Episode Summary

Margaret and Agatha talk about mutual aid in Ukraine and Agatha's experience trying to go there to fight in an anti-authoritarian platoon, but ending up doing a bunch of mutual aid supply distribution work instead. They talk about he intricacies of relief work and some of the special circumstances in Ukraine. Heavy content warning on this episode. Towards the end of the episode around 46:00, Agatha starts to tell a really intense story about being in a war zone. Around 56:00 is when it begins to get graphic.

Guest Info

Agatha (they/them) can be found on IG @jalutkewicz You can donate to their mutual aid work on venmo @agathawilliams or on Paypal @jalutkewicz@gmail.com

Host Info

Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

Agatha on Ukrainian Mutual Aid

Margaret 00:14 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for it feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy. And I'm really excited about this week's interview, I am going to be talking to an old friend of mine from quite a while back who haven't talked to in a while about what's involved in anarchists mutual aid in war zones, and specifically, Ukraine, and in the things that are going on there. Yeah, I'm really excited for you all to hear this conversation. But first, I'm excited for you all to hear that we're a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network.

Margaret 01:13 This is Margaret, from the future, coming back to say that this episode deserves a content warning near the end of the episode and there'll be some heads up. We will be talking about, "Hey, so I hear you were attacked." That part contains graphic descriptions of war and violence. And so listener discretion is advised.

Margaret 02:05 Okay, we're back. So, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then kind of a brief description of why you are in a good place to talk about anarchists mutual aid in places of active conflict.

Agatha 02:20 So my name is Agatha. My pronouns are they/them. Yeah, I went over to Ukraine last year about this time to do mutual aid support with anti authoritarian units and anarchists units. Things got fucked up on my way over there. So, that wasn't a possibility any longer. So, I just started doing aid runs with a convoy of other solo operators who went over there to try and do something to help alleviate the suffering of folks. Yeah, I'm here to talk about that.

Margaret 02:57 So one of my questions about that, is, what do these aid runs look like? I'm under the impression there are different organizations working to try to get new vehicles and armor and all of these things that, you know, to frontline units, to anti authoritarian units. And these are like, organizations from outside Ukraine that are like sending people and supplies to then deliver the supplies? Like what does this look like?

Ag