S1E30 - Parks on Disaster Relief

Explicit content warning

06/25/21 • 49 min

Episode Notes

Margaret talks to Parks from Appalachian Medical Solidarity about disaster relief, what kinds of medical interventions are often needed after a disaster, and how to both respond to and prepare for them.

Guest info and links

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

49:54

SPEAKERS Margaret, Parks

Margaret 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. I use she or they pronouns. This week I'm talking to Parks, who is a medical professional who works with Appalachian Medical Solidarity. And when I say this week I mean I recorded this interview at the very beginning of starting this podcast, which was just before the pandemic. I started this podcast in early 2020 when I had no real reason to think that COVID was going to become COVID in the way that it did. So this episode about, you know, medical things and disaster situations didn't really seem like it made a lot of sense. It's not what a lot of people were thinking about when it came to disaster and medical issues throughout all of 2020. But I actually, I still think this information is really important. And there are so many other crises that are happening now and will continue to happen. And so we talk a lot about, well, just what it means to be a responder to disaster, especially from a medical point of view, and I hope you get a lot out of it. I know I did. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of Anarchist Podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Jingle One to two one two, tune in for another episode of MaroonCast. MaroonCast is a down to earth black radical podcast for the people. Our host hip hop anarchist, Sima Lee the RBG, and sex educator and crochet artist, KLC, share their reflections on Maroons, rebellion, womanism, life, culture, community, trap liberation, and everyday ratchet. They deliver fresh commentary with the queer, transgender non conforming, funny, Southern guls, anti imperialist, anti oppression approach, poly add and bullshit. Check out episodes of MaroonCast on Channel Zero Network, Buzzsprout, SoundCloud, Google, Apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, all pleasure.

Margaret So, welcome to the podcast.

Parks Thank you.

Margaret Do you want to introduce yourself with whatever name, pronoun, and affiliations that you would like to be known for for this podcast?

Parks Sure. So my name is Parks, I use he/him pronouns, and I'm affiliated with Appalachian Medical Solidarity.

Margaret Could you maybe start by talking about what Appalachian Medical Solidarity is, like what you all do?

Parks Sure. Appalachian Medical Solidarity is a group that is centered in Asheville and the southern Appalachian area. And we provide disaster medical interventions, particularly after hurricanes and things of that nature. And we're working on other projects around the area, we do a lot of education in the area. For example, we taught a CPR certification class this weekend, and a Naloxone class.

Margaret So one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is that you told me once—you went through the list of how people design die and natural disasters and how it's not what people think it is. And clearly preparing or understanding how natural disasters work is, like, comparable to understanding how larger disasters work and things like that. So I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little bit about disaster and what the actual, like, kind of threat models are?

Parks Sure. So there are several kinds of disasters and natural disasters, as you and your audience are likely aware. One that my group deals with specifically based on our geographic location is hurricanes. In developed countries, or countries with well-built infrastructure such as buildings and roads, deaths from hurricanes tend to come after the event itself. So the hurricane may kill less than 10 people—I'm not, I'm making up numbers there—but a small number of people will be killed by things like wind and falling trees and powerlines coming down and, you know, maybe a tree falling through their house and hitting them, that type of thing. More people die in flooding during the event than anything else. So most people don't die from being hit by a tree or blown away. They die from drowning and f...

Episode Notes

Guest info and links

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

49:54

SPEAKERS Margaret, Parks

Margaret So, welcome to the podcast.

Parks Thank you.

Margaret Do you want to introduce yourself with whatever name, pronoun, and affiliations that you would like to be known for for this podcast?

Parks Sure. So my name is Parks, I use he/him pronouns, and I'm affiliated with Appalachian Medical Solidarity.

Margaret Could you maybe start by talking about what Appalachian Medical Solidarity is, like what you all do?

Previous Episode

S1E29 - Shane Burley on Confronting Fascism during the Apocalypse

Episode Notes

Margaret talks to author and organizer Shane Burley about fascism: what it is, why it comes up during times of crisis, and what we can do about it. They discuss the ways that we organize as anti-authoritarians to confront the ultimate authoritarianism.

Shane Burley is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017). His work has appeared in places such as NBC News, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, Truthout, In These Times, and Protean. He also runs the antifascist neofolk blog A Blaze Ansuz. You can find him on Twitter: @shane_burley1.

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

Transcript

1:16:24

SPEAKERS Shane Burley, Margaret

Margaret 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, I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to author and researcher Shane Burley about, well about fascism, about what it is and why it comes up during times of crisis and what we can do about it and the ways that we organize as antiauthoritarians to confront the ultimate authoritarianism which is, you know, fascism. This podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts, and here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Jingle Speaker 1 Where did you get this?

Jingle Speaker 2 Your friendly neighborhood anarchist.

Jingle Speaker 3 More of an anarchist militant.

Jingle Speaker 4 People involved in social struggles. Everybody else.

Jingle Speaker 5 People have been waiting for some content. The Final Straw. [inaudible] Thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.

Margaret So I'm here today with author and activist Shane Burley. And if you want to introduce yourself with I guess your name, which I already said, and your pronouns, and then I guess a bit of your background and how you come to know a bit about the apocalypse and fascism.

