Join Jesse Hirsh as he engages in a fascinating conversation with David Fingrut, delving into the vibrant history of the media collective and its impact on Toronto's cultural landscape in the 1990s. They explore how this unique social network fostered collaboration among diverse individuals, bridging various political ideologies while promoting creative projects that challenged mainstream narratives. Fingrut shares insights on the collective's ethos, encapsulated in the slogan "don't get caught," highlighting the interplay between activism, media, and public space. The discussion also touches on the evolution of grassroots movements, drawing parallels to contemporary events like Reclaim the Streets, which sought to reclaim urban spaces through creative protest. As they navigate these themes, Hirsh and Fingrut reflect on the ongoing relevance of these movements in today's socio-political climate, emphasizing the importance of community organizing and the fight for justice.

Engaging in a rich conversation about the evolution of media and community activism, Jesse Hirsh and David Fingrut reflect on the legacy of the Media Collective, a group that flourished in Toronto during the late 1990s. Fingrut describes the Media Collective as a vibrant social network that convened in person to collaborate on creative projects, often infused with political undertones. The conversation reveals how the collective fostered a sense of community among diverse individuals who were passionate about media-making and social change, utilizing discussions and monthly meetings to share ideas and launch various initiatives. Hirsh emphasizes the cultural significance of the collective during a period marked by the rise of the internet and alternative media, suggesting that it represented a crucial turning point in how communities engaged with media production.

Delving deeper into the socio-political context of their experiences, the hosts discuss how the Media Collective intersected with movements like Reclaim the Streets, which sought to reclaim public space through creative protests. Fingrut recalls the playful yet poignant tactics employed, such as street theater and spontaneous gatherings, which contrasted sharply with conventional forms of activism. The dialogue highlights the necessity of physical presence and community organizing, especially when juxtaposed against the backdrop of today's digital landscape, where online activism often overshadows physical mobilization. As they navigate through the significance of these grassroots movements, both Hirsh and Fingrut underscore a collective yearning for a return to tangible, community-driven activism in the face of modern challenges.

The episode culminates with a discussion on the future of activism and the role of media in shaping public discourse. The two ponder the implications of the current political climate, particularly as it relates to the rise of authoritarianism and the erosion of public spaces. They reflect on the lessons learned from the Media Collective and how those principles can inform contemporary movements seeking to reclaim agency in a world increasingly dominated by corporate interests. Hirsh and Fingrut's dialogue serves as a poignant reminder of the power of collective action, the importance of community, and the ongoing struggle for a more just and equitable society, urging listeners to reconsider their roles within these narratives of resistance and resilience.

Foreign.

Hi, my name is Jesse Hirsch.

Welcome to Metabuse, recorded live in front of an automated audience.

Today, I'm.

I always like to say a privilege, but today I'm really happy that David Fingrew is joining me to talk about the history of the media collective, as well as a whole bunch of other subjects.

And Dave, I.

I suspect.

Am I pronouncing your last name correctly?

I feel like there's.

There's more than one way to get it, and different people in my family say it in different ways, but you got it.

Yeah.

Right on, right on.

Yeah, it's like fingertoot.

Or fingert.

Or fingert.

Depends on, I guess, one's accent, right?

Yeah, but it's anglicized.

It's like.

It's a.

It's a German name.

Meaning.

Well, do you want the whole history or should I.

We'll talk about that.

No, no, we'll see if we get back to it.

Because, you know, one of the things I always like to start with here is the news, because, of course, Meta Views puts out a newsletter every day.

And today's issue is called All Bets Are Off.

And, you know, one of the themes we've been getting into lately is what we call the poly crisis, which is, you know, the intersection of fascism and Covid and climate change and, you know.

Wealth concentration, economy, environmental crisis, all of those things, how they affect each other.

Right, exactly.

Exactly.

And so, you know, the kind of moral of All Bets Are off is you can't make predictions anymore.

The rules no longer seem to apply.

And part of this gets into the news industry itself that I think, obviously you and I have rejected the mainstream news a long time ago, but I find it's even difficult to keep track of what's happening in the news.

For example, two episodes ago.

And I'll use this as a form of correction.

I had a guest on and I said the news was TikTok is currently having a hearing before the US Supreme Court to see if they'll be banned.

And he then insisted adamantly that.

That it had already happened and TikTok had been banned and it was going to be sold to Kevin O'Leary.

And so this is me stating a correction after the fact that, no, that didn't happen.

I don't think that.

No, no.

I even put on the YouTube video a little flashing going, nope, nope, that didn't happen.

At least it hasn't formally happened, especially, far as any of us know, not yet.

I think we would have known about it if that happened.

Yeah, correct.

And The Chinese government has been pretty adamant that they are not going to allow the sale, that TikTok will just shut down.

Now interestingly enough, still on the news topic today, the number one trending app in the United States is a Chinese social media app called RedNote.

Because all the TikTok users, as a kind of fuck you to the US government are installing this Chinese TikTok clone, not, not owned by TikTok.

Doyen is the Chinese version of TikTok.

So it's not that.

And I signed up for it today too.

And it doesn't even have an English interface Right.

Like it is.

It's a very obscure, you know, Chinese centric social media platform.

But its most trending topic today is American refugees because it's all the Americans using the app talking about TikTok being shut down.

So it's kind of fascinating.

Now Dave, in our news segment I always ask our guests, is there any news that you want to share with people or that you've been following that you think our listeners and viewers should know about?

Well, I mean the terror gram thing is pretty new.

Like that was just a couple hours ago.

I just saw it before leaving work to come here and do this interview.

But this is a big deal.

The US has declared the Telegram Channel on, on Telegram to be a terrorist entity.

And they've listed three individuals, not the Americans who are active in Telegram, but two.

Two folks in Europe and I think one in Turkey if I remember correctly.

I don't remember their names, but that's a big deal because the, you know, the US laws around terrorism are somewhat, shall we say, conservative.

They are restrictive.

But the, you know, the, the Telegram Channel has been used for actual crimes, like people have been killed based on the discussion on Telegram.

