Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you. But you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. All right, we'll find some
Speaker 1: clever way to introduce us. By then all huh, you
Speaker 1: know what, I might just go with that. I will
Speaker 1: find some clever way to introduce us. And that is
Speaker 1: that is the introduction now because because I said it, Hello,
Speaker 1: welcome to it could happen here today we are going
Speaker 1: to be talking about um Internet privacy and some new
Speaker 1: bills that will possibly undermine it. UM. Today I have
Speaker 1: with me Stopher. Hello, Christopher, Hello, I am here. I am.
Speaker 1: I don't know if excited is the right word, but no,
Speaker 1: people are really excited to come about the show. This
Speaker 1: is a this is a mild dread of the Internet.
Speaker 1: I try because we definitely, we definitely can. Things don't
Speaker 1: need to be always horrible and grim, even when you're
Speaker 1: talking about things that aren't great. But yeah, today today
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about some some interesting things. As per
Speaker 1: the title of this episode will probably be related to
Speaker 1: we are talking about the proposed earn It Act, and
Speaker 1: we'll just I'll explain what it is in the different
Speaker 1: kind of implications that could have on how like everyone
Speaker 1: uses the internet, um, but also affects a few specific
Speaker 1: types of people in particular. So but kind of part
Speaker 1: of this whole thing, We're gonna start off by talking
Speaker 1: about something a little bit different and then to kind
Speaker 1: of segue to the inn An Act. UM. So, last year,
Speaker 1: Apple Company announced like a controversial plan to install photo
Speaker 1: scanning software into every kind of every every device. UM.
Speaker 1: Apple's kind of long been seen as a pro privacy company. UM.
Speaker 1: In the past, they have like refused FBI demands to
Speaker 1: help investigators by pass locked phones. So this this idea
Speaker 1: on this plan to create a backdoor into the iPhone
Speaker 1: storage system to scan for photos was kind of a
Speaker 1: big deal coming for Apple because they were definitely, at
Speaker 1: least in the past, known as a generally like out
Speaker 1: of all of the companies, the ones that if you're
Speaker 1: dealing with sensitive matters, Apple is generally generally the better one.
Speaker 1: Now that that has become less of a case in
Speaker 1: the past few years, but that was that that definitely
Speaker 1: was the case. So when when this kind of idea
Speaker 1: was announced, there was a decently sized global coalition also
Speaker 1: formed to push back on this thing UM, and the
Speaker 1: company did pause the plan. Now, this came at a
Speaker 1: time that a lot of different kind of companies were
Speaker 1: also pushing back against not safe for work materials UM's
Speaker 1: cimically for like like like relating to the transactional money
Speaker 1: and banks. This was you know, around the time that
Speaker 1: only fans was flip flopping on whether they would actually
Speaker 1: have not safe for work kind of materials as a
Speaker 1: part of this kind of growing trend of like worrying
Speaker 1: about UM. The term now is like child sexual abuse
Speaker 1: materials more traditionally was it's called child pornography or you know,
Speaker 1: so it's part of this kind of overall kind of
Speaker 1: extra focus that tech companies have about being worried that
Speaker 1: if they if someone who is doing that who is underage,
Speaker 1: or if someone's being exploited who's underage, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: they could unfinancially hurt the company. So they're trying to
Speaker 1: a lot lots of companies have been trying to do
Speaker 1: this thing to prevent that legal and financial issue for happening. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, all this really actually ends up doing is
Speaker 1: just negatively affecting sex workers. Um. But that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of a topic for a different episode because we're talking
Speaker 1: about the inn Act more specifically and not not specifically
Speaker 1: talking about only fans. But this was Apple's plan to
Speaker 1: kind of scan all these photos to make sure that
Speaker 1: that they were not you know, naked photos of and
Speaker 1: of children. Um. Now there's a whole buch of other
Speaker 1: privacy issues around that, because I mean, obviously teens do
Speaker 1: take news and send them to each other and there
Speaker 1: is really no stopping that. Um. So the idea that
Speaker 1: all these photos are getting scanned and then seen and
Speaker 1: then like it would be the idea was that parents
Speaker 1: would be like alerted if something was found on the
Speaker 1: phone automatically, which means that for me, I have a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of other issues with that, Like that is
Speaker 1: a whole another kind of level, especially for queer kids,
Speaker 1: like that is like that is a whole again, but
Speaker 1: that that is mostly the whole whole other discussion that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk about right now because we
Speaker 1: are I do want to focus is focus this more
Speaker 1: on the more on the earn at act. Um. But
Speaker 1: so this this plan was paused, UM. But now that
Speaker 1: may not necessarily matter actually, um, because Congress kind of
Speaker 1: wants to force Apple's hand, along with a lot with
Speaker 1: essentially every other company that allows users to store or
Speaker 1: share messages or kind of really any content. Um. And
Speaker 1: Congress is some senators and there's a bill that will
Speaker 1: try to essentially mandate photo scanning and specific photo scanning
Speaker 1: technology approved by the government. So yeah, So while Apple's
Speaker 1: plan would have put privacy and it's the security at
Speaker 1: risk for all of us users, the Earned Act of
Speaker 1: compromises the security and free speech for basically everyone who
Speaker 1: uses the Internet. Um. The bill would create serious legal
Speaker 1: risks for businesses that host content such as messages or
Speaker 1: photos of stored in the cloud, online backups, and potentially
Speaker 1: even any kind of cloud hosting sites such as Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services, which means basically most of the Internet um
Speaker 1: and based so have the all these company all of
Speaker 1: these services and companies would be in serious legal risk
Speaker 1: unless they use this government approved scanning tools. A version
Speaker 1: of this bill was first introduced two years ago, sponsored
Speaker 1: by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, and Senator
Speaker 1: Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. And now, like a
Speaker 1: lot of these other things, it is allegedly aimed at
Speaker 1: tackling so called child sexual abuse material online. UM. Which
Speaker 1: is which is a problem there is the kids definitely
Speaker 1: do get exploited. UM, kids do get groomed, exploited, photos
Speaker 1: of children do get shared online. Uh. That like that
Speaker 1: that that actually is a real issue. UM. Now, a
Speaker 1: lot of the ways that these tools get implemented don't
Speaker 1: actually address that issue. And of course it doesn't actually
Speaker 1: deal with the people that do this, like you know,
Speaker 1: like the bad the bad people that do exploit kids.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily deal with them either. That is that
Speaker 1: is what they wrapped this idea as the original bills
Speaker 1: that was introduced two years ago threatened encryption and privacy
Speaker 1: features that would have actually, you know, put Americans privacy,
Speaker 1: particularly particularly the privacy of children, um, at risk. It
Speaker 1: also got in section to thirty in ways that caused
Speaker 1: over fifty civil rights groups to pennel letter describing the
Speaker 1: potential consequences um of such things like censorship um, you know,
Speaker 1: cramming down on free speech and the basically destruction of encryption.
Speaker 1: So when the legislation failed to advance two years ago,
Speaker 1: digital Um, liberty advocates, you know, sex workers, civil rights
Speaker 1: organizations all breathed a sigh of relief. But this past month,
Speaker 1: as I record this um in twenty in February, a
Speaker 1: group of lawmakers, again led by Senator Richard Bluementhal and
Speaker 1: Senator Lindsay Graham reintroduced the earnet ACTUM, a slightly modified
Speaker 1: version of it UM, and on the on the tenth
Speaker 1: of February, the Senate to Judiciary Committee voted to advance
Speaker 1: the dangerous earn It Act bill. So yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is. It is chugging along a bit further than
Speaker 1: what it did than what it did last time. The
Speaker 1: earn An Act aims to tackle the horrific criminal activity
Speaker 1: related to child sexual abuse material by making Section to
Speaker 1: thirty protections contingent on the prevention and response to such
Speaker 1: material online. So Section to thirty shields online services like
Speaker 1: you know commonly used social media from liability from most
Speaker 1: user generated content. Under earn it, a Section to thirty
Speaker 1: would be amended to enable civil claims and state criminal
Speaker 1: prosecution related to child abuse materials online against platforms. Now
Speaker 1: already this can kind of happen federally a little bit,
Speaker 1: um but it depends on how the company like responds
Speaker 1: to it. So, but this would introduce a whole new
Speaker 1: wave for civil claims and state claims to be filed
Speaker 1: against companies like this. Um if if if if, if
Speaker 1: material like this is to be found hosted on their site,
Speaker 1: you know, including you know that that that would even
Speaker 1: include if like someone who's underage operates and not safe
Speaker 1: for work Twitter account that they probably should not be operating.
Speaker 1: Um but this this, you know this, this could also
Speaker 1: this could basically make the company in trouble. They can
Speaker 1: fall under state claims or civil claims. So as as
Speaker 1: a result, online services could be subject to endless litigation
Speaker 1: under fifty different you know legal law systems you know
Speaker 1: for all the states regarding you know, finding child sexual
Speaker 1: abust material online. So the bill's proponents claim that this
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily a problem for any service as long as
Speaker 1: it is scanning the files then reporting child sexual beast
Speaker 1: material to law enforcement. Internet companies are already required to
Speaker 1: report suspected material if they come across it, and they
Speaker 1: do report material on a massive scale that often comes
Speaker 1: comes with a lot of mistakes. Facebook is often held
Speaker 1: as a positive example by what lawmakers and law enforcement
Speaker 1: for how much they do report such such material. But
Speaker 1: while their new scanning techniques have produced many millions of reports,
Speaker 1: most of them are inaccurate. Like most of them actually
Speaker 1: aren't of miners. It's it's it's not it's not. Actually
Speaker 1: none none of the s getting material is good because
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, many people up into their thirties
Speaker 1: can get often flagged and often like even non humans
Speaker 1: can get flagged, like pictures of fruit, like like it's
Speaker 1: not like it's not like, yeah, none of these scanning
Speaker 1: tools are actually very good. Yeah, and like this is
Speaker 1: I think, I think a thing that like, if you've
Speaker 1: never liked had to work with a machine learning algorithm before,
Speaker 1: I think it's difficult to understand how unbelievably bad these
Speaker 1: things are. Like it's just these oh, god, like the
Speaker 1: the the incomprehensible horror of trying to get a machine
Speaker 1: learning algorithm to do the thing that you wanted to
Speaker 1: do and not do the other things that you're not
Speaker 1: that you don't wanted to do to like, you know,
Speaker 1: be able to tell a difference between like a particularly
Speaker 1: smooth and round peach and like child's exhibuse material. You know,
Speaker 1: you human being can do this, right. The machine cannot
Speaker 1: and it is they it is horrifically inaccurate. You have
Speaker 1: to do all kinds of like hacking stuff together in
Speaker 1: order to get this stuff to work. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a fiasco. A good example of this that
Speaker 1: I've that I've heard before that I'm probably probably gonna
Speaker 1: butcher this explanation, but you know that you can take,
Speaker 1: you know, a photo of a wolf, um, maybe even
Speaker 1: three photos of a wolf, and say here this is
Speaker 1: these these are photos of wolves. Um, here's it, here's
Speaker 1: other here's here's these these other photos. Find which ones
Speaker 1: are wolves, and it'll, you know, it'll it'll sort throw
Speaker 1: the ones. So some of them have wolves, some of
Speaker 1: them don't. Um, and it only finds one picture that
Speaker 1: says this one, based on the three photos even given
Speaker 1: me this photos is a wolf, and instead the photo
Speaker 1: is not. The photo is of a tree. And you're like,
Speaker 1: why did it tell me this is a wolf? And
Speaker 1: the computer will answer, well, look at all, the all
Speaker 1: of the backgrounds are the same because it's trying, it's
Speaker 1: trying to match, like he doesn't have the same thing
Speaker 1: that humans do. And when when all these computer algorithms
Speaker 1: that are trying to learn to replicate and trying to
Speaker 1: find these patterns, it is never perfect. So the big
Speaker 1: thing that is people often overlook is that, yeah, specifically
Speaker 1: with this, like with with Facebook scanning tool and the
Speaker 1: millions of reports that that it does make. You know,
Speaker 1: federal law enforcement will frequently use the massive number of
Speaker 1: reports to suggest there is this giant recent up to
Speaker 1: in child sexual abuse materials. But that's not because there
Speaker 1: actually is. That's because the scanning that some companies are
Speaker 1: doing is just so bad, Like it's just it's just
Speaker 1: so accurate that it flags so many things. So like
Speaker 1: in action, the new earn It Act would just pave
Speaker 1: a massive new surveillance system run by private companies that
Speaker 1: would roll back some of the most important privacy and
Speaker 1: security features and technology used by people around the globe. Right.
Speaker 1: The idea is to compel private companies to scan every
Speaker 1: message that sent online and report violations to law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and it may not stop their earn An Act could
Speaker 1: ensure anything hosted online commular like backups, websites, cloud photos,
Speaker 1: and more, is all scanned. Now, of course, you can say,
Speaker 1: I mean there is no actual true privacy online, right.
Speaker 1: The n s A does see everything, which is basically true,
Speaker 1: but stuff like local police departments in the FBI do
Speaker 1: not have constant access to what the n s A has.
Speaker 1: It does actually like legally it does actually take some
Speaker 1: time for that to happen. The fact that all these
Speaker 1: private companies would be doing it for them, um, and
Speaker 1: the fact that this would actually break encryption makes people
Speaker 1: like the FBI, makes the local law enforcement have a
Speaker 1: much easier time accessing what we do on the internet,
Speaker 1: because yes, the n s A kind of does always
Speaker 1: to see everything, but that that this actually this actually
Speaker 1: is this actually is quite different in terms of the
Speaker 1: accessibility of that information. And I think I think it's
Speaker 1: also you know, to to to go back into one
Speaker 1: of the sort of like encryption arguments to right, So, okay,
Speaker 1: what once you put a backdoor into encryption? Right? Once,
Speaker 1: once once you have you know, you have your system,
Speaker 1: you have the encryption system, but you know now there's
Speaker 1: now there's a way to access it, right because oh, well,
Speaker 1: we need to access these you know, we need to
Speaker 1: be able to decrypt this in order to see if
Speaker 1: there's like child pornography materials on it. Right, Once that
Speaker 1: backdoor exists, any anyone who finds it can use it
Speaker 1: for anything they want. And it's it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: even just that, like well we'll get into some other
Speaker 1: things around encryption, but but yeah, you can continue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and I think I think this is
Speaker 1: something that I think people don't like. The people who
Speaker 1: are just to keep about this in terms of child
Speaker 1: pornography don't think about which is that like I don't
Speaker 1: know a lot like there these these kinds of backdoors, right,
Speaker 1: like other people can find them, yes, and you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: now now you've just put it back to it, all
Speaker 1: of the encryption, like oh hey, here's you know, like here,
Speaker 1: you're you you are. You are going to get people killed,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna get people killed because you're going to
Speaker 1: have people who are doing things under governments that you
Speaker 1: know will will will Like you know, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: people in mil Mart, You're gonna have people in You're
Speaker 1: gonna have people in Egypt. You're gonna have people in
Speaker 1: Syria who like these these regimes and like these you know,
Speaker 1: private private companies right are are going are going to
Speaker 1: sell the back doors to these regimes and they're going
Speaker 1: to use it to hunt down, torture and kill people.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, there is there's a lot of problems
Speaker 1: with it, especially especially how it how it kind of
Speaker 1: addresses encryption, because the bill does try to actually have
Speaker 1: some encryption protections, but the way they go about it,
Speaker 1: of course is not is not adequate, and it even
Speaker 1: kind of fosters it's its own negation in some ways
Speaker 1: if you read the entire bill. So but I'll get
Speaker 1: more into encryption in a sec because there are other
Speaker 1: like technical issues with the way this bill is designed
Speaker 1: and how it would be enacted. There is this sort
Speaker 1: of benefit to having a legal material that is that
Speaker 1: is actually exploding miners being primarily hosted on big tech
Speaker 1: platforms because these platforms are used so much and are
Speaker 1: mostly non restricted, so it makes catching this stuff and
Speaker 1: reporting it actually much easier, Like it is if they're
Speaker 1: hosted on these mainstream things, it does make seeing it
Speaker 1: and reporting less difficult. So not only will this bill
Speaker 1: make tech companies be more likely just to ban all
Speaker 1: not safe work material in general, right, because if companies
Speaker 1: are forced to scan and they're gonna be filing swimming
Speaker 1: reports that this will this will result in a lot
Speaker 1: a lot more companies just saying no new photos at all,
Speaker 1: like just completely gone. Not only will this bill just
Speaker 1: make tech companies more likely to ban all not safe
Speaker 1: work content in general, which would be horrible for sex
Speaker 1: workers and just a bad precedent, but yeah, they would
Speaker 1: be more likely just to do that because of how
Speaker 1: much overscanning there would be, and just a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of things, so we'd create it would create too many
Speaker 1: fears of legal repercussions. Thus, you know, that would force
Speaker 1: people who distribute child porn onto more sketchy sites and
Speaker 1: sites that might just refuse to scan content in general
Speaker 1: because they're temporary hosting. But the bill could also just
Speaker 1: to scare these bad people off of mainstream platforms and
Speaker 1: make them voluntarily migrate to more niche and hard to
Speaker 1: finde the corners of the Internet, making illegal content harder
Speaker 1: to catch and take down because there will always be
Speaker 1: weird temporary sites to host this type of thing, like
Speaker 1: they're always there, Like these bad people will find a
Speaker 1: way it's always like that is it is gonna always
Speaker 1: be a problem. Um. And so in a way, it's
Speaker 1: it is better to have these things on mainstream platforms
Speaker 1: because reporting them and taking them down can be much easier. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's like it's like when people really advocate platforms
Speaker 1: like Telegram shut down all fascist channels. Right. The thing
Speaker 1: is is that there's a lot of benefits to having
Speaker 1: these chat rooms on Telegram because that makes them really
Speaker 1: easy to monitor and really easy to infiltrate. UM. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot worse places for fascists to organize. UM.
Speaker 1: If you're doing it on Telegram, it's actually really easy
Speaker 1: to watch. So it's this weird given take in terms
Speaker 1: of in terms of where where these things happen, because
Speaker 1: they are going to happen somewhere. So I now want
Speaker 1: to talk about how specifically this bill threatens threatens online
Speaker 1: encryption services, all right, Um, The bill would strip critical
Speaker 1: legal protection for websites, apps, and specifically Section to thirty.
Speaker 1: If past, it would empower many different levels of government
Speaker 1: to make sweeping new Internet regulations. Right in, individual states
Speaker 1: will be able to pass laws um to hold private
Speaker 1: companies like libel um as long as they somehow relate
Speaker 1: their new rules to child abuse materials, like they wible
Speaker 1: to have a whole bunch of new rules on Internet
Speaker 1: regulations if they can sift it through this lens. The
Speaker 1: goal is to get states to pass these laws that
Speaker 1: will punish that will punish companies when they deploy end
Speaker 1: and encryption or offer other encryption services. This includes messaging
Speaker 1: systems like What's Apps, Signal I Message, and as well
Speaker 1: as web hosting like Amazon Web Services um EARN it
Speaker 1: aims to spread the use of tools to scan all
Speaker 1: online content against law enforcement databases like directly UM. In
Speaker 1: a myths and Facts document distributed by the bill's proponents,
Speaker 1: it even names a government approved software program that they
Speaker 1: could mandate called a photo d NA, which is a
Speaker 1: program that Microsoft made that reports directly to law enforcement databases.
Speaker 1: So earn it doesn't specifically attack encryption per se UM,
Speaker 1: but that's because it doesn't need to. Like it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to because of the way the bill is designed.
Speaker 1: How it approaches encryption is actually a little more insidious. UM.
Speaker 1: It allows the fact that encryption exists on the platform
Speaker 1: itself to be used as evidence against a company in
Speaker 1: order to find it liable for hosting child sexual abust materials,
Speaker 1: so they can use the fact that encryption exists as evidence,
Speaker 1: which is wild, like this is this is the thing.
Speaker 1: This is the thing that CCP does a lot like
Speaker 1: with you know, like they'll they'll use they'll use the
Speaker 1: fact that, like somebody is using a VPN for example,
Speaker 1: as evidence that they're this happens constantly and and it's
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of a lot of encryption stuff
Speaker 1: incredibly unsafe because like you know, you show up with
Speaker 1: your phone, you have signal on it, and the CCP
Speaker 1: is like, well, you're this is this is this is proof.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna we're gonna lock it up and throw
Speaker 1: away the key. Yeah, and yeah. It's extremely bad. So
Speaker 1: the result is that laws will make companies liable, um
Speaker 1: if they don't scan and report user content for child
Speaker 1: sexual abust materials, which they can't do unless they make
Speaker 1: break encryption. You know, big companies like Apple um are
Speaker 1: going to full to to protect themselves. Um, so earn
Speaker 1: it would is like it coerces these sites and plat
Speaker 1: forms and services to do this sort of scanning and
Speaker 1: not just some messages but all online content encrypted or not.
Speaker 1: Um Companies that handle online content would have to weigh
Speaker 1: the benefit of their users securely encrypting their data content
Speaker 1: against the legal risk of doing so. Um and encryption
Speaker 1: becomes much harder when it, you know, puts the company's
Speaker 1: bottom line at risk. And and and and like and
Speaker 1: and and and. Encryption isn't just her messages, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's not just on signal. It secures most of the Internet,
Speaker 1: or at least at least a lot of it, keeping
Speaker 1: what you do allegedly you know, private unsafe online. You
Speaker 1: can't have a secure internet where all the content is
Speaker 1: also screened because you can't haven't encryption alongside mass scanning requirements.
Speaker 1: It's just so, this isn't just an attack on encryption.
Speaker 1: It's attack on any fund of fundamental security that the
Speaker 1: Internet you know has. Yeah, and you know there's lots
Speaker 1: of like god, there are lots of extremely technical reasons
Speaker 1: why this isn't extremely bad things like it's like okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you you you think you think malware is bad,
Speaker 1: now like God, Like, look like the things the things
Speaker 1: that will happen, Like you you think people are stealing apes? Now,
Speaker 1: like the things that will happen if you have to
Speaker 1: if you have to deal with an Internet that's unencrypted
Speaker 1: or you know, like yeah, it's an absolute horror show,
Speaker 1: like if yeah, like I yeah, it's this. This is
Speaker 1: a thing bad enough that like I do not have
Speaker 1: the words to express how catastrophic this would be, because
Speaker 1: it's just a fundamental structure of the Internet. It really
Speaker 1: is not just for messages like the earned uh miss
Speaker 1: and fast document also like specifically attacks Amazon for not
Speaker 1: scanning enough of its content um and since Amazon is
Speaker 1: the home of Amazon Web Services, which hosts a huge
Speaker 1: number of websites, that implies that like the bill's aim
Speaker 1: is to ensure that anything hosted online also gets scanned.
Speaker 1: Like like like everything the online service providers, even the
Speaker 1: smallest ones, will be compelled to scan user content with
Speaker 1: government approve software like photo dona um And if earnest
Speaker 1: supporters succeed in getting large platforms like cloud fair and
Speaker 1: that some web services to scan, they may not even
Speaker 1: need to compel smaller websites because the government will already
Speaker 1: have access to the data through the cloud platforms. So like,
Speaker 1: as long as they get you know, these big hosting platforms,
Speaker 1: they don't even like, they won't even need need to
Speaker 1: bather with a lot of with a lot of smaller sites.
