1973, Henry Kissinger and the other demons of the US did a test run coup, but the people barricaded the neighborhoods and factories from the police and army.

Being the first elected Marxist president of Latin America, Allende was patient zero for a pattern of interventions that would plague the region for years to come. After just three years of presidency and a second coup attempt, Augusto Pinochet took power in a US-backed coup. In 1973, a few months after the first coup attempt, tanks rolled down the streets of Santiago.

Thousands were tortured, raped and murdered. Anarchists were disappeared. Those that escaped death found themselves in concentration camps, many of which were ironically established on the remains of the old nitrate mine villages. All political parties and trade unions were banned. Some courses at universities were closed down, denounced as the home of revolutionary sentiment. The secret police, Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, called folks in fear. The executed would be thrown into the sea.

and Pinochet would go on to rule for nearly 17 years. In 1975, Anarchist Clotario Blest and Ernesto Miranda would activate the Committee of Defense of Human Rights, the CODE, which would become of vital importance for those persecuted by the dictatorship. They would record the rights violations and rescue and help escape those being persecuted.

In 1977 and 78, the Codex managed to organize the first event during the dictatorship to commemorate International Workers' Day, which helped to disrupt the fair people had of the dictatorship. Six years after the coup, heading into the 80s, despite the repression, the anarchists were starting to reorganize, alongside libertarian-leading members of the former Popular Unity Coalition.

They created the Umbrella Group, Socialist Ideas and Action, PAS, and took part in the struggles against the dictatorship in the 80s. In 1980, syndicates affiliated with Norway's IWA was able to secure the freedom of UOP members who had been imprisoned for nearly a decade, exchanging their imprisonment for exile.

while the Marxist MIR managed to assassinate the chief of army intelligence, Roger Vergara Campos, and a few other significant military figures, as well as bombing US-affiliated corporations. In 1982, textile workers went on strike, despite the risk of repression, and they were joined by a solidarity strike by 1983, when children and teachers wouldn't attend school, people wouldn't buy anything, and workers would stay home.

The police tried to disrupt the marches of the people. Two were killed as a result, and hundreds were arrested or wounded. But between 1983 and 1984, mass protests became more frequent, and the people defended themselves against the police with molotovs, stones, and barricades.

While anarchists were involved in these struggles, anarchist ideas were in the focus. The focus was on toppling the dictator. However, by 1984, you had a libertarian magazine called La Voz del Aterismo circulating. In 1987, the anarchist black flags reappeared in Santiago, Concepcion, and Osorno. Social centers were also established, with an anarchist streak, such

such as the Center for Social Studies, El Duende, the ELF in Santiago, and the Colectiva Anarquista Liberación, CAL in Concepción, both under the umbrella of the Taller de Analysts Sindical y Social, the Studio for Social Studies and Analysis, which was created with the aim of broadening the space for the oppressed. A newspaper called Acrata, Anarchist, was published by Colectivo Anarquista Concepción and the Bulletin Liberación by the CAL.

Acción Directa was published by anarchist comrades in Santiago. By 1989, Pinochet had to accept defeat and step down by 1990. Liberal democracy had returned, somewhat, to Chile. In the 90s, several anarchist groups formed, disappeared, and regrouped, and several anarchist publications were printed and spread. You had the Anarchist Intercities Federation, Federación Anarquista Interciudadana, DECAM, o Juventudes Antimilitaristas,

Demalo de Movimiento Anarquistas Luis Olé, the FAI Concepción, Colectivo Cultural Libertario Manatista en Concepción, Red Anarquista, and various other groups in Vía Alemana, Osorno, Tinucco, Concepción, Valparaíso, Santiago, etc.,

José Antonio Gutiérrez Danton, the author of one of the historical accounts I referenced, took part in several of these orgs, as well as their own collective, Arbol Negro, which entered delegations to the IWA Congress in Spain in December of 1994 and took over the work of the IWW in Chile.

As of the 21st century, several collectives and individuals are disseminating anarchist ideas and practices. Anarchist book fairs have been hosted in Santiago, and the Anarchist Federation Santiago has been working in organizing an anarchist platform. Anarchist-inspired or adjacent movements have lit the streets against the government, protest formations refuse central authorities, and indigenous Mapuche activists carry on their decolonial struggle against the state by various means, sometimes bordering on anarchic.

