Rebutting Political Violence w/ Scot Nakagawa, Steven Gardiner, and Amanda Otero

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build a podcast from Convergence Magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the impact of rising authoritarianism while building the strength and resilience of the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:24] This week on the show, we are coming to you live from the 22nd Century conference. I’m excited to be here in an actual room with my guests instead of just squares on a screen for this conversation about political violence in our current political conditions. And I’m very grateful to be joined by three panelists today.

[00:00:39] Let me start out by introducing those panelists first. I’m joined by co-executive director of Take Action, Minnesota. Amanda Otero. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us today. 

[00:00:48] Amanda Otero: Thanks for having me. 

[00:00:49] Cayden Mak: Next we have the executive Director of the 22nd Century Initiative and co-host of the Anti-Authoritarian Podcast, which is also published by Convergence Magazine.

[00:00:57] Scott Nakagawa. Scott, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. And finally, the Principal Research Advisor for Political Research Associates, Steven Gardiner. Steven, thank you for being here as well. 

[00:01:07] Steven Gardiner: Great to be here. 

[00:01:08] Cayden Mak: Before we get started here, I just wanna hold a little space for a moment to get, for us to get grounded because we’re gonna talk about some stuff that may bring up some feelings for you.

[00:01:16] It certainly has been bringing up a lot of feelings for me, which is why we program this episode. And I actually am surprisingly nervous about having this conversation, given that I talk into microphones professionally every week. But part of why I have been thinking a lot about political violence especially over the past few weeks, is really the shifting terrain that we find ourselves on.

[00:01:36] I was talking to Tarso yesterday, Tarso from formerly of PRA, about how the last time there was so much public conversation about political violence was probably in the nineties. And there’s a lot of stuff now that is very different from that political moment. And it was actually the shooting at the Capitol Jewish Museum that got me really thinking about this because there’s a lot of complexity there in terms of somebody who was politicized on the internet who ostensibly is part of the left quote unquote.

[00:02:05] And I was it happened a couple of weeks before. I was at the Narrative Power Summit and my comrade, Shira Chare from Reframe shared this wild finding from her narrative research that was basically the right wing media machine takes just hours to animate itself after a punctuated moment.

[00:02:24] Whether that’s political violence, whether that is something that’s happening from like the office of the president or whatever, that they mobilize in a matter of hours to start spinning these events. Organizations on the sort of broader left can take up to days. And so I was really struck by that ’cause I was like, what does that mean for the narrative terrain that we’re operating on when it comes to political violence?

[00:02:48] And especially not just regardless of what side these violent actors are on. I found myself thinking about this a lot that we’re operating on this narrative terrain about political violence. It’s really dictated by the right. And it was like filling my, like lunch breaks.

[00:03:03] It was filling my time at the gym. Like I just could not stop thinking about it. And then the assassinations in Minnesota happened. To me it really felt like a deep sea change, like a real bellwether for our trajectory as a democracy. I wanna acknowledge the way that this event probably has hit on, ’cause it certainly has for me hit on some of the fear, grief, and rage that I’ve actually been pushing aside in order to be in motion in this political moment.

[00:03:27] And I just wanna take a moment for all of us to take a deep breath together and think about some of the folks that we’ve lost. It is representative Melissa Hortman, her spouse Mark, but there’s also a long history of both targeted interpersonal political violence, state sponsored violence, as well as structural violence that has taken comrades, colleagues, friends and family from us long before their time.

[00:03:46] So I wanna call that, those feelings into the room before we open this up. ’cause the shaded is pretty heavy. And we’re fighting on some very slippery terrain right now. And all the fields are welcome. This is, I think it’s been very live for me, for sure. Yeah. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:04:04] To start us out, I think I wanna get a little precise about what it is we are talking about when we talk about political violence in part because I think the term is slippery. And the other thing that I’ve been thinking about in terms of historicizing, the moment that we’re in is also nine 11 and the War on Terror, and how the frame of terrorism has changed the way that we talk about political violence in this country.

[00:04:25] Scott, I’m going to kick this question to you first, but I’m interested to hear from I, all three of you, I how do you define political violence and what do you think sets it apart from other types of violence that shape the social landscape that we’re operating in right now? 

[00:04:41] Scot Nakagawa: All sorts of violence shaped the social landscape, interpersonal violence.

[00:04:45] Can reinforce social hierarchies or can actually attempt to, rearrange them. And all of those things matter. They have a powerful effect, all kinds of power injustices enforced by violence. Political violence specifically though are acts of terror, coercion, or physical harm directed at governments, institutions, groups, or individuals in order to achieve a political end.

[00:05:11] Whether that is dividing or chilling a political movement, provoking people into conflict or to simply as happened in Minnesota, change the balance of power in a state legislature. So that’s basically what political violence is in the context that we’re in right now. It is very likely that we’re going to see political violence begin to proliferate on.

[00:05:33] Yeah. All around us, right? One side is very prepared to commit acts of violence on the far right. And the context of extreme polarization. And not just political polarization, but emotional polarization because so much of this polarization is driven by demonization and vilification is likely to provoke violence all around us.

[00:05:54] So we need to be prepared for it. We need to be ready to take action when it happens. We need to go on the defense and like you said, we can’t take two days to react when an incident occurs. 

[00:06:04] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Steven, is there anything you would. Add. 

[00:06:07] Steven Gardiner: Yeah. The main thing that I would add to that, and I agree with all of that, is that with political violence specifically, we have a process that is particularly corrosive to the possibility of democracy.

[00:06:21] And the more so when you have status quo, actors set aside people outside of the state, outside of government, outside of major institutions. But when people in those institutions act on a partisan basis and refuse to condemn violence that is committed by one of their partisans or seems to be when this happens, they are refusing the very notion of democracy, also political violence itself.

[00:06:51] Undermines the possibility of using the instruments of formal democracy, whether that’s elections or whether that’s due process, whether that’s protect constitutional protections and rule of law and due process. All of these kinds of things. It’s a direct attack on that. It is a preference for saying there are people within our society who are enemies, not opponents.

