WEBVTT - Understanding the Response to the Tyre Nichols Video 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.040 Hi everyone, It's meet James, and just before we start today, 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:07.400 we're going to discuss in quite some detail, the being 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:10.400 to death of Tyree Nichols by the police in Memphis. 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:13.560 And if you don't want to hear that detail, that's 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:15.840 totally fine, but we wanted to let you know now 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.040 so that you didn't get surprised by it in your 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:20.840 money commute or whatever. So if you want to skip 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.040 this one, if you don't listen to that one, then 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:25.759 we are trying to give you that warning ahead of time. 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:38.000 Discourse Discourse. Discourse is about podcast. I don't know it 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:43.560 could happen. Here is the podcast that you're listening to. Uh. 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:47.320 If you came here list looking for another podcast, then 0:00:47.479 --> 0:00:49.479 you fucked up, But you fucked up in a good 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:54.120 way because that podcast was trash. Thank you for being 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.680 here with us today. Who all? Who all? Who? Who? 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.800 Who's here? Who are you? People? We're in Eln? Sure? Yeah, 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:07.080 I'm THEA long I'm here. Wow, I'm I'm James. I'm 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:08.840 a little unsure about who I am beyond that, but 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:12.600 that's who I am. It's okay. I'm Garrison Davis and 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:15.680 I'm here to engage in discourse. I there's nothing I 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:20.440 love more than discourse. Um. Speaking of discourse, today we're 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:24.960 gonna be talking about, well, I don't know, it's not 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:27.640 really discourse, but today we're gonna be talking about the 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:33.920 reaction to the video of the Memphis police murdering Tyree Nichols. 0:01:34.200 --> 0:01:38.120 In particularly, we're gonna be talking about the way in 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:42.240 which kind of the left responded to this, both online 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.360 and kind of public channels and actually in the streets. 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.840 Because I think there's some interesting stuff here, um, and 0:01:48.960 --> 0:01:52.160 I think it's kind of worth analyzing outside of uh, 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:56.160 you know, the broader conversation about police violence and you know, 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:59.240 uh that sort of thing, because I think there's some 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:04.720 interesting story of tactical stuff to kind of talk about here. Um. 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.520 And yeah, that's that's that's what we're going to be 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:11.680 doing today. UM. In case you've been kind of stuck 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:14.480 under a rock, uh, you should probably be aware that 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:18.400 on January seven, three, police from the Memphis p D 0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:22.519 Scorpion Unit, which was a unit with a very sinister 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:27.880 name that existed to effectively over police, um a chunk 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:32.320 of the city of Memphis. Uh yeah, um, pulled over 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:35.640 Tyree Nichols, a twenty nine year old black man. UH. 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:40.640 Tyree was an amateur photographer. UM, he liked skating. He 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:45.160 had Crohn's disease. UM, he was just driving around that night. UH. 0:02:45.200 --> 0:02:47.959 And the encounter, as we would later see on the video, 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.400 went pretty much immediately violent on behalf of the police. 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:54.440 Nichols was beaten very badly, and he died in the 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:57.600 hospital three days later. And for the first few days 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.960 after the killing, obviously, you know this happened, the police 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:03.800 did this, and then rumors started kind of spreading in 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:06.440 the immediate wake of the beating, but very little was 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.000 known for certain about like what had happened, UM, about 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:15.440 you know what, why this had had gotten escalated so quickly. UM. 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:17.960 One of the first kind of signs that this was 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.760 going to become a thing on the national uh in 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:24.440 terms of like the national attention span, was when the 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.120 Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in the U. S. Department of 0:03:27.160 --> 0:03:32.320 Justice independently opened investigations into the beating. UM after reviewing 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:36.280 body camera footage from multiple officers on scene, five Memphis 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:40.000 p D officers were dismissed on January. Three days later, 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.920 an autopsy commissioned by Tyrese family found extensive bleeding caused 0:03:43.920 --> 0:03:47.480 by a severe beating. Outrage around the killing grew rapidly, 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:49.680 and it was announced by the Memphis Police that body 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.080 camera footage of the stop and of the beating would 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.800 be released to the public. Uh. This started the rumor 0:03:55.840 --> 0:03:59.440 mill really churning up. UM. There was kind of a 