Trouble # 7: No Permission Needed

Greetings troublemakers... welcome to Trouble.

My name is not important.

These days, it has become nearly impossible
to ignore the destructive impacts on our oceans,

rivers, land and atmosphere wrought by two
centuries of industrial capitalism.

The consequences have been devastating for
all forms of life on earth.

Around the globe, forests are disappearing
at a frantic rate, giving rise to the fastest

rate of species extinction in the past
65 million years.

Meanwhile, more than 10 kilometres below the
surface of the Pacific Ocean, the rocky depths

of the Mariana Trench have become a graveyard
of discarded plastic and other forms of packaging

for mass-produced commodities.

Human societies have also been hit hard.

Just this year alone, historic droughts have
ravaged numerous East and Southern African

states, putting tens of millions at risk of
famine... even as torrential flooding has

laid waste to parts of West Africa and the
South Asian subcontinent, washing away

entire villages.

Record-setting wildfires have ravaged California
and the Pacific Northwest, producing apocalyptic

scenes of destruction that look like something
out of a Hollywood disaster flick.

And then, of course, there was this year's
unprecedented hurricane season, which saw

multiple category five storms smash into the
Caribbean and Gulf Coast, and the first ever

reported hurricane off the coast of
the UK and Ireland.

But while these natural disasters have produced
terrible scenes of human suffering and death,

they have also provided opportunities for
some truly inspiring acts of solidarity

and mutual aid.

In areas where people have been abandoned
by state and NGO relief efforts, decentralized

networks of volunteers have popped up to coordinate
food and supply distribution, arrange for

temporary housing and help communities
rebuild local infrastructure.

Over the next thirty minutes, we'll highlight
the voices of several individuals as they

share their experiences working with decentralized
mutual aid disaster relief networks, circumventing

bureaucratic non-profits like the Red Cross,
and making a whole lot of trouble.

I was working with Common Ground in New Orleans
in the Lower 9th.

I got there two years after Katrina, and when I
got there I was really shocked to see

cement blocks where the houses had
been washed off the foundations.

And the government was fining people for not
cutting their grass when their houses were

totally washed away.

I was out in Queens when Sandy came in.

And we thought “surely this can’t be that
big of a deal, right? It’s not even a hurricane.”

What amazed me was how powerful the storm was, and how it just flattened Staten Island.

I mean there was just nothing.

To see the subway close down for the first time in over a hundred years,

because this catastrophic storm

had hit New York City, was truly terrifying.

And I thought, man, if this just starts happening everywhere...

what is our world going to be like?

Not good.

Believe me, not good.

The Carribbean has just been getting hammered.

The strongest hurricane in history to make
landfall.

Prayers are needed for this area.

Anytime it rains, people are re-traumatized.
They’re afraid.

The flooding was severe and they’re having
to adjust to the fact that their lives are

very different now.

Their lives are not ever going to be the same
again, because of this storm in some very

negative and long lasting ways.

The west side and the central area in Puerto
Rico have been really heavily affected.

There’s like 400 miles out of 5000 miles
of traversable roads.

There’s bridges that have collapsed.

The death toll that’s being reported is,
like, grossly underestimated.

It came in through the southeast and it created
a lot of damage in the area, and a lot of

damage in the mountains, and then it exited towards the northwest, so basically

the whole island was hit.

Communities you know, vary in different degrees
of damage.

But it’s been immense.

When you’re unable to go about your day
to day life and people are unable to go to

their jobs, when children are unable to go
to school, when folks are unable to get medical

care, when people literally die of infections...
that’s catastrophe.

There’s a great deal of damage.

Homes are in disrepair, there’s trash in
the streets, there are dogs roaming the streets

that are hungry because the people that they
were previously relying on to take care of

them are no longer able to feed or
care for them.

There’s a lot of displaced folks.

People who were homeless prior to the storm
are still living in shelter environments, where

they are revictimized and retraumatized on
a regular basis by these large international

disaster relief organizations who come into
the city and often times do

more harm than good.

