Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff Slash it
Speaker 2: could happen here episode? And this is a little pickup
Speaker 2: we inserted because James and I Hi, James, Hi, Margaret
Speaker 2: and Margaret, that's James. We're on each other's shows this week.
Speaker 2: We just spent three days in Minneapolis culminating in the
Speaker 2: general strike last Friday, and we were there to cover
Speaker 2: the rapid response networks and the mutual aid networks that
Speaker 2: people have been building, and that's what we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about in these two episodes. But the reason
Speaker 2: that we're recording this little pickup right here to listen
Speaker 2: to at the front of it is that nine hours
Speaker 2: after we finished recording these episodes, shortly after both of
Speaker 2: us had left the city, a man named Alex Pretty
Speaker 2: was killed by federal agents in what is obviously a
Speaker 2: something that you all are familiar with. And we just
Speaker 2: kind of want to mark that because I think the
Speaker 2: tone and what we're talking about right now is we're
Speaker 2: so excited about these networks that people have been building.
Speaker 2: But obviously the tone would have changed a little bit
Speaker 2: had we recorded it only nine hours later, and we
Speaker 2: would have been talking about something slightly different, and that's
Speaker 2: just the breaks of podcasting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fundamental message, I guess wouldn't change, but we
Speaker 3: all know that that doing what these people do can
Speaker 3: have terrible costs, and we were reminded of that again.
Speaker 3: Yeah Saturday morning. I guess we should just say that, like,
Speaker 3: we grieve his passing and we're sending our thoughts to
Speaker 3: his family and the people who loved him. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: gond be a really hard time for him.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Hello, and welcome to Cool People Could Happen Here.
Speaker 2: I'm one of your hosts, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me
Speaker 2: today as my other host is James. Hi. Margaret, we
Speaker 2: are doing a special crossover episode of it Could Happen
Speaker 2: Here and Cool People Who did cool stuff. And we're
Speaker 2: doing it because James and I are in sunny Minneapolis,
Speaker 2: which is true.
Speaker 3: The sun was out. Yeah, yeah, I saw the sun. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I saw it through a cloud.
Speaker 2: Of cold, cold air, the vapor of our own breath freezing.
Speaker 2: I have seen more people today with frozen eyelashes than
Speaker 2: any other point in my life.
Speaker 3: But together. Yeah, I breathed into my goggles briefly and
Speaker 3: that froze, Yeah, from my eyes froze. Yeah, Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was minus thirty fahrenheit.
Speaker 2: Feel I guess with windshill, what is that and what
Speaker 2: is that in Celsius.
Speaker 3: They come together at minus forty, so it's going to
Speaker 3: be like minus thirty five and something like that. It was.
Speaker 3: It was for those who are not familiar cold, very cold.
Speaker 2: And so the two of us came up to Minneapolis
Speaker 2: a few days ago and we have spent the past
Speaker 2: three days here talking to everyone we can about the
Speaker 2: rapid response networks that people have built to try to
Speaker 2: keep themselves and their neighbors safe from ice and federal
Speaker 2: oppression and the sort of federal occupation of the city,
Speaker 2: and so what we thought we would do this is
Speaker 2: kind of Neither of us have written scripts. Yet we
Speaker 2: are still here. We just had a fun, slightly hectic
Speaker 2: day where we spent only about twenty minutes reasonably sure
Speaker 2: we were getting arrested.
Speaker 3: We didn't get arrested. No, thank you, Comra train.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got on a light rail and were able
Speaker 2: to leave a kettle by a light rail, which is
Speaker 2: a new experience for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm very European.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, we came up here to talk to
Speaker 2: people and that's been like the story that I'm most
Speaker 2: interested in, right, is that we have all of these
Speaker 2: stories that are absolutely true. The stakes are really high here,
Speaker 2: but the things that people are building here are really incredible,
Speaker 2: and people know that they're holding down ice here in
Speaker 2: a way that no one would have expected, I think,
Speaker 2: And I don't know, So yeah, you want to Should
Speaker 2: we just talk about kind of our days?
Speaker 3: I think I just want to ground people before we
Speaker 3: do that in that so much as if reporting on
Speaker 3: Minneapolis has focused on trauma, and so much reporting on
Speaker 3: migrants focuses on trauma, right, And I think people who
Speaker 3: have listened to our podcast know that that's not really
Speaker 3: a game, and so I understand when they hear that
Speaker 3: we've been in Minneapolis, I think we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about horrific things that we've seen. I want to talk
Speaker 3: more about the beautiful things that we've seen, because I
Speaker 3: think those get missed and they're super important, especially if
Speaker 3: you're listening in another city in the US which will
Speaker 3: face some degree of this or is facing some degree
Speaker 3: of this. Right, So I want to ground this in
Speaker 3: saying that rather than talking about the trauma people experiencing,
Speaker 3: which I'm sure will be incidental, I want to talk
Speaker 3: about how closely people are holding each other here and
Speaker 3: how special that is and what we can take from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like without obviously we're like, we're not trying
Speaker 2: to paint a rosy picture of what's happening here, because
Speaker 2: what's happening here is like I'm I'm a cold hearted journalist,
Speaker 2: historian person, and I was crying multiple times in the
Speaker 2: past couple days as people told me about some of
Speaker 2: the stuff they've experienced. But some of it has been
Speaker 2: you know, we've asked people, We've said, like, hey, what
Speaker 2: do you want people to take away from this? And
Speaker 2: one of the main things is that kind of a
Speaker 2: like hey, you can do it too kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that people have talked about is
Speaker 2: like it would be really nice for people to see
Speaker 2: that what we're doing is amazing here, even if it's
Speaker 2: like coming out of such such horrendous adversity.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like one of the things that I've taken throughout
Speaker 3: my career is in hard times, we can build beautiful things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: That's what I wrote my book about, really. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: what I've tried to report on all of the world.
Speaker 3: They think this is more evidence of that, and so
Speaker 3: like you're going to hear things which were amazing and
Speaker 3: the people who have done them are wonderful, but they're
Speaker 3: not uniquely special. You can do all these things too,
Speaker 3: and like, I want you to see that it is
Speaker 3: possible where you live.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the first things that we did
Speaker 2: when we got here we talked about, you know, to
Speaker 2: put ourselves in the story. I drove a long way
Speaker 2: and James flew a long way and yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I picked up James at the airport and we came
Speaker 2: to where we're staying and we were talking about like
Speaker 2: and it was late at night and we're like, all right,
Speaker 2: what are we what are we trying to do tomorrow?
Speaker 2: And what are we trying to see? And what are
Speaker 2: we trying to learn? Yeah, And one of the main
Speaker 2: things one of the first questions we had was like,
Speaker 2: what's the scale of what's happening here? Yeah? Right, Like,
Speaker 2: like what were your impressions of the scale of what
Speaker 2: was happening? Mmm? We should talk without that.
Speaker 3: What's happening here?
Speaker 2: It's like really quickly, I bet you all know about
Speaker 2: it in the news. Why do I have a different
Speaker 2: tone of voice when I'm talking into a microphone? In
Speaker 2: this way, and so usually I'm in a zoom call,
Speaker 2: but instead we're both sitting in a bedroom on opposite
Speaker 2: ends of the bedroom. Yeah, talking into microphones, and I
Speaker 2: somehow have a different cadence and I don't know how
Speaker 2: I feel about it. Also, I've had to drink caffeine,
Speaker 2: which I don't do because we've had to do an
Speaker 2: awful lot. And anyway, what was I about to ask you.
