Episode 5 – Izzy Hernandez: Environmental Racism, Mutual Aid, and Disability Justice
In this episode Charlie talks with Izzy Hernandez, a two-spirit indigenous sailor and mutual aid organizer with Houston Food Not Bombs, about environmental racism, disability justice, and what it means to care for community at the margins of the state. Izzy shares how growing up along the Gulf Coast near petrochemical infrastructure shaped their understanding of how industrial pollution and systemic inequality produce disability and harm – disproportionately in Black and brown communities. They also discuss anarchism as a framework for care, the criminalization of feeding unhoused people, and why the sick and disabled community is – whether it opts in or not – a fugitive community existing beyond the state. The conversation moves through pollution, survival, solidarity, and what it looks like to build collective futures from the ground up.
Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/xNyUgKFeA0w
Topics we discuss:
Environmental racism and industrial zoning
Disability as a product of systemic harm
The Gulf Coast as a sacrifice zone
Mutual aid vs. the nonprofit industrial complex
Anarchism and community care
The criminalization of feeding unhoused people
Capitalism, hyper-individualism, and the nuclear family
Disability, the state, and fugitive community
Liberatory disabled futures
Episode 5 Transcript:
Charlie: Hey, everyone. I'm Charlie Moses, founder of Sick Futures Collective and host of this podcast, The Future is Sick. Today I'm joined by someone I think the absolute world of. Just a truly amazing person who I am very, very grateful to have as a friend. And that is Izzy Hernandez. So Izzy is a sailor in the Gulf as well as a mutual aid organizer. Through their work with Houston Food Not Bombs, Izzy helps feed and support unhoused communities and participates in local direct action efforts focused on things like care and solidarity and survival. Izzy saw his loved ones develop chronic illness and cancer from environmental exposure, and that shaped Izzy's understanding of how environmental racism, policy neglect, systemic inequality produce disability and harm.
I'm really, really excited to have Izzy here for this conversation. So here we go. Without further ado, let's get into it.
Hi, Izzy. Welcome to The Future is Sick Podcast…
Izzy: Hi, Charlie.
Charlie: Yeah, it's good to see you.
Izzy: Thanks for having me. It's always good to see you.
Charlie: Yeah. Likewise. Yeah. Izzy and I are good friends, so it's… It'll be, it'll be a fun one today. To get started, would you mind introducing yourself – like your name and your pronouns, where you're based? The kind of stuff you're involved in and get up to right now.
Izzy: Yeah. My name is Izzy. I'm he/they – a two spirit indigenous person from Houston, Texas. Mostly I participate with feeding and helping the unhoused with the resources, whether that employment or transportation. That’s my main focus at the moment. And then, of course, helping with Sick Futures Collective and reaching out to disabled people here in Houston and in neighboring cities to let them know that we exist and we're a safe space to share art and just hang out and speak to other people that are going through similar circumstances and situations.
Charlie: Awesome. Great. Thank you. Also, yeah, just thank you for your work in general with everything that you do. I know that also in addition to all of that, you are a sailor in the Gulf.
Izzy: Yeah. Blue collar worker.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, truly…
Izzy: Just blood money.
Charlie: But like really, truly impressive work. Just knowing that you're, like, out on a boat for days and days in a row every week. Is… It like… my mind can't really truly compute it.
Izzy: It's like, it's like microdosing prison, honestly.
Charlie: Hahaha
Izzy: You're just, like, in the middle of the sea with no access to land, surrounded by a bunch of other men.It's great. It's great. Hahaha.
Charlie: Perfect.
Izzy: Love it. And would never… wouldn't do anything else. Well, it's actually… that actually used to be like the option back in the day when you were caught committing crimes – you were either sent to the military or sent to the merchant marine to work on the ships. Those are your options if you don’t want to go to prison.
Charlie: Oh my God. Okay.
Izzy: Because they were all equally terrible. Yeah, because they were all equally awful. For me, I chose to do it willingly. Just, you know, recreational suffering.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. What does that say about you?
Izzy: Yeah. Of course. It's, too many things.
Charlie: Yeah. Incredible. Like, I guess with, like, you know, balancing the mutual aid work that you do and with just, like, trying to live and survive as a human being in the world, at any given time, and then with your work-work, like… I would say, where do your worlds, if ever, overlap or collide or come together in any way? Or do you like to keep things as siloed as you possibly can?
Izzy: Oh, completely different. Like, I don't speak to my coworkers outside of work. I don't involve my job with anything else I do.
Charlie: Yeah
Izzy: Because that's like my livelihood. That's like what pays my bills and keeps me fed and helps me take care of the people around me that I care for.
Charlie: That makes all the sense in the world.
Izzy: Yeah. It's actually kind of professional about it. That's a lot of professionalism that's really rare for me to do.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah! That's super professional of you haha. What was it like growing up along the Gulf Coast, especially near industrial sites and the petrochemical infrastructure that's there? Like how… how has.
Izzy: Pretty… pretty terrible, pretty awful honestly. A lot of oppression. A lot of pollution. A whole lot of chemical leaks, a whole lot of gas leaks, a whole lot of refineries. And, like, plants exploding. Constant threat of exposure to… there was, like, five different chemical leaks I can remember where we had to, stay indoors when I was younger growing up. Right, because of our proximity.
Charlie: Totally. And, like, as if just closing your doors and windows is gonna…
Izzy: That's pretty much what they told us. On the news was, “Just do that and don’t go outside.” But like, all the air is filtered through the AC units and through the windows and everything. So I'm like, we're getting exposed no matter what. This is just like a false sense of security.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: For people not to panic. But I remember that from like, I think the first time I went through that, I was like 6 or 7, and my dad just said, “Go to bed. And they said you can go to school tomorrow, so just go to bed. Don't go outside. Keep the window shut.”