Speaker 1: I think there's another thing I think that's probably worth
Speaker 1: mentioning here, which is so we don't really have like
Speaker 1: the time to fully go into this in this episode,
Speaker 1: but like there's a lot of this sort of stuff
Speaker 1: is being pushed by these incredibly right wing evangelical anti
Speaker 1: porn groups and their goal is just to eliminate anything
Speaker 1: that is not like part of their sort of fundamentalist Christianity, yes,
Speaker 1: from the internet and those people. And this is this
Speaker 1: is particularly relevant to this because those people are going
Speaker 1: to find a way to to to like to to
Speaker 1: bring lawsuits against these companies specifically so that they specifically
Speaker 1: so they can do because this is you know, what
Speaker 1: what you've done is say you've just handed them a gun.
Speaker 1: Poor insides will all be taken down because they'll be
Speaker 1: because they'll be facing so many endless lawsuits um like
Speaker 1: only like only fans will no longer host ethical poor
Speaker 1: like like none of this will have like all of
Speaker 1: it will be taken down. No one like this will
Speaker 1: this will attack sex workers to such an absurd degree.
Speaker 1: Um it'll make base. It will make a lot of
Speaker 1: if not most online sex work just impossible because there
Speaker 1: will be so many lawsuits always happening that companies will
Speaker 1: just always ban it just because they can't they can't
Speaker 1: risk dealing with all those legal fees. Um it's it's yeah.
Speaker 1: And and and in the fact that state prosecutors and
Speaker 1: private attorneys will be able to drag an online service
Speaker 1: provider into court over accusation that their users committed crimes
Speaker 1: and then use the fact that the service chose to
Speaker 1: encrypt like like chose to use encryption um at all,
Speaker 1: as evidence against them. Is the fact that the strategy
Speaker 1: specifically allowed under earn it like makes the possibilities of
Speaker 1: this type of thing just endless. Like like imagine imagine
Speaker 1: like they'll be aild to take down signal so easily
Speaker 1: because like it's it's it's it's wild all if they can,
Speaker 1: if they can find one instance of you know, as
Speaker 1: like as like a of of an abuser using signal
Speaker 1: or has you signal, then basically all of signal decryption
Speaker 1: will be severely threatened um because of the way that
Speaker 1: legal finds will be forced onto this company. It's is
Speaker 1: like specifically for stuff based like for any kind of
Speaker 1: in any any service allowed in the States. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really frustrating because you know, people including senators UM
Speaker 1: who are pro earn it, say that the new tools
Speaker 1: are necessary to tackle the issue of online child abuse
Speaker 1: and the and the distribution of illegal materials online. But
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, like possessing, viewing, or distributing child poorn
Speaker 1: or child sexual abust materials is already written into laws.
Speaker 1: Is a serious like, it's an extremely serious crimes can do, yes,
Speaker 1: and it has a broad framework of existing laws seeking
Speaker 1: to eradicate it. Right, people could like companies can already
Speaker 1: get in federal trouble if they're find if they're found
Speaker 1: to continue if like you know, if stuff is found
Speaker 1: and they continue to host it, or if they're going
Speaker 1: if like their stated purposes to host it, like like
Speaker 1: some of the most trouble you can get into, UM
Speaker 1: at least at least like on the books, UM, because
Speaker 1: you know you can you can look at you know,
Speaker 1: how many cops are involved with this type of thing
Speaker 1: as like other than being like like like as evidence said,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't like it may not get enacted upon.
Speaker 1: Always there was there was a horrible story recently of
Speaker 1: a teacher who sorry, this is this is this is
Speaker 1: this is going to be quite graphic. UM, but of
Speaker 1: a like skip ahead like a minute or two if
Speaker 1: you don't want to. UM of a teacher who fed
Speaker 1: students um food containing her husband's seamen um. Her husband
Speaker 1: was a cop and her and her husband again who
Speaker 1: was a cop, and the also the leader of a
Speaker 1: swatch team UM had raped multiple children um as like
Speaker 1: it had and had had pictures of children UM and
Speaker 1: like like both of them were doing this together. So
Speaker 1: like yeah, that's like the leader of swat teams like police.
Speaker 1: Like the fact that like if you if you look
Speaker 1: at the people often doing this type of stuff, it's
Speaker 1: cops a lot of the time. Like the cops raped
Speaker 1: so many um kids that that they that they arrest
Speaker 1: and detain. It is shocked. Like you you can google
Speaker 1: this every week and you'll find you'll find like new
Speaker 1: reports of it. It is, it is. It is horrific. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, online service providers that have actual knowledge
Speaker 1: of an apparent or imminent violation of current laws around
Speaker 1: child sexual best materials are required to report it or
Speaker 1: they will face legal trouble. UM. Yeah, like you you
Speaker 1: could you can kill people and get in less trouble
Speaker 1: with the law, then then you will get if if
Speaker 1: if you intentionally do this stuff, like there are scenarios
Speaker 1: where you can kill people where you won't get in
Speaker 1: trouble with law. There is no scenario where you do
Speaker 1: you you like you you intentionally do like you intentionally
Speaker 1: do this stuff where you will like unless you're a
Speaker 1: cop with like with with the legal protection of your
Speaker 1: other cops won't rat you out, like yeah, or you're
Speaker 1: like very very rich, yeah, like you know, unless unless
Speaker 1: you have extra legal protection. Yeah, like you are fucking
Speaker 1: going to vanish. So yeah, Like we already have a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff to deal with this and the methods
Speaker 1: proposed by Earnest would not only chip at the last
Speaker 1: semblance of privacy online, but it would all but it
Speaker 1: would arguably make actually combating real instances of online check
Speaker 1: of online child abuse a lot more difficult. It would
Speaker 1: pressure distributors and abusers um into harder to find corners
Speaker 1: of the Internet that don't fall under big tech companies UM. Plus,
Speaker 1: the massive increase in content scanning would produce so many
Speaker 1: false flags it would clog up any effort to find
Speaker 1: action materials because so much stuff is gonna get flagged. Right,
Speaker 1: it's gonna you're gonna get a wave of so many
Speaker 1: images that you have that you have sort sort through
Speaker 1: and figure out if the people in it actually are
Speaker 1: under age because a lot of people who look thirty
Speaker 1: and sorry, a lot of people that are thirty can
Speaker 1: also look under age sometimes, like like with lighting with
Speaker 1: ef fect like it it's it is, it will be.
Speaker 1: It's gonna it's gonna like be such a task. Um
Speaker 1: And we can only see this in effect with new
Speaker 1: scanning techniques used by Facebook. They that have produced millions
Speaker 1: of reports to law enforcement, most of them are accurate
Speaker 1: um And of course federal law enforcement use uses this
Speaker 1: massive number of reports produced by low quality scanning software
Speaker 1: to you know, suggest there's a huge uptick in these images. Thus,
Speaker 1: you know, armed with misleading statistics, the same law enforcement
Speaker 1: groups make new demands to break encryption um or with
Speaker 1: earn it hold companies liable if they don't scan user
Speaker 1: contact those kind of algorithms, right, Like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: this this is an oversimplification, but like to to to
Speaker 1: conceptualize why this is a bad idea, like these these
Speaker 1: are these like this is the this is the same
Speaker 1: stuff that like you know how, you know how, there's
Speaker 1: there's those there's those like trending topics on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: they'll they'll they'll show you a tweet and the tweet
Speaker 1: will be like I don't know, they'll they'll they'll be
Speaker 1: someone talking about a subway sandwich and it'll get like
Speaker 1: it'll show up under trains because it's the subway like this.
Speaker 1: Those are the algorithms that they want to fucking run
Speaker 1: the entire Internet through. I have seen I have seen
Speaker 1: some very I've seen some very erotic bell peppers. Um
Speaker 1: and like it's it's gonna like that. These things aren't
Speaker 1: aren't going to be good um and like independent child
Speaker 1: protection experts are not asking for systems to read everyone's
Speaker 1: private messages. Rather, they recognize that children, particularly children that
Speaker 1: might be abused or exploited, actually need encrypted in private
Speaker 1: messaging just as much, if not more, than the rest
Speaker 1: of us. Like no one, including the most vulnerable among us,
Speaker 1: can have privacy or security online without strong encryption. Um
Speaker 1: And the Earner Act doesn't really just target big tech.
Speaker 1: What it does is it targets every individual Internet user,
Speaker 1: treating all of us as potential criminals who deserve to
Speaker 1: have every single message, photographer, document scanned and you know,
Speaker 1: compared against a government database like directly directly to law enforcement. Um.
Speaker 1: And since direct government surveillance would be you know, blatantly
Speaker 1: unconstitutional and promote public outrage, U earn it to use
Speaker 1: as tech companies, you know, from the largest smalls the
Speaker 1: smallest ones as its tools to kind of bypass that
Speaker 1: constitutional like barrier um because yeah, if you, if you,
Speaker 1: if you, if you, if you hit the touch companies
Speaker 1: where it hurts, they will not allow this type of
Speaker 1: stuff at all. Like and this is also the thing
Speaker 1: you can you know, you cannot deny that this is
Speaker 1: also just part of a larger effect to ban porn
Speaker 1: um and just to ban any kind of sex work
Speaker 1: online as well. Like you you cannot deny that this
Speaker 1: is this is this is definitely an ingrained part of this,
Speaker 1: particularly with a lot a lot of its supporters and
Speaker 1: of course you know Senator Lindsay Graham appealing to that
Speaker 1: side of the Republicans. This is this is a big
Speaker 1: part of just trying to you know, remove porn and
Speaker 1: remove um, you know, any not safe work material from
Speaker 1: being hosted online. So the strategy is to get private
Speaker 1: companies to do the dirty work of mass surveillance. UM.
Speaker 1: You know it's the same. It's the same tactic that
Speaker 1: government's try to use this year, trying to you know,
Speaker 1: convince Apple to subvert its own encryption and scan all
Speaker 1: of its users photos. Um. It's the same strategy that
Speaker 1: the that the UK law enforcement is using to convince
Speaker 1: the British public to give up their privacy, having spent
Speaker 1: public money on a laughable public publicity campaign that demon
Speaker 1: as his companies that use encryption. UM. So that that's
Speaker 1: really how it's operating. UM. I do want to shout out, um,
Speaker 1: uh the e f F for provide a lot of
Speaker 1: the kind of research that I used for compiling stuff
Speaker 1: on on this episode. UM, thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you e f F. UM you often often do good work.
Speaker 1: That's the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They focus a lot on
Speaker 1: like Internet privacy issues. UM. And I do want to
Speaker 1: point people to a a link tree. It is uh
Speaker 1: you know l I N K t R dot E
Speaker 1: slash stop earn it. UM. So yeah, you can find
Speaker 1: different ways to UM. You know, if you're the type
Speaker 1: of person that enjoys calling representatives or something, it has
Speaker 1: it has links for that kind of thing. It has
Speaker 1: links to send you know, automated messages onto your representative
Speaker 1: to vote no on the Internet Act. That has too
Speaker 1: you know if if you're a type of person that
Speaker 1: enjoys the signing petitions UM, it has it has more
Speaker 1: info on what earn it is and what it does UM,
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of other stuff around, you know,
Speaker 1: organizing to help stop this bill. There's like discord channel
Speaker 1: that have people organizing to to stop this bill. UM
Speaker 1: links links forward on that has info on like actions
Speaker 1: you can take. UM. So yeah, I would uh if
Speaker 1: if you're interested in like looking for the different ways
Speaker 1: that can maybe you know contribute. You know, not no
Speaker 1: single person that can make an impact, but you know
Speaker 1: enough people, enough people can UM. So yeah that's link
Speaker 1: tree slash stop earn It UM. And then also again
Speaker 1: another shout out to the e f F. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wanted to make say two closing things before we close
Speaker 1: this out. One if if you think that if you
Speaker 1: think that once you're handing the entire context of the
Speaker 1: Internet over to the government who run through scanning all groups,
Speaker 1: that the only thing they're ever going to scan for
Speaker 1: is child pornography, I have no n f D to
Speaker 1: sell you. It is a picture of a bridge. Once
Speaker 1: once you buy this n f T of the bridge,
Speaker 1: you will own the Brooklyn Bridge Contact contact me for
Speaker 1: more details. The second thing is that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: when when we talk about like when we we talk
Speaker 1: about anti porn stuff, when we talk about how you know,
Speaker 1: the way you get around this is by banning all
Speaker 1: different work content. Right. The other thing that almost immediately
Speaker 1: gets banned. It's inevitably when when when when when companies
Speaker 1: for for whatever reason, And this is true just of
Speaker 1: of of companies that are trying to comply with you know,
Speaker 1: like the app store or stuff like that, like when
Speaker 1: when when whenever you get target things that target not
Speaker 1: for work content, they inevitably, inevitably without failed, target queer
Speaker 1: content content, literally nothing at all through sexuality. Because that's
Speaker 1: you know, this is this is this is this has
Speaker 1: always been like accusing queer people of of being child
Speaker 1: predators has been the attack line on queer people. Queer
Speaker 1: people are always on the front line of all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, they will always be the first people impacted.
Speaker 1: They will be the first people demonized, even if even
Speaker 1: if even if it's not even not sayek material if
Speaker 1: if it has if it has nothing to do with it,
Speaker 1: it will still always always be impacted more than basically
Speaker 1: anyone else. Yeah, I mean we've we've been seeing this
Speaker 1: on YouTube but constantly lots of lots of people who
Speaker 1: just you know, make trans content channels are always being
Speaker 1: banned or demonetized, yep marked as a belt content like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's horrifying. And if if if you want an Internet,
Speaker 1: not even just if you want to Internet that has
Speaker 1: like sex on it, if you want to Internet that
Speaker 1: has queer people on it, right expressing themselves in in
Speaker 1: in in in any way that's not like literally just
Speaker 1: it's straight person but you say queer right, if if
Speaker 1: that's a thing that you think is valuable and if
Speaker 1: you and if you think that you know it is
Speaker 1: important for core people to be able to express themselves
Speaker 1: for their own health and safety, Like you have to
Speaker 1: op post this, Yes you absolutely, Um, I guess what
Speaker 1: one final thing I'll add because they know someone will
Speaker 1: probably message me about it. Um. There is a slight
Speaker 1: opinion piece by somebody saying that this bill would actually
Speaker 1: let child abusers walk free because they could use the
Speaker 1: fact that this bill essentially, um, you know, compels companies
Speaker 1: to do scanning software via via government like mandate because
Speaker 1: of this bill. They would that because because in their mind,
Speaker 1: this could possibly violate the Fourth Amendment to this would
Speaker 1: allow abusers, um, the evidence that they was collected to
Speaker 1: prosecute abusers to become invalid in court. So this would
Speaker 1: actually also make the This would just make this would
Speaker 1: make the bill um uh you know, actually make people
Speaker 1: walk free. I do not agree with this take. I
Speaker 1: don't think that's how it would work out at all,
Speaker 1: because especially for you know, you can use this for
Speaker 1: like political organizing. You can use this for a lot
Speaker 1: of like you can use the same argument for a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, and it never works out that way
Speaker 1: because the government does not care about that sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not that's not how it works. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, like these things that get violated like in
Speaker 1: theory that does not know that's the way, like they
Speaker 1: illegally seized you know, ten Kazinski's you know, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like evidence and yeah, it doesn't it doesn't matter, like
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's that's not gonna matter. Because then
Speaker 1: this bill would be seen as a good thing because
Speaker 1: it would prevent people from you know, then encryption wouldn't
Speaker 1: be necessary because then none of the evidence that people
Speaker 1: would you know, would have gathered would ever be admissible
Speaker 1: in court. And that is that they would never design
Speaker 1: the bill like that that. That's not that's not the case.
Speaker 1: I disagree with this take. So do not send me
Speaker 1: this article saying actually it's going to have this happen,
Speaker 1: because I do not believe it, because this assumes that
Speaker 1: the government operates like like coherently and operates like you know,
Speaker 1: like no, the government does does does not care no,
Speaker 1: like again, like the First Amendment is superseded by traffic law,
Speaker 1: like you know that you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to use this. This isn't like this will secretly let
Speaker 1: abusers go free. This is not secretly a good thing
Speaker 1: because it will make all evidence inadmissible in court. Bullshit anyway, Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll give a final shout out to the link tree
Speaker 1: link tree slash stop earn it um. That's l I
Speaker 1: n k T dot e er slash stop earn it
Speaker 1: um if you're the type of person that likes doing
Speaker 1: those types of things. And also it has like links
Speaker 1: like discord channels for other types of organizing beyond you know,
Speaker 1: petitions and calling and senators and setting messages and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. Anyway, that's the episode. UM, thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. I just thought, I just thought, this
Speaker 1: is this is this is an important thing enough that
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it. I have not seen enough people
Speaker 1: talking about the earn It Act and the way it
Speaker 1: does seriously threatened digital privacy. And because it was approved
Speaker 1: by the Senate Judiciary Committee to be pushed forward, um,
Speaker 1: it is actually chugging along on the slow legal process,
Speaker 1: so it's gotten further than what it got in. So
Speaker 1: I thought it was actually worth talking about, um, you know,
Speaker 1: for privacy issues, how it affects queer people, how it
Speaker 1: affects sex workers, um, and all all that general thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and also I wanted you know that it's
Speaker 1: very easy to feel hopefuls with this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: but like we've beaten legislation. Like one of my one
Speaker 1: of my formative childhood experiences was when when we beat
Speaker 1: when we beat SOPA and people like we can beat them.
Speaker 1: It takes it takes a lot, takes a lot of mobilization,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like we we we we we I know
Speaker 1: we can. I know we can beat this because we've
Speaker 1: beaten things like it before. Agreed, all right, that nothing
Speaker 1: for us today. If you want to find us on
Speaker 1: a currently more secure than what it could be Internet,
Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter at cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: um and happened here pod. I think apparently Instagram too,
Speaker 1: So that's cool. If you're an Instagram person, good for you,
Speaker 1: because Twitter Twitter is bad. Um. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Hungry about Tie. Um, yeah, find me
Speaker 1: at at h R three You can't, you can't. Indeed
Speaker 1: that that do? Is it for us? Um? Encrypture? Hey everybody,
Speaker 1: Robert Evans here? Um obviously, as I'm sure everyone is
Speaker 1: being bombarded with. The war in Ukraine is in its
Speaker 1: fifth day right now, something like that. Um, we just
Speaker 1: passed ninety six hours. By some accounts, more than three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people have been made refugees. Those are going
Speaker 1: to be very in exact numbers, but it's it's likely
Speaker 1: to be somewhere between like fifty and a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people per day being made refugees, and it's possible that's
Speaker 1: gonna last for the foreseeable future. Much of the coverage
Speaker 1: that you will have seen at this point UM is
Speaker 1: going to focus on heroic pieces of of of resistance,
Speaker 1: you know, things that Ukrainian civilians picking up arms, throwing
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktails, Ukrainian soldiers destroying Russian armored columns. Some of
Speaker 1: that's going to be a propaganda, some of that A
Speaker 1: decent amount of that's actually happening. Obviously, we have a
Speaker 1: fair amount of documentation, but what I think has not
Speaker 1: gotten nearly as much plays the situation at the border
Speaker 1: of Ukraine in Poland UM because this refugee crisis is enormous,
Speaker 1: but it's also not sexy, and it points to a
Speaker 1: number of things that are ugly about some of the
Speaker 1: stuff that people like to celebrate this conflict, including the
Speaker 1: conduct of President Zelinsky, who is I think handled himself
Speaker 1: objectively well as a wartime leader, and who is also,
Speaker 1: as you'll hear in the interview that's about to follow,
Speaker 1: made some decisions that have had a catastrophic impact on
Speaker 1: people's lives. So this is an interview conducted by a journalist,
Speaker 1: uh James Stout, who is working with us on this
Speaker 1: project and with another project that will be launching soon.
Speaker 1: With a person, an individual an American who was well
Speaker 1: has a couple of different passports, but with a person
Speaker 1: who was in Ukraine when the invasion began and left
Speaker 1: and eventually wound up leaving on foot with tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of other people for the Polish border. So this
Speaker 1: is a story of what it is like to flee
Speaker 1: a country at the beginning of a war, um and
Speaker 1: and the realities that increasing numbers of Ukrainians are going
Speaker 1: to be facing every single day. So please listen. Hey, manny,
Speaker 1: how are you. I'm doing well, How are you good? Good?
Speaker 1: It's ready to keep you up late and period exhausted. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's okay. UM. I actually just arrived at
Speaker 1: a new hostel in New City. UM, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to be up for a couple more hours anyway, So
Speaker 1: it's a good time to talk. Nice. Great, Do you
Speaker 1: mind if I record this? Go ahead? Cool? Excellent, and
Speaker 1: let me explain what we're gonna do. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: bringing a piece for NBC on the the refugee situation
Speaker 1: that's emerging, and I'm also helping to make a podcast
Speaker 1: for I Heart Radio about a similar thing. It's okay,
Speaker 1: with you. We'll use the audio for one and then
Speaker 1: some of your words for another. Absolutely, how is my
Speaker 1: audio coming through? It's great, Actually, it's really really good
Speaker 1: that you wanted to set a phone or you on
Speaker 1: a computer. I'm on a telephone right now. I don't
Speaker 1: have a computer with me. Now, you're doing really well.
Speaker 1: If you're on a computer, i'd ask you to record
Speaker 1: it back up, but this is just fine. I'm recording.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like, um, it seems like you've had a
Speaker 1: pretty exhausting forty eight hours now. So if we go
Speaker 1: back to when you were in Kiev, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I was in Kiev a few days ago. I was
Speaker 1: in Kiev, um eight days ago? Um, and then I
Speaker 1: went to Leviv four days ago. Okay, And had you
Speaker 1: been how long have you been in Ukraine? I had
Speaker 1: been I've been in Ukraine or I had been in
Speaker 1: Ukraine in total for one week? Okay, so you know
Speaker 1: that long? And you so you ride Kieth, you went
Speaker 1: to Lviv. Can you remember, like where you were when
Speaker 1: you found out that the invasion was happening and that
Speaker 1: it was going to go posting bass and into the Ukraine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course. So I woke up on the morning of
Speaker 1: twenty four February to the sound of air raid sirens outside,
Speaker 1: and it was a very confusing sound. I had never
Speaker 1: heard it right, sirens in real life. I just heard
Speaker 1: them in movies and television shows and such, and I
Speaker 1: knew immediately what had happened. I didn't even have to
Speaker 1: check the news. Um and I did check the news
Speaker 1: soon afterward, and there were bombings all over the country.
Speaker 1: There were reports of bombings in Ivana front Kiss, which
Speaker 1: is a city on KOs south of Leviv where I was,
Speaker 1: and there were so many rumors flying around. There were
Speaker 1: rumors that the Russians were coming to Leviv at that moment,
Speaker 1: which was not the case but can still be the
Speaker 1: case very soon anyway. So we heard I heard these
Speaker 1: these air raids sirens as I woke up, and I
Speaker 1: shook away my roommate, who was a British journalist, UM
Speaker 1: and I told him we might be bombed any minute.