And of course, what's his name?

Pavel something or other from Telegram has been, you know, under some heat recently, so.

Well, he was arrested in France.

Yes.

And he's still.

His legal troubles have not been resolved.

Yeah, so this is a subsect, I guess you could say the more extreme end of the radical right within Telegram.

So you know, all, everything from, I don't know, trucker protests over to terrorist bombings and assassinations are organized on that platform.

I also realized a regional business person is a big Telegram fan.

So.

Yeah, I just discovered that while, I think last time we talked I was skating around the local ice rink and I noticed that he has a little, you know, those little things in the ad that promote which social media you're using.

So.

Yeah, but a lot of people use it and, well, it's big with the crypto set.

Yeah.

So anyone who has dabbled or been curious about crypto has definitely used Telegram or tried.

Yeah, that's.

I don't know, something that came up lately.

We'll see what the ramifications of that will be.

I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I think Telegram kind of flies below the radar for a lot of North Americans.

Yeah.

Certainly very popular in Europe, especially Eastern Europe, but all around the world.

I was on it for a while, but the amount of crypto spam that I kept receiving was quite obscene.

So I ended up, in fact, one of my Internet provider, one of the guys who runs my Internet provider, uses Telegram as part of their kind of tech support and their tech team because of crypto.

Like it ties back to some of the guys being crypto aficionados, but.

Thanks, Dave.

I thought that was an excellent bit of news.

Sorry, you want to add one last little bit on that?

Well, they, they really sell the platform as being censorship free and, you know, no moderation.

So, you know, that that's an issue that's been in the news as well with all the other platforms like Facebook, for example, like they're going back on some of their previous moderation policies, moving the staff out of California into Texas so that they can, I guess, get a little more cozy with the incoming government.

To be clear, though, they're not moving the staff, they're firing the California staff and hiring Texans of the belief somehow diluted, that Texans would be more neutral, fair, certainly less woke.

I think if the desire in, in the right wing language.

But, but I think you're being generous.

I, My, my take on that is Facebook is abandoning moderation.

Oh, yeah.

And, and it'll largely be algorithmic and, and there won't be any human nuance to it.

Right.

Yeah.

And I suppose there are progressive pockets within, you know, Austin and other parts of Texas.

I don't want to paint the whole state with the same brush.

But yeah, they're essentially getting rid of moderation.

So, you know, good time to drop any of your metaproducts.

Not meta views, but meta products.

Instagram and WhatsApp and Oculus and so forth.

Or at least if you're using them, don't be surprised if the moderation disappears essentially in the, in the next little.

While or becomes hostile.

Right.

Because that's the nature of algorithmic moderation is.

Right.

You know, we've, it's certainly been well documented that it's very anti leftist, that it's very, you Know, in its own way, kind of misogynist and xenophobic now, you know, it's interesting you, you sort of mentioned that juxtaposition between meta views and meta, because I did sort of discuss in, in my episode a few ago that I.

It embarrasses me.

It still kind of embarrasses me, you know, to be associated with them.

But I, I think at the same time, there's a need for us to reclaim the meta, right?

To, you know, get the notion of, Of a meta narrative, of a meta view, of a.

Even a metaverse in the original Neal Stevenson conception, you know, away from, from what has been a trap and a general cesspool.

Although it's interesting here in Canada, news, as we would know it, is still still not available on any meta product.

They still literally ban any Canadian news outlet.

Yeah, it's, it's unfortunate that some news sites are still affiliated with them or still use it to plug their content.

I can see a lot of people removing them from their, you know, magazine ads and billboards.

The little Facebook endorsement could become, you know, a scarlet letter in a.

In a few months.

Something that people wanted to have for credibility.

Like, look, I'm a legit business, I'm on Facebook.

But soon it'll be something they'll be stickering over, I think.

Well, we'll see that.

It's funny you say that because on the inverse, you know, when I, I sort of look at people and I see that they're on Twitter and if I see that they're paying Twitter for a blue check.

Yeah, yeah, to me, strike against them.

Yeah, it's a distrust, right?

It's like, okay, you know, there's exceptions to that rule in terms of researchers who are having to pay that money to get access to follow the far right or to get access to investigate crypto scams.

But again, these are interesting, the signs and symbols.

Now, in our second segment where we called wtf, what's the future?

We'd like to ask our guests, you know, what's something about the future that you've got an eye on, whether, you know, optimistic, critical, scary, you know, again, just as the same of the news segment, what is some aspect that you, Dave, are thinking about in terms of the future that you would like to share with our audience?

Well, just by coincidence, my phone conked out this week.

Like the operating system sort of auto updated.

I have like an ancient Android for a phone or 4e or something.

It's really old.

And, you know, like, I think Android is up to 13 or 14 in terms of the, the OS push.

And so my phone wouldn't take anymore, rather the battery wouldn't take anymore.

And it's gotten me thinking like in the pursuit of replacing my phone, first I considered whether to even bother replacing my phone.

Thinking like, is it possible to do most of what I do in life without a phone?

And might still be the case, but if, if I do, I mean it's kind of unfortunate that you can't just replace, I mean I could replace the battery, but it's still not really practical for me without engineering and tinkering skills to be able to salvage the phone.

You know, it's cheaper or easier to get either a new one or a secondhand one.

But be nice if you could just take out parts.

And I, I know there were companies that were doing that a while back.

I think there was a British company.

Yeah, they weren't even companies, they were more projects.

They were aspiring.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, I think like now that, you know, black BlackBerry's done and the Windows Phone is done and you know, Ubuntu tried to make a phone and I don't know if there's like a, a Linux phone floating around somewhere, but it, Well, I mean technically, like I guess Android is a, is, is a Linux.

Yeah.

Almost all phones are Linux phones and.

There are, to your point, there are phones that adhere or come close to the free and open source principles, but they ain't cheap and they don't have the, you know, functionality that we sort of take for granted in the.

Yeah, It's a project.

IPhones.

If you're willing to tinker and play with it, it's probably a worthy project.

