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Logging Off, Showing Up, and Organizing with Cayden Mak #62
30 Plays18 hours ago
What happens when the internet turns politics into a consumer activity — something you watch, share, and feel, rather than something you do? Cayden Mak, publisher of Convergence magazine and host of Block and Build, joins co-hosts Daniel W.K. Lee and Kenyon Farrow to untangle the structural forces shaping digital organizing, from Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism to Silicon Valley's role in driving authoritarian consolidation. He pushes back on AI hype — arguing that much of it is marketing designed to launder ideology and remove human accountability from harmful decisions — while also insisting that the internet has been genuinely life-saving for young queer people cut off from affirming communities. Drawing on the legacy of ACT UP and the long-view thinking of Grace Lee Boggs, Cayden makes the case that real politics is not what you watch or repost, but what you do with other people over time.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Power Beyond Pride' Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I think that one of the challenges with the culture of the internet and the culture of activism on the internet is that it has led us down a road that has made us forget that politics is not a spectator sport.
00:00:13
Speaker
Politics is not what you listen to, it's not what you read, it's not how you dress, it but it's what you do. And I think the challenge that the combination of sort of neoliberalism, placing everything that happens in society within the confines of the market and naturalizing like economic markets as the way that humans organize all their behavior, which is bullshit, frankly.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Power Beyond Pride, a weekly queer change making podcast bringing you voices and ideas from across our fierce and fabulous spectrum to transform our world.
00:00:47
Speaker
I am Daniel W.K. poet, author and unapologetic soy boy. And I'm Kenyon Farrell, writer, activist, and often referred to as your favorite Butch Queen's favorite Butch Queen.
Caden Mock's Experience with Netroots Nation
00:01:02
Speaker
And we are your co-hosts on today's Queercast journey. but Also joining us today in this episode, we're talking with an organizer, technologist, and in his own words, an all-purpose nerd.
00:01:16
Speaker
We're talking today with Caden Mock. Caden is a publisher at Convergence Magazine. He also hosts Block and Build, a weekly podcast that examines the balance of political force and the U.S. from a movement perspective.
00:01:31
Speaker
Welcome, Caden. Thank you so much for having me. It's a delight to be here. So excited. So excited. Caden and I, we met initially, at least very briefly, too, at Netroots Nation.
00:01:43
Speaker
and that was my first time there, actually. And so I don't really have much history to compare to. But from your perspective, what do you think has been the obstacles for conferences like Netroots and others to help translate digital organizing to kind of mass amassed political power?
Utilizing Tools for Social Movements
00:02:04
Speaker
Yeah, Netroots is a really interesting conference that I've been going for quite some time. i used to be, ah before was at Convergence, I was the executive director at 18 Million Rising, doing Asian American racial justice organizing online. And really, like, I was there for damn near nine years.
00:02:23
Speaker
in a lot of different roles. So I've seen net routes evolve. And, you know, what's interesting is 15 years ago or so, there was this moment around the sort of really around the Obama moment where people were like, great, the internet is the future. All this great stuff is happening. There was like a lot of like exchange between Silicon Valley and ah Washington, D.C. that was very in the like Obama mode, very like hopey changey.
00:02:49
Speaker
Something interesting is happening here. And i also think at that time, Netroots was... It felt a little scrappier, right? Because Netroots comes out of the Daily Kos sort of like blogging network and then spun out to be its own thing.
00:03:04
Speaker
And one of the things that's been true over the past like five or to seven years is Some of the tech vendors have been bought by like hedge funds. This just is like a ah big divide, I feel, in between the people who are doing like scrappy grassroots stuff and then more institutionalized things. and That's one of the things that kind of stood out to me this year, which is interesting.
00:03:26
Speaker
And i do think a lot about this question of like, how should we relate to the internet as social movements? Because it's long been my line that we can't leave any power on the table.
00:03:38
Speaker
Like, we need to be using the tools that are available to
Revival and Intent of Convergence Magazine
00:03:41
Speaker
us. But in this time of escalating authoritarianism, where a lot of the, like, leading lights and most wealthy people in the world who are Silicon Valley billionaires are driving a lot of that authoritarian consolidation, I do think that we need to be doing a little more deep reflection about how we use tools and why.
00:03:59
Speaker
And i don't know, it strikes me that... There were, there are a lot, there are like multiple streams of conversations that go on at a conference's biggest net roots. And i do think that the sort of like explosion of people who are thinking thinking and talking about how to use AI, for instance, is like something that I'm like, can we actually also have a meta discussion about like, why AI? Who is pushing this and who's benefiting from it?
00:04:24
Speaker
That I wish there was more space to have, you know, so. Yeah. And so I think kind of to that point, thinking about just a sort of strategy and power and where we lean into space and where the left is kind of conceded space.
00:04:39
Speaker
your So Convergence Magazine's podcast, Block and Build, aims to help kind of refine progressive strategy and develop strategic unity in a time of Really great peril for people and the planet. So where did the idea for the show come from and what's been the reception so far?