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.960 couple of leaks from people who had seen the footage 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:03.800 I think who were close to the case, and they 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:06.440 all sort of described it as uniquely bad. The term 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:08.560 that I heard a lot was that it's worse than 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:12.040 the Rodney King beating. Um. This is just the way 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:14.360 in which people started talking about it. And as more 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.160 details filtered out, there were conversations around the country, particularly 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.000 folks on the activists left, who started talking about the 0:04:21.080 --> 0:04:23.159 need to prepare for what they suspected would be the 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:26.520 aftermath of the video's release. UM. And one of the 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:29.320 things that was kind of kind of worth discussing here 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.000 is that in the immediate, like immediately before the video 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:35.839 came out, a lot of the conversations that people on 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:37.960 the left were having and that people in law enforcement 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.880 we're having kind of focused around the same expectations, which 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.040 was that there would be widespread protests and rioting as 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.159 a result of the release of this video. UM, police 0:04:48.160 --> 0:04:51.200 departments around the country entered high alert. Riot squads were 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:53.679 prepped UM and then kind of on the other side 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:55.919 of things and sort of open channels on Twitter and 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.600 massed on and in person, and a number of of 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.200 of different cases, distant people you know who claimed to 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:05.400 be that online talked about their expectations too. I heard 0:05:05.480 --> 0:05:07.880 variations of the phrase, you know, it's going to be 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:09.800 a really hot year. This is going to like lead 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:12.960 into a particularly aggressive summer. On the ground, people are 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:15.400 going to make the burning of that precinct in Minneapolis 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:17.960 look tame. You know, get your gear together, check in 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:21.240 with your friends, everything's about to go off. UM. There 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.920 was a lot of chatter kind of along those lines, 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:28.839 and I don't know, I didn't really speak up too 0:05:28.920 --> 0:05:32.240 much about this, but my kind of thinking, as folks 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:35.600 were sort of anticipating the reaction to this was I 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:39.560 suspected that the actual reaction on a mass scale to 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:41.800 the video's release was going to be more muted and 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:44.679 law abiding than than people were expecting at the time. 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:47.359 And I guess the primary reason that I felt this 0:05:47.400 --> 0:05:49.600 way was simply that kind of the vibes were off. 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.000 It just didn't feel like folks were ready for that 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:55.680 kind of a response. Um, but I do kind of 0:05:55.720 --> 0:05:58.279 have a fact based reason for why I was anticipating 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:01.960 that as well. UM. On January, two days before the 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.960 video's release, five Memphis p D officers were arrested and 0:06:05.040 --> 0:06:08.599 charged with murder, kidnapping, assault, a bevy of very serious charges. 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:11.800 Immediately after that, three firefighters T. E. M. T s 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:14.159 and a police lieutenant who had been on scene after 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:16.680 the beating were fired for failing to assess and provide 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:19.640 emergency care to Nichols on scene. And there's a couple 0:06:19.640 --> 0:06:21.320 of ways to view what happened here. I think the 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:23.920 less optimistic one is that the state simply made a 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:27.280 pragmatic decision to throw these guys onto the bus. That's 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:31.040 definitely what happened. The more optimistic way to look at 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:33.720 this is that because people had rioted so hard for 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:36.200 so long in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:38.599 state felt like it had to throw these guys under 0:06:38.640 --> 0:06:42.080 the bus rather than, you know, risk another year of rage. 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:44.360 And this is also correct. I think both of these 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:47.520 things are are pretty accurate ways to look at what happened. 0:06:48.160 --> 0:06:50.200 The idea that the release of the footage of Tyree's 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:53.120 murder would lead to massive protests was not quite universal, 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:54.720 but I didn't notice that a lot of the people 0:06:54.760 --> 0:06:58.280 who felt similarly to me expressed the belief that if 0:06:58.279 --> 0:07:01.480 people didn't riot over what had happened to Tyree, that 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:04.240 was due to a mix of liberal cowardice and racism, 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:06.480 since most of the officers who beat Tyree to death 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.200 were themselves black. And I think this is kind of 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:11.679 a short sighted and unfair take, and I'll talk about 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:16.800 why shortly. On January Friday, the Tyree Nichols videos were 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:20.080 released by the Memphis Police Department. UM, along with a 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:23.000 lot of you. I watched them all immediately, UM, and 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.520 you can find there's a description on my Twitter page. 