Speaker 1: So we went outside to try and find a shelter.
Speaker 1: UM pretty much still in our nightclothes. We went outside
Speaker 1: to try and find a shelter, and they were loudspeakers
Speaker 1: saying uh, everybody remained calm, fine, shelter helped the elderly
Speaker 1: stockpile water, and it was repeating this on repeat, and
Speaker 1: people were shuffling along. There was a sense of muted panic.
Speaker 1: So it was an outright panic, but it was a
Speaker 1: sense of urgency, I guess you could call it. And um,
Speaker 1: we were at war and that was when I realized
Speaker 1: that Ukraine was being invaded at that very moment. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds dramatic. And at that point you went to
Speaker 1: the shelter. I'm guessing, so did you spend some time
Speaker 1: then before making the decision to head to polent So
Speaker 1: after about fifteen minutes, the air rates I would stopped.
Speaker 1: The news generally came around the city that Lviv was
Speaker 1: not about to be bombed, but nevertheless, massive exodus of
Speaker 1: people began from Leviv at that moment. Because okay, we're
Speaker 1: safe for now, but for how long are we safe?
Speaker 1: Was the general sentiment that was around. So, Um, everybody
Speaker 1: just started making for the train station, the bus station,
Speaker 1: They got into their cars. People were just leaving. There
Speaker 1: were huge lines at the A T. M s. There
Speaker 1: were huge lines at the grocery stores. People were buying
Speaker 1: no perishables. Um, it was just not a panic pull
Speaker 1: out I would call it, but it was an urgent departure.
Speaker 1: It was an urgent exodus that was happening. And so
Speaker 1: me and my roommate we went to the train station,
Speaker 1: waited in the line for two hours to see if
Speaker 1: there were tickets. There were no tickets. We went to
Speaker 1: the bus station. We waited in the line for one
Speaker 1: hour to see if there were tickets. There were no tickets,
Speaker 1: um And so then we started to get a little
Speaker 1: worried because it was noon on the day of the invasion.
Speaker 1: Russian forces were everywhere in the country. Of our bombings
Speaker 1: everywhere in the country, and we had to leave, and
Speaker 1: there was no viable means to leave. The airport was closed.
Speaker 1: Of course, the airport was being bombed a few hours
Speaker 1: later there um And so we tried to look into
Speaker 1: a car higher. We tried to see if we could
Speaker 1: rent a car. We tried to see if we could
Speaker 1: take an Uber or a lift or a blah black car,
Speaker 1: which is the Ukrainian version of Uber, and none of
Speaker 1: those options were available. Because everybody was thinking the same thing,
Speaker 1: and in a sense of almost resigned despair, we decided
Speaker 1: that it would be best to just start walking west
Speaker 1: and see what happened, And there was around noon when
Speaker 1: we began to walk west. Wow. Um, So when you
Speaker 1: set off to walk, did you just sort of take
Speaker 1: what you could carry and that's sort of what the
Speaker 1: most people were doing. Or did you get the sense
Speaker 1: that at least the people were like preparing for a
Speaker 1: long period of time away when they left. The people
Speaker 1: certainly were not preparing for a long period of time away.
Speaker 1: The people were not preparing for war. Um. For the
Speaker 1: longest time, President z of Lynsky in the Ukrainian government
Speaker 1: maintained that there would be no war. They called indications
Speaker 1: of war alarmists that called them ludicrous. And uh, it
Speaker 1: was only in the final twenty four hours that everybody
Speaker 1: sort of woke up and said there's going to be
Speaker 1: a war. So I remember the last day before the invasion,
Speaker 1: people were getting ready, people were waiting at the A T.
Speaker 1: M s. People were buying groceries, people were packing. But
Speaker 1: it was not before before that time nobody was getting
Speaker 1: ready for the war. And so when the war struck, everybody, uh,
Speaker 1: everybody just sort of left hastily, and it was terrifying
Speaker 1: departure of a sudden and terrifying departure because people didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do and they just sort of grabbed
Speaker 1: what they had and they ran. Luckily for me, in
Speaker 1: my roommate, we were traveling with, you know, just one
Speaker 1: pack or so because we were not living in Ukraine, um,
Speaker 1: and so we were able to just carry what we
Speaker 1: had on our backs. Yeah. So he told me through
Speaker 1: that walk then it's I think that's sort of like
Speaker 1: forty three miles, is that right? That's that's right. So
Speaker 1: we did take a municipal buss a little bit of
Speaker 1: the way, which are from municipal bus. I believe it
Speaker 1: was five kilometers down the roadroad, um. Five kilometers being
Speaker 1: like three miles down the road um. And the total
Speaker 1: distance from Leviv to the borders eight eighty kilometers sorry
Speaker 1: eighty kilometers. Uh. So that really did not make a
Speaker 1: dent at all in the distance. And it was noon
Speaker 1: when we started, and we knew for a fact that um,
Speaker 1: that we would not make it before nightfall. And we
Speaker 1: knew that and we were terrified at that. So at
Speaker 1: first we walked along the countryside was picturesque, it was beautiful,
Speaker 1: It was indistinguishable from holiday during springtime. There was a
Speaker 1: fair fair weather was sunny, um, and no one could
Speaker 1: even tell that the nation was at war. There was
Speaker 1: really nobody else walking on the road besides us in
Speaker 1: the beginning, and the first uh twenty kilometers, I would say, um.
Speaker 1: And then we started seeing long lines of the petrol stations.
Speaker 1: Every everywhere was out of gas. There nobody had gas. Um.
Speaker 1: There was just no ability to fuel cars. And as
Speaker 1: a consequence of that, UM, cars were running out of
Speaker 1: gas and they were being abandoned on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, which caused further traffic pile ups, and soon
Speaker 1: the road was impenetrable to vehicles. UM. And so because
Speaker 1: of this, everybody started getting out of their cars and walking.
Speaker 1: And so these families who had planned to escape Mukraine
Speaker 1: to Poland in their cars and carry their lives with
Speaker 1: them were suddenly faced with the hard decision of taking
Speaker 1: what they could carry with them. Yeah, that just sounds terrible.
Speaker 1: That sounds really difficult. And I'm sure you saw like
Speaker 1: older folks and younger people as well, with people sort
Speaker 1: of and struggling to that's a long walk, right, It's
Speaker 1: gon a walk, and everyone could do it, must be
Speaker 1: very dear. It's a difficult walk for a young man,
Speaker 1: and many old women and little children under the age
Speaker 1: of five or forced on this march because there really
Speaker 1: wasn't no other option for them. It was either go
Speaker 1: back to Ukraine and risk being bombed, risk being under
Speaker 1: Russian occupation, or it was get out of your car
Speaker 1: and walk in the wintertime with no food or water,
Speaker 1: no toilet, four fifty miles. And it was just this
Speaker 1: nightmare scenario because all these people were on the road.
Speaker 1: There were people in wheelchairs who couldn't negotiate the mud.
Speaker 1: There were mothers with strollers who couldn't get get the
Speaker 1: children um out, and the children were crying, and the
Speaker 1: children were asking why are we here, what it will
Speaker 1: be doing? Why did we have to leave home and
Speaker 1: stand and walk fifty miles in the middle of winter
Speaker 1: um And the old people were sort of resigned to it.
Speaker 1: They There was one old woman I passed who was
Speaker 1: using a cane and she was hobbling along jade to backpack,
Speaker 1: and I asked her where are you going, because we
Speaker 1: were a part we were a long long way from
Speaker 1: the border, and she said, I'm going to Poland, very simply,
Speaker 1: it was a very matter of fact um statement. And
Speaker 1: so these people walked with a sense of duty and
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency, and um, it was just a
Speaker 1: very tragic hymn terran scene. Yeah, I can imagine. And
Speaker 1: that was a major that was a major route that
Speaker 1: you're run like a major road that just become impossible.
Speaker 1: It wasn't one of the bigger highways, but it was
Speaker 1: I believe the M eleven, the Ukrainian M eleven, and
Speaker 1: it runs east west throughout the country and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the major roads and it had become
Speaker 1: completely clogged. Yeah, Jesus so on arrival in in Poland
Speaker 1: or the border, and I understand that there's some men
Speaker 1: like broadly defined as like military age or eighteen to sixty,
Speaker 1: I think aren't allowed us and leave because they they
Speaker 1: have they have to stay in it and enlist. Is
Speaker 1: that right? Did you see? Yes? The border was absolutely
Speaker 1: the worst part for that reason. About five kilometers from
Speaker 1: the border. At the end of our walk, we were
Speaker 1: feeling relieved, we were feeling like finally we've made it.
Speaker 1: Ukrainian military patrols started walking by and driving by and
Speaker 1: announcing through loud speakers and announcing with their own voices, Um,
Speaker 1: all men must stay, All men between the ages of
Speaker 1: eighteen and sixty have to stay get out of line now.
Speaker 1: And so the fathers naturally asked, because there were a
Speaker 1: lot of fathers who were there to protect their families,
Speaker 1: to safeguard their families, and to provide for their families. Uh,
Speaker 1: these fathers asked, how about us, we have to we
Speaker 1: have little children, We have children under the age of five.
Speaker 1: How are we supposed to provide for them if you
Speaker 1: conscript us right here? The Ukrainian Army did not care.
Speaker 1: They pulled them away physically from their families. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of tears. There was a lot of crying.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of hurried goodbyes. Brothers left, sisters,
Speaker 1: mothers left, husbands, um, lovers left each other. People people
Speaker 1: just left. It was terrifying to watch. Um. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: these men were conscripted immediately into the army. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can imagine. And what people at that point like, it
Speaker 1: seems like that we're ready to be stoic. Up to
Speaker 1: that point, were people sort of resisting that, like just
Speaker 1: what they like, sort of sad but resigned to it.
Speaker 1: Was that was that well, that was when the panic
Speaker 1: began because everybody was sad, but resigned to their faith
Speaker 1: of walking to Poland. But nobody was prepared for losing
Speaker 1: all the men. Um. So when all the men were lost,
Speaker 1: when all the men were taken forcibly, and this was public,
Speaker 1: everybody could see these men being yanked from their families.
Speaker 1: People first started yelling at the soldiers that didn't do
Speaker 1: anything obviously, um and they were they were so angry
Speaker 1: at the soldiers, and the soldiers were genet care um.
Speaker 1: And then panic began because people realized, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this this person who was here with us, who was
Speaker 1: a travel companion, who's a relative, now we have to
Speaker 1: leave without him. And even more, he's going to the
Speaker 1: front now and he is in great danger at the front.
Speaker 1: So people began pushing, they began shoving, they began being
Speaker 1: rude to one another. Um. There there was no sense
Speaker 1: of empathy among the people at all, because it was
Speaker 1: a panic to get across the border at that point. Um.
Speaker 1: So there were people fainting, uh, and that was really
Speaker 1: just overlooked. The people who fainted were sort of dragged
Speaker 1: to the side and left there. And I think they
Speaker 1: they made it. I don't know if they made it
Speaker 1: out okay, They certainly didn't die, but there were people
Speaker 1: who were fainting. There are people who were sobbing there,
Speaker 1: or people who were hyperventilating. That was vomiting going on.
Speaker 1: It was just this sense of absolute human panic as
Speaker 1: people just tried to escape in the last in the
Speaker 1: last five kilometers and especially in the last five was
Speaker 1: the very worst. So, yeah, terrible thing to see if
Speaker 1: you hadn't stand you stay in touch. Want of the
Speaker 1: lads who was conscripted, right, Yes, that that was a
Speaker 1: development from tonight. So while we were walking about this
Speaker 1: was about fifteen kilometers out from the border, we met
Speaker 1: a young Ukrainian man UM and we just got to
Speaker 1: talking to him because I mean we could relate to him.
Speaker 1: We were about I'm about the same age as him, um,
Speaker 1: and so I we were just like we're talking about
Speaker 1: our lives and it was almost as if the war
Speaker 1: wasn't going on. And then we got to these army checkpoints, um,
Speaker 1: and they started calling all the men you have to
Speaker 1: you have to leave, um. And so my friend said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not leaving. I don't want to fight
Speaker 1: in this war. And he tried to you know, sort of, um,
Speaker 1: stay with us, because we were foreigners. We were not
Speaker 1: We were not eligible to be conscripted, so he sort
Speaker 1: of tried to stay with us. He was he was
Speaker 1: a student, He was trying not to fight in this
Speaker 1: war because he had a life elsewhere. He had a
Speaker 1: girlfriend who who was traveling with U. And so we
Speaker 1: we were walking with him and I said, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to do an interview? He said sure, UM,
Speaker 1: and I started talking to him on camera and then
Speaker 1: the soldier came by and yelled in his direction, hey,
Speaker 1: you get out of line. And UM he said, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I have to go, and he just gave me this look,
Speaker 1: like this despairing look, and he went with the soldier. UM.
Speaker 1: The two days later today, I Uh, he messaged me
Speaker 1: on Instagram and he said, because we by the way,
Speaker 1: we had exchange contact information where we were talking. Um.
Speaker 1: He messaged me on Instagram and he said, hey, I
Speaker 1: saw that you mentioned me in uh in your Twitter
Speaker 1: because I told him about the Twitter as well. UM,
Speaker 1: and he said, just letting you know I'm safe. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not in the East fighting the Russians. UM. I
Speaker 1: am in Leviv and I am safe. And it is
Speaker 1: my knowledge that he may have escaped conscription because he
Speaker 1: would otherwise be in the east. But um, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I just know that he was safe right now, and
Speaker 1: he confirmed that he was safe. Okay, So so yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not sure whether he's doing training or whether he's
Speaker 1: in some rearrestu on roll, or if he's managed to
Speaker 1: get out of it. To him, how I know that
Speaker 1: he has managed to escape the brunt of the fighting
Speaker 1: with the Russians, that's right, Yeah, okay, yeah, good for him,
Speaker 1: but it's still a terrible thing to have to do with.
Speaker 1: So it's my understanding. It said visa, there's visa free
Speaker 1: entry into Podent right now, exactly right, that people can
Speaker 1: walk aggressive. Yes, the entry into Poland was an absolute
Speaker 1: breeze compared to the exit from Ukraine. I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but you have to wait in a long line in
Speaker 1: Ukraine for an exit piece, just for permission to leave
Speaker 1: the country. And so, as I mentioned, that was the
Speaker 1: worst part because they were only letting ten people out
Speaker 1: every twenty minutes. That ten people get an ICET visa
Speaker 1: every twenty minutes, and there were at least two thousand
Speaker 1: people at the border with US, and so that's that's
Speaker 1: where this panic happened is because every time they opened
Speaker 1: that gate, every twenty minutes, and by the way, this
Speaker 1: is like two in the morning in the cold weather,
Speaker 1: and people are as I mentioned crying, vomiting, fainting, um.
Speaker 1: And so every time they opened that gate, there was
Speaker 1: a human crush to get to that gate, and it
Speaker 1: closed it and they forced the people back, and then
Speaker 1: it was another twenty minutes before it happened again. And
Speaker 1: this happened all night long. Um. And this was literally
Speaker 1: just to get permission to exit the country. It was ludicrous,
Speaker 1: it was insane. UM. So yeah, I'm sorry to divert
Speaker 1: from your question, but very interesting. Poland was extremely easy
Speaker 1: to enter. There was no visa process. They understood, they
Speaker 1: led us through. I think they just barely looked at
Speaker 1: our passports. Um. So yeah, it was it was easy.
Speaker 1: Were you at that point, like obviously had no plans
Speaker 1: or places to go? So the cold day house you
Speaker 1: with some kind of refugee housing that they put you in.
Speaker 1: Uh not when I was there, Um, they did do that.
Speaker 1: They did implement that about twelve hours after I arrived. Um.
Speaker 1: But when I arrived, we were greeted immediately pretty much
Speaker 1: right out of the border facility with donuts and tea UM,
Speaker 1: and so they gave us tonus, they gave us tea UM.
Speaker 1: And then they said, hey, there's a bus to Premisshill,
Speaker 1: which is the city about fifteen kilometers west of the border,
Speaker 1: um where all the refugees are gathering. And they said
Speaker 1: there's a bus the Premiership at least every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: And we got on that bus um and then we
Speaker 1: end up. We arrived in Premiershill and at that time
Speaker 1: refugees were responsible for their own accommodation. We managed to
Speaker 1: book a room in a hotel with eight other refugees
Speaker 1: UM in the room. Uh. And so I was sleeping
Speaker 1: in this this room with eight other refugees. They didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk to me. They were kind of despondent.
Speaker 1: They lost everything and so they were just very sad
Speaker 1: the entire time that I was there. Yeah. But to
Speaker 1: answer your question about housing real quick, uh, about twelve
Speaker 1: hours after we arrived, they began setting up tents for
Speaker 1: the refugees and that is where many of the refugees
Speaker 1: are living now. Are intense. Okay, you know that's a
Speaker 1: Polish government or the Red Cross or is that citizens
Speaker 1: to Poland? I have no idea which organization did that,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you that I did not see
Speaker 1: a single Red Cross or United Nations representative while I
Speaker 1: was in Poland. Okay, interesting, Yeah, they can be sometimes
Speaker 1: a little slow to react. Yeah, yeah, okay. So you
Speaker 1: then stayed in that hostel, you weren't able to really
Speaker 1: talk to the people there. It's understandable they probably had
Speaker 1: a very very difficult twenty four hours and we all
Speaker 1: have had yeah, I mean no talking being had pretty much.
Speaker 1: Did you get a sense when as you met the
Speaker 1: people walking there, crossing the border, et cetera, where people
Speaker 1: did they have plans to be gone from Ukraine? Were
Speaker 1: they thinking where can I stay for a long period
Speaker 1: of time? Were they thinking I'm going to wait this
Speaker 1: out in Poland? And see? Um. I was pleasantly surprised
Speaker 1: that a good half of the people that I spoke
Speaker 1: to in that in that convoy, in the refugee caravan
Speaker 1: had relatives either in Poland or elsewhere in Europe. Um
Speaker 1: and so they were all they had all called their
Speaker 1: relatives and they had arranged them to go to Western
Speaker 1: Europe and meet the relatives. Okay, yes, and they've got
Speaker 1: a place and they're planning to at least. However, another
Speaker 1: half of them have no plans whatsoever, and they're terrified.
Speaker 1: And those are the refugees that I stayed with the
Speaker 1: hotel last night. Um, is that they're terrified and they
Speaker 1: have no place to go. Yeah, right, and no one's
Speaker 1: really provided them with one yet and no. Yeah, that's difficult.
Speaker 1: And it seems like I don't be able to be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how the United States three acts because
Speaker 1: it hasn't really done very much so far. Um, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I heard that the reason I crossed at that place
Speaker 1: rather than any other places that I heard that the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army was there, and I did not see the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army and I searched for them and I did not
Speaker 1: find them. So I don't know where the US is. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you haven't seen any any evidence of like any seeing
Speaker 1: no sort of n POS or government sort of aid
Speaker 1: for refugees yet. Then it's kind of surprising. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned that, I haven't seen any U N representative, any
Speaker 1: Red Cross representative, any WHO representative. I haven't seen any
Speaker 1: NGO or governmental representatives. I did see, of course Polish
Speaker 1: government representatives at the border, but that was about it, right,
Speaker 1: it said from Polish people, do you get a sense
Speaker 1: of sort of solidarity? How I think it talking about?
Speaker 1: So it was actually amazing to say. It was heartwarming
Speaker 1: to see the citizens of Freshman Dell are now swamped.
Speaker 1: Their population has been doubled or tripled by the incoming
Speaker 1: Ukrainian refugees, and yet they are showing great amounts of solidarity.
Speaker 1: I actually attended a solidarity rally today, um where the
Speaker 1: citizens of Freshman Dill got together and they said ukraine
Speaker 1: Is are our brothers and putin us clearly in the wrong,
Speaker 1: and we will stand with them, We will show solidarity
Speaker 1: with them. And that was hard warming to say. I
Speaker 1: talked with a few of those Poles at that rally
Speaker 1: and they said, yeah, we knew this was coming and
Speaker 1: we prepared for it and we're ready to take in
Speaker 1: as many as is necessary. Yeah, that's really nice to herrity.
Speaker 1: At least people are that sort of showing sortidarity with
Speaker 1: each other, in support with each other. And yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so when you were on your way west, I presume
Speaker 1: that like the conflict didn't catch up with you, right
Speaker 1: you were to the saibected like in direct fire, or
Speaker 1: you see any of that. No. However, there was about
Speaker 1: fifty kilometers behind us a bombing. As I mentioned, we
Speaker 1: did not hear it, but there were reports of the
Speaker 1: fighting going on all the time. But it's not catch
Speaker 1: up to us while we were in that while we
Speaker 1: were in that caravan, and um it would have been
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying if it had. But I'm glad that it
Speaker 1: did that, right. Yeah. And then, so you've been there
Speaker 1: for about a week. Had you previously been doing some
Speaker 1: reporting in Ukraine. I've never done reporting in Ukraine before.
Speaker 1: But when I came to Ukraine and the war had
Speaker 1: not even started, I was mostly just doing interviews with
Speaker 1: civilians about what they thought about the possibility of war,
Speaker 1: about what they thought about the war and don Bass
Speaker 1: um most a lot of cultural stuff. It was kind
Speaker 1: of boring. I mean not that not that war is
Speaker 1: interesting or fund but it was not really much of
Speaker 1: a story. Um. So. I was just doing interviews with
Speaker 1: people about basic Ukrainian things. And then the war found
Speaker 1: us so and it seemed to have come as much
Speaker 1: a shock to them as it did to the rest
Speaker 1: of us. As I mentioned, nobody was prepared for war
Speaker 1: until about twenty four hours before a hit and that's
Speaker 1: when the Ukrainian government said, yes, there will be a war,
Speaker 1: and everybody began sort of to have a sense of
Speaker 1: urgency about them. Right. Did you see any of the
Speaker 1: citizen militias and citizens preparing for defense the people who
Speaker 1: decided to stay. Yes, I didn't see any of the militias.
Speaker 1: But I was went into a Ukrainian gun shopping Kiev
Speaker 1: and there was a line almost off the door. People
Speaker 1: were buying guns, um and I asked one of the
Speaker 1: people on the line, why are you buying a gun?
Speaker 1: And he said, if the Russians come, I want to
Speaker 1: be prepared. So a lot of people are buying guns
Speaker 1: privately in Kiev, at least as of last week, okay,
Speaker 1: so that they weren't wait for the government to supply.
Speaker 1: Then they were supplying themselves with guns. I believe. I
Speaker 1: believe the government's supply was a rather um, a sudden decision.
Speaker 1: I don't think the ukraining people were counting on it,
Speaker 1: and so they were supplying themselves and then buying like
Speaker 1: like ashing cough to the rifles. We talked about hunter
Speaker 1: rifles and yeah, you can't buy the flashing cobs in
Speaker 1: a gun store. They were buying sort of hunting rifles
Speaker 1: and shotguns Jesus. Okay, yeah, yeah, really under equipped, all right.
