Speaker 1: All right, welcome to it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart and also sometimes about how things
Speaker 1: have been falling apart for a while now. And today
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about how things were also bad in
Speaker 1: falling apart in the two thousands, which a profoundly cursed
Speaker 1: time period. And specifically we're going to talk about I
Speaker 1: think a part of the anti war movement that does
Speaker 1: not get much attention, um, which is the port militarization
Speaker 1: resistance that happened sort of two seven And with us
Speaker 1: today to talk about this is two people who were
Speaker 1: part of this movement if Juliana Newhouser, hello, and Brendan
Speaker 1: Maslaska's done, Yeah, both of whom were organizers and activists
Speaker 1: while this was going on. Yeah, and I thank thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks for having
Speaker 1: us so. Yeah. As I was saying a bit in
Speaker 1: the intro, I think that this is a part of
Speaker 1: the anti war movement that is not very well known.
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of people know about
Speaker 1: the initial stuff happened in twos three, and people might
Speaker 1: know about some of the stuff that was happening against
Speaker 1: the war in Afghanistan, but right when it started. But
Speaker 1: I don't think most people know that it, like you know,
Speaker 1: even after jails and three sort of doesn't work, that
Speaker 1: it continues and it continues sort of informs that are
Speaker 1: that are very interesting. And so I guess I want
Speaker 1: you to to start out. I want to ask how
Speaker 1: we sort of got from the early part of the
Speaker 1: anti war movement into this and how you got involved.
Speaker 1: I would say that there's this narrative about the women
Speaker 1: against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests
Speaker 1: in human history, at least at that point. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's still true against the invasion, and then
Speaker 1: it didn't work and everyone kind of went home and
Speaker 1: ended there, and to a certain extent that's true, but
Speaker 1: like you said, the people that didn't go home went
Speaker 1: an interesting direction. And UM, so at the time there
Speaker 1: were direct action was not as acceptable as it is now.
Speaker 1: The protest this movement was largely dominated either by UM
Speaker 1: big liberal coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically
Speaker 1: indistinguishable and what they actually did, which was basically nothing
Speaker 1: and in the best of cases and then the worst
Speaker 1: of cases, counterinsurgency. UM. But then there were small groups
Speaker 1: of people that at when we saw that it didn't work,
Speaker 1: and we saw that these giant, peaceful marches from one
Speaker 1: part of town to another, um or voting for John
Speaker 1: Carry or whatever, it didn't work, that we started to
Speaker 1: look for other options. Yeah, and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: got involved. Um you know, I'd say, what the anti
Speaker 1: war movement, That idea of how how war is unjust
Speaker 1: was really talked to me from a very young age.
Speaker 1: I mean my parents were you know, children of the sixties,
Speaker 1: and they had family members fighting in Vietnam and um,
Speaker 1: you know, friends dying in Vietnam and we're against the
Speaker 1: protests back then. So I grew up hearing these stories
Speaker 1: and of course stories from family members, particularly one of
Speaker 1: my grandfather's, both of them who were veterans in World
Speaker 1: War Two. One of them was a marine and the
Speaker 1: you know, in the Pacific Theater and still into his seventies,
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties until his final days, was just dealing
Speaker 1: with horrific PTSD and had always taught me from a
Speaker 1: young age never to get involved. So I, you know,
Speaker 1: and I remember when when the very clearly, um you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and when the
Speaker 1: invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of a Rock started.
Speaker 1: I was at that that massive demonstration in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: That Julianna just mentioned, and you know I ended up.
Speaker 1: I'm from Utica, New York. I went to a rural
Speaker 1: high school, uh just outside of of Utica, you know,
Speaker 1: russ Bell generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area
Speaker 1: of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters
Speaker 1: bothering me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends,
Speaker 1: and they were just everywhere in the hallways. Uh So
Speaker 1: it was very present um with me. When I was younger,
Speaker 1: I moved out to Olympia, Washington, two thousand six, and
Speaker 1: that's one a new student activist group, Students for a
Speaker 1: Democratic Society, was launched. That's how Julianna and I first met.
