BONUS: Merch & Yuletide Celebration

This week, we don’t have a new interview for you but we do have a bunch of rad announcements, some of which are time-sensitive. If you’re a Coffee with Comrades Patron (or you’ve ever considered becoming one,) this is definitely a 13 min. episode you don’t wanna miss!

· Support Coffee with Comrades on Patreon, follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and visit our website.

· Pick up a Coffee with Comrades shirt or coffee mug at our official merch store.

· Coffee with Comrades is a proud member of the Channel Zero Network.

· Coffee with Comrades is an affiliate of the Firestorm Books & Café. Check out our reading recommendations!

· Our logo was designed by Nathanael Whale.

Transcript:

Hey there, comrades!

I hope this episode of Coffee with Comrades finds you better than me. I’ll admit, it may be a touch dramatic to say this past week I’ve felt like Death itself, but that’s not far from the mark. Earlier this week, we had a COVID-19 scare at our house and we went and got everyone tested. There was good news and bad news. The good news? We didn’t have COVID. The bad news? We were all still sick as hell. If I still sound hoarse and sick, that’s because I’m still recovering. Fortunately, I am on the mend!

Anyway, to make a long story short, I ended up postponing a scheduled interview and, as a result, don’t have a full-fledged episode for you today. That said, there are a few exciting announcements that I wanted to make—some of which are time-sensitive—so I didn’t want to wait until next week. So, let’s dive right in.

As always, longtime listeners of Coffee with Comrades are well aware by now, we are a proud part of the Channel Zero Network. Check out this jingle to find out a little more about the network…

…Alright, first big announcement: it brings me great pleasure to announce that we finally have merch! We’ve got t-shirts. We’ve got crewnecks. And, by popular demand, we’ve got coffee mugs. You can find it all by visiting the hyperlink in our show-notes. We’re so psyched to finally see this stuff out in the wild. If you ordered something, be sure to tag us in it on social media.

Now that spoopy season is officially behind us, it’s time to celebrate the winter solstice. To mark the occasion, we are doing our first Coffee with Comrades Yule Tide Gift Exchange! I know, I know. I can hear it already. “Exchanging gifts!? That’s capitalist.” Settle down, y’all. Quite the opposite, gifts have a long, treasured history of being about community, ways of binding us closer to one another. What makes the holidays a capitalist nightmare is the commodification and profit motive, not the euphoric joy of seeing someone’s face light up when you exchange gifts.

To quote the indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, and to reciprocate…It’s funny how the nature of an object is so changed by the way it comes into your hands—as a gift or as a commodity.” Gifts spark kinship. They cultivate relationality. The Marxist theory of alienation suggests that commodities, on the other hand, alienate us from one another and from the larger biome we all inhabit together.

So, here’s how it’s all gonna work:

1) Over the next two weeks, we’re gonna collect names. In order to sign-up for the Yule Tide Gift Exchange, you’ll need to be a Coffee with Comrades Patreon subscriber. That’s not to be exclusionary, it’s just that it’s one of the only ways to really facilitate this sorta process safely. We’ll finish the sign-up process November 16th, so be sure to sign-up before then! To sign up, just private message me on Discord and I will put you name on a list for my eyes only!

2) On November 16th, we’ll draw names in the Coffee with Comrades Discord sever. We’re gonna be using a random generator appropriately called “Draw Names,” which I’ll enter everyone’s names into beforehand.

3) Once names have been drawn, I will privately message you the name and address of the person whose name you drew. This will mean that the only people who will ever have your address are me and the person who’s going to be giving you a gift! Of course, I already have your address on Patreon. But, if you haven’t put your address on there yet and want to participate in the Gift Exchange, be sure to put one down ASAP!

4) Finally, the goal is to mail out gifts for each other. I’d encourage everyone to try to make something by-hand. Write a poem, draw a painting, take a polaroid photograph of something pretty and design a cute frame. I dunno, go wild! If you’d prefer to pick something up, try to stay under a $20 limit.

5) Let’s aim to have our gifts in the mail by Dec. 16th so that folks will have a full month to create and/or shop for the secret gifts!

The goal here is to use this opportunity to build up community. Even if we are disconnected from one another, my hope is that through a gift exchange like this and our ongoing monthly book club we can continue to cultivate meaningful friendships and genuine camaraderie. I know a lot of folks have hang-ups around Operational Security and the good news is if you don’t feel comfortable, you certainly don’t have to participate! But we’d love to have you and, hopefully, maybe make this an annual tradition.

Making this program is a labor of love, but it’s a ton of hard work. Coffee with Comrades is a show made by a worker for workers. If you dig this program, it would mean the world if you chose to support us by going to www.patreon.com/coffeewithcomrades. Starting at just a $1/month, you can unlock awesome perks like access to our Patreon only Discord server, you can come hang out at our book club, and enjoy exclusive first access to new episodes of the show and behind-the-scenes looks at the making of this podcast. Any monthly contribution is enormously appreciated, no matter the amount you choose to give. Our Patrons are incredible folks who help keep radical, independent media alive and we are stupendously grateful for their ongoing support.

If you don’t have a dollar a month handy but still wanna support Coffee with Comrades, the good news is there are a bunch of ways you can help our show continue to grow! If you fuck with this program, follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Like, RT, and share new episodes every Tuesday when they go live. If you listen to shows on Apple Podcasts, you can review our episodes. Be sure to smash that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. But, most importantly, if you enjoy Coffee with Comrades, tell your friends about this program today.

Alright, I think that’s pretty much all I’ve got for y’all today. Like I said, no new interview this week. But, if you’re keen on horror, you can check out the latest edition of Macabre Media podcast, the other show I do with my friends Kaleb and Jorge. The three of us are celebrating our 50th episode by talking about 2001’s Jason X, arguably the greatest motion picture of all time. Although…I’m not entirely sure who would actually argue that.

Peace!