Mk: Hello, and welcome to The Child and Its Enemies, a podcast about Queer and neurodivergent kids living out anarchy and youth liberation. Here at The Child and Its Enemies, we believe that youth autonomy is not only crucial to queer and trans liberation, but to anarchy itself. Governance is inherently based on projecting linear narratives of time and development and gender onto our necessarily asynchronous and atemporal queer lives, and youth and teens are at the center of this form of oppression.
Our goal with the podcast is to create a space by and for youth. that challenges all forms of control and inspires us to create weird, feral, ageless networks of care. I’m your host, MK Zario. I’m 15 years old and I’m the youth correspondent at the Anarchist Review of Books, author of the blog DebateNibro, and an organizer for trans liberation in the Great Lakes region and beyond.
With me today is transfeminine YouTube influencer Lola Bloom.
Lola: Hello my pronouns are she, they, and I’ve been working with the Mariposas Rebeldas and Food for Life. I restock and participate in food distribution networks in my local area. I also organized a few events surrounding the Stop Cop City movement last year, and surrounding the fight for trans rights in my state the last couple years, actually.
But my main line of experience is with YouTube activism and community organization through my Discord channel. Thank you.
Mk: So what I’m super excited to chat about today is something utterly relevant to you. What it means to be an anarchist online, and what it means to be an anarchist in the world, which obviously intersects with technology for so many of us.
You’re really active in creating queer and trans positive online media on YouTube and Discord. Can you talk a bit more about the stuff you make and how it informs your broader trans liberationist praxis?
Lola: I believe that YouTube is a very powerful way for trans people to document their experiences and to showcase just how happy and successful they can be to a wider audience.
To me, vlogging has been very popular and has been, My way of showing people how we live and humanizing our experience in a powerful way. I think it also is very useful for trans people to exchange knowledge and skills that they can use to support themselves during their transition.
And I feel a lot of solidarity and community in the spaces that I’ve created during part of that journey. I’m really grateful for all the positive comments and exchanges that I get to as part of my channel. There’s something really special about being part of community where we’re all coming together To be able to lift each other up and support each other through really a hard and extremely personal and vulnerable period in our lives.
I think that community is something that we really don’t have a lot of, especially with so many people trying to legislate. us out of existence, and I think that creating spaces where we can come together is just very important.
Mk: That is so awesome about how you use the internet to especially highlight trans joy.
So much media online is about anti trans legislation and hate crimes and everything else that really just a few outspoken bigots do that makes our queer lives that much harder. I remember when I was maybe 11 years old there weren’t tons of accessible ways to get into activism. Like I was part of a nonprofit, but that was around it.
So as a result, I’d spend a lot of time looking at LGBTQ nation and other websites that I thought were all about, the lives of the queer community and how to organize, but really were more about bigoted things that people said on social media or various laws or whatever. But as almost everyone in life knows, one of the many strengths of the youth and teen community Is that not only are we full of trans and queer joy, we’re internet savvy and we’re willing to try new technologies.
Which can really help us build movement, even sometimes on really corporate forms of social media. So knowing that your audience on YouTube might skew pretty young, how do you view your content’s role in youth and teen liberation?
Lola: I think that my channel plays a really important role in normalizing and integrating trans people into society in a larger aspect.
I think that the space I aim to create would pave the way for a lot of trans kids to be able to do the same things in their life. I know that having not a lot of visible role models as a kid really was something that, impacted me personally, and I know that I only really knew one other trans person growing up, and they were treated with such disdain from the community that it was really hard to watch that and not feel afraid.
Mk: I’m so sorry that they had to face that and it means so much that you’re creating these spaces in which trans people can Be ourselves and we can be all ages and we can be anarchist and that’s possible Like I am personally on your discord and it’s one of the safest queer spaces i’ve ever been in
Lola: Oh, I really appreciate that.
i’m tearing up a little bit. It’s something I really strive to do. My trans friend to You was the only person I know. They ended up taking their life several years ago. And a large part of what I do is in, in memoriam to a lot of the people that I know who didn’t make it.
And I think that knowing that I’m doing that for people is one of my greatest joys in life. So I really appreciate you participating in that space and being part of that community. And the fact that you feel safe is really something that makes me feel honored to know.
Mk: It’s so meaningful, and I’m so sorry about your friend.
