Mutiny and "Elections" at Direct Action Everywhere.

this is a reaction video most reaction
videos are like dumb mainstream Hollywood movies or TV show there's nothing this is a reaction video to a political document a PDF signed by about 30 people 35 people some of that former members of the activist Network direct action everywhere I have a whole playlist of videos on this channel talking about the politics of direct action everywhere to what extent it's a good thing or a bad thing for veganism etc so my girlfriend your just said to me I will probably have more to say about this than she doesn't this video I feel like I already said everything I had to say about the right to action if we're it's a playlist you can click below you can check it out I mean some of my videos about them are intelligent some of them are less intelligent gonna say it like every video I made about the most great but I've had some intelligent things to say I feel like I saw this coming I called this years ago and that this is a pulp so ok the document is a mutiny document about trying to change the loot trying to kick out the leaders if your actors never and for that purpose stating what kinds of things they've been doing wrong what the problem is leadership have been it's kind of kind of stays we have to make these changes or else yeah old to pay well the problem is if you making the organization if you walk out in certain organization promised money and the one word you will not find in this document is money I think this talking was honest about many things but money was not one of them right so I mean all these disgruntled people who hate the leadership ready action ever why don't they just walk down the street start a new organization oh right you're right going allocating money for court fees right and the other one was that move to Berkeley campaign right so how do people to Berkeley and then found that they had difficulty paying for housing well they move to Berkeley in order to be a part of this movement or to be part of its steering committee or part of an executive level and once you move there you find surviving in Berkeley California it's not so easy so I obviously I don't think there was just for thought put into that like what was the responsibility the organization you know are you just inviting someone in the sense that you invite a friend oh hey I'm moving to Berkeley so you should move or were you actually kind of destroying people's lives they were coerced or you know they were they were promised compensation well it was clear from documents a whole that if you didn't move to the San Francisco Bay Area your opinion couldn't count you couldn't have control so I don't know if I'd say coerced but anyway now I mean okay so one thing it's not that I'm so money it's also not honest many people involved with TXE have talked to me about the cult-like aspects of the group so the emotional aspects and I don't even fault them for that I've talked about that in this channel for years - right I talked about like you know you have people willing to make financial service sacrifices willing to make financial sacrifices for a certain kind of lifestyle to be in a certain kind of community and then you start getting cold like aspects that creep in and I consider things you know what I mean and remember these are these are real people so we got we're doing this live stream and people are agreeing yeah Berkeley is really expensive but anyway look I remember I watched documentary about a hindu cult group so they were white people who converted to Hinduism in the United States and won that cult finally fell to pieces and was shut down and when it all fell apart one of the things they said in interviews was look we made all these sacrifices just to live in a community of like-minded people they just wanted to be other around other people that's a powerful thing for most human beings of course when kids are involved and workers involved and money's involved you know you want to raise your kids or on other people with the same values and whether that's because you're a white person who converted to Hinduism or veganism or whatever it is so I actually say that well simply I don't use it as like a shallow insult to say that well cult-like elements you give people something to believe in they start believing in it they start committing their time and effort and money and you start getting some cult like yeah one of the main problems mentioned in that in that section was that the chapters that the former members were part of members were part of to end they moved to Berkeley the those former chapters disintegrated after they love but yeah there were the other thing that is kind of quote like is the love bombing yes that's a cult term sure I had not heard of it but basically when there's conflict or somebody has a complaint waingro would talk to them and say hey Todd let's talk as a friend and or or they would he would compliment them and you know say what a great contributor they're the movement but in reality he's trying to get a confession out of them that he can use to kick them out of the group or condemn them or yeah um look I do not think Wayne Siong is very bright I don't and my opinion of his intelligence is partly based on his recordings podcasts videos but it's mostly based on reading his essays reading his writing and most of the behavior they tribute to Wayne here I don't really think of as kind of like manipulative or scheming I just think it's stupid and it's my it's my opinion and the stupidity of this group which I took the series as a warning years ago I said look they are lying to you and they are lying to themselves in claiming the what he's in charge they claimed they had horizontal leadership and that nobody's in charge and the first crack in that facade was when they had this sexual exploitation what's the worse candle sexual assault scandal okay now what actually happened with this scandal we're never gonna know right like yeah but there's no point in us talking about there are insiders you know the whole thing but there was there were a number of scandals and the hilarious thing to me was at that time they were so maintaining this facade that nobody was in charge they would even response because I was talking I was trying to do interviews with leaders and they were right back and said look I'm interest talking to leaders of the group on my youtube channel positively you know and the rep I can say there are no leaders and this is not a group they would say direct action everywhere is a fully horizontal Network and that's all it is so like a Facebook group nobody's in charge nobody's a leader nobody's a follower that's this kind of claim that it's just people communicating who all happened to be vegan activist and as soon as the sex scandal happened it was you have to be blind they said they were immediately said no no no don't worry we have this hierarchy we have some people who are leaders and some people who are followers some people are in charge and these people will have to answer for their misconduct to those people and so this whole bureaucratic top-down structure was revealed that apparently before they'd been in