00:04:56
Speaker
Well, and so a little bit of background on Convergence that might be helpful is so I got hired about two and a half years ago and I'm the first staff they've ever had. Some listeners who've been in movement for a long time might recognize Convergence. We used to be called Organizing Upgrade and we got started in like 2008, 2009 by a bunch of
Positive Reception and Focus on Thoughtful Media
00:05:14
Speaker
basically...
00:05:15
Speaker
Longtime movement heads, mostly who are working in kind of communications and like communication strategy roles being like, we need a publication where we can come together and talk about what is strategic, what is important. And again, this was like in the sort of wake of Barack Obama getting elected and being like, what are we to do as the left? Right. What is the task right now?
00:05:36
Speaker
And those years were wild, right? Like the Obama years also included Occupy Wall Street, the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. There's a lot of really interesting stuff that's contained within that. The publication went dormant in like mid-20-teens. And then in 2016, 2017, some folks on the existing editorial board wanted to revive it, specifically looking at the rise of MAGA and Donald Trump.
00:05:57
Speaker
And so the nature of the publication has always been volunteer run. And as a result, like sometimes you can keep up with with things. Sometimes it's a little harder because like people have jobs, people have lives. And one thing that came along with being staffed was a strategic assessment that being in audio, being in podcasting was actually like a real big opportunity, specifically because there's something so human about the human voice in your ear and that like,
00:06:25
Speaker
Aside from the sort of like cerebral analysis of what's going on that you can read on the page or on the web page, how can we get the stories of what's happening now in our movements into people's feeds, into people's ears? And one of the things we started discovering is that allowed us to respond to the moment in a little more timely a fashion. I like to say that convergence is slow media.
00:06:47
Speaker
Because we're not trying to like chase that like hype cycle. We're not trying to like glom on to a viral moment.
Caden's Early Activism and College Experiences
00:06:54
Speaker
What we're trying to do is like put forward some lukewarm takes that might actually help you understand the world better than just getting you angry about hot take, you know?
00:07:03
Speaker
And so the podcast was, in a lot of ways, like our desire to figure out, especially those of us who are full-time staff, our desire to figure out ways to speak to the political moment in ways that were a little more timely. And also have on guests who maybe didn't have time because of like organizing moments popping off, didn't have time to sit down and write a 2000-word essay about their work. Writing takes a lot of time, but like a lot of times, like we get folks on also who are not...
00:07:32
Speaker
They're doing incredible strategic organizing, but they're not necessarily people who are going to think, oh, I should narrate this, right? But getting them to be a guest on the show is like my little way of being like, no, your work is like badass and people need to learn from it. People need to know your story.
00:07:48
Speaker
And then we do this little headline read at the beginning, which is a lot of fun where I get to pop off a little bit about what I think about what's going on in our political culture. so And the reception has been honestly great. I actually was telling people I was at a wedding a couple of weekends ago and there was another guest at the wedding who came up to me. I'd never met them before. And they were like,
00:08:08
Speaker
I'm going fangirl for 90 seconds and then we can be normal. But I listen to your podcast every week. That's so great. That had never happened to me before. It was wild. I think the whole like parasocial relationship of it all is like something that's like kind of a trip.
00:08:22
Speaker
But, you know, I think that the creative brief for our show is really like, how can we talk about what's happening right now in politics, in politics? Donald Trump 2.0 in a way that is not going to make people feel paralyzed, sad, demobilized, but is actually going to make people be like, wait, there are other people like me all across this country who are fighting back with the tools that they have on the terrain that they find themselves. Because ah props to like all of the progressive media out there, like doing the hard work of uncovering stuff, talking about things from a critical perspective. Like oh if you consume too much of it you're going to be like, wow, the news is all bad. It's overwhelming. And in a lot of ways, like we want the pod to be an antidote to that.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yeah. From kind of, you know, what I have consumed already, it seems like it's i trying to expand and inhabit a little bit more of a kind of thoughtful, discursive space, which I really love. Kind of i love what you're saying, but like slow media, i got of a pushback in a way of just churning over. We're definitely I definitely want to get back to the Internet and AI. But but before that, i'd love to kind of hear your story or trajectory about how you came became really a change maker.
Impact of the Internet on Caden's Perspective
00:09:38
Speaker
yeah It's a long story. I mean, that the oldest place that I can start is really... well Actually, this is my first sort of like gender transgressive moment is when I was like, i don't know, maybe four or five.
00:09:49
Speaker
And I had on my mom's side, my grandmother was a very serious Catholic. And so she was like, we got to get the kids baptized. We got to get the kids confirmed. And so I'd been baptized and I was going to Sunday school to prepare for confirmation. And...
00:10:03
Speaker
She was still alive, so I had to have been like maybe four and a half, five years old. And in Sunday school, I was like, hey, when are we going to stop doing word searches about Jesus and start reading the Bible? And the nuns didn't know what to do about this.
00:10:15
Speaker
They were flabbergasted. They called my parents and told them to come pick me up because I was being insubordinate. And so here I am, baby Martin Luther. And like my what and so mean my parents, my dad, who was an atheist, thought it was hilarious. like He could not get enough of this.