Charlie: Oh my gosh. And then like the next day, it's fine for you to just like, go outside and walk to the...
Izzy: Yeah. It's it's like, “Oh yeah, it's all gone. It's all clear. The wind took it away.” Of course. That's to tell you what they want… what they need to tell you.
Charlie: Yeah. It's… I'm just remembering, like, back… I don't know, maybe it was in, like in the 60s or 70s or something where there was a slogan that was like, dilution is the solution to pollution. Like…
Izzy: Oh god, that's so harmful.
Charlie: Yeah. If you're just, like, diluting it out in the ocean or in the air…
Izzy: Yeah. No, that's.. that's completely false, because I was talking to older captains that are like… that started working out there like in the 70s. And one of them told me he fell overboard. And because he fell overboard in the Houston Ship Channel, they took him straight to the hospital because his entire body was covered in chemical burns from all the polluted water.
Charlie: Oh my god.
Izzy: And they told him… the doctor told them, “You see that stuff on your skin? That water went inside of you. So you're burned on the inside, too.”
Charlie: Uuuurgh, yeah.
Izzy: Because the entirety of the Houston Ship Channel was deemed a sacrifice zone. Like, nothing can grow. Nothing can be eaten there. Everyone's exposed to so many chemicals. Like it has… there's an increased rate of chances to get cancer just living near the ship channel.
Charlie: Right.
Izzy: And our life expectancy is like 20% lower against the average.
Charlie: Oh my God, 20% is a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. That's crazy.
Izzy: It's a lot.
Charlie: Do you know how long that ship channel stretch is? Like, how many miles?
Izzy: Oooo, yeah, it's like, at least like 60 to 70 miles down from the mouth from where the jetties are starting in Galveston all the way up to the city docks in Houston, it's like, by boat, it's about… at least an 8 to 9 hour trip. By car it's about an hour and a half from Galveston to the bend of the Houston Ship Channel. So yeah, it's about 60 to 80 miles total. All in all, it's all it's all heavily industrialized, and there's refineries and warehouses and plants and just ships all over the place. And just that mass amount of transit of ships, the ships pollute a lot too. They pollute a lot of exhaust.
Charlie: Yeah, I mean it just has me thinking… I've talked to you about my grandpa the
Izzy: The Plugger…
Charlie: The Plugger! Haha yeah, my grandpa was this like infamous fisherman in the Gulf and had this massive reputation for, you know, catching so many fish all the time. He owned a tackle shop for a while, made his own lures, all that stuff. But, yeah, I mean, just thinking about fishing in the Gulf for decades and decades and decades. And that's like, you know what my dad and his siblings were getting fed with and that…
Izzy: Yeah, the Gulf is pretty filthy, especially if he was fishing anywhere, like inside of Galveston or like Texas City, because all of that… there's signs all over the place along the ship channel waterways that said, do not consume the fish. Because they're so heavily radiated and full of chemicals.
Charlie: Yeah. Dude, it's it's wild. I mean I really think that people who aren't living in proximity or who aren't in states that are in proximity to the petrochemical plants really don't truly get or can't quite wrap their heads around, just how prominent it is – that it's like no matter where you live in Houston, like you can.. you know, but a stone's throw away.
Izzy: Yeah. And even then that has cascading consequences that affect the entire world, just because of industrialization. I mean, you can't even drink rainwater anymore. It's not safe to drink it.
Charlie: Right… right.
Izzy: And the fish are all full of mercury, which is how civilization survives this long off rainwater, because it was nature's way of filtering out everything pretty much.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, how can you describe, like… I mean, in talking about what you went through when you were six and then probably like every other year after that, having to essentially lock yourself indoors to try and stay safe from…
Izzy: They haven't had a lock in in a while. I think they’re just like, “Oh these kids… these people have lived so long… they have like an immunity, so when we get leaks out, don't even tell them anymore.” I think the last time they notified us about a leak was like, I think I was probably 19 or 20, and they just said, “Oh, just try to avoid this area as much as you can.” They didn't say… they didn't like block it off or anything. They just said, “Just try not to hang out there too long.”
Charlie: God… it’s so…
Izzy: Because it was a leak of benzene.
Charlie: Haha, great.
Izzy: Yeah.
Charlie: It's wild. I mean, and just understanding the way that that kind of exposure disables people and how quickly it can disable people. It's like…
Izzy: Oh, yeah.
Charlie: You know, if you have any underlying or genetic predisposition to autoimmune disease, that stuff just flips the switch on for you.
Izzy: Oh, it just absolutely destroys you. And then like the thing about that entire area is the majority of people who live there are black and brown people.
Charlie: Of course.
Izzy: Because it's all like, it's all the blue collar workers, all the lower income families. That's where they have a lot of the section eight housing. And those are historical neighborhoods that have been inhabited by black and brown people for like, the last 60, 70 years. So they've always been victim to it. And that's why especially in Houston it's a higher chance of disability among black and brown people.
Charlie: Mhm big time. I mean, and this is something to that like I've talked about with other medical anthropologists where there's… you know, there's like a way to kind of like… I don't know. It's like you can't really move entire massive generational communities of people. Like if people are like if you know, it's so bad, why don't you just leave? And it’s like…
Izzy: Yeah, that's just that's such a privileged take.
Charlie: Exactly. Yeah. I think it's like… it's really important to talk about why it's such a privileged thing for people to be like, “Why don’t you…”
Izzy: Oh 100%. Yeah, cause II mean either they're… either the family owns a house, which is rare here, especially among people of color for their family to even own homes or own property.
