Amplify RJ (Restorative Justice)
Restorative Justice is often framed as an alternative to punishment in criminal legal and education settings, and but that’s only part of the story. Join host David Ryan Barcega Castro-Harris to learn how to apply Restorative Justice philosophy, practices, and values in your everyday life.
Amplify RJ (Restorative Justice)
The Messy Birth of Rebellion: Andor, Movement Strategy & Restorative Resistance with Gabes Torres
What can a Star Wars show teach us about organizing, resistance, and healing? In this episode of the Amplify RJ Podcast, I sit down with strategist, therapist, and writer Gabes Torres to talk about Andor—yes, that Star Wars show—and what it reveals about real-life revolution.
We dive into how Andor de-romanticizes rebellion and reflects the complex realities of movement work: the banality of evil, conflict in organizing, disposability culture, and the painful but necessary tension between rest and resistance. Gabes shares insights from their piece on the show, their organizing and healing work in the Global South, and the ways marine mammals and myth can inform our strategy.
Whether or not you’ve seen the show, this conversation is about so much more than the galaxy far, far away—it’s about our world and how we build toward collective liberation with nuance, integrity, and care.
0:00 – Intro: What is Andor + Character Breakdown
5:20 – Meet Gabes Torres: Healer, Strategist, Rebel
9:42 – How Andor De-Romanticizes Revolution
14:20 – Disney, Propaganda & Revolutionary Storytelling
19:35 – The Banality of Evil in a Boardroom
25:00 – Real-World Parallels: Propaganda, Gaza, Gorman & Genocide
26:45 – Parenting, Powerlessness & Purpose
29:21 – Consciousness Building as Resistance
32:20 – Gabes on Luthen, Clea & Strategy in Movement
36:42 – Bix, Trauma & Knowing When to Step Back
40:28 – Organizing Through Burnout & Wavering Commitment
44:30 – Humananizing vs. Ruthless Sacrifice
47:40 – Disposability Culture in Movements
49:10 – Disagreeing Is Not a Failure of Solidarity
52:00 – Addressing Conflict & Building in Organizing
56:20 – Is there Shared Vision for Our Resistance?
1:00:23 – Activist Ecosystems, Movement Mentorship from Marine Mammals
1:07:30 – Upside Down Triangle: Rethinking Power
1:08:50 – Support Gabes & Psychosocial Care for Organizers
Connect with Gabes:
https://www.instagram.com/gabestorres/
Read her article:
https://gabestorres.substack.com/p/andor
Support mental health care for organizers in the Global South
https://gabestorres.com/support/
Connect with us on:
Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and TikTok!
SUPPORT by sharing this podcast and leaving a rating or review
Hi, I'm David, Ryan, barsega, castro, harris all five names for all the ancestors, and welcome back to the Amplify RJ podcast. I'm so excited for today's episode because we're talking to the brilliant Gabes Torres about one of my favorite recent TV shows. If you're familiar with the Star Wars show and or you can skip the next couple of minutes because I'm imagining not everyone listening to this has context for the show, so I want to give you a bit of a rundown and some context for the show so you understand the dynamics that Gabe's and I are talking about. So if you haven't seen it, andor is a Star Wars show that is a prequel to Rogue One, following Cassian Andor, a thief from the planet Canary whose life is upended by the Empire's relentless expansion. Over two seasons, the show traces Cassian's journey from reluctant survivor to committed rebel, revealing not only his personal transformation but all the messy collective birth of the Rebel Alliance. But Andor isn't your typical Star Wars tale of good versus evil, jedi versus Sith. It's a story of how ordinary people become radicalized, how bureaucratic systems enable harm and how resistance movements are often built from the ground up, often through disagreement, scarcity and strategic adaptation. And so, while the show is about the heists, the adventures, the plotting and the espionage. It's also about all the human to human moments on both sides. So, again, for those who aren't familiar with the show, I'm going to give some context to some of the characters who we're going to be talking about in the conversation.
Speaker 1:Cassian is a former orphan from the planet Canary who grows up on the planet Ferex after being adopted by scavengers. His journey is marked by trauma and loss as he survives as a resourceful and morally complex figure, sometimes a thief, sometimes a mercenary, sometimes a killer. Initially motivated by personal survival, his experiences with imperial brutality and the loss of his adoptive mother drive him to join the rebellion. He evolves into a skilled intelligence officer, spy and ultimately leader, playing a pivotal role in the theft of the Death Star plans. Cassian is determined, pragmatic and willing to make hard choices for the greater good, embodying the grounded, ambiguous nature of real revolutionaries. Now Bix colleen is cassian's longtime friend and confidant from barracks. Resourceful and fiercely loyal, she operates the salvage business and becomes entangled in the rebellion through her connection to cassian. Bix is courageous but pays a heavy price for her involvement, enduring torture and loss at the hands of the empire. Her resilience and emotional depth ground the story's depiction of ordinary people swept up in extraordinary events.
Speaker 1:Luthan real is a secretive and highly strategic architect of the rebellion. Operating from the guise of an antiques dealer on the planet Coruscant, he orchestrates covert missions and recruits key operatives, including Cassian. Luthan is uncompromising, willing to make morally difficult decisions for the cause, and excels in balancing a public persona with hidden revolutionary work. His vision and ruthlessness are central to the early growth of the rebel alliance. Clea Markey is Luthan's trusted associate, managing logistics and communications for his covert operations. She's highly competent, discreet and instrumental in maintaining the secrecy and effectiveness of the rebellion's early activities. Clea exemplifies the quiet behind the scenes work necessary for resistance movements to survive and thrive.
Speaker 1:Karis Nemec is a young, idealistic member of the Aldani rebel cell. As a political thinker and a writer, he provides the group, and Cassian in particular, with revolutionary theory and moral clarity. Nemec's manifesto articulates the philosophical underpinnings of the rebellion and his passion throughout inspires those around him. His tragic fate underscores the cost of resistance and the enduring power of his ideas On. Mothma is the principled and courageous senator from the planet Chandrila who becomes one of the earliest and most influential leaders of the rebel alliance. In the show, she is portrayed as a masterful political strategist, working from within the imperial senate to secretly fund and coordinate the rebellion, while navigating immense personal and political risk.