00:10:36
Speaker
And my mom was really worried about what her mom was going to say. And she was like, what's the deal? I was like, well, I'm i'm really interested in this in reading books. I'm really interested in this information. They keep talking about the Bible, with the word of God, whatever. And I was like, why can't we read it?
00:10:51
Speaker
And in retrospect, I think if somebody had sat me down and like taught me about like liberation theology or something like that, like any of the sort of like subversive history of the Catholic, like parts of the Catholic Church, I think I might still be a Catholic, to be honest. Like I was interested, I was told my grandmother was interested in becoming a priest and she was like, little girls can't be priests. And i was like, I don't see the problem. look so Me and gender in the Catholic Church, we go way back. It's complicated. But I came out in high school. And so this was the early 2000s in suburban Michigan, where I was really lucky that I went to a big nerd magnet high school. I was not going to the mainline high school because I don't know if I would have survived high school, frankly, if I'd gone elsewhere. But my senior year, some of my friends and i we did this, we told the, we were in this old elementary school building, so we had a lot of like single stall bathrooms anyway. We told the high school administration that we were going to stay just sit-in if they didn't make some of our bathrooms gender neutral. And the the principal was like, why not? Okay. And this was like 2004, right? This was just not something that was like part of the discourse. I forget even how we came up with this, but...
00:12:05
Speaker
that's that Those are some of my sort of like earliest memories of being like somebody who asks really hard questions and somebody who is like doing organizing. And I will say that also the other pieces, I went to college at the University of Michigan and the work that I did there with something called the program
Critique of Internet's Consumerism Design
00:12:22
Speaker
on intergroup relations really opened my eyes a lot to...
00:12:26
Speaker
ah the structures of power in our society and how those structures act on us as individuals and shape us as individuals. And I'm still really good friends with a lot the friends that I made doing that work and trying to bridge divides around race and gender and religion and class and very big and influential. So.
00:12:43
Speaker
Great. So I think we need to take a break soon. So we will pause here and welcome our listeners to come back and join us after this break with Caden Mock on Power Beyond Pride.
00:13:02
Speaker
Welcome back. This is Power Beyond Pride, a query change-making podcast, and I am Daniel W.K. Lee, here with my co-host, Kenyon Farrow. In one of our recent Reply All episodes, we discussed how the Internet has impacted and shaped the lives of millennials and later generations.
00:13:23
Speaker
Can you talk about the significance of the Internet that has played in your life and how it might need to change in order to kind of maximize its usefulness for progressive social movements?
00:13:38
Speaker
This is such a big question. and This is like, honestly, like, it to me, this is actually sort of my life's work. And like, looking back at college again, at some time during my senior year college, I woke up and I was like, I don't understand why I can't major in the internet because there's so much going on here. And I cannot find a way like,
00:13:57
Speaker
to fit this into existing modes of study. And a lot of the things that I've always been interested in are like, so we got, we actually got the internet in my house growing up when I was pretty young, like I think in middle school. My mom was a school teacher and she got a computer for free through the school district and she was, cause internet thing sounds cool. And so we got AOL. And sometimes I do say that I was radicalized on like the AOL feminism message board. So shout out to those folks who are like, I mean, a lot of them were college and students and grad students, and they had no idea that I was like 13.
00:14:27
Speaker
What year was this? This was like the late 90s. Okay. Yeah. this was like the late ninety s ok yeah Yeah, so the like AOL message boards were like really wild in those times. There were a lot of people on them. like People were talking about all kinds of stuff. That's how I learned about like bell hooks and a lot of people like that who were very sort of like foundational.
00:14:49
Speaker
And i also think that as good as my my small community in high school was, like it really got gave me ah a window into a world beyond my sort of like very limited, relatively white community.
00:15:01
Speaker
like
Online Platforms: Awareness vs. Surveillance
00:15:02
Speaker
suburban life that where was like full of straight people and full of straightness and like compulsory heterosexuality and saw i saw that there was a world beyond that was like worth living for and like really being like, oh, there are other ways of being.
00:15:16
Speaker
that are available to me, that there are like people who can be my peers in the future who are like hungry to ask some of the questions that I'm asking about, like, why does capitalism work the way it works, right?
00:15:28
Speaker
So i think that increasingly when we, is even now, like to relate to some of the stuff that we're looking at now, like all of these laws that are being proposed to sort of, quote unquote, protect kids from like predators on the internet or whatever, lot a lot of those like age verification things, whatever, they're going to have a much longer term, more negative effect, especially on young queer people for this exact reason that like queer kids who are growing up in places where they feel alienated from their families of origin, in their communities communities of origin, that like getting online and seeing that there are other queer people who are older than them,
00:16:03
Speaker
who are out there thriving, who are like asking hard questions, who are finding love, finding belonging, like that is priceless. well Like that is actual life-saving technology. So on the one hand, there's that, right? And I think that there's a lot of stuff about that phenomenon that also translates to people beyond the queer community, right? Like that this is an important piece of sometimes like people getting out of abusive relationships. There's all kinds of amazing things ways that the internet can allow us to connect with resources beyond our immediate environment.