And the Mapuche struggle in Chile, by the way, is a fascinating story that really deserves its own episodes, which I hope to explore in the future. Anakia's activists have also continued to be killed by the police or other reactionaries following the return of democracy, such as Claudia López Benajez in 1998 and Jani Cariqueo Yanez and Juan Cruz Magna in 2008.

Chilean anarchists have also allegedly been setting bombs around the country, meant to cause damage to law enforcement, security forces, banks, and transnational corporations' property, but also causing occasional injury or death to people. Tambone also writes the mutual aid societies still function, and in a society where the welfare state is practically non-existent, mutual aid plays a much greater role than elsewhere.

cooperatives, both agricultural and consumer, are found in Chile. Although they don't have the same level of economic influence that similar movements have in Western Europe or Canada, and there are other libertarian-oriented developments as well. Left-wing Christians and ex-Marxist Leninists who rejected the vanguard party formed local base committees working in poblaciones. They function as mutual aid societies and centers to organize local issues. End quote.

I hope that the people of Chile, like everywhere else, can find true freedom. After over a century of anarchist struggle, I hope they can find revolutionary success. Until that day, this has been Andrew Sage of Androism. It could happen here, given the historical context of anarchism in Chile. Where am I to go next? Hopefully far. All power to all people. Peace.

I can create a future that I look forward to. I can get where I was meant to go. I can transfer to a four-year university. When you pursue an associate degree for transfer at a California community college, you're on your way to earning your guaranteed safe spot at a four-year university. With an associate degree for transfer, I can do this. Classes can fill up quickly, so enroll today at icangotocollege.com.

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Yeah, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, we appreciate it. So we met through a mutual friend who was also a volunteer with you. And the reason that that friend contacted me was that unfortunately the IDF shot you. And it's obviously a pretty shitty situation. And would you be okay with just beginning by recounting the incident? I don't know if that's something you're okay going back to. Just because I think...

The fucking wantonness of the violence is so stark that I think it might help people to hear it. So I volunteered with Faza and we go to a demonstration in Beita every Friday. The aim is to go back to their land that was stolen from them. I think there's a settlement called Avatar on the Palestinian land.

And their aim is just to go back to it and plant the Palestinian flag. So we get there and they're doing Jummah prayer.

And then after Juma prayer is when they start chanting. So like not even, it was like between five to 10 minutes when they started shooting tear gas at us. - During the prayer? - After the prayer. - Okay. - After the prayer. - Yeah. - So the prayer went without incident. - Okay. - And then afterwards was when they shot tear gas at us, multiple tear gas canisters. And then once they started firing live rounds, we hid behind a concrete wall, tear gas still being shot at us.

and then live rounds as well. You could see the dust coming off of the concrete walls as they shot. And then once it seemed like they were coming down from the tower, I think Palestinians were running because they thought they were coming. So we ran and we went over a concrete wall. We ran for I don't even know how long. But once we got to a clearing and they thought it was safe,

We regrouped with everyone. So the road going up to where we were, there were Palestinians still running down. There's Palestinians running to the right. And we just waited maybe 30 seconds. And then someone told us to go. So we ran with them. And then we got to rest for like five minutes. Had a quick smoke, coffee. Some people had tea.

But then some Palestinians were moving towards the street to our right. So we followed them, a couple of us, and some of them stayed. And as we were approaching there, this was the road that went straight up to the watchtower we saw them on before. So there was still some tear gas shot at us and some live rounds as well. But we saw them actually coming down from the tower this time. And before...

you know they even drove down there was palestines to our left that were running so whenever we see them running we know that it's a threat they think may be fatal so we're running we we actually run to the olive groves behind us and as we were running just making sure all my comrades were good um i hear a loud bang and then i feel a pain in my leg

I thought it was like a tear gas canister that hit my leg because it just felt like a blunt force. But I've never felt that pain before. And one of my comrades were helping me up while I was still running and limping. And then finally, once we got to a clearing, that's when all the Palestinians ran to me and carried me away. So the pickup truck, which then went to the health clinic or the emergency clinic in Beita. And then after that...

