Speaker 1: Everyone. It could happen here a bit in a slightly
Speaker 1: different way. Today it's like asynchronous presentation, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: have some updates on things that we've covered. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to update on the ongoing you see strike, which
Speaker 1: at the time of recording is still ongoing, and these
Speaker 1: interviews are recorded on Friday, you will be hearing this.
Speaker 1: If you hurt the day that goes out, you'll be
Speaker 1: hearing on Tuesday. So a little more have happened, and
Speaker 1: I'll bring you some more updates after the break. Garrison
Speaker 1: is reporting on some stuff that they have covered, just
Speaker 1: updating various things, and Chris has an update on the
Speaker 1: mid terms now that we know a little bit more
Speaker 1: about the results of those. So we hope you'll enjoy
Speaker 1: these updates. We want to keep bringing you these stories
Speaker 1: and not just sort of reporting them and then walk away.
Speaker 1: We are off for the rest of the week after that,
Speaker 1: so nothing from us Wednesday through Friday, but we'll have
Speaker 1: something else for you next Monday. Starting to record, and
Speaker 1: if you could start off by just introducing yourself, saying
Speaker 1: your name, maybe what the when you're in something like that,
Speaker 1: and any like impertinent strike information would be cool. I'm
Speaker 1: Amy con are usually your pronouns. I am a second
Speaker 1: year a PhD student in the Computer Science and Engineering department,
Speaker 1: and I am on the bargaining team after the student
Speaker 1: research for union. Hi, my name is Adu Engel. I'm
Speaker 1: a third year in the math department, third year PhD student,
Speaker 1: he pronouns, and I'm on uh, the executive board for
Speaker 1: our union new aw amazing, Okay, great. I'm James he
Speaker 1: him uh And yeah, I'm a journalist trying to feel
Speaker 1: like one. So you guys have been out for about
Speaker 1: a week now, right, and you like, there was pretty
Speaker 1: good energy today. We just finished a big rally here
Speaker 1: down by the beach. People could probably hear the ocean
Speaker 1: in the background, which is very San Diego. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to know that how the first week ago and
Speaker 1: how the energy was, how the bargaining had gone. So
Speaker 1: perhaps you can give us a bargaining update because we
Speaker 1: haven't really talked about that yet. Yeah, I can do
Speaker 1: the bargaining update. I think that you see has really
Speaker 1: been attempting to avoid us at the bargaining table, and
Speaker 1: I think that we're are. Oh, we are constantly finding
Speaker 1: new ways to put a pressure on them, both through
Speaker 1: our bargaining strategy and through our on the ground organizing
Speaker 1: at actions to get them to meet us in a
Speaker 1: good faith the UM. Throughout the past year or more
Speaker 1: of bargaining, depending on which of the bargaining units you're
Speaker 1: talking about, they have done a numerous unfair labor practices
Speaker 1: and other forms of illegal and unlawful behavior in bargaining
Speaker 1: that have I just generally been stopping us from reaching
Speaker 1: a fair agreement. And UM. We're on strike to show
Speaker 1: them that we're serious about UM, or to not even
Speaker 1: to show them, but to apply the pressure necessary to
Speaker 1: get them to meet that's in good faith UM. In
Speaker 1: the past week, we have made a fair amount of
Speaker 1: progress on many non economic articles from various of the
Speaker 1: bargaining units. Non economic economic is a blurry a distinction
Speaker 1: that we think about UM in terms of bargaining and UM.
Speaker 1: And another thing on everyone's minds is wages, and there
Speaker 1: you see has still not moved from their entirely unreasonable
Speaker 1: a position from more than a month ago. For UH,
Speaker 1: the Student Researcher Union and the other bargaining units are
Speaker 1: very are in a similar vote. So what's say, what's
Speaker 1: the position right now, uh, there a position is a
Speaker 1: seven percent in the first year, a three percent in
Speaker 1: all the years afterwards, which is not that doesn't even
Speaker 1: encount for inflation. That's crazy increase cost like and incredibly
Speaker 1: unaffordable cost of living. It's basically a pay cut. Yeah, okay, Uh,
Speaker 1: So what are those non economic issues where you've had
Speaker 1: most success? Do you want to talk about those two? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean there's a bunch. I think one of the
Speaker 1: big ones where we've shown a lot of success, and
Speaker 1: there's one that actually we've made some progress today. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot. I think there's things that make our
Speaker 1: union stronger, union access and union A security. We've reached
Speaker 1: a tentative agreement on for most of the bargaining units
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure um uh for working current injury and illness.
