Take it away. Robert Evans, gosh, it could happen here. I did it brilliant. Thank you, Yeah, I love I love that really, thank you. You're Robert Evans. We also have Christopher Long, Garrison Davis, and we have Andrew here with us. We'll be leading this episode. Hi Andrew, Hello, Hello everyone. Oh, it is the with in Portland. It is cold. Everywhere else in the continental the United States it is a boiling hell storm. Actually today today it's only eighty four. But yeah, we we have three days where it's merely in the eighties and then it goes back to being like seven again. It's very very excited temperature measurements. But Angeles, it's lovely today. We're lovely for the next couple of days, and then we'll be burning sixty six is It's going to be perfect here forever. Climate change is over in northern Oregon. I have declared it. Well have you declared it? It must be true exactly. So today, once you have a bit of a discussion and open discussion about my favorite kind of discourse, and that is dead discourse. I wanted to talk about discussion could and code that people have been having a couple of weeks ago about restaurants restaurant discourse, whole idea that people who had about five minutes ago and got super are lap over and sparked to a bunch of like drama because that's what social media and centervices. But I figured, you know, we could have a nice round table discussion here about code and code restaurant abolition and share our thoughts on the idea is presented in the zine that in spired it for those those who read it, Abolish Restaurants by pro Lain Food. But first of all, I wanted to share a bit about my experience in the food industry. It was quite brief, and by brief, I mean like four days I started working at this this winery slash cafe that was um owned and run by this trust fund baby, and it was very clear that she had failed up for most of her life. UM. It was very disorganized and very stressful experience. I quit like a few days after I got it because instead of you know, making coffees and preparing wines and stuff, I got a job pushing paper in an office, which is only marginally better. And I mean everyone want to speak over like food serce people or anything because like my experience is very limited. But in my own limited experience, it sucked, I mean my blood too into water trying to keep up with everything. It was one of those kind of under the table jobs, so you don't have a contract or a specific job description. It's just like you're doing everything. So you're sorting and taking off recycling, you're organized and start, you're making coffee, bus and tables and cashion products. You're handling accounting for some reason, like lady, I just got here, but I'm already doing accounting, um, and so on and so forth. I didn't have an official break either, and I wasn't allowed to sit at all. Um. I mean, my boss said that I could stop for lunch what I needed to, But because of this these constant responsibility she was piling onto me, I bus, we never got a chance to take a breather. The one time I did take a lunch break, she rushed me out to the lunch break because I was taken too long, and she was busy taking care of her other real estate and her only consistent customers with her friends. Yet somehow, you know, she kept the doors open and the lights on because you know, trust fund baby, but yeah, to reiterate, it was a very sucky experience. Yeah, I worked at a restaurant for starting when I was in high school, I was fifteen and a half, for three or four years part of college. It made me learn a lot about how awful people are. But it was like, you did learn how to work in a team and things like that. Helpful skills there, but management was terrible. Ah, not exactly easy work, not exactly fun work. Um. Yeah, it was like, I honestly feel like a lot of people should have to do some type of job like that so that they learn, you know, how how to treat people who work in that in that kind of position. Um, because mostly my memories of it is terrible, horrible customers who just treated people like scum. Yeah, but I needed the job, so yeah. Yeah, My only experience in food service was working at a sonic not for a crazy long time, but it was terrible, um, and it left me with an abiding like respect for people who have to do that. And uh, you know, we can talk, we'll talk more about the restaurant thing, but I certainly don't think fast food restaurants are a thing that exists in my ideal future because I don't know how you could possibly operate those without a tremendous amount of human suffering and wasted potential, because they're just they're bad things. Now that said, any utopian society will have a way to acquire Popeyes, but perhaps not at like midnight in every city of the country. Whenever you wanted my utopian society as a wool in which KFC has been abolished and everything else too exist, Yes, yes, well again this is it could happen here sponsored by I'm perfectly okay with imperialism, but like I need someone. Yeah, and what kind of like can I ask, like, what kind of restaurant? I know? Robert said his fast food? Mine was very like casual food. What what kind of restaurant did you work at? Right? It wasn't It was like a winery slash caffee and it also served food. It was like a touched to a hotel. Oh yeah, and the hotel part of it probably made it. Yeah, appearance in the hotel and yeah, all right, yeah, I'm sorry, Yeah, kurs, scare either of you rather work in the food fruit food service industry at all? Yeah. I worked at a bakery for like a year and a half mostly back of the house. Um. But I mean, would you know, would end up washing washing dishes and taking out recycling and all that kind of stuff. But most of my work was designing recipes because I was more on like the food science angle. I don't know, yeah, I mean it's I have a complicated uh feelings on like cafes specifically, I mean I I love anarchist cafes and like the idea of Chris Cafe. I would love to love to like have one at some point. It's like operated by the workers WoT quote owned by the workers, um, with a shooting range out back. But obviously