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.440 It's turned currently pinned to my profile of the video 0:07:28.600 --> 0:07:30.520 if you haven't seen it but want to know what 0:07:30.600 --> 0:07:33.400 happened there. UM To kind of summarize it in brief, 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.600 it's it's very ugly. Uh. Tyree is immediately calm as 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:39.360 he's pulled over and taken from his car. The police 0:07:39.360 --> 0:07:42.800 are not calm. He attempts to de escalate them. They 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:46.320 accuse him falsely of resisting, then they mace him and themselves. 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:49.760 I think in general that the inciting incident for the 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.840 beating was the incompetent use of mace by these officers. 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:55.320 They hurt themselves, they got pissed, and then they beat 0:07:55.360 --> 0:08:00.240 Tyree because they were angry at themselves for macing themselves. UM. 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.120 It's also kind of worth noting that a white officer 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.880 who has since been fired as well, also deployed his 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.360 taser on the young man. There's been some kind of 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:10.080 this was kind of left out of a lot of 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:13.120 the initial summaries of what had happened. Uh, that guy 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:17.080 has now been fired. UM. And yeah, it's it's bad. 0:08:17.120 --> 0:08:20.400 The video is is very unpleasant and very brutal. UM. 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:22.440 Watching it, though, I think kind of the thing that 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.600 struck me most was how much like a normal traffic 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.240 stop a lot of this was. UM. I think that 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:31.680 if you know, they had gone a little bit less 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:33.800 hard and beating him a little less badly and he 0:08:33.880 --> 0:08:36.760 had survived, they probably would have charged him with resisting 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.320 arrest and assault on a police officer. UM. And who 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:42.760 knows how the case would have gone. You can hear 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.880 the police preparing for this eventuality in the footage, one 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.400 officer claims that Tyree went for his gun. There's no 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:50.920 evidence of this in the footage, uh, And you can 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:52.880 kind of hear them all working to get their stories 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:56.560 straight after they beat Tyree Um for the inevitable court case. 0:08:57.320 --> 0:09:00.680 More officers and emergency personnel arrive on scene as he's 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:02.960 just kind of laying there, and none of them seemed 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:07.160 to find what's happened peculiar or noteworthy, which is interesting 0:09:07.200 --> 0:09:10.480 because immediately prior to the video's release, police departments around 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.240 the country all issued statements that were basically identical, condemning 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:17.720 the officers who had beaten nichols Um, saying basically, this 0:09:17.880 --> 0:09:21.640 behavior is unacceptable. These men are bad apples. This is 0:09:21.720 --> 0:09:25.040 like an extreme example that does not represent policing values. 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:28.480 And there's a couple of things that are are interesting 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.920 about this. One of them is that the actual way 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:36.240 in which emergency responders on scene treated the beating kind 0:09:36.240 --> 0:09:38.920 of puts the lie to that, because nobody acts as 0:09:38.920 --> 0:09:42.040 if anything outside of the normal has occurred. And the 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:45.120 other thing that is noteworthy is the uniformity of these 0:09:45.160 --> 0:09:48.160 these messages by police departments around the country. I have 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.880 not actually seen that happen before. There was kind of 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.160 a version of this that occurred in the wake of 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:56.880 the George Floyd video, but it was much more cohesive 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:02.199 prior to the release of the Tyree Nichols video. UM. 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:04.640 That said, there were no widespread riots or acts of 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.000 property destruction. After the video was released. There were protests 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:10.960 in a number of cities, most notably in Memphis, UM, 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:15.320 but compared to things were very subdued. There was not 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.640 kind of widespread property destruction or rioting in Portland, which 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.520 was obviously the site of intense radical street actions. In 0:10:23.320 --> 0:10:27.079 there were two fairly small marches. UM. I'm not gonna 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.920 delve into this in tremendous detail, but there were kind 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.440 of allegations from one of the marches that the larger 0:10:34.480 --> 0:10:36.760 and less radical of the two was an op designed 0:10:36.760 --> 0:10:39.040 to take numbers and energy away from the radical march. 