Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's meet James, and just before we start today,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss in quite some detail, the being
Speaker 1: to death of Tyree Nichols by the police in Memphis.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to hear that detail, that's
Speaker 1: totally fine, but we wanted to let you know now
Speaker 1: so that you didn't get surprised by it in your
Speaker 1: money commute or whatever. So if you want to skip
Speaker 1: this one, if you don't listen to that one, then
Speaker 1: we are trying to give you that warning ahead of time.
Speaker 1: Discourse Discourse. Discourse is about podcast. I don't know it
Speaker 1: could happen. Here is the podcast that you're listening to. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you came here list looking for another podcast, then
Speaker 1: you fucked up, But you fucked up in a good
Speaker 1: way because that podcast was trash. Thank you for being
Speaker 1: here with us today. Who all? Who all? Who? Who?
Speaker 1: Who's here? Who are you? People? We're in Eln? Sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm THEA long I'm here. Wow, I'm I'm James. I'm
Speaker 1: a little unsure about who I am beyond that, but
Speaker 1: that's who I am. It's okay. I'm Garrison Davis and
Speaker 1: I'm here to engage in discourse. I there's nothing I
Speaker 1: love more than discourse. Um. Speaking of discourse, today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about, well, I don't know, it's not
Speaker 1: really discourse, but today we're gonna be talking about the
Speaker 1: reaction to the video of the Memphis police murdering Tyree Nichols.
Speaker 1: In particularly, we're gonna be talking about the way in
Speaker 1: which kind of the left responded to this, both online
Speaker 1: and kind of public channels and actually in the streets.
Speaker 1: Because I think there's some interesting stuff here, um, and
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of worth analyzing outside of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the broader conversation about police violence and you know,
Speaker 1: uh that sort of thing, because I think there's some
Speaker 1: interesting story of tactical stuff to kind of talk about here. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's that's that's what we're going to be
Speaker 1: doing today. UM. In case you've been kind of stuck
Speaker 1: under a rock, uh, you should probably be aware that
Speaker 1: on January seven, three, police from the Memphis p D
Speaker 1: Scorpion Unit, which was a unit with a very sinister
Speaker 1: name that existed to effectively over police, um a chunk
Speaker 1: of the city of Memphis. Uh yeah, um, pulled over
Speaker 1: Tyree Nichols, a twenty nine year old black man. UH.
Speaker 1: Tyree was an amateur photographer. UM, he liked skating. He
Speaker 1: had Crohn's disease. UM, he was just driving around that night. UH.
Speaker 1: And the encounter, as we would later see on the video,
Speaker 1: went pretty much immediately violent on behalf of the police.
Speaker 1: Nichols was beaten very badly, and he died in the
Speaker 1: hospital three days later. And for the first few days
Speaker 1: after the killing, obviously, you know this happened, the police
Speaker 1: did this, and then rumors started kind of spreading in
Speaker 1: the immediate wake of the beating, but very little was
Speaker 1: known for certain about like what had happened, UM, about
Speaker 1: you know what, why this had had gotten escalated so quickly. UM.
Speaker 1: One of the first kind of signs that this was
Speaker 1: going to become a thing on the national uh in
Speaker 1: terms of like the national attention span, was when the
Speaker 1: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in the U. S. Department of
Speaker 1: Justice independently opened investigations into the beating. UM after reviewing
Speaker 1: body camera footage from multiple officers on scene, five Memphis
Speaker 1: p D officers were dismissed on January. Three days later,
Speaker 1: an autopsy commissioned by Tyrese family found extensive bleeding caused
Speaker 1: by a severe beating. Outrage around the killing grew rapidly,
Speaker 1: and it was announced by the Memphis Police that body
Speaker 1: camera footage of the stop and of the beating would
Speaker 1: be released to the public. Uh. This started the rumor
Speaker 1: mill really churning up. UM. There was kind of a
Speaker 1: couple of leaks from people who had seen the footage
Speaker 1: I think who were close to the case, and they
Speaker 1: all sort of described it as uniquely bad. The term
Speaker 1: that I heard a lot was that it's worse than
Speaker 1: the Rodney King beating. Um. This is just the way
Speaker 1: in which people started talking about it. And as more
Speaker 1: details filtered out, there were conversations around the country, particularly
Speaker 1: folks on the activists left, who started talking about the
Speaker 1: need to prepare for what they suspected would be the
Speaker 1: aftermath of the video's release. UM. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that was kind of kind of worth discussing here
Speaker 1: is that in the immediate, like immediately before the video
Speaker 1: came out, a lot of the conversations that people on
Speaker 1: the left were having and that people in law enforcement
Speaker 1: we're having kind of focused around the same expectations, which
Speaker 1: was that there would be widespread protests and rioting as
Speaker 1: a result of the release of this video. UM, police
Speaker 1: departments around the country entered high alert. Riot squads were
Speaker 1: prepped UM and then kind of on the other side
Speaker 1: of things and sort of open channels on Twitter and
Speaker 1: massed on and in person, and a number of of
Speaker 1: of different cases, distant people you know who claimed to
Speaker 1: be that online talked about their expectations too. I heard
Speaker 1: variations of the phrase, you know, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a really hot year. This is going to like lead
Speaker 1: into a particularly aggressive summer. On the ground, people are
Speaker 1: going to make the burning of that precinct in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: look tame. You know, get your gear together, check in
Speaker 1: with your friends, everything's about to go off. UM. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of chatter kind of along those lines,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I didn't really speak up too
Speaker 1: much about this, but my kind of thinking, as folks
Speaker 1: were sort of anticipating the reaction to this was I
Speaker 1: suspected that the actual reaction on a mass scale to
Speaker 1: the video's release was going to be more muted and
Speaker 1: law abiding than than people were expecting at the time.