there's guns and buns. We call it guns and buns. You can get a Croissan and you can shoot funded by cafe by all of me inside. You're right, guns and Buns is a breakfast cafe, gun range, strip club and apparently as long as as long as you fund it, you can have whatever you want. Um, but the people will fund it. Garrison. Obviously, the food service industry has just make it a cooperative that everything sorry, police continue. Yeah, Like the food service industry has a lot of problems. But if if I were if I were able to go into a bakery, like maybe like two or three times a week to just bake food for people and that helps me live the rest of the week. I would totally do that, right, So, like it depends on a lot of factors, but it's like there's ideas around, like an anarchist cafe, work around a cafe that would be like totally chilled to work to like be there a few days of the week making food because I enjoy making food. I enjoy baking, and I like food science. Um. But you know, when you would start we start tying that into labor and exploiting the labor practices and the notion of like having to serve other people, then it gets a little bit more tricky, um, and you know, less less less good. That's yeah, exactly. You know, it was kind of funny about it, Um, I would say, is like kind of last mention of thought, Guada, let me just think for a sect. Well, So, I mean one of the things that I have noticed over the years, because I've had a lot of friends work as bartenders, as waiters and waitresses, there are there's a chunk of people who really like the work. They usually don't like their employer. They often have issues with like their manager or whatever, but like they like their co workers and they enjoy the the act of like doing restaurants stuff. Um I I and I know that. Like, so one of the things that I did recreationally for years is I was good. I would go to these regional burning Man events. And one of the rules there's like everyone pays the same thing to get in. There's no like get there's no like talents, so there's nobody who's like paid to be there as an act, and there's no like exchange of currency lab But there are restaurants. There are people who like bake food and and and give out and like make and give out coffee. There's there's multiple bars, and a number of the people I knew who were like the most who would spend the most of their time which is again totally their own at these events volunteering as bartenders were people who worked as bartenders. And we're like, look, I like serving drinks. I hate a lot of what goes along with being in a bar, but I enjoy making and serving drinks. There was this one really cool dude out in the middle of he was out because it's a spread out over acres of Woodlands. There's just this guy I found one night alone in the woods at like a podium sized, little booth lit up bar he'd made, and he was like, look, I am a very good bartender. What I do not like is making the same things every night for drunk people who don't know anything about a good mixed drink. So you and I are gonna have like a five minute conversation and then I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna make you based on like yeah, and it would, but yeah, it was really cool like that. More stuff like that, More like restaurant pop ups that are like those types of things are are just divorced from like this notion of like, you know, being served by a lower class member of society. Instead it's people like sharing actual interests that they have and they're not obligated to be there or else they get, you know, or else they're not able to pay their rent. Right, There's lots of things like a utopian society or be like, yeah, I would totally be down with doing some some kind of you know, some kind of thing related to giving food to other people are preparing food or you know, drink like mixed strengths Uh, I like making coffee a lot like espresso and the ship. Um, it's like, I can totally see that, but right now, you know, it's just a totally different field. Um, by and large for most people in you know, the food service industry, and it sucks work. By by and large, it really sucks to work in the food service industry. Yeah, the food service industry is one of the most explicitve industries in the country. That said, the idea of gathering in public to consume food and beverages is fundamental to human beings and we're never not going to have that as society's so there has to be ways in which to have versions of that. And again probably not the every ten minutes you get the same three has food restaurants that are open all night. That probably that definitely does not exist in an ideal society. But in any any better society, human beings will gather to eat and drink around each other because it's something we've done in every civilization that has ever existed. So, Andrew, you do, do you want to talk a bit more about the actual zine, because I feel like a lot of people's course around the zine is not about the zine itself. It's about what the title of the Zene is, because people people should read the actual zine. If you read it, makes very reasonable arguments. Um. The titles just intentionally provocative. Um so yeah, And what I've realized about intentionally provocative slogans is that the people who who want to get it, you know, they tend to be drawn into those kinds of things. And then there's some people who see something provocative and it kind of shuts them down. Yes. Yes, some people see see something supervocative and see it's like I want to learn more. And other people see it and they have that kind of a gut reaction to It's like it's like the backfire effect type thing. Yeah. So I mean to get into the kind of the history of it and just the idea of restaurants as as the Zene Explorers. According to the discourse, a restaurant is just a place to eat. If you sit down in the middle of a desert with a table and a chair and you eat something that's apparently a restaurant, that's not a restaurant, and it's not a restaurant. But okay, the definition of a restaurant is a place where people pay to sit and eat meals that