Speaker 1: So they were just prepared to trying to get anything
Speaker 1: they could get their hands on to look after themselves
Speaker 1: and their families. Yeah, I bought that spray. Yeah that
Speaker 1: it than nothing. H yeah, okay, so yeah there was
Speaker 1: there was. Did you see like the people you walked
Speaker 1: with with it? Did families tend to leave as a
Speaker 1: whole or did did some folks so say I'm going
Speaker 1: to stay behind and fight, or I'm going to stay
Speaker 1: behind to stay and look after a house and you
Speaker 1: should leave. Did you get sent to that the vast
Speaker 1: majority of people traveling were families as a whole. There
Speaker 1: were very few single travelers or partial families traveling. It
Speaker 1: was I think that people have wanted to stick together
Speaker 1: and so it was the vast majority of people traveling
Speaker 1: were families. Okay, yeah, yeah, So stayed or left? Do
Speaker 1: you get a sense of how many people you said
Speaker 1: about two thousand put out the border, like of what
Speaker 1: proportion of the city decided to leave for Poland not
Speaker 1: all the people that the border were from leviv Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of them have been traveling since that morning
Speaker 1: from Kiev, uh and other cities in UH central western Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Um So, yeah, I was talking to people at the
Speaker 1: border and a lot of them were from Kiev, A
Speaker 1: lot of them were from zephyr Zisa. I'm pronouncing that wrong.
Speaker 1: A lot of them were from turnal Pill or Ivana,
Speaker 1: frankisk Um or Odessa and Uh. So I would not
Speaker 1: have any sort of conjecture on what percentage of the city. Also,
Speaker 1: still pretty early in the crisis, h because it was
Speaker 1: still the first day and it was fewer than twenty
Speaker 1: four hours after the invasion began. So I imagine the
Speaker 1: numbers are a lot higher now. When you were getting
Speaker 1: news right, if you were traveling, etcetera. Were you like
Speaker 1: on Whatsapple? What people on Twitter? Like? How are they
Speaker 1: getting news of what was happening? Everybody, and absolutely everybody
Speaker 1: was completely dark during the walk, um because I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but there was no sense of cell reception,
Speaker 1: there was no sense of data reception, there was no
Speaker 1: sense of Internet connection at all during the walk. And
Speaker 1: so everybody I met, we we asked, we asked everybody
Speaker 1: we met, do you have any news? And they said no,
Speaker 1: do you have any news? Um? So nobody had any
Speaker 1: news until we got to the border. Some people had news,
Speaker 1: but for about about sixteen hours we were completely in
Speaker 1: the dark about what was going on. And that was
Speaker 1: terrifying because when we left the invasion had just begun
Speaker 1: and we didn't get to be updated on the first
Speaker 1: a half day of it. So yeah, it's crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then on arrival you're faced with this news of
Speaker 1: this like sort of glitz cre egl lied right, bombing
Speaker 1: and right yes. Um. I mean we we saw a
Speaker 1: little bit of it in the morning that day, well
Speaker 1: when we when we started out, um, but it had
Speaker 1: really accelerated and amplified by the time that we ved
Speaker 1: Um and the Ukrainians were absolutely terrified at this because
Speaker 1: they did not realize what happened on such a large scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think very few people did. Okay, imagine if it's
Speaker 1: in your own country, it's petrifying. Were you there when
Speaker 1: the fighting began in the Chernobyl exclusions or were you
Speaker 1: in Poland by then? When did the fighting began in Churnal?
Speaker 1: I believe about twenty four hours after the fighting began,
Speaker 1: big period. I was crossing into Poland twenty four hours
Speaker 1: after the fighting began period, So I was probably crossing
Speaker 1: into Poland when that fighting began. Okay, it's interesting to know,
Speaker 1: especially how sort of the older people or people who
Speaker 1: have been alive the nuclear accidents, you know. But I's
Speaker 1: wondering how they I mean, I've been talking to plenty
Speaker 1: of plenty of older people, and as I mentioned, the
Speaker 1: older people especially were resigned to this because during the
Speaker 1: Soviet times, during the Cold War, the sort of thing
Speaker 1: was common, um, And so the older people knew what
Speaker 1: was going on, and the younger people were the ones
Speaker 1: who were more panicking. That's in testing. Yeah, they said
Speaker 1: they've been raised with the fear of that. I suppose, right,
Speaker 1: And this happened in to like this is the biggest
Speaker 1: refugee crisis since nineteen eight nine, because in nineteen eight
Speaker 1: and nine, when all the republics fell in the Warsaw Pact,
Speaker 1: so many people turched to the roads, and so the
Speaker 1: older people were used to that kind of thing, um,
Speaker 1: But as I mentioned, the younger people were not so right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, different reactions, I guess. And it's very
Speaker 1: young people obviously unable to understand what's going on. And
Speaker 1: beyond the there leaving their homes, which is said right,
Speaker 1: and especially the little children had no idea what was
Speaker 1: going on, and it was impossible to explain to them,
Speaker 1: so nobody did um And so I can't imagine how
Speaker 1: terrifying this must have been as a child, not knowing
Speaker 1: why you had to walk dozens of hours in the
Speaker 1: cold carrying everything you had. Yeah, it's always the saddest
Speaker 1: thing to see children in those refugee situations when they
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't know what's going on and doing,
Speaker 1: think Rome right. Yeah, hopefully they're all safe. Hopefully they're
Speaker 1: in Poland, hopefully they can go to safe places. I
Speaker 1: made several contacts during this trip, and as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: only one of one of them has gone back to me,
Speaker 1: So I hope the others get back to me soon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's tough, but you've got the sense of everyone since
Speaker 1: they weren't turned back. Per say, they just might be
Speaker 1: sort of not in touch because their phones don't charged
Speaker 1: or something like that. It's either their phones aren't aren't charged,
Speaker 1: or in the men men's case, they were sent to
Speaker 1: the East, or they're too busy trying to arrange accommodations
Speaker 1: or food for themselves or something I mean, everybody was
Speaker 1: just very busy trying to survive. Yeah, so I don't
Speaker 1: blame them if they don't, if they don't hop on
Speaker 1: social media. Yeah, yeah, of course. And of course yeah,
Speaker 1: I did very very stressful time for everyone. Did you
Speaker 1: did you hear of anyone who has been sent to
Speaker 1: the east, either second hand or like three people you
Speaker 1: met people who are at the front already. Um, I
Speaker 1: do not have any contacts of anybody who was sent
Speaker 1: to the East. From what I understand, the Ukrainian Army
Speaker 1: has a strict uh communication social media sort of policy,
Speaker 1: and so none of these soldiers that I met one
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to me. I did not talk to
Speaker 1: any Ukrainian Army soldiers in uniform because they had a
Speaker 1: very strict policy. They could not talk to me, and
Speaker 1: too I could not get their contacts for much of
Speaker 1: the same reason. Okay, so they didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: to you, and I didn't want to talk to anyone.
Speaker 1: They were just looking for you know, they were just
Speaker 1: they were very stern and they did not want to
Speaker 1: talk to anybody. So I talked to zero soldiers in
Speaker 1: uniform during this experience. Okay, yeah, so where are you now?
Speaker 1: You've you've gone further west west desem Right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I took a long bus ride to crack Off today. Um,
Speaker 1: and so I'm now I'm crack Off Poland. Okay, how folks?
Speaker 1: Is it different there being about a little bit more distant.
Speaker 1: I've already talked to a few people and uh, well
Speaker 1: it's a Saturday night. They're going out to drink, and
Speaker 1: they they're saying, well, yeah, it's it's terrible that this
Speaker 1: war is happening two fifty miles east of us, but
Speaker 1: what are we supposed to do about it? So they're
Speaker 1: going out and drinking. So it's this very detached sense
Speaker 1: here and crack out. Not the same as it was
Speaker 1: in Freshmanville. Yeah, interesting to people are living their normal
Speaker 1: life and it's just it's a news item for them.
Speaker 1: It's they're not worried about any potentials spill over a fallout, right, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not worried. Nice and well you do you plan
Speaker 1: to stay there? What's what's next to you? So I
Speaker 1: actually just booked a flight uh an hour ago. I'm
Speaker 1: going to be flying back to the States on Marshall first. Okay, great, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can you can come back, and presumably you're
Speaker 1: like your US passible holders, so you could just get
Speaker 1: that's how you got through being conscripted, etcetera. I am not.
Speaker 1: I'm not carrying US passport right now. I'm carrying an
Speaker 1: Italian passport um because I'm also a citizen of Italy.
Speaker 1: And I was told before I left by some friends
Speaker 1: in the intelligence community that it would look significantly less
Speaker 1: suspicious to carry an U passport than the US passport.
Speaker 1: So I bought the EU passport. Nice. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you can travel free lyre y, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do
Speaker 1: you know if Yukrainian people can creble once? Because once
Speaker 1: they're in Poland, can they then move through the Shangan's
Speaker 1: own freely? Ukraine is not a member of the EU,
Speaker 1: they're not a member of Shangan. I do not believe
Speaker 1: they can move really, right, I just wondering, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they would be. I don't know how their passports would
Speaker 1: be checked if they're going across some of those land
Speaker 1: borders that I think. I do know that this was
Speaker 1: it was an emergency situation yesterday and so that's why
Speaker 1: they were just very personally checked. But I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: director usually. Yeah, I wonder what they would be like
Speaker 1: if they tried to exit Poland or if they'll right,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen to them, No,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I'm guessing there's been no communication of
Speaker 1: that that you've seen, either right, leg of what they
Speaker 1: should do or how to apply for asylum or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I have talked to a few people. They
Speaker 1: say that they're banking on those countries being empathetic to refugees,
Speaker 1: and I understand. I think that countries will be empathetic
Speaker 1: to refugees. Yeah, yeah, said, do you certainly hope they will.
Speaker 1: So they're just gonna hope that those countries, the ones
Speaker 1: who don't have a country to go to, you get
Speaker 1: the senser, Yeah, that they'll they'll apply for asylum wherever
Speaker 1: they can find a safe place. That's right, um. And
Speaker 1: I believe that countries Western European countries that have been
Speaker 1: very vocally pro Ukraine recently, UM, will take them in.
Speaker 1: So I think that they'll they'll be safe. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: good to hear. I know. I've seen estimates of up
Speaker 1: to five million refugees, which would be I mean, Germany
Speaker 1: absorbed a million people from Syria, right, it's not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible for Western European countries do that at all,
Speaker 1: but it will, but it would still be a catastrophic crisis,
Speaker 1: the worse than magine. And yeah, I have to hope
Speaker 1: it doesn't get to that. Do you get the sense
Speaker 1: of people are still flowing across the border? I know
Speaker 1: you're a bit yes, you think for me, I mean
Speaker 1: it's weird because you want to believe that what you
Speaker 1: experienced and what the people around you've experienced was a
Speaker 1: one time thing, that it was a one time incident,
Speaker 1: that it was one caravan. But this is happening constantly
Speaker 1: and it will continue to happen constantly for weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the trains and the across the border, things like that
Speaker 1: that people can take or is it solely yes? So
Speaker 1: when when I said that, I went to the train
Speaker 1: station and the leave and there were no trains, what
Speaker 1: was really happening is, yes there were trains, but all
Speaker 1: the trains until March March were booked, So okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: people can't take their trains across that kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: if they tried to book right now, they won't be
Speaker 1: able to find a booking for a while. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they were already booked up. And by the way, here
Speaker 1: in crack Out, Um, the first two hostels that I
Speaker 1: went to, the first two places to stay that I
Speaker 1: went to, we're all booked up. And I asked why
Speaker 1: and he said, Ukrainian refugees. So there are Ukrainian refugees
Speaker 1: here and crack Out Okay. Yeah, people are moving for it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of people want to get far
Speaker 1: aways hand. Yeah. So people are just constantly moving lest
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, but they have friends of a family
Speaker 1: that they don't get to it because Yeah, and I've
Speaker 1: been hearing the Ukrainian language just constantly on my trip,
Speaker 1: so that's interesting too. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for that's a
Speaker 1: really really interesting inside. Is there anything else you think
Speaker 1: from your experience that people ought to hear about? Um? No,
Speaker 1: I believe I've told you everything. I've I've really told
Speaker 1: the story dozens of times since it happened, and UM,
Speaker 1: I really hope that I hit all the all the
Speaker 1: right notes here. UM, if you if you had to
Speaker 1: tell anything to the people who were reading or listening
Speaker 1: to this, Um, Ukraine really needs weapons, yes, but they
Speaker 1: also need humanitarian aid. When I was walking all that distance,
Speaker 1: with all those people, there was not a single sense
Speaker 1: of food being provided to anyone, water being provided to anyone.
Speaker 1: There was no chance to go to the toilet, there
Speaker 1: was often no chance to sit down. If we could
Speaker 1: give even a chance for these people to eat something,
Speaker 1: to drink something, to have a minute of solace, um,
Speaker 1: that would mean the world to them. And so I
Speaker 1: think that we need to provide humanitarian aid to the
Speaker 1: refugees as soon as possible. And you you said you
Speaker 1: didn't see any organizations you'd suggest people donate to that
Speaker 1: you you didn't see any of that? Is there anyone
Speaker 1: you can know? And I don't know. I haven't actually
Speaker 1: done the research and that I probably should, um, but
Speaker 1: I I know that the Welcome Committee in Poland were
Speaker 1: private citizens. They were not part of any energy or anything.
Speaker 1: They were private citizens were welcoming awesome. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: some of them organizing on Facebook. So try maybe linked
Speaker 1: to some of those or something like that that people
Speaker 1: going to support, right and all right? And then is
Speaker 1: there anything like you'd like to to plug like do
Speaker 1: you have a you have a Twitter? Right? Is there
Speaker 1: anything else you could tell us what your Twitter is? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean? So the Twitter that I'm using for this,
Speaker 1: which you've probably seen as a temporary one. It was
Speaker 1: meant only to cover this crisis. I guess my private
Speaker 1: twitter uh plugged that, which has you've seen that as well? Probably,
Speaker 1: Um it's just my name. Um yeah, I guess just
Speaker 1: plugged that. And uh, I mean thank you for everything, No,
Speaker 1: of course. Um it's a Mannie mutta with two teas, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: M A R O T T A great. Okay, we
Speaker 1: got that, and yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for
Speaker 1: taking the time to talk. I appreciate a pretty difficult
Speaker 1: couple of days to get some rest. And if there's
Speaker 1: anything else in any developments, please do let me know.
Speaker 1: Give me a shout tella. Thank you. All right, cheers, mate,
Speaker 1: you have a body of me. That's that's that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Just take photos of his children walking into the door
Speaker 1: of their public school. Yeah, send him to him with
Speaker 1: the pro pro protatto Hill account. Don't let him know
Speaker 1: what he did to provoke this. Just just frighten him.
Speaker 1: I do like it els is being recorded. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's how you do it. But the episode's begun. We're
Speaker 1: including all of that, Sofie, all of that welcome to
Speaker 1: it could happen here the podcast where we will take
Speaker 1: pictures of your children entering a public school and send
Speaker 1: them to you as a threat, but we won't tell
Speaker 1: you what you're we're threatening you over because that's I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is, probably terrorism technically speaking, speaking
Speaker 1: of child abuse. Great Garrison very proud nailed it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be We're gonna we're doing an episode
Speaker 1: to talk about the recent kind of letter and opinion
Speaker 1: piece that the Governor of Texas and the Attorney general
Speaker 1: wrote relating to trans kids in Texas. We're we're also
Speaker 1: planning like like a more like a week long worth
Speaker 1: stuff kind of going into this issue across not not
Speaker 1: just the States, but also like like internationally as well
Speaker 1: in terms of like the growing kind of war on
Speaker 1: trans people. But because this thing happened, we we do
Speaker 1: want to kind of talk about it now as well
Speaker 1: before we you know, spend a lot of time making
Speaker 1: a week long is the worth of of of scripted
Speaker 1: pieces on it. So anyway, we're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: what happened last last weekend or last week at time
Speaker 1: of recording, um when the Texas Attorney General kN Paxton
Speaker 1: released an opinion piece UM on I think it was
Speaker 1: it was Monday, they one declaring gender affirming medical care
Speaker 1: for transgender children to be a child abuse UM. In response,
Speaker 1: the next day, UH, the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott,
Speaker 1: directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services UM
Speaker 1: to investigate these practices UM. And then kind of on
Speaker 1: that following Wednesday, the letter that Grey Gabbott wrote went viral,
Speaker 1: detailing both Attorney General's kind of opinion that a number
Speaker 1: of the so called quote sex change procedures constitute child
Speaker 1: abuse under existing Texas law UM and directing the Family
Speaker 1: and Protective Services to protect these to quote unquote protect
Speaker 1: these kids from abuse. And I hear by director agency
Speaker 1: to conduct a prompt in their own investigation to any
Speaker 1: reported instances of these abusive procedures. UM. And what's really
Speaker 1: insidious is that like it's not even it's like, of course,
Speaker 1: like there is not gender affirming surgery done on minors anyway,
Speaker 1: that does not happen. UM. But the but this letter
Speaker 1: actually does UM go into UM says uh. It's it
Speaker 1: says uh. According according to the general Attorney General opinion,
Speaker 1: it has already against the law to subject Texas children
Speaker 1: to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning,
Speaker 1: including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, removals of otherwise
Speaker 1: healthy body parts, and administration of puberty blocking drugs or
Speaker 1: doses of testosterone or estrogen. So it's not it is
Speaker 1: also including HRT, including puberty blockers, which again we already
Speaker 1: give to sis gender children all the time. UM. Puberty
Speaker 1: blockers are given to kids who have early onset pre
Speaker 1: perty who assists UM. But it's now including puberty blockers
Speaker 1: inside like constituting that in its in and of itself
Speaker 1: as child abuse, which is an escalation of things that
Speaker 1: we've seen before. UM. Yeah. And then it's also talking
Speaker 1: about how Texas law impostes reporting requirements upon all licensed
Speaker 1: professionals UM, including doctors and nurses, teachers, therapists, and provides
Speaker 1: you know, criminal penalties for failure to report things. So
Speaker 1: like it is that that was that was that was
Speaker 1: the That was the main part of the of the
Speaker 1: letter that went viral, detailing the different different ways that
Speaker 1: they're trying to harass, intimidate, and um introduce possible legal
Speaker 1: legal repercussions to parents and um, you know caregivers who
Speaker 1: support transgender youth inside the state of Texas. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: um it is. It is like the perfect example of
Speaker 1: the thing these people always do when they make laws
Speaker 1: based on their bigotry, which is like reflexively make a
Speaker 1: law based on whatever is like the fucking Twitter talking
Speaker 1: point that they've been yelling about, and then don't consider
Speaker 1: all of the different things that it's going to do
Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with the group of people
Speaker 1: they're trying to hurt. And lots of cases, this is
Speaker 1: just gonna it's it's not even gonna it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: impact a lot of like queer people in general, right
Speaker 1: because it's it's in terms of like reporting things that
Speaker 1: seem outside the mainstream, so not even necessarily trans not
Speaker 1: even necessarily transgender people, not even necessarily queer people as well.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of like you know, I I
Speaker 1: and if definitely when I was growing up, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of like cis girls who enjoyed dressing more like
Speaker 1: Butcher tomboy. Um, you know, there's a there's a and
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of stuff that will just affect
Speaker 1: like kids in general. Um, with all of this reporting
Speaker 1: and all of this like and making making these like
Speaker 1: procedures and like hormone treatments like you know, to trying
Speaker 1: to make them seem like they're legal. Because that because again,
Speaker 1: like the actual Texas law has has not changed. It
Speaker 1: is it is the it is. This is an opinion
Speaker 1: piece investing directing the Child Protective Services to investigate these things.
Speaker 1: So the actual law in the book doesn't change. What
Speaker 1: it has done is caused a whole bunch of like
Speaker 1: a possible legal danger um and a massive headache and
Speaker 1: just a whole bunch of like legal harassment against parents
Speaker 1: and kids. And that that's what it's gonna that's what's
Speaker 1: gonna result in, because it's it's unclear what this what
Speaker 1: the governor's directive is going to actually practically look like,
Speaker 1: um because in the in the in a tweet on
Speaker 1: last Tuesday, he said that he's directing the Child Protective
Speaker 1: Services to enforce this ruling and investigate and refer for
Speaker 1: prosecution for instances of miners receiving affirming care UM. And
Speaker 1: then the Texas Protective Services told Time magazine on Wednesday
Speaker 1: that it was going to comply with the Governor's directive UM.
Speaker 1: But in terms of like directing them for prosecution, there
Speaker 1: has in like five Texas District Attorneys UM, including the
Speaker 1: d as of Dallas County and Houston's Travis County. They
Speaker 1: issued a statement to the day after condemning the Directive
Speaker 1: UM and saying that they plan to enforce the Constitution
Speaker 1: to their quote unquote that's what they said, and that
Speaker 1: they are quote deeply disturbed by Governor Abbots and Attorney
Speaker 1: General Paxton's cruel directives treating transgender children's access to life
Speaker 1: saving gender firm and care as child abuse. We will
Speaker 1: not irrationally and judifiably interfere with medical decisions made between children,
Speaker 1: their parents, and their medical physicians to ensure the safety
Speaker 1: of transgender youth, adding that we will not allow the
Speaker 1: governor or turn in general to disregard Texas children's lives
Speaker 1: in order to score political points. So in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, there's many certain parts of the certain parts
Speaker 1: of the state where even even if protective Services does
Speaker 1: investigate reports of this, they're not gonna get prosecuted. But
Speaker 1: there will be other parts of the state where these
Speaker 1: they probably will like and because it's because because it
Speaker 1: is just because it is just an interpretation of the law.
Speaker 1: You can still you can still get lots of legal trouble,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be up to juries and other
Speaker 1: people to decide on what interpretation of the law is
Speaker 1: going to be enforced and enacted upon. Um. So you're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of people being like, oh, no, it's
Speaker 1: actually okay because the law is not changing, it's just
Speaker 1: the interpretation. And we're like, well, no, it actually is
Speaker 1: a big problem. Like it's like and it's not even
Speaker 1: it's just the overall like it's saying the things that
Speaker 1: have been gone unseid for a long time, like it
Speaker 1: it's it's it's making the things that everyone kind of
Speaker 1: assumed or was kind of the unseaid bigotry, putting it
Speaker 1: into writing and making it concrete. And it's like the
Speaker 1: overall escalation of this thing which is which is is
Speaker 1: deep deep, deeply concerning. I mean, it's it's the thing
Speaker 1: that happened with like COVID restrictions, with like masks and stuff,
Speaker 1: where you've got the cities and stuff where you have
Speaker 1: kind of more rational leadership or saying like we're not
Speaker 1: we're not paying attention to this directed from the governor,
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep having letting people mask or we're not
Speaker 1: going to let you, you know, go after businesses that
Speaker 1: require masks. But with the added dimension of like the
Speaker 1: rather than it being sort of targeting businesses and schools,
Speaker 1: it's it's targeting individuals, and it's allowing individuals to target
Speaker 1: other individuals, like the Texas abortion law exactly. And the
Speaker 1: primary purpose of this is going to be too basically
Speaker 1: gradually erode the areas in which which trans kids can
Speaker 1: can live in Texas. Like, yep, they'll be able to
Speaker 1: live in some of the cities for a while at least,
Speaker 1: well and even even in the cities. Right, it's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe the the A doesn't prosecute, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that CPS can't just can't investigate you, And like
Speaker 1: that's that's gonna be really traumatic, a lot of legal
Speaker 1: harassment because like DFPS cannot remove any child from their
Speaker 1: parents or guardians without a court order, and no court
Speaker 1: in Texas or anywhere in the country has yet found
Speaker 1: gender affirming care to be considered child abuse. So it
Speaker 1: has not happened yet, but they sure wanted to happen.