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:42.720 There were confrontations between members of both groups, and while 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:45.439 the overall story, again is not worth spending time on, 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.160 the gist of it is that very little happened. Now 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:51.600 this is not kind of limited to Portland's Atlanta, Georgia 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.280 is probably the city in the US today that's been 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:57.000 the center of the most effective radical protests against law 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.960 enforcement and the history of attempts to stop and stabotage. 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.320 The construction of Cops City, which is obviously a massive 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:06.720 police training compound in Atlanta's largest urban forest, has been 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.000 well documented by by Garrison Davis UM as well as 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:12.480 a number of other reporters. UM. I do think it's 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.320 worth noting that days before the Nichols video was released, 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.920 Atlanta police shot and killed a forest defender, Tortu Guida, 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:23.320 and a moderately large protest followed, where protesters smashing windows 0:11:23.320 --> 0:11:26.160 and lighting one cop car on fire. This was the 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:29.800 kind of action that I think most of the activists 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:32.679 I observed expected in the wake of the Nichols video 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.440 as well, but we simply didn't see that. I'm just 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:37.360 going to butt in here for a little bit and 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:41.120 you'll you'll you'll hear more about that riot slash protest 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:44.960 in Atlanta next week. UM. I'm putting together a series 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.800 on it that'll that'll be out soon. But definitely one 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.080 of the things that was talked about a lot in 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:57.720 Atlanta was the upcoming release of this video and the 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:02.600 potentiality of this video getting released shortly after the death 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:05.679 of Tortuguita at the hands of police. Kind of both 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.120 of these things feeding off each other into a into 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:13.800 a similar like level um uprising. And this was like 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.440 no one was like for sure about this, Like no 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.280 one was like saying, this is absolutely definitely gonna happen, 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:22.800 But it was something that was definitely thought about. UM, 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:25.520 it was something that was definitely considered. I think, honestly, 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:30.800 if the the video was set to come out originally 0:12:30.800 --> 0:12:36.440 on like the Monday or Tuesday following the big downtown 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.280 protest in Atlanta, UM, it was supposed to come out 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:42.000 just a few days later, and that that didn't happen. 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:46.439 It was delayed once again for further further into the week. UM. 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.400 I think if it came out sooner, I think that 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.440 could have fed off momentum in a pretty considerable way. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.559 I think a few things happened both in Atlanta that 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:57.640 in the in the next few days that kind of 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:04.400 stunted possible possible for their protest. UM National Guard was deployed. 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:09.640 UM police in Savannah were ordered to start arresting people 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:13.520 and shutting down gatherings of over fifteen uh specifically for 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:17.800 like including vigils, and in Atlanta, obviously there was people 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:22.520 getting really pretty pretty inflated, uh high level felonies and 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:25.760 domestic and domestic terrorism charges simply for being simply for 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.560 being present at a protest UM. So I think those 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:33.959 those things kind of all in all impacted people's ability 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:38.680 to like prepare for you know, a sequence of protests 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.360 which there was someone there was someone in l a 0:13:41.880 --> 0:13:44.160 for for like a day or two. The ones in 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:49.679 Memphis were pretty big, but I think they the timeline 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:53.360 in which they released the video is definitely should be 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:55.640 considered in terms of when they chose to release it 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:01.720 um to like yeah, in terms of the state's goal 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:05.840 of preventing you know, large large scale protests. But that 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.960 was definitely something that was talked about a lot during 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.120 during like the little over a week that I was 0:14:12.280 --> 0:14:14.720 that I was in Atlantis, because everyone was getting ready 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:17.839 for this, Like everyone heard that this is going to 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.000 be like the worst of ADEO that we've seen since 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:22.480 Rodney kinging like that that that that was the way 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.520 it was. It was thought up of like on the ground, 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:31.200 you know, just like word of mouth being being passed um, 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:36.120 and people were definitely like preparing, like preparing themselves for it, 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:39.040 like like like thinking, like thinking about like what's going 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:42.080 to happen if this is like, if this really is 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:45.680 the most horrific thing, what is the appropriate response to that? 