But yeah, know, like I've just been thinking how the, the EU just made a unified cable rule.

Like they, they switched everyone onto USB C.

I think so.

No, no, Mac style cables to reduce all the E waste and it would be nice if that were the case with phones like, I know, I know it's products that are designed to be disposable or they want you to buy a new one every few years.

But it's expensive and it's wasteful and it's unfortunate.

You know, stuff that is more durable in places where you can repair it and replace the parts that go to last longer.

You know, just imagine having a 100 year old phone that works.

Like I, I can imagine that's true for a lot of your agricultural technology.

Well, some of it, not all of it.

But you know, a plow is still a plow if it's sharp and you could, you could have a scythe if you keep it in good shape, or a shovel.

Why not a phone that lasts longer?

That would be kind of cool, I think.

Yeah, I agree.

That would be a utopia.

Well worth fighting.

Yeah.

Now, one of the reasons I really wanted to have you on was when I did that History of Meta Views episode.

You know, Covid certainly has my brain and it's, it's to some extent coming back and thinking, like when I had the Real Health episode last year, I ended up trying to inventory all my memories.

Like, I really tried to go through a lot of life experiences.

So I guess I've reached that old man age where history has become something not just that I want to consume, but that I want to produce.

And, you know, I kind of thought it would be fun to talk about the media collective and, you know, rather than me kind of give any praise or introduction.

How would you describe the media collective?

David Fingroot?

Oh, man.

I feel like we did a lot of discussion about this, like back in the 90s.

Right.

But haven't done so in a few decades.

So it might be dusting off some old cobwebs in the back of my brain, but it was.

And let's give the disclaimer, no matter what, it's revisionist because that's the nature of memory and it's been a long time.

And I will have other media collective members on the podcast, Anna, Carly, for example, have both already expressed interest.

So everyone's got their own.

There'll be multiple voices.

That's good.

Everyone's got their own perspective on it.

And yeah, we embellish memories and we see the past the way we'd like to or feel it ought to have been.

But yeah, it was a group of people, I guess you could say it was a social network.

But in person, before there were electronic social networks as we know them now, we met once a month and discussed ideas, projects.

Often they were technical or creative with a political tinge.

And people would collaborate on things based on things that seemed interesting at the time and kept going for what, two years or so and had a lot of interesting spinoff projects relating to publishing and broadcasting and.

Oh, all sorts of things.

Yeah, it was, it was a fun little window of Toronto in the 90s and had some international spin offs as well, kind of parallel to many other groups.

Do you want to elaborate on what you mean by that kind of little window into Toronto?

Because it was kind of a cultural moment, and that cultural moment was larger than the media collective, certainly.

Yeah.

But we seem to touch upon a lot of it, like in the couple of years that we were active, you know, a lot of people kind of came through our meetings and came through our events that were, I think, right across the political spectrum, kind of representative of some of the weird and wild and interesting stuff happening in Toronto about that time.

And this is where I'm also going to ask you, do you remember the years.

96 to 98, all park?

Okay, great, great.

February 27th was the first gathering at Diablos, which is a.

I don't know if it's still there.

I would assume it's still there.

It's a cafe within University College at U of T.

So sort of ballpark.

Harbord and St.

George intersection.

Yeah, like it was.

Yeah, it was a window in the sense that, like, you know, first of all, there was no 416 or 9.

Well, maybe there was a 905, but there was no 416 or 640 code.

Hardly anyone had a cell phone.

Maybe lawyers, dealers or.

But I guess pagers were more common than cell phones.

They existed in other countries, but most people did not have that.

So.

And dial up, you know, if people had Internet access at home, it was dial up.

Not a lot of people had high speed, but you might get access through a library or some kind of shared resource like a university or college, or if you knew someone who ran an isp, that that was handy as well.

So, yeah, just spreading the word about something like.

Just like if you want to invite a bunch of people over for a potluck or a party, you would call them or you would run into them or you might even make a little flyer.

So there was a sort of more personal edge to getting together, going around and calling people or talking to them in person.

I think we had a line, like sort of a hotline or a phone line that was kind of a side product project.

The electronic music scene in Toronto.

It was pretty common to find out about a party through a line that you would call.

And the people that came out were an interesting mix.

Like, I think it was young, young or youth or student heavy.

And a lot of people with some of the Toronto colleges and universities, what was then Ryerson, what's now Toronto Metropolitan, also ocad, and.

Or then it was oca, now it's ocad, U of T, some York kids, some of the George Brown kids as well.

But not, not everyone was in that student realm.

Like some people were already working or finding out creative ways to survive in Toronto, like without working as much as they had to, you know, work as little as possible.

And it was, it was also an economic time when it was possible to do that in, in Toronto.

Like now I, I mean I, I've moved out of the city for, I think it's been 12, 13 years now.

So I don't, I don't even really know what the going, you know, average is for rent, but it was actually possible to, if you had a bunch of roommates and if you weren't really that needy, if you're, if you're single and weren't too needy in terms of personal space, you could survive for a few hundred dollars a month in Toronto.

But now that's like totally impossible unless you want to live in, under someone's bed or on their couch or, you.

Know, even gonna charge you.

Yeah, quite a bit, probably.

Yeah.

So it was like a more survivable city and I guess wages relative, even if you had a minimum wage job, like it was more easy to survive and so you would do creative things on the side where your, your life was in the boat, the student identity or the job identity.

It was about what you could produce creatively, what kind of works of art or what kind of interesting projects you could come up with.

And collaborating with other people, I think was part of the game as well, like finding people that you think would be interested in sharing your goals or your schemes.

Yeah, it was an interesting project.

And I think to that point it's worth sort of noting that in the late 90s, it was the early part of what became a media revolution, in that, you know, we were making media zines and you know, websites, websites, but you know, all sorts of different forms of media that were not possible 10 years earlier that we had never dreamed were possible.

And it really felt like a kind of media revolution.

But I want you to tie that into the slogan don't get caught.

Like, if on the one hand it's a media revolution, why would the slogan be don't get caught?