Speaker 1: And this is these are the next these are the
Speaker 1: next steps that can make it happen. Right, They are
Speaker 1: trying to get there um with this like incremental like
Speaker 1: these incremental things, you know, starting off with like legal
Speaker 1: interpretations and the law. Eventually they would want to change
Speaker 1: the law just to reflect this opinion, right, Like they
Speaker 1: want this to happen. They're just they're trying to slowly, slowly,
Speaker 1: slowly get at it um and it needs to be
Speaker 1: pushed back upon because yeah, any any slow incremental thing
Speaker 1: that they're going to try to do to make it
Speaker 1: basically be impossible to live as trans in Texas, the
Speaker 1: UH and lots of other states as well. It's not
Speaker 1: just it's not just Texas. There's things like this happening
Speaker 1: across all of the United States basically, especially especially you know,
Speaker 1: portion portions, portions of the South. Um. And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it does play into this kind of overall in the
Speaker 1: past five years, you know, once they lost the gay
Speaker 1: marriage issue, they're like, Okay, the next line of defense
Speaker 1: for these people is making it be impossible to be trans.
Speaker 1: So it is that it's like the new that's the
Speaker 1: new thing they're gonna be really focusing on. And we've
Speaker 1: seen so many, so many new bills against against like
Speaker 1: being trans over the course of the past five years. Again,
Speaker 1: it's it is more so putting into writing the things
Speaker 1: that have been always kind of unconscious bigotry or even
Speaker 1: concis bigotry, but it's putting that into actual stone and
Speaker 1: making it like cemented. Um. You know, just at just
Speaker 1: at the start of this year, there was new restrictions
Speaker 1: put in place pro tectas is transgender student athletes playing
Speaker 1: on K through twelve school sports teams UM that that
Speaker 1: went into effect on January eighteenth. It was it was
Speaker 1: a house built twenty five authored by Representative Valerie Swanson.
Speaker 1: UM requires student athletes to complete in interslastic competition to
Speaker 1: play on sports teams that correspond with the sex listed
Speaker 1: on their birth certificate at or near their time of birth,
Speaker 1: which means that the legislation went further than the previous
Speaker 1: rules from the University of Slastic League UM, which governs
Speaker 1: the school sports in Texas, in which the students gender
Speaker 1: is determined by their birth certificate. It but that that
Speaker 1: can also be legally modified, like you can change these
Speaker 1: texts assigned at birth on on on your birth certificate.
Speaker 1: The new ruling is that it needs to be it
Speaker 1: needs to match the one that it was at or
Speaker 1: near your time of birth. So again, like they're finding
Speaker 1: all these little, these little small like things to like
Speaker 1: pry um that just makes things overall be harder to
Speaker 1: live in um. And at this point, like ten ten
Speaker 1: other states have put in very similar laws relating to
Speaker 1: like relating to to school sports and like bathroom bills,
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's the it's the
Speaker 1: same thing that authoritarians always do, which is they're just
Speaker 1: kind of edging further and further and and continuing to
Speaker 1: proceed as they do not meet resistance, and the goal
Speaker 1: is to make it illegal and impossible to exist as
Speaker 1: a transgender person in society. You know. Part of what
Speaker 1: they're doing with it with the wording of how this
Speaker 1: change in Texas has been announced as they're trying to
Speaker 1: frame being trans is a contagion that threatens children. And
Speaker 1: step one of that under the is going proceeding under
Speaker 1: the ages if we are protecting children by making these
Speaker 1: kind of surgeries and stuff illegal. But the steps beyond
Speaker 1: that are eventually banning and restricting the ability of trans
Speaker 1: people to be around children and eventually be in civil
Speaker 1: society at all because they're a threat to children. That
Speaker 1: that that's the logical procession of the arguments that they're making.
Speaker 1: And I think they're proceeding in a fairly um um
Speaker 1: logical way in terms of achieving that as a goal,
Speaker 1: and they're not going to stop until they are stopped
Speaker 1: by probably force, if anything stops it. At this point,
Speaker 1: that's that's what it's going to have to be, because
Speaker 1: the local government has realized that that's how you get
Speaker 1: elected because you can't you can fix the power grid
Speaker 1: in Texas, you can't provide people with anything that makes
Speaker 1: their lives easier, but you can hurt trans people. UM.
Speaker 1: And Republicans are are are always down with that. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's this thing fascists to where they
Speaker 1: introduce a false crisis. They introduce a false crisis that
Speaker 1: they can actually take steps to to, you know, um,
Speaker 1: make changes about. But all that ends up doing is
Speaker 1: hurting more of the population. It doesn't actually solve any
Speaker 1: issue that actually hurts people. UM. It's it's one of
Speaker 1: the core things in the fascist playbook. And I it's
Speaker 1: even in the States where there aren't just like blanket
Speaker 1: bands on kids being able to participate in sports teams. Um,
Speaker 1: there's other horrifying things happening. Um Like. In the beginning
Speaker 1: of February, it came out that the Utah Republicans propose
Speaker 1: as commission to analyze trans kids bodies. Um, you're talking aboulicans,
Speaker 1: the first of its kind anti transit sports bill that
Speaker 1: would form a commission to determine a student athletes eligibility
Speaker 1: on a case by case basis. The commission would have
Speaker 1: authority to establish a baseline range for various attributes including height, weight,
Speaker 1: body mass, wingspan, hiptoony ratio another physical characteristics affected by
Speaker 1: puberty bearing trans athletes um who do not fall within
Speaker 1: the established limits to from from participating engendered sports. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, asking like a government appointed panel to analyze
Speaker 1: the bodies of transminers. It does sound like a giant
Speaker 1: recipe for disaster. Um. And there is some even more
Speaker 1: like horrifying details. The bill would render the commission quote
Speaker 1: immune from suit like lawsuits with respect to all acts
Speaker 1: done and actions taken in good faith in carrying out
Speaker 1: their purposes. Uh. So, yeah, you can't sue anybody for
Speaker 1: what happens under the guise of this commission. So yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just gonna be investigating trans youth bodies and yep,
Speaker 1: you can't. There's no lawsuits allowed. Let's let's let's let's
Speaker 1: let's give the let's give the trans child abuse uh
Speaker 1: phrenology panel, just immunity from lawsuits, Like, yeah, qualified extend
Speaker 1: qualified immunity to citizens hurting the group of people that, uh,
Speaker 1: we don't think are human, Like, this isn't the only
Speaker 1: way place we're going to see that logic extended towards
Speaker 1: You're already seeing it in places like Louisiana with these
Speaker 1: bills to make it legal to kill protesters if you
Speaker 1: feel threatened. Um, like, it's it's the same playbook, and
Speaker 1: it's going to be the same playbook because there's no
Speaker 1: way to fight it without some sort of force. You
Speaker 1: can't vote these people away. The courts are packed for
Speaker 1: the time being. There's there's only there's not a solution
Speaker 1: that isn't some kind of force. Now we can discuss,
Speaker 1: is it like the force of of getting the Feds
Speaker 1: to intervene or whatever, But like, there's no there's no
Speaker 1: solution that is just like democratic, I mean, and like
Speaker 1: Biden's office made a statement on this recent Texas like
Speaker 1: a law opinion interpretation thing, and they're like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: seem was bad anyway, good luck? Could you like yeah,
Speaker 1: oh cool, Yeah, it's that that meme of like the
Speaker 1: person drowning with their hand out and they high five years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what's happening. And I think the situation is like
Speaker 1: is it's worse than that too, because you know, in
Speaker 1: the past couple of weeks, what's something we started seeing
Speaker 1: as we started seeing democratic journals and democratic strategists openly
Speaker 1: talking about how we need to make assessions to the
Speaker 1: right and the culture wars Like okay, well what does
Speaker 1: that mean is like, yeah, throw pro trans concert to
Speaker 1: the bus right. Yeah, because they can't vote, they're already freaks,
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're the easiest person to pick away at
Speaker 1: the rights for UM And because overall, just in the
Speaker 1: past year alone, more than a hundred bills designed to
Speaker 1: restrict the rights of transgender people have been introduced at
Speaker 1: least three three states. Um, it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a record breaking year for anti trans legislation that's been
Speaker 1: that has been introduced. UM. In Arkansas, the state legislator
Speaker 1: recently banned gender affirming treatment for minors um, including hormotherapy
Speaker 1: like like puberty blockers and similar treatments. Again, this is
Speaker 1: the thing that like that could not happen for a
Speaker 1: long time anyway, just because like culturally and medically doctors
Speaker 1: would never do that. But now at the point where
Speaker 1: that started starting to change, it is this. It is
Speaker 1: this like a reactive, reactive effect that people are doing.
Speaker 1: And like now now that now that these cogs are turning,
Speaker 1: people are putting the massive brakes on it and putting
Speaker 1: the thing that used to be just unsaid now into
Speaker 1: actual legal writing. So now this actually is like just
Speaker 1: not allowed as opposed to it just not happening because
Speaker 1: doctors were assholes. So yeah, in Arkansas you can't even
Speaker 1: receive hormone treatment or beauty blockers. The bill was called
Speaker 1: the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act. Yeah, so referring to
Speaker 1: medical treatment of one of affirming one's gender identity as experimentation, um,
Speaker 1: which is not great. I mean that is that is
Speaker 1: how I view it for myself because I like being
Speaker 1: a freak. But as an overall trend, that is that
Speaker 1: is horrible, Like that is a horrible way to to phrase,
Speaker 1: this type of thing for a lot of people, especially
Speaker 1: the people who who know specifically what gender they want
Speaker 1: to be and and are like that is that affects
Speaker 1: them so differently. I mean, I'm I'm lucky enough just
Speaker 1: to be more are gender queer ish um And but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all of these bills are gonna affect so many
Speaker 1: people in different ways, and it's it's real bad. Like
Speaker 1: shortly after the Arkansas bill prohibiting transforming medical practices was
Speaker 1: signed into law last April, reports of suicide attempts among
Speaker 1: trans youth in the state. Uh, we're going up. Um.
Speaker 1: And the doctor Michelle Hutchinson, who runs the largest provider
Speaker 1: of Homer therapy in the state, called the ap that
Speaker 1: just just into her office alone during April she saw
Speaker 1: an uptick in suicide attempts from from from trans youth
Speaker 1: and this is this is it's gonna keep happening, and
Speaker 1: like there is you can't trust a lot to stop it.
Speaker 1: Like the Arkansas Governor um uh Asa Hutchinson, a Republican,
Speaker 1: did veto this bill, citing potentially dangerous consequences for trans
Speaker 1: youth and telling it that telling reporters that it was
Speaker 1: a vast government overreach and a byproduct of the culture
Speaker 1: war in America, and her veto was vetoed by the
Speaker 1: state legislator, so like it's going to be a looping,
Speaker 1: endless problem of legal issues. So it's there's there's needs
Speaker 1: to be other things. Like I've been on Twitter the
Speaker 1: past week just watch looking at all the go fund
Speaker 1: means by parents of trends kids in Texas who are
Speaker 1: trying to move out of state so that their kid
Speaker 1: can receive like hormone treatment and just like be allowed
Speaker 1: to be a person without being harassed by protective services
Speaker 1: and teachers and the school system. And it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's horrifying, like watching all these people like asking for
Speaker 1: help so they can move out of state so that
Speaker 1: they can let their kid be just a kid. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's it is, it is really rough, um. And
Speaker 1: a big part of why, part of why it's so
Speaker 1: horrifying is that like, obviously, if you're in that situation,
Speaker 1: you can get your kid out there, of course, but
Speaker 1: it also means the more people who move out of
Speaker 1: places like that, the less resources there will be in
Speaker 1: the future for kids whose parents can't get them out,
Speaker 1: you know, support there will be the less and like
Speaker 1: there is just there is no real escape from it,
Speaker 1: like you cannot get fully away. It is that you
Speaker 1: cannot ever fully escape that type of fascist um thought
Speaker 1: and creep within the state legislator and specifically around you
Speaker 1: know how it's going to affect different different classes of minorities. UM,
Speaker 1: I will direct people if you want to kind of
Speaker 1: learn more about this sort of thing and if you
Speaker 1: you know, can you can find some some stuff around that.
Speaker 1: There's an organization Texas called TENT which is the UH.
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure I say it right.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's it's the Texas Educational Network, the trans
Speaker 1: Educational Network of Texas. UM. It's one one of those,
Speaker 1: but it is. It is a. It is a It
Speaker 1: has a whole bunch of like mental health resources, guides
Speaker 1: for trans youth in Texas for how to make things
Speaker 1: slightly less shitty. Um and yeah, they do, they do
Speaker 1: some advocacy work in Texas. There's also a Quality Texas
Speaker 1: which is another organization that does that does assistance for
Speaker 1: trance under people look in schools, um and just you know,
Speaker 1: try again trying to make life slightly less, slightly less shitty. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of the last the last thing I wrote
Speaker 1: is the is just fix your hearts or die, which
Speaker 1: is the kind of overall overall message that you can
Speaker 1: really only give to people who want to do this
Speaker 1: type of thing, is that, yeah, there's really no arguing
Speaker 1: with them. Um, you have to either they need to
Speaker 1: fix their hearts or not be around anymore. Like they're
Speaker 1: they're just like whether that be like just secluded to
Speaker 1: your part of society, but it's like it it needs
Speaker 1: to be actually like resisted upon because these people are
Speaker 1: never going to back down on their own. The other
Speaker 1: part of the problem here again is just with how
Speaker 1: you know, like this this is sort of kind of
Speaker 1: this is an inherent problem that you have with democracies, right,
Speaker 1: with with democracies and in civil rights words, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have a group people who aren't extremely well minority, and
Speaker 1: you know, and you and and and this gets compounded
Speaker 1: by the fact that you're dealing with extremely small minority
Speaker 1: of people and you know, you're already dealing with like
Speaker 1: the you know, the thing that is called democracy, right
Speaker 1: is only participated in by an extremely small number of people,
Speaker 1: especially when you get you know, especially when you get
Speaker 1: down to the state level. Of the local level, right,
Speaker 1: like very few people are actually voting in these things.
Speaker 1: That people who are voting in these things like want
Speaker 1: trans people to die. And so you know, you you
Speaker 1: you you need, you need some kind of other solution
Speaker 1: to actually secure to secure civil rights, because there's just
Speaker 1: there's there literally are not enough trans people and there
Speaker 1: are not enough people who support them and care enough
Speaker 1: to do it and also are in these areas to
Speaker 1: prevent this through just the normal like vote blue. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I keep seeing this with with Texas. Everyone keeps
Speaker 1: saying it's like, wow, Okay, we just gotta vote blue.
Speaker 1: And it's like people have been like people have been
Speaker 1: saying this about stuff in Texas for as long as
Speaker 1: I've been alive. It has never happened. Ever, like it
Speaker 1: hasn't my entire life. They keep saying, is it keeps
Speaker 1: not happening and kids keep dying, and yeah, there has
Speaker 1: there has to be something else, because yeah, Texas, Texas
Speaker 1: has been labor laboriously constructed as a political entity to
Speaker 1: sty me all of your liberal dreams of of uh
Speaker 1: it going purple um and and it will continue to
Speaker 1: be for the foreseeable future. Like you cannot this is
Speaker 1: not a voting issue. This is a I mean, like
Speaker 1: I said, some kind of force is going to have
Speaker 1: to be used to oppose these people. They're not they're
Speaker 1: not there. They wouldn't listen if you voted them out,
Speaker 1: you know, and like and they do for like they
Speaker 1: themselves do for is you look at all the stuff, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and even like regular people like this whole
Speaker 1: thing of like, yes, you should like report your neighbors
Speaker 1: that you see if you if you see a kid
Speaker 1: who doesn't look like a regular normal borings this child that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should report them. But you should go harass everyone
Speaker 1: who works in your school board so that they ban
Speaker 1: all books referencing anything related to being queer. It's like
Speaker 1: they do take steps to actually hurt other individuals. Um
Speaker 1: and they they can do it through these means that
Speaker 1: you know, they don't necessarily have to always punch you
Speaker 1: in the face, but they can sure direct the state
Speaker 1: to send agents to your house to to like to intimidate,
Speaker 1: harass you and threaten to threaten to take away your children.
Speaker 1: Um Or they can you know, if you're a therapist
Speaker 1: or a teacher, you can be fired or put in
Speaker 1: jail for failing to report, you know, kids who don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to their Christian supremacist ideas of like traditional general rules. Um,
Speaker 1: because again it's it's it's not even all it's like,
Speaker 1: again there's not tons of trans people in general. Usually
Speaker 1: it's like, this is just gonna affect a lot of
Speaker 1: CIS kids as well, who maybe don't want to who don't,
Speaker 1: who don't, who don't, who who just want to dress cool.
Speaker 1: Like it's like it's it's, it's it doesn't even just
Speaker 1: it is is it does affect everybody. Um, So it
Speaker 1: is it's a it's a it's a it's a horrible
Speaker 1: it's a horrible thing that is not even like there's
Speaker 1: no escape from it, and it will affect you, whether
Speaker 1: or not your trends or not. And I think it's
Speaker 1: important also to talk about the mandatory reporting stuff because
Speaker 1: even with managery reporting in general, like even like I've
Speaker 1: I've had things where I was in a school and
Speaker 1: my school essentially turned into a police state because there
Speaker 1: are people who I couldn't talk to about things because
Speaker 1: of things that happened to me that if if if
Speaker 1: if any of them heard it, and one time someone
Speaker 1: did and had to literally beg them, like on my knees,
Speaker 1: not to report me, right, not not to report the
Speaker 1: thing that happened to me, because if you know, because
Speaker 1: because if if if that had been heard, like and
Speaker 1: if that had actually been reported, it would have you know,
Speaker 1: it would have started a enormous process and I would
Speaker 1: have had to you know, like the I I would
Speaker 1: have had to you know, deal with this like this
Speaker 1: is an institutionalized thing, and that like the absolute terror
Speaker 1: that this kind of stuff creates where you have to
Speaker 1: you know, you have to watch every single word that
Speaker 1: you say around all of the adults in your life
Speaker 1: because if you don't do it, they are going to
Speaker 1: report you. It is like the level of psychological terror
Speaker 1: you are inflicting on people is horrific. And then that
Speaker 1: in and of itself just is a cost like and
Speaker 1: and it is something that is going to contribute to
Speaker 1: trans kids killing themselves. And it's it's just that simple.
Speaker 1: In that place, it is such a life and death issue,
Speaker 1: so you have to really be forced to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes into like it's very like ontological issue as well, um,
Speaker 1: and it deals with so many things around the nature
Speaker 1: of like being and what you're allowed to be inside
Speaker 1: as this societal construct. Um, and they're just trying to
Speaker 1: make that impossible for so many people and make everything
Speaker 1: so limited in their very narrow version of what they
Speaker 1: want the world to be that makes them feel comfortable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then and you know, because because it's not it's
Speaker 1: not what the world is, they have to use violence
Speaker 1: to do it. Yeah. So because it's stuck, because that
Speaker 1: is the rule that that is, that is the rules
Speaker 1: that we're playing by. That is the game we're playing. Yeah, my, my,
Speaker 1: only the the the default response to be for those
Speaker 1: people is yeah, they need to they need to fix
Speaker 1: their hearts or die and just get out of the way.
Speaker 1: And because it's that's they already have that for us,
Speaker 1: except they don't want us to fix their hearts. They
Speaker 1: just want us to die. So like we are way
Speaker 1: more empathetic than they are, um, because they can just
Speaker 1: not be transphobic. They cannot, they can they can just
Speaker 1: not do these things. Um. But if they're gonna keep
Speaker 1: doubling down, then yeah, well that's if if you want
Speaker 1: to play by their rules, then we need to start
Speaker 1: playing by their rules because they're not going to have
Speaker 1: if they're not going to change the rules. Then that
Speaker 1: is the that is the game that they want us
Speaker 1: to do. Um And again like actual like I want
Speaker 1: to I always I always every episoce like this, I
Speaker 1: always want to kind of end with like here are
Speaker 1: some steps that you can like take that are relatively easy.
Speaker 1: Seen it's it's it's challenging for these types of some
Speaker 1: sorts of things like like there yes, there is things
Speaker 1: you can do around you know, getting like making sure
Speaker 1: you're aware of what bills are being talked about in
Speaker 1: your local like your local area, contacting representatives to to
Speaker 1: do stuff, going to going to you know, either whether
Speaker 1: their school board meetings or stuff. But like a lot
Speaker 1: of the electoralist type of ideas around this feels always
Speaker 1: so inadequate, um and it feels always so fake. Um
Speaker 1: that you know, it's it's it is so much it
Speaker 1: feels a lot easier to that to like, you know,
Speaker 1: figure out different ways to actually help actual trans people
Speaker 1: in your area, um and give trans people money um
Speaker 1: and like because like that is often can be actually
Speaker 1: have a way more positive effects at least effects that
Speaker 1: are like observable. But like, but there are also ways
Speaker 1: to stop this type of legislation, Like there is that
Speaker 1: there is there, there is ways to do that, and
Speaker 1: I will I'll try to get into more of that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff as well once we get you know,
Speaker 1: our our week long of stuff about the war on
Speaker 1: transpol Um that will be upcoming probably sometime in this
Speaker 1: in this next month. Yeah. Um. Remember, folks, if anybody
Speaker 1: ever suggests doing something for children that isn't providing them
Speaker 1: with food or shelter, you should probably hit that person
Speaker 1: because they're probably trying to fund something up for somebody.
Speaker 1: It's nearly always. Don't trust anyone who says there we
Speaker 1: need to do something to protect children that they're lying
Speaker 1: to you. As a rule, they're lying to you. Um
Speaker 1: anyway you guys, Um, how's the boy that's Star Wars?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love there's the There's the there's the
Speaker 1: the Obi WANs coming out. That'll be good. I am
Speaker 1: excited for the Obi WANs because it Speaking of speaking
Speaker 1: speaking of you and McGregor, a few months ago, I
Speaker 1: saw the film Velvet gold Mine starring you and McGregor,
Speaker 1: which is a wonderful like pseudo fictional film but about
Speaker 1: kind of the glam Rock era inside Britain's very very gay,
Speaker 1: very a whole bunch of a whole bunch of very
Speaker 1: good twink action. And there was one scene where, um,
Speaker 1: you McGregor's character, he's he's like, he's kind of based
Speaker 1: off one of the one of those types of music. People.