denial about you know so to me at that stage everything that's wrong this organization is obvious and also it really is a one-man dictatorship or life organization Wayans Young is the dictator and his girlfriend priya is the network she's referred to as the mother of the organisation on their websites and so on the momma bear the organization nobody elected them and they just had so just a couple of days ago less than two weeks ago they had elections that this document explains were rigged or supported or not legitimate not against the rules they broke they broke their own rules so keep in mind we're not we're not applying United Nations standards here or something DXE broke their own rules their own procedures in terms of this election yeah yeah you're supposed to announce at two weeks and in advance this one was only one week in advance we didn't have all the members it was a private meeting you guys can read the PDF if you want to know every detail but yeah this yeah and also Dwayne had kind of shut down every possible source of debate including shutting down email groups he had prevented other people from running against him in the election they had refused to allow people to have the status of so-called global members which is basically their Parliament level their height their executive level members so there was a lot of bullying intimidation and as they say here overly centralized control but this is coming from a musician that used to deny look though the thing with denial yeah that's parallel with just that the issue of finances with them just denying and there have been these debates on the Internet in podcast format or what have you would they just deny that money is an issue and you know even in his debate with Gary France aione he just said no no there is no money nobody donates anything in France he only said backed and what are you talking about I've been to your website there's a big red button that says donate now and they receive donations from peda people people with Ethical Treatment of Animals and then they deny that they've received the donations and nobody knows where the money goes nobody's honest who's getting paid they do not have a form 990 the only if you're an American citizen do you know the term form 990 but in general charities post public information in terms of form 990 you actually don't have to if you're below a certain number of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year but still it's expected that charities have that type of public accountability and they do not and I've written to them asking for it and I had a wrote to an insider who I knew through Facebook and asked her look take this to Wayne take this to leadership why is there nothing like a formula why is something resembling it like maybe not every detail but where is the money coming from where is it going who's making a salary under this and who isn't because I don't even resent that Wayne makes a salary out of this I think most people donating money to this group accept the idea that the leaders make a salary but you should have the same transparency that that petaa has peda has that level of transparency so yeah and this document as a measures were honest so many things but not one so I was already sorry I said before I feel like I don't have a lot to say because I said it and I saw it all coming I think I mean for both of us I've talked about in this channel for years activism means different things to different people and for me right now one form of activism I can do is publishing a children's book to parole veganism it shows very clearly explicitly about veganism we're getting an illustrator we're getting a publisher and we're doing the whole the whole nine yards for a lot of people in their minds Street protests are kind of the sign of purity in activism we saw you looking at stuff like Julie carb strong it's a lot of unexamined adulation for the street protest but what this shows is there's nothing pure about that they lied also I already had videos of us they lied about arrests we have videos and websites where they claim nobody's ever been arrested which is a lie people are getting arrested in the United States hiring a lawyer to plead your case is not cheap of whether it's criminal charges or otherwise there are people facing the legal consequences of DXE products of direct action over protests and in at least one case that we know about shall we say through it's from the horse's mouth from people talking to us somebody was promised by the repetition of aware that the organization would pay for their illegal fees and then the organization did not do so now I don't want to speculate as to why other people have told us speculation as well but regardless of the reason even if there were good reasons which I doubt that that that's destroying people's lives I mean long story short this work was so you participated in this protest for veganism now you're bankrupted trying to pay for your own legal defense writing a children's book as advantages it's pretty clear from this document you know what they allege makes it clear that it's not legit form of we think an organization emergent leadership what what is emergent leadership it means nobody has a clear explanation for why Twain is in charge or why Wayne can utilize early you know shut things down and cancel things and whatever yeah so if you say democracy everyone knows what the market means you say transparency and accountability we know what those things mean but emergent leadership seems to be a kind of 21st century fashionable term for nobody knows why some people are more important than others it just emerged that way yeah all right so I find that very menacing yeah and how we basically ousted people who could have been in leadership roles that threatened his you know credibility I guess well you know but bottom line you know I've said before people think about stupidity like an obstacle like a rock on the road like something you got to move around or deal with and stupidity is not something inert and heavy and immobile I think stupidity is something fast-moving and destructive and dangerous it's less like a rock on the road it's more like a fire in an office waste paper basket you know if you don't manage it and control it sudden like it's a control people like Wayne from my perspective are dangerous not because they're evil and not because they have bad intentions I really don't I think Wayne has good intentions I really do you know I don't think he was scheming any of this stuff like he brewed this document each one of these ridiculous conflicts I'm sure he was thought he was doing the best for the for the organization and for veganism therefore nails he's stupid he's stupid and stupidity is dangerous and when you have stupidity in a position of power and authority unquestioned Authority Authority people can't question Kenny it's really dangerous and things go down don't know quick the the great thing is I said this in criticizing txt and of another heading before you know I said well why would you protest the Bernie Sanders lecture yeah you know what I mean why not write your own lecture hall have your own life you don't mean this this