Speaker 3: How widespread stuff is?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, well what was it? Okay, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about what's happening here.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so if people aren't familiar, right, ICE, which
Speaker 3: is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency charged with removing
Speaker 3: people from the United States who are non citizens right
Speaker 3: who are considered deportable. Specifically, the branch of Immigration and
Speaker 3: Customs Enforcement that we are seeing here is Enforcement Removal
Speaker 3: Operations aka EOO. We're also seeing border patrol right in
Speaker 3: the last year, actually more than a year, and I right,
Speaker 3: this begun under the Bay deministration with Operation Turned to
Speaker 3: Send Her in the Central Valley of California. We're seeing
Speaker 3: border patrol agents used to do internal enforcement right of
Speaker 3: people who are generally documented, sometimes undocumented, but always non citizens.
Speaker 3: They are detaining them in the street. They are detaining
Speaker 3: them outside schools. They're detaining them at the bus stop,
Speaker 3: They're detaining them at places to work. And when I
Speaker 3: say detaining, that's as they're grabbing people out of cars.
Speaker 3: They're snatching children and using them to bait out their parents.
Speaker 3: They're smashing people's car windows and pulling them out. They're
Speaker 3: barging into businesses. In one case, they ate at a
Speaker 3: Mexican restaurant and then arrested the workers there later that day.
Speaker 3: I've visited a lot of places where terrible things happen. Right.
Speaker 3: The ship that is happening here, it's a ship that
Speaker 3: people come to America to get away from. It is
Speaker 3: men in masks with guns pulling people who have done
Speaker 3: nothing wrong, who are here not harming anyone, People who
Speaker 3: do not have criminal records. Just for the I don't
Speaker 3: feel like I need to say that on this show,
Speaker 3: but I need to say that every time I talk
Speaker 3: about this, right, like, the vast majority, something like eighty
Speaker 3: percent last time I know to the status of these
Speaker 3: people have no criminal records, and a criminal record could
Speaker 3: be something like fucking parking in the wrong.
Speaker 2: Please, I've been arrested Yeah. Also, I don't care. I
Speaker 2: would give you a lot of crime. Everyone listening to
Speaker 2: this has done a lot of crime. Whether or not
Speaker 2: you've been caught, you're.
Speaker 3: Probably stead Yeah you went a little bit too late
Speaker 3: through a red light whatever, Like, I don't think that
Speaker 3: matters actually exactly, even if you're a lib, even if
Speaker 3: you believe it, our justice system is fair. It should
Speaker 3: be fair for everyone. There shouldn't be different consequences for
Speaker 3: different people. Let's move past set, right, So how wide
Speaker 3: spread is this? Margaret and I got in late. We
Speaker 3: sat up even later talking all the shitty Vegan pizza.
Speaker 3: We ate it. We kind of was Yeah, had better,
Speaker 3: I won't name drop. We we work up the next morning,
Speaker 3: and within five minutes while waking up, we heard like
Speaker 3: beep beep beep coming down the street. Yeah. Both Mark
Speaker 3: and I ran to the front door, spent a while
Speaker 3: trying to put on snow boots, and watched an Ice
Speaker 3: agent rolling down the street in what they normally drive in, right,
Speaker 3: which a rental SUVs with the windows blacked out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and people following them alerting the block that Ice was here, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're not downtown. We like picked an area
Speaker 2: that's like slightly lightly out of it. But we got
Speaker 2: warned that nowhere is goon free. Yeah, and they were right,
Speaker 2: nowhere is good free.
Speaker 3: Right. I mean we have probably been within a thirty
Speaker 3: minute radius of the spot we're staying at for three
Speaker 3: or four days.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We've seen ICE pile their car into a telephone pole.
Speaker 3: We've seen spent munitions on the floor, Ice tear gas
Speaker 3: and people a few ox from us, but they were
Speaker 3: gone by the time we got there. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: don't want to get this out like front and center
Speaker 3: at the start. It was not Ice who kettle protesters today.
Speaker 3: It was Hennepin County Sheriff's office. It was not Ice
Speaker 3: who arrested people who approached them with their hands in
Speaker 3: the air trying to work out what was going on.
Speaker 3: That was Helipin County Sheriff's office. I've seen press conferences
Speaker 3: with Minneapolis police. I don't know what their deal is.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you the Hennepin County Sheriff's office for actively
Speaker 3: participating in this. Right, I'm not buying this local cops good.
Speaker 3: This will shock listeners. I'm not buying the local cops good,
Speaker 3: federal cops bad. Narrative when cops get asked what site
Speaker 3: they're on there on the side of the other cops.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting because the thing that you have is
Speaker 2: that you have you know, there's the great classic like
Speaker 2: if those are neutron times of oppression or siding with
Speaker 2: the oppressors, right, Yeah, because the overall situation here, it
Speaker 2: seems to be, is that you do have much more
Speaker 2: the oppressive force here as an outside forces concerned to
Speaker 2: any other protest movement I've seen in the United States,
Speaker 2: people are very aware that it is outsiders who have
Speaker 2: come to their city to steal their neighbors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And.
Speaker 2: So because of that, the federal forces are the forces
Speaker 2: everyone's mad at, whereas a lot of the people who
Speaker 2: are standing up to federal forces are neutral or fine
Speaker 2: with police and even like the concept of other federal agencies.
Speaker 2: They just don't want people snatching neighbors. Now that's not universal,
Speaker 2: but it's like some of the people we've talked to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but what state level law enforcement has decided is that
Speaker 2: they are committed to keeping the peace and they can't
Speaker 2: keep the peace against ice, which they probably on some
Speaker 2: level morally know that they need to, but they don't.
Speaker 2: And instead they're like, all right, well we can mess
Speaker 2: up with the you.
Speaker 3: Know, the protest protested there protested, right, But.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like when we saw people drive down honking the
Speaker 2: very first thing that we experienced in this town, and
Speaker 2: we weren't sure what it was. We were like, is
Speaker 2: that is that people following ice and honking? And I
Speaker 2: had done fair about research before I came, and I
Speaker 2: kind of knew about the whistles, but I didn't really
Speaker 2: know about this like incredible network that people have built.
Speaker 2: Yeah that what we saw was not in any way exceptional, right,
Speaker 2: that was just.
Speaker 3: A standard street on a Wednesday morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so we get into we get into my
Speaker 2: vehicle and we start driving. You know, we have some
Speaker 2: places we think we're going to go check out, We
Speaker 2: have some you know, friends who are local who are
Speaker 2: going to talk to us. And we get like two
Speaker 2: blocks three blocks before we find people protecting Somali Daycare.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, we uh, well before that, right, we went
Speaker 3: to the food cop to get food. Yeah, And we
Speaker 3: went into the food corp. We got a food and
Speaker 3: on the way out, we see this big old sign
Speaker 3: on the door which is like we're closed on the
Speaker 3: twenty third Ice out of Minnesota. Yeah, I s had
Speaker 3: in Minneapolis whatever it is, and it's in English and Spanish,
Speaker 3: and it's like in solidarity with our migrant neighbors, we're
Speaker 3: not opening. Yeah, And like obviously it's a food cop right,
Speaker 3: it's not a reactionary space that sort of planted a
Speaker 3: seed for me, like, ah, like this is a big
Speaker 3: ass business, you know, like like it's not a business
Speaker 3: that necessarily relies on migrant labor. But I can see
Speaker 3: it being a space for people who in solidarity. I
Speaker 3: wonder how white that is right? And they even in
Speaker 3: the time we've been here, I've seen businesses put those
Speaker 3: ut that didn't happen when we were going out on Wednesday, right,
Speaker 3: like people being like, nah, this isn't right, but yeah,
Speaker 3: to go back. We What happened was that Margaret was driving.