The army trucks blocked our way while I was in the ambulance when I was transferred. And there was two checkpoints afterwards. And the two checkpoints, they demanded to see who was inside, which delayed my care further. And then finally getting to Rafidia Hospital.

Jeez, the swept. Fucking hell. Classic of them to block the ambulance. I've heard that so many times. Yeah, yeah. I'm really glad that it wasn't like an arterial bleed or something when that time would have been a life and death in those minutes, right? That's a really good point. Yeah, I was smiling because I was like, I don't know what just happened to me, but I hope I'm okay. And also...

I know I'm here for Palestine, so, you know, kept smiling, but I didn't know what was happening. And thankfully it was no artery or bone. So I was very lucky. Yeah. Do you know what rifle you were shot with? Because I know they sometimes use like smaller calibers for crowd control. Yeah. From what I heard was M16. Okay, fucking hell. Yeah. So yeah, they're just really going for it. And yeah.

Unbelievable. I'm glad you're okay. We spoke about this before, but just so listeners, you're healing up. You feel like you're on the path to at least physical recovery. Yeah, absolutely. So I got shot and one week later, I went from wheelchair to crutches to cane. I'm still on the cane.

but I can move around pretty well like indoors like when I'm outside I have to use the cane because my leg buckles and the hole in the front the exit wound is still healing it's not fully closed yet but a lot better did the bullet go straight through

Yeah, it went straight through. No fragments, I believe. They had to do surgery to stitch me up, but also to take the dead tissue out. And I think they had to put together some muscles as well. Yeah. Jesus. So, like, I want to talk about a couple of things regarding this. First of all, I think, like, are you a U.S. citizen? Yeah. Yeah. So, like, a foreign military shot a U.S. citizen, right, has your...

a no senator representative any of these people who are supposed to give a single fuck about this like reached out to you

So it was just the embassy. The embassy did contact us maybe the same day I was shot, just a little bit later. But no representatives here in the United States have reached out to me. Yeah, that's pretty reprehensible. Do you want to give people a rough sense of who those might be? Because I don't want to dox you and where you live. I'm in Jersey City. There is a vacancy, actually, for one of the representatives. So that is one reason why. But the other ones, yeah, Jersey Senators...

local politicians nobody has reached out yeah nobody's reached out yeah and i think like we said this again before but like it's not that your leg is more important than someone's child's life in gaza right like that's i don't want to imply that for a second but like yeah you know the system of states as it is today works in a certain way and in theory those people should care about you and like i think it really gets us to something else i wanted to talk about which is that like

The existence of Palestine, like as it is today and as it wishes to be in the future, much like, you know, other places I've worked in Kurdistan and the liberated parts of Myanmar, is a threat to the system of states and governments as it exists today. And like at some point you decided that the government

and writing to your senator or whatever tweeting people do wasn't enough or wasn't gonna work and you decided that like you wanted to put your body in between the people trying to kill the people and people trying to survive so can you talk us through that journey like have you always been invested in

in the Palestinian cause? Is it something that you became aware of at some point? Yeah. So I'm part of the Philippine movement, Anak Bayan, I'm part of Bayan and the national democratic movement in the Philippines. Uh, so through them, I was in contact and collaboration with Palestinians. And that's when I started to understand Palestinian struggle. And actually I was at the protest in New York recently and it's came full circle because, um,

Nardine of Within Our Lifetime stated that she actually started it because of the National Democratic Movement and our work together and our studies. So because I also saw Palestinians standing for the liberation of the Philippines, we always had that connection or I had that connection with Palestinians. And it grew over time. And the escalation of October 7th really had me thinking

just dysregulated because I'm a teacher in Jersey. And for the first few months, it was so hard for me to teach. It was like I was just going on autopilot because how could we, you know, just go on with our daily lives, seeing these atrocities happening every day.

And once it was the end of the year, it was hot. I was smoking a cigarette. I put my keffiyeh on the gate outside of our school. And then I came out because I had to bring the snacks in for my students for the last week of school. And it was gone. So I had to buy another one.

And when I did, it came with a really beautiful handwritten postcard from Palestine. And it was just talking about, thank you for supporting us through these difficult times. And then it said invitation to visit. So that was what prompted me to research and ask other friends in the movement. And then they told me about FASA. And then I took the orientation and training and I went over during my summer break. Yeah, it's a great easier summer.

