“ Transilient: So you talked about being political here, and communism, and I feel like that might be particularly hard to talk about here?
Luke: Yes. I met with the Wyoming Red Star Coalition, which is a group of leftists that are kind of starting to organize and do things around here, to make themselves known. I was shocked. I found them on Facebook and then they found me on Twitter and messaged me.
Transilient: With the administration that we currently have and the political beliefs that are kind of… opposite… what do you see happening? Or what would you like to see happen?
Luke: I would like to see people rising up and making their voices heard. Not necessarily physical violence, but rejecting the system and strikes and things like that. Not just work strikes, but rent strikes, and things like that. I really don’t like landlords. This is a right-to-work state. They can fire you for whatever they want. So it’s really hard to do any kind of organizing in the workplace. For the state of Wyoming the minimum wage is $5.50. To be able to pay people that and get away with it, your business has to make, like, $550,000 a year. And I did, at one point, work for that kind of wage. I worked at a gun club loading traps for a summer. And they paid me $5.50 an hour. And that’s a dangerous, dirty job. I was raised in a hunting family, so I’m kind of comfortable with that kind of stuff. I would like to see some sort of socialist rifle organization types of things out here, because that’s a big thing for so many people around here. And I think a lot of people already have ideas in their head but they have an idea that they can’t like ‘this thing’ and like ‘this thing’ at the same time. So they can’t be a leftist or a Democrat and like guns. And they just need to see that it’s possible. When I was living with my mom for all of high school we would go out once a year and go hunting, usually for deer, and that would fill our freezer for the winter and into the summer. That would feed our family for a while. Actually, in Wyoming, they have a sort-of “Stand Your Ground” type of law. It’s fucked up. If someone’s threatening you or in your home, you can legally shoot them. You can also hang somebody if they steal your horse in this state. There’s another law that you can’t go skiing or snowboarding drunk in Wyoming. Which is kind of fair, I guess. Just… don’t be stupid, please. “