are cooked and served on the premises. Commerce is a part of the definition of a restaurant. Why do we universalize and naturalize things that are neither That is my question. It's like what people do with the state, or with capitalism, with police or gender. Just like those things. The restaurant is an invention, but it's been crystallized and induced into our mind as something that is you know, that is natural, it is universal. You know when when Kronk brought his buddy Brock a piece of chicken, that was a restaurant. You know, it's like we take we take these things that come from very specific modern capitalist context and we stretched them out over the entire human experience. If you look into the history restaurants, the first restaurants began to pay in Paris in the seventeen sixties, even as lads in the eighteen fifties, majority of the restaurants the world be located in Paris. And I mean, for those who know a little bit about history, Paris is kind of an interesting place where a lot of things happen, especially during that rough time period. A lot of stuff going on there exactly. I mean elsewhere on the world. Communal meals were quite common. People cooked community in the eight community, and they were new restaurants specifically before the invention of restaurants, and in Paris, around Europe at least, where people had servants who cooked for them, travelers had inns where their meal was included with the price of the room, and they ate for the innkeeper and his family, and peasants they ate their meals at home, and of course they were also caterers for events and special occasions. And there were taverns and wineries and coffees and bakeries for certain foods and drinks. Of course, later on all of those things, the taverns, the wineries, the gig the caffees, and the bakeries. After restaurants came about those other institutions to shape and bend into this sort of the mold of the restaurant that was established restaurant based on the name of it um comes from this, this idea that they were meant to restore health to sick people. Restaurant restaurant, all right, And they used to sue these small meat stews. So by by that by that metric, taco bell cannot be a restaurant. I I would argue that it is the only restaurant. It's well, it's gonna restore Bowel movement if you haven't gonna block it that that that it will restore that. But besides that, I cannot, I can do not think it's going to restore. Yeah talk about it's probably something like a laxatant. I don't know. But um yeah, So why France, Why Paris? Why restaurants? It kind of occurred after the food craft kills were abolished by the Revolution. It was like this attempt to kind of democratize the food industry. You know, Liberty got a horn, all that jazz, so restaurants and it began spree enough because all these former cooks of the now be headed king and aristocrats, they wanted to work somewhere. Sure, so, you know, in a restaurant, you get a meal at any time the businesses open, anyone with money could get a meal. The customers would come and they would eat an indivi vidual tables, eat individual plates and bowls of food. They get to choose from another option, a number of options, and they grew in size and complexity as they went into They got a fixed menu, and eventually one day we invented the bacon eat. Yes, yeah, the end fact, the bacon. It was the first booger I had when I went to Neus. I would apologize, but this country has done so much worse than that of fun facts about Andrew. Yeah, you know, it's another thing to tune in and you get a little new fact that you could I don't know adds my Wikia page or something, but yeah, yeah, it was, it was, It was. It was mid. Honestly, my brother makes better boogers. But that's besides the point. Yeah, nearly every burger that you can get at a fast food restaurant is is mid. Yeah. T g I Friday's had some good Friday. That is the place when you're in a town you've never been before, that's where you want to just show up and get absolutely ship house drunk until two am with like a bunch of strangers at the t g I Friday's Bar, which is the Boulevard of broken dreams. Like it's only people who can't hack it in a regular bar and weirdos traveling through town. I love a T G I. A Friday's bark. I was not aware of that stereod type. I mean it's a t G I here in Trinidad, and I mean last time I knew they had like some kind of karaoke thing going on. Yeah, it's probably the vibe. I haven't been too many times anyway, I think this is enough product plast month for for one episode, like a lot of different here's ads. Sure, why not? So the growth of the restaurant came the growth of the market. With the growth of the restaurant came the growth of the market. Needs that will you know, fulfilled either through a direct relationship of domination like between a lord or a king and his silvants, or a private relationship like within the family. They were now being fulfilled on the open market. It was once a direct oppressive relationship now became the relationship between bier and seller now became. It didn't direct oppressive, exactly, a diffused oppressive relationship foremost because no one post and I would say, you could really carry the blame. A similar expansion to the market to place over a century later with the rise of fast food, because as the nineteen fifties, housewife was on her way out, you know, being undermined, and as you know, women started to move into the open labor market, many of the tasks that were done by women traditionally were being transferred onto the market. Not to say that women still don't do the majority of care work in modern society, but as women started moving into the office into the workplace, things started to shift with regard to eating and eating patterns. An important point to notice that, of course, you know, the whole woman moving into the workplace thing is kind of a white woman phenomenon, because you know, people of color, women of color were in workplaces before then in large numbers. Yeah, And and there's there's a thing I think it's important to note here too, which is like part of what's