Speaker 3: I was riding next to Margaret. I saw a group
Speaker 3: of people. One guy had kind of tanned for housers
Speaker 3: on and I was like, stop, Margaret. Margaret slowed down,
Speaker 3: signaled and turned into the parking lot that these folks
Speaker 3: were at, and they immediately they had seen us right
Speaker 3: ham on the brakes and turn up in a vehicle
Speaker 3: with that estate plates. Then we then we better go
Speaker 3: speak to these people. We probably scared them.
Speaker 2: What's going is we thought we scared them. No, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're not scared of us. No, they're looking to see
Speaker 2: if they're on to us. It's such a huge difference, right, right,
Speaker 2: because when people are scoping us out, they're not like, oh,
Speaker 2: that might be ice. They're like, is that ice?
Speaker 3: Let's fucking get them. Yeah yeah, Like if that's ice,
Speaker 3: we need to roll, right, We need to we need
Speaker 3: to let people know. We need to start honking, we
Speaker 3: need to start whistling.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we get out, walk over and we start talking
Speaker 3: to these people, and like that. The person who was
Speaker 3: most fourth, right, most forthcoming, was an older lady. I
Speaker 3: mean she shared her rages. I think it's fine to
Speaker 3: say I think seventy six. Yeah, it's probably a round
Speaker 3: zero fair andheighth, like even like that warmer than that, right, So, like,
Speaker 3: you know, mindus ten celsius something there. Yeah, not wearing
Speaker 3: a hat, yeah, just give a fuck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm chilly in my like brand new winter clothes,
Speaker 2: and I live outside in the mountain. I don't live
Speaker 2: outside anymore, but I live in the mountains.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm wearing all my nice technical gear show
Speaker 3: on a Parker and yeah, and she's just like so zealous,
Speaker 3: is like she's so happy to be doing what she's
Speaker 3: doing and so proud of herself for being the person
Speaker 3: who did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And she's not in an earnest way, like in
Speaker 2: a way that in a self congratulatory way, but just
Speaker 2: in a like I am one hundred percent convinced I'm
Speaker 2: in the right and I will talk to you, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I will say it with my whole chest. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 2: do you want to share some of the stuff you said?
Speaker 2: I thought it's really one of the things that she
Speaker 2: said that, yeah, Like I mean, you know she I
Speaker 2: didn't get the impression she was like a wild political
Speaker 2: radical or something, right, and she's just like, you know,
Speaker 2: my father fought fascists in France and Italy, and like
Speaker 2: he would be proud of me, and like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: sure he would be. Yeah, and I'm.
Speaker 3: Sure it would be disgusted at what's fucking happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, and while we're talking, the Somali
Speaker 2: family who's daycare it is, comes out and gives us
Speaker 2: symbosas and we're like no, no, no, no, we're journalists.
Speaker 3: You don't have to give us anything.
Speaker 2: We're like, not even helping. We're like, they're like, you're here,
Speaker 2: you're with us, you are taking food.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was like, no way, some monies we feed
Speaker 3: people like, yeah, what's your deally vegetarian? We're like, we're
Speaker 3: with vegan.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he comes out, goes back, comes out with the
Speaker 3: vegan ones, you know, like and they were delicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, there's some best foot I ever eaten. As we're
Speaker 2: standing there, more people come and go. So you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is happening here, right, you know, no pun intended.
Speaker 2: And we as we leave, we talked to a few
Speaker 2: more people we leave, and and some of the other
Speaker 2: people we talk to are like and the people from
Speaker 2: different scenes, it's not you know, like it's not just
Speaker 2: an old.
Speaker 3: Lady scene, right, it's a diverse crowd.
Speaker 2: Right. And you know, when we talk to a father
Speaker 2: who I tangentially know through the metal scene, who is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: my kid goes to school here. Yeah, like no one
Speaker 2: is taking kids while I can stand here, you know,
Speaker 2: And he was like, I have work to be doing it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He's like, we're supposed to be recording this band today
Speaker 2: or whatever. And he's like, no, I'm here, I'm doing this.
Speaker 2: There's no sadness, you know, there's just.
Speaker 3: So he's like, this is what I have to be doing.
Speaker 3: It's the most important thing to do.
Speaker 2: Every two blocks there are people on the corner. Yeah,
Speaker 2: usually two people, sometimes alone. And those what we later
Speaker 2: learned because we were like, holy shit, there's ice watchers everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 2: those are just the marked people we see. That's the minority. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there are people driving constantly in very organized but entirely
Speaker 2: decentralized networks of rapid response where they have come together
Speaker 2: in these like hyper local Signal loops. Signal is an
Speaker 2: encrypted messaging app that you can use on any device Android, iPhone.
Speaker 2: The government can't break its encryption. However, there's no truly
Speaker 2: safe system.
Speaker 3: It's the safest one we have and it automatically deletes
Speaker 3: mess ues after a period of day if.
Speaker 2: You set it up to yeah, and which you should.
Speaker 2: And so people are using this system, and you know,
Speaker 2: a ton of these people had never heard of Signal
Speaker 2: before in their life and now they're using this system.
Speaker 2: And also we talked to folks and people felt that
Speaker 2: like a certain level of transparency about the networks they're
Speaker 2: building is very useful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should probably address its head on, like just
Speaker 3: to be super clearly. Yeah, I think we are sharing
Speaker 3: is because people have implored us to share it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We did not sneak in and find its information. People
Speaker 3: openly gave it to us because they wanted you to
Speaker 3: hear it.
Speaker 2: Right, Because they understand that this is the kind of
Speaker 2: system that is currently proving effective and they want people
Speaker 2: to learn from what they're doing, and so they've created
Speaker 2: hyper local systems like block by block. We have groups
Speaker 2: where neighbors are able to check in on neighbors and
Speaker 2: people are able to say, hey, I saw this thing right,
Speaker 2: you know, And so there is constant presence all over town.
Speaker 2: And when I say town, we spent our time in Minneapolis,
Speaker 2: but we have talked to a lot of people always
Speaker 2: say the same Paul is doing a similar thing, suburbs
Speaker 2: are doing a similar thing. Even some small towns elsewhere
Speaker 2: in Minnesota starting to do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't quite know where the town is, but
Speaker 3: if people are local, Like a few years ago, I
Speaker 3: went to a massive renfare here and already outed myself
Speaker 3: it's okay. I brought a cloak I must wear. Folks
Speaker 3: all the way out there are doing it too, which
Speaker 3: is that was that place had a rural Midwest vibe,
Speaker 3: let me tell you.
Speaker 2: And so people are doing this all over. I have
Speaker 2: never seen unity like this.