My name is Debra. I am one of the co-founders
of Bayou Action Street Health,

which is a street medic collective in Houston.

BASH formed right before Hurricane Harvey and has been doing disaster relief

and mutual aid work since the storm.

It’s a loose collective of people from around
the city and around the country who come and

help out for whatever predetermined amount
of time

that they want to come and be here.

We advocate for people who have been locked
out of the Red Cross shelter, we help with

mucking and guttering of the
homes that were flooded.

We are doing mold remediation, clothing distribution,
food distribution, supply distribution,

along with street medic training, mental health
training, peer-to-peer counselling training,

and regular old street medic-ing.

In times of crisis I think it’s natural
for people to look around and see

how they can help.

We saw a lot of it in Houston, and we saw
it happen very quickly.

We saw Mutual Aid groups come together in
the blink of an eye.

Communities that we’re working in, the lower
socio-economic status, the homeless, the poor,

the working poor- sometimes they need other
people to come in and give them a hand.

They know what needs to be done.

They don’t need to be infantilized or objectified
or tokenized, but they just need access to

resources, and if you have access to resources,
then it’s your duty to provide those resources

to those who don’t have them.

The water was not water, it was sewage, and
it was overflow from the superfund sites,

from the chemical clean-up sites, and it was toxic.

Houston is one of the petrochemical centres
of the Gulf Coast.

So when the storm came, we had fuel spills,
we had sites that were flooded that were already

contaminated, so that water flowed through
the city.

What we already know happens in those areas
are large concentrations of upper respiratory

and lung diseases, cancer clusters, fetal
death, premature birth, deformities

- not only in the short term, but the effects of the
Petro-Chemical industry

- that’s a a long term problem.

We may not see those effects for five,
ten, fifteen years from now.

But eventually we’re gonna see them.

There’s looting in Houston in the wake of
Hurricane Harvey.

That’s according to local police officials.

There’s been numerous reports of looting
by storm survivors.

Neighbours here... they’re not messing around.

I know of one grocery store in Houston after
the storm that was broken into

because people were hungry.

They took eggs, they took milk and
they took bread.

The media was out, and a reporter called the
cops. And his reasoning was we have to keep

order in place, otherwise there
will be total chaos.

Well of course the government wants to criminalize
disaster victims because it does the same

with poverty.

It has to be part of the discourse and the
narrative.

And it’s also very racialized.

There were all those images that came out
of Katrina, um, there’s one in particular

where it’s a photo of a white person with
a bag full of groceries, dragging it through

the floodwaters.

They were portrayed as being beneficial to
their family and their community.

And then there’s another photo of a Black
person, basically the same situation, - ‘looters’

you know, ‘ ravaging the city’.

It’s a game.

They’re the same people, doing the same
thing, for the same reason.

Especially with Puerto Ricans being the ‘second
class citizens’, if you may, these people

who enjoy some rights, but are
colonized by the US.

Then you also have to promote this idea of criminalization,

this idea of incapacity to run a government.

But we have the conditions that we have because
US imperialism

and colonialism has created the situation.

What should people do?

Should they die?

Should they allow their children to die?

We should all be considering very deeply what
it means when a society values things

over human life.

Cuz with the way our society is unraveling
and how rapidly it’s unravelling, one could

easily find themselves swimming to the corner
store in search of food.

Despite what the oil industry lobbyists and die-hard
climate change skeptics may say, it's a widely-accepted

fact that greenhouse gas emissions are trapping
more of the sun's energy within the earth's

atmosphere, causing a spike in global temperatures.

2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, for
the third year in a row... and 2017 is currently

expected to come in a close second.

But while people on dry land have been sweltering
through historic heatwaves, the effects on

ocean temperatures have been even more dramatic.

And just as climate scientists have longed
warned us would happen, warmer surface temperatures

in the oceans are producing more frequent
and powerful storms.

This year's hurricane season was unprecedented,
with three separate mega-storms, Harvey, Irma

and Maria making landfall in the Caribbean
and areas along the US Gulf Coast.