[00:07:13] And with an enemy, you give yourself permission to kill them because you believe they’re trying to kill you. 

[00:07:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah. I Amanda, I don’t know if there’s another response that you wanna add there, but I also really wanna pick on this the like emotional polarization thing because I think that it cuts to something that I’ve been thinking a lot about in terms of this moment and in terms of, an ongoing conversation that we’ve had on this podcast about like, how.

[00:07:39] The way that we feel is like this, like unacknowledged, bubbling aspect of our politics right now. And I’m curious from, really from all three of you how you see the response to political violence over, especially si I think really since Inauguration day hardening some of those, like emotional boundaries.

[00:07:59] It’s, yeah, it’s, I don’t know it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot too, that like the internet is a piece of this for sure. And I think that like our political discourse is, feels like it’s hardening us into these sort of emotional places. Yeah. I’m curious about y’all’s reflections on that.

[00:08:18] Amanda Otero: Yeah, I can jump in. As an organizer, a lot of my work and the work at my organization at Take Action Minnesota is about meeting people where they’re at, supporting them and taking action, supporting them in wrestling with these hard things that we’re going through right now. And we actually just in the last hour sent out an email about what happened this last weekend and what is political violence in the frame of we organize parents and caregivers and so in the frame of how does a parent talk to their kiddos about what’s happening, we all have a 6-year-old and a 4-year-old.

[00:08:51] You get questions. People even at that age, they perceive and understand some of what’s happening in the world and how do you explain it. And so I think to just speak to the emotions that are coming up for folks, I had so many parents and of, members of ours reaching out last weekend trying to make sense of, trying to both wrestle with the emotions coming up, the fear, the rage, the grief, but also a degree of numbness. I hear this from a lot of folks, we’re feeling numb because it’s an onslaught and it’s relentless and we need to feel to have forward motion and we do feel, and yet we’re also protecting ourselves by, feeling numb at times.

[00:09:29] And so I, I think it’s just really critical that we have these conversations and in our organizing, acknowledge and meet people where they’re at and talk about and process our feelings just in the way that you opened us up today, Cayden, to have, take a deep breath and to just sit with that for a minute.

[00:09:43] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. We are ultimately mortal animals, right? We experience these things through being a feeling organism. So it makes a lot of sense. Any thoughts about. This sort of like polarization of feeling? 

[00:10:00] Scot Nakagawa: It’s important to remember that when it comes to the issues, day-to-day issues, bread and butter issues that concern most people we’re not that polarized.

[00:10:10] Political polarization as we’ve experienced it, is mostly driven from the top down and by the parties. The kind of emotional polarization we’re in is the result of those who are the most engaged on either side in either party, who pay attention to campaigns and to policy debates interpreting the behavior of elected officials as if they are the same as all of the people who elected them, who of course have their choices.

[00:10:35] Greatly constrained by the parties in terms of who they can vote for in primary elections, right? And that’s some of that kind of emotional polarization, how it comes together, right? It’s around interpreting the behavior of one person or another person who’s an elected leader, as if it is exactly the choice that everyone wanted.

[00:10:54] Everyone wanted someone who believes that there might be Jewish lasers starting forest fires in California, for example, when that is entirely untrue. But it has created a rural situation for us, in the United States today more people oppose marriages across political parties than interracial marriages.

[00:11:15] And same gender marriages. That’s 

[00:11:18] Cayden Mak: wild, 

[00:11:18] Scot Nakagawa: right? That’s wild. That’s some wild shit. Yeah. And that’s the situation that we’re in. And so it’s really important that we start to figure out how to bring down the temperature. 

[00:11:27] Cayden Mak: Yeah, that’s super helpful actually. I think too, like a lot of that emotional polarization is coming.

[00:11:33] I’ve been doing a personal deep dive into the sort of like right wing media machine and like, how much of that is being driven by again, like how we talk about issues and like how the right wing media machine is able to spin a lot of stuff that we see and make sense of stuff in advance of frankly the sort of like lukewarm takes that we produce at convergence that are a little more grounded, a little more thoughtful.

[00:11:57] And it feels like a really big challenge in moments like this. Amanda, obviously I invited you on the show to talk a little bit about the specific circumstances and the sort of political conditions in Minnesota. And obviously from me personally and from our team, like deep condolences for the loss of representative Hortman and her husband Mark.

[00:12:15] And I think, the things that I know about the co-governance work you all have been doing in Minnesota means that a lot of our comrades in Minnesota have lost a colleague in a very serious way. This also isn’t the first incident of very visible political violence against an elected that we’ve seen this year.

[00:12:32] And it likely won’t be the last, as you were saying, and I think it’s a really direct assault on democratic governance in Minnesota. It has these implications and also that go beyond the state. Could you tell us a little bit about the landscape and context of the work you all are doing in Minnesota and what the sort of like political landscape is in your state right now?

[00:12:51] Amanda Otero: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah. I appreciate you acknowledging and naming the, because of some of the co-governance and the organizing work in Minnesota, like it is, it is a small ecosystem. People do know each other, they have shared space. I think that’s true in a lot of our states.

[00:13:07] Right? And a lot of our movement work, it ends up being small and I’ve been reflecting a lot on the layers of the hurt and pain. There’s the personal folks having personal relationships with those impacted, but then, we in Minnesota are also reeling from the implications of this political violence.

[00:13:24] I think, the context in Minnesota, the political context leading up to this this moment. There’s a lot that we’ve been proud of as a state in the last couple years. We had an incredible legislative session last biennium where we passed huge wins, paid family medical leave or in sick and safe time.

[00:13:42] A hundred percent renewable energy. I’m sure you all are familiar with the list. It goes on and on. And Speaker Hortman was a huge champion and leader in that work for the decades prior to passing those things. A particular leader on climate, on and on, on gun control itself.

[00:13:57] And we, the legislative session we just wrapped up was was not as winning as the last one. We did very concretely experience a tie in the Minnesota House. And at the beginning, I don’t know how much this broke through, but the beginning of this legislative session, speaker Hortman actually led her caucus in denying quorum, right?