00:16:35
Speaker
On the other hand, the internet, especially as it is currently designed, because everything we do on the internet, of course, is designed by humans, for a goal. And so much of the way that the internet is designed, whether that's like the Web 2.0 sort of algorithmically driven social media stuff,
00:16:51
Speaker
like Facebook, like Twitter, refuse to call it X, like Instagram, they're designed to hold our attention and make us consume. And one of the books that has been really formative for me about this is Shoshana Zuboff's book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which is a tome.
00:17:10
Speaker
But one of her main theses in it is that social media companies in their drive to figure out how the heck their business model may actually make money takes us not just from consumers or products to be sold to advertisers, but that our attention is actually becoming the raw materials of their business model because they're tracking our clicks, they're tracking our attention. And by doing that, they have this like massive, just like inconceivably large data set about human behavior on their websites.
00:17:42
Speaker
And so it's not even that they want to sell us as consumers to advertisers anymore. It's that they take this sort of byproduct of us being sold as products to advertisers and selling that back too, right? that's And that sort of culture, that sort of like stalker tech culture has become central to both how Silicon Valley operates.
00:18:06
Speaker
And i think it's feeding in a lot of these like really dark ways to things like normalizing surveillance, making it so that we we just don't think Palantir is that bad, right? Like, it's okay that they're doing this, like, massive surveillance for ICE and all this stuff, that, like, it's part of a larger culture shift in Silicon Valley around surveillance and what kind of surveillance is okay, and also how to make money on surveillance. So yeah that was a lot. But it's I think it's stuff that we really need to be grappling with.
00:18:36
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think you kind of raised a couple of different points. i think
AI's Role in Activism: Oppression vs. Liberation
00:18:41
Speaker
we want to get to. So one, you mentioned the way in which a lot of the sort of policymaking right now about the Internet or about is and under the guise of protecting children and kids. Right. Which ends up taking a bunch of.
00:18:57
Speaker
often kind of racist and then your revisionist history and kind of anti-queer, anti-trans policies really in under this guise of protecting children. At the same time, the big meta and the big Internet or social media companies have actually stopped or come back greatly on content moderation. Right. So they're not that much concerned about what kids are seeing. but They're actually not moderating ah what people post in terms of violence or but just racist comments or sexist, transphobic comments, et cetera, right? So it's like that duality. But one of the things like that's been also interesting kind of in this moment is the ways in which social media has also helped drive public attention to things that the mainstream media has, i won't even say failed to do, but actually has been resistant to do. So one of which is like covering
00:19:48
Speaker
genocide in Gaza in a very clear and honest way. And so I would love to hear your thoughts about kind of that dichotomy. How do we, as kind of progressives, the lefts, radicals, or whatever, ever think about kind of engaging in these platforms, which we know are, as you said, really about kind of collecting huge amounts of data about human behavior in order to sell us back stuff for to do or to actually manipulate human behavior in particular kinds of ways while we're also using these tools to actually try to address and ultimately halt human atrocity, for instance, like the genocide in Gaza.
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a really tough tension. And and there's a couple of there's a couple different ways that I think about this, right? And i think the first caveat I will give is that one of the amazing things about being in social movements is knowing that you don't have to do all this by yourself, right? That this is a collective project and that not everything has to be your personal ministry, right? i think You can go, you can figure out and carve out what your lane is.
00:20:54
Speaker
And so the ability to say no to something is actually like really, I think important for us as individuals, but also understanding that we need to all be good at the position that we play. Right. And so when I talk about saying no to things, I also think that like, we also have to keep in mind that other people,
00:21:13
Speaker
may need to say yes. And so none of this is like a ah personal judgment on like consumption or participation choices. The second thing is, and I think that one of the challenges with the culture of the internet and the culture of activism on the internet is that it has led us down a road that has made us forget that politics is not a spectator sport.
00:21:35
Speaker
And as my comrade and friend of the pod, Asha Ransby Sporn, likes to say, politics is not what you listen to. It's not what you read. It's not how you dress. <unk> not it But it's what you do. And it's what you do with other people. That's politics, right? And I think the challenge that the combination of sort of neoliberalism that is about this, you know,
00:21:56
Speaker
Placing everything that happens in society within the confines of the market and naturalizing like economic markets as the way that humans organize all their behavior, which is. bullshit, frankly. And then the way that the internet is designed in the way it's currently designed, which is, again, reducing all of our behavior, clicks, what we pay attention to and for how long into the realm of marketing.
00:22:20
Speaker
but Those two things are related, right? And they have made it so that politics has become consumer activity, right? And some of this is Some of this we have played into on the left, right? Some of this is like your move on.org, let's sign a petition, whatever. And it's like isolating and isolated as opposed to let's do activities together and form collectivities, form a sense of ourselves as a constituency and actually like struggle together versus let's click on stuff. Let's like participate in what is ultimately a market, right? And designed to be a market. So those are my two caveats about this.
00:22:58
Speaker
but But on the one hand, I'm like, look, this is the first time. And this was the case with Black Lives Matter before before the this moment of the genocide in Gaza that like we are able to see in real time stuff that is has historically been.