happening here is that like some of the care labor the white women were doing gets transferred on to non white women. And this is this is this has been one of the things that like I think we talked about this a long time ago and an interview I did with it with a nurse. But like, like, for for example, you see this with healthcare a lot where like a lot of like union workers get these goods, you know, they get really good healthcare plans from the unions, but those healthcare plans are basically subsidized by not paying women of color like ship and there's this whole sort of like trend around this is sort of like like you can, you know, if if you're witching, if you're rich enough, you can escape housework. But you escape housework by essentially thrusting it on somewhe on someone else who's like further down the social ladder venue. Yeah, it's kind of like a form of that um phenomenon. People have been talking about the the idea of choice feminism, as in any choice that it wouldn't speak that a woman makes is parts of the feminist sort of movement. So I saw some discoos happened recent Dude. People are talking about, um, how oh one should have a right if she's a housewife, that she should still be able to, you know, pursue her interests, which is of course agreed, and the solution being proposed so that was that the man, the breadwinner, would pay for a domestic servants to come and work for the woman so that she can pursue her other responsibilities, her other interests and desires. And so it's just kind of this perfect what a close to license exactly because then this woman is working away from her family, and then you know it's just like this is a the massed up system. But yes, so, as fast food restaurants began to grow rapidly, people began being paid wages for what used to be housework. And of course, as we know, capitalism couldn't exist without the billions of dollars of unpaid labor that woman perform on a yearly basis. Modern restaurants emerged in the nineteenth century under specific conditions. They had to be businessmen with capital to invest in restaurants. They had to be customers who are expected to satisfy their need for food on the open market by buying it. And they had to be workers with no way to live but by working for someone else. As these conditions developed, as capitalism developed, sorted restaurants, and so at the root of this whole abolished restaurants discourse needs to be an understanding of where restaurants came from their historical development. You cannot take them in isolation and project them, like I said, across all of humanity, because it's only through understanding, through specific circumstances that we can transform it. As we transform society as a whole, as we were saying, you know, there's a lot of things that are health about restaurants, the way that work comes in like weaves and rushes, a lot of slow time in between. We either really stressed out the really bored. I remember working they had the winery and like for mostly day I just have to be like shifting around bottles on the shelves. I couldn't sit down and chill or be on my phone or anything. I just had to busy myself until a customer came. And Gus was never key because it was a field business propped up only by her parents money. But did you ever get told the phrase if you can lean, you can clean, Not in not in those exactly ways, Yes, in those exact words God, and every fucking manager who says it to you thinks that like it's their cool line. I was fucking anyway, yep. Yeah, So you have to just you have this. This can something of trying to look busy while having nothing to do, while you're trying not to fall behind because they have tendings to do. Everyone is always working harder and faster, and of course the boss wants to squeeze as much work out in the same number of people out as possible, you know, like you're pushing people to these ridiculous extremes, which is why it's a kind of stereotype now of like restaurant workers all being on drugs. You know, there's also this whole in humanity to like employees being paid in tips. Now, as far as I know, nowhere is that as severe as it is in the US um. But of course around the world there are tipping cultures of varying degrees. And so when you have that sort of work where you're throughout your living, your subsistence is so directly tired to like tips. Not only do you have this sort of divide being created between the workers between like, for example, the waiters who make the tips and the cooks who don't make any tips, And it's just the sort of had to compete against each other because the way so it's trying to get as much done as possible so they can make the tips quickly, so they could have the you know, quick silveres, where as the cooks they have no interesting motivation to push themselves harder. It just becomes stress. I never got tips from baking in the back of the house unless some of the people in front of the house would like share the tips at the end of the day by their own like yeah, and I know folks who worked in places where all tips were shared with the way the kitchen staff, and it seemed to be a fifty fifty breakdown of this is really good and everyone gets paid fairly, and this is actually some scam by management to deny people a bunch of tips by like pulling them and a certain factory that gets done so Like it's like any formulation of this inherently winds up being pretty abusive. Yeah, and dividing. You know another interesting and I mean, as you guys mentioned stressful components about you know, this line of workers. Of course, the customers, which customer service people in general turn to. You know, whether you're working at a bar or you're working at a you know, a restaurant, even working in like sales and some sort of like retail, still their whole subrether is dedicated to how terrible customers are two workers as that that sort of dynamic of service, it it really changes people. I mean, customers can just as easily be working class as the people working in the restaurant, but there's still that dynamic that's created when you are the one being seated and served