Trans lives are so precious, and in the statist world, they’re threatened so much. And I am. I also became anarchist after someone I loved started to go through a very hard time. I’m here for you.
Lola: I appreciate you being there. Mental health matters. And, something I really do want to talk about at the end of this interview is just how much my personal life has been impacted by mental health journeys.
And, some things that I would like to share with people about. My struggles and how I’ve been able to find ways to accept my limitations, but still encourage myself to get the support I need and to get what I need out of life, even when I’m not able to do everything that I want to do in the day.
Mk: A dear anarchist friend of mine talks about how all liberatory struggles are about letting ourselves have both voices and needs, how we can have those boundaries, but we can also, want to provide care and want to create radical spaces, and that can be true while we have access needs and because we have access needs.
And I’d say that’s almost specific to neurodivergent anarchists, but also true of all anarchists. Like we can’t just have endless capacity. That’s, some capitalist ideal that none of us can live up to. And it’s so great that you’re talking about this because I think a lot of new organizers feel like they’re failures if they can’t do everything all at once, all the time.
Lola: I agree with that a thousand percent. I want to make sure That people feel like they are not alone when it comes to feeling burned out in a system that is not designed for sustainability. And I think that just framing it in the overall perspective that we work more as humans now than we ever have.
And we also have tools that should be enabling us to work less. It’s something that doesn’t make sense in any rational mindset. And I think that creating this community space has really given me the space that I need to exist authentically and to share skills and to grow as a person and with my business, while I’m trying to figure all of this stuff out.
And it gives me the space away from capitalism to, to look at things in a different perspective. I think it’s incredibly. Difficult to transition. And it’s incredibly difficult to transition out of these capitalistic old. Capitalistic systems and providing people the, this, the encouragement support and resources they need is one of my biggest focus, biggest focuses as an entrepreneur and a business woman.
Mk: This idea of transness as a refusal of capitalism is so meaningful. I as I’ve talked about on this podcast, I got radicalized by the queer movement. And one of the biggest things stuck with me was this idea that the book’s lesbian body is the only body that can’t be commodified under capitalism.
And, that’s why people mistreat books, lesbians. And I think if we update that for today, the trans body is also very much like that, like it’s impossible to define, and that’s what makes it beautiful, but that’s also what places it outside of all hierarchy and control.
Lola: I think men fear what they don’t understand and what they can’t control.
Mk: Very much yeah as do people who buy into the idea of cisgenderism, that our bodies determine our gender rather than maybe our gender determining what embodiment feels right to us.
This is a very weird segue, but on the topic of like your relationship to technology and the content you create online.
When I was doing research for this podcast and talking to folks I found out that some anarchists just straight up will not use platforms like YouTube and discord because there’s this fear that they’re corporate and really Public nature might endanger trans kids. So what would you say to those people about your decision to be public on those platforms?
And what makes you choose to, instead of being on the Fediverse or somewhere explicitly anarchist, to be in a space that might be more hostile?
Lola: So for me I think there are places for security culture, and then there are places for outreach and normalizing our existence. I think that If we only had spaces where we were absolutely 100 percent safe, then there would be no place for people to transition into those spaces to find out about those spaces.
There would be no way for us to grow as a community. So I think, having those spaces that are secure and then having ways to find. Ways to outreach to the community and get people engaged in those safe spaces, I think both have value. I’m also working on starting a matrix server with some people in Atlanta who are trying to create a safe space for people where, you know they know that it is a secure environment and, I think that having both is something that’s very important.
Trans people come from somewhere, and a huge part of my platform is being a public space where people can see that it’s not so bad or scary to transition. And I really encourage people to mind be mindful about what information they share in these spaces. But please understand that Any personal information that you share this is not a safe space in the Discord.
This is a public space just like a mall. You wouldn’t go sharing out your most personal details at the mall. But you can meet people who might share like minded views, and then you can have spaces where you can come together and, have groups that more closely, protect and, create that security culture.
So I think that there’s a value here, but it’s not a space for people to let their guard entirely down due to his public nature.
Mk: That is so meaningful about how really for accessibility to teens, honestly, there need to be a range of spaces. Like most teenagers I know outside of the anarchist movement do not use Signal, or if they do, it’s to text with me.
So having spaces on Discord can be a point of entry, even if someone never wants to organize, to be able to be an anarchist community without drastically changing their tech is necessary. I know that you’re in this space, but the child and its enemies does happen to have a discord server. And I thought about it like that.