kind of thing this is a feature of democracy disrupting yes I've had film clips of that on my channel both Sanders and Hillary yeah yeah another thing people were going to jail for the Nathan's hot dog eating contest right yeah they were saying that that didn't get as much attention as what was happening in the Berkeley yes just because of their focus in their social media group on Berkeley who's who's gonna make that decision right I mean you can who decides what's on the YouTube channel yeah I mean that's ultimately what that's about right so people want to feel famous i I'm not even hating but that's obviously in the 21st century if you have a political group of that size those are gonna be this who's on the Instagram page who's on the YouTube channel how you gonna decide that through emergent leadership yes I'm sure for a lot of people that's a real dispute they say hey I've worked really hard to make this day of action this protest this event or maybe it's okay so I went to prison because of this event I didn't even get on the YouTube channel sure I mean cell rapes but I that would really create bitterness and meanwhile some other event that happened to be in Berkeley California is on the YouTube channel on Instagram and it's they didn't do as much work people will resent the hell out of that so yeah that's a real 21st century activism problem that's not in what was that book Sol olinsky's most for radicals rules for radicals does not cover how to run your YouTube page your social media you don't give aid yeah yeah but obviously some of the conflicts with this about this kind of stuff anyway if the leader of an organization is stupid what we have here in this cumin is evidence of an attempted coup d'etat attempted mutiny against the leadership but most of the time people just vote with their feet you just say okay well I'll join peda instead I'll start my own organizations there's people that you know they basically Zoe's that were kicked out so easily there were they didn't have a choice Wayne kicked them out yeah anyway look I'm you know uh so what what this is like the tragedy of veganism is to 2017 you have 1,000 isolated angry individuals at keyboards making angry comments on Facebook and the question is how can you organize them into groups of 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or a thousand and actually make something positive and the answer is not this direct actually everywhere is is an example I think an instructive example of how not to do it how you should do it would be a topic for for another video but la I said this in other videos who was giving someone specific specific advice on a specific group okay and I can see my own experience when I was in Victoria's in Victoria there was a small vegan activist group and I really did disagree with leadership on things but the leadership I recognized they had done all the hard work to build up this group so I wasn't gonna try to take it away from them or challenge them for me I was like okay look I got it both with my feet excited I said look basically the guy who's the dictator for this group he he's the one putting in all the long hours so I'm you know I'm not gonna try to take his take his position away from him or even challenge his voice in this group he wants to act out his little power trip fantasy let him do it I got you know we'll just walk away but sure for some people DXE is the only game in town so that if they walk away they're all alone there wasn't some other activist group for them too or if they're kicked out and shunned and bad but it was talking about gas lighting and stuff to talk about you know bad basically bad-mouthing people group because it looks like they have chapters all over you know yeah at the bottom of the PDF there were a lot of signatures in a lot of different cities so I don't know this is basically bad-mouthing the leadership especially Beverly the three people in charge of the top obviously a lot of people with good into what we talk to that one guy via Skype or would I read you know he quit two years ago though because he saw how the group was getting worse and worse but sure a book put it this way I'm sure for a lot of activists DXE will be a formative influence in their lives even if they were involved for only a few weeks or a few months and then quit where they look at that and probably true positive lessons from it and negatives I'm sure for a lot of people pedo was like that probably some people were involved with petaa for only a few months and then said wow they don't want to be involved you know but for some people coming up I've just I said I could never be a member of a group like that where I regard the leadership as stupid and dangerous that's how I regard Wayne's Young and everything I read from including his essays and his debates with Terry Francona and stuff I I can't do it you know what I mean and as I say I it's to me like I don't mean it just as like a lo caddy personal and so there's like no this is a real problem you know you have to have leaders who are reliable and accountable and intelligent and admirable you know its leadership in something like veganism it's it's demanding in some ways and not another look I've said in other videos too like we got a stop feeling sorry for ourselves unlike the leaders of the lotion revolution none of these people are living in caves wings Young is is living in Berkeley California I think in luxury I don't think any these people are living in poverty or living in the jungle or living in a cave or what have you none of them you know none of them are suffering they always like to compare themselves this is the founding mandate of DXE they compare themselves to the abolition of slavery leaders of those kinds of movements well you didn't fight in a civil war you know your heart you aren't fighting in a slave rebellion and like the rebellions in the history of Haiti or something no you know keep it in perspective all this is kind of you know kids stuff compared to real political movements and there's your the world but sure nevertheless for the role the leader it can't be Wayans young it can't be Gary Yourofsky it can't be durianrider these these really are the examples we've been dealing with so whatever the features whatever the way is to get vegans to move past isolated individuals to groups of 10 20 50 100 eating this and hey look let's let's throw in the positive contrast meanwhile quietly PCRM Physicians Committee for Responsible medicine they're taking over they're winning they're taking over the world maybe they're taking over the future of the movement guys like John McDougall quietly they're not in the street protein it's just a different paradigm and they're making they're making a big difference making an impact so I do hope people learn from what the positive and negative of direct action everywhere but let's also learn from PCRM let's learn from John McDougall let's learn from the whole range of what's going on just the last 10 years and for me you guys can check out the playlist you won't hear more but yeah long story short I do see to our connection everywhere is much more of a negative example than a positive one that's a wrap