Speaker 3: No, Like the only time I've seen a city this
Speaker 3: much in lockstep is when I was in Comishlo in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three. And where is that. Comishlo is the
Speaker 3: capital of what is generally referred to as Rajava, the
Speaker 3: Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. And at that
Speaker 3: time we were being bombed by Turkey. Turkey takes offense
Speaker 3: at Kurdish people having any autonomy. And this is what
Speaker 3: that felt like, because there is someone invading your town
Speaker 3: and taking your friends. Yeah, and everyone. I remember there
Speaker 3: were funerals, right because so one bomb killed thirty four,
Speaker 3: say show the internal security forces, and I remember everyone
Speaker 3: rolled out for the funeral like it was like a
Speaker 3: general strike. And that's what it feels like here, Like
Speaker 3: you could walk through town the day that happened and
Speaker 3: see people were sad, but they were sharing their sadness.
Speaker 3: And here people are mad and they're sharing their anger
Speaker 3: but also their love for one another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even when someone was killed by ice. This did
Speaker 2: not stop people from doing this work. Yeah, it brought
Speaker 2: more people out to do this work because people are like, no, this,
Speaker 2: this work needs to be done. And on some level
Speaker 2: the scale is that, right, Like, because if someone is
Speaker 2: seeking asylum, like, no one runs unless they have a reason,
Speaker 2: you know, And so sending people back to the places
Speaker 2: that they've sought asylum from often just means killing people. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, let's look at the things that happened in
Speaker 3: the last month. Right, gay men being sent back to Iran,
Speaker 3: where the punishment for that is death. People from this community,
Speaker 3: Korene people, right being sent back to Mianmar where we
Speaker 3: know that they are directly delivered to a military prison.
Speaker 3: They are sending people back to Mauritania, where again you
Speaker 3: can be punished for being queer by death. Right, Like,
Speaker 3: what is happening here is that people's lives are at stake.
Speaker 3: I think sometimes people think, oh, I think of Veni
Speaker 3: and you go out a place where life is less,
Speaker 3: you know, you don't have a target. No, that's not
Speaker 3: a deal. Yeah, we're sending people back to Venezuela. Right,
Speaker 3: We're sending people from the US to Venezuela. The US
Speaker 3: notably just kidnapped the president of Venezuela. Those people aren't
Speaker 3: going to have a nice time. Yeah, right, And if
Speaker 3: you were a US intelligence agen see and you wanted
Speaker 3: to insert people into Venezuela, that's how you would do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And Venezuela knows that Venezuella then that dumb and they
Speaker 3: are very paranoid. Yeah, and they are a state which
Speaker 3: has a great deal of ability to do violence based
Speaker 3: on that paranoid.
Speaker 2: And so people are aware of the stakes and they're
Speaker 2: doween something about it, and what's cool. It's so interesting
Speaker 2: because at the same time, but you know, there's a
Speaker 2: little bit of like, yeah, we're built different and certainly
Speaker 2: around the colt that is absolutely true. And there is
Speaker 2: all of this stuff in the history of at least
Speaker 2: Minneapolis that people have built resistance out of, right, you know,
Speaker 2: all of this very active multiculturalism going back decades. We've
Speaker 2: talked to organizers who grew up and you know, we
Speaker 2: talked to an organizer who grew up in the American
Speaker 2: Indian movement and was talking about like black and Indigenous
Speaker 2: solidarity going back to the sixties and seventies, right, and
Speaker 2: you know, and was saying like, there's all of this
Speaker 2: multicultural and solidarity. There's also all of these like cultural events, right.
Speaker 2: They have this huge Mayday parade right, or festival every year.
Speaker 2: It's funny, I've spent a lot of time in Minneapolis,
Speaker 2: but I've never actually been here for this, but everyone's
Speaker 2: always talking about it where basically people go to this
Speaker 2: park and build puppets and build giant puppets together. But
Speaker 2: it's it's decentralized, and so there's all of this history
Speaker 2: of decentralized organizing. And in twenty twenty, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: the uprising kind of began here and people are very.
Speaker 3: Aware of that.
Speaker 2: And so they have all of these networks that have
Speaker 2: been built for years, and they weren't necessarily like crazy
Speaker 2: active in the intervening years. But people know each other
Speaker 2: on some level. And that's the thing though, because we
Speaker 2: expected kind of I expected people being like, ah, yes,
Speaker 2: they had all of these deep interconnections, and most people
Speaker 2: were talking to are like, no, I know my neighbors.
Speaker 2: Now do you know six months ago we had the
Speaker 2: we have these like small seeds, right, and so there,
Speaker 2: so people here are and aren't special about that. But
Speaker 2: do you know what is special? Else I can die.
Speaker 2: I shut it to think, Margaret. I think what's special
Speaker 2: is the fact that you and I run anti capitalist podcasts.
Speaker 2: It's special as a lot of meetings, Yeah, that are
Speaker 2: interrupted by advertisements. Yeah, it is, it is different, it is,
Speaker 2: it is a thing. And here they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you please in certain name of advertiser here
Speaker 3: for buying us a low grade vegan pizza which still
Speaker 3: cost us more than fifty dollars and reback. Yeah. I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk a little bit about like the structures
Speaker 3: that exist, right, and I think probably the way to
Speaker 3: do that is to break this down into two distinct,
Speaker 3: I guess categories. And I think these are distinct in
Speaker 3: terms of organizing for the most part. Right, one is
Speaker 3: mutual aid and one is rapid response. And I just
Speaker 3: want to break down why people are doing mutual aid. First.
Speaker 3: First of all, we're doing mutual aid because it is
Speaker 3: the way that we build a better world by taking
Speaker 3: care of one another without trying to extract profit from
Speaker 3: one another. Why they're doing it is because people right
Speaker 3: now who are at risk of deportation are afraid to
Speaker 3: leave their homes. They are living like a lot of
Speaker 3: Jewish people lived in nats. This is this is a
Speaker 3: comparison to somebody whose grandparents fled the Holocaust made for
Speaker 3: us today, like Jewish people did Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: The difference is this time they know their neighbors have
Speaker 3: their back. Yeah, and so they're afraid to go out.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Schools are offering remote education because kids are afraid to
Speaker 3: go to school because ice has been hitting school bus stops. Yeah.
Speaker 3: People can't go out and get groceries, and they can't
Speaker 3: go to their jobs, so they can't pay their bills.
Speaker 3: And so that requires if we want to take care
Speaker 3: of people, we have to feed them. We have to
Speaker 3: help them pay their bills, meet their material needs, get
Speaker 3: their kids educated. That is a heavy lift. Capitalism extracts
Speaker 3: are pretty heavy fee for paying rent. Right, we give
Speaker 3: most of our lives, yeah, to capital so that we
Speaker 3: can get food and pay rent and clothes and shit.
Speaker 3: We have to do that without that here, right, and
Speaker 3: people are doing it. So they are organizing food drop off,
Speaker 3: they're organizing diaper banks, they're organizing to give people rides
Speaker 3: who might not feel safe driving by themselves. Yeah, they're
Speaker 3: taking people's kids. Some often right. A scenario that I'm
Speaker 3: very familiar with is citizen children born to non citizen parents.
Speaker 3: So those kids, no one is safe when you have
Speaker 3: this many people running around with weapons, right and very
Speaker 3: poor training and then a lot of anger and yeah,
Speaker 3: not very good at driving in the snow. But their
Speaker 3: kids are still able to go out and go to school.
Speaker 3: But it's about idea for their parents are taken, right.
Speaker 3: So you're seeing people organizing school runs, getting food for people.
Speaker 3: Then you've got businesses that are owned by migrants, right
Speaker 3: like there, or businesses that are largely staffed by migrants.