Speaker 1:Mon's story is one of quiet, resilience and sacrifice. She must balance her public role, strange family relationships and the constant threat of exposure, all while striving to unite a fractured opposition into a cohesive movement. Her unwavering commitment to justice and democracy, even in the face of great danger, makes her a moral anchor and visionary architect for the fight against the empire. We spend most of the time in the face of great danger makes her a moral anchor and visionary architect for the fight against the Empire. We spend most of the time in the episode talking about the quote-unquote good guys, but a couple of the ops that we do talk about are Orson Krennic and Dejah Miro. So Orson Krennic is an ambitious Imperial officer responsible for overseeing the construction of the Death Star. He's manipulative, ruthless and obsessed with gaining favor with the Empire's hierarchy. Krennic's willingness to exploit and destroy entire worlds for the sake of imperial power make him a formidable antagonist, embodying the bureaucratic horror of the empire.
Speaker 1:And Dedra Miro is an ambitious and meticulous officer in the Imperial Security Bureau, the equivalent of the FBI. She excels at intelligence work and is relentless in her pursuit of rebel activity, particularly on Ferex and then the planet Gorman. Her methodical approach and willingness to bend the rules for results make her both effective and dangerous. Her character highlights the banality and brutality of imperial power, as well as the personal ambitions that drive its agents. Of course, that's not a summary of all the characters on the show and this show is not a complete breakdown of the themes and the storylines and the characters represented in Andor. But I'm really excited for but I'm really excited to let you in on this conversation with Gabes and hear her thoughts as a strategist, a healer and an operator in our political times. So let's get into it, gabes, it is so good to have you here. I want you to be known in the ways that you want to be known to this audience. So who are you?
Speaker 2:I am thankful, tired and here.
Speaker 1:Who are you?
Speaker 2:Who are you? I am a descendant of my Lola, who is a guerrilla warrior, and of my Lolo, who is a militant pilot, and my Lola is a guerrilla warrior in the realm of intel, and so I feel like a lot of her work and a lot of her passion around that I've inherited who are you? I'm an archipelago of a person where I am made up of many different parts and interests and I'm drawn to many themes. Too much intersectionality, even who are you?
Speaker 2:I am a free diver and I'm hoping to be a skilled surfer and I hope to be a good enough friend of the ocean.
Speaker 1:Who are you? I believe in mythical creatures and aliens and energy who are?
Speaker 2:you. I am a lover of literature, of friendships, of the idea and practice of the erotic conceptualized, popularized by the great Audre Lorde. I love love and I love poetry and deliciousness and embodiment.
Speaker 1:Finally for now, who are you?
Speaker 2:Gosh, I am who. I am because of who and where I belong.
Speaker 1:That one we're going to unpack, especially within the context of this conversation about andor. Also, you're a rebel spy, we're gonna get there too. Um, but before we get into all of that, to the extent that you want to answer the question right now for our community, listening, how are you?
Speaker 2:how am I gosh? Um, I am excited to have this conversation with you and to have a conversation about andor. I will say that I'm a little intimidated by those of by the folks who are listening, who are, um, respectable star wars nerds and lovers. Um, I feel like I'm relatively new to this conversation, even though I've watched it since I was a kid. But in this moment I am hopeful and excited and a little tired because it's a little late my time zone. But yeah, in anticipation, yeah, and anticipation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there is so much excitement for me when I saw you post that you wrote something about Andor. For those of you who don't know, I did a series of podcast conversations with Galean Mendoza about the TV show the Last of Us a couple years ago, and I love having these conversations about what popular media and storytelling can do to apply to our lives right now, in the moment, and your insights, which we're going to get to, ranging from the banality of evil to the way that we are in conflict and the way that that's necessary in movement spaces and you know how we're strategic about engaging with ops can be so fruitful and such stimulating ground for making our resistance movement stronger and moments of connection between people who are fans of intellectual property, so we're going to get into it. And or, for those who don't have an incredible amount of context, is a star wars show, but it's not about the light side of the force and the dark side of the force, but and the jedi and the sith um, while we think about the skywalker family or palpatine or all of these forces that play throughout the whole galaxy. And or is really of the story of people who are building the Rebel Alliance.
Speaker 1:And you know it follows primarily a man named Cassian Andor. But along the way he was working, he was supported by so many people right, both in his context on his new home planet, pharax, and a lot of other people along the way as he was developing his role in the Rebel Alliance. And so when we follow this story of this man and all the people in his community around him, there were so many things that came up right. We talked about the ways that revolutions are built in the political realm, ways that revolutions are built on the ground, the way that imperial powers or colonial powers or empires devalue their own in order to reach their own goals. But I want to know, before we dive into any of that, I want to know how you came to this property of Andor. You know back in season one and what your initial impressions were and why you're like, oh my gosh, this show is my life.
Speaker 2:I did say that that my life purpose is Andor, but what really drew me to Andor was how I mean it's very different from the rest of the saga where there, at least from my perspective um, it was much easier to caricaturize the, like the figures of good and evil, caricaturize the uh, like the, the figures of good and evil, and there were parts of, from my experience, the saga that you know, there was like the hero and then there was the villain, and so the binary was clear from my point of view. But when I watched and or what drew me to this story is how it felt like a sharp analysis of power and power and I mean power not just like in the empire or not even in the Republic, but also in the rebellion, and how it kind of de-romanticized resistance movements. For me and from my point of view and during that time, that was like what? 2022, 2021, 2022, right, that was when I guess, like I'm also a therapist and I'm also a therapist to a lot of folks in movement spaces and mostly youth who are also new to movement spaces, where it's pretty natural or common for folks to still have some degree of dualistic mentality around good and evil.