Yeah, well, there was an overlapping group called tvac, Toronto Video Activists Collective, which was basically before everyone had a little video camera in their pocket.

They functioned as a sort of documentarian role or interviewing people, sort of like cop watch in, in some respects because often TVAC would record police violence that other people wouldn't catch and that would be used as, as evidence to get activists off or to get people off if they're injured or beaten by the police.

That, that kind of overlapped with the group and you know, something like that would be kind of superfluous now in a way because everyone is their own little video activist if, if they film police brutality or they witness something else.

The don't get caught part as well was, I guess there's an anonymity function to a lot of the activities that people did.

There were some circles that would do things that maybe would be borderline crossing the line over property rights.

I guess not intellectual property rights.

Spell it out.

Well, I mean, if, for example, if you're feeding people food, there.

There was an overlap with a Food Not Bombs group in Toronto.

There's a collective that kind of came and went.

You know, that, that is one example.

Where, although Food Not Bombs in Toronto is now active again.

Oh, okay.

Came and went, came and went, came and went.

But again, for our listeners, take a moment to explain what Food Not Bombs was.

Is.

Yeah.

And you know, kind of how that ties into this, this notion of don't get caught.

Well, okay, you have repurposing food.

Lots of different charities do that and finding people that are either house houseless or street involved or maybe between houses or homes that.

Or just precarious and hungry.

Yeah.

Many students as well in that category and finding, I guess, networks between the businesses that were throwing out a surplus of food.

And a lot of the people that were involved in this were dumpstering themselves coming out of the punk scene or were figuring out ways to repurpose things from their own workplaces if they worked at a grocery store or something like that.

I mean, still exists.

There's something like that in my community where the local grocery store does a donation to a food share organization and tries to make sure that, you know, the stuff doesn't go to waste, or if it does go to waste, at least goes to someone's livestock rather than going into the landfill.

But, you know, historically in North America, to do that was actually illegal.

Like it contravenes property rights and health codes and so on.

So you're not really, you're not really supposed to feed people in that, in that way in a public space.

It's, it's considered, I don't know, against too many government principles, I guess.

Although the, the Peterborough one, like, I'm fairly close to Peterborough and that that group has been running for a while and they sometimes have a pretty good relationship with City hall.

Like, I guess it really depends on which community is doing the Food Not Bombs.

Sometimes they have a good relationship.

But yeah, there are also people in the group who are doing more, more traditional, like wheat pasting, posturing over things or doing stickering campaigns, even billboard campaigns where they would alter billboards.

So, you know, again, you get into property rights issues.

So the don't get caught thing is like, I guess to the degree that you're potentially breaking some kind of rule to maintain some degree of anonymity to what you're doing and discussing as well.

And you're being, I think, a little coy when you say property rights issues.

Right.

I think part of what the media collective in its early days was trying to address was the encroachment of public space by private and the privatization of what used to be public industry or what used to be public infrastructure that's accelerated substantively with the private equity.

I don't want to say revolution, power grab, a mass of wealth.

But, you know, what was interesting about the media collective was while it was very much cultural and focused on kind of media and making media, there was a real political undertone in terms of the meetings, had a lot of politics to them, and there was a lot of politics debated.

But because there was representation from really right across the political spectrum, there was certainly nothing near consensus, nor were there any agreements or decisions made.

You know, what kind of problems and, or what kind of opportunities do you, do you think that that afforded?

Well, the group was all about promoting an idea that you could go off in small groups and do it.

And if, if people weren't into your idea, they wouldn't join your small group.

And if it was just you, then it would just be you.

You could, you could pitch something and if no one was into it, then, you know, no luck.

You do it yourself or you don't do it.

But some ideas might be really popular.

You might have 30 or 40 people who would join in your project.

Yeah, I mean, the consensus model, like, you know, lefty groups are famous for endless debates about whether to use consensus or some kind of voting system or a hybrid.

Consensus is used in theater groups and in the feminist movement and in the Quaker faith and indigenous groups, I think, were the ones who passed it on to the Quakers.

So, you know, the go around and the endless discussion about how to decide on deciding and that, you know, there's only so much of that any one person can handle.

But it's, it's an interesting learning process.

Like informally, it happens in families or in groups of roommates or, you know, most of us, if we're in a more traditional bureaucratic organization, a government organization or a corporation or a business, there's none of that.

It's just top down Hierarchical, like, you know, you do what your boss tells you or what your manager tells you, and there's no autonomy, there's no consensus making, you know, but if you've ever done any theater or improv, you've probably been, you know, some.

Somewhere along the lines in a, in a creative group where they use that to determine what the next scene is going to be or who this character is going to be.

So, you know, it's something that a lot of people are familiar with, but some people maybe never experience.

I got to push back on that.

I don't think it's something a lot of people are familiar with.

Just like I don't think there's a lot of people who have experience in theater or in improv.

I wish they did.

Certainly if we were in a media collective meeting, there would be a lot of people who are present there.

Yeah, there was a big overlap in that, the Toronto theater scene as well.

Like there were a lot of actors, you know, people from buddies in bad times and people who are like trying to promote their play and people doing guerrilla theater and street theater and also puppetry and mime and all sorts of things.

So, yeah, I mean, that, that was maybe, maybe a bias I had because I had a toe in that world and I knew some of the people in the theater community.

But yeah, obviously like 99% of people know maybe you go to a play once or twice in your life as a student and that's about it.

You could add some more nines to that.

Unfortunately, if that wasn't the case, we wouldn't have the political environment that we currently find ourselves in, I might posit.

Now I, you know, I kind of, I want to get to the demise of the media collective, but before we do so, I kind of want to ask you, to what extent was that experience either formative in a positive sense, offering lessons, maybe in a negative sense of what you would have done differently or what you did do differently moving forward.

And you know, to what extent was the media collective not just a formative moment for yourself, but something we could look back to as a cultural mile marker in terms of, you know, where Toronto was at a certain point or where, you know, this kind of media literacy and DIY or bottom up media and how it's evolved into social media, where now to your point earlier, anyone can, you know, participate in Cop Watch and if they see police violence, whip out their phone and be sure to cover it?