Speaker 1: And I guess the primary reason that I felt this
Speaker 1: way was simply that kind of the vibes were off.
Speaker 1: It just didn't feel like folks were ready for that
Speaker 1: kind of a response. Um, but I do kind of
Speaker 1: have a fact based reason for why I was anticipating
Speaker 1: that as well. UM. On January, two days before the
Speaker 1: video's release, five Memphis p D officers were arrested and
Speaker 1: charged with murder, kidnapping, assault, a bevy of very serious charges.
Speaker 1: Immediately after that, three firefighters T. E. M. T s
Speaker 1: and a police lieutenant who had been on scene after
Speaker 1: the beating were fired for failing to assess and provide
Speaker 1: emergency care to Nichols on scene. And there's a couple
Speaker 1: of ways to view what happened here. I think the
Speaker 1: less optimistic one is that the state simply made a
Speaker 1: pragmatic decision to throw these guys onto the bus. That's
Speaker 1: definitely what happened. The more optimistic way to look at
Speaker 1: this is that because people had rioted so hard for
Speaker 1: so long in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the
Speaker 1: state felt like it had to throw these guys under
Speaker 1: the bus rather than, you know, risk another year of rage.
Speaker 1: And this is also correct. I think both of these
Speaker 1: things are are pretty accurate ways to look at what happened.
Speaker 1: The idea that the release of the footage of Tyree's
Speaker 1: murder would lead to massive protests was not quite universal,
Speaker 1: but I didn't notice that a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who felt similarly to me expressed the belief that if
Speaker 1: people didn't riot over what had happened to Tyree, that
Speaker 1: was due to a mix of liberal cowardice and racism,
Speaker 1: since most of the officers who beat Tyree to death
Speaker 1: were themselves black. And I think this is kind of
Speaker 1: a short sighted and unfair take, and I'll talk about
Speaker 1: why shortly. On January Friday, the Tyree Nichols videos were
Speaker 1: released by the Memphis Police Department. UM, along with a
Speaker 1: lot of you. I watched them all immediately, UM, and
Speaker 1: you can find there's a description on my Twitter page.
Speaker 1: It's turned currently pinned to my profile of the video
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it but want to know what
Speaker 1: happened there. UM To kind of summarize it in brief,
Speaker 1: it's it's very ugly. Uh. Tyree is immediately calm as
Speaker 1: he's pulled over and taken from his car. The police
Speaker 1: are not calm. He attempts to de escalate them. They
Speaker 1: accuse him falsely of resisting, then they mace him and themselves.
Speaker 1: I think in general that the inciting incident for the
Speaker 1: beating was the incompetent use of mace by these officers.
Speaker 1: They hurt themselves, they got pissed, and then they beat
Speaker 1: Tyree because they were angry at themselves for macing themselves. UM.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of worth noting that a white officer
Speaker 1: who has since been fired as well, also deployed his
Speaker 1: taser on the young man. There's been some kind of
Speaker 1: this was kind of left out of a lot of
Speaker 1: the initial summaries of what had happened. Uh, that guy
Speaker 1: has now been fired. UM. And yeah, it's it's bad.
Speaker 1: The video is is very unpleasant and very brutal. UM.
Speaker 1: Watching it, though, I think kind of the thing that
Speaker 1: struck me most was how much like a normal traffic
Speaker 1: stop a lot of this was. UM. I think that
Speaker 1: if you know, they had gone a little bit less
Speaker 1: hard and beating him a little less badly and he
Speaker 1: had survived, they probably would have charged him with resisting
Speaker 1: arrest and assault on a police officer. UM. And who
Speaker 1: knows how the case would have gone. You can hear
Speaker 1: the police preparing for this eventuality in the footage, one
Speaker 1: officer claims that Tyree went for his gun. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence of this in the footage, uh, And you can
Speaker 1: kind of hear them all working to get their stories
Speaker 1: straight after they beat Tyree Um for the inevitable court case.
Speaker 1: More officers and emergency personnel arrive on scene as he's
Speaker 1: just kind of laying there, and none of them seemed
Speaker 1: to find what's happened peculiar or noteworthy, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because immediately prior to the video's release, police departments around
Speaker 1: the country all issued statements that were basically identical, condemning
Speaker 1: the officers who had beaten nichols Um, saying basically, this
Speaker 1: behavior is unacceptable. These men are bad apples. This is
Speaker 1: like an extreme example that does not represent policing values.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of things that are are interesting
Speaker 1: about this. One of them is that the actual way
Speaker 1: in which emergency responders on scene treated the beating kind
Speaker 1: of puts the lie to that, because nobody acts as
Speaker 1: if anything outside of the normal has occurred. And the
Speaker 1: other thing that is noteworthy is the uniformity of these
Speaker 1: these messages by police departments around the country. I have
Speaker 1: not actually seen that happen before. There was kind of
Speaker 1: a version of this that occurred in the wake of
Speaker 1: the George Floyd video, but it was much more cohesive
Speaker 1: prior to the release of the Tyree Nichols video. UM.
Speaker 1: That said, there were no widespread riots or acts of
Speaker 1: property destruction. After the video was released. There were protests
Speaker 1: in a number of cities, most notably in Memphis, UM,
Speaker 1: but compared to things were very subdued. There was not
Speaker 1: kind of widespread property destruction or rioting in Portland, which
Speaker 1: was obviously the site of intense radical street actions. In
Speaker 1: there were two fairly small marches. UM. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: delve into this in tremendous detail, but there were kind
Speaker 1: of allegations from one of the marches that the larger
Speaker 1: and less radical of the two was an op designed
Speaker 1: to take numbers and energy away from the radical march.