Charlie: Yep.
Izzy: A lot of times, it's close to the job that their parents do or their family does, or they have family members. Are they caregiving for other elderly people that are already disabled in the family? So it's really hard for us to move because we're very family centric. Or if someone's sick or someone's disabled, we don't.. we can't afford medical care or like to send them to some hospice or anything. We care for each other. And then a lot of people follow their parents’ footsteps. Their parents work at this factory. They're going to work at the factory. That's very common too. So like, to uproot is to pretty much rip themselves out of the life that they built, the life that their family has built. It's a very hard thing to do. And it's also like just deemed very selfish, which a lot of people aren't selfish when you grew up in impoverished communities.
Charlie: Yeah, majorly. It's like you recognized the intense value and importance of community and relationship. Like,
Izzy: Yeah.
Charlie: Like just how necessary it is.
Izzy: Yeah, and how much, people rely on you and how responsible you are for others that were responsible for you. That’s how it goes, like they raised you and then we helped care for them as they aren’t able to care for themselves.
Charlie: An obvious question, but an important one to just state, and you essentially already did is, you know, looking at the way that environmental racism and industrial zoning shape who becomes sick and who doesn’t, and certainly it's intentional.
Izzy: Oh yeah, Houston’s like one of the most prime examples. Like all… every single major railroad that transports chemicals is directly going through a black or historically brown neighborhood. There are no railroads that are going through any of the nice, rich, affluent areas, or just the richer in general, not even just white, just richer, higher class people, because they have so much power in legislation that they just boycotted it outright and went to the city and complained to the city and the city’s like, “Alright, we won't build it there. We'll just build it in the usual impoverished areas that we always have.”
Charlie: Yeah, certainly. I think it’s like, communicating to people that in order to try and boycott legislation, you got to have a lot of resource. You gotta have time…
Izzy: Yeah, yeah time and money.
Charlie: Exactly.
Izzy: And we don't have time to do anything because we're too busy working.
Charlie: Yeah, precisely. It's like understanding that time is such an enormous privilege, the ability to have time, AND…
Izzy: It’s a currency, honestly.
Charlie: Yeah, and that people who are disabled, just because they can't work or can't work as much, doesn't mean that they have time.
Izzy: Yeah.
Charlie: I feel like this big misconception that disabled people are just like sitting home, relaxing all day, or like being…
Izzy: No. That's insane. No, nuhuh. They're at home suffering.
Charlie: Yeah. Yeah, precisely. It's like our job is to try and maintain and manage our bodies like that’s… that’s what people are getting up to in those situations.
Izzy: And I recognize that, like because I work… I've worked blue collar jobs since I was 18, but that's just because I'm physically able to do it. And most people, not everyone is. Not a lot of people are built for it either mentally or physically.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: So I have to recognize that I have that privilege – that I have an able body that can do all this hard manual labor.
Charlie: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's like all over the board with that – of recognizing or just knowing that, you know, for all of the industrial age it's like, okay, who's at the very top they're doing absolutely no manual labor, and then it trickles down.
Izzy: Yeah because they always have that tired, lazy take – where, “Oh they’re just tired, they just need to work harder, or they're just lazy…” No, that's not true. A lot of people aren't physically or mentally able to do it in one capacity or another through systems of oppression.
Charlie: Mhm. mhm… absolutely, it's looking at like policing and incarceration, and like, any other system of oppression, and recognizing that environmental exposure is a major one.
Izzy: Oh yeah. That's an outright attack on humanity and just people that are in those areas, which most times those are impoverished people that are the victims and are exposed to so many chemicals, so much pollution, and end up being disabled at a larger rate or just dying younger in general.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, is there anything in particular that you wish that people really understood? Or I should say, like, particularly privileged people understood about that relationship between like environmental justice or just like environmentalism in general, and then disability justice, like, where are those worlds overla..? I mean, essentially they're the same, but yeah…
Izzy: I mean, the environment affects everything. An attack on the Earth is an attack on the people that live there. So like just outright industrialization pretty much destroying the earth and destroying everything around it which people live around. You're destroying them hand in hand.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. You know, it has me thinking about just the way that like, dividing things up into these categories where it's almost like, um…
Izzy: Yeah, it's not like they're separate boxes. They're all the same stems from the same tree.
Charlie: Right, right. It's like trying to argue identity politics really strongly, and where it's like we’re all these connected systems, right?
Izzy: Yeah, because I was having a discussion the other day where you can backtrack most of these things back to patriarchy.
Charlie: Yeah, big time.
Izzy: Pretty much. Because patriarchy birthed oppression, and oppression births all this environmental, disability, unhoused… just people that are poor in general. It all stems from, “Oh, you're weaker than me. I'm stronger, more superior. I can beat you in this competition, so I can oppress you.”
Charlie: Yeah, gosh. And like rewriting history in these ways that are like, “Oh it's all about competition.” Like Darwinism or like whatever.
Izzy: Yeah. Or like fucking Adam Smith or capitalism or just authoritarianism in general where, “I need to be in charge or monarchy. I need to be in charge. The rest of you are beneath me.”
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is a good segue into talking about anarchism. I mean, because there's like that fucking Hobbesian understanding or narrative that's just been pounded into people over the many centuries of being like, “Well, without a state, there's just chaos.” Thinking like…
Izzy: Yeah, that's just like… that's just factually wrong. That's not right. It's just so much propaganda that convinces people we need the state. We need to be told what to do, and we need to be submissive towards the higher power. But that comes back and that just stems from fucking… from monotheism, from the Abrahamic religions where, “Oh, there's one person in charge and everyone needs to listen to that person.” And that's what bred monarchism and capitalism and just any authoritarian regime now where it's centralized power.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, it's wild to understand that there's this like… well, I mean, there's so much propaganda around it, and there's so much push about it in the media, but that like there has to be authoritarianism, like there has to be an authority, and it has to look like authoritarianism or authoritative rule in order for things to be okay and evenkeeled and like…
Izzy: Which I'll give it to them, they did a damn….they did a damn good job convincing everyone that that's how it has to be. Look at the entire world.