[00:14:18] Until until an a, a power sharing agreement could be decided between the Republicans and the Democrats that were tied to 67, 67, and that had a whole, a whole set of complicated factors and negotiations and inside, outside game strategies around that. But she really, she led that caucus in holding such a line about democracy and how we were going to live out our democracy.

[00:14:43] In Minnesota this session, which would’ve been important and significant any year, and of course under this administration in this year, was an incredible incredibly necessary feat. And so it’s just important to name that, that legacy and that context that her, her assassination and her husband’s assassination took place in.

[00:15:03] Yeah. 

[00:15:04] Cayden Mak: Thanks. Yeah, that’s I think it’s important context, especially for folks who are outside of Minnesota looking in to know about that long legacy of being a champion of a lot of these issues and like a champion of democracy, right? That that’s a piece of the puzzle. And I know you mentioned, the work that your organization has been thinking about in terms of helping make sense of this moment for your membership.

[00:15:27] What are the other things that you all are thinking and talking about internally now in terms of how. This is gonna change your work politically and frankly, socially. ’cause I imagine people are pretty shook,

[00:15:39] Amanda Otero: yeah. I think, I was reflecting today, it hasn’t even been a week yet, so it’s, I yeah, it’s, it, we’ve lived years and yet it hasn’t been a week.

[00:15:47] And so I think, and particularly in the context of, just last weekend, the state of really heightened anxiety across the state before Bolter was apprehended, just means that we’ve really moved, I think finally this week into grieving. And I think it’s hard to say exactly what all the implications are gonna be, politically and I agree socially.

[00:16:07] I imagine there’s certainly going to be like conversations about heightened heightened security measures in places, in ways that we haven’t necessarily seen before. And mostly I’m thinking about. The broader implications for all of us. And I think really in relation to this conversation and the bigger picture, political violence that, this was an individual person’s decision and yet we have to understand that individual person is part of a network, a well-trained security operation network.

[00:16:36] Really steeped in networks coming, from, with white Christian nationalism animated by being anti-abortion. And that these are people and dynamics that we are living amongst and in across the country. And there’s a lot to still learn about Bolter, about how he came to this decision.

[00:16:55] What context? Even more specifically than what I’ve just named, he was swimming in and I am hungry and I think we are hungry in Minnesota to continue to understand and make meaning and assess that because what I see in the opposition and in the current administration is, even if this was an individual’s choice and action, it is, it can be used and is being used as part of an escalation of political violence. And so for me, that is the most significant implication in the state, outside of the state, how is this adding on and being used and weaponized even beyond, its just literal, physical impacts. 

[00:17:29] Cayden Mak: Yeah. I’m I also was struck about like when the information was coming out about who carried out this act of violence and like his connections to a white Christian nationalist network and his history being like virulently anti-abortion. Again, thinking back to the nineties and like the, that political moment around the attacks on abortion clinics and healthcare providers who are providing abortions that like, it feels, that feels so far away, and yet it’s like that.

[00:18:02] Past is still here with us. Like it is among us. And I think that the thing that strikes me about that is in some ways, like how short our memory can be around some of this stuff. And I know Steven, you think a lot about this question of this sort of like normalization of political violence that it feels like that’s one of the things that perhaps we need to guard against.

[00:18:24] And also something that we’re like a current, we’re struggling against in the, in, in this political moment where the president is willing to pardon the people who did January 6th and act like that just didn’t happen, that there’s a lot of normalization that ha that’s happening at every level of our political culture right now.

[00:18:42] And I’m wondering, you talk a little bit to what you see those risks as being right now and maybe a little bit what we can do together to resist that. 

[00:18:50] Steven Gardiner: Yeah. Normalization of violence has been, it’s been obligatory for us as we live in a society that is relatively saturated with violence compared to pure societies around the world, but particularly state sponsored violence, which goes back not just to the war on terror, but to the war on drugs and the war on crime, and mass incarceration, and the selective targeting of particularly black, but also brown communities for social control using state violence. But then at the same time, we have up and down with, depending on what the regime is what, who’s in charge in Washington, who’s in charge in a specific state.

[00:19:32] We have the intervention of people who think that whatever the problems with our current system are, it’s not racist, it’s not sexist. It’s not hierarchical enough. They often see those problems as being one of losing their identity. So they construct this as an enemy situation and being at war. So then we have now a regime that has say gone from saying that there are good people on.

[00:20:02] Both sides of an issue where someone drives a car into a group of peaceful protestors to pardoning people who are convicted of violent felonies to on a partisan basis to sending out his administration officials to make statements that essentially amount to, they’re going to enact regime change, in particular cities that disagree with him politically.

[00:20:29] All of this is framing up political violence and sending a message of impunity. On the other hand, people who are trying to send a message of resistance to this are being forced to overcome fear. So there is, at the same time, there is numbness from being one thing after another, especially in terms of the slide towards authoritarianism.

[00:20:50] There is at the same time fear. What if they come for me and. What people do if they’re actively trying to overcome fear, this is actually not a very good response. But it’s what people do naturally is they whip themselves up into a fury of adrenaline. And when that comes out, it’s not pretty.

[00:21:11] And it’s not considered. And so some things that we can do is help people to literally sit with and think through. How would you respond if. There was an armed person menacing people in your group. How would you respond if your board of directors was taken into into detention? How would you respond?

[00:21:33] Making, let’s think about what the bad things are that can happen. This is in fact what the right does in their media ecosystems. They run scenarios about how they would respond, and they have pre-canned talking points on lots and lots of issues. Now they have the advantage of being willing to simplify and frankly, in, in many cases, to just flat out lie.

[00:21:55] We don’t like to do that. But I think that many of the message we can send are much simpler. We get bogged down in the fact that we don’t have a perfect answer. The answers that we need to give, it’s all right if they come from the heart and they’re true in that moment, and we say, and there’s still more to learn.