Speaker 3: So it's trying to keep those places afloat so that
Speaker 3: community can continue to care for itself. But when it's
Speaker 3: workers can't come in, or what if the majority of
Speaker 3: the clean tell of the business and migrants, well, maybe
Speaker 3: people volunteer to do delivery, right, so that that business
Speaker 3: can stay afloat and those migrants can still get the
Speaker 3: foods that make them feel safe at a time when
Speaker 3: they don't feel safe. Whatever it is, right, people are
Speaker 3: meeting each other's needs without trying to extract, like find
Speaker 3: actual compas station from each of them.
Speaker 2: And to talk about the decentralized nature of this again,
Speaker 2: and it's like hyper local like no org, many orgs,
Speaker 2: but no one org stepped in and was like, ah,
Speaker 2: this is the way to do it. Here's this top
Speaker 2: down flow chart. Instead. All of these groups started in
Speaker 2: different ways, like we've talked to people from like different
Speaker 2: neighborhoods where like ah, it all started like this, and
Speaker 2: then they paint a completely different picture from people from
Speaker 2: three blocks over. Yeah. Yeah, and like you know, someone
Speaker 2: was like the mutual aid here started with one mom
Speaker 2: who was like, while I'm making food, yeah, and in
Speaker 2: her own kitchen made food.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then it was like I will carry the entire
Speaker 2: weight of the world as necessary upon my shoulders.
Speaker 3: And then other people.
Speaker 2: Were like, okay, I'll help you lift this. I think
Speaker 2: of the have you seen the meme about like I
Speaker 2: can't lift weights with my anarchist friends. No, I can't
Speaker 2: lift weights with my anarchist friends because every time might
Speaker 2: pick up the barbell, like thirty of my friends come
Speaker 2: over and help me lift the bar bell while singing
Speaker 2: John Henry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's perfect, And.
Speaker 2: That's like what's happening here? Yeah, you know, And so
Speaker 2: one person starts doing this thing and people say, oh,
Speaker 2: that's a good idea, and there are these other networks
Speaker 2: that can then tie that in and people will be
Speaker 2: heavily involved in one network and have a little bit
Speaker 2: of an understanding what's happening in the other networks. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but enough people are talking to each other that they're
Speaker 2: learning best practices, they're learning what doesn't doesn't work, and
Speaker 2: they're also changing to get to mean the threat. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the other thing is here that no one's
Speaker 3: coming in with like tax deductible funding. Yeah. Right, this
Speaker 3: is just people taking care of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That has been sustainable for some time, right, like since
Speaker 3: since mid December we're now in late January. That is
Speaker 3: a thing that like there's a need for money, yeah,
Speaker 3: to keep banking that happen, and that is an area
Speaker 3: where people outside of Minneapolis going to help, they want to,
Speaker 3: So I just want to flag that. Yeah, and we
Speaker 3: will drop some resources at the end of these two episodes,
Speaker 3: and we'll drop at the end of the first episode
Speaker 3: and hopefully you'll if you feel so inclined, you'll be
Speaker 3: able to help financially. But yeah, let's talk about rapid response.
Speaker 2: ICE is not as large of an agency as they
Speaker 2: wish it was. You know, there's so much news about
Speaker 2: how hard of a time they're having hiring people, to
Speaker 2: the point where they like hired the like leftist journalist too,
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, applied as a joke, you know here.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: And so they've they've had the surge here, the flood
Speaker 2: they called it, I believe of agents here and you
Speaker 2: know there's about three thousand I think ice agents in
Speaker 2: the city.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was metro surge here. Midway flood
Speaker 3: was Chicago.
Speaker 2: Okay, And they can't do that everywhere at once. So
Speaker 2: if you play video games, Minneapolis is tanking. Did you
Speaker 2: know the concept of tanking. Yeah, you'd ask to be
Speaker 2: a video game. You do in Dungeons Dragons, I know,
Speaker 2: I know they do it. Yeah, you can tank in
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons, but the actual Weirdly, I think the
Speaker 2: concept of tanking comes not from Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah,
Speaker 2: later additions that this is a nerd tangent.
Speaker 3: Anyway, James and Margaret talk about Dungeons Dragons eptomology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the concept is that one person stands there and
Speaker 2: takes the damage while other people heal that person and
Speaker 2: do damage to the people attacking that person.
Speaker 3: Well prepared themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, in the video game version, as you you know,
Speaker 2: one person takes all the damage while everyone else is
Speaker 2: also helping do the damage back, because that's literally just
Speaker 2: the World of Warcraft version. But Minneapolis is tanking. It's
Speaker 2: the Twin Cities and Minnesota are tanking, and all of
Speaker 2: the ice agents that are here aren't somewhere else. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the ways that they're making that possible
Speaker 2: it's a rapid response.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And rapid response that's what the name says. That is
Speaker 2: a way to respond rapidly. Which is the other Okay,
Speaker 2: this is the other question, and I have coming in
Speaker 2: Why does this work? This was my thought. I was like,
Speaker 2: why does blowing whistles at ice agents make them not
Speaker 2: able to kidnap people? So I was like does this work?
Speaker 2: That was one of the main questions we ask people.
Speaker 2: The answer is yes, it doesn't work all the time.
Speaker 2: This is still a tragic situation where if everyone involves
Speaker 2: is kind of traumatized to medium to greater degrees. I
Speaker 2: don't want to say the lesser degrees. But what happens
Speaker 2: is is that if the ice agents are outnumbered, they
Speaker 2: usually don't successfully abduct anyone, even though they're the only
Speaker 2: harmed people in the situation, even though they theoretically the
Speaker 2: way that police would act. Being outnumbered it helps, but
Speaker 2: it's not as much of a game changer. Yeah, with
Speaker 2: ICE being wildly unpopular occupying force so far at least currently,
Speaker 2: outnumbering them seems to often stop abductions. At first, I
Speaker 2: believe to Zemberish, the way that ICE was handling things
Speaker 2: was these big, spectacular raids that we've seen in a
Speaker 2: lot of places. Thirty agents are showing up and raiding
Speaker 2: this place, right, and so if you get a call
Speaker 2: about that, a rapid response can be twenty minutes, it
Speaker 2: can be thirty minutes. You can show up and you're
Speaker 2: still part of fighting against this happening. And this is
Speaker 2: what's happening all over the country, right. Yeah, So ICE
Speaker 2: here adapted and started moving faster and faster. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: so now often these abductions take two or three minutes.
Speaker 2: So they were like, how do we get a crowd
Speaker 2: in two minutes? And when when an organizer first, like
Speaker 2: everyone here is an organizer. When a person who does
Speaker 2: this first suggested that to me, my thought was like,
Speaker 2: well you don't, Yeah, that's impossible, but it's not.
Speaker 3: They do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they do it because everyone here in Minneapol.
Speaker 2: Like I not everyone everyone, but I I haven't run
Speaker 2: across too many counter examples. Yeah, is themselves willing to respond. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 2: and so when you hear people honking and whistles outside.
Speaker 3: You go outside. Yeah, I mean we heard someone was
Speaker 3: mentioning that they had seen and to be clear, this
Speaker 3: morning again the real feel was in the minus thirties
Speaker 3: celsius and fahrenheit, which is the last Friday. But they
Speaker 3: have said they were on the block, they heard some honking,
Speaker 3: they come outside. There they were outside and cut off
Speaker 3: pajama pants and crogs, screaming and blowing whistles right like,
Speaker 3: and you we saw it, even when someone mistook us
Speaker 3: for ice agents. Right and within a couple of minutes
Speaker 3: a couple of people are come and we were to
Speaker 3: go with your list like yeah, long hair like sap
Speaker 3: them range, Yeah, exactly like crusty like you can you.