Speaker 1: There were confrontations between members of both groups, and while
Speaker 1: the overall story, again is not worth spending time on,
Speaker 1: the gist of it is that very little happened. Now
Speaker 1: this is not kind of limited to Portland's Atlanta, Georgia
Speaker 1: is probably the city in the US today that's been
Speaker 1: the center of the most effective radical protests against law
Speaker 1: enforcement and the history of attempts to stop and stabotage.
Speaker 1: The construction of Cops City, which is obviously a massive
Speaker 1: police training compound in Atlanta's largest urban forest, has been
Speaker 1: well documented by by Garrison Davis UM as well as
Speaker 1: a number of other reporters. UM. I do think it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that days before the Nichols video was released,
Speaker 1: Atlanta police shot and killed a forest defender, Tortu Guida,
Speaker 1: and a moderately large protest followed, where protesters smashing windows
Speaker 1: and lighting one cop car on fire. This was the
Speaker 1: kind of action that I think most of the activists
Speaker 1: I observed expected in the wake of the Nichols video
Speaker 1: as well, but we simply didn't see that. I'm just
Speaker 1: going to butt in here for a little bit and
Speaker 1: you'll you'll you'll hear more about that riot slash protest
Speaker 1: in Atlanta next week. UM. I'm putting together a series
Speaker 1: on it that'll that'll be out soon. But definitely one
Speaker 1: of the things that was talked about a lot in
Speaker 1: Atlanta was the upcoming release of this video and the
Speaker 1: potentiality of this video getting released shortly after the death
Speaker 1: of Tortuguita at the hands of police. Kind of both
Speaker 1: of these things feeding off each other into a into
Speaker 1: a similar like level um uprising. And this was like
Speaker 1: no one was like for sure about this, Like no
Speaker 1: one was like saying, this is absolutely definitely gonna happen,
Speaker 1: But it was something that was definitely thought about. UM,
Speaker 1: it was something that was definitely considered. I think, honestly,
Speaker 1: if the the video was set to come out originally
Speaker 1: on like the Monday or Tuesday following the big downtown
Speaker 1: protest in Atlanta, UM, it was supposed to come out
Speaker 1: just a few days later, and that that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: It was delayed once again for further further into the week. UM.
Speaker 1: I think if it came out sooner, I think that
Speaker 1: could have fed off momentum in a pretty considerable way.
Speaker 1: I think a few things happened both in Atlanta that
Speaker 1: in the in the next few days that kind of
Speaker 1: stunted possible possible for their protest. UM National Guard was deployed.
Speaker 1: UM police in Savannah were ordered to start arresting people
Speaker 1: and shutting down gatherings of over fifteen uh specifically for
Speaker 1: like including vigils, and in Atlanta, obviously there was people
Speaker 1: getting really pretty pretty inflated, uh high level felonies and
Speaker 1: domestic and domestic terrorism charges simply for being simply for
Speaker 1: being present at a protest UM. So I think those
Speaker 1: those things kind of all in all impacted people's ability
Speaker 1: to like prepare for you know, a sequence of protests
Speaker 1: which there was someone there was someone in l a
Speaker 1: for for like a day or two. The ones in
Speaker 1: Memphis were pretty big, but I think they the timeline
Speaker 1: in which they released the video is definitely should be
Speaker 1: considered in terms of when they chose to release it
Speaker 1: um to like yeah, in terms of the state's goal
Speaker 1: of preventing you know, large large scale protests. But that
Speaker 1: was definitely something that was talked about a lot during
Speaker 1: during like the little over a week that I was
Speaker 1: that I was in Atlantis, because everyone was getting ready
Speaker 1: for this, Like everyone heard that this is going to
Speaker 1: be like the worst of ADEO that we've seen since
Speaker 1: Rodney kinging like that that that that was the way
Speaker 1: it was. It was thought up of like on the ground,
Speaker 1: you know, just like word of mouth being being passed um,
Speaker 1: and people were definitely like preparing, like preparing themselves for it,
Speaker 1: like like like thinking, like thinking about like what's going
Speaker 1: to happen if this is like, if this really is
Speaker 1: the most horrific thing, what is the appropriate response to that?
Speaker 1: And and this is kind of a lot of what
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk around because you have sort of
Speaker 1: Georgia law enforcement. There's this this riot, and the response
Speaker 1: to that, as well as the response to the tree
Speaker 1: set is a series of dem stick terrorism charges, um.