[00:22:17] If we say them with humility, we can say them quicker. And if we can get together on that and quit sniping at each other across our communities, and recognize that even if some of the people we need to work with to oppose authoritarian slide and to oppose the use of political violence and to oppose its normalization, may not agree with us on everything.

[00:22:44] They still oppose those things, at least from a point of view of self-interest. We can work together with a wider range of people than we have been willing to if we recognize the moment that we are in, which is I’m not gonna do, a too obvious analogy, but it’s not a good moment.

[00:23:02] It’s a moment where 14 alarm fire bes should be going off. 

[00:23:08] Cayden Mak: Yeah. I will, I think this raises for me too, Scott, I’ve been hearing a lot from you on your excellent substack about the ways that we can make some of this political violence backfire in this moment, and what are the opportunities that we have to not just respond in ways that like are human and real and connect to one another, but really like.

[00:23:30] Pull the mask down a little bit on, on the purpose of political violence and like what this the coercive effects of it. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit to that about the ways that we can make political violence backfire. 

[00:23:43] Scot Nakagawa: Sure.

[00:23:43] First I really wanna make the case, and Steve alluded to this, that the greatest danger is state violence here, right? That is something that we need to always be aware of. The state may absorb the vi violence of violent factions on the ground. It will execute acts of violence in order to move its political agenda.

[00:24:02] The state also must protect its monopoly on legitimate violence and will react violence on either side, right? Very forcefully. So even liberal governments can be pushed in an authoritarian direction when conflicts start to heat up. So we need to maintain nonviolent discipline. Nonviolent movements are proven to be much, much more effective than movements that deploy violence.

[00:24:26] For one thing, they maintain moral authority. They are able to actually engage the broad public they escape this boat sides false equivalencies that are often put out there that are really just to be clear, authoritarian talking points, right? And they are able to maintain a participant advantage over movements that are violent.

[00:24:48] We don’t want our movements to descend into violence and to become places where only the most risk tolerant people are willing to participate and that repels everyone else and causes them to stay home in the hopes of avoiding a war that’s being waged over their heads. So those things are really important for us to consider when we.

[00:25:08] Though, encounter incidents of political violence, we have to understand that there political violence is violence is motivated in order to profit politically and sometimes even economically. Yeah. And so we need to reduce the profit. Those who perpetrate these acts enjoy. And we do that by taking the offensive, right?

[00:25:27] Not by passively waiting for government institutions to act. We actually have to redirect energies around those institutions and act as a community to demonstrate popular opposition to violence. We need to redeem people who have been targeted. We need to reframe those incidents in the broadest context possible and in the context of democracy and the damage that violence does in that context.

[00:25:50] And we also need to start to think about, how we can position ourselves relative to the vast, overwhelming majority of people in our country who stand opposed to violence in our politics. To caution. To force as a means of making, forcing political decisions. So we need to build that relationship, and we do that by maintaining nonviolent discipline.

[00:26:16] We must think of nonviolence as a form of political martial art and recognize that it is a strength and not a weakness to maintain that discipline. 

[00:26:29] Cayden Mak: Yeah. This makes me think also about. Again, going back to what I was saying in our opening that like I could not stop thinking about the Capitol Jewish museum shooting in particular because the young person who is alleged to have been that shooter is somebody who was politicized, it seems like on the internet and did not have a ton of community around him that helped him form a sort of sense of political effectiveness outside of this almost like messianic, like individual, like actor, like framework.

[00:27:04] And part of the reason I can’t stop thinking about it’s, I’m like, I, there’s a level on which I I understand. Where that feeling comes from, having also watched like a live stream genocide for the past almost two years, right? That there’s a feeling of helplessness and alienation that comes from that.

[00:27:25] And I think the thing that you’re saying about nonviolent discipline also speaks to the need to, it’s not just about it’s, this is not just a messaging thing, right? This is about building movements that have space for the, like complex feelings and challenges and like whole allows us to hold one another in that, that like discipline is not a sort of like top down, I’m gonna tell you what to do, but discipline in the sense of can we move together in a direction towards a goal in ways that like actually open up.

[00:28:02] Opportunities for meaningful action. I see both you, Scott and Amanda nodding excitedly about this observation. 

[00:28:10] Amanda Otero: I just, yeah, I really appreciate I appreciate this point and it’s exactly, again, something that’s been on my mind and that I’ve been talking with colleagues with over this about, with over this past week because, I agree about obviously the strategic and moral and principle choice of non-violence.

[00:28:27] And again, as an organizer, I don’t think we’ve actually deeply had that conversation and chosen it together. And when we think about our education system, where we all come from, what we learn about Martha. Martin Luther King Jr. And Gandhi, and we learn, in the history books, but it’s a few sentences and it’s of course it’s lifted up as and especially when we are experiencing the intense fear, and this is what I wrestled with on Saturday morning, people saying, should we go to the No Kings March or not?

[00:28:53] And are we gonna be in danger or not? And how do we answer those questions, just for ourselves, much less, for everybody in a context like this, what does safety really look like when we’re thinking about these fears around violence against us? And then thinking the right answer or the textbook answer is to be nonviolent.

[00:29:10] What is the training and the work to really deepen our understanding of that choice as the strategic and principled choice and why, and how we hold that line when we are in a context that is gonna generate, unfortunately violence from many kinds of actors and sides and ways. 

[00:29:31] Scot Nakagawa: I think it’s really important that we think about what happened on No King’s Day, right?

[00:29:38] By some estimates nearly 2% of people in this country turned out in protests. I, some scholars say it takes about 3.5% of people to be involved in sustained mass mobilizations in order to affect the kinds of changes we need to hear in order to. Save democracy from authoritarianism and also to invigorate and expand upon it.

[00:30:02] So we’re in a pretty good position there. But people then think the next thing you need to do is to drive even more turnout, right? Sure, we should do that. But what we really need to do here is we need to start to pivot from defense, which is protest, right? To offense. We need to have more effective movements because effective movements that win are what drive turnout more than anything else, right?