We'll just stop for some advertisements here and then come back. We are back. Unfortunately, you've had to listen to some adverts, so hopefully you've skipped them. So I wanted to ask about like that journey, the journey to Palestine. Now, I imagine it's very difficult and like,

How did it feel, I guess? This is a cause you've been invested in for some time, right? And then you've seen these horrific things and then suddenly you're on the ground. Was to be in solidarity with people... I know my experience at the border has been that I would much rather be in it, even if it's terrible, than at home seeing pictures of it. I wonder how it was for you. Yeah. For me, I've always just wanted to visit Palestine. And I want to be in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

As a Filipino American, I've seen Palestinians there to support Filipinos. I've been there in the streets with them, you know, when they supported Americans, black Americans, you know, against police brutality. So it just felt like a duty as an organizer, as a revolutionary to, you know, show the same solidarity back, as well as knowing that I'll be in a beautiful place with beautiful people under horrible circumstances. Yeah. Yeah.

I wish more people, and it's not just Palestine, right? We have these revolutions that we talk about and these causes that we talk about, like,

And I understand it's not always easy. People have commitments, financial and interpersonal and like, if you can go, you should go. Yeah. Do you feel like your solidarity grew? Because you experienced solidarity in return, right? Like somebody ran towards a gunfighter to pick you up at some point. Do you feel like a more profound sense of solidarity after that experience? Having also experienced like settler colonial violence, I guess? Absolutely. It's like, you know, before I'm talking about it, we

we talk about in circles and I did have the privilege to be able to go you know not a lot of people have the financial ability mental ability physical capabilities so I'm lucky on that end as well but if one is willing and able in all those different aspects they should go if they can especially during all of the harvest right now which is an escalation of settler violence that we've seen recently

And even the Israeli army. So I get updates from Kusva right now and I just see everything that's happening still. And I know all of harvest is a huge economic thing for the Palestinians. So, yeah, it would be great for anyone that's able to go. Yeah. Leading up to you getting shot and maybe after, can you describe maybe what

the environment was like like what on the ground how people were living your experiences with the idf me before that like can you just walk us through what that was like on the ground yeah so my first day there i was in kusra and we were just getting the money that we need we got some groceries i believe i had i only had like two pairs of clothes i packed like

And then we had dinner with the Palestinian family. Very beautiful collective dinner.

And when you have lunch or dinner there, you know, it's not like a quick 30 minutes and you're gone. You're there for like three hours. Even if we have different language barriers, it's just very beautiful culture and people. And then I get shot the second day. The second day? Good God. I didn't know that. Yeah. So second full day. And so I think I was the first person shot at a demonstration there.

So people were ready for, I guess, the usual tear gas and live rounds. But I don't think anyone is expecting anyone to get shot that day, including me. But yeah, so I was healing in the hospital. I heard the Israeli army came into Kusra. And, you know, we had the amount of people we had on the ground. And one person had to kind of stay around me. So I was scared and feared for my people.

over there. And then another day goes by. The next day after that, I'm back in town. And then there was reports of a settler that was killed. And then we heard that all the settlements, there was a call to attack Kusra. So right when I get back, we're ready on high alert. We're watching, making sure nothing was happening. Thankfully, nothing did happen that day.

But then, yeah, it happens like every other day where either the Israeli army comes in or settlers attack. In Kusra, we also tried to open the gate between the town because the Israeli army put a gate between the town so people can't travel within the town. And we tried opening it, but they have the key. And a peaceful demonstration turned into the IDF demonstration.

or the IOF coming with like 12 soldiers, intimidating folks, loading up some kind of automatic weapon, pointing tear gas at us. A few days after that, they came into town at night, shot up the town. A few days after that, the Israeli army was guarding settlers really close to town, or actually in town,

And then a couple days after that, too, I think one of the last days I was there, they raided the town. They shot like 12 tear gas canisters, like two to three flashbangs, and then like three live rounds. And they shot a boy in the back. Thankfully, he's also okay. And then...

After I left, settlers attacked international volunteers, US citizens as well, with rocks. And the IOF shot like five other Palestinians as well. So it's just continual violence. You know, what I faced that one day is what they face every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they don't get to go home like it is at home.