Like it isn’t supposed to be the signal group. It’s not a place where folks are talking about anything high risk or illegal or even personally sensitive. But it is a space to build networks of care and connection. And sometimes that’s the only way that teens can have that. So What other organizing do you tend to do, and how does it intersect with your creation of online content?
Lola: I do work at some local food distribution groups, and we really specialize in providing people with food and creating a space where people can meet up and have that community in person during the week. I think that helping each other get what we need to survive is one of the most anarchist things that we can do as people.
And I think that How it intersects with my online community is really in the ways that a lot of promotion and a lot of
There’s a lot of discussion that happens beyond the scenes and giving people a space to do that online when it doesn’t need to be secure is something that definitely the discord exists for. And then, the signal and the matrix groups exist for the more secure things that we do. So I think that.
In the process of attempting to start these events and get them more populated we really need these online platforms to keep everything together and to keep people, connected. in a central place where they can stay organized and informed. I’m in the process of attempting to start a communal combolage event myself on the Beltline.
And I think a big part of my marketing approach and my, I hate to call it marketing, but my advertising, my, my awareness building campaign has been through These online chat groups. And I think that giving people a space where they can organize in a decentralized way is just really important.
Mk: Yeah, that is all so cool. Just going a little bit off script for some of our listeners who like me may not be in the Atlanta area or might have connections, but just be supporting remotely or whatever. Can you define what Combolosh is?
Lola: So Combolosh is a Event that we have every week that is based on in my understanding, and I don’t want to get this wrong, cause this is just what I’ve been told.
But it is based on some Native American traditions of giving freely and trading. It’s basically a market where everyone comes and exchanges goods and services but there’s no money allowed. There’s no. financial exchanges allowed. It’s just going to be people. exchanging their own goods and services and their own sources without common capitalistic interference.
Mk: I I love that takes value and price out of it and just makes it about meeting people’s needs. I I’m giving a talk on the Seriously Wrong Discord server. I’m coming up and I was having a talk on that Discord server with someone really about mutual aid and what it means to practice mutual aid in a space that’s translocal and is a lot online.
And we were saying that usually it tends to get towards fundraisers. You make a go fund me, you make a graphic and it goes on social media and that’s great because often people do have monetary needs, but at the same time, it still makes capitalism the priority when it might be more efficient to just get people that housing or that food or whatever it is that they need in a direct way.
But of course, the struggle with that is that. People tend to struggle with accepting free stuff, and monetary donations tend to feel more doable in a state of society. And anyway, I just think it’s so liberatory that y’all are moving past that.
Lola: I
Mk: think
Lola: that really sorry for interrupting if you were.
Mk: No, I wasn’t. I guess sometimes it sounds like I’m going to talk and I’m not. I am nervous for a kid.
Lola: I understand this deeply. But one thing I really want to focus on as a culture is stopping looking at the symptoms and stop treating the symptoms which is people needing immediate financial help.
Assistance and start treating the sources of these symptoms not having access to housing and food and clothing, adequate clothing and medicine is the big one. I think that these are very much things that we can. Do as a society that we don’t need to rely on the current existing systems that we can really take a lot of our power back as people by learning how to do those things in ways that are sustainable outside of that culture.
And I think that. Having these systems in place where we are growing our own food sustainably and building our own housing sustainably is something that I definitely want to continue to invest a lot of my time in doing.
Mk: Exactly. And even just building up the infrastructure for healthcare. I do a lot of reproductive justice advocacy and fundraising for abortion funds and the like.
I am on social media recently did a fundraiser for the Midwest abortion fund. So that’s cool. But I see so many fundraisers online for people who need help paying for gender affirming care. And I can’t help but think What if every city had a trans health care fund in the same way we have abortion funds now?
How much would that transform mutual aid if we had those networks of care in place already, and people didn’t need to make a GoFundMe every time they had perfectly normal and quotidian health care needs?
Lola: I still, as someone who still, eight years into their transition, has not been able to finish their electrolysis, I’ve done, Thousands of dollars worth of laser and electrolysis and I still have some facial hair and it’s just you know Access to these things would directly improve my life personally, so I can attest to that I think that would be a wonderful thing for a lot of people.