Yeah, well, I mean, can you, you know, even just for a second, it may sound difficult but try to imagine a post social media world, you know, like it's hard to do because we've all been swimming in it for so long.

But if, if there were no electronic social media or maybe it'll be some other form we all have, I don't know, cranial jacks or something like that, it, it would be easier to imagine a physical social network where people meet in person.

And you know, these things exist in faith groups and in community groups already.

There are people that are in a bowling league or whatever and they go out for beer afterwards and there's a certain conviviality to their meetings that allows them to sort of escape the, the 9 to 5 of, of their jobs and maybe some of the family obligations, you know, like the third, third space that's neither the home nor the workplace, but also not a faith group.

So you know, that, that was kind of partially what I think the function of the group was.

So you could replicate that in different ways.

And like there's, there's a group I'm part of now that is a little bit like that, but it, it only meets online and it's like people all over the world doing creative stuff and they, they pitch ideas and it's mostly sort of art, kind of pranky stuff, creative things that don't quite traditional category of art or theater.

And you can choose to collaborate or not.

And it's actually more in a sort of hypothetical sense, like the more effective ideas are the ones that you'll never do.

So it's not about going out and painting a mural.

It's about something weirder and grander than that that sort of verges on the dreamlike.

So you know, anyone could start a group like that.

And I guess the wonders of the Internet allow you to do that, but you have a million pop up ads on the way, so it's easy to get distracted from what your original creative goal was.

Well, and I think there's something to be said about kind of in person community organizing, which given the future we're facing, has some very resilient components.

Now over the course of our discussion, your laptop cover has been inching backwards.

So if you.

Oh, okay.

We were starting to get just the top of your cap there.

Even a little more might probably be helpful.

How's that?

That's good.

All right.

I'm kind of holding my laptop is bent over backwards and I'm holding it over an apple box balanced on my bed.

So yeah, it would be funny to take a picture if someone was in my room.

I'd make a very funny picture holding it, but as long as you can see me, I'm happy.

Well, I was going to say a note to the Chinese State Security.

Please send us the.

That photo of Dave from the light fixture.

We would love to use it as the COVID for this podcast.

Now, you know, when you were talking earlier, I actually tried searching for some examples, some breadcrumb, some proof that the media collective existed, and I could not find it.

Maybe it didn't.

Maybe it didn't exist.

Maybe it's a collective.

It is possible.

It is possible.

We could be hallucinating it as a consequence of long Covid.

Yeah, but.

And also, I do.

I could actually find this material.

I know where some of it is on the web.

It's Google that's broken.

Right.

And that is not, you know, allowing me to find it, you know, very briefly, because I do want to talk about Reclaim the Streets, and more importantly, I want to talk about the inauguration and what's happening here in the present.

What's your take on the media collective's expiry?

And I want to say expiry, because I kind of think it had a necessary duration, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

So I don't want to try to suggest that there was anything premature or unnatural in the way the media collective in that iteration ended.

But what are your thoughts on kind of what happened and why it didn't, let's say, become a corporation or become a nonprofit or become all the other things?

Like, if I look back on our shared history, there have been a lot of people like that kid, Craig Kielberger, who.

They turn their initiative into a huge institution that sustains them for the rest of their lives.

And there were people in the media collective who kind of did that on a small scale, won't name them.

But what's your thoughts on why the media collective had the lifespan that it did?

Yeah, it could have gone in that direction.

And I should mention the Craig Kilburger.

What was it called?

Free the Children or Save the Children or whatever that one of the camps is actually not too far from.

Yeah, they're not too far from the town that I live in or the property used to be there.

And I know they controlled.

They had a huge chunk of real estate in downtown Toronto for a while before they sort of imploded.

But, yeah, that's the risk of NGOs.

I mean, nonprofits, charities.

I don't know.

I guess.

Yeah, I guess the group could have gone in that direction.

I certainly considered it for A while.

I mean, like, we all have to make a living somehow, so why not make a living in some kind of creative, friendly group that has an environmentalist bent and a social justice bent and also is about criticizing the media?

Like, if there's a way to do that and, and make a living, great.

But the power dynamics are complicated.

Right.

Because who, who in the group?

If, if we're all essentially volunteers or friends or some combination of friends and acquaintances, how do you decide who gets paid and who's the payee?

Right.

Let's be frank.

There were also mutual enemies in that room too.

Sure.

I mean, to his friends, acquaintances and enemies.

Yeah.

And I don't mean that in any large or embellished sense, but there are conflicts.

Yeah.

Differences of opinion, like ideologically, creatively, and so on.

Yeah.

I mean, you, you'll find that in any theater collective or arts collective or an activist group, I'm sure, like slightly different versions of the same ideology.

But yeah, it could have, it could have gone in that direction as an ngo.

And I actually consider that for a while, like, I went to a bunch of meetings for some.

What's it called?

Canadian Environmental Network.

I don't know if that group is still around.

And I think technically we were considered the one branch of the youth wing of the Canadian Environmental Network for a brief period of time, which allowed us to send a couple of representatives to other countries for conferences, which is just kind of a little weird.

Like, just that, that, that played out as such.

No, I think they're for bodies.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, you know, bureaucracy, I guess, is necessary in some organizations.

And I, I wouldn't, I don't know.

I wouldn't want all NGOs to disappear, but certainly there's that.

I don't know.

The SPLC is going through this right now, like the Southern Poverty Law center in the U.S.

you know, their, their fights against people trying to form a union within the group.

They just got rid of their hate watch function now that Trump is getting into office, which I guess we're getting too soon.

So.

Yeah, like they're, it's not as if.

They'D have the resources to keep up with the right amount of the, the tsunami of hate that we will discuss soon, coming up in our inauguration segment.

There's probably still some good people in this.

Oh, I like the, I like the can.

Laughter, Jesse.

I'm working on it.

My timing there.

I end up getting too much into the conversation that I forget.

Yeah.

Little buttons that I should be using.

