Tootfinder

I gave the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness crew the significant challenge of trying to make me sound coherent in this interview with Inmn Neruin. I was managing some pretty significant sleep deprivation and a mild cold, but I think it turned out pretty good (despite my best efforts).
But I did talk a lot about my trauma related to some of my experience living in #rural areas, and in doing that I was definitely not as careful as I could have been to talk about that as a trauma experience rather than as reality. Some people get trapped in rural areas, but other folks live there because they find beautiful things.
Not only is #RuralOrganizing critical (Trumpism grew out of areas neglected by "the left"), but rural living can be beautiful and rewarding. I briefly mentioned growing up throwing knives. A friend of mine lived way out in the woods, and there's something special about having a playground that spans several square miles. Intertwined with the old settler colonialism, antisemitism, *phobias, and isolation, that is at the heart of a lot of my personal rural misery, there's also a joyous and feral thing that taught me a lot and, I think, helped me organize more fearlessly. That thing is both individualist and collectivist, in different ways, and I don't think it's well understood without experiencing it. There's far more nuance than I was able to offer (and I definitely could have been more careful not to play into anti-rural stereotypes).
I think I said, "no one wants to live there." People do. You do. So let me try to fix that by giving you a chance to talk about that. I also talked about how slow things move, how nothing changes, but there are also sometimes opportunities to change things in huge ways specifically because structures don't exist to stop those changes. So while I'm bumping this zine and interview, also I want to use this as an opportunity to welcome my rural comrades to help fill in the gaps:
What draws you to where you are?
Do you choose to live in a rural area vs urban, and why?
Is there any other thing I've said that you would like to correct?
What other things should folks know?
https://www.tangledwilderness.org/features/near-death

Just started listening to this one, and I'd absolutely recommend it. It's great.
It's really hard to explain how complicated beliefs can be, especially to folks in an urban bubble. The truth is, part of my anarchism came from listening to #rural folks. I didn't really live in a big city until I was like 18, but I came to those places already with a set of liberal biases.
Some of the things I experienced in those places pushed me towards being a Communist. But there are some strangely anarchistic tenancies, even in those who profess to be politically the opposite.
My stance on guns was largely shaped by understanding and extending the arguments of rural gun owners. They continued to evolve long after, but it took actually listening to break through my liberal biases and understand the ways in which gun control can actually intersect with other forms of oppression. There is a lot more nuance than I had grown up to believe.
And it goes both ways. Conservative gun owners have absolutely no intellectual against anarchist gun arguments. They're generally either gonna fall into racism that you can talk about, or start to radicalize left. There are plenty of similar pathways.
But also, not everyone in rural areas is conservative. There are plenty of rural anarchists and communists. They just get buried under stereotypes.
Anyway, this has been great to listen to and I'd recommend it.
https://www.tangledwilderness.org/strangers-podcast/talking-to-rural-conservatives