Speaker 1: And then this video comes out and there's not a
Speaker 1: mass like radical street response to it, and it it
Speaker 1: seems to me and Garrison you can correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong that a big part of that is people
Speaker 1: in Atlanta were kind of not willing to throw more
Speaker 1: lives and bodies at the police without kind of more
Speaker 1: of a cohesive plan of what to do given the
Speaker 1: severity of the repression that that was being engaged in.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously can't comment on people's votivations or like
Speaker 1: plans for for for stuff, because that's not something that
Speaker 1: I would be would be privy privy to. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so I I don't know, there's there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean, like I think a big part
Speaker 1: of why I heard a lot about it in Atlanta
Speaker 1: was one because a friend of a lot of people
Speaker 1: who were involved in the forced and the force events
Speaker 1: got killed by police a few days earlier. And two
Speaker 1: Memphis is only a few hours way from Atlanta, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not it's it's it's not that far,
Speaker 1: and it's a big part of the stuff in Atlanta
Speaker 1: is like solidarity with struggles that are not just in
Speaker 1: your immediate vicinity. And you could argue that Memphis really
Speaker 1: is in the immediate vicinity of Georgia. Um, but like
Speaker 1: that that type of cross cross state solidarity is is
Speaker 1: a big part um. But yeah, I can I I
Speaker 1: could not comment on on on why why people did
Speaker 1: or did not choose to do specific things. I think
Speaker 1: that that's that's up for people themselves. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to want to put words into anyone's mouth. But it
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting because I I paid attention a
Speaker 1: lot to the reaction, and there were a lot of
Speaker 1: folks talking about how disheartening it was that there were
Speaker 1: not more of the kind of radical actions that they
Speaker 1: wanted to see in the wake of the video coming out,
Speaker 1: And I'm that's kind of the thing I wanted sort
Speaker 1: of to talk most around because I feel very mixed
Speaker 1: around this, But broadly speaking, I guess I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we didn't see a repeat of the part of that
Speaker 1: was folks standing up in front of cop shops until
Speaker 1: riot police came in and getting charges against them, because
Speaker 1: I just don't think that that works right now. I
Speaker 1: don't think it works is functional anymore. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: think it actually hurts the state because the reaction, like
Speaker 1: there was a period of time early in those first
Speaker 1: couple of months in particular, where you could see the
Speaker 1: police were off balance. Obviously in like Minneapolis with the
Speaker 1: burning of the Third Precinct, was was this kind of
Speaker 1: sea change moment um, but you could see it in
Speaker 1: a number of cities that like they didn't really know
Speaker 1: what was going on, and they were themselves concerned with
Speaker 1: how out of control the situation had gotten. And then
Speaker 1: it kind of morphed later in the year to I
Speaker 1: think a situation they could control very well where there
Speaker 1: were these acts of fairly minor property destruction and then
Speaker 1: a bunch of people would get picked up and charged.
Speaker 1: And I think that while I understand like the desire
Speaker 1: to react that way and to do something, um, kind
Speaker 1: of very firm and uh and radical in response to
Speaker 1: state violence like this. I'm also like deeply concerned about
Speaker 1: people not throwing away months and years of their lives
Speaker 1: fighting charges. Yeah. I mean a big part of it
Speaker 1: is is people learning that treating protesters as disposable meat
Speaker 1: bags to throw against the wall of the state is
Speaker 1: kind of a bad idea. Um. Yeah, And there's I
Speaker 1: think this is something that that that was talked about
Speaker 1: in conversations just just like regarding like, hey, this video
Speaker 1: is going to come out, what do you think it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Like there's just a lot of the casual,
Speaker 1: casual conversations, but like there was a lot to make happened.
Speaker 1: A lot of things contributed to the intensity and the
Speaker 1: length of those protests. I think, uh, COVID being a
Speaker 1: pretty big part. This was a few months into the pandemic.
Speaker 1: People have been stuck in their homes now for a
Speaker 1: few months and not really like prepared for that. Like
Speaker 1: at this at this point, we're kind of we're all
Speaker 1: kind of used to being in our house a lot
Speaker 1: more now, But back then it was it was new
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. So I think the opperaty
Speaker 1: the opportunity to get out of the house for what
Speaker 1: seemed like an important reason. I think was a really
Speaker 1: big part of people. People being out of a lot
Speaker 1: of work was a really big part of because a
Speaker 1: lot of people did did not have the types of
Speaker 1: jobs that they might have now, did not have the
Speaker 1: jobs they had like in like the months before. It's
Speaker 1: maybe because I can't really think of another example like
Speaker 1: this from history. Obviously a lot of uprisings occur when
Speaker 1: people are suddenly out of work, but this was a
Speaker 1: mix of people are suddenly out of work and they
Speaker 1: suddenly they all have cash like that, that which contributed
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways because like that, that was
Speaker 1: I think what funded a lot of you know, people
Speaker 1: bringing in food and people bringing in like pallets of
Speaker 1: water and getting gas masks and stuff as they had
Speaker 1: these sort of checks for you know, as a result
Speaker 1: of like COVID relief, which was an interesting situation as
Speaker 1: well that hasn't been replicated since. I think there's there's
Speaker 1: another very important factor of this that doesn't get talked
Speaker 1: about that much, which is just the weather. Like if
Speaker 1: if you, if you, if you, if you go back
Speaker 1: and look at when the largest police like largest anti
Speaker 1: police protests in the US have happened, right, They either
Speaker 1: start like late spring, early fall, or just the middle
Speaker 1: of the summer. And there's the reason. Yeah, Like then
Speaker 1: this is I think another this is this is the
Speaker 1: thing up in Chicago, right was it was just really
Speaker 1: fucking could and I mean this this affects actually circles too.
Speaker 1: But it's like you can't get the critical mass, which
Speaker 1: just regular people in the streets when it's like twenty degrees.
Speaker 1: I think the other side of that is, um, just
Speaker 1: summer vacation of a lot of a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who go the hardest at these protests are people
Speaker 1: in high school. UM. And during winter, fall, spring kids,
Speaker 1: kids are in school during during summer, uh, people have
Speaker 1: people under the age of eighteen have a lot more
Speaker 1: free time on their hands. So I think that is
Speaker 1: another contributing factor. UM. And I think there's there's there's
Speaker 1: one other aspect which is very sinister um And but
Speaker 1: I think is worth talking about in terms of how
Speaker 1: of how the state may have been trying to frame
Speaker 1: this to like to to frame the release of this
Speaker 1: video too kind of like curtail the the the the
Speaker 1: the intensity of any type of like um of a
Speaker 1: protest revolter up racing. Now obviously that there was like
Speaker 1: the fucked up nature of like making this feel like
Speaker 1: a world premiere of like a snuff film was like
Speaker 1: it was it was. It was like a weird a
Speaker 1: weird aspect, which I think it encouraged the video to
Speaker 1: be to be something that is consumed versus something that's
Speaker 1: actually like watched and like, oh, this is a fucked
Speaker 1: up thing that we that we need to do something about. Instead,
Speaker 1: it turned it into this like element of consumption and
Speaker 1: the other aspect for this in terms of a lot
Speaker 1: of hardcore activists like like people who have thrown down
Speaker 1: in the streets before, people who have who have who
Speaker 1: have seen fucked up ship is that the intensity, what
Speaker 1: was the violence depicted on this video was framed as
Speaker 1: being extremely horrific, being being a very very unusual a
Speaker 1: very um like uncommon but but but but horrifying display
Speaker 1: of violence and display of brutality by the police. This
Speaker 1: is this, This is what police departments were faring it as.
