S1E71 - Sabot Media on Rural Organizing

Episode Summary

Margaret talks with Sprout and Charyan from Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective about organizing in rural areas and how that can be different from organizing in more urban areas. Sprout and Charyan talk about the different projects that Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective work on, supporting unhoused people, the importance of having a music scene, and the unfortunate state of fascism.

Guest Info

Sprout (they/them) and Charyan(they/them) work with Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective. Those projects can be found on Twitter @Blackflowerllc, @Aberdeenlocal1312, or Instagram @Blackflower.collective or @Aberdeenlocal1312, or on their websites https://sabotmedia.noblogs.org/ or https://blackflowercollective.noblogs.org/. They can also be found on Mastodon @Aberdeenlocal1312.

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

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 – Sabot Media on Rural Organizing

Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And I'm excited to talk this week about a subject that is very near and dear to my particular heart. And it might be near and dear to your particular hear or it might just be a subject of idle curiosity. I have no idea. I don't know where you live. You're in my head. I'm in your head. Something. Today we're going to talk about rural organizing, and we're gonna talk about some of the differences between rural organizing and urban organizing, and we're going to be doing that with Sprout and Charyan from Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective and we're going to talk about that. First, we're gonna talk about the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Bah duh duh duh dah [Margaret makes melody noises like she's singing] Okay, so if you all could introduce yourself, I guess with your your name and your pronouns and then like maybe a little bit about what Sabot Media and The Blackflower Collective are.

Sprout 02:32 Yeah, hello, I'm Sprout. Pronouns are they/them.

Charyan 02:37 I'm Charyan. They/them.

Sprout 02:40 We're here to talk about our new project in Grays Harbor County called The Blackflower Collective. And we're here also representing Sabot Media and our podcast Molotov Now.

Margaret 02:55 Where's Grays Harbor?

Sprout 02:58 It's on the coast, Western Washington. The main town is Aberdeen where most people have probably heard of it is because that's where Kurt Cobain was born and grew up.

Margaret 03:12 Oh, one of my favorite trans women in history. That is my contentious belief. Anyone who's ever wonder that. Yeah,

Charyan 03:24 I've heard the theory.

Margaret 03:26 Yeah. One of my friends was friends with Kurt and was like...and when I first started coming out was like, "Wow, you talk about your gender the same way that Kurt did." And so that's why I hold on to this particular theory so hard. But I'm not trying to...no one has ever been more mad at me on the internet as people were when I said this once on Twitter. So whatever, I'm not trying to specifically claim or not claim dead people...whatever. Anyway, that's definitely what we're here to talk about today. So, I guess really quickly, like what is Sabot Media? What is Blackflower Collective?

Sprout 04:09 Well, Sabot Media is a media project that we started because we saw a need for our own reporting of certain stories around the homeless and the mutual aid efforts that were going on in our town. The local paper record the Daily World and the other local stations out here were just not covering the stories at all that needed to be told. And so we stepped up to start talking about that stuff in our own community. We've got a website on No Blogs. Sabotmedia.noblogs.org, where people can go check out our articles. We've got comics, we've got columns, we've got a podcast as I mentioned. Yeah, so The Blackflower Collective was born out of another project here on the harbor that's been going for a couple of years Chehalis River mutual aid network. And the organizers for that project did a lot of talking to the community and discussing internally about what needs there were and how to meet those needs. And the solution came out as The Blackflower Collective. So our goal there is to have a piece of land, just outside the city limits, where we can have a sustainable ecovillage to house low income and unhouse...currently unhoused people, as well as pairing that with a social center and makerspace where we can have a business incubator and people providing social services.

Margaret 05:53 That's really...Okay, one of the things I got really excited about when I first heard about this project that you all are working on about it is because I think about how much...how impactful social center type spaces can be in smaller communities. Like it just seems to me...like off the top of my head, at least I think of like...I mean, a makerspace and, you know, social center space and stuff like that in a big city rules and is great, and I'm really excited when they exist, but it seems like a much higher percentage of the town's socializing or something...like it seems like a bigger deal in a smaller place. Am I like...Am I off base about this? Like, what are your kind of aspirations around that?

Charyan 06:34 Not at all. That's actually kind of one of the dichotomies that we talked about in our article. And on our interview on It Could Happen Here is like the modes of socialization feel a lot different from big city and large population big city communities and, you know, smaller rural towns and whatnot. For example, like in the bigger city, the way you meet people is like, you know, you have your job, or, you know, you go out to the club or, you know, what have you. There's lots of different groups and classes you can take part in. Like you walk into any building or storefront and there's going to be a wall filled with fliers for different events and classes and all sorts of stuff. A place like here in Aberdeen, you have to hunt and dig for that kind of stuff. And even when it does happen, you're more than likely not even going to hear about it. The mode of socialization in smaller places is usually through friends and family you already have. You know, you're hanging out at somebody's house and somebody comes to the door. It