[00:30:27] We need to start to think about how we deploy people in ways that take the place of the sort of anxiety and angst that drives political violence by giving them effective things to do, to be able to engage in disruptive actions that actually drive defections from the pillars of support of authoritarian power.

[00:30:46] And that also disrupt the ability of those within the authoritarian coalition, from continuing to profit from co authoritarianism in the many ways they do, including financially. So that’s really a big thing, right? Yeah. We can talk about violence, but what we need to do is provide people with alternatives to violence.

[00:31:05] Yes. That feel effective, that make them heroes, that give them the opportunity to act and act effectively. So that is, I think really important for us to all wrap our heads around. The other thing we need to do is to take the offense take the offense on. How we are articulating our vision of this, right?

[00:31:27] Naming enemies and threats is a very important thing to do when people are intentionally setting out to harm you, right? People need to know how to protect themselves, and they need to be able to anticipate the sort of universe of possible things that they may have to contend with as authoritarianism consolidates.

[00:31:47] But the offense is joyful liberation, right? We need to create movements that are magnetic. To people and we need to start to move forward a joyful liberatory vision of the world. We want to live in one in which freedom is illustrated to people in the ways that we turn out, the things that we do, how we behave in public, that in country, after country in the world is the secret sauce.

[00:32:16] You need to start to pivot to freedom and not simply continue to do this sort of fighting around which side is worse, right? We got, we have to actually demonstrate that there is a better path. 

[00:32:30] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. And that. There’s like another thing on the side, on the other side of this, and then I think that, like one of the through lines I’ve seen in a lot of the conversations that I’ve already had here this week is about.

[00:32:41] What is on the other side of this? Because we do have a historic opening in a lot of ways to envision what that other side might be. I wanna just pause for a second and say that we are gonna take audience questions but because we have a virtual audience if you would go into the app, open up the session that this is for, and ask the questions via q and A there so I can read the questions to the panelists.

[00:33:05] That would be awesome. Ooh, we got some questions. This is, I feel like this is a classic which, it’s one of these questions that I feel like I think a lot of people get annoyed by, but I also think it’s really important because. I do think we should make some distinctions between political violence and public disorder.

[00:33:25] There’s a way in which, speaking of, the state’s ability to reinscribe its exclusive like right to quote unquote legitimate violence. But really thinking about, the images that were being amplified in not just right wing, but mainstream media from la over the past couple weeks of burning Waymo’s, right?

[00:33:48] That like these images of public disorder have are conflated in our discourse with violence. And also I’m curious about the ways that you all think about how those images of public disorder interact with I. Both structural and interpersonal issues of political violence. So I think it’s very alive for a lot of people right now.

[00:34:13] Yeah. Steven. 

[00:34:14] Steven Gardiner: Yes, of course there’s false equivalence all the time. There’s also reliance on, even in, again, mainstream media as you said, on what is sensational and remembering that if you’re looking at a scene where streets are filled with smoke and the smoke is tear gas, it wasn’t the protesters look who dropped the tear gas and made it look like a war zone.

[00:34:36] If you look at the protests over the No Kings Day, and this was also true over the whole course of the 2020 uprising when you had thousands and thousands of protests in every state and. Almost all nonviolent except where they were violence was fomented either by state security, by mostly by police, or by right-wing paramilitaries who intervened in the situation or escalated the situation and made it more likely that police would intervene.

[00:35:10] So no graffiti or burning a garbage can is not the same thing as assassination. Yelling at cops because they’re protecting Nazis is not the same thing as genocide. And this is important to recognize. Disorder is the very process of. Really conventional ideas about how to fight authoritarianism.

[00:35:36] This was certainly the case during the American Revolution. It’s been certainly the case during the 1960s and 1950s and sixties fights for civil rights for black folk in this country. It was certainly the case in the fight for women’s and queer liberation in this country.

[00:35:54] And it’s always gonna be the case that there’s, it’s gonna be messy and messiness is something we’re gonna have to be able to tolerate. Now, is it useful to escalate things unnecessarily? Often, not now, but whether something is useful politically is different than whether it is the same as an assassination or a bombing or a an anthrax attack or or mass arrests of people for exercising for amendment rights.

[00:36:25] Cayden Mak: Yeah, no, that is super helpful. 

[00:36:28] Steven Gardiner: And I think it’s, 

[00:36:29] Cayden Mak: yeah, I dunno, top of mind Scott, do you, or Amanda, do you have anything to add to that? 

[00:36:32] Scot Nakagawa: I just wanna say that spectacle that you’re talking about though, we need to be really clear that can be very damaging, right? It can provide a justification for state violence and repression of both or either side, that in ways that then might actually promulgate more bottom up violence.

[00:36:50] And. It creates a kind of moral cover for this idea that both sides are at fault, right? And that, as I said before, is an authoritarian talking point. The side with the intention and force in this extreme polarization we are in is on the right. That’s why we’ve been experiencing this ratchet effect.

[00:37:11] You know how people talk about how the pendulum goes right and left and right and left historically? When the centers wreak the side with mosts force is actually able to cause a ratchet effect where the pendulum keeps moving further and further to the right. And that’s what we’ve been seeing for decades now, because they actually have forcefully and intentionally intervened in this situation in order to polarize things, in order to be able to consolidate authoritarian power because they believe that’s.

[00:37:38] The path to the future for their side, so to speak. And so we just need to be really clear that we provide that kind of ammunition when we engage in acts of unnecessary disruption, right? We need to be engaging acts of very targeted disruption. But like Steve said, some of that stuff’s gonna go down anyway.

[00:37:58] Yeah. Yeah. It’s gonna happen and we need to learn to tolerate it and not to react to it in the way that we have to. Other things that have come up and become media items, cancel culture’s. A really good example, we’re talking about a relatively small group of people who are free radicals online making incendiary statements and then people not just on the right, but on the left, reacting to it by saying this is the problem.