on the other person on their feet serving you. Some of the worst customers in America at least are working class and poorer folks who it's like their chance to be above somebody, like when they go out to a restaurant, so they can be extra shitty. Yeah, that is a thing that happens. Surprising me that even like restaurant weekers who treat restaurant workers fatly when they go to a restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yes, it's like someone gets the opportunity to be to exert the power and they're like, do it in the short, short, short, short amount of time. But although I will say, I'm sure those are also the restaurant workers who treat people badly at the restaurant they work at, including like some of the some of the things that have ever been said to be by customers at the restaurant job I had. Yeah, not surprising, And I was like no, I was like I was like in the high school. I was a kid, and these are like grown ups being horrendous now, Like I think I think it's like I don't know, like when people talk about this, like when people talk about restaurants like and in the discourses it's it's in a way that's like it's incredibly abstract and doesn't like it isn't it doesn't think about the fact that like the relationship between the customer and the people who have to interact with the customers, host, etcetera, like that that is a social relation. It's a social relation that like that, like like the the power dynamic inherent to it abscribes sort of different kind of like it describes different kinds of behavior to the people who are who are like on either side of it, like it it controls like what you have to do as a server, like what the performances you have to give to like the smile you have to put on, which is actually like that's the original thing of what emotional labor is, right, is like the labor you have to do to make the person who you're serving, Like I think that you're like happy and enjoying it, like having a good time. But then you know, on on the customer's end too, it's like you get this sort of you know, I was like, oh, this is your one chance to to be on top of a sort of power relation, and like that like that like that specific thing is so fucking evil. It's like that there there, there's there's a story I think about a lot from run In Schwang. Originally was it was about um like one of one of the last emperors of the Tang dynasty, like his his concubine like loved lechia and like, okay, I get it as lesia that gets really good. But like leech has grown leaches only grown in this in the south of China. You can't really grow in the north. It doesn't like it's too cold, too arid. And so in order to get her leisha, like every morning, they would send like the fastest writers like in China would like be sent by horse like to southern China and then back so that he get the lechia there in time like for for it still to be like ripe and like edible. And you know that that's the kind that's the kind of power that used to only literally the Emperor of China had this ability, right like the like the Emperor of fucking China could get this commodity and like force everyone in a change to go do something for them. And now like everyone has that like literally one has the power, Like every time you use Amazon, you have that power. Every time you go to a rustaurant, you have the power to do this, and it it turns people into monsters because like that's you know, the Chinese emperors are like these are some of the worst people who've ever lived. Now, like everyone everyone like just like like the fundamental basis of the society is there was a place where you can go and you can become the emperor of fucking China with the idea of instant gratification being reliant on the exploitation of other people. Yeah, and and like that, yeah, and that doesn't seem right, Garrison, Oh yeah, I think. Don't worry now, watch me as I order next day delivery on a dollar drone just to just to funk around in my backyard. Like yes, it's it's everything is fine in America. I I do. I am like of the opinion that the grocery store is like the primary artistic achievement of capitalism as a system. Um. They are objectively marvels, um. And they're they're built on a river of blow deeper and wider than is. It's like it's a hyper object, right, It's like impossible to comprehend the full scale of cruelty that goes into being able to like, well, it is November. I'm gonna go get a fresh bag of grapes that have been genetically modified to taste like cotton candy, picked by people making sense an hour in Yes, in the country that's on the other side of the world. Yes, whose relatives are shot for attempting to scramble over the border. Yeah. That the grapes passed through easily. Yes. And I think like like that that points to another like I think part of the dynamics infelic with restaurants that happens, which is that like, okay, like cooking takes time, right, and the less and less time that you have, the more like the more reliant you become on like on these services. And so you see this with like you know, like China has like a like a particularly horrible like delivery culture. Like you can like you can have someone to liver food to you, like to the train like like a sub Like a train will stop at a stop and you can have someone run a bag of food to you and then like leave and you just like you go to the next stop and you get off, and that happens because everyone's working nine nine six, and it's like, okay, you're working seven You're working nine am the nine pm, six six days a week, and you know you don't you literally do not have time to cook because you're working. You're working twelve hours a day, and like an example of this is like restaurant people who work restaurants, like line cooks and chefs, hardly ever cook for themselves. They always get food from other restaurants because they're cooking eight to ten hours a day. They're not going to go home then cook for themselves. They It's like, yeah, it's this system almost it makes it makes the things that prop it up become necessary to keep the whole thing going. It's all like balancings