00:23:14
Speaker
locked out of the mainstream. And like the shift right now in the consensus on Israel in the United States is a huge example of that. That like the stuff that we're seeing out of Gaza right now is like more extreme, maybe more horrifying. But this has been the reality of of the Palestinian people for 75 years. And I think that we cannot deny the power of that, that that is huge and that cannot be suppressed. And I think that a lot of the regulations combined with this like stepping back from content moderation sort of like highlights, I think, a way in which
00:23:52
Speaker
The sort of like oligarchic powers that be are trying to figure out how to reassert control over the chaotic, messy human Internet, which in this country, unlike a lot of countries where you hear, oh, there's uprisings. And so the government turned off access to the Internet.
00:24:08
Speaker
Our infrastructure, the actual material infrastructure of the Internet in this country is basically impossible for them to just shut off with a switch. And so they need to come up with other ways to control the discourse, basically. And I think that's kind of what we're looking at there.
00:24:23
Speaker
And i think that, like, the other thing is when we're thinking and talking about how we relate to the internet and how we relate to, frankly, a live stream genocide on our phones twenty four seven interspersed with pictures of our friends' kids and puppies and whatever, is that, like...
00:24:44
Speaker
are weird little mammal brains are also just not set up for this shit, right? Being kind to ourselves. And again, to me, going back to Asha Ransby-Spaorn's point that politics is not what we watch, it's what we do, gives us, I think, a framework to be like, hey, actually, sometimes logging off is okay. Disengaging from politics is not okay.
00:25:05
Speaker
But logging off is okay. And that like recognizing that these systems are actually set up to flatten the affect of the content that we consume because a video of emaciated children in Gaza is basically given the same weight and the same value as some like weird cooking video is it is an affront to the senses for a reason. Right. And they're like that is actually your internal compass telling you something and that I don't know, even in the age of twenty four seven like cable TV news, you could still turn that off. You weren't carrying that around in your pocket.
00:25:42
Speaker
it There's something that is that it's it does to us that I think is really is really profound and dark, frankly. So, i don't know. To me, it's like we can't look away and also that like on a a larger level, we can't look away and we should not be looking away.
00:26:01
Speaker
But that just watching videos of human suffering is itself not activism. And I think we need to remember that, right? That like the questions that we need to be asking ourselves when we see a video of human suffering are, what are the systems of power that made this come to be that are allowing this to happen and are allowing this to continue? And
Podcast's Role in Amplifying Voices and Strategy
00:26:22
Speaker
that to me is also like fundamental to the work of Convergence that like we're trying to help folks understand What are the balance of forces that are invested in this continuing and protecting it?
00:26:33
Speaker
And why? Because i think that otherwise we can get really wrapped up in how dire everything feels. Because it does feel dire. Because it is Right. Right.
00:26:45
Speaker
You're touching upon, I think, like technologies of power and technologies of control, which is kind of a good segue to what my question is about AI.
00:26:55
Speaker
And circling back to Block and Build, I listened to that episode with Hagen Blix. Oh, yeah, he's great. AI and the fear of it Yeah, it was great. And it got me thinking about And I agree that this kind of anthropomorphized AI doomerism is probably overblown. I mean, I recently watched like the the robotics kind of Olympics or whatever at in China, and you can see like these like the robots couldn't really run themselves. Like there was a human that still needed to steer them or they were far from them really kind of taking over the world.
00:27:31
Speaker
But AI has already been used as a tool for repression for the state. You mentioned Palantir and increasingly ah tool of genocide for states and for corporations because corporations are like are profiting from it. It's kind of a hand in hand project.
00:27:48
Speaker
Do you think, though, And I guess this kind of brings back to your question before, is there possibilities of using AI for liberatory organizing? And if not, and I guess the question was you you were posing before is, well, why do we want that? Right. Knowing that AI essentially is kind of a is ah at this point and really a tool for corporate power, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, i mean, one of the things that I do think about this and it's helped me think a lot about this is i just want to point to my friend Alex Hanna, the podcast that she does with Dr. Emily M. Bender.
00:28:25
Speaker
called Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000, which is an incredible name for a podcast. But one of the things that they're trying to do is really poke holes in ai hype, because I think that you're right. Like a lot of the a lot of it is marketing. A lot of the attempt to make it seem like any of these algorithmic systems are all quote unquote intelligent is pure marketing.
00:28:47
Speaker
And a lot of the like sort of methods, the algorithmic methods, there they are in fact a lot older than this current moment of AI hype, right? Like a lot of AI is essentially spellcheck with a sort of like algorithmically generated language database, which actually makes it worse than spellcheck because it's not like edited by a human person. um And so disambiguating what it is that what we're talking about when we're talking about AI is I think part one, right? Being able to differentiate those different things, I think is really key. And the other thing is that a lot of the stuff that is most troubling is about these systems is they're also about sort of removing humans from decision making so that there's like plausible deniability about harm.
00:29:39
Speaker
And I think that's when we talk about AI being used in military context, we talk about the way that Israel, for instance, the IDF is using quote-unquote to identify targets. A lot of what they brag about is being able to identify more targets. So it's not actually about discernment, but it's about them being able to say, oh, the algorithm chose this for us.