Can you explain for people who aren't familiar, right? I think a lot of people have come into solidarity with Palestine in the last 11 months, which is fine, right? You don't have to know like textbooks of history to be like genocide is bad. Yeah. So like you're in the West Bank, right? Can you explain where that lies in relation to Gaza and what is happening there?

in the West Bank, especially right now in the last few days and weeks, that is extremely concerning? I don't know how to phrase it, like terrible. Yeah, so the decimation of Gaza on Israel's end is a response to October 7th escalation, even though October 7th was a response to however many decades of oppression that they faced.

So Gaza is being decimated, but Israel wants more land. The greater Israel that they've been advertising.

settlers want to move into Gaza. Settlers want to continue to move into West Bank. The West Bank also, from reports, Israel gave authority or something of being able to get more land, which is Palestinian land. So what kind of authority do they have over that? All the legal settlements. But they're trying to just take all the land that they can get.

whether it's in Gaza, whether it's in West Bank. So they're obviously connected because it is Palestine. But now they're just going into the West Bank because there's further resistance now as well. And there has always been just a lot more quiet than Gaza at the moment because, I guess, of the government that's over them, Palestinian Authority. But yeah, it's all connected.

And they want to just squash any kind of resistance there is, whether it's in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as just trying to take as much land as possible before international intervention happens, which we haven't seen because the U.S. continues to supply weapons and arms to Israel. Yeah. Apparently what happened to you isn't going to stop that like nothing else is.

I don't know what it is. Just for people who aren't familiar, the West Bank is a much larger geographical area. Bank refers to the Jordan River, right? Settler colonialism is a term that people are familiar with, right? And it happens. I'm not saying it doesn't happen in America because it still happens every day. It's a process that we continue to create. It's not one that stops in the 19th century, right? I don't want to imply that, but like...

Where you were is the bleeding edge of settler colonialism, right? It's a family being kicked out of their house. It's people not being allowed to go back to their homes. Do you have a sense of like, what does that look like? Because it's incredibly violent, right? And incredibly inhumane. No reasonable person would think that like, oh yeah, this seems normal and cool. Can you explain like,

perhaps how that would appear for one family or for the farm or the village. So in Khusra, there has been a good amount of resistance even before October 7th from the leaders there and the community. But even with that, three months before, it looked like settlers coming into town, a whole wave of them burning 11 houses, I believe it was, cars, houses.

attacking people with Israeli army there, not stopping anything. I believe it was Masfer Yata, where other activists are, where they literally come to the land, say, this is ours, try to destroy infrastructure, like water wells. They come in and literally say, God told me this is my land and I'm here, and try to settle there. There's, I guess, I saw...

a place where the Israeli occupation forces would guard around a mosque, not for the Muslims there, but for settlers to come in and pretty much make it a synagogue for however long. It looks like someone coming in and claiming that your home is theirs and destroying any infrastructure so you don't come back, whether it's the home, the streets, water, whatever it is. Yeah.

I keep thinking about, like, one, how much it didn't matter that you were American. But I keep thinking about Rachel Corey and how maybe that was the most, like, egregious recent example I can think of of an American citizen. I think she was 23 when she died. She got run over by a fucking bulldozer from the IOF. Nothing happened. Her parents are still trying to remind the world what happened, like, year after year. Yeah. And so...

it's not surprising to me that no one reached out to you and that there is no outrage, but it's just really frustrating that it really doesn't matter. Like you could have, like you could have lost your life and no one would have bad an eye in government. Like it really, really just makes my blood boil because it's, I don't know. That's what I've been thinking about for a tiny bit. I just reminded me of that and how it,

there's no protection being American when you're on the ground in Palestine at all. Yeah. When, when we're there, our power comes from having a passport somewhere else and our phone, right? That's,

Why we go there to volunteer to create a buffer between the Israeli army, settlers and the Palestinians. And it shows their complete disregard. The caveat there is that they said it was a mistake, which it went straight through my leg. So I don't know how kind of how what kind of mistake goes straight through my leg. But also someone was arrested and heard that they thought I was Palestinian.