Speaker 1: This is what the President of the United Its was
Speaker 1: framing this as like this this is a case of
Speaker 1: a few of a few bad actors who who did
Speaker 1: an egregious um but you know, uncommon thing. And I
Speaker 1: think when a lot of people who have thrown down
Speaker 1: watched this video, it just reminded you of stuff that
Speaker 1: you've seen before, Like, yeah, they saw a thing they
Speaker 1: had seen. It wasn't It was not shocking in the
Speaker 1: same way that it was getting framed as. Because what
Speaker 1: separates this from most of the arrests that happened in
Speaker 1: Portland during is very little Like one or two punches
Speaker 1: that were that were thrown just a little bit too
Speaker 1: hard is all that separates this from most like violent
Speaker 1: police arrests, Like this was not an uncommon display of violence.
Speaker 1: This was an ordinary, an ordinary encounter that just a
Speaker 1: few things were pushed just barely over the edge. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people watched, like my first
Speaker 1: reaction was like, oh, like this, this is not as
Speaker 1: bad as what I thought like this and that that
Speaker 1: that should be a condemnation of the police's actions, Like well,
Speaker 1: that's why I think one of the most important things
Speaker 1: to watch is how the other cops who were not
Speaker 1: present for the beating, but who show up immediately after
Speaker 1: or at the end of because some of them did
Speaker 1: watch the others beat him. How they react because they're
Speaker 1: just kind of even the m T R. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this has happened, but we we we do a stand back.
Speaker 1: When this happened, pizza people, the people on the ground
Speaker 1: were not concerned. Like it was not you could you
Speaker 1: could slowly watch because like a lot of this video
Speaker 1: was not of the actual beating. It was it was
Speaker 1: of the aftermath, and you you you could you could
Speaker 1: watch these cops slowly start to realize that maybe they
Speaker 1: went a little too hard, just very slowly over the
Speaker 1: course of thirty minutes. But for most of the time
Speaker 1: they're on the ground, they're like making jokes. They are
Speaker 1: talking about how fun, like how fun it was to
Speaker 1: beat up this person and there facing each other. That
Speaker 1: is most of the video. I think it's worth noting
Speaker 1: like a couple of things. One like it's extremely long,
Speaker 1: Like I'm not in the in the way that the
Speaker 1: George Floyd video like fits into the attention span of
Speaker 1: stuff we consume on our telephones at a time versus
Speaker 1: versus like an hour of footage. Right, Yeah, if Tyree
Speaker 1: Nichols had just been seriously disabled, have life altering injuries,
Speaker 1: been charged with disting rest all the things that very
Speaker 1: plausibly could have happened if a couple of punches had
Speaker 1: handed in different place, this body camera footage would have
Speaker 1: been denied under the investigative exemption, right then have said no,
Speaker 1: we're investigating his resistance of arrest. You can't you can't
Speaker 1: see it, and none of this ship would have happened.
Speaker 1: And like, yeah, the normalcy of so much other than
Speaker 1: the outcome. I don't know that that stripped some of
Speaker 1: the rage away, but it's important context. I think a
Speaker 1: few things I mean, and this is again one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think you can see from this
Speaker 1: that is evidence is sort of a positive long term
Speaker 1: result too, and it's it's a very mixed bag when
Speaker 1: I say it's positive, but that is kind of a
Speaker 1: positive sign. Is that they acted so quickly to throw
Speaker 1: all of these guys. They are firing and charging a
Speaker 1: lot of city employees over this. It's going to be
Speaker 1: between all of the people fired and all of the
Speaker 1: people charged, more than a dozen people by the time
Speaker 1: this is all done, which I can't think of another
Speaker 1: time when that has happened this quickly over an incident
Speaker 1: of police violence. And they did that not because it's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do, but because they were scared,
Speaker 1: and again I do I want to emphasize here the
Speaker 1: thing that they're scared of is not that like radical
Speaker 1: left wing protesters will take to the street. It's that
Speaker 1: liberals and more political they know that the consequence of
Speaker 1: the cops beating someone to death is that, like someone
Speaker 1: suck a mom will fucking abandon how many vans wing
Speaker 1: hammer into your cops show if you don't do this,
Speaker 1: do like give a scapegoat, right, like do the fair
Speaker 1: the bad minimum? And so the positive the thing that
Speaker 1: I can say that is probably positive about this is
Speaker 1: that it does show there's still some fear there on
Speaker 1: their behalf. The thing that's negative is that, like, well,
Speaker 1: it it worked, because I will say, on a moral level,
Speaker 1: I think a wide variety of radical actions are morally
Speaker 1: justified by what was done to Tyrene Nichols. Now that said,
Speaker 1: like back to the sort of the point we're making
Speaker 1: the start of this, I don't particularly urge or encourage
Speaker 1: that just because, like I don't like seeing people get
Speaker 1: arrested and charged and spend years of their life fighting
Speaker 1: ship in court um for the chance to like, let's say,
Speaker 1: carry out minor acts of property destruction on a cop shop. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think like that sort of activism works right now. Um,
Speaker 1: it certainly doesn't work without them, without the critical mass
Speaker 1: of like liberals sort of behind it, without enough people
Speaker 1: saying like we like again you look at like the
Speaker 1: fact that the burning of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: is still one of the most popular things in modern
Speaker 1: American politics. But that was the product of a fairly
Speaker 1: unique moment, And I just don't I see some positives
Speaker 1: in like the lingering fear of that moment, But I
Speaker 1: also don't see the material conditions that make me think
Speaker 1: it's something like that is coming again in the immediate future.