00:30:01
Speaker
And so there's some air gapping between the decision to blow up a housing complex in Gaza and a human pulling a trigger, right? That there's like a ah sort supposedly more rational, more intelligent agent that is making the decision for us. And I think that first of all, it's bullshit. People design that algorithm, right? It's also bullshit. People chose to use the algorithm. And that the even if it's not about where to so fire missiles, the decisions that are made by AI for these corporations are in a lot of ways designed to elide decision-making and hide the ideology in a lot of ways behind those decisions. And I think that's something that we really need to be vigilant about.
00:30:51
Speaker
I think that technology is designed ultimately designed by people, right? And when we think about what things are used for, we also have to think about who designed those and to what ends and what were what are the things that benefit them.
00:31:06
Speaker
And yeah, it's like hard to say anything sort of like blanket about AI in that way because machine learning and like pattern recognition are useful tools, especially if you're using like really large databases. Like I know some people, some friends of mine who are like medical researchers who can go through larger databases of medical data and use...
00:31:27
Speaker
like those kinds of pattern recognition tools to great benefit for humanity. But we don't have to call that artificial intelligence because that's actually like a tool set that has been conceptualized and used since probably like the middle of the 20th century, frankly. But it's just like we have more computational power now.
00:31:45
Speaker
Yeah, it's really complicated. I do think that checking out Dr. Hannah and Dr. Bender's podcast is really great. They have a new book out also called The AI Con, which is fantastic. So... That's excellent.
00:31:55
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you so much for that. And what we're going to do now is take another pause here and shift into our third section when we come back from the break.
Avoiding Burnout in Activism
00:32:05
Speaker
And we're going to get a little bit personal with Kaden and a Goto, our kind of speed round questions. so join Power Beyond Pride after the break.
00:32:23
Speaker
Welcome back to Power Beyond Pride, a queer change making podcast. And I am your co-host Kenyon Farrell here with my other co-host, Daniel W.K. Lee.
00:32:35
Speaker
Yes. And we're going to take a little turn and get a little bit more personal in this segment. I wanted to know, being ah a pun magazine publisher, podcast host, and you've worked with multiple different organizations, what are some ways or habits that you practice to avoid burnout?
00:32:58
Speaker
Mm, such a good question. i mean, one of the things is like really just like finding community, whether that's in work, within work or outside of work. I run a very small team, but our editorial board is very engaged. And like, we have a couple members of our editorial board who are in their 70s, but not in a like,
00:33:17
Speaker
I'm resting on my laurels way. Like they've really kept up with politics. And so like their long view perspective has been so essential to me. Max Elbaum, our editorial board chair and often columnist for Convergence, he's he just turned 78 this summer and he's been in the struggle for since the sixties and is such an inspiration in that way.
00:33:39
Speaker
And then the other thing that I should plug is we co-founded the Movement Media Alliance and our colleagues in the Movement Media Alliance have been so essential to me not feeling isolated or like losing it a little bit that having folks like that to commiserate with is huge.
00:33:56
Speaker
And also, frankly, get a hobby. Like I play Magic the Gathering and my magic community is like so cool. It is just honestly, these people are incredible and they're like kind of like vital to my mental health, like having something to do that like I can completely unplug from the thing, the concerns of the day, the stresses of work, all kinds of stuff with them. So.
00:34:18
Speaker
Absolutely. I definitely recommend people having friends outside of the movement. but but For sure. And interests outside the movement. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, so we're going to move into our final round, which is our speed questions round, where we get to know you little bit better, Caden. So we'll ask you some questions that you don't get any time to think about. First answer pops into your head. Go with it. Right. So you ready?
00:34:46
Speaker
Leah, let's go. All right. All right. First question. When you're low on motivation, where or who do you go for inspiration? It's a really good question. Okay, so over the summer, I was, or actually i guess in the spring, was finally diagnosed with ADHD.
00:35:01
Speaker
And it turns out a lot of my low motivation is just ADHD burnout. And honestly, a lot of the techniques around sort of dopamine loading are really big for me. That like sometimes when I'm like, I can't focus on anything, I don't know what's going on.
00:35:14
Speaker
Going outside, taking a walk around the block is actually huge, right? It sounds so corny. And it's the kind of thing where I'm always like, I'm too cool for this, but we all just have human bodies. And there's a reason that this shit works. is that It's a just that quick hit of, like i did something concrete.
00:35:31
Speaker
I moved my body. Huge. Really big game changer. That's great. Great. So what's one thing that you're surprisingly good at? Oh, surprisingly good at. Well, one thing that this is like another of my little hobbies that keeps me sane is weightlifting. So not powerlifting, but like Olympic weightlifting.
00:35:55
Speaker
And it surprised me because I was never an athletic kid. I was like very much like the kind of kid who was like, I'm going to pretend I don't have a body. I'm a brain in a jar, but I'm very good at clean a jerk.
00:36:07
Speaker
Yeah. I remember when I first started actually doing like deadlifts, like for serious. I'm like, oh, i actually like these. Surprisingly. Feels good. It turns out. Yeah. Yeah.