Speaker 1: This is something that actually that you see was not
Speaker 1: a budgeting on for a really long time for student
Speaker 1: researchers that now we're hoping that we can actually reach
Speaker 1: an agreement soon about UM and we're thinking that's likely
Speaker 1: a personal a time off as another one that up
Speaker 1: until now a graduate student researchers I didn't have a
Speaker 1: legal right to take days off work, and now you
Speaker 1: see has moved to twelve days a year, which does
Speaker 1: this start. We don't think it's good enough, but oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to see if they moved to UH four
Speaker 1: is a current plant, and as a bunch of other
Speaker 1: smaller ones, like there's the access needs access needs article,
Speaker 1: there's UM I can't remember all of them off top
Speaker 1: of my head. There's a bunch in that sort of
Speaker 1: vein that we've made a lot of progress on UM
Speaker 1: and and yeah, there's also some economic ones that we've
Speaker 1: made at some progress on, like a transit is a
Speaker 1: big one. But there's a lot of things and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how to summarize at all, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very complicated, but there's a lot of small things, small
Speaker 1: things that's good. Yeah, so maybe you could tell that
Speaker 1: to get you to needed like you had a really
Speaker 1: good vibe with your picket line. Yeah, totally talk about
Speaker 1: what it's been like for a week. Yeah, I mean so,
Speaker 1: I think the week just started off very strong. So
Speaker 1: we had great numbers on day one and at day
Speaker 1: one we did a massive, massive rally with everyone on
Speaker 1: campus who was striking coming right a little way now, Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: the head of the California Federation of Labor talk there.
Speaker 1: It was like extremely electric and I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of people for the first time they saw just
Speaker 1: how many people were in this together with them, and
Speaker 1: that just you know, set the tone like we're doing
Speaker 1: something really radical. We're fighting for radical change, but we're
Speaker 1: all doing it in mass altogether. And and my picket
Speaker 1: line especially, or I'm sure this is true many picket lines,
Speaker 1: but we've developed a very strong sense of community. We
Speaker 1: do like communal meals that are cooked in like five
Speaker 1: instant pods outside on the picket line. Um, we've done
Speaker 1: you know, like various chill events like karaoke and trivia
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, but we also get together and
Speaker 1: do some you know, really militant actions. We shut down
Speaker 1: a conference yesterday. We've like picketed in intersections and done
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff and it's just really cool to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe we can talk about some of the action zing
Speaker 1: because I think and a lot of people in this
Speaker 1: country still maybe have never seen or been involved in
Speaker 1: a labor action themselves, and certainly they don't know what
Speaker 1: it looks like at a university, which is a different
Speaker 1: place from you know, a factory. Or something. So what
Speaker 1: have you been doing when you've been getting up to you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the base level thing is we just pick
Speaker 1: it in front of our buildings, so we have a
Speaker 1: picket line, we encourage people not to cross and in
Speaker 1: the hope of disrupting the natural flow of university functions. Um,
Speaker 1: but then they are also you know, the university have
Speaker 1: some big events such as conferences, and now we pick
Speaker 1: it outside a conference, and all of a sudden, avery
Speaker 1: at the conference has to be really uncomfortable crossing our
Speaker 1: picket line. And you know, if we're really loud, then
Speaker 1: it's hard for them to do the regular conferencee things
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I like that. I
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about like what make
Speaker 1: strike to work generally, solidarity right between people on strike
Speaker 1: and people outside. So like we had somewhere from the
Speaker 1: teamsters talking and like I covered the teams to strike
Speaker 1: last year, did you want me the teams to his
Speaker 1: refuge workers are on strike and Chula Vista and it
Speaker 1: was great. People were bringing them food every day. So
Speaker 1: have you seen much of that, like from other unions
Speaker 1: or just from the community. Absolutely, yeah. I one of
Speaker 1: the big community supports is undergrad support UM have I
Speaker 1: pickt line, Like undergrads are just coming by all the time.
Speaker 1: They just drop off some food. They say, just wanted
Speaker 1: to give this to you, and then they just leave.
