S1E68 - This Month in the Apocalypse: April

Episode Summary

This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Margaret, Brooke, and Inmn talk about a lot of stuff that happened in April. They explore the history of Mayday, what will happen if the US defaults on its debts, Brooke's reasons for not wanting to become a Dracula, strikes, a report from the Sudanese Anarchist Gathering on the current conflict in Sudan, a horrible string of murders, guns, syphilis, cheetahs, more syphilis, shirt slinging neo-Nazis, and some new news about the Stop Cop City movement.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

LLWD: This Month in the Apocalypse: April

Margaret 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the End Times. This is a This Month in the Apocalypse special where we talk about this month in the apocalypse, but even more than that it's the Mayday special because it's Mayday--not when you're listening but when we're recording--and that's what matters to me is the things that affect me. I'm one of your hosts Margaret Killjoy.

Brooke 00:33 Hi, I'm Brooke.

Inmn 00:35 Hi, I'm Inmn

Margaret 00:36 Inmn is joining us. Is this is your first time co-hosting the show?

Inmn 00:41 This is...yes...this is my first time co-hosting.

Margaret 00:45 That's very exciting.

Inmn 00:46 Yes, I'm excited and under....I'm here for playful banter.

Margaret 00:53 Great.

Brooke 00:53 If there's three co-hosts, should it be co-co-host?

Margaret 00:57 Or co...tri... No, I got nothing. Okay. So, co-co-hosts but not Coco Chanel because she's a Nazi.

Brooke 01:08 Yeah. Bad.

Margaret 01:10 Yep. Alright. So, this podcast is proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Bop! [Said like the note of a song] That was my song.

Brooke 01:23 Beautiful.

Margaret 01:24 Thanks.

Margaret 01:42 And we're back. Okay, so, today is Mayday. What's Mayday, you might ask? Eh? Eh?

Inmn 02:26 What is...What's a May Day?

Margaret 02:29 Thanks. It's the thing you say when you're in trouble and you're in an airplane. [Brooke makes sad trumpet noise] Okay, so, Mayday is the international working holiday. I don't have any notes about this in front of me. So, I'm going to be off the top of my head. But I've have given this as a spiel multiple times in my life. Mayday has been celebrated in various forms, kind of going back to 1886. And going back to 1886 in Chicago, let's like [Makes scifi time machine noises]...now we're in 1886 in Chicago and there's this vibrant anarchist scene and it's an almost entirely immigrant culture, mostly German in this particular time and place as well as there are some like born in the United States anarchists who are part of it, kind of most famously, the power couple Albert Parsons and Lucy Parsons. Albert Parsons is a white guy who used to be a Confederate soldier, realized he was on the wrong side when he as a teenager, spent the next huge chunk of his life trying to fight actively against the thing he had fought for. He managed to get shot in the process. And then he illegally married a black woman, Lucy Parsons, because it was illegal for interracial marriages. So, they actually moved to Chicago even before it was legal there. They moved from Texas up there. And they were rad organizers, and Lucy Parsons was like actually way more interesting than Albert. No offense to Albert, you know. He's one of today's martyrs for May Day. And Lucy Parsons has all these quotes about like, "What I want is for every greasy grimy tramp to arm himself with a knife and a gun and wait outside the homes of the rich. And, as they leave, stab or shoot them." Lucy Parsons did not fuck around. Lucy Parsons knew that class war was a thing that was already happening to marginalized people and wanted to see it returned to the rich. And so, the anarchists on Mayday during this time, they would do things like they'd have these huge parades where they like, marched to the homes of the rich with like banners that said, shit, like, "We're gonna fucking kill you," or whatever, you know. I'm sort of paraphrasing here because I don't have my notes. Yeah. And so they had this like culture and they were building this amazing culture and there was also this, like...they had community defense organizations, they had plays, they had like--it's very actually parallel to a lot of the stuff that's getting built now--only we'll survive repression better than they did; I hope. Okay, and so at the same time there's this massive fight for the eight hour workday. And the anarchists were a little bit like, "I mean, that's cool, I guess. Like we kind of want the no-hour workday. Like, we're in it for the abolition of capitalism, but we'll put up with it. Right, that's all right." And so, they were a big part of the organizing, and--kind of in a similar way that anarchists participate in organizing now--and there was basically this idea that we're like, "Alright, on May 1, 1886, we're just declaring the eight hour day, and no one will work more than that, and it's gonna be this massive general strike." And it was it was this massive general strike all across the country. And in Chicago, at the McCormick harvester factory where they made harvesters,which were, you know, big combine machines used for farming or whatever, a bunch of people were like, "Fuck this. We're not working." And so they brought in scabs, and then people were like, "Fuck you," and they like threw rocks at the scabs and stuff. And then the cops were like, "Well, what if we just shot you?" and people were like, "We'd rather you didn't shoot us," but the cops weren't listening. So, they shot them anyway. And some people died. And it was bad. And that was on May 1st. And then there were several days of protests after that. But the anarchists were like, "Man, they're just shooting us now." And these were not the first labor people who were getting shot in the US during this fight, but they were like, "You know, if they're shooting us like, let's put out this thing that's like, you know, in both German and English, it's like, "Show up at Haymarket Square and get ready to fight. This is our time." you know, and it's this big kind of bravado thing. But then,the day of everyone was like, "Actually, let's just show up and be peaceful because it's like, kind of sketchy. Like, you know?" and I feel like we've all been in this kind of situation. And so then all of these people go up and give these speeche