00:36:18
Speaker
All right. Next. Do you have a specific spot in your home where you feel the most productive? Well, this is my living room and i like this desk setup has been really great for me. I have a window right here so I can like see the sunlight, see the street.
00:36:34
Speaker
But the other place that I am very productive is my kitchen table. I'm a big kitchen table, spread it all out, spread out books, spread out papers kind of person. And I also do a lot of reading there. I like to, I'm, I cannot, I'm the kind of person who I need to do something else while I'm eating. i can't just eat a meal quietly. need to do, so again, ADHD.
00:36:55
Speaker
So I've started leaving paper books next to where I eat my meals. I've read so many books this year, y'all. It turns out just being able to read five or six pages while eating lunch, you get through a book pretty fast.
00:37:09
Speaker
Yeah. Love that. Love that table. All right. So what's your favorite podcast? And I will just say quickly, no pressure to name your own nor this one. Well, i try to free too yeah I try not to listen to my own podcast because like some does this ever happen to you where you listen to your own voice and you're like, who is that person?
00:37:29
Speaker
No, I don't have that problem. Oh my God. I struggle so much to listen to my own voice. There's a couple that I find myself going back to time and time again. And my fun one is Gastropod, the pod about the science and history of food. It's so interesting. I learn about really interesting stuff every single week from the hosts and they're constantly finding...
00:37:50
Speaker
Stuff about colonialism and food and like technology and food. And you really, i mean, they go deep on a lot of neat stuff. And I don't know, I just think food is the thing that brings us all together. And in terms of political podcasts, I really love Kelly Hayes' Movement Memos. but That's one of my go-tos.
00:38:08
Speaker
Two podcasts I'm not familiar with. So that's very cool. um What's your favorite way to spend an evening with friends? Well, I did mention that I play Magic the Gathering. So we are in my local magic community. We're really into cube draft, which is like you curate a big list of cards and then like people take turns picking cards from pre-made packs. So really my ideal evening involves probably pizza or tacos and beer and drafting with my friends. and so Yeah. What's a historical moment in LGBTQ history that you find particularly impactful?
00:38:43
Speaker
This is a great question. i don't know. I've been thinking a lot about ACT UP lately. i think maybe for obvious reasons between the pandemic, between anniversaries, whatever. But ah the more that I learn about the work that ACT UP did in the sort of height of the AIDS crisis, the more inspired I am.
00:39:02
Speaker
by that sort of vision and the like willingness to put your body on the line in a really high-risk way. And I think RFK Jr. taking over Health and Human Services and everything that's going on with the CDC and all that kind of stuff is has made that history feel more... i just feel like we need to talk about it more because of the changes that are happening in those government agencies that queer people fought really hard to make more equitable and more just.
00:39:29
Speaker
And now this man is coming in and ruining it. oh Yeah. Yeah. Act Up was so effective and they're so instructive. Anyone kind of want to like in your face, occupying space, politics with demands and everything. i think I...
00:39:50
Speaker
Anytime someone, a queer person says, oh, I've not seen How to Survive how to survive a Plague, I'm like, gotta see it you have to watch it. You have to watch it. And also thinking about the ways in which, like, ACT UP was the center of this, but there was so much other work that was happening.
00:40:05
Speaker
Whether it was like mutual aid, taking care of folks who are really sick and dying of AIDS or using arts and culture like here in the Bay, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, like to reach people to talk about what was going on. That like that moment is such a like under we under I think we under discuss it now, but there there are a lot of folks who are younger.
00:40:27
Speaker
of like Gen Z folks who really don't know a lot about the AIDS crisis. I think a lot about how being a teenager in the 90s and early 2000s, like we grew up with knowledge of AIDS and like being worried about it. But like kids now, it's like prep is everywhere. Right.
00:40:43
Speaker
And i think that that history needs to be revisited right now in a big way.
Long-term Perspective in Social Movements
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, certainly. What's a specific moment of solidarity that you've experienced within your community that really impressed you?
00:40:59
Speaker
This is also a really great question. i i do think a lot about the sort of like moment right after October 7th when people were starting to come together in direct action groups here in the Bay.
00:41:13
Speaker
Um, for to end the genocide in Gaza. And that one of the things I love about direct action is the way in which people form into sort of affinity groups that are often based on identity. And I found myself hitting the streets again with a lot of folks who I had done direct action with the sort of like mid-2010s around Black Lives Matter, who are like Asian Americans who are like, no, we have a stake in racial justice and we're really clear about that.
00:41:42
Speaker
And like also then being like Asian Americans who are like, we understand what it means to be in U.S. empire. Like a lot of the reason that a lot of our people are in the United States is because of U.S. empire and being able to stand up in that way for Palestinians, for people in Gaza was like one of the and a lot of those people are also queer. Right. like It's just like these things are all feel all connected.
00:42:12
Speaker
but And then the deepening connections that I found through that work with jewish kind of queer Jewish comrades that like we have a lot in common, in East Asian Americans and Jewish Americans, to be honest, both in terms of like our experiences of assimilation, our experiences of colonization, and like what brought us the U.S. in the first place.