The islands of Dominica and Barbuda were completely
flattened, and the UK and US Virgin Islands

sustained heavy devastation.

But nowhere was the scale of damage worse
than in Borike, or as it’s known by its

gringo overlords...

Pweeerto Rico.

Puerto Rico was hit by two separate storms,
Irma and Maria, causing massive flooding,

knocking out the country's electrical and
telecommunication grids, and leaving millions

of people without access to clean drinking
water.

This natural disaster was made all the worse

by the man-made disaster that is the Trump administration

All appropriate departments of our government

from Homeland Security to Defense
are engaged fully in the disaster.

and the island's status as
a hyper-exploited US colony.

But while Trump has used the disaster as an
excuse to work on his paper-towel 3-point game

and yet another opportunity for delusional
self-glorification,

When you talk about relief, when you talk
about search, when you talk about

all of the different levels. And even when you talk about lives saved...

I give ourselves a ten.

people in Puerto Rico have responded to the situation with an incredible level of resiliency,

and outpouring of collective solidarity.

Puerto Rico has been undergoing a crisis for
over 11 years,

starting in 2006, dramatically, and obviously the
hurricane just deepened that crisis.

The state government and many municipalities
have either collapsed because they don’t

have the capacity to operate emergency because
of the lack of resources

that we have on the ground.

And also it’s been kind of like a hands-down, let FEMA come in and take care of us.

But FEMA’s been withholding aid and
deploying people into assignments but they’re

not going really into the communities.

They’ve lied about the access to communities.

So in the absence of state and federal government,
people are starting to come together.

The bureaucracy and red tape and protocols
on the ground set by FEMA and Red Cross have

been creating a lot of difficulties and barriers
between the people and the resources that

they need.

I think a lot of the times before NGO’s
go in to do an action they have to consider

how it’s going to fall upon the ears and
the sensibilities of their keepers

- of their funders.

We don’t have that responsibility.

We think about the way the thing that we’re
seeking to do is going to impact the community,

who’s going to benefit from it, and if there
is an actual need.

If we can come to a consensus that that is
true, then we go and we do the damn thing.

Everywhere we go throughout the island the
stories it’s the same; people on the ground,

neighbours coming together to clean their
neighbourhoods, to help feed other folks in

their neighbourhoods when the aid is not coming
in.

Trying to pool together resources to have collective
kitchens and collective meals and it’s been

an incredible amount of solidarity both from outside Puerto Rico

but also especially within folks in the communities

because it’s based out of need.

So now you have to talk to your neighbour
because you have to share the rice and the

beans so you can cook something together and
you happen to be the one with the gas stove.

So this has resulted in some spaces that are
called Centros de Apoyo Mutuo, centres of

mutual support that vary from social kitchens
or collective kitchens where folks come to

eat, to places where people can come to drop off
stuff so it can get distributed to communities

that have little to no communication.

Even FEMA had mentioned the model of
Common Ground relief collective that

-as that being, like, that decentralized model being
a way to get mass resources to people like

quickly, immediately, rather than waiting
for government bodies to respond.

So there’s decentralized groups on the ground
now that are distroing food and getting supplies

out to people because FEMA’s reporting that
they give out 200,000 meals a day

in a place where there’s millions of people.

And that’s like 1 meal a day for 200 000
people.

So they’re sorely failing.

So we’re like daring to believe that we
could render the state and these NGO’s unnecessary

by just being on the ground and responding
to people directly.

So in that way decentralized methods are - like
we’re able to circulate more easily,

we're able to get intel around the island better,
we’re able to communicate more directly

with people rather than treating them like
they’re passive receivers of aid like they’re

consumers, and treating them like they’re
human beings and listening to them.

It’s been a challenge, the lack of communications
so we have to actually go to places.

It’s been a challenge also for us the lack
of transportation- the fact that because we

are poor and working class, we really don’t
have adequate vehicles.

So we’ve eventually gonna rental, and try
to get to places and take stuff directly to

folks that we haven’t heard from yet who
are the ones in most need.

But the challenge is in transportation, communication,
and also money- the fact that we can’t ask

even with donations.