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:48.440 And and this is kind of a lot of what 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:51.840 I wanted to talk around because you have sort of 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:56.720 Georgia law enforcement. There's this this riot, and the response 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:58.800 to that, as well as the response to the tree 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:02.000 set is a series of dem stick terrorism charges, um. 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.440 And then this video comes out and there's not a 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:09.400 mass like radical street response to it, and it it 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:11.400 seems to me and Garrison you can correct me if 0:15:11.400 --> 0:15:13.760 I'm wrong that a big part of that is people 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.480 in Atlanta were kind of not willing to throw more 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:23.160 lives and bodies at the police without kind of more 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:25.120 of a cohesive plan of what to do given the 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:28.240 severity of the repression that that was being engaged in. 0:15:28.520 --> 0:15:33.640 I mean, obviously can't comment on people's votivations or like 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:36.520 plans for for for stuff, because that's not something that 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:41.080 I would be would be privy privy to. Yeah, um, 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.040 so I I don't know, there's there's there's a lot 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.400 of stuff. I mean, like I think a big part 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:49.760 of why I heard a lot about it in Atlanta 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.240 was one because a friend of a lot of people 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:55.480 who were involved in the forced and the force events 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.160 got killed by police a few days earlier. And two 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.520 Memphis is only a few hours way from Atlanta, Like 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.040 it's it's it's not it's it's it's not that far, 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:06.280 and it's a big part of the stuff in Atlanta 0:16:06.520 --> 0:16:10.240 is like solidarity with struggles that are not just in 0:16:10.280 --> 0:16:14.040 your immediate vicinity. And you could argue that Memphis really 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:17.800 is in the immediate vicinity of Georgia. Um, but like 0:16:17.960 --> 0:16:24.240 that that type of cross cross state solidarity is is 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:28.040 a big part um. But yeah, I can I I 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:32.000 could not comment on on on why why people did 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:34.600 or did not choose to do specific things. I think 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:38.640 that that's that's up for people themselves. Yeah, I want 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:40.760 to want to put words into anyone's mouth. But it 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.280 was kind of interesting because I I paid attention a 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:45.440 lot to the reaction, and there were a lot of 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:49.640 folks talking about how disheartening it was that there were 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:53.400 not more of the kind of radical actions that they 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:55.960 wanted to see in the wake of the video coming out, 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:58.720 And I'm that's kind of the thing I wanted sort 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.360 of to talk most around because I feel very mixed 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:05.879 around this, But broadly speaking, I guess I'm glad that 0:17:05.960 --> 0:17:08.520 we didn't see a repeat of the part of that 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.320 was folks standing up in front of cop shops until 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:15.680 riot police came in and getting charges against them, because 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:19.320 I just don't think that that works right now. I 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:22.920 don't think it works is functional anymore. Um, I don't 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:28.040 think it actually hurts the state because the reaction, like 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.680 there was a period of time early in those first 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.520 couple of months in particular, where you could see the 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:37.800 police were off balance. Obviously in like Minneapolis with the 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:40.119 burning of the Third Precinct, was was this kind of 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:43.119 sea change moment um, but you could see it in 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:45.840 a number of cities that like they didn't really know 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.280 what was going on, and they were themselves concerned with 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.080 how out of control the situation had gotten. And then 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.439 it kind of morphed later in the year to I 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.760 think a situation they could control very well where there 0:17:56.760 --> 0:18:00.640 were these acts of fairly minor property destruction and then 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:02.880 a bunch of people would get picked up and charged. 