So it just shows even more so the complete disregard for Palestinian life. Yeah, right. Whether they thought I was or not, that they would just shoot me. And yes, there was two U.S. citizens that were recently attacked by settlers and the IOF did not do anything. Only a little bit after they said, stop throwing rocks, but the damage is done. Yeah, our government...

has complete disregard for Palestinian lives because there was also a lot of Palestinian Americans that have been dead. And our lives or my life or others that are just American with another nationality have, you know, I guess a little bit more value in their eyes, but because they don't want outrage, international outrage. But yeah, our government, they haven't reached out to me, which showcases that

they don't care about US citizens that support Palestine. Even Biden said that, you know, if a US citizen got hurt, he would do something and nothing has happened. Yeah. I think it's kind of illustrative, right? Like we're supposed to live in a democracy and like here they are choosing the interests of a state to do what is extremely clearly and like it's very widely agreed upon illegal.

and to do so in a genocidal manner. And they're going to back that over your right to not be shot in the leg. Yeah.

I do think it's funny, maybe that's not the right word, but the fact that they thought you were Palestinian as if that was a good enough excuse to shoot at you. It's like, oh, that explains it, of course. Like, okay, sure. That makes me so mad. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We mistook that person for a person whose life doesn't matter. Yeah, it's shameful. You know, you're really giving it away. Yeah.

And I think like, I know it seems to me that our government is not going to solve this, right? Like it realistically in the election, you know, there are third parties and stuff. I'm going to vote for someone who said nice things about Assad, but like you don't have a box you can take that will make the stop in November. Right. And the only way we can do anything is with solidarity. So like,

What do people do? Like how, you've been there, you've seen it. Like how do people most effectively be in solidarity? Yeah, I think the biggest thing is international pressure that we've seen all across the globe, which has showcased some results in other countries, not here, where arms exports are actually at least

Some are being banned or restricted altogether. But here, I think it's continuing to build up anti-imperialist organizations like Anak Bayan, like the many pro-Palestinian organizations, like many revolutionary black organizations, and then uniting and coming together to create...

of power that is beyond the two-party system and uniting with everyone that is pro-Palestinian, that does want to see true democracy in the United States and all across the globe. Because I was one person and people call me a hero, but for me, the Palestinians face this every day. They're the heroes and we should be uniting to support them in their liberation.

And sometimes it looks like building those organizations. Sometimes it also looks like going to Palestine and joining things like FASA, like International Solidarity Mission, to be a buffer as much as we can, even though it's showcased that they don't care. And I think...

When we unify, we would be able to pressure, especially when we have good organizations, to pressure elected officials to really divest from the two-party system and people that support genocide. And have that pressure amount to more than the lobby for Israel or people lobbying for arms for Israel, to have that outweigh

the pressure financially that they have politicians. Yeah. That was very informative and I really appreciate sharing your experience. Yeah. Thank you for all the work you do. People might want to support your healing. They might want to support FATHER. They might want to support International Solidarity Mission. They might want to find out more about how they can like

be that buffer. Do you have any suggestions on where people could do any of those, all of those things? I don't have a personal fund right now, which is fine. I'm going back to work, teaching. But there are people that need funds to be able to participate, especially during the Olive Harvest. So following Faza, F-A-Z-3-A underscore P-A-L

is somewhere to follow, as well as defendpalestine.org. They're both connected. So you can follow the news on what's happening on the ground, as well as, I believe, contacting them. There's a general fund for folks that want to travel to Palestine but are not able to. So there's a general fund for that.

In the future, my friend was going to make a T-shirt to help fund the Palestinian Ambulance Center over there that I got a first aid training with Amado Sison on there. So I don't know if it'll work here, but over there, definitely. So there's a lot of different things. I know there's the different camps that are being raided right now. I think there's some fundraisers for them as well. And Gaza, there's plenty too.

But in any way that people can contribute to any of those things, you know, it always goes a long way for them. Yeah. That's pretty great. Thank you. Is there anything else you wanted to say to people before we finish up? Yeah. I hope that one day folks, persons listening right now, if you're capable and able to join up to see the beauty of Palestine, the landscape is gorgeous. Yeah.

outside of the settlements. The people are so loving and caring and the culture is just amazing. And I just hope that you will be able to see Palestine one day, whether it is to be in solidarity with them as a protective presence or just to see it. And hopefully one day, inshallah, it's free and we are all able to visit. So,

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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