Charlie: I know…
Izzy: This modern civilization is just ruled by authoritarian governments or authoritarianism in general.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, and the wild part also, is that it's really challenging, I think, for a lot of people to imagine otherwise.
Izzy: 100%, even though it's only been that way for what I mean, in 4 or 500 years.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: No, not even – less than that. A lot less than that. Probably since, like what, the 1800s or. Yeah, probably like the last 150 years it's been strictly authoritarian with the erasure and the oppression of all the indigenous populations around the world. They didn't have that system of belief or that way of life.
Charlie: Right, I mean really, there are a lot of communities and cultures that kind of seasonally, maybe they would bring in somebody to be in an authoritative position, but then it would get disbanded very intentionally.
Izzy: Yeah, I've read about that, where they did that during warfare, during times of famine, or just during times of, or during time of just when they're struggling to survive. But most of the time, like I know several cultures, they didn't have leaders – they just had healers and elders that took care of each other and just helped each other care for each other.
Charlie: Right.
Izzy: It wasn't like a strict like, “Oh, this is the person that's in charge. We all listen to him forever until he dies. And then it's that his kin or next of kin or whatever.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, for people who are unfamiliar with anarchism or who think that it's only what media has fed us, which is chaos, right?
Izzy: Yeah, chaos. No rules, no laws. Everyone fends for themselves. It’s none of that, yeah.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. How would you describe anarchism in the context of care and community and just kind of life in general?
Izzy: The anarchism I practice and just anarchism, the way I've perceived and the way I've lived, it is more communal… very communal-based. It's about living in harmony with each other and caring for each other against the odds stacked against us. Well, it's also specific to the current system that we live under, especially in the United States – the “so-called” United States. Yeah, anarchism is just a communal… take care of each other, mutual aid at the forefront, everyone's in this together, which is fighting against an oppressive system.
Charlie: Mhm.
Izzy: Because I mean, humans are very social creatures, and anarchism is not everyone fend for themselves. It’s everyone come together to survive against the oppressive regime.
Charlie: Yeah. Gosh, absolutely.
Izzy: I mean, but it also is a lot of disorganization, haha. But that’s the fun in it.
Charlie: I mean truly though. You know, I think that there's a lot of grace when the… kind of the central point of anarchism is community and mutual aid. And, you know, mutual aid in the sense that everybody's got some different types of skills and resources that can be shared and exchanged. I keep feeling the need to drive home that mutual aid isn't just a GoFundMe. I think…
Izzy: Haha no, it is not a GoFundMe.
Charlie: Like I think it just got so co-opted by that…
Izzy: Yeah, 100% mutual aid and harm reduction got co-opted by social media and no one even knows what those words mean anymore. Like mutual aid doesn't have to be a GoFundMe. It can be like letting someone like crash on your couch until they get back on their feet. That's mutual aid. Cooking someone dinner that you care about is mutual aid.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: It's just mutual aid is just love and care for each other, honestly. And whatever shape or form that takes. Because that's like the root of anarchism is love and care for each other.
Charlie: I mean, I think it's so interesting to think about the portrayal of anarchism as being, you know, this chaotic spread as well as being super autonomous, individualistic – when really, truly what we're living under, what we're living within, and capitalism is like THE most…
Izzy: That is hyper individualism hahaha.
Charlie: Hahaha like that is THE most individualistic system that we have ever conjured up.
Izzy: Yeah. Like, look at the atomic family – the nuclear family. Terrible, terrible, terrible.
Charlie: I know, I know, it's like mortifying to be like, “Oh, we're all just going to live in our little isolated confined spaces and not interact with our neighbors or with other…
Izzy: Yeah, because everyone is your opponent. You’ve gotta beat everybody else. You gotta have the biggest house and whatever the hell they measure success by nowadays – access of wealth.
Charlie: Yeah, the competition thing is really it… it's like frightening to just see how deeply it's permeated through everything – that everything has to be hyper competitive
Izzy: 100%. I got to be better than everyone. Someone's got to be the best at something. And everyone wants to be the best. No one wants to be fucking last place – everyone wants to be first.
Charlie: I know – I'll just like blame Greece and the Olympics forever. Hahaha I don't know, I don't know. I mean, but it's just… it's just like, where did it start?
Izzy: I feel like the Greek Olympics were less about competition and more just about admiring men being shirtless and covered in oil hahaha.
Charlie: That's probably true. You’re probably right hahaha – for like everybody's own enjoyment.
Izzy: They're like, we’ll just say it's a competition. We just want to watch them touch each other. That's it.
Charlie: Haha yeah, “Carry on. Please. No, every year.”
Izzy: “Yeah, no that's the winner right there – yeah you won. That's the whole point.”
Charlie: “Looking good.” Yeah hahaha. Oh my god. Yeah, I mean I just… there was like some commercial for like Top Chef came on the other day, and I was just like, this is horrible. Like I just couldn't even… It's like I don't even want to watch a second of it. Like how it's just like “Cutthroat competition!” Like “Brothers against each other!” And it's like, what are we doing?
Izzy: Hahaha
Charlie: Like, oh my god, followed by some military commercial, like, I can't handle it anymore.