Speaker 2:And the show was refreshing because again it de-romanticized the revolution that it's just because everybody has shared enough ideas and visions of what collective liberation, freedom, decolonization could look like Doesn't mean that we get along, doesn't mean that we have the same ideas about how to get to collective liberation.
Speaker 2:So as a therapist who wasn't just doing one-on-one or group therapy with folks but also did a lot of like mediating conflict, trying to practice accountability, infrastructures and tools in movement spaces, I felt seen by the show because it unveiled a lot of the messy parts on how to to and how to get to the place that we are safer, that we want to be, where we fight our fight for our human rights.
Speaker 2:So it it was a. It was definitely. I was so shook that just utterly stunned that disney was airing this, because it felt again like very antithetical to the platform um itself that they were airing these insurgencies that had detail and dialogue, that felt very reflective of I mean, it's different in every context in every part of history, but it felt similar enough to what I've seen on the ground yeah, I mean, and this isn't wholly a conversation about the creators of these stories, right, but we can even think about George Lucas thinking about the Rebel Alliance as the Viet Cong and the Galactic Empire as the United States in the Vietnam War back in 1977, when the original Star Wars was released.
Speaker 1:Tony Gilroy is somebody who has thought deeply about revolutionary movements, not just in this moment, where, you know, many people can draw a lot of parallels to what's happening in this current moment and what's happening in the US, in my context, globally, in the Philippines, to some extent, right, with authoritarian regimes trying to exert power over those who they feel like they can take from. But you know, star Wars in many ways has always been a revolutionary story where there is evil. There is very clear evil in Emperor Palpatine and his goals, right, and that's existent through all nine movies and the TV shows in between. But almost everybody else within that system of actors, even from the imperial side or, you know, separatist side, if you're thinking about the Clone Wars they're all motivated in some way by fear Right, some way by fear right, um, and or have been indoctrinated into a system of believing that control, um, and subjugation of people and order is the way for things to be, and those people are still people.
Speaker 1:Humans, um, who love, um, give love, are loved um to varying degrees of healthy expressions of that, as we see especially in the show um, but it's complex and, um, we have sympathy and empathy for so many of those characters as we see them struggle to survive, um, under a fascistic, uh, dictatorial regime, uh, just like the people, um, who are explicitly um, struggling against that and just trying to survive day to day. But speaking to the Disney of it all too, I wanted to just highlight a conversation that I had, if you go back in the podcast feed about Black Panther 2, right, disney, it is surprising that Disney allows these things to continue to be what were. The plot of Black Panther 2 is hey, the CIA or FBI found vibranium underwater and then they pitted the black and brown people against each other. And you know, I definitely respect Ryan Coogler as a storyteller and filmmaker and even when he has to go and work under those like Disney spaces, like there's not fully the opportunity to tell a fully revolutionary story.
Speaker 1:And so I think, about the positionality of Tony Gilroy as a very well-respected white man with a whole history of filmmaker and in my listening to interviews with him saying like, hey, kathleen Kennedy, who's the head of Lucasfilm? This is the story that I want to tell, where the first scene is a man going into a brothel looking for his sister and then murdering a couple people and she was like, okay, cool, but I mean that's from the perspective of a white passing person Doing some of those things. Even though Diego Luna is of Mexican descent, we can talk about all the colonial aspects of the Spanish Empire and the effects that that's had.
Speaker 1:But the person who gets to tell the story, tony Gilroy versus Ryan Coogler and Black Panther, or even bringing like a ton of hussy coats, uh version of black panther where like he wrote um the comics like there. It is surprising that like this thing gets to be shared on on disney platforms, uh, but grateful that it does, so we could have this level of conversation no, I appreciatehmm Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:No, I appreciate you naming that. Yeah, it's tough with mainstream storytelling and knowing how to I don't like using the term like knowing how to play the game, but being able to outmaneuver the politics around how to make these stories accessible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and especially with Star Wars, where it's such common language for I, I imagine many of us right. Um, there's stories that we grew up on. My parents showed, my dad showed me, uh, the original, and I was like, so excited in 1999, uh, when you know this, the prequels came out, and excited for episode seven and eight and less excited about episode nine because that was terrible uh but like have also like gravitated toward all the storytelling in between um as ways to understand power in the world um and how we organize and how we build and how we resist.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm curious, within, like this context of andor, um, you wrote about a couple things. Uh, what were the things that uh stood out as like oh, we need this right now in our movement as it exists so here's what I wrote in the piece that might be helpful, um for context for folks.
Speaker 2:So early in season two, a secret meeting takes place in the Malthean Divide, krennic, and a curated circle of imperial delegates gather to discuss Gormen, a planet known for the booming trade of Gormen silk, spun by the planet's native spiders called the. I still can't pronounce this. Can you help me here?
Speaker 1:Oh no, Maybe gorlectopods.
Speaker 2:Gorlectopods, sure, but Krennic was building up the discussion in a corny retro fashion to reveal that he wasn't exactly fixated on the fabric, but what lies underneath the planet, which is chalcite. And it's an ore so potent that it could rewire the Empire's power altogether, suggesting that the mineral was needed to build or fuel the Death Star. And for that Krennic is prepared to tear through Gorman to claim it. And here Go ahead.
Speaker 2:And it was this scene that brought chills to my spine because the meeting was so monotonous, perhaps even boring for some viewers and very tedious, but the outcome of that meeting had destructive and even fatal implications and outcomes. One part there was one of the delegates even talked about as they were trying to brainstorm what to do, how to conduct this systematized massacre. One of them even mentioned staging a disaster, and that made my stomach drop because it made me wonder, like in real life, like how much of that happened here in our, I guess, like in our dimension, in our reality.
Speaker 1:And again, like this is when the concept of banality of evil comes to mind, that even in the, the monotone and the admin stuff, um, we have to pay attention to when, um, evil and cruelty and um, yeah, evil creeps into the day-to-day details yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think like this specific scene, this meeting at the Malthean Divide of the ISB, which is the Imperial Secret Service Bureau, something like the intelligence branch of the imperial government, was mirrored specifically after the Wannsee Conference in 1942, where the Nazis were planning the genocide right.