We I’m, sorry that you
Mk: haven’t been able to access that statism is the worst It is
Lola: very unfortunate. I, I don’t have if I can go several days without needing to shave still, but it’s just still frustrating. And, I, for a very long time when I was early in my transition, had no access to those those treatments.
And I think that. It was, it really affected my mental health, and it affected my ability to work, and to feel like I was a part of society and it definitely made me feel othered, and I think that, no one should have to go through that.
Mk: I agree that it is fundamentally alienating to not have our needs met under capitalism and that it can isolate us from community, which is exactly why mutual aid and clear spaces are so necessary.
Were you into anarchy or community organizing or radical media as a kid and teen? And how, if at all, did you tend to organize?
Lola: Yes, I never really believed I could organize anything successfully until recently to be honest I was bullied and ostracized a lot of my life and I did join a couple of groups I’m, sorry No It sucks but yeah, I feel
Mk: If anarchists have one thing in common, it’s that we got bullied in elementary school
Lola: a lot of people You know if you if the system doesn’t serve you find You Ways to try and change it or at least if you don’t succumb to the system you do But yeah, I feel like a lot of people who are Not happy with the way things are get othered, and singled out and treated as different because they’re a threat to the people in charge, and
Mk: Especially because a lot of us are queer and neurodivergent, so bigoted ideas that people may already have can also be weaponized almost as a form of counterinsurgency.
And even in the anarchist scene so much affinity group in fighting is driven by oppressive ideas that folks have internalized and not questioned.
Lola: I really feel like when people don’t question their internal biases that’s how we get things like genocide and it’s people who are different that are often the first people who are targeted and, when you can demonize someone and treat them as, As another in any kind of sense, then that’s how we get some of the most brutal atrocities in human history.
And I think, we saw that very directly when Trump was elected, and I think we’re still seeing the after effects of what that looks like as a society.
Mk: Yeah, for sure. Like, When there is a very transphobic and racist person in power, that really makes people feel like they have a license to behave that way, when really something that tends to get lost under statism is that how we treat each other is not a legalistic thing, it’s entirely about how interactions feel and whether we have networks of care, and the, one of the main problems I see with hierarchy is people’s inability to think for themselves about basic kindness.
Yeah, thank you for bringing that up.
Lola: No there’s a very real problem with people who are taught to base their moral system on, of what the society around them is doing and not off of rational thought and experiences and for having me. Being present with what feels right to them.
And I think when you’re dealing with a relativistic moral compass, which is based off of the environment around you it is very susceptible to shift in ways that are not what you want and what. And
Mk: that can really make it hard to hold complexity as well because I know so many anarchists, myself included, who care very deeply about Palestinian human rights and would like for status up to end and do a lot of advocacy around humanitarian aid.
And I’ve also known people who maybe started out. genuinely wanting to be pro Palestine and part of that movement, but have instead just fallen into anti Semitic tropes and as a result not done much of anything.
Lola: I think that anytime you are Using hate as a weapon, you are missing the point, which is that we all need to come together and find ways to sustain ourselves under a capitalism system that is failing the vast majority of people.
And if we end up dividing ourselves based on race, ethnicity gender, culture or anything that is not intrinsic or that is not, based on whether or not someone is violent, really my only distinction on whether or not I want someone in my life is, are they okay? Being violent or discriminatory against other people, and I think as long as we can agree to not be violent or discriminatory towards people, then we can all agree to get along, and that we can all agree that this system is not working for us, and that we can find a better alternative.
Mk: Speaking of not being violent or discriminatory, because we got off topic what kind of organizing gigs do you like to do in your teens?
Lola: I did do a lot of organizing with groups like Anonymous and a couple of groups when the Black Lives Matter protests were active in my area, I was very active as a observer and as a street medic.
I did get some training I am a certified street medic Through some programs that they did at the bakery, which was a queer organizing space before COVID happened they’re still active, they’re not using the same facility, and they’re not organizing at nearly the same capacity, but I still, every once in a while will, help them with an art installation or go to an event or, I try and stay involved when I can but mostly when I was a kid I really just tried to find places where I could fit in and eventually I started getting involved in the activism, but it really didn’t start As being an activist, it just started with surrounding myself with people who were.
involved in activism.
Mk: For sure, yeah, and I’m so glad that you’re organizing and creating such beautiful networks of care, and especially that they center, queer and trans art and providing medical care to people. And basically everything that I always think about this would still be deeply necessary in anarchist society.