Izzy: Yeah, no, I don't even… especially with the rise of AI. Oh man, I don't even... Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, just when it's… I've been thinking a lot lately about how the sick and disabled community is, like, whether or not you are wanting to opt into it is like a fugitive community. Like it is a community that exists outside of the state simply by us continuing to exist and survive as people.
Izzy: Yeah.
Charlie: Because, you know, it's like we're punished by the welfare system, we're not allowed into the workforces.
Izzy: 100%. Nuhuh, y’all have, like the disabled community has so many obstacles in front of them, intentionally been placed by society. As you know much more well than I ever will.
Charlie: It’s interesting to frame it in the way of being like “Oh it's essentially… we're an autonomous community, because we are having to make these mutual aid structures so like so strong, so intensely in order for us to just get through the day by day, moment by moment existence.
Izzy: Mhm.
Charlie: Because I mean, and especially with so many of our rights being challenged currently, and with so many states trying to throw out that insurance or Medicaid covering caretakers is essentially being disbanded as well, or it's attempting to be. But yeah, I mean, I just I think about the many, many different communities that are having to exist outside of the state in so many ways, kind of as much as is possible without essentially turning into the Zapatistas. But it's… I don't know. I'm trying to think of other examples within the U.S of communities that are like, “Hey, we're… bye. We're going to be over here continuing to exist.”
Izzy: Yeah, I mean I feel like the unhoused is pretty close to that. They kind of do their own community like they don't have even access to like, not all of them have access to internet information or GoFundMes. They’re just kind of out there, and they form their encampments, and they're just there. Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah, no I think that that's super astute, and I think you're right. It really is like this, you know, the state doesn't give a shit.
Izzy: Not at all. All those nonprofits just pocket that money for themselves. Like they don't really ever go out ther. Because I've been out there, and they're like, “Yeah, I speak to them about the non and ask about the nonprofits, like I've never spoke to any of those people in my life. I don't know who any of them are.”
Charlie: Mhm haha. Yeah, yeah I mean, in thinking about Food Not Bombs and with so many… I mean, Texas especially, but with so many states and so many counties trying to make it illegal for Food Not Bombs to operate.
Izzy: Oh, yeah. Houston… it's illegal in Houston. That's like a telltale – they really just hate the unhoused. Like no, not even… because Food Not Bombs isn’t getting money from anyone. They're not state-funded or funded by taxpayer money. Just people out of the goodness of their heart going out there and cooking, making meals. And the state hates that. “What do you mean you’re not gonna relying on us to take care of you? What do you mean, people are helping each other out of their own good wellness in their heart?” No incentive, no profit incentive, no profit margins.
Charlie: Mhm, yeah. We better make a law about it haha being illegal.
Izzy: Yeah, we better make it illegal
Charlie: Mhm.. yeah, to give food to people.
Izzy: Yeah, that's so dystopian. That's disgusting. That's been going on here for like the better part of 4 or 5 years now. They outlawed it back in ‘05 but they didn’t start enforcing it until like 2022.
Charlie: Yeah, I feel like that… kind of right when I was getting down to Houston, and was working with them a bit, it was like, “Oh, I'm sorry, what? They're just trying to make this an illegal action? Great. Awesome. We love it. We'd love to see it.”
Izzy: I've been exposed to a lot more information about the legislation against disabled people from you honestly. Before that, honestly I never really heard about much of it. Yeah, so that's just how under the rug all this anti-disabled legislation is. Or just all the attacks on people that are disabled, like it's so far removed from all the current struggles on the internet or just in media that they didn't ever bring any of you up at all really.
Charlie: Truly, truly, yeah. I mean, trying to think of the last time anything having to do with disability rights got mentioned in popular media, I like really… I have no idea.
Izzy: No, I could not tell you know. Y'all are forgotten completely about. They’re like, Oh out of sight out of mind.” We've got to bring something else up. Like, no one ever wants to talk about disability rights or people that are disabled being under attack by legislation or just by the law in general.
Charlie: This conversation just always brings me back to like, you know, the peak of Covid, and there being so much talk about like, “Well, the strongest will survive,” and like, “Oh, this person died because they had preexisting conditions, so they were going to go anyway…” That kind of framing.
Izzy: Oh yeah. Like it was like some Darwinism culling shit or some bullshit, like just really disgusting and just outright attacking everybody. Like, “Oh, they only died because they were unhealthy.”
Charlie: Yeah, yeah, no big time. And that there was just this like punishment of people who weren't in perfectly good health, but it was like, “Well, makes sense that it got to them.”
Izzy: Yeah, yeah and even then, like, Covid still exists. Like caught that thing like a couple of months ago that shit was rough. That was painful. That sucked.
Charlie: Yes. Yeah. I mean it's wild what it does to people. I had one of… one of the worst doctor's appointments… (I'm just going to rant for a second) recently.
Izzy: Go for it.