Speaker 1: I forget, I forget which one it is. Um, I think, people,
Speaker 1: I think, I think, I think. I think he's playing
Speaker 1: like a kind of a version of that. But there's
Speaker 1: one scene where he's doing a performance where he takes
Speaker 1: all of his clothes off on stage and you get
Speaker 1: to see you and McGregor's dick. Um, and yeah, you do.
Speaker 1: So if if people, if people want to see a
Speaker 1: kind of David Bowie esque film starring you and McGregor,
Speaker 1: it has. It has like a weird gay email, Christian
Speaker 1: bale as as a twink, and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other really really solved stuff. I would recommend watching Vella
Speaker 1: Guild Mine. It has, it has a lot of great stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: and you do very early in the film get to
Speaker 1: see you and McGregor's penis just flapping around on stage,
Speaker 1: and it is. It's pretty good. It's speaking of movies
Speaker 1: where you see a famous person's dick, if you want
Speaker 1: to see another famous Penis. The movie Galaxy Quest contains
Speaker 1: several shots of Tim Allen dong. I don't want to
Speaker 1: see Tim Allen's hanging wang. As someone who's seen both
Speaker 1: Galaxy Quest and Vellla gould Mine and who appreciates both films,
Speaker 1: Dearly You and You and McGregor is miles hotter than
Speaker 1: Tim Allen's dong. Shot is not hot. It's not pleasing.
Speaker 1: It is not supposed to be. He has hungover in
Speaker 1: his like bathrobe leaning over. But if you want, if
Speaker 1: you if you want to see if Rain or Fastbenders,
Speaker 1: Dick Germany and Autumn, Okay, that that's w I could,
Speaker 1: I could, I could do that very weird movie. However, alright, alright,
Speaker 1: if you were in terms of in terms of actionable
Speaker 1: things make you feel better, everyone go watch fell a
Speaker 1: gold Mine because it has some day It has some
Speaker 1: very good gender play, has wonderful yeah, wonderful off around gender,
Speaker 1: wonderfu stuff around gayness, and yeah film from like the
Speaker 1: nineties where there was like lots of gay fucking and
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, how is this filmmate in the nineties,
Speaker 1: Because it is a whole bunch of like big name
Speaker 1: actors now who were like unknown at the time, all
Speaker 1: being gay and sucking each other and you're like, holy
Speaker 1: sh it. Alright, so yo, that is the uh, that's
Speaker 1: what we got that. There's your action items. Action items.
Speaker 1: Go watch, Go watch Velvet gold Mine. Make everyone you
Speaker 1: know watch Velvet gold Mine and I'll thank you. Feel
Speaker 1: good about gender. Take screen grabs of Ellan McGregor's dick,
Speaker 1: make Berner Twitter accounts and just start posting. Just just
Speaker 1: get it out there, get it out there. The world
Speaker 1: needs to know. Throw some of Tim Allen's dick out
Speaker 1: there too. Don't be don't be choosy. Stick it all
Speaker 1: all the dicks, all right, that's gonna be the day.
Speaker 1: That's that's the show. Yeah, welcome to it could happen
Speaker 1: here a podcast that is uh you know this this this,
Speaker 1: This is the podcast about the world falling apart. The
Speaker 1: world is in fact falling apart extremely quickly right now.
Speaker 1: And I'm I'm your host, Christopher, and I am here
Speaker 1: today to talk about an immense occupying army with an
Speaker 1: extensive record of torture and extradicial killings. I am referring,
Speaker 1: of course, to the Chicago Police Department and with with
Speaker 1: me to talk about yet more just absolute horrors that
Speaker 1: this department has committed here and worldwide. I have Raven,
Speaker 1: who is a journalist of Chicago Free Media. Raven, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show and thank you for joining us. Hi,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Yeah, how how how have
Speaker 1: you been holding up in these uh oh boy things
Speaker 1: are go and bad? Yeah, you know we uh we
Speaker 1: have discussed doing this interview earlier this week. And I
Speaker 1: don't think either of us expected uh Russia to invade
Speaker 1: Ukraine last night. Yea was yeah and that wasn't even
Speaker 1: the yeah, it was the convoys about you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is a this is a time of chaos
Speaker 1: and death. Um. But I think it's important to understand
Speaker 1: that he has always has always been a time of
Speaker 1: chaos and death and yeah, and I think especially where
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police Department is concerned. Um, we've talked about
Speaker 1: we've we've talked about some of their more famous crimes
Speaker 1: on the show. But I wanted to have ravenon to
Speaker 1: talk about a police killing that I don't think got
Speaker 1: that much attention. I mean not even he gus I
Speaker 1: got a lot of in Chicago. But even as said
Speaker 1: of Chicago, I don't think it's as well known as
Speaker 1: some of the other police killings, and that's the killing
Speaker 1: of Rickiya Boyd. Um. Yeah, do you want to walk
Speaker 1: us through how basically what happened the night that uh
Speaker 1: don't I servant killed Rickuet Boyd? And yeah, we can
Speaker 1: start from there. Sure, sure, I mean there's some context
Speaker 1: here for sure about sort of the the way we
Speaker 1: ignore the murders of black women specifically. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: Rickia Boyd was was murdered after sort of like the
Speaker 1: first wave of of national Black Lives Matter protests. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't like it wasn't on the radar, right that
Speaker 1: people weren't talking about police killing black people. Um, but there,
Speaker 1: you know, there is this long standing issue of course,
Speaker 1: was like the killings of black women specifically not getting
Speaker 1: as much attention, right, And this was just such a horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible incident that, like, I mean, looking at the details,
Speaker 1: even even though I live here and I was like
Speaker 1: around when it happened, and some of our other you know,
Speaker 1: the other journalists and are collective covered the protests and
Speaker 1: and and the the court drama and everything, it still
Speaker 1: just blows my mind. Um, the way this happened, and um,
Speaker 1: you know. Ultimately, the most important thing to take away
Speaker 1: from it is that her family never saw a justice.
Speaker 1: He walked away. He walked away from the incident and
Speaker 1: then went on to start training police in Latin America,
Speaker 1: which we can talk about also, so so, not only
Speaker 1: did this, did the Chicago police officer who was off
Speaker 1: duty with an unregistered gun murder and innocent twenty two
Speaker 1: year old black women hang out with her friends in
Speaker 1: a park. He then got a job with like a
Speaker 1: tactical training institute to travel to Honduras and train police there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we can. We I think yeah we We
Speaker 1: definitely will be getting to the sort of international ankle
Speaker 1: of this. But yeah, the explorer of American policing essentially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I guess for people who aren't familiar with what happened,
Speaker 1: UM can can cantu walk through that? Yeah? So so
Speaker 1: serving showed up UM at a park with an unregistered gun.
Speaker 1: Um he you know, witnesses reported that he smelled like
Speaker 1: alcohol that night. He may have been drinking. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that that was ever verified, but certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprising. Um showed up at this park to complain
Speaker 1: about a group of people making noise, and oneever key
Speaker 1: Avoids friends approached the car with a cell phone in
Speaker 1: his hand, which servant then would go on to say,
Speaker 1: I thought was a gun and started firing shots and
Speaker 1: shot Rocky avoiding the Um. He wasn't on duty, he
Speaker 1: wasn't actively policing. This was totally totally outside of the
Speaker 1: realm of duty incident, right, yeah. Um. And no weapon
Speaker 1: was ever recovered from the scene, nothing like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was there was no in no universe was there
Speaker 1: any justification for this. Right, It just defies, it defies
Speaker 1: logic like that that it could even happen this way. Um.
Speaker 1: And after it happened, you know, so not only did
Speaker 1: he kill Rickie avoid in this park, um, but after
Speaker 1: it happened, there was there was just a lot of
Speaker 1: like there were a lot of misteps in in the
Speaker 1: justice system. Um. And it has been I think, I
Speaker 1: want to say, like seventeen years at that point since
Speaker 1: a Chicago cop had actually been charged with with murder. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: so it has been a long time since there had
Speaker 1: been even any accountability. And um, basically the prosecutor there
Speaker 1: was something called a directed verdict, where the prosecutor essentially
Speaker 1: under charged him intentionally or we think it was intentionally
Speaker 1: um with with like reckless conduct and manslaughter, and the
Speaker 1: judge tossed the case because the judge was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't even meet the criteria for for reckless conduct
Speaker 1: because it was clearly first degree murder, and then he
Speaker 1: couldn't be tried again because of rules surrounding double jeopardy,
Speaker 1: which is like just a it's just like what like
Speaker 1: it's it's such like I was reading this like it's paffling,
Speaker 1: Like it's like this whole thing is like it's it's
Speaker 1: very like very very seemed very clearly have to fail.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, like we're we're gonna we're gonna intentionally
Speaker 1: have a case will reach right this guy with things
Speaker 1: that you that you just you cannot convictim of because
Speaker 1: like again it's it's it's not it's not like manslaughter.
Speaker 1: He just he drove up and shot her, right, He
Speaker 1: very very clearly with intention shot Ricky Boyd. And it
Speaker 1: very much seems like they planned this out that they
Speaker 1: were like and you know this is we talked about
Speaker 1: this on on their last CPD episode, Like prosecutors collaborate
Speaker 1: with judges and the police constantly because that's just how
Speaker 1: the thing called the justice system works. Um. But like yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is like a parcripulally egregious example of them
Speaker 1: just setting up the case that they know that they
Speaker 1: just knew would fail exactly. And this is the same
Speaker 1: prosecutor who was ousted in the aftermath of the Laca
Speaker 1: McDonald murder. Um. You know, there were there were very
Speaker 1: large protests. Then there was a hashtag going on social media.
Speaker 1: Her name is in need to Alvarez. So the hashtag
Speaker 1: was by Anita Yeah, and and it was Anita Alphres.
Speaker 1: Like I think people outside the city probably didn't I
Speaker 1: don't know about much about this, but like this Anita
Speaker 1: Alvarez was like so hated that like like every like
Speaker 1: like everyone in the city basically worked together a runner
Speaker 1: out like you had, like you had like liberals and
Speaker 1: anarchist groups like working together like like like everyone in
Speaker 1: this say like all like the the the electoralists, nanci electoralists,
Speaker 1: like the people who just like have no politics basically whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Like it was it was just sort of it was
Speaker 1: just really incredible like coalition because she like just the
Speaker 1: stuff Anita Alfarez is doing is just so egregious that
Speaker 1: everyone was able to find a way to put aside
Speaker 1: their differences on just the logic of get her out
Speaker 1: right right. But you know, to know again, that was
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the Lakoha McDonald's shooting, and you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it didn't what happened with Rickia Boyd wasn't
Speaker 1: enough for those large protests. And and this is not
Speaker 1: to like Denni grade or demean the people who did
Speaker 1: come out in protests, because it's still like, like there
Speaker 1: were still protests, don't get me wrong, Like people showed
Speaker 1: up for Rakiya. But the difference in people showing up
Speaker 1: for Rakia and people showing up for black men being shot,
Speaker 1: you know, like that that's something that black women have
Speaker 1: drawn attention to you. You know, they're like, why don't
Speaker 1: you care when we get murdered? Um? And it's just
Speaker 1: it's become this sort of um, you know, ongoing chance,
Speaker 1: Like if you go to any Chicago racial justice protests,
Speaker 1: you will hear people say, we do this for Lakwan,
Speaker 1: we do this for Rakiya, because it's just one of
Speaker 1: those names that, for whatever reason, based on what was
Speaker 1: going on in the media at the time, just like
Speaker 1: didn't make its way outside of Chicago very much. Um,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing a similar sort of situation right now.
Speaker 1: Is what happened with the mirrorlock in Minneapolis. Right Like,
Speaker 1: that was something where I think a lot of us thought, Okay, wow,
Speaker 1: this this is gonna this is going to explode. You know,
Speaker 1: this is such just a horrible miscarriage of justice, Like
Speaker 1: how could this happen? Um, surely there will be massive
Speaker 1: protests again, you know, something like that. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, Minneapolis was out there. We had like some
Speaker 1: small actions here in Chicago but didn't really catch fire,
Speaker 1: so to say. I mean, I think that there's always
Speaker 1: sort of cycles of this where you know that there's
Speaker 1: cycles where you get these massive protesting cycles that you
Speaker 1: don't but you know, And I think this is one
Speaker 1: of the things with that you can look at with
Speaker 1: the Cube Boy too, where it's it's like, regardless of
Speaker 1: whether people are in the streets or not, the killing continues.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I think that's just just sort of
Speaker 1: that's an extremely grim thing to live with, but that
Speaker 1: that just you know that that that's just what the
Speaker 1: police is, right and until you know, until they are
Speaker 1: actually stopped, You're just going to keep getting this cycle
Speaker 1: of I don't even know if select selective outrage is
Speaker 1: the right word, but you get these cycles of people
Speaker 1: who get murdered and there's this protests and people who
Speaker 1: get murdered and get forgotten and yeah, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and it really does seem to be kind of you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of layers to it, Like like obviously
Speaker 1: the misogyny against black women is part of it, and
Speaker 1: I think the media just you know, is a part
Speaker 1: of it too. Like I mean, I'm a part of
Speaker 1: the media in a sense, but we're alternative media, so
Speaker 1: it's a little bit different. But you know, like there
Speaker 1: are there are choices made behind closed doors about what
Speaker 1: stories to follow and and amplify. And um, I will say,
Speaker 1: you know what I will say is I think because
Speaker 1: of what happened in I think there's a lot more
Speaker 1: scrutiny on Chicago police now, at least more mainstream scrutiny
Speaker 1: of them than there was back in when Rikiya was murdered. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say that we're doing enough because
Speaker 1: we have, because we absolutely are not. But I I
Speaker 1: think did in some way, you know, push things just
Speaker 1: like a little bit further if that makes sense that
Speaker 1: you know, there are some more liberal mainstream types of
Speaker 1: people talking about the horrors of Chicago policing and and
Speaker 1: all of that. But you know, when it comes to
Speaker 1: Chicago police, like I just they're they're apparatus is so massive,
Speaker 1: like not just from like the funding they get, but
Speaker 1: like their media and pr you know, the prosecutors and
Speaker 1: the judges like you mentioned are absolutely part of the
Speaker 1: policing apparatus. Like they're not separate, right, It's prosecutors are cops.
Speaker 1: And we have a prosecutor for a mayor and she
Speaker 1: is a cop like like and and you know it
Speaker 1: was black youth who tried so hard to speak up
Speaker 1: about this before she was elected and and said like
Speaker 1: Lori Lightfoot is a cop, and people didn't listen to them.
Speaker 1: And that's where we're at now, where we have this
Speaker 1: this prosecutor for a mayor who's because of her background,
Speaker 1: like she can only view things through a punitive lens,
Speaker 1: Like her answer to everything is just punishment. How can
Speaker 1: we how can we punish people? Yeah? The only things
Speaker 1: she was trying to do recently what she wanted to
Speaker 1: do these like basically this measure where they called it
Speaker 1: like an anti gang funding thing, but it was basically
Speaker 1: just like if there's a group of people, you can
Speaker 1: just take the cops and just take money from them.
Speaker 1: And it was like it was just an incredible things
Speaker 1: like it was it was you know, part of what's
Speaker 1: going on here is that I've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but like Lori Lightfoot is you know, at the time,
Speaker 1: I think people voted for her partially because they just
Speaker 1: didn't listen and the North Siders were just like, oh hey,
Speaker 1: look it's Loria Lightfoot. But then you know, like part
Speaker 1: part of it was she she she ran as like
Speaker 1: the anti machine candidate, and it was like, no, she's
Speaker 1: just a cop. But like I think the just thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, like she she's like incredibly widely hated, like
Speaker 1: to the point where like you know, the Chicago City
Speaker 1: Council is like not notably a a anti police body,
Speaker 1: but like even the city council was like, you can't
Speaker 1: do this, Like then they you know, they actually blocked
Speaker 1: I think if if if, if I'm if I'm getting
Speaker 1: my my my facts right on this, Like I'm pretty
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they blocked life with reposal because it
Speaker 1: was just like, yeah, and that that's been one of
Speaker 1: the things that was like we've had a cop pool
Speaker 1: of like weird kind of like attempts to reign the
Speaker 1: CPD in, but they're not really happening because of like
Speaker 1: anti police sentiment. They're basically happening because the city council's
Speaker 1: feuding with a mayor. Weird. Yeah, and and you know,
Speaker 1: I've seen it, like it's it's she's such an god.
Speaker 1: I could the figure of Mayor lor lor lifebook. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just makes no sense, right because she's hated by
Speaker 1: people on the left, you know, who obviously are anti police. Thing,
Speaker 1: she's also hated by the police, ye, just like yeah,
Speaker 1: she I mean, if you go through any of the
Speaker 1: conservative like cop blogs and Twitter accounts, you know, Chicago
Speaker 1: police are very active on social media, right, which is
Speaker 1: you know, it's whole a whole thing in of itself.
Speaker 1: These people, you know, they shouldn't be pope broad asking
Speaker 1: the things on social media that they do. But she's
Speaker 1: universally hated by everyone at this point. Um, So you know,
Speaker 1: it's just been a really it's been a really tough
Speaker 1: couple of years for Chicago since the riots, especially because
Speaker 1: Chicago just the word has become so loaded in the
Speaker 1: national media, right, like it's become this this this racist
Speaker 1: boogeyman essentially for like, what what could happen to your
Speaker 1: city if if the woke mobs successfully defund police or
Speaker 1: you know whatever, which is completely at odds with reality
Speaker 1: because at no point have we defunded the police, Like
Speaker 1: they just keeps increasing. Yeah, like what what's what? What's
Speaker 1: their budget is? Like, like is it I want to
Speaker 1: say it's the total budget, but I think that's low.
Speaker 1: It's something like that. I mean it's billions of dollars,
Speaker 1: Like it's we're pumping billions of dollars into this standing
Speaker 1: army that is that is basically occupying of Trigo's budget
Speaker 1: goes to the police department, right, right, And you know
Speaker 1: all of that money could obviously be spent on other things,
Speaker 1: and and we know, like we know what reduces crime.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we could get into like the category
Speaker 1: of what even is a crime? Right, Like there are
Speaker 1: certainly lots of things that shouldn't be labeled crimes that
Speaker 1: are but we know that communities with resources don't have
Speaker 1: significant violent crime problems, Like we know that lifting people
Speaker 1: out of poverty and giving them opportunities and homes and
Speaker 1: all of these things, like we know that that reduces
Speaker 1: in our personal harm, and instead we just keep looking
Speaker 1: and everything through this lens of punishment and how punitive
Speaker 1: we can be. Yeah. Yeah, and it's been I don't know.
Speaker 1: The Chicago Police Department is just it's just an absolute
Speaker 1: horror show. Um. And it's a horror show. And and
Speaker 1: they're also like it's a horror show not just because
Speaker 1: of how evil they are, but also because they're incompetent, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you've got them doing all of these really bad
Speaker 1: things and then they also just like struggle to to
Speaker 1: cover up their crime, and then they're messing up like
Speaker 1: along the way at every step. Yeah, and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, they have the CPDS Like it's they
Speaker 1: have this kind of you know, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you exactly unique it is. But
Speaker 1: but I think going back to our sort of theory
Speaker 1: of like every police department has one thing that they're
Speaker 1: really good at it the CBD has this unique combination
Speaker 1: of like incompetence, torture, and crime that they do. That's
Speaker 1: like I think so, I think sets it apart from
Speaker 1: a lot of other UM police departments. I think that's
Speaker 1: a good place to sort of jump off into the
Speaker 1: second I guess part of the rickyed Boyd story, or
Speaker 1: really it seems to be the Ricked Boyd story. It's
Speaker 1: the story of Dante Servant, which is his role in
Speaker 1: essentially exporting American policing and the horrors of UM, the
Speaker 1: horrors of the American police system, the horrors of sort
Speaker 1: of American imperialism to other countries, because it is not
Speaker 1: enough that the CPD murders people here, They've also got
Speaker 1: to do it other places, right, right, And and so
Speaker 1: there was a there was a Chicago Reader piece written
Speaker 1: about this UM back in February. Servants not mentioned in it,
Speaker 1: but it was a really good story. I recommend people
Speaker 1: look it up because, you know, some of this research
Speaker 1: is not like my original research, right, it's it stems
Speaker 1: from the research that people with the Invisible Institute did.
Speaker 1: But essentially, you know, there are Chicago police officers, and
Speaker 1: there's one in particular. His name is Aaron Cunningham. He's
Speaker 1: the man who UM founded this Tactical Training Institute UM
Speaker 1: that go you know, they go abroad, like they go
Speaker 1: to different countries and and it's private, privately funded, so
Speaker 1: they claim to be working with with the says, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like weird gray area there where
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of oversight and nobody really knows,
Speaker 1: like are you getting federal money to do this? Are
Speaker 1: you just saying you are? Like, like what's the deal? Right?
Speaker 1: But the Cunningham was essentially like a crooked cop who
Speaker 1: funded this tactical training institute so that they go oversee
Speaker 1: to underresourced countries with underresourced police departments and train them
Speaker 1: and how to be police. They train them in crowd control,
Speaker 1: they train them in like narcotics and drug investigations, they
Speaker 1: train them in like gang warfare, you know, all of
Speaker 1: these things, right, And these are countries that have tremendous
Speaker 1: issues with like you know, outright warfare going on between
Speaker 1: gangs and the existing police forces. Right, So they're in
Speaker 1: desperate need of of of aid, of assistance, and and
Speaker 1: of course, like some of these conflicts that are going
Speaker 1: on stem from American imperialism to begin with, right, So
Speaker 1: it's like we caused the problems, then we're gonna come
Speaker 1: in and like send a bunch of cops over who,
Speaker 1: like you know, have extensive misconduct records in their in
Speaker 1: their home cities, and some of them have even just
Speaker 1: like murdered innocent women in the park. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: going to have them train your guys into how to
Speaker 1: be cops. Yeah, and and yeah, you know that that
Speaker 1: goes about as well as you would expect it to,
Speaker 1: which is one of one of the things that the
Speaker 1: reader piece talks about is so one of they these
Speaker 1: guys keep brought in to train a bunch of cops.