[00:38:22] This is what’s driving the conflict. This is why our politics are falling apart, not at all the case. And in many instances when you see that kind of what you could call extra judicial, because there’s no policy solution being proposed. Demands being put out there. It’s because the judicial way is not working.

[00:38:42] Think about Me Too as a movement, for example. There are many things about the way that developed that I disagree with. It was no one’s intention for it to go in that direction, but it caught a wave of sentiment in the public that drove it in that direction because the judicial system, the civil rights system doesn’t work for women who are harassed and sexually assaulted too much of the time.

[00:39:05] And when that happens, people will turn to other means because they have to. How else do you make yourself hurt? How else do you make the statement, I am a human being and I don’t deserve this. If the court system, if the law enforcement system, if your workplaces and whatnot, will not protect you.

[00:39:23] We just need to put these things in context and not allow ourselves. To repeat what amount to right-wing talking points when these conflicts arise and people start talking about this, we could do as Loretta Ross does, and call the people in as opposed to call them out. 

[00:39:40] Cayden Mak: It’s actually funny, we just finished publishing, co-publishing a series on dealing with cancel culture within movement organizations with our friends at the Forge.

[00:39:49] That was written by a group of movement facilitators who are really trying to think about what is the effect of this as structurally on our movements. And I weirdly, it does to me deeply relate to this conversation about our shared efficacy, right? That in some ways, the way that like the practice of calling out in a way that derails our work together and our ability to struggle together is, I think, part and parcel to the challenge that I think our organizations face in terms of helping people understand themselves as protagonists. And also understand one another as peers and comrades and the co strugglers, right?

[00:40:26] That it’s like we cannot buy into this sort of all or nothing black and white thinking about like within our movements, right? I’m talking about like the folks who are. Part of the struggle with us together our real comrades, right? That recognizing that we’re humans and that we fuck up is actually an important part of the kind of like humility and frankly belonging, which I feel like is often a word that we bandy around is like an essential part of our movements.

[00:40:57] But that the more that we’re talking and the more I’m thinking about it, I’m like, this is actually an essential part of that nonviolent discipline that like creating belonging for people and knowing how to handle conflict amongst ourselves and modeling that for people who might be interested in.

[00:41:15] Being a part of our work is actually a PA really big piece of this puzzle. 

[00:41:20] Amanda Otero: Yeah. The thing that’s coming up for me, as someone in one of the organizations, right? It’s, it’s challenging and conflict, strategic conflict is a really important part of strengthening. Strengthening our work and movement.

[00:41:32] And I often feel like collectively we are like woefully underequipped to do that. And so then that is where things like cancel culture and just tearing each other down I think really happen. And so we have to take this seriously, the work of capacity building around how to navigate and confront and work together through strategic conflict.

[00:41:51] And then I also think, what’s coming to mind for me is part of what then to, to put in the effort and the energy and the grit that it takes to do that and to work through the tensions that arise when you’re building something together. We have to be clear about the shared enemy, right? And what we’re up against.

[00:42:11] And so I think there’s a real balance, and I’m saying this coming off of a session here at the conference yesterday about the multiracial, right? And the way that the multiracial right is or the way that, rightwing forces are growing in their, yeah, just growing, growing numbers of folks from various communities of color really identifying with and finding belonging in maga, and it was such a helpful reminder as an organizer who can get so caught up with what we’re doing wrong on the left.

[00:42:38] And there’s a lot we’re doing wrong. I’m not gonna not say that. And 

[00:42:41] Cayden Mak: look if we were perfect, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. We wouldn’t be here. Exactly. 

[00:42:45] Amanda Otero: But to be reminded that to have that really fire in our bellies about what we’re up against and stay grounded and clear and committed on that is the thing that drives me to say, okay, let’s sit down.

[00:42:55] Let’s talk this through. Let’s figure out, what aren’t we doing well? How do we need to work together in, in productive and principled ways? Yeah. Great. 

[00:43:03] Cayden Mak: Another audience question I’m going to kick this to Scott first, but I imagine all three of you have some thoughts about this is what are the things that you see to do with the momentum from No Kings?

[00:43:14] And actually the session that I was just in earlier was talking about the fact that there’s now starting to be this Caydence of expectation that there’s gonna be something to do maybe every couple months, every six to eight weeks. But especially with the framework of taking the off going on offense.

[00:43:31] What are some things that you were like, if you were to be able to direct this energy, what are some of the things that you would want folks to embrace or try to take on in this moment? I. 

[00:43:41] Scot Nakagawa: If we wanted to direct this energy first, we need to absorb the people who are turning out for these protests.

[00:43:48] At this point, there doesn’t appear to yet be an absorption strategy. And so we need to work on that. How do we engage people post this if we don’t have the ability to contact them to be able to communicate with them? Those are the big questions. I sometimes imagine that you could give people talking points at these demonstrations on a piece of paper with a QR code that they could then go to, to be able to share information if they their information, if they want to be in continuing communication so we can start to actually develop their tactical and strategic capacity and also direct some of those energies in ways that would be the most effective.

[00:44:29] Steven Gardiner: Yeah, I think that the. The energy that’s going into No Kings, which is not one organization, it’s a variety of organizations that are are sponsoring this primarily Indivisible and 50 51. But and with some tension between them and bringing this to happen. But the point is that when you have a rally or a March, when you make decisions about how that’s going to be, you’re making decisions about what it is to be a participant.

[00:44:56] To ask people to be a participant in something when they don’t know what the safety regime is going to be, how safe they’re going to be at that situation coming out of it. I agree about the absorption of people and finding useful things to do and having some plan to test their willingness to go along with things that are easy as we move them toward things that take a little more time or a little more risk.

[00:45:24] While assuring them that we’re not actually going to ask most of them to charge the barricades this is not actually in the playbook. If we get to that point we will have already lost this fight and beyond to the next one. And and I’m too old to to, to contemplate that particular situation.

[00:45:42] Yes I mean there’s all kinds of things that you can do that are real easy, that have been tested in other countries that have fought with authoritarian regimes. You come up with a, something that people can be, have some unity around. A really simple statement a around a particular kind of make ice agents and other federal agents stop wearing masks.