Charlie: And I had it… I think it was last… It was a week ago on a Monday. And, you know, I've been dealing with like severe autonomic system crashes, and like true failures where, you know, it's hard for me to relieve myself. My bladder won't empty fully. I'm not sweating anymore. I'm not producing saliva anymore. Like, those are some of the things. And then there's like a whole list of other things, like severe amounts of blood pooling in my legs, to a point of pain, not being able to move. Like, I'm getting a custom lightweight wheelchair in the next handful of months, so that I can actually be mobile again. But like, you know, all of these things stemmed from getting Covid. And I'm also having, you know, heart irregularities. And I already had a heart condition, so it's just made it so much worse. So I went to see my electrophysiologist, one of my heart specialists, to talk about this and to see if he had any recommendations, any suggestions – if he had been reading up on long Covid and how it's affecting the electrical system of the heart – all of these things, and I get in there, and it was one of those moments where I realized that he had read my chart and had his mind made up about how the appointment was going to go before I even entered the room. And was just like, “Well, you know, I looked at the imaging of your heart. Everything looks good.” And I was like, I mean, cool. Yeah, sure. But it's not… Like I'm here in my bridge wheelchair. I'm like, “I can't walk, doc. And I understand that the autonomic system is ultimately a neurological phenomena, but it affects the heart a lot. So are you up on any of this research or anything like that, or like anything having to do with long Covid and how it's affecting the heart? Because I had heart involvement with both episodes of Covid that I had.” And his response to those things was like, “Well, now that COVID's just like a part of our lives, you know, people aren't really particularly interested in having long Covid clinics or really studying long Covid anymore. You know, it's just… it's something that just passes through you and then it's gone.” And I’m like, “Passed through and then it’s gone?!”
Izzy: Yeeaaah, like… like it's a common cold.
Charlie: Oh my god! I was like, “You're talking to somebody who got severely disabled by this virus. I have to use a wheelchair to go distance.” You know, like, what are you talking about? And he was like, “Listen, you know, you probably weren't even supposed to survive until age 38. Like, back in the dawn of humanity, you would have gotten eaten by a tiger or killed off by some other disease. I'm not supposed to be able to survive till I'm 58.” And like, went on some weird pseudo human evolution tangent.
Izzy: Like, is that really what he said? This is coming from my fucking doctor?
Charlie: Yes, I have it recorded. I have like a transcript of it. It’s sooo wild!
Izzy: Damn, that’s like so fucking pathetic. What the hell?
Charlie: Yeah! And I’m like, you’re talking to somebody who has like a PhD in anthropology also. Like this isn't, that's not how human evolution worked…
Izzy: What the hell?
Charlie: This is also not how medicine has evolved, or, you know, just like any medicine, be it east or west or whatever, like, this is… this has nothing to do with my wellbeing of anything. Now you're just trying to spew weird philosophical bullshit…
Izzy: He's like mad that you're making him do his job. He's like, “You shouldn't even be alive right now. You should be… if this is when you were living, you would have been dead, so you have to be grateful.” What kind of shit is that?
Charlie: Yeah, totally. And that was like, “Okay, well, hope that gives you some peace of mind – so long!” And was just like, what are we working with right now?
Izzy: God damn.
Charlie: But just like getting, you know… trying to have a conversation about how Covid is affecting people just generally, and like… That it’s not just a passing thing and a virus that just passes through people, and then it's done, and then your system just gets back to normal. Because for a good percentage of the population, I think it's around like 18%? At least that’s been documented… Like Covid… those symptoms linger. That's what long hauler Covid is all about. But anyway, I mean, like… from my rant, tying it back to the things that we're talking about. It's like, again, with the state being like, well, telling people the truth about, you know, what this virus can do to you, and like, requiring us, requiring these systems to have to change around it to keep people protected and safe, we can't do that. There’s no money in that.
Izzy: No, they can't patent that. There's no profit incentive. It’s people over profits.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: And that's really what just adds to the absolute vitriol negligence and hate towards the disabled, from the state. The state does not care if you yell at all, really, because they can't make money off of you.
Charlie: Right, right. Yeah, I mean gosh… this reminds me of… I feel like I might have talked about this on the podcast already, but it was just such a perfect example of this. It was during one of our ice storms here in Portland, one of the big Kroger's (which we call Fred Meyer) – one of the Kroger’s lost power, and so they were having to throw out all the food. And they were throwing it in dumpsters, and it was freezing outside, so all of the food was staying frozen. It was still frozen.
Izzy: Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah, it was perfectly good food. And so people were like, oh, fantastic – let's just go stock up on all of this free food that they're literally just throwing out. And then, of course, Kroger caught on to that, and they called in the Portland Police Department to stand around the dumpsters and keep anybody…
Izzy: Protecting rotting… protecting bad food. Ha, that's insane. Actually, I've seen that happen here before. Some of the grocery stores here have locks on their dumpsters.
Charlie: Haha it's just like absolutely insane.
Izzy: Yeah. Well, yeah…
Charlie: Mm… haha yeah.
Izzy: You'd rather lose that much money and waste that much animal flesh and just food products than feed people. You'd rather take the loss than actually helping people out and feeding them. That's disgusting. That's absolutely disgusting.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: What kind of behavior is that?
Charlie: Yeah. Like the lowest, the lowest, lowest low behavior.
Izzy: Yeah. Like, no one could even think of writing something so evil hahaha.
Charlie: Hahaha I know, they’re like, “Know what we’re gonna do? Take a bunch of food that we can't sell anymore, that's perfectly fine for people to eat, and we're going to make it illegal for them to eat it.”
Izzy: Yeah, we're going to call the police and make them guard that fucking dumpster until the food rots and it's inedible. And then just from the police to be like, “Yeah, alright, we'll be there – we'll be there in ten. Yeah we'll point… we'll shoot anybody that comes near the dumpster of rotting food.
Charlie: Right, right. Yeah no, well…
Izzy: That's fucking embarrassing.
Charlie: Actively kill people over garbage.
Izzy: Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, you know, with working with Food Not Bombs or just the unhoused communities in general, like, through that work, what have you learned about care and survival and solidarity? All of that.
Izzy: Care and survival, not so much. I learned that from my family, and it just helped me teach others in the organization about well… their… everyone already knew, mostly – because it's all the result of extreme oppression and being aware of how oppressed you are. I learned that from an early age. So like, I find more middle ground, and I find I'm more relatable to unhoused people than to the super rich. Which people forget that. You’re closer to being homeless than you are to being a millionaire or billionaire or whatever the hell.