super like precariously on its own weight. It's it's equivalent to like if you're in a criminal sin to kit making, somebody you're working with tangentially shoot a man in the back of the head so that you both have blood on your hands. Like everyone is everyone just by by virtue existing under it. Like if you're working sixty hours a week is a fucking nurse during COVID or as a fucking line cook dealing with this surge of delivery ship and then on your way home you just want to pick up some like sushi from a fucking grocery store that requires ingredients from all around the world and is made by people who are not getting enough money to make it and is horrible for the environment and the fisheries and all that kind of ship um, and but like what are you supposed to do? Like you you just you just finished like a ten hour shift, Like do you not deserve like one one nice thing at the end of the day. Like like so it's if you people can't like either you becomeing like a complete aesthetic right and and reject and go kind of ted kay and live in a shack in Montana and reject all of these these kind of modern conveniences, or you accept that like you're going to spend some time waiting into the river of blood because otherwise the things you have to do to stay alive in this society are completely emotionally unsustainable. Yeah, this was this was the original, Like before it kind of became this cop out for like just doing whatever you want. Like this was the original. There's no ethical consumption. Dury capitalism was about. This was about like this specific problem that everything in the society, Like even even if you're living in the woods and Montana, it's like yeah, like where where where did where? Like where where did your cabin come from? Like where did your nails come from? Who made the hammers? Like everyone's like completely dependent for everything on the exploitation of other people, and it is it is a The one thing that gives me a little bit of hope is when Andrew was explaining how like restaurants came arise because of people who used to work for kings and ship who then started working at restaurants because they still want to make food. It's like that evolution. Taking it to the next step is people who work at restaurants now no longer having to work under capitalist exploitation and realizing, hey, I know how to cook, Well, I'll just set up like ways to feed the community outside of this system of commerce. Right, that is the next evolution. If you start with people cooking for the king people, then cooking in places where you pay to eat in this exploitative system, and then people cooking for people so that there's food around into like a community setting. Right, if you if you follow that trajectory that's actually kind of hopeful. It's almost like we've i mean in some ways. Yeah, like right, it's if if you just go back to like beings, yeah, like communating. If there's places around different communities, different towns, different like urban centers that have that have the capacity to feed people who are not able to cook, cook, cook for themselves that night or that day, that's something that if if it's there's ways of setting that up which I can see being so much better than how restaurants work. You know, maybe maybe people wash their own dishes afterwards, maybe people do something to help with like prep or something. Right, like there's there's there's ways to make this that gives you the parts of restaurants that are actually really convenient, um without the exploitation. And so that that type of like community cooking is something I mean, you know that's even similar to like how like a good dinner party operates, um, just that kind of extended out across you know, more of like a pop up setting and say hey, yeah, this this month, we're using all of these ingredients that are grown in our general local area. Right, We're not getting shipped, We're not getting like strawberries in December ship from halfway around the world will make stuff that is available um as it you know, as it's grown, or we can pickle, we can store food, right and yeah, and maybe we we've we've turned the old defunct Walmart into a grows shelter. So once or twice during the winter there are some strawberries and everybody comes together and shares this marvel that the community came like worked as a team to ensure would be available. But you can't just go and buy four pounds of strawberries that are produced with their like twice the weight of the strawberries and pesticide in order to keep them alive in fields that were never meant to grow straw Like, maybe that's not available all year round. Like, yeah, let's get back to the point being raised about about like, because that's a really important point. The whole purpose of that seeing has been mastardized, but it really is crucial to have to do once and the signing of it. What frustrates me is that it's been taka and then it's been too it into this justification and that it's okay that I buy from Sheen, It's okay that I buy a three thousand dollar whole from Sheen, because no ethical can sumption on the couple is on. Was like with where somebody goes on, they engage in something that is normal. That is, Andrew, you're talking around my two and a half pound a day veal habit and I don't appreciate. Yeah, that sounds like a problem. That's like something Joe Rokanot sense like I need two and a half pads of veal every day and that keeps my brain running smoothly. The caveman, I mean exactly, it did work for Georgie Peterson, he's doing great. Christ at the mirror notion of Antifa, I would do an impression, but hood my throat, so that's I would see. I would say that as we were saying, you know that there really is is potential. We see even under these conditions that people find ways to survive. You know, they create like these informal work groups that are not only able to come together and push back against management, were able to work together to create trust within each other. You know, you have like for example, waiters who would try to hand in the kitchen on a slow day, or a cleaner or who might