[00:46:05] And then on a certain day you ask everyone to wear red shirts if they support. Wow. And then they see that they don’t die if they wear a red shirt and then you write about it, and then you go on to the next thing. That takes a little bit more effort. And you then, as you get some momentum, then you try to get the, instead of trying to get the big organizations that have base building capacity or bases like labor unions, for example, to drive this.

[00:46:35] Once they see that it exists, they’ll be a lot more happy to sign onto it. And this is the way you build energy to do a a 5 million person mobilization in DC one day. And along the way you try to get the low hanging fruit, you try to get bipartisan for whatever examples you can get.

[00:47:00] Condemnation of political violence. Especially locally, there’s still a lot of people who think it’s a really bad idea if someone gets assassinated in their city regardless of who did it or who the targets were. So you try that and then you, you ask people to turn out for whatever the next plan is, to help with doing a independent monitoring of elections in this country that mobilizes them along electoral lines.

[00:47:31] But not just to vote, not just to be a partisan, but to be a democracy monitor. This is just an example. These are things that have been done internationally. There’s a long list of these tactics that have been tried. Ask people to play music all at the same time, bang on pots of pans at midnight.

[00:47:46] Things that, that you can do to build energy and build solidarity by having the impact of, oh, other people are actually doing that. I’m not an idiot who’s sticking my neck out to be arrested by the goons. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:48:00] Cayden Mak: I think the other thing that I think about those things too are about cutting through the culture of individualism that is so like rampant.

[00:48:11] I was talking to somebody recently about the the cultural impact of neoliberalism, whether or not neoliberalism survives this political moment. The cultural impacts of neoliberalism are going to be with us for a very long time in terms of the way that we think about ourselves and our relation to other people in our society.

[00:48:30] And I think that, like what it comes down to is about this idea that we, the individual need to both have the right answer and that we need to be the one, like we need to be able to like, bring about change on our own. And that sort of impulse to individualism, it strikes me that a lot of these things that you’re describing that have worked in other countries to build momentum, to build towards things are about.

[00:48:53] Cutting through some of that individualism and seeing yourself as part of a collective again, because I have a really hard time with big rallies ’cause I actually find them to be incredibly alienating. Like when I go to them, I actually feel alone sometimes. And that finding ways to express ourselves as part of a collective as opposed to a massive individuals is different than a collective.

[00:49:14] And it strikes me that that is part of going on the offensive. That going on the offensive is reaffirming our collective identity as however we wish to, to define our group. Amanda, do you have other, do you have other thoughts about going on the offensive in this moment?

[00:49:28] Amanda Otero: Yeah, I think what I would add, just to add another layer is, this is, I find this, fascinating and such helpful orientation, right? And. I just wanna name also, we started talking about the like and what co Cayden you’ve been bringing up. Like the what comes next and what, when, when we get to envision and imagine what our future can look like.

[00:49:49] And part of what we’re building with absorption, with putting people into roles, we’re building teams that are really collective and making strategic decisions collectively, together. That’s all the kind of infrastructure that we need to, build the world that we wanna see. And that, and so that is really, I think.

[00:50:07] Motivating and right for folks. And I’ve had, many of our members and ask about they wanna, they’re so hungry to be engaged in the strategic move. To the point of yes, we go to the protests, yes. We get, we gotta be in the streets, we will do that. And we are starting to do that together, right?

[00:50:22] But then what’s the strategic role and lane that I can play with a team of folks? And I think that’s part of the answer too, on some of the safety and security pieces and how do we not spin out when we’re scared and it’s, it is teams, it is collectives that are gonna have to hold that together.

[00:50:37] So that, I think that just makes a lot of sense on the ground. 

[00:50:41] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah. I’m also, I was really excited about that answer too, because it feels like the opportunity that we have is to. Figure out who else might be on our team to do some strategy together. And that like strategy isn’t something that happens in a, like a room away from the action.

[00:50:58] That actually strategy is part of the action itself, right? That there’s like a a practice of doing strategy that can be not rarefied and not part of the reason, I’m frankly, part of the philosophy of convergence is that like we all can be strategists, right? And the reason that we try to publish material that is talking about strategy in ways that are accessible to people is that like we would like to invite people into being strategists.

[00:51:24] And that there’s a piece of that I think again speaks to the need to build new collectivities. I appreciate there’s a question asker who’s asked a little bit about the way that. Our time together at this conference has also been structured around the block and build strategy.

[00:51:39] And obviously this podcast is called Block and Build, so it’s not a coincidence. But I think that, I don’t know, I’ve, I’ve been thinking a lot also about like how we have put Block and build forward as a sort of strategic call on a strategic container. And I’m a little curious and I’m, this question has made me think a little bit about, to bring us home a little bit like.

[00:52:04] What are some of the strategic imperatives that we’re facing in this moment? As we’re trying to block the impacts of authoritarianism as we are struggling with this stuff, what are the strategic questions that you are all sitting with knowing that we’re entering into a period where like risk is gonna look a lot different.

[00:52:23] And how are you thinking about your role too in this time that we’re going to have to both block and build simultaneously? Like it is not an either or anymore. It is a both end.

[00:52:38] Scot Nakagawa: I’m gonna say it never was right? Never was an either or. Should we block or should we build? We always have to be doing both at the same time. And actually in the work that we are involved in at the 22nd Century Initiative, we think of the block as a way of building, right? Building our democratic muscle, building our base.

[00:52:56] We should think of these things in ways that are fully integrated and act in those ways as well. On the block side, I will say, that the authoritarians in this most recent election experienced a breakthrough of a kind that did not have. On their side in 2016. We are at a very dangerous point in history when authoritarians break through like this political sciences.

[00:53:23] Scientists tell us we have a relatively short window of time to act before authoritarian power is consolidated across all of our institutions in our particular situation. They still have not consolidated that kind of power over the court. So we still have an independent judiciary and many states still have, especially within our federal system, room to resist.