Charlie: Yeah. Big time.
Izzy: Yeah. And it's not even just that, like just the care in general. Just going out and speaking to somebody, just having a simple conversation goes a long way, because it reminds people they're not completely alone. And that's what solidarity looks like, especially in Food Not Bombs. They'll get their plate, they’ll eat, and then they'll just shoot the shit, and I'll talk to them for hours after the feeding and just hang out with the unhoused or just people in general – just organization. But for solidarity, you do learn a lot about organization and just coming together and knowing where to go and who to speak to, and where the areas of… where all the encampments are, or where the high-risk areas where you can actually offer a hand and help people out. Like the times to go to avoid police, which that's really fucking stupid that we have to know the routes and where they're going so we can feed people. Like how to avoid them. It's really disgusting.
Charlie: Truly. Yeah, I mean, it's the same in certain states with harm reduction work, and being like, okay, I'm sorry, we can't deliver clean syringes to anybody?
Izzy: Oh yeah, yeah, harm reduction is another big one too.
Charlie: When I was in Houston and doing that work. It was just like, oh dang. Okay. Like, even trying to get Narcan, just in general and especially distributed is its own massive hurdle.
Izzy: Oh, 100%. It's like they just want… they want all three of those groups of people just gone. They're like, no, don't help them out at all. We’d rather they just die because we can't profit off them.
Charlie: Yeah, truly. It's like, okay, unhoused people, people who use drugs, and then people who are disabled – “just let them die!” Like, it's just so mortifying to see how we're framed in the eyes of the state, and knowing that we are far less than human. And then, you know, adding in if you are black, brown, indigenous, an immigrant… like, a whole extra layer to the shit cake.
Izzy: Yeah. And especially… there's also the medical racism towards black and brown people that are disabled, especially through the med field. There's so much racism that they experience from doctors or nurses. Especially if they don't know English – like, I saw that with my grandma firsthand. There always had to be one of us that new English to go with her, to make sure that she was getting the proper care and treatment…
Charlie: Yeah. Right. Yeah, getting like, any amount of care or treatment. My black friends who are disabled when they go to the E.R., they're like, they won't give us pain medication ever. Ever like ever ever – like you could have a gaping wound and they'll be like, no. And then for myself, being a blonde white person, they're like, how much fentanyl do you want?
Izzy: How much fentanyl do you want?! Yeah…
Charlie: “We can give you all the fet…” I'm like, get it away from me. Like, jeeze. They just like can't help themselves. And just seeing the discrepancy... It's just so… like, it's so blatant. And I feel like with so much of oppression, it's just blatant. Like there's… like nobody's trying to be covert about oppression.
Izzy: Yeah. And it's so normalized across the board that when we do see how they treat people that aren't people of color, we're like, what the fuck? Why are we getting treated this way? Because we thought… we assumed everyone's getting treated the same, but no – it becomes very obvious when we speak to people that are white or white passing, the treatment that they get. And we see it firsthand.
Charlie: Majorly. Yeah.
Izzy: Because we're just so used to it. It's just so normalized, like just outright bigotry and hatred. We're just so used to it. We experienced daily for our entire lives that we didn't know something better existed. They treat other people better…
Charlie: Yeah, totally. Because it's… Yeah, it's like until you're around somebody who's just getting the white person treatment, you're like, I'm sorry, excuse me? What?? It's like that?
Izzy: Yeah. We’re like, they gave you what? You didn't have to… they didn’t say no. They just gave it to you because you asked?
Charlie: Yeah. You didn't have to like, prove your entire generational history and…
Izzy: Yeah, or like take a drug test or some shit.
Charlie: Ha, yeah. Yeah, well, we're into our last, like, five, ten minutes of conversation here, but I wanted to shift into futurism and futures thinking, you know, and think about, like, What do you… When thinking about these issues, does your mind go a route where you're like, “Okay, how can things look different? What's it gonna take? What is the action associated with that?
Izzy: I don't think I could talk about that on this podcast hahaha.
Charlie: Hahaha that's true, but we understand!
Izzy: Yeah, because it's not looking... It's all it's all kind of going downhill right now. So it's like, we're watching the collapse unfold in real time.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. Truly.
Izzy: Yeah, I don't have an optimistic view towards the future with the way things are going right now. It would take drastic action to change any of that.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. Majorly.
Izzy: 100% like it's not looking good for any of us in any three of these, especially the disabled people – with all the fund cutting they're doing just across the board to fund their wars. But they're only going to keep getting dragged out longer, especially with the energy crisis that's pretty much being hung over our heads right now as well.
Charlie: Mhm, yeah. God. I know I'm definitely in a like, okay how can I grow enough food to support a community of people? Like, if the rain stops, where are we getting water from? How can we do this as separate from the state as possible?
Izzy: Yeah, like a community garden or something? That can be pretty cool – that'd be cute.
Charlie: Yeah, right? Like one little version. It's just like, where's food coming from? Let's see if we can cover that.
Izzy: Yeah, I don't think we could do that here. I think our soil is too polluted to grow anything that's edible.
Charlie: I know haha. Yeah, yeah, truly. I mean, it is... it’s like, how many decades of kind of revamping and like shooting nitrogen down into that soil will it…
Izzy: Yeah, because the earth retains all of the trauma that is being exposed to.
Charlie: Mhm, yeah – big time. I mean, there's, you know… it's understanding that the Earth is, or we are, just mirroring each other's sickness.
Izzy: Yeah, 100% because it's only getting… we were having this conversation about what more can we do because society is getting so bad that we have to do more.