Yeah.

The soundboard.

Well, yeah, there's I mean, I don't wanna.

In this case, it's actually sound pedals.

Right.

So I actually have to like, oh.

You know, that's handy playing a church organ or a wah pedal on a guitar or something.

You know, speaking of which, when I was Googling, there is now a media collective in Toronto, and it's the Toronto Media Collective, and they have an Instagram account, so I clicked on it, and they're a street team for a church.

Oh, okay.

Well, so they, you know, lucky for.

Them, we didn't copyright the name.

Wow.

By all means.

I mean, if they're helping homeless people by giving.

I don't.

Food or place, but.

Or are they just.

They're just trying to convert them to whatever?

Neither.

I see this.

It's so funny to talk to you, Dave, because you are.

So all of your assumptions is that we are living in a world of, you know, revolutionaries who are trying to do the best.

No, no, it's street team.

As if.

I don't even think they're interested in homeless people.

I think they're interested in, like, Torontonians who they can convert to their.

Okay, that's very different.

Yeah.

Rather than people who are, you know, know, without a home in Toronto, which is a growing number of people.

I.

Speaking of that, though, let's talk about Reclaim the Streets.

Okay.

Because, you know, the media collective to your earlier point, involved a lot of overlap with a lot of communities, and there were a lot of different groups that were kind of either active in the community, in the media collective, or adjacent to the media collective.

You know, one was Dow Ca, which I was involved with, which was kind of an Internet group.

And, you know, I'm sure I'll do a future episode or few on that.

But Reclaim the Streets was another.

And it was one that I think kind of inherited a lot of the enthusiasm, certainly some of the creative agit prop tactics, and staged some rather interesting events in Toronto.

Even though Reclaim the Streets as a kind of moniker or movement originated in the uk.

But the Toronto Reclaimed the Streets was kind of its own manifestation.

Right.

Its own kind of happening.

Do you want to describe that and kind of allow our listeners and viewers to sort of imagine what Reclaim the Streets Toronto was like.

And I say this partly because my dad still has one of Jason's posters hanging up in his living room.

And every time I walk by it, I sort of think of, you know, maybe.

I know.

I know.

The poster with the woman.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, Jason, he was a big situationist guy.

Deboer.

I Guess that was a major influence for him.

So a lot of his art at that time had that.

Had that slant to it.

Yeah, well, I guess the, the contemporary, more contemporary word would be flash mob combined with critical mass.

So critical mass is the bike.

Large cities in North America and around the world have these large bike rides to advocate for cycling, broadly speaking, and having, you know, maybe having bike lanes or cycling safety, the ability to cycle without getting killed.

So there's the critical mass angle.

And then flash mob is like a large spontaneous gathering of people doing creative fun stuff.

So I don't think anyone really in Toronto had done a flash mob at the time.

Maybe in San Francisco or other parts of the world.

You know, there's long history of guerrilla theater and street theater and different places.

But 90, what was it?

98, I guess was the first Reclaim the Streets in Toronto.

Oh no, no, no.

96.

Yeah, there was I think three of them about two years apart roughly.

And the 96 one I think was considered like a global event.

So there were events in maybe 30 or 40 different cities in the world.

They had some affiliation to a group called the pga, the People's Global Action, which was, guess you could say, affiliated with the anti corporate globalization movement.

If you, if you think back to WTO protests, that kind of late 90s phenomena, pre 911 stuff.

So that was a coalition of groups.

I guess the Canadian representative of that was the Postal Workers Union Cup W.

And they had indigenous people.

There were definitely Zapatista influenced people, EZLN influenced people, some environmentalists.

And they would have these gatherings every, every so often, I think once a year in different parts of the world, basically trying to envision a utopian alternative to corporate globalization.

So I guess, you know, interpret that as you will very interesting mix of utopian ideas.

And the Reclaim the Streets was in a way to showcase that.

But I think that was probably more of a factor in England than some of the other cities.

I think the Toronto one was a little more heavy on the creative spontaneity.

Street theater, stilt walking and bike riding in the streets.

So yeah, that was what it was like.

Two different groups that converged on an intersection at around Bloor and Brunswick, which is now what the.

It's no longer the Brunswick House and it's no longer the same intersection that it was in the mid-90s, but still kind of a lot of cafe going student types would hang out there.

So yeah, that was the 1 in 96 and then it was replicated in 98, more or less, same idea, different location.

And then the.

This intersection.

One fellow, the late Tucker Gomberg, who was an environmental activist, former Edmonton councillor, brought a truckload of sod and basically laid down a whole park land full of sod at the intersection of like York and King in between all those different Bay street buildings.

So, yeah, it was, you know, kind of ridiculous, fun, good times.

I don't think anyone was killed or injured.

So, you know, call it a protest or call it a party or party for the right to fight or something like that.

And you sort of mentioned that one of the feeders, for lack of a word, or one of the roots of Reclaim the Streets was critical mass.

And Toronto, critical mass compared to other cities was not as militant or radical.

It was very much Canadian.

Can't we all get along?

We need to role model ourselves as cyclists.

There were a few critical mass rides in our era which were.

Did have a lot of arrests and disobedience and kind of militancy, but they kind of scared people back into the.

No, no, no.

We should stop at red lights and, you know, we shouldn't get tickets.

And so I think that very much influenced the.

The spirit of Reclaim the Streets Toronto.

Yeah.

Didn't want to devolve into a riot with police.

Yeah, I think one of the Australia ones were using pile drivers to rip up the tarmac.

Like the sort of beneath the paving stones, the beach kind of situationist idea.

Like the Toronto one was very polite in comparison.

There was like giant ribbons that came out.

A woman that I knew, who I don't think is around anymore, but was living in Toronto, had been sort of storing different lengths of colored cloth and, you know, the intersection where the first one started or stopped, the intersection where the first one stopped was covered in this giant multicolored web.

Be like, I don't know, the giant spider from that big sculpture in front of the gallery in Ottawa, the National Gallery.

Imagine that thing just spitting out web everywhere throughout downtown Ottawa.