We can’t ask because it’s so hard to get
money even from the banks.

The mail is practically paralyzed or working
at a very very low level because of the damage

of the hurricane and the systems are down.

So even the mail is an issue and we’re an
island, so people with money fly in planes with

aid, but working class folks can’t do that.

So it’s really been about pooling resources-
what do we already have?

And finding solidarity with some, even some
sympathizers at all levels, from business

owners to truck drivers, to folks that are
ready to help us and us being able to have

the connection because we’ve been with the
folks that do the front line work.

And it’s been a challenge but it’s been
a necessary challenge cuz if not, nothing

would get to a lot of our communities because
of the way they’re not connected

to the political structures of the island.

People at first were waiting for the government
to- you know, thinking that the government

would come and respond to their needs but
once they saw that it wasn’t coming,

they started joining together, organizing kitchen,
you know, getting community aid out and then

connecting with other networks that were,
you know, trying to get the word out of what

people in their areas and rural municipalities
were in need of.

There’s this like fear mongering that society’s
gonna break out and we’re gonna have to

have the government come in and police us.

I mean, well that’s absurd, because the
government when they come in, they’re usually

taking and not giving.

And what I've seen here is people giving to each other.

From the airport- every single place that
I’ve been in, I’ve seen people pouring

out the milk of human kindness to each other.

So yes, the solidarity has been immense.

And it’s the first steps of a popular power
that’s gonna build because of folks coming

together in absence of a state and a military
occupation by the US.

Early in the morning of September 19th, 1985,
Mexico City was struck by a devastating earthquake.

In the span of minutes, thousands of buildings
collapsed into piles of rubble, including

hospitals, factories, schools and entire apartment
blocks.

An official death toll was never produced,
but it's generally agreed that somewhere between

ten and thirty thousand people lost their
lives.

The government of President Miguel de la Madrid
responded to this national tragedy by ordering

a news blackout, and sending the military
into the streets to impose a curfew.

Outraged by the state's incompetence and authoritarianism,

the Mexican people spearheaded the rescue efforts themselves,

pulling survivors from downed buildings
and helping to organize emergency

shelter for the hundreds of thousands of people
rendered homeless by the quake.

In September of this year, Mexico was hit
by two more earthquakes.

The first, and more powerful of the two struck
near the southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca

on Sept 7th, and the second hit near Mexico
City on September 19th... exactly 32 years

to the day after the ‘85 quake.

This time around, the Mexican government has
attempted to avoid the negative press that

plagued its predecessor, by cynically using
the tragedy as a way of

increasing its domestic image.

But the majority of people in Mexico have
long since stopped believing in the legitimacy

of their government, and in recent years,
their values of solidarity and mutual aid

have grown stronger.

More or less the official number
is 40 collapsed buildings,

but there's easily a thousand buildings
that cannot be used as housing.

There's a lot of people that are in the streets,
and many of them don't know

if they can return to their to their homes,
because no one can tell them.

And of course they always want to go back
to retrieve their belongings,

but that puts their lives in danger.

And the authorities are not competent.

After the earthquake happened, the general response
was to go to the most affected areas.

There was no immediate response from the government.

It was civil society, and since the earthquake in '85
it has been always civil society

the ones who are going to the sites and starting aid,

especially removing all the debris from the area.

The autonomous brigades, here in our school
emerged from the restlessness

of asking ourselves:
"What can we do?"

The first thing we did was to open
a center of supplies and aid.

Later we started an information verification project,
because of the massive amounts of messages - real and false.

Some things that had already
happened, other things that had not.

So then we concentrated reousources,
and from here bicycle brigades would leave

to take aid to the places that needed it

- be they shelters, disaster zones or damaged buildings.

When they came back, they would give us a report

on the status of the situation.

If other things were needed,

or if heavier things required a car to be transported,

bikers would come that would support us

in moving insulin.

Some taco delivery motorcycles

helped fit a cooler of insulin
in the box of their motorcycle.