Speaker 2: Can see us coming but out of state plates. Yeah.
Speaker 3: A city is made of people, right like that. The
Speaker 3: people are out there, the blood pumping through the veins
Speaker 3: of a city. It's not made of buildings. And there
Speaker 3: are people every were and when all of them are
Speaker 3: willing to show up, right or half of them? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 3: in the entire time we have seen here, the only
Speaker 3: person who has expressed any negativity about what is happening
Speaker 3: is a person in a truck today who was honking
Speaker 3: at a large protest that we were part of in
Speaker 3: a way that was clearly adversarial. Oh yeah, yeah, literally
Speaker 3: one person.
Speaker 2: He was also stuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was also stuck and have been stuck for
Speaker 3: some time and hid struggling with a merged situation that
Speaker 3: happened when.
Speaker 2: We actually don't know as political opinions.
Speaker 3: He was unhappy. It was just that's the only person
Speaker 3: I've seen express any upset, Like every the person checking
Speaker 3: us out at the supermarket, the people who we have
Speaker 3: run into a coffee shops right like Rando's outside the
Speaker 3: Dollar General store, people we see in the street. But
Speaker 3: people we see in the street are standing it. It's
Speaker 3: cold as fuck. No one wants just like vibing on
Speaker 3: a park bench currently, but everyone, yeah, is one hundred
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 2: On the fuck these guys page, Yeah, like we we
Speaker 2: today we heard about an ice vehicle that crashed into
Speaker 2: a pole and This is actually fairly common, I believe,
Speaker 2: because one they don't know how to drive in ice, yeah,
Speaker 2: and Minneapolis is icy, and they were driving like a
Speaker 2: I don't know whether the vehicles all we were drive
Speaker 2: or not. It was the Ford Escape, yeah, but it
Speaker 2: was some not altering tires. Yeah, No, those were pretty
Speaker 2: those were some California ass to ice. Yeah. And it's
Speaker 2: just crashed into a pole in a like pretty impressive way,
Speaker 2: like going at a decent speed.
Speaker 3: Yeah. They both hair bags had deployed, the radiator was done,
Speaker 3: the engine block was you know, like, Yeah, they'd crumpled
Speaker 3: the front of the car. It's because they drive erratically
Speaker 3: when people are driving behind them trying to get rid
Speaker 3: of them, and they are driving ill equipped, both skill
Speaker 3: wise and vehicle wise. Yeah, and so we showed up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: an hour and a half after the crash. They just
Speaker 3: abandoned the vehicle. They're like, they came and got some
Speaker 3: of their stuff out of the car. To your guess, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I tossed some seer guys.
Speaker 2: We saw the canister on the ground of Safes Gas
Speaker 2: and they just left it there and they were not
Speaker 2: going to clean it up. I don't believe they will
Speaker 2: ever clean it up. That'll be on the local police
Speaker 2: or whoever, you know, city And we're standing there and
Speaker 2: a guy drives by and he's just a normal man. Yeah,
Speaker 2: no distinguishing features yet, no belief to be a subcultural
Speaker 2: or lefty or someone drives by and it is like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, is everyone okay? And I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's a nice vehicle, and he just starts laughing, he
Speaker 2: barks his car, he gets yeah yeah, and this happens
Speaker 2: over and this is must have been happening over and
Speaker 2: over over an hour to happen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: What else I noticed then was like, so we were
Speaker 3: walking up and this this person popped out of their
Speaker 3: house and was like, hey, what's happening. We were like, oh,
Speaker 3: I spiffed it into this pole. Yeah, And they were
Speaker 3: like okay, if you guys need anything, like I'm here,
Speaker 3: I'm taking care of some kids or an elder. I
Speaker 3: can't remember, but they were like, you need to come
Speaker 3: in the house. It's called just come to come knock
Speaker 3: on the door, like you need a hot drink, you know.
Speaker 2: Like, and we're more press, We're not like hello, we
Speaker 2: are the activists.
Speaker 3: You know. Yeah, like you know, I'm to be clear,
Speaker 3: I'm wearing a helmet mark. Were both wearing helmets with
Speaker 3: with big blue press patches on them. So one of
Speaker 3: the things I noticed is like, and it's been repeated
Speaker 3: a bit and then reported on a little bit, like
Speaker 3: these three D printed whistles. Right, Yeah, one of the
Speaker 3: ways that people identify someone was saying them that people
Speaker 3: know you're cool. It's like people are all carrying whistles
Speaker 3: around the next like almost. I was just keeping an
Speaker 3: eye on this is as we met people throughout the
Speaker 3: last few days. Everybody had a caribbean with their keys
Speaker 3: and a whistle on it, or a whistle around their neck,
Speaker 3: or there was a whistle on a lanyard on their wrist.
Speaker 3: It's like a little marker.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting is we've talked to people about how
Speaker 2: at the beginning, I know a lot of people are like,
Speaker 2: this seems kind of silly. Yeah, right, You're like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're the Federal I mean there's the Gestapo, right yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: and we have whistles and so it seems so absurd. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but there's so many parts of it they hate. They
Speaker 2: want to operate in secrecy. Yeah, yeah, we see watchers
Speaker 2: on every corner. We don't see ice, Like this is
Speaker 2: a city under occupation, but it's like visibly under occupation
Speaker 2: by its own defenders. Yeah right, it is like infiltrated
Speaker 2: by federal agents. Not like you don't you know, I've
Speaker 2: been in places where you have like the the police
Speaker 2: rolling around in their tank things with Yeah, and like
Speaker 2: this isn't that because they can't actually express much force.
Speaker 3: They can't even be seen as you go. They're trying
Speaker 3: their very hardest to hide, right, They have tinted vehicles,
Speaker 3: they cover their faces. They keep getting different rentals so
Speaker 3: people can't recognize it. Yeah, Like they are trying their
Speaker 3: best to blend in and failing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And everyone having a whistle. So not only is it
Speaker 2: effective because it draws attention to them, it makes you
Speaker 2: a defender. It's a very cheap and easy way you
Speaker 2: hand the whistle, and you're handling them responsibility. You're saying
Speaker 2: like you are now it's like, I mean he's handing
Speaker 2: some of their goddamn sword, you know, in a like
Speaker 2: night fantasy land way, right, Yeah, like you're one of
Speaker 2: us when we take care of each other, and you
Speaker 2: are going to defend people. Yeah, and you're going to
Speaker 2: defend people by casting these people like it's so interesting
Speaker 2: because I'm so used to thinking like power doesn't need
Speaker 2: to hide, right, Like, yeah, you know, and when journalists
Speaker 2: are like, oh, well, what they really fear is the truth,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm like, well, power doesn't need to hide.
Speaker 3: But the power is not with the folks driving around
Speaker 3: and occupying the city right now. The more relevant power
Speaker 3: is with the folks standing on street corners who don't
Speaker 3: feel the need to hide, who want afraid, right.
Speaker 2: And like, this is part of why I hate saying
Speaker 2: things like this. I think we're gonna win, yeah, And
Speaker 2: I haven't felt that way in years, And like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that this spirit, the spirit that is animating
Speaker 2: this city is the thing that will get us through it.
Speaker 2: And when I say when when conditions are all weird
Speaker 2: and hard and we're going to lose a lot of people,
Speaker 2: like we're going to lose a lot.