Speaker 1:And you know, tony Gilroy like explicitly talks about this, like, yeah, they just planned it over lunch. Like 15 members of the Third Reich got together, hitler and his leadership were like, how are we going to carry out this genocide and not have it blow up in our face? Right, because, like in this meeting of the ISB officers, they were talking about like oh, let's stage this natural disaster. What propaganda do we need to use to make it seem like the rest seem okay? Enough for the rest of the world for us to be able to, you know, extract these resources in order for us, to, you know, assert more dominance over the rest of the empire?
Speaker 1:And yeah, it's just very logistical. Hey, here's this PowerPoint presentation and let's have this board meeting essentially about what the best course of action is. And you know, not only do their actions in that meeting have impact on the gores very specifically, because eventually, right, there is a massacre and essentially not shown, but, um, the planet is wrecked um, as and like, made uninhabitable, um, by the mining operation that uh goes on there so they can complete the death star one and eventually the second version of it as well.
Speaker 1:Uh, but that's just not where people um would think like, oh yeah, that's what's happening in a board meeting right, yeah, right.
Speaker 2:one thing that I remembered, too is just the role of propaganda and how that uh was successful enough that other planets abandoned the gore, like they. The meeting I can't actually remember if they discussed this in the meeting, but what was propagated was the idea that the gore are arrogant and wealthy, that it made other people I guess like the messaging which is really, which feels like more like in the context of revolutions, like it feels like more of a 20th century framework or tool or idea, especially with social media and the internet. But they were pretty successful in getting others apathetic or apolitical about all the tragedies that are happening to the gore, and I feel like that is also something that feels real. In our time. Authoritative regime have been spreading far and wide to pit us against each other, especially in times where one of our communities or what's our version of planet, like nation states, are needing solidarity or international solidarity.
Speaker 1:Right and simply like the way that things are covered and framed or not covered. Right, Because when we think about, just this week that we're recording this, 14,000 Palestinian babies will die versus two people were shot at the US Israeli embassy Right. Both are terrible things right, and one is being propagated by a government. The other was the act of one person.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask you a question Is that okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I have not lived in the States for a while and I've been so curious about how it's been feeling there and I guess, like the collective energy and everything that's happening, it feels like there's like one executive order after another that's being initiated and changes are just happening rapidly and I guess, like in light of, maybe, in light of propaganda, in light of, I guess, like in light of, maybe in light of propaganda, and light of, I guess, like in light of and or like what are the links that you're making between the story and where you're at right now? I'm just curious about, I'm just so curious. I haven't been there and the distance is. It's one thing to hear about the news, but it's another thing to actually hear from somebody who's there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think the overwhelming sense of I'm a tired parent trying to survive late stage global capitalism is what's front of mind always. I don't always absorb or it's not really possible for me to keep up with everything that's going on. I don't follow news in that way and of course things trickle down.
Speaker 1:I feel disempowered in many ways to like have impact on what is actually happening on the federal government level. I did not vote for Donald Trump Surprise, surprise level. I did not vote for Donald Trump Surprise, surprise. Most of the people when I say most of the people, the majority of people like 60 ish percent of the people in my city where I live did not vote for Trump, and there are many people who did. I know that the nature of my work as somebody who teaches about restorative justice, as someone who holds space for people who are navigating conflict dynamics and who supports people in building cultures and communities rooted in ideas of interconnection and care and accountability, my work is needed just as much as ever.
Speaker 1:But, like I'm still doing my work, yeah and so much of my energy is now about navigating the day-to-day um waking up multiple times a night with a one and three-year-old um and trying not to lose my shit. I hear you yeah um, and so like I can't speak for I don't know how much you're asking me to speak for Americans versus this one experience in. Southern California. Um, but that's, that's my response no, thank you.
Speaker 2:I need, we need specificity to reach universality, so no doubt that folks would resonate.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing yeah, but like, when it comes to like what is my role? Like my role is not that, like what is my role in resisting right now, um, when I think about andor and like what everybody did, I am not out there like shooting motherfuckers, right, I'm not there like building, uh, building the resistance in that specific way maybe uh, if we go back to season one of the show, I am a character in nemic who wrote a manifesto right who, like inspired cassian and many others, like at the very end of season two, we see that his manifesto is has penetrated the entire galaxy and one of the isb officers is listening to this right before um, the end of the season um.
Speaker 1:But, like, when I think about that, it's consciousness building, it's about radicalization through words, through media, through content, which you know we're engaging right now. And then nemic didn't necessarily do this part, but you know, I hold space, I curate spaces for people to build those skills, build those practices, to apply these. We're engaging right now and then Nemec didn't necessarily do this part, but you know, I hold space, I curate spaces for people to build those skills, build those practices, to apply these principles to the way that they engage in the world, in their professional lives, right, as teachers, as DEI professionals, as leaders of organizations, as people who are in relationship to each other. And then, what does that mean? When we go to the ballot box? What does that mean? When we show up to an organizing event, what does that mean?
Speaker 1:when we uh are building movements and organizing around specific issues instead of like specific issues and like in electoral politics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, I love that you resonated with nemik, and it's so. It's really cool to see how the manifesto was only meant for Andor and yet it echoed and reverberated to, I guess, like I don't know how many more, but to basically more people, and so I'm really hopeful that all that you're building continues to echo as well, and just reminds me of the theme of legacy, I suppose, and how even the revolutions today they're not. They don't come from a vacuum. They come from the already existing foundations and history of past revolutions.
Speaker 1:It's not like we're starting from scratch, it's like all it's all, like a, a continuous thread yeah, yeah, right, because, like, I'm building on, like the, the work of my teachers, and the, the work of so many others, and you know everyone has their, their role to play. I'm curious, you know, I in some ways identified as a nemic. Like, who did you identify with in this show? Uh, if you were to put yourself as a character or maybe like an unseen role?