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:07.200 And I think that while I understand like the desire 0:18:07.760 --> 0:18:11.640 to react that way and to do something, um, kind 0:18:11.680 --> 0:18:15.520 of very firm and uh and radical in response to 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:20.320 state violence like this. I'm also like deeply concerned about 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.399 people not throwing away months and years of their lives 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:26.840 fighting charges. Yeah. I mean a big part of it 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:33.280 is is people learning that treating protesters as disposable meat 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:35.840 bags to throw against the wall of the state is 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:38.959 kind of a bad idea. Um. Yeah, And there's I 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:42.840 think this is something that that that was talked about 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:47.400 in conversations just just like regarding like, hey, this video 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:48.879 is going to come out, what do you think it's 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:50.720 going to happen. Like there's just a lot of the casual, 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:56.320 casual conversations, but like there was a lot to make happened. 0:18:56.440 --> 0:19:01.119 A lot of things contributed to the intensity and the 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:05.879 length of those protests. I think, uh, COVID being a 0:19:06.040 --> 0:19:09.080 pretty big part. This was a few months into the pandemic. 0:19:09.280 --> 0:19:11.720 People have been stuck in their homes now for a 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:14.280 few months and not really like prepared for that. Like 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:16.760 at this at this point, we're kind of we're all 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:18.320 kind of used to being in our house a lot 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.720 more now, But back then it was it was new 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:24.959 for a lot of people. So I think the opperaty 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:27.159 the opportunity to get out of the house for what 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.800 seemed like an important reason. I think was a really 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:34.000 big part of people. People being out of a lot 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:36.320 of work was a really big part of because a 0:19:36.320 --> 0:19:38.840 lot of people did did not have the types of 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:40.760 jobs that they might have now, did not have the 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:45.080 jobs they had like in like the months before. It's 0:19:45.400 --> 0:19:48.399 maybe because I can't really think of another example like 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:52.280 this from history. Obviously a lot of uprisings occur when 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:54.439 people are suddenly out of work, but this was a 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:56.720 mix of people are suddenly out of work and they 0:19:56.800 --> 0:20:02.440 suddenly they all have cash like that, that which contributed 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:04.479 in a lot of ways because like that, that was 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.119 I think what funded a lot of you know, people 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:09.840 bringing in food and people bringing in like pallets of 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.480 water and getting gas masks and stuff as they had 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:15.679 these sort of checks for you know, as a result 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.520 of like COVID relief, which was an interesting situation as 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:32.200 well that hasn't been replicated since. I think there's there's 0:20:32.200 --> 0:20:35.080 another very important factor of this that doesn't get talked 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:37.679 about that much, which is just the weather. Like if 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:39.320 if you, if you, if you, if you go back 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.320 and look at when the largest police like largest anti 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.320 police protests in the US have happened, right, They either 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.960 start like late spring, early fall, or just the middle 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:51.600 of the summer. And there's the reason. Yeah, Like then 0:20:51.640 --> 0:20:53.840 this is I think another this is this is the 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:56.280 thing up in Chicago, right was it was just really 0:20:56.320 --> 0:20:59.679 fucking could and I mean this this affects actually circles too. 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:01.520 But it's like you can't get the critical mass, which 0:21:01.560 --> 0:21:04.600 just regular people in the streets when it's like twenty degrees. 0:21:05.800 --> 0:21:08.360 I think the other side of that is, um, just 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:11.439 summer vacation of a lot of a lot of the 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:14.440 people who go the hardest at these protests are people 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:20.960 in high school. UM. And during winter, fall, spring kids, 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:25.080 kids are in school during during summer, uh, people have 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:27.520 people under the age of eighteen have a lot more 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:29.520 free time on their hands. So I think that is 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:34.680 another contributing factor. UM. And I think there's there's there's 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:41.520 one other aspect which is very sinister um And but 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:43.800 I think is worth talking about in terms of how 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.200 of how the state may have been trying to frame 0:21:46.280 --> 0:21:49.159 this to like to to frame the release of this 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:56.120 video too kind of like curtail the the the the 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:58.879 the intensity of any type of like um of a 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.639 protest revolter up racing. Now obviously that there was like 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:04.520 the fucked up nature of like making this feel like 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.320 a world premiere of like a snuff film was like 0:22:07.920 --> 0:22:10.160 it was it was. It was like a weird a 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:14.840 weird aspect, which I think it encouraged the video to 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:18.120 be to be something that is consumed versus something that's 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:20.760 actually like watched and like, oh, this is a fucked 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:23.200