Speaker 1: They just like want to help us out. It's super
Speaker 1: cute and it is very uplifting for all of us.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you wanna. Yeah, I think also a support
Speaker 1: from other unions and from UM other members of the
Speaker 1: labor movement has been really important. Like one of the
Speaker 1: really big ones is the Teamsters UM, like all of
Speaker 1: them UM sanctioned our strike, which means that they, uh,
Speaker 1: they've instructed all of their unionized workers to not across
Speaker 1: our picket line. This means that tons of UPS drivers,
Speaker 1: tons of a Teamsters organized workers have been turning around
Speaker 1: other vehicles when they reach our picket lines. And yeah,
Speaker 1: has been really inspiring to see the San Diego imperial
Speaker 1: A County's Labor Federation agreed to to cut the check
Speaker 1: for anyone experiencing acute hardship during the strike, which is
Speaker 1: incredible and I think it really makes us feel very
Speaker 1: strong when we have the entirety of the entirety of
Speaker 1: the labor movement at our back. Yeah, it's good to see, right, like,
Speaker 1: especially um, if we like I'm a historian, and I
Speaker 1: definitely spent eight years a lot of money here in history.
Speaker 1: And like when we see students who workers together, that's
Speaker 1: when we see change, right like especially in you know,
Speaker 1: the last fifty seventy years whatever, And so that's, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very impressive. I wonder, like, I'm sure it hasn't
Speaker 1: all been like rainbows and unicorns. Like someone's talked today
Speaker 1: about a factory member who drove the car through a
Speaker 1: picket line, and what the fund is happening with that?
Speaker 1: Can you You cannot name the person if you don't
Speaker 1: want to, Like, I haven't heard about that situation. There's
Speaker 1: a lot going on every day. I know there was
Speaker 1: one motorcycle that nearly drove through our line. Who were
Speaker 1: pretty sure as an abusive advisor, We're not entirely sure. Um,
Speaker 1: there's some good news. Actually, one piece of good news
Speaker 1: is that we members of the picket line that I'm
Speaker 1: at basically all engineers. And I mean I keep in
Speaker 1: mind here that I've been told by a lot of
Speaker 1: other workers in higher education they you can't organize engineers.
Speaker 1: And and this morning, I think over a hundred of
Speaker 1: us marched on the chair of the Material Science a
Speaker 1: department and she agreed to send a letter to the
Speaker 1: chancellor in support of our demands, and then she did it.
Speaker 1: That's great, which is awesome, But there's also some crazy
Speaker 1: stuff happening. There are some people that are really infuriated,
Speaker 1: um when they see the pick of line. Those people
Speaker 1: we try to de escalate and let through. But overall,
Speaker 1: I think you see strategy and the community strategy at
Speaker 1: large too. To overcome our strike is a lot of
Speaker 1: background noise. UM. I think that the university's main response
Speaker 1: has not been to crush our strike, though there has
Speaker 1: been some retaliatory behavior from some advisors. The main thing
Speaker 1: is that they just try to ignore it and act
Speaker 1: like it's not happening. And I mean, we all here
Speaker 1: know that it is happening. I feel like everyone on
Speaker 1: our campus at this point knows that it is happening. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's sort of their approach, and I think
Speaker 1: that's the biggest way that they try at a union
Speaker 1: bust is they don't meet with us, they don't treat
Speaker 1: us fairly, and they don't and they act like we
Speaker 1: don't exist. Yeah, that that's difficult and it'll I'm sure,
Speaker 1: only get harder. Do you know if people are facing
Speaker 1: like I know people have talked about like potential academic
Speaker 1: difficulties and sort of academic consequences I guess for striking,
Speaker 1: which is obviously a concern when your academic labor and
Speaker 1: your labor for the university is sometimes sort of blurry
Speaker 1: or like people feel like their relationship is something that
Speaker 1: goes beyond their relationship with the university. Yeah, totally. So
Speaker 1: there's kind of two aspects to this. There are some
Speaker 1: illegal things that people in the university have tried, such
Speaker 1: as UM. For example, many of us work as graduate
Speaker 1: student researchers. UM. We do research, it is our job.