Speaker 3: Of like grabbing people up the street hair every day
Speaker 3: to style of this.
Speaker 2: Because when I'm like, oh, people are stopping so many abductions,
Speaker 2: they're also everyone we've talked to has stop abductions and
Speaker 2: failed to stop abductions. Yeah, and that haunts a lot
Speaker 2: of them. I think I think so too, And yeah,
Speaker 2: people are really torn between those two things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll just say that like as someone who's been
Speaker 3: in it for a minute when it comes to like
Speaker 3: advocacy for migrants, right. Yeah, If I go back three
Speaker 3: years ago to twenty twenty three, it was one hundred
Speaker 3: crusties and anarchists and Quakers and Sikhs who were feeding
Speaker 3: thousands of people in the desert, right, and in a
Speaker 3: big city metro area of three million people forty five
Speaker 3: minutes away. People didn't believe me when I told them
Speaker 3: it was happening, because nobody gave a shit, to include
Speaker 3: the local media. Then I was in La Right in
Speaker 3: summer this year, and there were young folks there who
Speaker 3: were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, right,
Speaker 3: and did really inspire inst really inspiring stuff and very
Speaker 3: brave stuff. And so many of them were those kids
Speaker 3: who are in that situation where they are citizens and
Speaker 3: their parents are not, and they believe in the right
Speaker 3: to a freedom of expression and speech, and they came
Speaker 3: to use it. Right. But I could walk five blocks
Speaker 3: from there, and it could have been any other day
Speaker 3: in La Right. I went to a fancy coffee shop
Speaker 3: I overpaid for a coffee.
Speaker 2: Because the white people didn't give a shit. I mean,
Speaker 2: or you didn't for the most part. No, you're right,
Speaker 2: could have been they cared.
Speaker 3: I think they cared. A lot of people say, oh,
Speaker 3: it's terrible, what's happening. Yeah, but you know, some people
Speaker 3: spoke to me about their film script la. Right, that's
Speaker 3: a given, But it did not feel like the city
Speaker 3: was locked in. This feels different to that. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: feels more locked in than it even felt in twenty twenty. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because everybody sees this is an external thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but do you know what doesn't like doing transitions
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 3: It's me.
Speaker 2: I don't actually like doing it, but that is my job.
Speaker 2: And here's some ads, and we're back. The external threat
Speaker 2: part is really fascinating and is like a key to
Speaker 2: a lot of this. I believe, you know, the difference
Speaker 2: between the tone of twenty twenty, where it was this
Speaker 2: nationwide internal threat. This is still absolutely present, right, is
Speaker 2: absolutely all of the problems from twenty twenty, Yeah are
Speaker 2: still here at up Yeah. Earlier today and we watched
Speaker 2: them arrest a lawyer. Yeah, and we'll get to that.
Speaker 2: But the thing I've been thinking about is that in
Speaker 2: protest movements you often say things like oh, what radicalized you?
Speaker 2: Or I got radicalized by this, or yeah, this isn't radical,
Speaker 2: even though it's higher stakes, more risk, like, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: not radical to say, man, I don't think you should
Speaker 2: kidnap literal children, you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think Yeah, which is why very normal people are very
Speaker 3: pissed off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like and one of the things has come
Speaker 2: up from multiple people, you know, and and the internet
Speaker 2: commenters will say, well, then why they vote this way?
Speaker 2: And that's just a that doesn't get us anywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what the are you doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've talked to a bunch of people who are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that Republican business is closed for the general strike. Or
Speaker 2: my neighbor who is very conservative, is pissed as hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah I saw a signed today and we'll get to
Speaker 2: the big protest. I sorry, what would Ronald Reagan do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? The person right, So this person has not just
Speaker 3: thought that. Yeah, they have got out their pens and
Speaker 3: paper and their crafting supplies. Yeah, they've made that sign.
Speaker 3: They've got their ass down to the middle of town
Speaker 3: and it is minus ten minus fifteen, and they are
Speaker 3: out and about with their what would Ronald Reagan sign? Right,
Speaker 3: because they have that pissed off.
Speaker 2: And no one's mad at them. Yeah, because at a
Speaker 2: certain point it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, rather they were here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like exactly. And like the thing I've been thinking
Speaker 2: about a lot is that glad you're here, gets so
Speaker 2: much further than what took you so long. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: there just is a line. The federal government has crossed it.
Speaker 2: And the more people who are aware of that, the better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think it's really important that part of the
Speaker 3: organizing here has been so wide and so inclusive and
Speaker 3: so broad and yet so focused.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so focused on keeping their neighbors safe. And
Speaker 3: that's it can be so broad because most people think
Speaker 3: that's the right thing to do. That is what is
Speaker 3: allowing them to do this right now. Yeah, And it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter where someone was yesterday or in November of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, if they're on a street corner today
Speaker 3: looking out for their neighbors.
Speaker 2: And I'll say that I'm not going to name them,
Speaker 2: but to shout out part of the reason I'm here
Speaker 2: is that like someone I know who I don't know,
Speaker 2: if they have a political ideology to their name, just
Speaker 2: you know, a young queer person I know was talking
Speaker 2: to them a couple of weeks ago and they were
Speaker 2: telling me about how, you know, I didn't understand the
Speaker 2: scope of the rapid response networks, but it's hard to
Speaker 2: see from outside.
Speaker 3: Yes it is, yeah, yeah, and necessarily it's something that
Speaker 3: people don't always talk about to everyone, right.
Speaker 2: Right, totally, And so, you know, talking to this person
Speaker 2: and they're like, oh, earlier today, I you know, went
Speaker 2: and stood in front of apartment building because of ICE.
Speaker 2: And I was like, your apartment building and They're like, no,
Speaker 2: about a block away, and I'm like okay. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I just want to go stand out front to make
Speaker 2: sure ICE didn't get in. And I'm like, okay, I
Speaker 2: don't quite understand, you know. And then they're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and I you know, I go to the hotels where
Speaker 2: Ice are at and me and my friends sit there
Speaker 2: and write down license plates and I'm just like, and
Speaker 2: I'm imagining this is just like an activity they're doing.
Speaker 2: I don't quite understand, you know, But I'm like, why
Speaker 2: are you doing it? Right? And not that not that
Speaker 2: it's a it's an obvious answer on some level, but
Speaker 2: they're like because I told myself I was someone who
Speaker 2: would do it's right. Yeah, And I think that then
Speaker 2: in all of our hearts, we tell ourselves that when
Speaker 2: it comes down to it, we do it's right. And like,
Speaker 2: you know, people like talking about like comparisons between now
Speaker 2: in Nazi Germany and the rise of fascism, and they're like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's the meme about like how we all
Speaker 2: ended up fascists. You're failing an open note test, you know,
Speaker 2: But Minneapolis isn't failing the open note test.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they are passing with flying colors, right, Like
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I think you know you and I
Speaker 3: have both history appreciators, and history has taught us a lot, right,
Speaker 3: the big coalitions do better than small one or ones
Speaker 3: a fracturing too a million pieces that like leadership isn't
Speaker 3: what we need. Participation is what we need. And yeah,
Speaker 3: you see a lot of it in action here and
Speaker 3: like all of us, right, like anyone who's spent any
Speaker 3: time reading, writing, learning, listening to history whatever has sort
Speaker 3: what would I do? We're finding out is that yeah,
Speaker 3: we're not learning at having thought what would I do?