pick up a thing or two a dishwasher, we're trying to move up to become like a align cook. All these different workers, they they do things certainly to try to undermine the unnatural divisions and hierarchies and between these skill and unskilled um in the restaurants. Certain of course it doesn't always work because there are you know, settings were in the manager six as fully created divisions. You know, whether it be the manager creating a division between um teen different nationalities of immigrants, so you know, playing upon someone's queer phobia against like queer staff, or someone's biases against I don't know, I can't think of a third example, but there are ways of managers try to like sew these divisions between workers, and they always at workers try to push back. They're also ways at managers trying to do the opposite, to create a community within the restaurant and includes themselves. So instead of fostering isolation and prejudice, they create a community that especially in small restaurants, that involves them, that talks about that you know, the boss much shape with them, how difficult it is working and organizing for the business to the restaurant, and or they might create like a special kind of restaurant focused on their identity. So they might create a restaurant for for queer youth with all the staff a queer, or you know, you have a restaurant for you know, a black owned restaurant world workers a black and try to create a community based on this identity. But it kind of erases the unavoidable class interests between workers and management. It's smooths over that dimension, so it becomes more difficult to organize and to speak up for your rights because you're you're aware that the managers are human and they too are struggling, which kind of brings me to the idea of restaurants with no managers and the idea of cooperatives. The assus cooperative restaurants is that they basically have to collectively take on the rule of managers managing themselves, creating those pressures and pushing those pressures upon themselves. They enforced the work on each other, and they have to work longer in some cases and work hard in some cases because the structure of a restaurant is designed to make money, and if it is not making money, then everybody loses their jobs. So due to this pressure, bosses in a position where they have to pushed workers to get as much out of the workers as possible. You raised the boss on the occasion from the equation, but you keep the rest of the concept of a restaurant, and line between work and parts becomes blur to the extent where it's almost like that image of a person with a boot and hand pulling a boot on their head, where this oppression there was one external becomes internalized because that is how a restaurant survives through pressure, through exploitation. It's kind of like with how self employed people are on the capitalism. Yes, you're working for yourself and you have some freedom that regard, but you're still restricted by the broader system. You haven't escaped it. You've just had to navigate it. And I have to make quarterly payments to the I R S. Yeah, I mean, I say, I think work for ourselves in some capacity have a certain level of freedom and it um you still have those pressures and it's just you have to inflict them on yourself. You know, you don't have like a break that has been man dated and so this in my case, I don't say breaks because that's just how I am, you know, you work longer hours, you push yourself harder and harder, you work on days when you should be rested, and it's just it illustrates the fact that liberation is not to be found under this system, and it's something totally new with a totally different metric of success, a totally different metric of sustenance, totally different bare minimum, and totally different motivation needs to be the foundation upon which society is built because there's profiting awaken. Yeah, And I think there's a like, I think the reason this debate happens like this, this whole discourse happened in the first place, which just that like like just like a lot of it really was just a complete inability to imagine like literally any other way of like even just like like any other way of getting food that has not involved you go into a place and telling someone to make it for you and like that. I don't know, Like, yeah, it's like the fact that there have already been sort of seismic shifts in the way that like food production happens, right, I think is evidence of like, no, we don't have to do it like that, like we just we just do not It wasn't like this for most of human history, we could do something better than whatever they were doing before it. Yeah, a lot of people might you know, wish for like in this, So let's just shift over into the abolition section of it, the restaurant abolition. A lot of people look to, for example, a union as a path by which in the short soon you know, we make sit and gains and belong to we can take over and radically transforming. The difficulty comes in how unions have traditionally operated in the restaurants fair they tend to be significantly less successful. I mean, restaurants usually have very high turnover people in the last couple of months, um. They often employed like a lot of young people who are just looking for part time or temporary employment. Well, people who do work, they're constantly looking to move on to better things, and so it makes it difficult to create a stable union with a stable membership that can buckle down and really negotiate and push for the interests of the people working, because people working and constantly change it. I think one of the like, one of the really great things has led to is that like like especially when fast food took over, like the major unions that even do exist which is like that we like we're just not gonna bother even try and organizes people because they just assumed it was impossible. And so like there are there are very very few fast food unions. I mean, like I think one of the only like even sort of functional ones is the ww like organized Burgerville. But