After the civil society started working on the sites,

the government also sent special forces,
but that included the military, police groups,

and some engineering teams, but the feeling was

that they were not really trying to help and save lives,

but just in general control the situation at all the sites.

On Thursday night it seemed like

material necessities were taken care of,

so we asked ourselves:
what more could we do to help?

What came next?

We put our energies into the school here,
with the documentation brigades

- who interviewed people that were
affected by the quake

with a list of questions.

Asking them how they were doing,
how was their home?

What they needed...

and asking them to describe their
interaction with the authorities.

When we decided to stop working
as an aid warehouse,

we began to envision this work as a long term project.

So we developed new working groups,

like art brigades that deal with things that
we are more used to, like graphic work,

to find ways to support
with what we really know how to do....

to go beyond the moment of emergency and immediacy.

So we have various assemblies, in which we figure out

where we should put our energies - where to support.

Like creating a census of people who've been affected.

If we find camps that need things, if we have the capacity we bring them.

It was impossible for one single group to
organize aid.

For example there was collaboration between
the groups collecting or being able to buy

equipment, food, to send to Oaxaca.

People organized to make lists of what was needed
where, and then there were other groups in

charge of finding what was the best way to
transport all those things.

So in general, a very specific group got specialized
in one part of the process and then it helped

a lot with previous organization knowing which
autonomous groups were working in Oaxaca,

so those were very important connections to
make.

We never got in one another's way.
We never said: "You do this, and you go there!"

...like no one has to tell you what to do,

which was fuckin awesome!

In the wake of a natural disaster, local systems
of authority break down.

The widespread damage to infrastructure, disruption
of service provision and general sense of

panic and desperation associated with these
events creates a sudden power vacuum.

Governments are well aware of this, and many
have developed contingency plans that allow

them to rapidly move to reassert the rule
of law, over often still-traumatized populations.

According to the cold logic of state power,
containing threats to public order brought

on by a catastrophe is more important than
actually saving lives.

This includes quashing threats to the sanctity
of private property brought on by the necessity

of human survival.

For anarchists, and other enemies of social
control, there is a flipside to this equation.

While natural disasters are horrific tragedies
that cause immense devastation and suffering,

the collective trauma of these events can
also serve to bring people together, and inspire

neighbours to build local networks of interdependence
and mutual aid, in order to collectively navigate

situations where they’ve been abandoned
by the state.

This brings to mind the well-known quote,
by Spanish anarchist revolutionary, Buenaventura

Durruti: “We are not afraid of ruins.

We carry a new world, here, in our hearts.”

In the ruins created by climate catastrophe
and natural disasters, new worlds are being built.

Small-scale experiments in local
sustainability and the fostering of new

social relationships rooted in the values of autonomy
and mutual aid.

In Lakewood, what happened during the storm
was almost criminal.

They were told they were not in a flood zone,
they were not priority evacuation, and as

the water started to rise from the bayou that
encircles the neighbourhood,

they started calling up rescue and they couldn’t get any.

So, they helped themselves, they found the
boats.

Some neighbours went around rescuing folks
off their roofs,

and the community took care of itself.

They have always been a tight knit community,
and now that they’ve gone through this together,

they’re even closer knit.

I think organizing around short term and long
term relief for people has really helped to

demonstrate how communities can do the work
themselves and render the state unnecessary.

That vision of community, mutual aid, horizontal
organization and solidarity is coming to life

with people.

This charity vibe of the big corporations raising funds,

they do it so they can say, "I am this corporation, and I am going to help you

rebuild your home, because I am so good."

And I think that mutual aid doesn't seek recognition.

I think we have to be very careful about the
politics about the groups that are saying

they are doing aid in Puerto Rico.

A lot of folks in the US, not necessarily
the disaster relief folks, but other people

from the Puerto Rican diaspora or non profits
have come in to try to colonize the efforts

and they can have influence on organizations
usually based on identity politics.

So folks are like “oh these are the Puerto
Ricans, so we gotta listen to them”, but not

all Puerto Ricans are on the same page.

Charity can be used as political capital

for other interests that don't interest us.