Speaker 1: But because we're also students, we are enrolled course credits
Speaker 1: for these research and you know, they have said that, oh,
Speaker 1: if you don't do your research, you're going to fail
Speaker 1: these course credits, which is completely ridiculous, completely illegal because
Speaker 1: this is a hundred percent over life with our labor,
Speaker 1: and we are completely legally protected in our right to
Speaker 1: strike UM. But another aspect of this is that many
Speaker 1: many of us are students who are taking very regular classes. Uh,
Speaker 1: and many of these classes are still continuing and so
Speaker 1: for these students who are concerned about their grades in
Speaker 1: these classes, you know, this has had to you know
Speaker 1: take them away from the picket line at times to
Speaker 1: go to these classes. But we've tried to accommodate that
Speaker 1: as best as we can. UM. For example, in our
Speaker 1: picket line, we've had you know, we do a lot
Speaker 1: of milited actions, but we need time to rest. And
Speaker 1: during this rest time, we encourage people to you know,
Speaker 1: work on their coursework together. We have this great community,
Speaker 1: let's use it. Let's use it to you know, get
Speaker 1: their course work done, and so we can all be
Speaker 1: on the picket line as long as we possibly can.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, and it feels pretty nice to hear
Speaker 1: its week. Okay. So in terms of like the hard ships,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the longer year at the more difficult, it
Speaker 1: will get right and and folks will obviously like start
Speaker 1: to feel more economic hardship. And so I want to know,
Speaker 1: like I guess how you're preparing, and then I'd like
Speaker 1: to know how people can help too, if there's a
Speaker 1: place they can donate or show other support. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think when it comes to economic hardship, UM, right now,
Speaker 1: we're not even entirely sure whether the university is withholding pay.
Speaker 1: They have not sent out at testation forms. We think
Speaker 1: that they might at some point soon, but of course,
Speaker 1: UM at the end of the day, that's up to
Speaker 1: the university to decide. Um if or when they do,
Speaker 1: lots of people will face if a fair amount of
Speaker 1: economic hardship. The u a W does have a strike fund,
Speaker 1: so all out of the u a W members on
Speaker 1: across all the u c s in our union, if
Speaker 1: they show up for enough shifts on the pick a line,
Speaker 1: they are entitled to a four hundred dollars a week, which,
Speaker 1: mind you, is not enough too. It's not a comfortable wage,
Speaker 1: but it's enough to scrape by. Yeah. Do you know,
Speaker 1: for instance, what someone living in grad student housing like
Speaker 1: well Mirama will be paying in rent in a month.
Speaker 1: Just to give people a sense of ill expense to yeah,
Speaker 1: I can tell you my experience. So I live in
Speaker 1: Nouveau East on Campus and I pay about thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in rent. But the year that I I started here,
Speaker 1: just after I started, they hiked the rent buy up
Speaker 1: to thirty five percent in some units as an example. Um,
Speaker 1: even though I pay a thousand dollars in rent in
Speaker 1: my two bedroom apartment. The other bedroom is which you know,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. And I think if anyone is interested in
Speaker 1: supporting the workers on strike, especially if we do have
Speaker 1: our pay with held, I would recommend you give to
Speaker 1: the Strike Hardship Fund. This is something that disperses to
Speaker 1: any striker that's facing any any form of acute hardship,
Speaker 1: no questions asked. And this is if you're interested in giving,
Speaker 1: you can go to the website fair you see now
Speaker 1: dot or slash a support and that's where you can
Speaker 1: give to the Hardship Fund. And I do recommend you
Speaker 1: do UM. And that's the way that we're dealing with
Speaker 1: economic hardship, okay in those situations. Nice. One more thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask about, and just from my own
Speaker 1: experience as an international student, was that, like, your situation
Speaker 1: is extremely fucking precarious and you can lose your visa
Speaker 1: for almost any reason. I wonder how international students are
Speaker 1: dealing with this, and like how the Union is helping
Speaker 1: to protect them. Yeah, so international students are actually quite
Speaker 1: protected in the strike. UM. They have the same legal
Speaker 1: protection domestic students do. And so namely, none of them
Speaker 1: can be fired for this. Yeah, and because their visa
Speaker 1: is tied to their employment, their visa is also safe. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: nicely has that Do you think people still feel that
Speaker 1: sense of precarity, like, because like just to give an example, Um,
Speaker 1: I I was in real visa trouble and like that
Speaker 1: was extremely petrifying for me. Right, Like, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: people I'm just interested to know like if they feel
Speaker 1: that sense sort of they feel like protected. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean absolutely, it is. It is tough in many ways.