that's that's been like it like the like the big unions, when they've done campaigns for fast food workers, it's like it will was clean like five or fifteen, but it's like they're not actually trying to like form unions of the freshmand workers, Like they don't they're not even trying. They're just trying to They're they're using them for sort of like a lot being an advocacy. Yeah, and difficulty also commins when a union's established itself, you know, because a union structurally it's not always by all the lucas. You know, there's still sort of a hierarchy of bureaucracy that we established itself and trying to maintain its even if it starts off benignly. No, just for all of the radical history that unions do have, quite a few unions in the particularly United States, have also been conservative bastions and bastions of different attitudes about like stuff like white supremacy. You know, there's there's a lot of the union movement is as much Blair Mountain as it is trying to stop black people from being able to work on trains. You know, like all of those things are part of the history. Yeah, I mean, I'll speak briefly on like the union situation in the Caribbean, particularly in Trenda. The trade union movement was intrinsically inextricably tied with the anti colonial movements in the movement for independence. You're subcating that the unions became tied up with the political parties that are rules after independence and well during the process of independence. But I know happening with the unions was that they end up being tied to deeply with the political parties. So ended up being that the established unions, you know, the higher ups in those established unions, they have these relationships of favors and obligations with the politicians. A lot of politicians come out to these union movements and end up establishing their own political careers. And because it's also tied up when you workers get into these industries that do have union that have been unionized. There's a very clear separation between the union and the workers because while the union is able to you know, push for the workers rights and you know, they're still separate from the workers. The unions still exists as a new negotiator between the workers and the management. And so you have the workers which to go beyond just negotiating. The union exists almost as a release valve for any sort of class antagonists. So any kind of pressure, any kind of real pressure against the start at school. I mean, it's not just unique to turn that outlet to the Caribbean. I means it's globally cross history. You've seen union struggles kind of go over the same sort of dynamic. You know, new generations of workers, they build love the movements, they build up the unions, and the unions begin to change, and perhaps new union leaders spring up to replace the old union leaders, one put on the same position and the same pressure as the reacting the same way as the bureaucracy and being rejuvenated. Unions are reformed and they end up going back to the same obays that they had been before. And in some cases the fight to reform the union takes the place of the fight against the boss because of all the bureaucracy and system, of all the ocations and just deeply rooted ideas about the place of the union, because well, unionizing is a difficult process. Union leaders do tend to enjoy certain benefits from their position, and as we are aware of, you know, certain hierarchies self justifying those are the top tend to want to perpetuated. It's kind of like and so this idea that this is kind of an unsettled thought of mind, but it's kind of like the idea of you know, using the state to establish workers power and then abolishing it afterwards, you know, using union to get some ship workers po But then it's expecting this union of a certain structure that exists towards negotiating, ends to somehow pushing these sort of more radical directions. There's a saying that but um, but the zine um, the rights of the zine say, it's like restaurant unions needed to be restaurants and we don't. I think that sort of applies more broadly because when we get into the whole idea of like work abolition, it's just concept of workers are people outside of work, but a workers union exists within the confines of work as we understand it, so I think that's where the difficulty lies. The Zne goes on to say later on that every time we attack the system, but we don't destroy it, it changes and in turn changes us and the train of the next fight. Gains are turned against us, and we are stuck back in the same situation at work. The boss to try to keep us looking for individual solutions or solutions within an individual workplace for an individual trade. But the only way that we can free ourselves is to broaden and deepen our fight. We involve workers from other workplaces, other industries, and other regions. We attack more and more fundamental things. The desire to destroy restaurants becomes a desire to destroy the conditions that create restaurants. We aren't just fighting for representation in or control over the production process or fighters and against the act of chopping vegetables and washing dishes, or poor and bear or even serving foods other people. Is with the way all of these acts are brought together in a restaurant, separated from other acts, become part of the economy, and I used to expand capital. The starting and ending point to this process is a society of capitalists and people forced to work for them. We want an end to this. We want to destroy the production process or something outside and against us. We're fighting for a world of productive activity fulfills the need. There's an expression of our lives not forced on us in exchange for a wage, a world where produce for each other directly, and I don't order to sell to each other. The struggle of restaurant workers is ultimately for a world without restaurants or workers. And I mean so, I think people are still going to call some multigensives restaurants restaurants anyway, probably, But I hope this discussion as cause equals kind of deepen the approach to this