Speaker 2:yeah, I. It's funny because, oh gosh, people would not be people. People who know me would probably be surprised by it, unless I've been with you in organizing spaces, because sometimes I know that.
Speaker 1:Can I make a prediction? Can I make? Oh yeah, I was gonna make a prediction. I was gonna say you, um, you feel like a clay to me yeah, but but that was like, there was like an order.
Speaker 2:So I do that sometimes I do get here's a thing. I know he's an insider inside manipulator and but his philosophy about things I get him. I don't like the way that he does it most of the time, but I do get and it's probably because I we have more access to luthens um it's luthen, by the way, so you didn't.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he didn't say luthen luthen, kleia and then vix.
Speaker 2:That's like the order of who I resonate with the most um, but I think I say luthen because we get to hear more of his speeches around, like the themes of sacrifice and what he had to give up on for um, the rebellion and I identify with some of his like, his tactics or his strategic mind has to do with like predicting and knowing your opponent, and I think that that's the the writing on the character building and not just like character building but really understanding this character. I was just so drawn to Luthan's ability to imagine what it's like to be in the opponent or the enemy's perspective and I think that that's something that we need in movement. That often gets, I guess, like often gets missed because we go straight away to tactic, we figure out what kind of action that we need to do without actually identifying our target. And what I loved about Luthan is that he thinks first about the opponent. The organizing term here is power structure analysis, where you create like a my, like a power map, or you identify like a primary and secondary target. And what is it about this primary target? What are the businesses that they have, what are the stakes, what is their Achilles heel and sometimes, even though it feels gross, you got to like imagine what it's like to be your opponent, even though they're politically dirty, and you just see a lot of their investments and a lot of what matters to them, the people that they're afraid of, the people who matter to them. That's how Luthan's mind worked.
Speaker 2:He knew what he was up against and I think that that's something that what I noticed a lot of organizers are trying to avoid imagining what it's like to be in the opponent's shoes, but that's really important in movement work, especially if we're trying to come up with tactics, objectives and strategy is to know who we are targeting to create the change that we want or to disrupt the problem that we notice, which can be a political leader often is a political leader, but that's what I appreciated about Luthan.
Speaker 2:And then with Clea, honestly, I have these two worlds, david, where I'm like this therapist who's like warm, and I'm trying to be loving and affectionate and listening.
Speaker 2:But when I put my organizer hat on, I not that I not that I don't have empathy, but for the most part I especially when the stakes are high, like I noticed that I tend to be like let's just get the job done, because we want to get home so that we can move on to the next objective.
Speaker 2:And I just really dig those scenes where she was working on comms, that console, that, that console, um, there's this vintage looking console where she was transmitting what I say cryptic messages to, um, some members or groups of the the building rebellion, and that was really important to, to, to the foundations and that laid the groundwork for, for the rebellion is just, is her transmitting all these messages to make sure that how do I say it? To make sure that people are safe, to make sure that some of their objectives and goals are met, and it feels very, it feels like a very small device and yet again, like laid the groundwork to, to forming this, this alliances that they have. So that's, that's what I love about. I was always so mesmerized by the way that they worked with bix.
Speaker 1:My heart softens whenever I remember her and all that she had to go through so bix is um actually the first person who luthen contacts um on ferix right when he's trying to get an imperial star path unit that's going to help him navigate the the world, uh, without being detected.
Speaker 1:Um cassian finds out about that um and her lover at the time actually betrays them both and then Bix is tortured for that to give up information about Cassian, specifically by members of the ISB, including Dedra and a scientist who she later gets her revenge on.
Speaker 1:In season two we see her recovering from all of that, both living as a refugee on the planet, whose name I'm forgetting, both as somebody who is victimized as a refugee in that precarious state where an equivalent of ice, a stormtrooper or an imperial commander tries to rape her and she resists and saves her own life. But then she has to heal through that trauma and uses substances to try to heal, ends up getting revenge as a way to heal and then decides that I cannot stay in this resistance in a good way for myself and for the rebellion in relationship to Cassian right, Because there's too much emotional attachment and it's preventing him from doing the thing that he needs to do and I don't feel safe and or valued in this relationship moving forward. I don't know if you would characterize any of that differently, but what parts of that did you relate to Gosh?
Speaker 2:I think and this is not just Bix, but this is also Cassian, and maybe especially Cassian where our energy will dampen in movement, work, like I know for myself, like there will be seasons, and there have been seasons where I'm just I just want to give up. And I know that I have this certain, I guess, like public persona, where it seems like I am always on the ground organizing, but similar to to Bix, but very different from Cassian because his his own, like his own, like I see him waver a lot. And I think that that is relatable and that is very human, for for a lot of us organizers, activists, human rights defenders that our commitments will waver, especially when we're talking about survival and we're talking about trauma. And I think what I really like about this series is just the reality of what it's like to be human.
Speaker 2:And I think Cassian talked to Luthan about this when Luthan was checking in on Bix. And this was when Bix was taking substances just to cope after a series of traumatic events and he visited Bix to assign, to give her an assignment, but decided not to because it seemed like she was unwell and then Cassian wasn't aware of his visit. So Cassian was angry and confronted Luthen and they started talking about. What did they start talking about? They just. This is when I was starting to hear. This is when we started to hear Cassian. It's not like it's endangered, like it seemed like the relationship that he had with Vix was threatening his commitment to the rebellion.
Speaker 2:And what was stunning in that conversation was when Cassian said we are not droids, we are not machines. A version of that is that we are not machines and that we're human. We're made out of flesh, blood and feelings and fears and flaws and all of that. And he has a point there. And I think that what's relatable to Bix and, I suppose, yes, to Cassian as well is that just because we are committed to this revolution or to the resistance movements that we are committed, that we say we're committed to there, I think it's wise to expect that we will waver or that the energy that we had in the beginning wouldn't be the same. And so what is it like to intuit or discern when we're starting to feel like our fuel is running out? And what is it like to oscillate between resting and resisting, because it's something to expect, rather than expect that we will be progressing, we'll have the same excitement, or again like energy or vitality, as we did in the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so relatable and I think one the public perception and like I think it bears repeating, instagram is not reality right. Like for all of us, for anyone who engages on social media or like things that are put out there, like you're only seeing the thing that somebody decided to show you.