Speaker 1: Now Salvador after the Al SALVADORI police do a bunch
Speaker 1: of horrible massacres, and then they trained these cops, and
Speaker 1: then the cops immediately turned around and also again do
Speaker 1: a bunch of horrible massacres. And it's it's this, it's this,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, I I don't want to de
Speaker 1: emphasize the fact that like the like Al Salvador for example,
Speaker 1: like is a place that has its own like native
Speaker 1: right wing like it had there, like it has his
Speaker 1: own SALVADORI like right wing death squads, right and they
Speaker 1: they you know, in the back by the CIA. But
Speaker 1: like you and I don't want to like under my underplay,
Speaker 1: just how violent, just like the local reactionaries are because
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's like it's it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: like they wouldn't also be death squads if the US
Speaker 1: wasn't there, but like the US, you know, and the
Speaker 1: chocol Police Apartment sending people to train them is making
Speaker 1: them even worse. And it's yeah, yeah, And and every
Speaker 1: place has their own right wing reactionaries, right like we're
Speaker 1: seeing right now. To bring to loop everything together and
Speaker 1: just bring us back to like what's going on with
Speaker 1: Ukraine and Russia, Um, it's related, you know, like both
Speaker 1: sides of this conflict of their own reactionary right wing forces,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And anywhere you go around the world, that's
Speaker 1: going to be a sting and empires like the American
Speaker 1: Empire or the Russian Empire are or the Al Salvador Empire,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever empire, they're going to be looking for
Speaker 1: ways to take advantage of those forces. And I think
Speaker 1: that what I think is important, Like one of the
Speaker 1: things I think is important about this politically is to
Speaker 1: understand that there is a like there there there is
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of international solidarity between cops right, they
Speaker 1: have you know, like that you know, I've seen I
Speaker 1: think there's a book called The Thin Blue Line International,
Speaker 1: but it's it's yeah, I mean, that's that's that's a
Speaker 1: thing like you see this basically where the cops, like
Speaker 1: the comps know which side they're on and it's the
Speaker 1: side of the other cops. And I think that's something
Speaker 1: that that confuses a lot of people because you can
Speaker 1: thinks like for example, like like that's the Chinese police, right,
Speaker 1: like the Chinese police like go like we're trained by
Speaker 1: I think, I mean what you know, because the like
Speaker 1: the Chinese place in Hong Kong for example, like that
Speaker 1: that police force like is still literally just colonial British
Speaker 1: police force. They just they didn't even like they didn't
Speaker 1: even bring in new people. They just like promoted a
Speaker 1: new person who was a British colonial police officer and
Speaker 1: then made them the new head of the police. And
Speaker 1: then you know, and those those and those cops are
Speaker 1: also trained by the trained by American comps trainer British cops. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're trained a lot by Israeli cops. Um this and
Speaker 1: this is this is this is the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: it is the same thing with with with with the
Speaker 1: like the you know, like this this is the sort
Speaker 1: of the same effect that gets you like Erik Prince,
Speaker 1: like you know, being being like hired by the CCP
Speaker 1: to run stuff and change on like it's it's there's
Speaker 1: there's an incredible right wing sort of militarist comp alliance
Speaker 1: that go just you know, it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of international police solidarity that scrambles a
Speaker 1: lot of the sort of perceptions of what people think,
Speaker 1: like like what what how how people try to think
Speaker 1: about the world because yeah, and you know, and like fundamentally,
Speaker 1: like the basis they have is the defensive property and
Speaker 1: the defensive sort of the like the I usually call
Speaker 1: like the the global white supremacist regime. And they all know,
Speaker 1: you know, when when when an American cop Costa Salvador,
Speaker 1: like they know which side they're on. They're on the
Speaker 1: cops side, and it's and you know, and and they share,
Speaker 1: they share information, they share weapons, they share tactics, they
Speaker 1: share are you just literally people, they share training and yeah,
Speaker 1: and and of course because again it's the cpd uh,
Speaker 1: they shared Dante servant Yeah and so he he I
Speaker 1: you know, apparently at some point very shortly after the
Speaker 1: murder of Rakia Boyd. It looks like, based on what
Speaker 1: I've seen on his social media and what I pieced
Speaker 1: together from from his employment history, it looks like he
Speaker 1: had begun working with one of these tactical training institutes
Speaker 1: right before the murder. And then he murdered Rickie Avoid
Speaker 1: And I mean, I guess technically I'm not supposed to
Speaker 1: use the word murder, but you know, yeah, no fucking
Speaker 1: I mean murdered, and so, so he murdered Rickie Avoid,
Speaker 1: and then everything happened with like going through courts, and
Speaker 1: he walked away without being charged or imprisoned. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was charged, but without being convicted or imprisoned. Then, um,
Speaker 1: the police board, you know, recommended his firing, but he
Speaker 1: resigned two days before, like he was supposed to have
Speaker 1: his hearing, so he still gets a pension. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that's how that word um yeah, and so he
Speaker 1: gets yeah. I don't I thought to confirm that, but
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure he gets the punch. So he resigns,
Speaker 1: and then at some point after he resigned, he starts
Speaker 1: posting to social media about his trips to Honduras, and
Speaker 1: you know it's posting photos of of like hanging out
Speaker 1: in the bar with with the cops down there and
Speaker 1: and kind of just all of that. And this is
Speaker 1: not like public information, like it's he has like a
Speaker 1: LinkedIn page where he's like lived the things he's been doing.
Speaker 1: Like like this is completely public. I don't know like
Speaker 1: why nobody knows about it or has talked about it. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know that also I think just comes back
Speaker 1: to this murder kind of flying under the national radar
Speaker 1: a lot um. And so you know, we don't know
Speaker 1: what company or organization he's there with. Um. It doesn't
Speaker 1: say he's with International Tactical Training Association, which is the
Speaker 1: the Chicago based group led by Aaron Uningham and his wife.
Speaker 1: My guest would be it's that group, because that's the
Speaker 1: big one out of face out of Chicago. But you know,
Speaker 1: like we can't I can't prove it could be another
Speaker 1: It could be another right wing tactical training group that's
Speaker 1: trained de squads. Yeah. And that's the thing, right, is
Speaker 1: that this is not just happening here in Chicago. So
Speaker 1: like there are these tactical training groups all over and
Speaker 1: there are a number of US based ones started by
Speaker 1: different police officers from different departments because it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a career path for them in a sense, because
Speaker 1: it's a thing they can do once they retire. You
Speaker 1: get and it's a moneymaker. You hold these these tactical
Speaker 1: training seminars, and so a number of them are domestically based, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're not necessarily going overseas, but what they're doing
Speaker 1: is there. They're having these seminars and their training other
Speaker 1: police officers in like certain things. Like some of them
Speaker 1: might be like an afternoon session where you go and
Speaker 1: you learn about like you know, firearms safety or something.
Speaker 1: Then there might be like larger ones where you go
Speaker 1: and you like stay and camp out for like three
Speaker 1: days and you practice like ambushing guerrilla gangs in the
Speaker 1: jungle or something like that. Um And then a lot
Speaker 1: of them are are based around guns safety and firearms training,
Speaker 1: and so many of those are open as of the
Speaker 1: general public. It depends. Some of these are like only
Speaker 1: for other cops or law enforcement, and you have to
Speaker 1: like show I D Or military and you have to
Speaker 1: prove um that you're affiliated with police and military. Some
Speaker 1: of them are open to the public and you just
Speaker 1: have to have like a firearms cart. So that's problematic
Speaker 1: for one reason because we found that in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the January six Capital riot that a number of
Speaker 1: a number of the Capital rioters did attend like firearms
Speaker 1: training classes, tactical training classes in just various sort of locations.
Speaker 1: So this is a way for officers who have left
Speaker 1: the force for whatever reason to then have a captive audience.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, they're teaching them how to like shoot guns
Speaker 1: and you know, follow them more like specific sort of
Speaker 1: things like that, But what kind of conversations are they having,
Speaker 1: Like what kind of ideology is being espoused, what kind
Speaker 1: of other people are showing up to these meetings, and
Speaker 1: what are they talking about? What groups are they recruiting for,
Speaker 1: what are their affiliations. Yeah, and I think and I
Speaker 1: think that that's something that's important to think about and
Speaker 1: also to you know, have have more generation of journalists
Speaker 1: look into because you know, when when you look at
Speaker 1: these I mean like we know, we we we've had
Speaker 1: stories like this before, right, Like I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a lot of how for example, like the Taiwanese Special Forces,
Speaker 1: for example, UH spent an enormous amount of PARST Special
Speaker 1: Force apecially just the Taiwanese armies spent an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of time doing stuff very similar to this, and you know,
Speaker 1: the the product of that was and this is a
Speaker 1: this is cold warrior um. They're doing this the seventies
Speaker 1: and during this in the eighties, some excet the sixties, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and and I mean the product of this
Speaker 1: is like arena. The product of this is you know,
Speaker 1: the like the like one of the people they trained
Speaker 1: did the Almozete massacre, like and that that that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. You can trace these these influence networks, and
Speaker 1: you can trace these sort of I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of this is i mean literally just funded by weird cults, um.
Speaker 1: But you can you know, you can trace these different
Speaker 1: sort of paramilitary and intelligence inflence networks, and what you
Speaker 1: see at the end of them is like a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, it's just a bunch of fascists, and
Speaker 1: it's a bunch it's a bunch of fascists doing coups
Speaker 1: and you know, like in some sense like yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is a kind of like you know, like
Speaker 1: liberal democracy has this sort of problem, right, which is
Speaker 1: in order for liberal democracy too, you know, function as
Speaker 1: a liberal democracy, you have to have cops. And that
Speaker 1: means that you're you know, you are producing domestically and
Speaker 1: internationally a group of just ferocious, bloodthirsty right wing murderers,
Speaker 1: and you're you're giving them, sayuthority, and you're giving them
Speaker 1: all these training and weapons. And you know the product
Speaker 1: of that is they do what they're training to do,
Speaker 1: which is they kill people, they torture people, They train
Speaker 1: other people how to do this, and yeah, you get
Speaker 1: these these cascading series of effects that lead you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of people taking these classes January six, They
Speaker 1: lead them to coups all over the world. They lead
Speaker 1: in the desk all to love the world. This has
Speaker 1: been It Could Happen Here Join us tomorrow for part
Speaker 1: two of our interview with Raven. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram and on Twitter. It Happened Here pod check
Speaker 1: out the Cool Zone from More of a podcast, and
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. Welcome to It Could Happen Here,
Speaker 1: a podcast about how much I Christopher Wong hate the
Speaker 1: police and specifically the Chicago Police Department. UM and we
Speaker 1: are bringing you part two of my interview with Chicago
Speaker 1: journalist Raven about more crimes of the Chicago Police Department,
Speaker 1: the international in fact, and how the police weaponize race
Speaker 1: and class lines in order to preserve their power enjoy
Speaker 1: You know, I spent a lot of time just like
Speaker 1: in like cops social media spaces, right, and of course
Speaker 1: it's like rotting my brain, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: honestly just really tough to deal with sometimes. But you
Speaker 1: know one thing that we see like over and over
Speaker 1: again if you look at the memes that they share
Speaker 1: and the the posts that they write on spacebook and
Speaker 1: all of these things, is it's they the people as
Speaker 1: their enemy, right, like they're they're trained the military. The
Speaker 1: militarization of the police isn't just about the equipment that
Speaker 1: they have and the money that they have. It's also
Speaker 1: about their psychology and how they they view themselves as
Speaker 1: like warriors fighting the bad guys. But because of the
Speaker 1: nature of policing, the bad guys are literally anyone who
Speaker 1: isn't complying with what they say. And usually this is
Speaker 1: like black people, you know, marginalized people, poor people, um.
Speaker 1: And then there's sort of this like you see a
Speaker 1: lot of these like memes where they they talk about
Speaker 1: themselves as like sheep dogs protecting the sheep from the wolves.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and like the sheep are supposed to be
Speaker 1: like the innocence, which typically if you if you really
Speaker 1: go deep into it, it's like in their minds, that's
Speaker 1: like women and children who are like mostly white, right,
Speaker 1: Like they think they're protecting like white innocence from like
Speaker 1: bad guys. And and there are layers to it, right
Speaker 1: because like obviously it doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are like poor white people in
Speaker 1: rural areas who deal with police repression. You know, there
Speaker 1: are like wealthy black people who get pulled over by
Speaker 1: the cops just because they're driving well black. Like, there
Speaker 1: are certainly like layers upon layers here, depending on like
Speaker 1: class and and just everything. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, like they're training themselves up to be a
Speaker 1: military fighting the people in invading their spaces, taking over.
Speaker 1: And the psychology of it is just really really dark too,
Speaker 1: because you have these people who because because we're sending
Speaker 1: them into underresourced communities sort of after the fact, after
Speaker 1: traumas occurred, after there have been there's been violence, there's
Speaker 1: been shootings, everyone's poor, you know, whatever, we're sending them
Speaker 1: into these places where there's just like the most horrible
Speaker 1: things about poverty and about violence are happening and that's
Speaker 1: all they're exposed to. So then they end up with
Speaker 1: PTSD or all of these problems, you know, like the
Speaker 1: alcoholism rate, domestic violence, right, all of these things within
Speaker 1: the Troublablie force are extremely high. And all of this
Speaker 1: comes back to because we're treating everything as punishment. We're
Speaker 1: coming in after the fact. We're not actually treating these
Speaker 1: problems at the source. We're just sending people in to
Speaker 1: to manage the chaos after the fact, and then they
Speaker 1: end up traumatized. They end up enacting more crime and
Speaker 1: more violence for these communities, and it just becomes the
Speaker 1: cycle but no one can get out of. And then
Speaker 1: it and it comes back to just like defunding the
Speaker 1: police and and state priorities, like where are we putting
Speaker 1: our resources, because if we were putting them in the
Speaker 1: right place, so many of these things wouldn't be happening
Speaker 1: in the first place. Yeah, and I think one everything,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's important that we talked about this
Speaker 1: on our you know, the episodes about the cartels. We
Speaker 1: talked about this on our episodes about the other episodes
Speaker 1: about chocol Police, which is that the the other thing
Speaker 1: that happens is that the Chicago police just they you know,
Speaker 1: they they see the drug trade and they go, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just gonna get in on it, and you know,
Speaker 1: and the the sort of the combination of these people,
Speaker 1: these just incredibly violent, armed people with total impunity and
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of money is that you know, they
Speaker 1: they they they they become themselves just you know, they
Speaker 1: they become exactly the same thing that they that they
Speaker 1: were you know, nominally supposed to be fighting. And that
Speaker 1: has all of these these downstream effects. If you talked
Speaker 1: about the way that the way that this militarizes basically everything, right,
Speaker 1: this this militarizes the police just has that, you know,
Speaker 1: the violence of it has the effect of militarizing like
Speaker 1: militarizing everyone else, militarizes the non ste actors, and it
Speaker 1: just sort of it just keep rashing up the level
Speaker 1: of violence. And as long as you keep throwing the
Speaker 1: state at it, and as long as the state just
Speaker 1: keeps essentially like going okay, I just okay, we have
Speaker 1: a drug trade and I'll just got a cut of it,
Speaker 1: and as long as that keeps happening, like all of
Speaker 1: the stuff that the cops are you know, nominally there
Speaker 1: to to deal with, it's just going to keep escalating
Speaker 1: because the state that like because just because state violence
Speaker 1: is intensifying and making it worse, right, right, and it's
Speaker 1: just so like they're still fucking racist, Like I just can't,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I don't. We have to we have
Speaker 1: to keep talking about that because it's just like so
Speaker 1: much of just like where like where they get their
Speaker 1: information and how they exchange. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: these cops social networks and where they're getting their information,
Speaker 1: and the kinds of things they're saying to each other
Speaker 1: about black people in Chicago are all so ridiculously wrong
Speaker 1: because they're just parroting these like cop blogs that they
Speaker 1: read full of all kinds of just that shit fucking
Speaker 1: conspiracy there is about like our our black d a,
Speaker 1: our prosecutor excuse me, Kim Fox being like a puppet
Speaker 1: of George Soros. They literally believe this, and and it's
Speaker 1: echoed by people like Tucker Carlson, you know, in national media,
Speaker 1: like anytime Chicago comes up, you will hear these kinds
Speaker 1: of just completely off the wall conspiracy theories about like
Speaker 1: communist BLM and Tifa, Soros funded Kim Fox like ruining Chicago.
Speaker 1: And and I'm not like defending Kim Fox. Don't getting wrong.
Speaker 1: She's still a prosecutor. She's still like putting people in jail.
Speaker 1: But she you know, she was elected because she was
Speaker 1: to do she was supposed to be this big reformist
Speaker 1: and and all of that, and so she's become a target.
Speaker 1: And then she's also become a target for them because
Speaker 1: she's a black woman, so it's easy for them to
Speaker 1: to make her to a lightning rod of hate basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, like they just the dehumanization of of
Speaker 1: black Chicagoans that you see in these in these Facebook
Speaker 1: posts that these people are writing and the things that
Speaker 1: they're tweeting, like it is violently disturbingly racist. And all
Speaker 1: of that comes back to just how they view themselves
Speaker 1: as like an occupying army in these communities, Like they
Speaker 1: don't view themselves as like cooperative partners in helping these communities.
Speaker 1: Like it's no words there to occupy, We're there to
Speaker 1: extract resources. We're there to like, you know, benefit off
Speaker 1: of this gain warfare if we can you know and
Speaker 1: and like you mentioned, like if you look at like
Speaker 1: the corruption and and the things that that have gone
Speaker 1: on with that, I mean, like I mean that goes
Speaker 1: back to city council, right. I mean we have we
Speaker 1: have alder men. We have we have older people who
Speaker 1: are essentially in bed with the cops, looking for looking
Speaker 1: out for them and you know, like their dedicated cop alderman.
Speaker 1: I mean, like all of our Chicago aldermen are older
Speaker 1: people excuse me, are Democrats by name. But it's like no,
Speaker 1: we have five or six older people who are Republicans.
Speaker 1: Like they called themselves democrats because they wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to be elected in Chicago if they didn't. But they
Speaker 1: are absolutely like cop loving Republicans. You know, they just
Speaker 1: called themselves Democrats because they like support gay marriage or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well it's because it's Chicago and you can't run it
Speaker 1: like the like the the the only time a Democrat
Speaker 1: has ever lost one of these elections was the time
Speaker 1: a I want blanking on the name of the cult
Speaker 1: I the time of Larushite accidentally won the primary and
Speaker 1: lots of the like that. That's basically it, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's you know this this is
Speaker 1: a democratic city, but you know, the democratic city just
Speaker 1: means incredibly right wing and police, which right, right. And
Speaker 1: when you look at the history of policing in Chicago,
Speaker 1: you have to go back decades and decades and kind
Speaker 1: of look also to it like where a lot of
Speaker 1: these cops came from. In the aftermath of like the
Speaker 1: dissolution of like the official like mafia and like al
Speaker 1: Capone and all that stuff, you had a lot of
Speaker 1: working class immigrants from like European communities, like the Polish community,
Speaker 1: the Irish community, the Italian community, and all of these
Speaker 1: communities have their own like police associations here, like the
Speaker 1: Italian American Police Association, the Polish American Police Association, all
Speaker 1: of these things, and and so like it becomes this
Speaker 1: being a cop to go back to sort of like
Speaker 1: the international ties here, being a cop becomes this like
Speaker 1: identity for them and their family is like a lot
Speaker 1: of people are cops because their dad was a cop,
Speaker 1: their grandpa was a cop, their cousins are cops, their
Speaker 1: brothers are cops. There's like a family honor sort of
Speaker 1: in like being a cop, and and a lot of
Speaker 1: them show, you know, and that that that goes back
Speaker 1: to why they show so much solidarity too with like
Speaker 1: cops from other countries is it's like the profession in
Speaker 1: and of itself is lionized. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: you have right now in Chicago, like because of gentrification,
Speaker 1: because of just like immigration patterns and the way communities
Speaker 1: have changed. We have these like traditionally Polish Italian communities
Speaker 1: that feel like they're being encroached upon by mostly like
Speaker 1: Latin X communities. So we had for example, like you know,
Speaker 1: this shooting, um the murder of Anthony Alvarez up on
Speaker 1: up on the northwest side, the far northwest side of
Speaker 1: Chicago last year, and in the aftermath of that, we
Speaker 1: saw a lot of like pension between the traditional like
Speaker 1: Polish Polish American community up there and then the new
Speaker 1: wave of like Latin X immigrants UM. And the problem
Speaker 1: is a lot of the people in the Polish community
Speaker 1: up there have family and relatives who are cops. So
Speaker 1: we had like cops trashing the memorial you know, to
Speaker 1: the s Anthony Alvarez. We had like Polish biker gangs
Speaker 1: like riding by the rallies trying to like intimidate people
Speaker 1: and it all comes back to like white supremacy and
Speaker 1: and just straight up racism, right. Like there's another example
Speaker 1: of that with like the the Columbus statue that was
Speaker 1: sent here by Bussolini that eventually yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: like one of the I guess you'd call it the
Speaker 1: second wave of the upraising in Chicago was a bunch
Speaker 1: of people, like the enormous numbers of people throwing things
Speaker 1: at cops who were attempting to defend the statue. And
Speaker 1: this was like a like the Italian like American like
Speaker 1: the right wing of it got like extremely mad about this,
Speaker 1: and there was all this sort of you know, there's
Speaker 1: all the sort of tension between between these these different Yeah,
Speaker 1: and some of that comes back to like also um,
Speaker 1: the construction of of the Inner States. Right, So like
Speaker 1: in the I don't know when they started building the
Speaker 1: highways down by u C. Is like in the fifties
Speaker 1: or the sixties, right, you had this like traditional Italian
Speaker 1: American community down there by University of Illinois Chicago and
Speaker 1: like on Taylor Street, and then people built the highway
Speaker 1: and it like funked up a bunch of ships. You know,
Speaker 1: some people had to sell their homes, you know, some
Speaker 1: their traditional neighborhood was like destroyed all of these things,
Speaker 1: and then this university is built and that coincides with that,
Speaker 1: and so you end up getting a lot of like
Speaker 1: old school racist Italian getting piste at the students and
Speaker 1: at the school and everything in the aftermath. And it's
Speaker 1: a really really multicultural school. I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: familiar with you I see, but it's like, yeah, so
Speaker 1: do I see, has like one of the largest immigrant
Speaker 1: student population student bodies like in the country. Um, it's
Speaker 1: just a very very diverse school. I'm pretty sure white
Speaker 1: people are actually a minority if you look at like
Speaker 1: the demographics of just like how people identify in student surveys.
Speaker 1: U i S is the University of Illinois and Chicago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a one of the big universities in the city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just for the non Chicago wins. Yeah not yeah, different,
Speaker 1: there's a different one, University of Chicago that's like I
Speaker 1: went to. They've got their whole thing going on because
Speaker 1: their campus police force is one of the largest private
Speaker 1: police forces in the world. Yeah, and you know, I
Speaker 1: guess we can talking about that a little bit because
Speaker 1: that's this sort of like it's kind of horrible bind
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, so it's that that police force
Speaker 1: is one of the largest police forces in the world.