Like in organizing this way, You’re not only helping people survive capitalism, but you’re prefiguring something that people so desperately need. What would have made organizing spaces more accessible for you when you were younger?
Lola: I think the main things were transportation and food costs. I really didn’t have a plan. a good way of getting to events or getting to the spaces where I was engaged with these activism people, especially with my parents being a little bit more strict at the time. I think that Having spaces where parents could feel safe dropping off their kids, like a lot of the events I’ve seen at the Wielani collotion would have been really nice.
A lot of groups that I met in spaces that were not easily accessible, or where I had to sneak around because they weren’t the most Child friendly, they were, very grungy punk rock and our anarchist kind of environments, which were, they were nice and scenic, but they definitely were not somewhere where it was easy for me to get involved in as a teenager to early adolescence.
Mk: Yeah that can definitely be a big thing with accessibility and it’s tricky because our anarchist spaces are all about helping teens, find autonomy in a world where nuclear family is sadly still a big part of our society. But at the same time, like being able to be somewhat palatable to nuclear families can be a big part of accessibility.
And I’ve been in so many affinity groups that have had this conversation, how do we Undermine family’s authority without necessarily alienating them. On that note what advice would you have for trans kids who want to get into art and media and anarchy?
Lola: I would say just do it.
Start off doing it badly if you need to. Just keep on doing it until you get better. You’re gonna have really bad days. You’re gonna have days where you make mistakes. There will be a thousand reasons for you to quit. All you really need is one good enough reason to do it, and you will be able to make it through.
I also, on the last topic, I would recommend, finding spaces where you can organize in spaces where you have peer community, where you have kids your age, where maybe your parents are more willing to be accepting of that environment because it’s people who are in your age group. I know a lot of times I try to hang out with a lot of people who are older than me because they shared similar values and, maybe work your way there, start off small start organizing groups yourself and then, you can be really surprised on what changes will happen over time.
Mk: Yeah, and there’s this huge duality to that too we need intergenerational spaces, adult friends, mentors, but we also need to be in youth specific spaces. And it really is possible, if your friends share your values, or even are just queer and trans and interested in anarchism, to start an affinity group with your friends.
One of my really close friends from school just started a zine distro with people in their school club. The end. That’s a place to start, and that can make such a positive change, even if it isn’t what might be considered palatable by adult anarchists. It can really make anarchism feel accessible to teens.
And there’s no such thing as being bad at organizing. Just being human and imperfect is the norm, which anarchists of all ages are. So to close us out any shameless plugs for your content?
Lola: No, I really just wanted to touch on one more thing that you’re talking about, I think that, having local groups with local friends is amazing, but I think also you’re finding, conventions, finding, different sports or sciences or other places where you can relate to kids who are into similar activities and find people who may be interested in an affinity group there.
When you get stuck in your immediate vicinity as I did a lot as a kid, it can be very overwhelming and you can feel like there’s no one around you that really understands you. But I promise you, there are so many people. In the greater communities out there, and there are so many people who really will be able to connect with you in a way that doesn’t feel like it has to be forced, and it doesn’t feel like you’re weird or different.
It’ll just feel like you’re people. And. If you don’t have that where you’re at I just want to encourage you to keep looking because there’s nothing wrong with you.
Mk: And you’re so right about balancing those local and translocal spaces, or not balancing, just finding what feels good to you.
What I’m in the queer spash back tendency for a lot of my organizing, and one thing I love about it is the idea that local spaces really only work because translocal spaces do. People organize together in part because they meet online, or they meet at regional convergences, and if you are a teenage organizer and there aren’t people in your locality, there are still communities of care for you, such as Lola’s Discord.
So would you like to share any of your links?
Lola: Yes, shameless flags. My YouTube is youtube. com slash Lola Eichler. Although I’m probably going to be changing it to Lola Bloom soon when my legal name change officially goes through. And then my instagram is instagram. com slash rainbowbloom420.
That one’s going to stay the same. My discord link will be posted in the description for the interview, because it’s a bunch of numbers. But my Patreon is patreon. com slash Lola Bloom, and I hope to see y’all there. Thank you
Mk: so much for sharing your youth liberation journey. If anyone wants to learn more, please look us up wherever you get podcasts, or go to thechildanditsenemies.
noteblogs. org to check out past episodes and join our discord I’m MK Zariel, this has been Lola Bloom.