Speaker 1: Like I know one person next week instead of being
Speaker 1: on the picket line, he has to go back to
Speaker 1: the UK to renew his visa and that he's all
Speaker 1: he's very unhappy about this. He actously had the picket
Speaker 1: line at everyone. But yeah, it is what it is.
Speaker 1: And um on top of that, many international students come
Speaker 1: from cultures where such activities are not as common. They
Speaker 1: are very unsure about joining it. But like for the
Speaker 1: last few years, we have been deeply committed to a
Speaker 1: movement of all workers, and so we organize every single
Speaker 1: person we can, whether they are domestic, international, we are
Speaker 1: all on strike together right now. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is the end of week one, hopefully hope
Speaker 1: you guys get what you want? And what do you
Speaker 1: have planned for next week? It's Thanksgiving? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so we have three days next week before thanks Saving break,
Speaker 1: and I think we are going to go all out
Speaker 1: for those three days. Everybody's gonna use all the energy
Speaker 1: they have and then have a cool break anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's the plan. We're gonna make this university
Speaker 1: regret not meeting us in good faith? Mega? All right,
Speaker 1: where can people do? Have? Flick social media for the strike?
Speaker 1: Social media for yourselves or your unions probably one of
Speaker 1: the easiest places as you can go to either of
Speaker 1: the Twitter accounts for either of the student worker unions,
Speaker 1: like those are the ones that a tweet the most things.
Speaker 1: So you can either go to Twitter dot com slash
Speaker 1: s r u u A W or two uh Twitter again,
Speaker 1: uh you a W to eight six five, And that's
Speaker 1: where we do most of our communications. Nice. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: if anyone wants any info at all, the the best
Speaker 1: source of all is just fair you see now dot org. Okay,
Speaker 1: nice outstanding, Thank you very much, guys. So it was
Speaker 1: very good. Hey Garrison, here, I'm gonna be giving a
Speaker 1: few updates on some of the types of stories that
Speaker 1: I've covered on the show the past couple of months,
Speaker 1: And I think I'll start by talking about Port Townsend.
Speaker 1: So if you remember, from the beginning of September, we
Speaker 1: put out an episode talking about this wave of transphobic
Speaker 1: hate and organizing in response to this non incident at
Speaker 1: a y m c A in the Olympic Peninsula, and
Speaker 1: this spawned this massive organizing effort for these transphobic rallies
Speaker 1: led by far right people and by turfs, appearances on
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson, Fox News, all of all of this stuff, um,
Speaker 1: And we were putting this episode out right before a large,
Speaker 1: well what seemed to be a large upcoming rally on
Speaker 1: September the third. There was not like actual like national
Speaker 1: socialist fascists coming in from out of state to to
Speaker 1: to join in on this, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of kind of local turfs and far right people, and
Speaker 1: the rally turned out to be kind of a bust. Uh,
Speaker 1: So that's some good news. They did not get nearly
Speaker 1: as many numbers as they were expecting, and the community
Speaker 1: response was very very strong, So a lot of people
Speaker 1: coming out in support of trans rights and coming out
Speaker 1: in support of trans people. Uh. Um, so that was
Speaker 1: that was a nice thing to hear. I mean, and
Speaker 1: across across the Pacific Northwest, there's actually been this wave
Speaker 1: of of of like turf like trans exclusionary radical feminist,
Speaker 1: like that term is kind of a misnomer, but there's
Speaker 1: been a wave of of of kind of these events
Speaker 1: and protests, well not protests, but these events and uh,
Speaker 1: these attempts at protests I guess by a few like
Speaker 1: turf influencers. They've been going all around all around the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest and Portland, UM, and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: cities up in Washington, and similarly, they have been met
Speaker 1: with a pretty strong resistance, uh, a lot of local
Speaker 1: people showing up and saying no, we're not going to
Speaker 1: tolerate this kind of stuff, accented by the occasional pie
Speaker 1: throwne in one's face. So that's the kind of state
Speaker 1: of of of some of the anti trans organizing here
Speaker 1: inside the Pacific Northwest. And I wanted to start by
Speaker 1: talking about the story and the successful counter organizing and
Speaker 1: support of trans people. Um. Mostly because of the mass
Speaker 1: shooting a few days ago inside Colorado Springs and because
Speaker 1: the other other thing I spent a lot of this
Speaker 1: summer covering was this uptick in queer exterminationist rhetoric, and
Speaker 1: that type of rhetoric results in attacks like what happened
Speaker 1: a few days ago at queer clubs and queer havens
Speaker 1: and queer gathering spaces. And I I think some of
Speaker 1: the team was gonna talk about this probably sometime in
Speaker 1: the future, will probably do something on it, but it's
Speaker 1: still just so current and full of frustration and raw Payne.