Or in this case, it was Toronto.

So, yeah, it was fun times, you know, and everyone involved had a different interest or focus.

Like for some it was the environmental aspect or the cycling.

For some it was like solidarity with the Zapatistas.

But I think most people who would across it, we're like, what's this random, like, who are you?

Who are you?

Who organized this what's it for?

Are you selling us something like you're trying to convert us to some kind of faith?

But it just kind of disappeared afterwards like a flash mob, you know, a bit of Burning man overlap as well.

Like some of the cacophony society, San Francisco people who went on to be involved in Burning man.

There was probably that influence, you know, like a lot of stuff in Toronto kind of trickles down from California slowly.

So I don't wish to suggest that the Reclaim the Streets was the first time anything like that had ever happened, because lots of people do different street theater activities, but maybe it was the first time that stodgy Toronto had done anything like that in a very long time.

No, no.

I would have to imagine that in the 60s, you know, in Yorkville.

Yeah.

Maybe not as.

Maybe different.

Right.

It would have been more of that moment.

Yeah.

A being or a loving or whatever, or the street theater.

But that's before our time.

Like, that's just stuff.

Stories you hear about.

Right.

Well, and the reason I felt that Reclaim the Streets was a good kind of second segment is it sort of sets up a theme with the media collective being about this creative symbolic attempt to do both, a political intervention, but I think also a reconfiguration of how our media communicates with ourselves, with each other.

And then Reclaim the Streets was an attempt to kind of translate that onto the streets, translate that into the physical realm.

I think on some level, and I'm not sure this was conscious, but I think on some level, Reclaim the Streets was a little bit of a rebellion against the Internet, because it was coming at a time when the Internet was reaching a really peak hype.

The dot com boom was underway, and everyone was, you know, talking about how this was the future.

And, you know, I think it was an attempt to say, no, politics is still in the streets.

It's still, you know, about bodies.

And Reclaim the Streets was an attempt to make it fun, was to say, okay, you know, if you want a revolution, let's dance.

Let's.

Let's have a good time at it.

And so I want to bring that to connect to the inauguration that that's coming up in less than a week, I suppose.

And the extent to which it is both physical in the sense that it's an event in Washington that is sort of meant to draw all those in the power structure of the United States into this kind of ritualistic, symbolic performance.

But at the same time, this incoming president, he is about symbol over substance.

He's, you know, about a kind of propaganda in the sense that, to me, this is kind of fundamental fascism in that power is held in corporations, but you have one leader who acts as a kind of symbol or myth that brings it all together.

And so I say that more as a lead up to the question of is this inauguration different?

Right.

Historically, even Obama's inauguration, which had a lot of emotion, many of these things just seem like empty rituals.

But this feels a little different this time.

I'm curious what your take is and why in particular you wanted to talk about this.

I don't think Trump and Obama will use the same poet laureate, that's for sure.

Yeah, it's gonna be different.

Hold on.

Sorry, I was a little slow there.

I need one of those on a keychain, like, just to, you know, you reach a certain age where your.

Your dad jokes start to get flat responses.

So if I had a little keychain laugh track, that would be really useful.

Yeah.

Well, it's next week, right?

And it's like this big symbolic thing.

I'm a big fan of etymology, and, you know, inauguration contains the word augur, which is the.

The old Roman method of telling the future.

They let some pigeons fly around the room, or they'd cut open an animal and look at its entrails, or they'd look at the, I don't know, the sacred chickens of Apollo.

And based on what they ate or the direction that they pooped or something, that they would foretell the future when it came to decisions about politics and war.

And they were serious about this.

So, you know, an inauguration is a kind of foretelling of.

Of what the next few years are going to be like or maybe the next very, very long time is going to be like.

So whatever.

Whatever happens next week, you know, if there's a response or reaction, if, you know, people are staying at home or if they turn out in protest, if they.

I don't know what.

What they have to say about it will be a bit of a portent for the next few years, I think, just be an interesting moment in time.

It's also like at noon, right?

So that's like, you got this time that's in the middle of the day.

It's between sunrise and sunset.

I guess the high noon is going to be a little after noon.

It'll be like around nine minutes after 12.

So whatever happens around then would be interesting to watch for as a kind of symbol, like a little frozen moment in time.

Like, we.

We had this thing, what, like a week ago or two weeks ago, The.

The Las Vegas incident with the cybertruck, and we had this thing in the summer with Trump getting shot in the ear.

You know, really iconographic moments in history, things that you'll look back on, well, 20 years or 30 years in the future.

You've kind of been, at least for as long as I've known you, you've been a sort of researcher following the far right and kind of, you know, both, I think, on and off.

And lately, you've been really getting into the symbolism that the far right uses to kind of organize and draw cohesion around themselves.

Have you been sort of watching, in terms of their discussion, chatter, activity around the inauguration, both on a symbolic level in terms of the.

The meaning of it, but literally in terms of whether they'll be there on the ground either celebrating or, you know, trying to draw attention to themselves?

Well, I think there's a split on the far right.

I mean, I'm not someone who monitors far right.

Well, literally, in terms of Bannon and Musk, which I think.

Yeah, that's right.

Not tweeting, but posting on Blue sky earlier.

Yeah, the Guardian article about, yeah, Bannon and Musk having a little tiff.

But there's also the.

There's the.

I guess you could say the far right and the extreme right, however you want to categorize it.

People who like Trump and people who dislike Trump, people who think he's gone too far and people who think he hasn't gone far enough, or, no, rather, it's the opposite.

People who would like him to go further and people who think he's, I don't know, rhino or a sellout or he's too beholden to racialized people or to immigrants or something like that.

So, yeah, I mean, it's emboldened people, and it.

It will be interesting to see if he carries through on his promises to release a lot of the January 6th protesters.

Like, there's the.

The head of the Proud Boys, the head of the Oath Keepers.

There's, you know, probably a few QAnon people still in prison.

Lots of people.

There's one fellow hiding out in, well, not so hiding out.

He's up in bc, snowboarding, claims to be, like, an asylum seeker from his activities at January 6th.