Speaker 1: It has shot students, it has shot people who are
Speaker 1: not students. It does a bunch of horrible things. But
Speaker 1: then you know, some you're there's there's this kind of trap,
Speaker 1: right because like one of one of the things that
Speaker 1: happens is like, well, okay, so you get rid of
Speaker 1: the u cp D, right, and then then you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna bring the Chicago Police Apartment in and
Speaker 1: it's like the Chico Police Department are like one of
Speaker 1: the few institutions in the world that's worse than like
Speaker 1: the regular UCPD, and it's you know, and and that
Speaker 1: was that was one of the things that that was
Speaker 1: really inspiring. Um was just yeah, the way that the
Speaker 1: abolished the Chicago Police Department like movement was sort of
Speaker 1: like unfolded in this broader just this broader potential just
Speaker 1: abolished chiccoo, the Chicago police in general. But it's this
Speaker 1: weird thing where it's like you have these you have
Speaker 1: these occupation zones and it's like that that that part
Speaker 1: of the South Side and then the other the other
Speaker 1: thing I think that people don't understand about Chicago Police
Speaker 1: Department is that they have an absolutely enormous range that
Speaker 1: they patrol. Right that that doesn't include it's way it
Speaker 1: goes way off campus like they have. They have an
Speaker 1: absolutely enormous range of things they conclude and they do
Speaker 1: things like, uh, you know, they'll they'll just like like
Speaker 1: like locked down the entire campus and they'll just do
Speaker 1: this just happen because there they'll be like chasing someone
Speaker 1: who like like one of one of the one of
Speaker 1: the times while I was there, someone like they like
Speaker 1: stolen something from like a video game store, and the
Speaker 1: whole campus got locked down, like the cops are screaming
Speaker 1: and everyone to stay in the buildings, like and they
Speaker 1: just like, you know, they had this like enormous numbers
Speaker 1: of cops just sort of like swarmed through the entire
Speaker 1: the entire campus for like an hour. And this is
Speaker 1: just like happens. I mean, there's cops everywhere. They just
Speaker 1: they do stuff like that, and there's this whole you know,
Speaker 1: and and but this is one of the other things
Speaker 1: where you get these tensions because so you Chicago, the
Speaker 1: University of Chicago also has like it's not as large,
Speaker 1: but also has like a like it also has like
Speaker 1: a pretty large international student immigrant like population. And there
Speaker 1: was this uh there was there was there was a
Speaker 1: Chinese national student who got shot, who got shot a
Speaker 1: robbery last year, and that was a huge I think
Speaker 1: that was last year. Yeah that was yeah, it wasn't yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that turned into a huge thing where you had
Speaker 1: these sudden you know, because we had the anti police protests,
Speaker 1: but then suddenly there was this huge wing of like
Speaker 1: basically the right wing faculty, a bunch of just like
Speaker 1: absolutely reactionary, like extremely rich CCP scions and like this
Speaker 1: this sort of like Ducleus of of the like like
Speaker 1: people like people in the right wing law faculty, like
Speaker 1: the ECON people, who suddenly had this like giant thing
Speaker 1: that was like it was, it was. It was a
Speaker 1: sort of microcosm of of of the broader sort of
Speaker 1: like turn against the anti police movements by using crime.
Speaker 1: And they had this whole thing that we need to
Speaker 1: keep the campus safe and they're like, oh, we need
Speaker 1: to give you the ucp D the ability to lead
Speaker 1: to to go off of campus, which you know they
Speaker 1: already have there, Like we need to get the more money,
Speaker 1: we need to have more cops everywhere, and it was
Speaker 1: just and it's it's just this sort of like you
Speaker 1: get this horrible, horrible sort of pendulum effect where like
Speaker 1: you get this violence and then you know, people like
Speaker 1: the like the the rights response to that violence is
Speaker 1: just to create is you know, just descending more cops
Speaker 1: to create more violence, and it just keeps escalating and
Speaker 1: keep escalating, and it's it's and then you know, and
Speaker 1: then there's there's a sort of dynamic of this right
Speaker 1: where rich students at the University of Chicago. And this
Speaker 1: is so some extent this is it's mostly a class
Speaker 1: embraced thing, but it's not entirely. But like people who
Speaker 1: go there just like have this like incredible fear of
Speaker 1: literally everyone around them. It's like they turned to many cops.
Speaker 1: Like there are people who are screaming about how like
Speaker 1: just the red line is not safe at night. And
Speaker 1: I was like I have literally like I have walked
Speaker 1: like thirty blocks back home at two in the morning
Speaker 1: and been completely fine. Like you guys are just cowards,
Speaker 1: but and you know your your cowards and extreme basis,
Speaker 1: but like yeah, like all all of these sort of
Speaker 1: factors blend together and you get these you get these
Speaker 1: coalitions of of these these right wing pro police people
Speaker 1: who want to just not not just like you know,
Speaker 1: not not just support the police, but want to continue
Speaker 1: to expand it so they can feel safe. And it's
Speaker 1: like you're not, you're not even in danger, but they
Speaker 1: have they have they have the same sort of like
Speaker 1: this whole town is trying to kill us, like racist
Speaker 1: cop rand mentality, and yeah, sorry, this is this is
Speaker 1: this is this has been being upset about this because
Speaker 1: I feel you and it's like it's and but it
Speaker 1: relates back to kind of like campus policing in general
Speaker 1: and kind of why it exists, which is that a
Speaker 1: lot of colleges, I mean not all of them, It
Speaker 1: depends on where you are, but like some colleges, especially
Speaker 1: in like large urban areas, you know, are we're built
Speaker 1: in the middle of like largely black communities Chicago to
Speaker 1: a t. Yeah, and because the land wish cheaper to buy,
Speaker 1: you know, there are reasons why necessarily, like they're built
Speaker 1: in these spaces, and so the campus police departments function
Speaker 1: as just a way to like keep the students isolated
Speaker 1: from the community. Like it's making a community within a community.
Speaker 1: It's making this little enclave, and then of course people
Speaker 1: are are then going to view anyone outside of that
Speaker 1: enclave with like racist suspicion. Right, And if you have
Speaker 1: immigrant students who may or may not be wealthy, it's
Speaker 1: a punk on where they come from. But you UFC
Speaker 1: has like a lot of as far as I am aware,
Speaker 1: like wealthy international students. And they might be coming from
Speaker 1: countries where like there aren't any black people or there
Speaker 1: aren't very many. And just because they're they're coming from
Speaker 1: like this country doesn't necessarily mean that they like our
Speaker 1: left wing. So they they're coming into these communities, you know,
Speaker 1: with not a lot of experience, just sort of around
Speaker 1: people who look different from them, and so they're going
Speaker 1: to be of course looking to like these police figures
Speaker 1: than to quote protect them. But but to go back
Speaker 1: to it, it's like, Okay, well, if you are feeling
Speaker 1: unsafe on the train at night, for example, why why
Speaker 1: isn't the train safe? Like why are people using it
Speaker 1: as you know shelter? Why are people doing drugs on
Speaker 1: the train? Like why is there violence happening? And that
Speaker 1: just comes back to again, like we're not actually addressing
Speaker 1: the route problems by just adding more police. And I
Speaker 1: will say, like I think, I think again, Like the
Speaker 1: everything that's happening here is really just the University of Chicago,
Speaker 1: like is a place to which the world's leadish is transplanted.
Speaker 1: And you can see this like very clearly along because yeah,
Speaker 1: like there is the wealth gap between like between poor
Speaker 1: international students of rich international students is like it's it's
Speaker 1: the largest single wealth gap in like in this in
Speaker 1: the entire university. It's it's unbelievable. Um and you know,
Speaker 1: and you could you could just you can watch it
Speaker 1: playing down on class lines in a place down other
Speaker 1: lines right where you have like like you know even
Speaker 1: like yeah you have like you have both we have
Speaker 1: students from I don't know, you have students for China,
Speaker 1: students from Vietnam, and like one of them will be
Speaker 1: trans and you know it turns yeah, it's like oh hey,
Speaker 1: look like yeah, like when when when you have like
Speaker 1: when you have a Chinese trans student, right's like yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there. They the people who back home had have
Speaker 1: experienced depression in various ways, are consistently like consistently um
Speaker 1: or like consistently anti police and consistently like significantly. It's
Speaker 1: bad about this stuff. It's it's in my experience, it's
Speaker 1: it's very much. Is just you have this sort of
Speaker 1: transplanted like you have the short of transplanted eLife and
Speaker 1: by the countries to come to the Unversity of Chicago
Speaker 1: so they can you know, study economics and go back
Speaker 1: to their own countries and like continue to like rob
Speaker 1: their own populations. And those people are the ones who
Speaker 1: are doing this stuff. And it's I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: you see a lot of kind of like this like
Speaker 1: I think really misguided like anti racism. That's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we have to take the security concerns of of of
Speaker 1: these these of of Asian people seriously. It's like these
Speaker 1: are this is this is the Chinese ruling class, this
Speaker 1: is the this like you don't need to take these
Speaker 1: people's concerns seriously. They are finatally they're ferocious right wingers
Speaker 1: who have just read highatt for the first time. Like
Speaker 1: you guys, these these are these are not the same
Speaker 1: people as the people who are suffering under the like
Speaker 1: right right. And we saw that. We saw that too
Speaker 1: with like the big wave of stop Asian hate protests
Speaker 1: here last year where we had like this big rally
Speaker 1: down in Chinatown, UM with like a huge, huge number,
Speaker 1: like hundreds of people from the community came out and
Speaker 1: and you had a lot of younger people who very
Speaker 1: much had like you know, defund the police kind of sentiments.
Speaker 1: But then you had we had like police representatives speaking
Speaker 1: at the rally, yeah, about how they were going to
Speaker 1: to make like Chicago safer for Asian people. It's like
Speaker 1: this stuff like it makes me so angry, like CPT yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was. It was regular CPD Like I I'm Chinese.
Speaker 1: They almost killed me on campus. Like these people like
Speaker 1: they're not these these these they they're like the police
Speaker 1: don't keep us safe. But like you know, there's been this,
Speaker 1: there's been this incredible weaponization of of the Asian American community.
Speaker 1: Like you see this, you see this in Chinatown. There's
Speaker 1: there's been this like that. There's like China Town is
Speaker 1: like this is different. Even in the last like like
Speaker 1: three or four years, has turned into this just like
Speaker 1: like incredibly right wing. I mean it's it's not everyone,
Speaker 1: but like you see like they're they're like I like
Speaker 1: there there's there's a there's there's there's a bench in
Speaker 1: in uh in Chicago in front of the library right
Speaker 1: that had they have these tables and the tables have
Speaker 1: an engraved plaque on them that says no loiter ring,
Speaker 1: and that says we will call the police on you
Speaker 1: if you loiter. That this is outside of the library.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, there's they have this sort of like
Speaker 1: in criticis incredibly right wing like anti anti like anti
Speaker 1: like homeless people campaign that's happening, and it's it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's one of just the most depressing
Speaker 1: things I've seen here because you have, you know, you
Speaker 1: have the Chamber of Commerce is to sort of like
Speaker 1: you know as the most powerful political force in a
Speaker 1: lot of these communities, and like those people's are right
Speaker 1: wingers and they just they they don't have the same
Speaker 1: interests as like the rest of the Asia, of of
Speaker 1: the Asian American community, and you know, and it gets
Speaker 1: you get this horrible, horrible thing, which is what was
Speaker 1: happening on these car campus, which is like essentially the
Speaker 1: right wing like pitting the right wing like just just
Speaker 1: pitting the like basically basically like pitting Asians against black people.
Speaker 1: And it's horrible and it and it just comes back
Speaker 1: to like who who is benefiting from this? Like who
Speaker 1: when we when we have immigrant communities or non immigrant communities,
Speaker 1: you know, like being upset with other communities, What are
Speaker 1: the greater forces here that are like benefiting from that
Speaker 1: sort of like infighting. And it's always like the fascist
Speaker 1: coops who who ultimately come out of the top there,
Speaker 1: because if they can keep the people fighting amongst themselves,
Speaker 1: or they can stoke prejudice and racism between the people,
Speaker 1: you know, they can then come in and scoop up resources.
Speaker 1: And when you look at like a school like University
Speaker 1: of Chicago, they just have a massive, massive amount of money, right,
Speaker 1: Like the resources there are just unbelievable. And so of
Speaker 1: course you're going to have people in the community who
Speaker 1: are resentful of that, who are upset about that because
Speaker 1: like they don't have affordable housing, they don't have good jobs,
Speaker 1: like they're trying to make a living and keep their
Speaker 1: kids safe. And here's this like university in the middle
Speaker 1: of their neighborhood with all of this money. And wow,
Speaker 1: I'm so amazed. I'm just so happy that like somebody's
Speaker 1: doing construction right now outside my apartment. Thank you for
Speaker 1: this timing. I'm so glad about him. Um. But but essentially,
Speaker 1: like you know, you they the students, the students end
Speaker 1: up being a scapegoat for all of their like all
Speaker 1: the communities like justified fears about what's going on, Right,
Speaker 1: they're justified in being upset that they don't have these resources.
Speaker 1: But it's not necessarily like the individual students. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and there there have been a lot of really good
Speaker 1: Like right right before one of the things that was
Speaker 1: happening in high part right before I got there, was
Speaker 1: there is this huge campaign basically there wasn't a level
Speaker 1: one trauma center like on this outside, and so you know,
Speaker 1: if you get shot, right, they have to like take
Speaker 1: you in a helicopter to the north side to a
Speaker 1: hospital there, and you know in that time, like there's
Speaker 1: a good chance you're gonna die. And there had there
Speaker 1: had been one, but it got shut down because it
Speaker 1: wasn't making any money. And so you know, there was
Speaker 1: this huge, uh community student campaign to like to force
Speaker 1: the university to open one of these trauma centers. And
Speaker 1: so I think and I think it's important that like
Speaker 1: we don't have to fight each other like that that's
Speaker 1: not a thing that you know, Like yeah, like I
Speaker 1: think I think like that university, I I don't think
Speaker 1: it should continue to exist. I think at the very
Speaker 1: least it should be like taking out of the community control.
Speaker 1: But who but like yeah, like for the people who
Speaker 1: are there, and you know, I think like for for
Speaker 1: the Asian Americans listening to this, and for for for
Speaker 1: people who are students like you, you do not have
Speaker 1: to be the weapon of the cops. You don't. You
Speaker 1: can you can work together and and and when you
Speaker 1: do that, you can win and you can win. You
Speaker 1: can win like really incredibly tangible games for the community,
Speaker 1: and you can save people's lives, you know it also
Speaker 1: outside of campus, same deal with Chicago police, right, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't need to have the Eastern European communities fighting
Speaker 1: the Latino communities fighting the Black communities. Like we don't
Speaker 1: need to have these like all of these communities just
Speaker 1: like fighting each other instead of like the actual oppressive
Speaker 1: forces at the top. Um. But you know, right now
Speaker 1: we're at like this kind of I don't know, I
Speaker 1: guess tipping point. I think where either people start to
Speaker 1: show solidarity or we're fucked. Like there are massive not
Speaker 1: to get like super existential with you, but like there
Speaker 1: are massive, massive forces right now, right wing forces trying
Speaker 1: to benefit off of all of this factionalization, and as
Speaker 1: we see tanks rolling into Ukraine, like that's this is
Speaker 1: a global phenomenon. It's not just happening at home. It's
Speaker 1: happening everywhere, and like we don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: time left to stop this and to bring it back
Speaker 1: to this like far right trucker foe trucker convoy show
Speaker 1: that's about to happen and then roll into roll into
Speaker 1: our capital. Like I'm just struck by the timing of
Speaker 1: it all. And I'm certainly not going to be like
Speaker 1: a conspiracy theorist about it and be like, well putin
Speaker 1: Is has planned this all happened at the same time. Um,
Speaker 1: but I do think that whether or not it's like
Speaker 1: plans happen at the same time, it's absolutely going to
Speaker 1: benefit these people that you know this is happening right now,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's it's It's the same thing with with
Speaker 1: just horrific anti trans bill said the anti transport I
Speaker 1: not buil but in anti transide government action, I guess
Speaker 1: is the correct term in in that's happening in Texas
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, it's uh, you know, like people people
Speaker 1: draw comparisons to to the Third Roich In to Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany and them banning like you know, homosexual dance parties
Speaker 1: and things like that. You know, like they didn't start
Speaker 1: out saying we want to kill all the Jews. Like
Speaker 1: that's not like it doesn't you don't start that way,
Speaker 1: you make you would do the smaller attacks first, you
Speaker 1: build up to it, You take power inch by inch
Speaker 1: until like nobody can stop you. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: I think you know, there's there there's an important note here, though,
Speaker 1: which is that, like it's it's very easy to sort
Speaker 1: of especially in times like this, to sort of just
Speaker 1: like be be in a place where it just it
Speaker 1: looks like history is just want sing go over you,
Speaker 1: right that you know, we're we're we're bound by these
Speaker 1: sort of irresistible powers and forces, and that's not true.
Speaker 1: Like these these these these kinds of fascist movements can
Speaker 1: be defeated, these kinds of militarist movements can be defeated,
Speaker 1: but they they they they they can only be defeated
Speaker 1: when we actually take our place as the subjects of history, right,
Speaker 1: Like we we we are that we are the people who,
Speaker 1: through our actions, create history. And you know when we
Speaker 1: also are the people who create the world we see
Speaker 1: around us. But you know, as David Graby was incredibly
Speaker 1: fond of saying, rights like we we are the people
Speaker 1: who create the world around us, and that means that
Speaker 1: we can it can be otherwise. And you know, when
Speaker 1: when we essentially like when we when we reclaim our
Speaker 1: you know, our our status is subjects or status is
Speaker 1: human beings are status as the people of which history
Speaker 1: is composed of. And we move we can stop these
Speaker 1: things like they're they're there, do not have to be
Speaker 1: another like there don't have to be more Nazis, they
Speaker 1: don't have to be more genocience. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be more worse. We can stop them. We just have
Speaker 1: to fight, right. I don't disagree with that. I think
Speaker 1: I think it's completely true. I guess I'm just I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe I'm like a dumer. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's really hard right now to kind of see I
Speaker 1: guess sort of mass resistance forming in the US specifically
Speaker 1: just because of the way the pandemic has wrecked us,
Speaker 1: and I feel like people are I mean, people are
Speaker 1: just checked out, right, Like they're exhausted, they're broke. I
Speaker 1: you know, a million people have died because of because
Speaker 1: of the government's just complete lack of adequate handling of COVID,
Speaker 1: and so I completely agree that like this isn't inevitable,
Speaker 1: like we can stop this. At the same time, I
Speaker 1: just I don't know what it's going to take for
Speaker 1: Americans like as an entity to actually stand up and
Speaker 1: fight this. And I'm not blaming individual people because it's
Speaker 1: like all the reasons for people being exhausted and checked
Speaker 1: out are like also by design, right, because of course,
Speaker 1: like if we keep people exhausted and checked out, then
Speaker 1: the oligarchs at the top like can continue to like
Speaker 1: loot society. Yeah, I mean I think I'm sort of
Speaker 1: less sang when on that, just because, like you know,
Speaker 1: because I remember, this is the same thing that like
Speaker 1: everyone said right before the uprising, like everyone was checked out.
Speaker 1: Everyone was sort of like you know, like the pandemic
Speaker 1: had just started. Everyone there's this like general consensus that
Speaker 1: like mass action was in visible, and then you know,
Speaker 1: like two days later, they burned down they burned down
Speaker 1: a police station and like deluding the American Mile, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's like it's these these these things,
Speaker 1: these things like you know, every like the the people
Speaker 1: who are in some sense the most in tune with
Speaker 1: like what is happening, it'll often tend to be the
Speaker 1: people who are most shocked by when when these kinds
Speaker 1: of things just emerge seemingly out of nowhere. And so
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think, I think, I think we
Speaker 1: can't know what exactly will set off the next wave,
Speaker 1: but I but I think it's a safe bet there
Speaker 1: will be another one because there always is. Right, We've
Speaker 1: never you know, we we have yet to hit a
Speaker 1: point so bad that people stop fighting like ever in history,
Speaker 1: so oh for sure. Yeah. And and that's the long
Speaker 1: arc of history too, is it's like people have always
Speaker 1: been fighting for their liberations in some way. And if
Speaker 1: you look at the longer story, you know, there might
Speaker 1: be very long periods of darkness and repression and collapse,
Speaker 1: and then people emerge from that and new societies emerge,
Speaker 1: new ways of thinking all of that. And I think
Speaker 1: where we're at now, like at this moment, there are
Speaker 1: certainly small ways that people can resist and ways that
Speaker 1: we like we have to focus on like our immediate
Speaker 1: communities too. You know, it's so easy to get to
Speaker 1: feel helpless when you like you look at things on
Speaker 1: such a grand scale. Because of course, like we can't
Speaker 1: all just like run into Ukraine right now and like
Speaker 1: stop putin like there's there's really not a lot we
Speaker 1: can do when it comes to like things like that.
Speaker 1: But we can like take care of our friends. We
Speaker 1: can like make sure that the people immediately around us
Speaker 1: like have what they need. We can like check in on,
Speaker 1: like you know, our on house neighbors. We can like
Speaker 1: take you know, some people here in Chicago are are
Speaker 1: prepping to like take in Ukrainian refugees, for example, right now.
Speaker 1: And and that's like the sort of action that like
Speaker 1: is definitely going to be needed. Um. And you know,
Speaker 1: like when you look at the story of like something
Speaker 1: as as horrible and just like awful as a holocaust,
Speaker 1: like of course, are all all these like small stories
Speaker 1: of like people who like sheltered, people who were who
Speaker 1: are being sought out, And you know, there were there
Speaker 1: were all these different kinds of resistance movements in Germany
Speaker 1: and in Poland. Um. And it's not just about like
Speaker 1: all the people that that Hitler killed. It is also
Speaker 1: about all the people that like we're that people managed
Speaker 1: to save, you know, And it is also like I
Speaker 1: don't know we we in America especially, it's like we
Speaker 1: gotta get away from the Hitler comparisons, which I know
Speaker 1: I just like just made, but like it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: like don't get me wrong, Like there's obviously like plenty
Speaker 1: of parallels and and it's important to be like students
Speaker 1: of history and like understand what's going on and everything,
Speaker 1: but like we don't. What we're seeing is like we're
Speaker 1: going to see a kind of fascism that is uni
Speaker 1: to our era, right, Like I don't know that Trump
Speaker 1: is going to come out and call for like outright
Speaker 1: genocide and like you know, build build death came or
Speaker 1: like Rhonda Santis is going to get elected and like
Speaker 1: build death camps. Like it's going to look different than
Speaker 1: it has in the past, even if like some of
Speaker 1: the phenomenon are similar. So what we're looking at instead
Speaker 1: is like, especially with climate change, we're looking at a
Speaker 1: lot of controls over borders. And obviously some of that
Speaker 1: is like what's happening in Europe right now too, but
Speaker 1: you know, people are going to be looking to control
Speaker 1: resources like water, oil, land as we know that they're
Speaker 1: like running out. And so this this sentiment against like
Speaker 1: immigrants especially, you know, that's something that is going to
Speaker 1: just keep getting worse. And so I think it makes
Speaker 1: it harder for people to I guess recognize that things
Speaker 1: are as bad as they were, if that makes sense. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: And ultimately, like it's just yeah, mass resistance is the
Speaker 1: only way out, right, Like, the people have to resist
Speaker 1: and we can't keep waiting for like Joe Biden or
Speaker 1: or anyone to be our political savior. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: I think that's a that's that's a pretty good note
Speaker 1: to end on. Yeah, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Do you have stuff that you want to plug? Um,
Speaker 1: not at the moment. No, I mean I think, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess our Twitter account, But that's about it. Okay. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: this this has been this has been another episode if
Speaker 1: we could happen here. You can find us on Twitter
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Speaker 1: stuff at the Cool Zone with a website. Go there.
Speaker 1: Stop asking me for horses. They're they're on the website.
Speaker 1: They get out again uploaded. Uh. Yeah, So Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: thank you once again for twining us. Hey, We'll be
Speaker 1: back Monday with more episodes every week from now until
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