Speaker 1:But, I also think that applies to when you show up in organizing spaces or when I show up in a workshop, or when I show up on a coaching call, right Like I'm showing you what I want to show you in this specific role in this specific time, that doesn't tell you anything about my interrupted sleep overnight and how like sometimes I'm like barely hanging on and thanks to like I'm only here, thanks to like a big, big, big cup of coffee, right, and you know what that means for us as people in movement is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, take time to rest. There are other people who can carry on the work and like. That's been a hard lesson to internalize, and I think something that you and I were talking about before we hit record was my internalization of like you're only as good as like how much service you are to people.
Speaker 1:Right my internalization of like you're only as good as like how much service you are to people, right, and like where that comes from is like in some ways, a healthy place. Like oh yeah, good, be of service, but like, not like like how much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice? Right, if you go back to luthen, luthen was ready to sacrifice it all. Luthen had no relationships outside of no relationships, no focus, no time for anything outside of I am building infrastructure to take down the Galactic Empire and that cost him any kind of human to human relationships. Right, he saw people not as maybe droids, but saw people as tools to use, use. He valued people's lives just as tools to use.
Speaker 1:He was. He was ruthless in making sure that he's preserving um the safety of the movement over the safety of individuals. He killed people who were his allies to make sure that nothing could get traced back, to make sure that they would not be liabilities, and that's not the level of sacrifice that I'm willing to engage in. Like I'm not that single minded about, you know, restorative justice in general or our greater movement towards collective liberation. I know like collective liberation is not that singular as like resisting the galactic empire, but like that's not where I'm at and I feel guilty about that sometimes. But like I also have to acknowledge one that that approach isn't necessarily healthy and that just might not be my role yeah, that part is tough, like with the whole liability and what does sacrifice mean and what if?
Speaker 2:because it and this is where I get stuck on and the next post is coming my next blog post is coming about andor, and that's one of the themes that I'm like still musing on is the theme of sacrifice, like what makes sacrifice sacred, because there are so many versions of it that I heard, or stories before where what makes sacrifice is really choice, but what of the characters who didn't get to choose and yet it was kind of like an enforced sacrifice or an enforced loss.
Speaker 2:And I think that what I love about Andor is that, at least from my perspective, is that it didn't really give me a lot of direct answers, but more questions, because I think things like that like maybe like what Luthan does and people being liability and them disposing these people because they were liabilities there are different versions of that in on the ground work, possibly maybe in different scales than actually like killing people, but there is such a thing as disposability, culture within movement work, and I think that this show, instead of solving or knowing which direction we go, it unveils more of what's already going on, and I think that what's refreshing for me about the show is that, okay, let's actually talk about it, at least have a conversation about it, then ignore it, I suppose. So it was refreshing to me because at least it unveiled something that's potentially and, yeah, very likely happening in movement work, which is disposability culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think within that culture, right like sometimes, like you said, in organizers, it's just what needs to. I can't tend to this relationship right now because this work needs to get done. Like if you value relationships in that way, you would stop and address that for the long term, for the long-term benefit, and like I'm not saying like in any given moment what is the right, uh, what is the right or wrong action? But the, the valuing of people for the sake of being in relationship versus valuing of your cause, um, is something that have to contend with, like loyalty to people versus like loyalty to your cause and standing in integrity, when maybe values misalign, or even if there's just a misunderstanding, like are you going to stop and tend to this or not? It's not a clear answer one way or the other, and sometimes it is like a healthy boundary to like let somebody go or remove somebody from a space, but then where's, if that's the choice, where are you going back to restore or not repair?
Speaker 1:or not, if possible.
Speaker 2:Right, and just because you, just because a person says no to a relationship for now, doesn't mean that that has to be like the static response every time there can be. There's no formula to it, um. And so maybe at this time you could set it aside instead of like severing it and then coming back to it. Or maybe there needs to be a shift to, to the relationship itself, that maybe they're demoted as best friend for now, but to really embrace the dynamism of relationships and that again, there's no formula to how we respond to these circumstances.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, definitely. There was one other piece of your piece that I wanted to make sure that we talked about. Is that like disagreeing within these movement spaces? We see lots of examples of that within the context of the show like really like trivial and like come on y'all, what are we doing? Disagreements to really core decisions about resource allocation?
Speaker 1:and who to trust, um, that plays such a role in organizing spaces, movement spaces, organizing spaces, movement spaces and just general human life, um, what did you pick up on? What did you think was important? Important for those of us who are listening to your words and your voice to think about.
Speaker 2:Can you read part of it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:It's wise to expect that we will be at odds with others during mobilizations, campaigning and even in something as everyday as communication. Disagreement is not a failure of solidarity but a sign of plurality. There's no singular body of the resistance, no monolith of good intention. We are porous, self-contradictory and ever-shifting, and perhaps that's not something to fear but to expect to navigate through and to even honor. So here, I think what's where my mind was at was, besides what I see in Andor, which is like a lot of bickering, a lot of folks who are coming in with different levels of experience, like we see this in Aldani, we see this in the Gorman Front, there was, yeah, there's just a lot of the different generations of Yavin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, oh my was.
Speaker 2:yeah, there's just a lot of different generations of Yavin, yeah, exactly, oh my gosh. Yeah, that one was really stressful. One thing that came to mind was that it did have to do with whether a person has been I guess, like again, like different degrees of experience, different people who are seasoned and who are new to resistance work. And one thing that I did point out in the piece and I want to also reiterate here is that majority of conflict in the movement spaces that I've been in has been because of a lack of resources and a lack of information, and in this case would be a lack of experience, because with Gorman this wasn't like directly said, but I just made the assumption that, just because it's a wealthy planet, they didn't have a lot of experience with fighting for their rights because historically they didn't have to, and so they needed Cassian and eventually they needed Vel and Sinta to assist them. They were even told not to carry guns because they really weren't. This is something that's very new to them.