Speaker 1: And the other thing we have talked about on the
Speaker 1: show that this year is efforts from groups like the
Speaker 1: unforc John Brown Gun Club and people who are willing
Speaker 1: to show up armed to defend queer events and queer spaces,
Speaker 1: and the use fullness of that is demonstrated here. And
Speaker 1: the LM Fork John Brown Gun Club has continued to
Speaker 1: do good work in showing up two places that they
Speaker 1: were invited to to help hopefully help prevent things like
Speaker 1: what happened inside Colorado Springs. And then of course in
Speaker 1: Colorado Springs, it wasn't the police that took down the gunmen.
Speaker 1: It was queer people from inside the place who were
Speaker 1: unarmed who did the job of actually having to protect
Speaker 1: fellow queer people and themselves. And similarly, since I was
Speaker 1: talking about the John John Brown gun club in Elm Fork,
Speaker 1: the other thing that I've covered um is relating to
Speaker 1: those protests is the group Protect Texas Kids, read by
Speaker 1: the self proclaimed Christian fascist Kelly Needered. She is among
Speaker 1: the wave of far right people that are currently being
Speaker 1: replatformed on Twitter. And it's not it's not just bad
Speaker 1: because they have a platform. And this the specific thing
Speaker 1: I've talked about with Kelly Needert is that they use
Speaker 1: platforms like Twitter not just as a soapbox, but also
Speaker 1: as a place to actually organize these types of queer
Speaker 1: exterminationist events. This is where they actually do a lot
Speaker 1: of the public organizing and get people to come out.
Speaker 1: The same thing with Limbs of TikTok. It's not just
Speaker 1: it's not just like an amplifier. It's a place that
Speaker 1: they actually organize these types of hate campaigns, and lots
Speaker 1: of them are going are getting back on these massive platforms,
Speaker 1: are getting a lot of cliques. Elon Musk is even
Speaker 1: interacting with some of these people. Um Elon Musk has
Speaker 1: interacted with Limbs of TikTok inside her mentions just driving
Speaker 1: massive engagement. We talked about Kanye West anti semitism last
Speaker 1: month and he has continued to make pretty egregious statements
Speaker 1: UM that are that are very much in the line
Speaker 1: with very typical anti semitism, doing a lot of the
Speaker 1: same tropes. He's been dropped by a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of com and these who were working with him UM.
Speaker 1: Just a few days ago he was seen talking with
Speaker 1: white nationalist Nick Fuentes from our Cowboy episodes UM and
Speaker 1: also with Milo Napolis UM. So just paddling around with
Speaker 1: openly fascist far right influencers UM and continuing to make
Speaker 1: horrible statements. He is also back to posting on Twitter.
Speaker 1: We're using a massive and in this case it is
Speaker 1: a massive amplifier of anti Semitic rhetoric UM and he
Speaker 1: is he is back and posting as of this morning.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the state of things that have covered.
Speaker 1: We got good news with the Port Townsend thing and
Speaker 1: how queer people have been successful in in in combating
Speaker 1: anti trans and antiqueer organizing UM across the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 1: We have stuff in Texas with the un Forked John
Speaker 1: Bround Gun Club continuing continuing to do that crucial work. Um,
Speaker 1: even though some of the ashists who are organizing these
Speaker 1: events are getting replatformed. But the queer extermination as rhetoric
Speaker 1: has not gone away. It's only become a whole lot
Speaker 1: more visceral. And that's the that's the topics I wanted
Speaker 1: to give updates on. I'm sure we'll I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: talk more about, you know, how to various efforts for
Speaker 1: community defense like within the community, and how queer people
Speaker 1: can approach that. Um. But yeah, anyway, that's my that's
Speaker 1: that's my update. For our next update, let's take a
Speaker 1: look at what happened in the mid tum of elections.