Speaker 1: And especially because this this situation around this video demonstrates
Speaker 1: how much more effort the state's putting into trying to
Speaker 1: prevent things from happening before they start. Like there was
Speaker 1: a lot of like inter agency work put into having
Speaker 1: all of these local police departments release statements, having the
Speaker 1: FBI release statements, having uh president like having having the
Speaker 1: president release statements, and it's it is all made slightly
Speaker 1: more bizarre considering that the contents of the video are
Speaker 1: not the on on the level of like uncommon or
Speaker 1: like rare, rare displays of violence that the police do,
Speaker 1: like this is this is this is relatively standard, um
Speaker 1: and that that kind of one thing I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about is like why did they choose this video? Like
Speaker 1: why did they why did they make this one? Like
Speaker 1: what were they afraid of, like for this video, because
Speaker 1: like other other other videos have come out in the
Speaker 1: past few years, like other like other police killings have happened,
Speaker 1: like the police killings all the fucking time, but they
Speaker 1: they did a lot of work on this one specifically,
Speaker 1: um and it it's kind of it's kind of interesting that,
Speaker 1: like why why they chose this specific video to to
Speaker 1: dedicate all of this work into because not not only
Speaker 1: did they like you know, denying stuff, but they also
Speaker 1: they like they like hyped it up. They're like you
Speaker 1: using this as like an example, Yeah, like like using
Speaker 1: this as an example, like here, this is what bad
Speaker 1: cops look like. Watch us punish these bad cops. Well,
Speaker 1: but I think I think I think there's a rate.
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge racial aspect of this, right,
Speaker 1: which is that like you know, like the cops are
Speaker 1: getting prosecuted. Are only the black cops who are involved
Speaker 1: in this right, and I think that's a huge part
Speaker 1: of this entire strategy. I think that's why they framed
Speaker 1: this as exceptional violence, is to play on people's racism, right.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's why I think person why
Speaker 1: this is allowed to happen, which was that yeah you
Speaker 1: can it is. It's like even inside the police it
Speaker 1: is a lot easier to throw black cops under the
Speaker 1: bus that it is that throw white cops under the bus.
Speaker 1: That's just how the system works, and it doesn't trigger
Speaker 1: that same like visceral response right that that we all
Speaker 1: had to seeing the George Floyd video. I don't think
Speaker 1: quite like like there is age old tradition of white
Speaker 1: men doing violent to black men on behalf of the state.
Speaker 1: And I think also it's it's also easier politically inside
Speaker 1: of the police departments because I think I think there
Speaker 1: would have been a lot more pushback from like the
Speaker 1: police part Like there hasn't been much that I've seen
Speaker 1: like internal pushback like from inside and police partments, because
Speaker 1: I I think if ituld have been five white cops,
Speaker 1: I think this would have been a huge fight, and
Speaker 1: I think you would have had like the fucking police
Speaker 1: union like calling Biden like an anti cop, like whatever.
Speaker 1: But I I think I think these were people who
Speaker 1: they were, Like we could tell these people onto the
Speaker 1: bus and doesn't looking matter because who cares Yaity isn't
Speaker 1: there for him? I think those are I mean, that's
Speaker 1: certainly like a significant aspect of why like this was
Speaker 1: the one they focused on. But I also think a
Speaker 1: major aspect of it is that it shows and records
Speaker 1: the reaction of other city employees to this, and you
Speaker 1: can see in real time the police putting together um
Speaker 1: story like it's it. There's I think a few things
Speaker 1: about this that are are really unique, but even I
Speaker 1: don't know the it's relatively unusual to have an angle
Speaker 1: which is not like the body camera, right, which really
Speaker 1: I think the violence in this was was captured and
Speaker 1: depicted in a way which was more or explicit than
Speaker 1: you would get many individual cops body camera. And like
Speaker 1: the fact that they most of the time when cops
Speaker 1: kill people, they do it with guns, right or maybe
Speaker 1: to taste sera or something like that. The fact that
Speaker 1: they took minutes, you know, like several minutes to be
Speaker 1: a man to death. It's it is just it should
Speaker 1: We've we've said like how this isn't unusual, and it's not,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean it's not repulsive. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's sucking disgusted by it. It's it's nightmarish. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: point is that, yeah, it's it's it's it's even more
Speaker 1: nightmarish considering how common this is, because yes, they did
Speaker 1: spend a few minutes doing this, but it was really
Speaker 1: only I think one or two punches that threw it
Speaker 1: right over the edge, Like it wasn't just a punch.
Speaker 1: Is the thing that I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that I saw that I think was probably critical and
Speaker 1: why he died. No, it was when they tackled him.
Speaker 1: His head bounced against the ground with a significant amount
Speaker 1: of force. There's a number of like a perfect store
Speaker 1: and the factors, right that went into making this the
Speaker 1: incident that they talked about, and like this the incident
Speaker 1: that didn't start two. I guess it's no one particular thing,
Speaker 1: it's all these things that led to it. And I
Speaker 1: do think also, like we have Joe Biden as president, right,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the same bullshit it's still happening
Speaker 1: that we've covered, right, like talking about the cops, talking
Speaker 1: about the border talking about all this stuff, but it's
Speaker 1: not being shoved in people's faces by legacy media outlets.