Speaker 3: And most people have said what I wouldn't be one
Speaker 3: of the ones who did something, So they're doing something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think about maybe my last thought for
Speaker 2: today is that when ice abducts people, which they do
Speaker 2: every day, Yeah, did it just disappear people?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: They just show up.
Speaker 2: They pull someone over literally just for being brown, to
Speaker 2: be really transparent. Yeah, Like the police have come out
Speaker 2: and been like, could you please stop pulling over all
Speaker 2: of the brown cops? Yeah? Right, Like and when they
Speaker 2: when they pull someone over, they just take them and
Speaker 2: they leave the car, sometimes running, sometimes in drive, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and just drive away. And I was like, are we
Speaker 2: walking into a ghost town? Right? Are we going to
Speaker 2: see this everywhere? And like, in my three days here,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen the abandoned vehicle except the ice abandoned
Speaker 2: vehicle that get crashed. But it is happening every day,
Speaker 2: and we have talked to people who see it every day.
Speaker 2: And a very common activity is the ghastly approaching an
Speaker 2: abandoned vehicle abandons there the vehicle that has been the
Speaker 2: occas and trying to figure out who the fuck it
Speaker 2: was and going through and finding the information to contact
Speaker 2: people's loved ones and and say like, hey, your your
Speaker 2: wife has been stolen? Yeah, you know and like and that,
Speaker 2: and we were talking to you know, a decent number
Speaker 2: of the people that we talked to about this were
Speaker 2: Jewish and they're you know, talking about like this is
Speaker 2: what my family told me about. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 2: like that was one of the first things that someone
Speaker 2: told me that really made me cry. This whole thing
Speaker 2: has been like really challenging all my cynicism and detached
Speaker 2: us from from hard things. But hearing those stories and
Speaker 2: then just seeing the people who do that, which could
Speaker 2: be anybody. Yeah, because people step up. It's a god.
Speaker 2: I just a I I say, I can only imagine it,
Speaker 2: you know, but it like that's a that is a
Speaker 2: daily reality. Here is someone will just stolen. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: person was just stolen, and I have to go through
Speaker 2: their effects to figure out who they were.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I guess when we were speaking about that, I
Speaker 3: was thinking about experiences I've had in the desert right
Speaker 3: where you find someone's bag as they're walking through and
Speaker 3: it's got too hot. They've taken off their bag, and
Speaker 3: you go through all the little ephemera, the little things
Speaker 3: that people thought were worth carrying across the world, and
Speaker 3: you try to piece together their life and work out
Speaker 3: who they are, and you look at pictures of their children,
Speaker 3: and you look at pictures of their spouse and their home,
Speaker 3: and you hope that they're okay, right, And in this instance,
Speaker 3: they're not okay, right. And it's not the abstract violence
Speaker 3: of the structures of borders and walls and surveillances that
Speaker 3: have killed them or taken them. In this instance, right,
Speaker 3: it's five people in masks in a car over there,
Speaker 3: and it's happening in the middle of cities where people
Speaker 3: can see it. Right. Part of the function of the
Speaker 3: border is to take the violence away from where people
Speaker 3: can see it. And they got away with that for
Speaker 3: so long that they figured they could just bring it
Speaker 3: into cities. And it makes my heart so proud that
Speaker 3: when people could see it, they said, fuck no, you're
Speaker 3: not doing this in my town. Because for so long
Speaker 3: I've believed that if people could, Like the reason I'm
Speaker 3: a Jeralist, right, the reason that I have spent a
Speaker 3: better part of ten years I'm like receiving trauma is
Speaker 3: because I really believe in my heart that people could
Speaker 3: if people could see the cruelty, they would care and
Speaker 3: they would do something. And like this confirms that for me, Right,
Speaker 3: people can see it and they have cared and they
Speaker 3: have done something amazing, right, and that makes me so
Speaker 3: proud of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the paradise built in hell, as Soulment put it.
Speaker 2: You know, people are finding community and a really active
Speaker 2: way and learning what people can do for each other
Speaker 2: and the levels in which people are plugging in. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a whole long sending cliche that for every front
Speaker 2: line access, there's ten support people. Yeah, and you're like,
Speaker 2: well here, it's those lines aren't so clearly delineated. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because on some level, you know, we've talked to people
Speaker 2: who have been like, oh my my neighbor who you
Speaker 2: know has so many mobility issues that they can't leave
Speaker 2: their house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're just.
Speaker 2: Hanging on the front porch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on the front line. Yeah, exactly, because the front
Speaker 3: line comes to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like we talked to someone earlier who was pepper
Speaker 2: spread this morning while walking their dog. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: because while walking their dog they witnessed masked agents stealing
Speaker 2: a person. Yeah, well I about to do it for
Speaker 2: part one of it. Could cool people here and uh,
Speaker 2: we'll be back on Wednesday or whenever. It We actually
Speaker 2: don't know what the scheduling is going to be of
Speaker 2: this particular episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll be back in the subsequent episod of the podcast.
Speaker 3: Feed you're listening to you.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, And yeah, you're gonna final Let
Speaker 2: me say this, right.
Speaker 3: I was really sad when I came here because my
Speaker 3: friends were dying Reshaba. Yeah, and I wish I was
Speaker 3: with them in a strange way, Yeah, because I know
Speaker 3: the sense of togetherness they feel and I felt that
Speaker 3: here and that was really special for me because I
Speaker 3: would struggle to be dealing with this alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're gonna talk a bit more about rapid
Speaker 2: response stuff. And there's also just a point some articles
Speaker 2: people's way. There's a series of articles that came out
Speaker 2: from crimethink, which is crimethink dot com that have talked
Speaker 2: about some of the structures of rapid response networks. And
Speaker 2: people here are putting together a lot of resources about
Speaker 2: what they have and haven't learned. And we're gonna be
Speaker 2: talking about some of those things that people have learned
Speaker 2: and things like that. But it's really worth understanding wherever
Speaker 2: you are because you're also that person who can hang
Speaker 2: out on your front porch. I mean not necessarily literally
Speaker 2: you hang out on your front porch. But it's like
Speaker 2: the idea is when the entire city mobilizes, it works.
Speaker 2: And I think that when we realize that we can
Speaker 2: mobilize the entire country, that works. That's my theory. Yeah,
Speaker 2: see y'all soon.
Speaker 3: Hi friends, it's me James. I'm back, and I'm back
Speaker 3: because we ask in people on the ground if they
Speaker 3: could provide us with some links to places where people
Speaker 3: could donate that have been vetted that they knew would
Speaker 3: be going to people helping people on the ground, and
Speaker 3: they provided us with a lot of different links. So
Speaker 3: I'm going to tell you what each of these links are,
Speaker 3: and if you'd like to donate, you can just scroll
Speaker 3: on down whichever app you're using to the podcast show
Speaker 3: notes and you can click one of the one of
Speaker 3: the links below. So there's rent support for neighbors in Phillips,
Speaker 3: rent support for neighbors in Central, rent support for neighbors
Speaker 3: in Powderhorn, supplies for political art making, protective gear for
Speaker 3: legal observers, diapers, and menstrual supplies. There are abolish iced
Speaker 3: T shirts that you can purchase. There is a fundraiser
Speaker 3: for Northstar Frontline Street Medics and the Twin Cities Swirlitariat Bailfund.
Speaker 3: There are links for both of venmo and cash app
Speaker 3: donation there.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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