Speaker 1: Because the American election system is run by a troup
Speaker 1: of volunteer clowns, we still do not know the exact
Speaker 1: margin of Republican victory in the House. What we can
Speaker 1: confirms the Republicans are in fact going to gain a
Speaker 1: House majority. It is also going to be a very
Speaker 1: very small majority. As as we discussed in our last
Speaker 1: sort of election episode, this is basically the Chaos Bode configuration.
Speaker 1: The product of this is that Mergerya to Other Green
Speaker 1: and her sort of tidy cohort a weird fascists are
Speaker 1: going to be able to extract a bunch of concessions
Speaker 1: on the Republican Party. And obviously this is only to
Speaker 1: the extent that these people actually disagree about stuff. Which
Speaker 1: it is true that a lot of the sort of
Speaker 1: mainstream of the Republican Party has gone unbelievably far right.
Speaker 1: It's also true that a lot of the party leadership
Speaker 1: doesn't like Mrdery tather Green and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party is still facing essentially an internal soil
Speaker 1: war um. Mr McConnell has managed to hold off a
Speaker 1: power for challenge by Rick Scott, who was at the
Speaker 1: head of the RTNC, which is really fun. I don't
Speaker 1: know why Rick Scott thought this was going to work
Speaker 1: for him. Like Rick Scott are arguably Rick Scott is
Speaker 1: a single, like individually responsible for the Republicans losing the
Speaker 1: election because he's completely screwed up everything. He was a
Speaker 1: typic to deal with the R and C and like
Speaker 1: poured a bunch of money into weird targeted like Twitter
Speaker 1: ad campaigns that just did not work at all. But
Speaker 1: you know what, we we we still don't know if
Speaker 1: if Kevin McCarthy has enough like votes to become a
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House. Every everything is essentially just complete chaos.
Speaker 1: You know, we we we've we've also seen our sort
Speaker 1: of first quote unquote concession that's been sort of wrung
Speaker 1: out of this new House majority, which is that they're
Speaker 1: going to do an investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop, which
Speaker 1: I genuinely I have been struggling to find a reason
Speaker 1: for any single person who is not completely Fox News
Speaker 1: brain pilled to give a single ship about the Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden's laptop story, like since it started. I don't know
Speaker 1: why anyone is expected to care about this, And I,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the fact that the Republicans the
Speaker 1: first thing they're doing upon retaking the House is doing
Speaker 1: an investigation into this stupid laptop is an incredible side
Speaker 1: of just how out of touch these people are with
Speaker 1: just anything even remotely or tenentially related to reality. And
Speaker 1: I think that this is in some sense of explanation
Speaker 1: of how the Democrats like miraculously somehow seemed to have
Speaker 1: managed to win a like to to gain an additional
Speaker 1: Senate seats in a in a in a in an
Speaker 1: off your mid term election. I so, right right now,
Speaker 1: the Democrats have technically gained Walgist The technically have gained majority.
Speaker 1: The question basically is whether it's going to be a
Speaker 1: fifty or fifty one majority, pending the sort of runoff
Speaker 1: in Georgia between Warcock and herschel Walker. I don't know
Speaker 1: who knows what's going to happen there. Herschel Walker's running
Speaker 1: ads about Leah Thomas. So hopefully Leah Thomas fucking does
Speaker 1: the reaper thing and claims another mainstream American political figure
Speaker 1: here up. But okay, so what what what does this
Speaker 1: actually mean in terms of us? Because you know, even
Speaker 1: if the Democrats more accuracy somehow, what held the house? Right? No, nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing really good was going to be happening. It looks
Speaker 1: like there's been a sort of deal worked out between
Speaker 1: the Democrats and some of the some of the modern
Speaker 1: ish wing of the Republican Party to get a vote
Speaker 1: on a bill that will legalize gay marriage and also
Speaker 1: legalize interracial marriage, although a lot of fucking Republicans voted
Speaker 1: against that, which is, you know, not a great sign.
Speaker 1: But but again, I mean the the thing that you know,
Speaker 1: you can sort of see here, right, gay marriage unbelievably popular.