Speaker 1: Liberal folks have not been getting gradually angry or more
Speaker 1: upset at like the appearance of vulgarity from the White House.
Speaker 1: And and that's also a big aspect of why things
Speaker 1: went the way they did in is you have four
Speaker 1: years of pent up frustration on behalf of the a
Speaker 1: large group of liberals as well. Although I do again,
Speaker 1: I don't like pushing kind of the simple narrative here
Speaker 1: because I see that on the left a lot that like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Libs they stopped coming out because Biden one and
Speaker 1: they never really care. And I think that like that's
Speaker 1: there's certainly like a decent chunk of people who who
Speaker 1: showed up because it was the thing to do and
Speaker 1: we're not committed. But I also think the folks who
Speaker 1: are just like, um, you know, people stopped coming out
Speaker 1: because they suck. That's a that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a reductive summary of the take. But I think that
Speaker 1: that that broad idea leaves out a lot. One of
Speaker 1: the things that leaves out is that a lot of
Speaker 1: those those Libs and moderates who showed up in got
Speaker 1: the ship beaten out of them and got pretty traumatized,
Speaker 1: and are probably would be willing to get back out again,
Speaker 1: but are going to need to feel like there's a
Speaker 1: an actual chance of doing something because they understand the
Speaker 1: consequences of showing up in the street better. Um, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, I don't want to do the same
Speaker 1: thing that I just got my ass kicked and there's
Speaker 1: still cops. Um, there is a decent amount of evidence
Speaker 1: that for kind of the long term positive impact of
Speaker 1: getting all those people out in the street and of
Speaker 1: the fact that so many more people in witnessed police
Speaker 1: violence with their own eyes. Um. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: places you can go to look at this, But I
Speaker 1: was I was watching going through a recent ABC News
Speaker 1: Washington Post poll that showed that from twenty three confidence
Speaker 1: that police treat black and white people equally fell from
Speaker 1: fifty two percent where it was inten to thirty nine
Speaker 1: percent among Americans. UM and confidence that yeah, and confidence
Speaker 1: that police like it's too it's certainly too high, but
Speaker 1: that's a significant change. And confidence that police were adequately
Speaker 1: trained to avoid use of excessive force fell from fifty
Speaker 1: percent to um like and confidence in both of these
Speaker 1: things fell twice as fast from twenty three as it
Speaker 1: did from and that like thirty something percent number is
Speaker 1: just that is also just like close to like the
Speaker 1: number of people who are like active, like like actively
Speaker 1: hardcore racist yeah about the country are biggest. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think the election was real. Think that I
Speaker 1: want to quickly mention that, like some of those liberal
Speaker 1: folks as well, like like like this is not we
Speaker 1: don't do like shipping on the lips or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: useless and it doesn't help. But like a lot of
Speaker 1: those folks have been out doing other ship too, Like
Speaker 1: I've seen folks so I haven't seen since twenty like
Speaker 1: trying to protect trans kids, trying trying to stop biggest
Speaker 1: shout and get little children going to the pantomime or
Speaker 1: some ship. Like they've been doing stuff, and that contributes
Speaker 1: of course to people being you know, fatigued from other actions.
Speaker 1: A large part of what I'm seeing people not being
Speaker 1: willing to do anymore is like the same ship that
Speaker 1: they did in twenty that stopped working, right, it didn't
Speaker 1: continue to be effective. Yeah yeah, And I think also
Speaker 1: like this this also, you know there's something actors like
Speaker 1: the weather, like the stuff that was happening in the
Speaker 1: very very like the first week where like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the cops lost control of like the sid at
Speaker 1: the center of Chicago, right like that. The kind of
Speaker 1: people who did that stuff like aren't really like that.
Speaker 1: Those those those are those those that was not being
Speaker 1: done by people who were sort of like political liberals
Speaker 1: or whatever. That was being done by people who like
Speaker 1: had like very various tenues, very tenuous connection to politics
Speaker 1: at all under normal circumstances. And you know, like eventually
Speaker 1: eventually you'll get will see something like that again. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean it took like six six five
Speaker 1: or six years between like Ferguson and like that. That
Speaker 1: will happen again. But there's that kind of that that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff doesn't happen that Like those those like
Speaker 1: the kind of people who actually riot very significantly, who
Speaker 1: are not in the sort of like cadra of like
Speaker 1: hardcore left or organizers, like, they don't throw in that often.