Shane Burley Sure, sure. So Shane Burley, he/him or them, both a fine. I'm based out here in Portland, and recently just wrote a book, a collection of essays sort of tying together fascism, antifascism, and the kind of feeling of the apocalypse. I've been an organizer for all my adult life, labor, mutual aid groups, housing groups particularly, and part of kind of integrated social movements on both coasts, and have definitely seen a certain kind of crisis set in—maybe a longstanding crisis—but when that really came into fruition in 2020. So the feeling of the apocalypse was something I felt like I knew really well. And it's how I became—began to kind of understand the last few years within the narrative of apocalypse, particularly kind of the religious apocalypse that a lot of us were raised with.

Margaret Okay. And that's kind of interesting to me because usually when I think about the apocalypse, and when I—when I talk about it, I actually don't think much or talk much about the religious apocalypse, like—and so that's actually a little bit outside my own purview. And I was wondering if you could expand on that, because I mean, like, I have ideas about how the current world relates to societal collapse in a secular sense. But could you explain more what you mean about religious apocalypse?

Shane Burley You know, I think a piece of it comes to how I kind of understand religion or maybe spiritual practices as a sort of folk tradition for understanding our emotions, our experiences, our relationships, both kind of small, interpersonal, but also like big social systems. And so, you know, the apocalypse is something that's such—one of those ever present—kind of perennial concepts in people's folk traditions, trying to understand themselves in the world. It can be sometimes cyclical, there's many apocalypses and many rebirths, that kind of thing could be one, long standing apocalypse. But I talk about this in my book is that, you know, I had a lot of religious terror growing up in advance of the millennium. And ...

Next Episode

S1E31 - Guy on Heat-related Illness

Episode Notes

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. You can support her and this show on Patreon at patreon.com/margaretkilljoy.

The guest Guy recommended people support the Gray Coast Guildhall on Patreon to support a small town community space: https://www.patreon.com/graycoastguildhall

Transcript

This is an updated transcript, replacing the machine-generated one which was initially posted with the episode.

1:05:45

SPEAKERS Margaret, Guy

Margaret 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 use she or they pronouns. Normally I do this like whole intro thing that I record after the conversation. But this is a special—a special episode that I'm just doing as quickly—as quick turnaround as I can because of what's going on in the Pacific Northwest with unprecedented heat. And I want people to have information as soon as possible. So please forgive audio quality on my end, I'm recording this from the best place I had access to internet, which is right next to one of the busiest intersections in all of the tiny town of Asheville, North Carolina. But anyway, this podcast is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchist podcasts. And normally I put in a jingle here, but I'm not going to. Instead you should just go to Channel Zero Network. I don't even know the website, you just Google it. I mean, come on, who's actually going to type in URL and you can just type things into the search bar. Go check out the Channel Zero Network, there's a ton of shows that might interest you. Okay, so would you like to introduce yourself with your name and your pronouns? And then a bit of your background as relates to heat related illnesses?

Guy Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me on. My name is Guy, I use he and him pronouns. I live up in the Pacific Northwest on the Olympic Peninsula. And my background related to this, I have been a wilderness educator and backpacking guide for many years, especially working down in the Grand Canyon for several years. So a lot of exposure to heat there. And I also instruct wilderness medicine courses. And so I teach and think about bodies and how bodies adapt to stress, particularly heat stress in this context. Yeah, that's me.

Margaret Hurray. I'm so glad that your skillset is about to become very useful away from the Grand Canyon and in the Olympic Peninsula. The rain forest that I believe is not—is it—is it normal for you all to have 109 degree weather? Or is that abnormal?

Guy That is definitely abnormal. Yeah. We sometimes we’ll cross 100 or triple digits over 100 for one or two days in the summer, usually in late July or August. I cannot remember a time when we hit 108 degrees, and certainly not in late June. It is pretty hot.

Margaret Yeah, I've—I'm from the Mid Atlantic and now I live in the south on the east coast. And I've, the only time I've been in—I mean, I've been in triple digits. I don't think it ever got hotter than 103/104 the whole time I was growing up. And only time I've been in 110 degree weather was in Death Valley. So I'm worried about you all. So that's why I'm—I don't, yeah, we're going to talk at a later point with someone that you co teach with about more wilderness first aid. But it seems like wilderness first aid is suddenly might become urban first aid in a way that we're not—I'm not really used to and maybe you're not really used to. I guess to start with, do you want to talk about, like, what are the dangers of heat?

Guy Yeah, so I'll preface this by saying a couple of things. The first is that human—the human body is actually really adaptable and resilient if it has time to adapt to a changing environment. So people can handle really extreme heat if they have time to acclimatized to it. But if we get these big spikes of heat coming in a place where people aren't used to it, we're jumping from the mid-80s, one week to 108 another week, then that becomes a lot more stressful on body. And then add on to that, right, up here in the Pacific Northwest as a culture, as a society, we're not adapted to experience heat. Most people don't have air conditioning. Most people's houses aren't particularly well insulated because, in general, it's a fairly temperate climate. So there's just not the—either the time to adapt on a physiological level or to adapt our environment to really manage and han...