00:42:32
Speaker
And that's been really inspiring to me. Very cool. And I think on the subject of activism and solidarity, past, present, and maybe future, this podcast is called Power Beyond Pride. And something that we'd like to ask all our guests is, what does Power Beyond Pride mean to you?
00:42:48
Speaker
To me, Power Beyond Pride is really about, like, how do we become, as queer people, how do we become part of a governing majority in this country that puts us on the path to really like reckoning with the stuff that we need to reckon with. my my My personal analysis and Convergence's analysis is that like we're, this is part, what we're living through right now is part of a coordinated backlash against the gains of the civil rights movement and before it, the gains of the labor movement in the 30s and 40s, right? And so if we're looking at a moment where
00:43:26
Speaker
The far right has taken damn near a century to put into motion the systems and processes that are now harming our communities, driving us apart, kidnapping people off the street, making it impossible for trans people to exist in public.
00:43:41
Speaker
We need to have an equally long view. about what it might take for those of us who are committed to justice, to equality, to frankly living on a livable planet in the future and stopping climate change, that like we need to take as seriously that kind of long view that in everything that we do. It's not to say that everything we do needs to be about pointing at that 50 or 100 year horizon, but that like power is something that is built, is cultivated, and that
00:44:13
Speaker
Just because we're losing a specific fight right now doesn't mean that we cannot be oriented towards that long view and like changing culture more deeply.
00:44:26
Speaker
And to me, that's that ultimately is really what power in general is about. It's like, how do we do that? How do we re-envision what society is? And we're up against a lot, right?
00:44:36
Speaker
It's going to take more than i think what we are used to giving to the movement to win right now. Yeah, for sure.
Concluding Thoughts and Listener Engagement
00:44:43
Speaker
Like orchestrating a reorientation is a kind of long term project that is that is worthwhile taking.
00:44:50
Speaker
And my final question or our final question is we like letting or leaving our listeners with an actionable point. So what is one tip you have for advocates or activists who are in a moment of feeling disempowered?
00:45:07
Speaker
I think a lot about one of my sort of like movement ancestors, movement luminaries, Grace Lee Boggs, who was really dedicated to reflection as part of the process of taking action.
00:45:20
Speaker
And that I do think that with the sort of non-profitization of a lot of movement work, there's been our big focus on output, output, output. And i also think the political conditions make us feel like we need to act to act. But part of the reason that I started working at Convergence and I think Convergence is such an essential project is doing that reflection that Grace was always telling people to do.
00:45:45
Speaker
Like you always need to take a step back at the end of a campaign, whether it was a win or a loss. You need to take a step back. Think about what you learned, what you're going to do different next time, what it may have revealed about the enemy, um how you have become stronger through the process, whether it was a win or a loss. And that that kind of reflection is actually what fortifies us for the long run, because it teaches us, again, that there is a much longer horizon than a single Supreme Court decision, a single bill being passed. And that by learning from what happens, whether that's out in the world or something that we're acting on, we are able to fortify ourselves and think more deeply about that long game.
00:46:29
Speaker
Absolutely. And with that, we're out of time for the podcast. Thank you so much, Caden Mock, for joining us. definitely would love to have you back. You're so erudite and have so many ah great ideas that you're sharing with us. i know you're thinking you're rambling, but I think you're really nourishing our listeners. um Where can people follow you or get hear about your work?
00:46:54
Speaker
Well, it was totally delight to talk to you both today. i really had a good time. Folks can find Convergence at convergencemag.com. And we're on most of the social media sites. We're not really on Twitter slash X. We post a lot on Instagram.
00:47:09
Speaker
And you can follow me on Instagram at Catacresis, C-A-T-A-C-H-R-E-S-I-S. And same username on Blue Sky.
00:47:21
Speaker
I try to check in now and then there, but I got a lot going on, so.
00:47:27
Speaker
So with that, we want to thank you again, Caden, for being with us today. And again, everyone can follow Caden on those social ah channels, convergencemag.com. I can't quite repeat the IG one, but we'll probably place those in the show notes so people will get access to them regardless. So thank you once again. I'm your co-host, Kenyon Farrell, and you can find me on all social media just at my name, at Kenyon Farrell.
00:47:54
Speaker
And i'm your co-host, Daniel W.K. Lee, poet, author, and jack-o'-lantern fanatic. And you can follow me at strongplum on upscrolled as I continue to wean myself off of meta.
00:48:07
Speaker
ah Remember to subscribe and get your friends to subscribe to Power Beyond Pride on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts or whatever you're listening this podcast.
00:48:18
Speaker
And check out our site at powerbeyondpride.com. Power Beyond Pride is a project from A Great Idea, queer-owned design and content agency. Learn more about them at agreatidea.com.
00:48:32
Speaker
This episode is produced by Maddie Bynum, who is also our project developer. Our editor is Jared Redding, with support from Ian Wilson. We are both part of this podcast's awesome host team, and we invite you to send in your questions and comments at powerbeyondpride.com.
00:48:49
Speaker
And check out our new episodes each week. We look forward to Queer Change of Anything with you next time. Thank you from all of us at Power Beyond Pride.