Speaker 1: And a lot of political conditions have to like converge
Speaker 1: exactly correctly for it to happen, and it's just not
Speaker 1: going to happen most of the time. And that's a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, but like you like, that's just that's
Speaker 1: just what reality is. Yeah, I don't think there's been
Speaker 1: enough time between cycles in order for things to really
Speaker 1: pick up, because yeah, it does require a lot of
Speaker 1: people to forget, to forget the brutality of what the
Speaker 1: corps did to people, and like and and and and
Speaker 1: and just like material conditions and like recovering from burnout,
Speaker 1: and it creates it. Like one thing that's been so
Speaker 1: incredible about Atlanta is the level of resiliency because they've
Speaker 1: not they've not really stopped since they like they've they've
Speaker 1: kind of they they've they've kept going in a very
Speaker 1: particular way that both like encourages people to take care
Speaker 1: of themselves and not to be treated as disposable. And
Speaker 1: I think a big part of that is having like
Speaker 1: a multi pronct movement, Like the movement isn't it's not
Speaker 1: built around a singular thing like going out and breaking
Speaker 1: windows or even even just like camping in the forest. Like,
Speaker 1: the movement isn't just those things. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: other various aspects. So when you're exhausted from one single thing,
Speaker 1: you can move on to one of the other many
Speaker 1: aspects and like do that as like as your recovery,
Speaker 1: um and and having having that, I think it's contributed
Speaker 1: to the level of resiliency that we've seen. UM, But
Speaker 1: I don't think the rest of the States has those
Speaker 1: types of practices. Like people in Portland are definitely still
Speaker 1: extremely burnt out from from Jesus, and I assume a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of other cities are dealing with
Speaker 1: similar levels of fatigue. One thing I do want to
Speaker 1: address really quickly is the horseshit framing of this by
Speaker 1: legacy media. Again, like the very fucking people who, like
Speaker 1: on the day that Derek Shovin went to Joe retweeted
Speaker 1: that initial statement where Minneapolis p D basically said George
Speaker 1: Floyd died of a heart attack. I think we had
Speaker 1: a cardiac condition or something. Um, the very same people
Speaker 1: who retweeted that statement said never again are we going
Speaker 1: to be calmed by this ship and now out there
Speaker 1: fucking just carrying water for the cops, like CNN saying
Speaker 1: that Tyree Nichols had an encounter with the police, Like
Speaker 1: I don't understand what it fucking takes for these people
Speaker 1: to understand, Like, and I've been like I was on
Speaker 1: NBC this year trying to persuade other NBC journalists too
Speaker 1: maybe critically assess the claim to the police and like,
Speaker 1: here we are again doing the same ship again, and
Speaker 1: we should we should probably close out here soon. But
Speaker 1: one kind of final thought that I've had is the
Speaker 1: other another kind of crucial difference between how this was
Speaker 1: treated as opposed to the George Floyd video is that
Speaker 1: the person who recorded the George Floyd video was like
Speaker 1: a bystander, Like they were just there and they posted
Speaker 1: that on their own accord and it was able to grow.
Speaker 1: It was able to grow traction over the course of
Speaker 1: a few weeks, kind of slowly in like underground um
Speaker 1: like in like underground communities, you know, people who are
Speaker 1: much more aware of police violence, and then that's the
Speaker 1: least seeped out into the mainstream. I think there's a
Speaker 1: difference in having that type of actual growth of people
Speaker 1: learning about like hey, did you see this fucked up
Speaker 1: thing that my friends sent me, or like did you
Speaker 1: like like there's that level of like, oh, we found
Speaker 1: this thing that is really fucked up and people need
Speaker 1: to care about this, versus the framing of the police
Speaker 1: and how they used this as like a world premiere
Speaker 1: of this, like of this of this like snuff film.
Speaker 1: It's it's like that there was like a fucking countdown
Speaker 1: to to to to to watch the video and that
Speaker 1: that immediately frames this as something to be consumed. That
Speaker 1: immediately frames this is something like the way to engage
Speaker 1: with this is to sit down and watch it and
Speaker 1: then you're done. Like that that that that is the
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're framing this the same way that
Speaker 1: you would watch like a movie or like a music
Speaker 1: video drop like that is that is the style of engagement.
Speaker 1: Because this video is being published by the police like
Speaker 1: they are. They are they are from from the very start,
Speaker 1: they're controlling the way that information is distributed. They're controlling
Speaker 1: what information is distribute. Did it like creates this scenario
Speaker 1: where the consumption of the video itself like is the
Speaker 1: event as opposed to any type of like follow up
Speaker 1: action or protest or direct action that instead of that
Speaker 1: being like the action event, the action event is just
Speaker 1: the consumption of the video based on how it was
Speaker 1: hyped up as as this thing that was to be
Speaker 1: like officially released and you like count down for it
Speaker 1: and then you watch it and you're like, Okay, that
Speaker 1: was it, that was the thing. Um, and I think
Speaker 1: that does just really impact it when it's like this,
Speaker 1: like sanctioned premier versus this thing that's spread by regular people. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think it kind of became
Speaker 1: the act of penance. Like you watch the video, you say,
Speaker 1: holy funk, that's disgusting, and then like the thing is
Speaker 1: already done right like that, the cops are already fired,
Speaker 1: so you just do your penants. You go through the
Speaker 1: painful thing, rather than the George Floyd thing, which was
Speaker 1: like nothing has been done about this. I've got this
Speaker 1: organically from a friend. I'm fucking furious. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you're right. I think it's very different. Yeah alright,
Speaker 1: well I think that's probably going to do it for
Speaker 1: us today. Um until next time. Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Don't don't let your city name a police elite unit,
Speaker 1: scorpion or anything else. Uh yeah you can tell yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have special police if. Yeah, I would prefer
Speaker 1: no cops. If you're going to have a special police unit,
Speaker 1: maybe call it like the Barney Fife Battalion or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um, at least at least try not to
Speaker 1: hype them up to be scorpions. Yeah. Um, anyway, that
Speaker 1: that that that that the fuck. Hi, everyone's James again
Speaker 1: bookend in the episode, and I'm just here to ask
Speaker 1: you again to donate if you have the means, if
Speaker 1: you're able to, to relief for people in Syria who
Speaker 1: are obviously experiencing terrible conser quotation from this earthquake. The
Speaker 1: news cycle kind of moves on, but people's lives don't,
Speaker 1: and they still need your help. So a couple of
Speaker 1: places you can donate. The White Helmets, that's White Helmets
Speaker 1: dot org, slash e N for English Syrian American Medical
Speaker 1: Society Foundation, that's s A M S hyphen USA dot
Speaker 1: net Medsan San Fantier, Doctors Without Borders and that's Doctors
Speaker 1: Without Borders dot org. And the Kurdish Re Question h
Speaker 1: E y V A S O r U K dot
Speaker 1: r G. Those were all great places and we'd love
Speaker 1: it if you could spare little money to help people out.
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