Charlie: Mhm, yeah.
Izzy: Just to try to, like, put up a fight against just the absolute shit show that it is current, modern-day civilization.
Charlie: Mhm, yeah. Yeah. I mean I think a lot about class warfare and how that will play out, boil down, what it will look like, where we're at…
Izzy: Pshhh… if it ever looks like anything. If it stops being just some trendy slogan.
Charlie: I know, I knooow. Majorly. It’s so frightening. Just everything having some weird media messaging attached to it. I think, like, you know, if we were to imagine a future where all people, where THE people were protected from environmental harm, like what that would look like, what it would…
Izzy: What that would look like in current modern-day society? Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, but just generally, like – not even having to attach it to modern day society, because I feel like…
Izzy: Because I mean like, a world like that existed before I'm pretty sure. We’re just coming back… Haha I don't even know. We're just like, devolving so far away from… Like, I feel like…. I don't even know. Yeah, I feel like a world like that already existed before, and it was just destroyed – they were like, “Absolutely not. We're not having any of this.”
Charlie: Haha yeah, yeah. I mean, again, like send in the patriarchy and see what happens. And here we are.
Izzy: Yeah. Now we're all just stuck with each other because everything's so interconnected thanks to the access to information. But like it all causes a ripple effect. Nothing's fully autonomous. Every major action from every major superpower affects the entire world. It's pretty hard to escape that or to break off from it.
Charlie: Yeah. Big time. Big time
Izzy: I mean, I think that's the goal for the future that envisions like no environmental impact or no oppression towards disabled people or oppression in general. It would be to break apart from this. But how? Is that achievable? I guess that's for us to figure out somehow.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah, truly. I mean, understanding anarchism, I think, is very, very important. Understanding that this is such a blip in terms of social structures that have existed historically. It's like, okay, we gave it a shot, clearly it’s not benefiting. Let's get on with it. Let's do something else. Okay. We...
Izzy: Yeah, I was having that conversation the other day with the socialists where they were talking about they don't really read much anarchist writing or look into too much because the stuff they did read was very bleak and like, in your face, and aggressive. And I'm like, yeah, that's what it is. It's like a result of extreme oppression where you're just… extreme violence just creates more extreme violence. The only way torespond to violence is with violence.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: Which is a hard pill for a lot of ‘em to swallow. They’re like, oh no we can legislate our way out of this.
Charlie: No, no. Yeah. I think that…
Izzy: It’s like the harsh reality.
Charlie: It is. It is. I think that the policy talk is so surface-level at this point. That being like, “You could just tote better policies…” Being like, “It's still in the same system!”
Izzy: Yeah. Be like, “We just need to vote better.” I'm like, you're just, I mean… voting, you're just upholding the colonial system that enslaved and destroyed a whole half side of the world.
Charlie: Yeah. It's tricky. I mean, there's like, you know, there's a defensive voting tactic to keep this version of fascism out. But at this point…
Izzy: Yeah, especially with dealing for disability rights. You kind of have to vote for disability rights, like that's one of those systems where you have to vote because they're just gonna keep throwing away all the groundwork that's been done.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. It's tricky. It's like, a challenge to be on the defense, a challenge to try and create new laws, new language on the offense, while I think that, you know, some of our best action energy can be saved for shifting away from these systems entirely.
Izzy: Okay. That's interesting.
Charlie: Yeah, sigh yeah… without saying… Again without like without… hahaha
Izzy: Yeah. Yeah. Keep it.. keep it PG 13 hahaha. This is a good wholesome Christian podcast.
Charlie:That's right. We're just trying to not have anybody knocking on the door. Um…
Izzy: Hahaha
Charlie: Hahaha yeah. But you know, omission is its own version of language, so we keep it to that.
Izzy: Yeah, yeah.
Charlie: Well, Izzy, it's been so wonderful talking with you, as it always is. Is there?
Izzy: Thank you.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah. Just, like, grateful to have you in my life and to get to share your wisdom and these conversations with other people out in the world. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you would like to talk about?
Izzy: No, I think I'm good. We covered most things. Anything else could be saved for, like, the future. Yeah.
Charlie: Yeah, for sure, because we'll do it again.
Izzy: Yeah. All right. Looking forward to it.
Charlie: Yeah.
Izzy: Yeah, I feel like an hour conversations is enough. Anything more, like I personally stopped paying attention. My brain just drowns stuff out.
Charlie: Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Yeah, the capacity is only so vast at this point.
Izzy: Thank you so much for the conversation. It's always fun.
Charlie: Yeah. I mean, likewise, I just I love you so much
Izzy: I love you too, Charlie. See you soon.
Charlie: Yeah, see you soon. Bye!
Izzy: Bye!
Charlie: Wow. Okay, a huge, huge thanks to Izzy for joining the show and for sharing their experience and their insights. They're just… they're a truly amazing, wonderful, incredible person. I am just so, so pumped that they were here and that we get to share this conversation with all of you. You know, I feel like it's conversations like this that are… they're just so necessary for everyone to see how disability justice and environmental justice are just one and the same. All of these issues, they're all connected. Nothing is siloed. They all overlap, meshed together. They're systemic. You know, the places people live, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the systems that shape all of these things – they have major impacts on our existence. So, just so grateful for that conversation.
Okay. Well, we're wrapping it up. This podcast is an experiment in sick time and storytelling and in imagining futures together. So if you enjoyed this conversation, please share it. Please follow the show and stay tuned for more conversations with brilliant disabled organizers, creators, thinkers, all of it. Alright, until next time. Take care. Rest when you need to, and remember, the future is sick. Bye!