Speaker 1: A lot of Republicans still voting against it. And again
Speaker 1: that this this is because you know, insofar as the
Speaker 1: two things we can learn from this election, one is
Speaker 1: that the far right evangelical base that the Republicans have
Speaker 1: been building really since the eighties is not a majority
Speaker 1: of the US. It's not even close to a majority
Speaker 1: of the US. It is you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's controlled by a small group of of like, you know,
Speaker 1: unbelievably reactionary activists, and these people are completely out of
Speaker 1: touch with what normal people in the US like. And
Speaker 1: you know, this has this has positives and downsides, right,
Speaker 1: It with downsides that in places where the Republicans gain control,
Speaker 1: they're able to impose unbelievably far right agendas, are able
Speaker 1: to impose massive anti trans agendas, and you know that
Speaker 1: that that's been having real consequences, and especially a state
Speaker 1: legislators that they control. But it also means that it
Speaker 1: limits the damage Republicans are able to do because again,
Speaker 1: like people don't actually like their stuff because it sucks.
Speaker 1: The other thing that's very important about this is that
Speaker 1: again legislatively, nothing is going to happen until and this
Speaker 1: means that as a terre of struggle. No matter what
Speaker 1: you sort of ideologically believe about, you know what, whether
Speaker 1: whether or not we should be contesting elections as a
Speaker 1: terrate of struggle, the electoral seat is debt. Right. There
Speaker 1: is very little, if anything that even conceivably could be
Speaker 1: done there. If you want anything to change in the
Speaker 1: next two years, you're going to have to be operating
Speaker 1: outside of the electoral scene, right. And this isn't This
Speaker 1: is an argument we've been making sort of strategically and surgically,
Speaker 1: ideologically and morally for a long time now. This is
Speaker 1: part of why we talk about dual power constantly. This
Speaker 1: is part of why we talk about the cons of
Speaker 1: community organizing that are necessaries, is why we talk about
Speaker 1: serve community self defense organizing. But this, this specific configuration
Speaker 1: of of the sort of American system is one you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's, it's, it's it's it's a pure
Speaker 1: deadlock infiguration. Nothing is going to happen. The only thing
Speaker 1: that can possibly happen is stuff that we do. And
Speaker 1: you know there is stuff that we need to do. Right.
Speaker 1: If you want to stop instead of rolling Republican chanitis
Speaker 1: side against chance people, if you want to stop them
Speaker 1: from inciting more mass shootings. You know, if if we want,
Speaker 1: if we if if you want to stop the sort
Speaker 1: of rolling bipartisan wave of mass clearings of cancer ameless people,
Speaker 1: if we want to contain, if you want to actually
Speaker 1: deal with you know, the sort of looming effort pressed
Speaker 1: a horror of American border fascism. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: do it ourselves. Because even in a world in which
Speaker 1: it was possible to get Washing DC to give a
Speaker 1: single ship about any of this, and mostly it's not.
Speaker 1: Mostly people in Washington, d C. Vote every single time
Speaker 1: to make this ship worse. But even in that world, right,
Speaker 1: nothing is going to come out of there. All all
Speaker 1: that is going to be happening in the House and
Speaker 1: these Senates is a bunch of fights over the dead
Speaker 1: ceiling and in a bunch of increasingly bizarre investing investigations
Speaker 1: out of the Republican House. So this is the time
Speaker 1: to take back the streets. This is the time to
Speaker 1: before me tennants unions. Is the time to be doing
Speaker 1: community self defense work. This is the kind of This
Speaker 1: is the time to be doing the kind of unglamorous
Speaker 1: work that everyone sort of forgets about when the sort
Speaker 1: of shiny midterms shows up. But but you know, but
Speaker 1: that that is the stuff that actually genuinely is going
Speaker 1: to make things change in this country. Things have to change.
Speaker 1: We we we cannot continue to be going on on
Speaker 1: the path that we are right. We cannot. We cannot
Speaker 1: allow there to be more mass shootings. We cannot allow
Speaker 1: Republicans to continue to exterminate trans people. We cannot let
Speaker 1: this happen. We're going to have to go fight, and
Speaker 1: we are going to have to do it ourselves, and
Speaker 1: we are going to do it alone because there is
Speaker 1: no help coming from the top. There never was any
Speaker 1: help coming from there, and even if there had been
Speaker 1: a will, there is now no longer away. It could
Speaker 1: Happen Here is the production of cool Zone Media. Well
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Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.