When you receive charity,
other than probably clearing

someone's conscience,
they can also profit politically from it.

Mutual aid doesn't pursue that.

The difference between charity and mutual
aid in a disaster situation is charities like

the Red Cross- they’re set up along very
specific lines.

They have CEO’S, they have vice-presidents
of communication, they have all of these different

levels in their hierarchy and as you go up,
each level is more authoritarian

than the one before.

So in order to make any decisions, in order
to do anything, things have to follow a very

specific set of rules, they have to be done
in a certain way, and if you try to contravene

those rules, then you get booted out of the
organization.

From Katrina, to Haiti, to Houston, they cause
the same problems over and over again,

because their structures are inflexible.

We get to pick and choose what we wanna do,
and in picking and choosing what we wanna do,

we let the community who needs the work
done, direct us.

Mutual Aid just recognizes that we’re all
in different places and we have to meet each

other where we are in order to keep moving
forward.

All of this hand wrangling, all of this ‘will
our funders renew that grant at the end of

the year’, is not an issue.

We’ve been creating affinity groups like
medical crews, organizing short term infrastructure

like solar and water purification and we have
a long term systems group

that’s coming in after.

We’ve been in contact with folks from Houston
and Louisiana and Mexico who’ve been organizing

that same structure.

It’s open source open communication, it’s
really accessible so community can get involved

where they have the most intel on what’s
going on.

When you have an opportunity to rebuild systems
so that they’re more people centered than

organizationally centered, then you’re doing
real work, then you’re making a difference

that’s a long term difference because you’re
letting people direct what it is that they

need rather than coming in and dictating to
them and telling them what you will give them.

When disaster happens, it’s a crack in societal
norms that the state has set up for us and

we can see through the cracks and exploit
those cracks.

This is the time where we can seize power
and we can act and really empower other people

to you know, to make our communities ours.

Liberalism is dying for a reason.

Watching Anderson Cooper and saying “oh
my” is not activism.

If you believe that change comes from other
means, you need to be

actually doing those things.

Just go out and fucking do it.

Get self organized, get affinity groups together,
and start responding but respond through listening.

We already have to have plans in place when
this happens because

the response has been too slow.

For comrades that are organizing in other spaces,
I would say get out in the community,

get them involved in what’s going on,

start organizing projects around people’s experiences,

and then building from there.

Go find the people.

They’re there.

You see them everyday.

They’re the single mom who needs a child
care co-op, or help setting one up.

I think that what you’re seeing is anarchists
leading and saying “here are our options”

rather than waiting on the government to enact
those options, we’re going to create

open source resources and allow the communities
to have access to them

so that people are empowered.

It’s the future.

It’s where we’re going, and I am proud
to be a part of the anarchists

who are leading the way on that.

In the days after we finished interviewing
members of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief,

the church they were operating out of in Guaynabo,
Puerto Rico, was raided by a SWAT team.

These comrades were detained at gunpoint,
asked if they were associated with antifa,

and interrogated as to whether or not they
intended to overthrow the government.

Thankfully, they were all released without
charges and were able to

quickly get back to work.

This act of ill-thought out repression clearly
demonstrates that governments see relief efforts

that fall outside of the hierarchical control
of state and corporate non-profits as a challenge

to their legitimacy, and a threat to their
assumed role as the sole deciders of who gets

aid, how they get it, and when.

So at this point, we’d like to remind you
that Trouble is intended to be watched in groups,

and to be used as a resource to promote
discussion and collective organizing.

Are you interested in starting a local group
to help support front-line disaster relief efforts?

Or just figuring out how people in
your town could better apply mutual aid principles

to your local organizing?

Consider getting together with some comrades,
screening this film and discussing what this

could look like in practice.

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Also, we’ve been fundraising to send water
filtration systems to Puerto Rico,

to get to folks in dire need of clean drinking water.

To help us in this mission go to sub.media/puerto-rico/

This episode would not have been possible
without the generous support of Natalie, Ita,

Avispa Midia, And Nicholas

Now get out there, and make some trouble!