Speaker 2:So the root of a lot of the conflict that I noticed in Andor and I also see in organizing spaces here is because we don't have a lot of the conflict that I noticed in Andor and I also see in organizing spaces here is because we don't have a lot of. It's hard to build and it's hard to fight when our tools are limited, when our intel is limited, when we are also trying to be, in some cases, underground or hidden from surveillance state surveillance whenever we work together. And again, it's not a failure, but it's because of just how the system deliberately is set up for us to fail and what ends up happening is that maybe we are misdirecting our anger to each other than to the very root of why we're under-resourced in the first place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, without. One of the things that I often think about in organizing spaces specifically is nobody has to be there. Everybody's a volunteer. They show up on their of their own volition for the most part. Right, sometimes people are like dragged into spaces, but for the most part people show up on their own free will with their varying degrees of experience and varying value sets and varying beliefs about the world and like what should happen and nothing is holding us together, except like we want to work on that issue um and sometimes that is not enough because we don't have the mutual understanding of why this is important.
Speaker 1:We don't have the mutual agreeance on how we're going to go about getting there, and judging somebody's commitment to working on the issue that we're going after might not be helpful when you might not have an understanding of what's motivating everybody and where everybody's coming from going forward. And so when there are those moments of conflict due to lack of information or scarcity of resources, it is easy to write people off or lead into disposability, slowing down, to have those conversations about why things are important, why we're doing this and how we are going to navigate differences and conflict when they inevitably come up, because wherever humans are, there is going to be conflict is really important and you know know, in the framing of restorative justice specifically, it's like what are our community agreements right and like?
Speaker 1:it doesn't always have to be like that explicit thing, but sometimes it does right, it really should and let's go back to them to make sure that these agreements are still serving us, to make sure that we're still on the same page. In the way that we're working on this specifically, we're going to disagree about a lot of different things, but when we're working on this in the space, this is the way that we're going to communicate, is the way that we're going to make decisions. Um, when there is disagreement, sometimes we're going to go for consensus.
Speaker 1:Sometimes there are people who have more experience, who just need to make decisions? And we're going to trust that, and you know it is sometimes like just follow orders or do what you're told is the thing that needs to happen, versus like, hey, let's sit down and talk about this um because sometimes we need to act with expediency and like, without that relational capital, without that trust built, like it is hard for somebody who is a volunteer, um, who is of their own free will, to do something that they might not fully agree with.
Speaker 2:Capacity building y'all. It takes a lot of capacity building. This is where I'm in the work that I do right now, which is to be a mental health practitioner for folks on the ground. I think it has to be a full time thing to help facilitate and mediate, especially in times of conflict.
Speaker 2:And I would say too and this is important for me to say, because maybe majority of the folks who are listening are based in the US there's a tendency to think and I don't know if you noticed this, but there's a tendency to think that the solution to this is uniformity or to be on the same page. I mean, it can be the case that we can be in the same enough page, but there's a temptation, I suppose, to resort to sameness or to seek for what's tidy, when really what we're fighting for, what I'm hoping we're fighting for, is multiplicity and, again, porousness is to fight for the capacity and the context to welcome as many selves and choices and rights as possible. And that would probably mean that some of us won't live together or be in close proximity to one another, and I think me being in an archipelagic reality, like having different islands and having the ocean in between us we could come up with a version of that, but without the ocean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that, but you know, you know, without the ocean, yeah, I think about in star wars, right there is a singular galactic empire that everyone is organizing and fighting like in a military framework, against and like.
Speaker 1:Our world is not that neat and tidy, right? We're not trying to blow up the death star, we're not trying to like stop emperor palpatine. As much as like we can go back to 15-whatever-it-was and say like, yeah, we should have like gone and killed King Philip of Spain right in the context of the Philippines, but that that's not the reality that we exist in. There are factors of white dominance, manifest destiny, imperialism, colonialism and like all of those other factors like are baked into global, global realities. So, like in the us, like what does that mean to make america quote unquote great again?
Speaker 1:america being being a country built on the land of First Nations people and like built by people kidnapped from Africa. Right, like, what about? That is great at all.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm.
Speaker 1:And so, like there's not just like one reality that like just, it's not like one narrative that we're trying to reclaim, it's all the impacts of those choices from hundreds of years ago that are still harming people um today. Like, like, how do we attack them with our limited resources? Yes, plurality, yes, porousness, but it's not as simple as like blow up the death star.
Speaker 1:There's not really a cohesive vision on the left about the world that we're trying to, a cohesive vision on the left about the world that we're trying to build, and I don't think that the rebel alliance had that either. Right they were just like blow up the death star, stop palpatine, and like the government that they created after all of that collapsed in 30 years and the first order arose, and that was like episode 7, 8, 9 of star wars um and you know that win is enough for the moment, but for us, on the I'll use the colloquial left what is it that we're actually building towards?
Speaker 1:Like? I don't think there's a I'm not even saying like unified goal, but a clear enough goal that people are marching towards, Except like, not whatever's going on right now, not white supremacy, not racism, not capitalism, not imperialism, not land theft, not genocide. Right, we don't have a clear vision of what it is. We're continuing to organize for, as we're actively participating and contributing and in some ways benefiting from, especially in the us um all of the systems of oppression so much to navigate through complicity and targeting.
Speaker 2:Which lane am I? It would be really nice if our only north star were to blow up the death star.
Speaker 1:That would be such a nice trajectory right and like you would think within the context of the the galaxy in star wars, how many people actually know about the death star right?
Speaker 1:not that many not until something happened really tragic happened yeah, yeah, yeah gosh, I think, like my question to you, like my response, that response was an attempt to get you to like to hear thoughts about, yes, porousness, yes, plurality, but towards what exist and like, in some ways I do lean towards anarchy, right. But when we are faced with such an oppressive regime and such oppressive forces that are trying to enforce, um, uniformity and like get rid of everything else like assimilate or die, submit or die um. What is it that we're building towards?