[00:53:46] And so we need to take advantage of that. A reality and we need to act quickly to be able to stop that kind of consolidation from happening. So the block is a really important investment right now, right? We need to be blocking in order to create the political space and opportunity to start to imagine what the build looks like.

[00:54:07] So I would go there and when, when people say we need to present alternatives, we need to have a vision of change, make it concrete. Absolutely. We should be doing those things. We don’t wanna just sell people abstractions. Right? But in Thailand, for example, I was in the Philippines doing some training of people who are concerned with with right wing populism in Southeast Asia and members of the future for forward party of Thailand, which has since been banned by the military ed there.

[00:54:35] But at the time had just come out of an election where they won a significant number of seats in government. I actually asked. The party leader, what are you going to do? And what she said to me is, do as much good as we can until the Junta kicks us out. And then that did in fact happen. But how they won those seats is really important.

[00:54:54] She demonstrated that to us by showing us a political ad that looks nothing like political ads in the United States. Political ads in the United States have normalized a terrible way of understanding politics, right? This political ad. Was a bunch of different people, a multi-ethnic group of people of all ages, dancing and singing together while pointing to the future, future forward.

[00:55:21] They simply enacted what freedom looks like, what living harmoniously with your neighbors looks like in a highly repressive state, and it ignited the imaginations of young people across the country. The future could look different, and we could, we should go there and think about the build in all the complicated ways, but let’s not overcomplicate that in the actions we take over the next, say, 12 to 18 months, and really try to ignite that kind of joy in people, but really invest in the block and recognize what needs to be protected, right?

[00:55:53] I would, I just think that’s an important thing. Let’s not let ourselves get caught in one, one or the other, or making things too complicated at a time when we need to keep things simple for people, right? We need to lower the bar for participation and give people easy ways to get involved and take action in significant enough numbers to slow the consolidation of power, and then start to convert from protests to more specific kind of disruptive activities that can actually stop the consolidation of power.

[00:56:28] Steven.

[00:56:34] Steven Gardiner: Yeah. When it comes to these kinds of questions I think the relationship of Block and Build is one, not to confuse what may be a slogan that becomes popular with what the underlying strategy might be. Now, an example is defund the police. Defund the police was always a slogan, not a strategy.

[00:56:54] The strategy underlying was divest invest, meaning there may be situations where we need armed responders, but police as we understand them in many places, are captured by property interests and enforce social control. That doesn’t mean we don’t need. Responders who will call, who will respond if there’s an emergency that involves violence.

[00:57:18] Otherwise the alternative is self-help or something worse, rich people hiring mercenaries. So this is not what is wanted, but a whole bunch of things that you would have to build instead that you would have to fund that would be potentially joyful. Community resources for recreation, for being safe outside, for having livable and walkable neighborhoods.

[00:57:40] Really simple kinds of shit that most people would like as opposed to, pay, getting the damn garbage picked up reliably. And this is not a mystery, but on the other hand, the most vulnerable communities are not going to be the ones that want to be the social experiment by for how this is going to work.

[00:57:58] And we have to keep that in mind too. 

[00:58:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Any closing thoughts, Samantha? 

[00:58:06] Amanda Otero: Just appreciating Scott, you’re framing around the block and the build are not necessarily one and then the other. In fact, they happen. They’re, key strategies that can happen together and I really I think that’s what’s true for.

[00:58:20] The question was a little bit about like our roles in this time, right? And I think about organizations like mine. Our role is to hold that with people and to train folks and work together on the block and the build and. Sometimes that’s hard and it’s complicated and we’re up against a lot and people are still having all the challenges of regular daily life.

[00:58:42] It’s just, it’s, yeah, it’s holding a lot, but I really, but I actually think, like my experience on the ground with our members is we are clear that we must in fact, block and build simultaneously, and so we, yeah. It just resonates a lot that, that, and that is the, I think that’s the role of organizations like mine.

[00:58:59] Yeah. To figure out how to do that with folks on the ground. 

[00:59:01] Cayden Mak: Amazing. I have a couple of like really rich conversation or really rich questions from the audience that I feel like we cannot tackle in nine minutes, but this is by far not going to be, this is the first, but definitely not the last conversation that we’re gonna have on the show about political violence because we just barely scratched the surface of, for instance, structural violence and how like, structural violence is a piece of the puzzle here and a piece of, I guess like why, a lot of the sort of like spectacular sort of interpersonal political violence becomes like a part of people’s imaginary, and yeah I’m gonna be taking some of these questions and I’m gonna be like finding some more folks to talk to about them because the questions are really good.

[00:59:39] Y’all. I appreciate I appreciate all of you, the three of you. I appreciate our audience. Shout out to my producer Josh, who has been setting everything up. Yeah. As we wrap up here, know that this is gonna be a continuing conversation because again, I think that we are in a moment where we’re going to see escalation.

[00:59:56] It’s gonna be things are gonna get rough and that we’ve only really scratched the surface here. My thanks again to our panel for joining us, Scott from the 22nd Century Initiative. Steven from PRA and Amanda from Take Action Minnesota. Thank you to the 22nd Century conference for having us.

[01:00:10] And shout out to the staff here at the venue for all of their hard work helping pull this conference off. This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for Radical Insights. I’m Cayden Mak. Our producer is Josh Stro. Kimmy David designed our cover art and Logan Gross is our summer intern. Also if you have something to say, please do drop me a line.

[01:00:26] You can send me an email that will consider running on an upcoming mailbag episode at [email protected]. And I’m also excited to announce that we just started our 2025 summer Fun Drive. Every summer we have this focused effort to raise money to sustain our publishing so that we can stay editorially independent.

[01:00:42] And this year we’ve set an ambitious goal of a hundred thousand dollars for movement media. Anyone who starts an annual or monthly subscription or gives 25 bucks or more, or upgrades their subscription ’cause I think we have some subscribers in the room. You will get a special thank you gift. Head over to bitly slash Summer Fun Drive, all one word to make your contribution today.

[01:01:00] I hope this helps.