So, you know, is Trump going to release all those people and have a new, I don't know, posse of brown shirts or black shirts?

Is that what he's going to do?

Or is he going to just use the militia movement or just use the regular old army?

Like, I guess it's anyone's game to see how it plays out next week or in the, in the coming few months.

You know, I'm not someone who monitors channels and I'm not, I don't claim to be like a prognosticator or fortune teller or anything like that.

So I just hope for the best for everyone.

I hope it's.

I don't know, maybe he will have second thoughts and decide he just wants to retire to Mar a Lago and.

And so does his vp and there'll be.

I don't know.

I'm trying to think of a positive spin on this.

It's hard to think of a good outcome.

Speaking of the vp, he's actually.

And, and this is kind of both paradoxical and typical, he's skipping the inauguration because Ohio State is playing in the National College Football championship that evening.

So he's getting his own private swearing in ceremony in the morning so that he can actually go to the football game.

Interesting.

That is, of course, the most important priority for the vice president of the United.

I didn't know that.

Although it probably makes sense to not have both of them in the same place at the same time.

Right.

Like just a, you know, as a safety or whatever.

I'm sure that's the, that they came up with after the fact.

But no, to your point, this will be an administration where the president plays golf, the vice president goes to football games, and real power lies in the billionaires and the oligarchs who are the backers of this regime to make sure that they get what's theirs.

Yeah.

And we'll see what, what they're going to annex, whether it's Greenland or us or whether it's Panama or, I don't know, the TikTok or whatever is going to be the next step in manifest destiny.

Yeah.

I mean, I'd like to think of a positive spin I could put on this, but I can't.

You know, it's going to be a rough week and a rough couple of months, but I hope people are just sort of planning ahead and just trying to build community and taking care of each other.

And to that point, I think that's where the positive spin is, is that I think, I think that the election was a real kick in the ass, certainly for the center.

But I think the left, I think especially the radical left is kind of recognizing that if now, when, if not now, when.

Right.

Like, I think there's a real mobilization.

I think there's a real desire certainly amongst the general population for radical alternatives, not just, you know, Kind of centrist alternatives.

And, and I think we, we could see that.

And, and that sort of brings us to our shoutouts part of the show.

Because on that point I want to shout out Charlie Angus.

Charlie Angus.

Today was on episode of My Comrade, Toronto Mike and the Toronto Mike Podcast, and Charlie was on for fire.

He was just ripping apart both the incoming US President, but also a number of Canadian politicians.

And I felt he was really setting a tone for what the left needs to be saying and doing and arguing to really ratchet up the fight for working people, the fight for the environment, the fight for humanity as we know it now.

Unfortunately, Charlie is not running for re election.

I think that's in particular why he was speaking so frankly to going back into music.

I think he had a couple of bands before, I believe.

Yes and no, actually.

And he was again to shout out Toronto Mike.

This was his second appearance on Toronto Mike show and in his first one he basically flat out said, no, I'm leaving Ottawa because I want to be political.

Right.

He gave this really phenomenal interview about his kind of radical early days and, you know, his love of direct action and organizing and just feeling that as an MP he couldn't do that.

And the subtext, which I don't think he's going to say now, he may say in the future, a few months from now, is his frustrations with the ndp.

Sure.

And his frustrations with the current leadership and apparatus of the ndp, because they are kind of centrist.

Right.

They're really not taking the kind of position and the kind of stance that we really need.

Yeah, they're so similar to the Liberals, it's ironic that they have bad blood between them.

Like they would be more successful if they merged.

You know, there's not really a whole lot of radicalism in the NDP nowadays.

That's true.

Well, best wishes to Charlie, whatever he ends up doing.

So do you have any shout outs?

Anyone, living or dead, fictional or real, that you would like our audience to know about, to let them know that you're thinking about them with a shout out?

Well, yeah, more dead than living at this point, now that I'm aging.

You know, I had a busy year for funerals, so I won't list people individually, but, you know, to those that came before us, we give our thanks.

That's all I'm going to say for that.

Well, and serendipitously, actually, I just glanced over at my other screen and saw that PJ Lily sent me an email just after we started recording and I haven't heard from her in a very long time.

So yeah, likewise.

Hi bj.

Yeah, perhaps she knew we were indirectly talking about her and her spidey senses caused her to send an email.

I will of course invite her onto the podcast so that she can talk about the media collective and her experiences and memories.

With that, any final words?

Dave, before we conclude.

Thanks for having me on.

It's been nice to connect and congratulations on getting back in the swing of things.

Jesse, good to hear your voice again.

Right on.

Yeah, a few people been saying, you know, welcome back.

And I'm like, well, I'm not back welcome up.

Yeah, yeah, I was down and now I'm back up because we all need some upliftment.

We all need to, you know, figure out what it is we're gonna do to.

You need to get down to get up.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

In fact, Lee Rosevear, whose music we're listening to right now, who is the, I think the one of the greatest living Canadian musicians, certainly the greatest living musician on Prince Edward Island.

This is his songs and he's caught an extensive library and I messaged him to saying, Lee, what do you got that's really bass heavy.

And he goes, oh, let me dig up a few selections for you.

So stay tuned, people, listeners, watchers.

The soundtrack here on Metaviews will be changing rapidly.

Thanks again, Dave.

This has been a phenomenal conversation.

Certainly it's allowed me to remember what it was about the media collective that I thought was so electric.

And that's why I'm excited that we will revisit this again in future guests.

And I may have you back on, Dave, especially as I fear the far right is going to becoming much more visible and much more public over the next several months and maybe even couple of years.

And it'd be good to kind of get your take on that in terms of helping people build up a kind of anti fascist literacy when it comes to understanding who these groups are and sort of what they're doing.

But with that said, you know, anyone who is listening today who would like to be on the show, who would like to share some comments, please get in touch.

Our contact info is up on the screen now.

Or if you're listening to this in a podcast, it's in the notes of the show.

And with that said, we'll say thanks and good night and we'll talk to you soon.