Speaker 2:right. The first thing that actually came to mind was like to consider the eco system, and this might sound like such a corny corny response, but I think about the activist ecosystem. I don't know what end yet. Like what we're aiming for.
Speaker 2:Collective liberation is vague. To welcome as many choices and preferences is quite vague, because who knows what's going to be at odds. But if we're going to lean to nature as the mentor for this, for our direction, then so be it. Like what is it like to? Yeah, to lean to nature, and maybe nature will teach us. Because I feel like we're so far from our essence because of capitalism, because of racism and systemic oppression, that there's an element of forgetting who we are and maybe what we're meant for. And so I feel like, yeah, what is it like to have? And maybe we could look at it as an activist ecosystem. Maybe in this ecosystem there's, instead of like species.
Speaker 2:We've got organizations that lean toward climate action. Others would be social justice and the arts, others would be how to clear medical debt. We need as many people in these many different organizations as possible, and we also. This is going to be a little controversial, but I love that we have activists. But I also think and Andor taught me this maybe we don't need any more activists. Maybe we need more mechanics, more teachers, more babysitters, more people who would cook for folks in the front lines. We need more engineers and strategists and teachers to be able, in this ecosystem, to be able to get us where we want to be. I don't know where we're headed to, but it would be nice to just be like a frog on a pond right now. But yeah, to consider the ecosystem, I know that it sounds corny, but at this point it's a helpful teacher.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I really love that Corny or not, right? Cliches are cliches for a reason right, and I think remembering our relationship to the world around us, not just our human relatives, is really important. What does that look like for you?
Speaker 2:Symbiosis, like with capacity building. I think about the Weddell seal, and I learned this from Dr Alexis Pauline Gumbs in the book Undrowned.
Speaker 2:She talks about how she's what's called like a marine mammal apprentice and that marine mammals are her teachers and the huero seal doesn't know, like the baby huero seal doesn't know their capacity to breathe or to hold their breath underwater, until mama seal drags them down and really stretches their lung capacity and if not for tough love and if not for some struggle and trust in one's body, then that's when baby Guerocele will know their capacity and that they have what it takes to stay underwater for an X amount of time. So stuff like that. Like I think about the river dolphin who doesn't see, like their vision isn't as great in the river because of how strong the streams can be compared to like the ocean river, because of how strong the streams can be compared to like the ocean. And what they taught to me is that what are other ways of seeing, like, if I can't count on my vision, like the traditional way of seeing, what are other ways of seeing which can be through intuition, through touch, by what I hear? What is it like to listen in multidimensional ways and that can be incorporated in organizing as well?
Speaker 2:I think that that's what I was talking about about Luthan earlier. Like what are ways of listening? What are we not hearing and what are we actually hearing? What is false information and what isn't? How do we know that? There's a a mole in our group, that kind of question?
Speaker 2:Um, even Deidre, like, even though she can drive me nuts, she's actually pretty brilliant because she does something that's similar to Luther and she knew how to, uh, step into the shoes of her opponent because she knew how to listen, um, so so that's. Those are kind of like my marine mammal mentors and I think it's really like, at least for me, when the struggle, when it gets really tough and on the ground work. There's also something about just remembering the earth, um, and I know that I'm very complicit in damaging the earth at the same time, but there's also something about remembering the water and the beyond human kin. That gives comfort and gives me, like, a deeper breath, a deeper breath, and maybe that's enough for the day as well, to keep saying yes to keep saying yes to this work, yeah, yeah, for sure, and, and sometimes that's just enough to be able to say yes tomorrow or like yes, like right now, yeah, and I think vision is good, long-term vision is good, and sometimes the next step is the most important thing in any given moment.
Speaker 1:Um, what I'm conscious of is it's one in the morning, where you are, and folks, this is the brilliance that's pouring out of games at one in the morning. Imagine, um, what else could pour out of games in other times where they're not so exhausted. Thank you for accommodating of this, uh, the time difference and my capacity as a parent of young kids i'm'm curious, with that in mind, what you want to leave people with today.
Speaker 2:Watch Andor, but please watch it in different ways than subscribing to Disney+. And if you'd like to reach out to me and tell me your thoughts, I welcome them. I love having conversations about this and I loved having conversations with you, david, about this. I hope that we I want to echo what Nimick said that he didn't say this precisely, but he said something along the lines of authoritarian, imperial power is brittle, and the way that I view that is that we often think about hierarchy or power as like a triangle, like we are.
Speaker 2:Some of us are at the bottom, some of us are in the middle of that triangle. But what if we think about power and Dan Hunter talks about this like what if we flip it and think about power instead of like a triangle, we think about an upside down triangle where the foundation is delicate. The only reason why those in power is like held together is because there's like these, these pillars of power that hold them up. And can we imagine power like that? What is it like to to topple and to tip that triangle? So, in times of hopelessness, think about that upside down triangle and I hope you can also access natural beauty and beyond human kin as our mentors, as we continue to say yes.
Speaker 1:Gonna drop the mic on that. Links to connect with Gabe's are in the description of wherever you're reading this. Are there any other ways people can support you in the ways that you want to be supported?
Speaker 2:Usually, I would put up some fundraisers to sustain our psychosocial support networks. In the global south. A lot of human rights defenders, organizers and climate activists need psychosocial support, and some of us are providing that for free, and these fundraisers are helpful to sustain our work in continuing to provide mental health support to those who are on the ground. So stay tuned. I usually announce them on my social media, so I hope you could support us there.
Speaker 1:Or also just Venmo games.
Speaker 2:Or that too.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, your writing and your openness to connection. This isn't the last conversation that you and I are going to have. Whether or not the broadcast for everyone else remains to be seen, but to those listening, thank you so much for being here for this episode of the Empire Day podcast. Until next time, take care and be safe and build the world that we want to see.