Speaker 1: We were both in separate chapters of that new organization
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest. And the port protests started just
Speaker 1: just a few months after I moved out there in
Speaker 1: in Olympia in two thousand six. So wait to declare
Speaker 1: for this for a second, because I've never quite been
Speaker 1: clear on this history. So there was a second st
Speaker 1: like Students for Democratic idea that was like unrelated to
Speaker 1: the first one. Yeah, they're born briefly um at the
Speaker 1: end of the bushop Manastery. That that explains a lot
Speaker 1: of things that it's very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're definitely in the in the second uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the rebirth of it um. So you know, I think
Speaker 1: it it took on some things in spirit um you know,
Speaker 1: but also was i'd say different in many ways, and
Speaker 1: it was very active to me at least, it was
Speaker 1: very exciting to be a member of the new STS
Speaker 1: because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: and was a great way to connect with young activists
Speaker 1: all over the US. So STS is emerging in this
Speaker 1: time period. One of the other things I was interested
Speaker 1: about is something someone you were talking about in in
Speaker 1: in the early part of this, which has to do
Speaker 1: with the way that these giants both the sort of
Speaker 1: Answer Coalition PSL Frank Group and I guess the I
Speaker 1: s O was still around back then coalitions work versus
Speaker 1: how like anything else worked. So so what was was
Speaker 1: STS sort of like consciously set up and in opposition
Speaker 1: to those groups. I don't think it was conscious, but
Speaker 1: there was just like I mean, these days, I mean
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with like
Speaker 1: anarchist versus tanky politics. None of that mattered at that time, Like,
Speaker 1: none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was
Speaker 1: the answer, which is the PSO Front group was completely
Speaker 1: fucking useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police
Speaker 1: um liberal democratic front group. There was literally no difference,
Speaker 1: just in terms of their aesthetics maybe like is there
Speaker 1: a donkey or a hammer and sickle on something. That's
Speaker 1: the only difference we saw. So I don't I don't
Speaker 1: think there was. It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious
Speaker 1: like political opposite attention to it. It's just like they're
Speaker 1: not doing anything, and and so we had to look
Speaker 1: in another direction. Actually, you know, it's hard to keep
Speaker 1: track of the alphabet soup of authilitarian communist groups at times,
Speaker 1: but this was actually answer for those who don't recall
Speaker 1: it was a front group for the Workers World Party,
Speaker 1: the WWT, which yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: keep track, right, Yeah, that's the same thing, like I think,
Speaker 1: so so okay, So for people who are sort of
Speaker 1: unaware of this, there's a network of connected but sometimes
Speaker 1: feuding like weird stalonist cults that kind of kind of
Speaker 1: like they hold on through the eighties and nineties and
Speaker 1: they start sort of rebuilding again around the anti one
Speaker 1: movements in that period. That that's the PSLs of the
Speaker 1: DUP's answer, like, and I think that's like most like
Speaker 1: modern anti war groups are also still these people, which
Speaker 1: is incredibly depressing something they want to talk a bit
Speaker 1: about it towards the end of this, but yet just
Speaker 1: for people who have not spent the last half decade
Speaker 1: in the in the trenches of extremely weird anti war politics. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we should get into how the sort
Speaker 1: of the first action starts in Olympia. Yeah so, and
Speaker 1: there were actually a couple of actions that happened um
Speaker 1: in the year proceeding that, you know, before I moved
Speaker 1: out to Olympia in two thousand and six, it was
Speaker 1: not yet under the banner of PMR port Militarization Resistance.
Speaker 1: That was a name that was officially coined in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and in May and June of two thousand six. So,
Speaker 1: just to give you an idea, Olympia, it's it's a
Speaker 1: college town or at the Evergreen State Colleges there. It's
Speaker 1: also the capital of Washington State, so you have that
Speaker 1: going on. It's also a military town. It's a little
Speaker 1: over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis.
Speaker 1: It's now called j B l M. J BLOM or
Speaker 1: Joint Base Lewis McCord. It's an Army and Air Force
Speaker 1: base now it's one base. Um So, yet all these
Speaker 1: you know, different kind of elements, uh in you know,
Speaker 1: in tandem in in that town and the public port.
Speaker 1: The Port of Olympia is one of about seventy years
Speaker 1: so public ports in the state of Washington, some of
Speaker 1: which are I mean, they're used for all kinds of things,
Speaker 1: you know, for commercial, private industry, but also the military
Speaker 1: and the US government. Uh So, uh you know, I
Speaker 1: heard from someone I don't even remember who that the
Speaker 1: military was sending a ship to the Port of Olympia
Speaker 1: in late May of two thousand six. And this happened
Speaker 1: for ten or so days, and it was just kind
Speaker 1: of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of us
Speaker 1: to go down to the Port of Olympia. It was
Speaker 1: it was the war machine in our backyard. And the
Speaker 1: idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out
Speaker 1: with just like less than ten people number folks getting arrested,
Speaker 1: and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests. Every single
Speaker 1: day um AN active blockades people, those of us like
Speaker 1: Julian and myself and other folks using civil disobedience or
Speaker 1: what we prefer to call civil resistance to try and
Speaker 1: stop or at the very least slow down these striker
Speaker 1: vehicles and to give folks an idea of what a
Speaker 1: striker vehicle is. You can look it up online, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of halfway between um, you know, a tank
Speaker 1: and humby. It doesn't have the slats you know that
Speaker 1: a tank would have. It's you know. And they were
Speaker 1: being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan for for raids
Speaker 1: of residential areas. They were really on the front lines
Speaker 1: of the war in in both those countries, and that's
Speaker 1: what we were trying to stop. I only got involved
Speaker 1: later um because I wasn't living in Olympia at the time.
Speaker 1: UM I was in another STS chapter, but my roommate
Speaker 1: was from Olympia and he had been involved in that
Speaker 1: first round of protests in Olympia before moving up to Ballingham.
Speaker 1: And so like hearing his story, it's got me very
Speaker 1: excited because just like finally someone's someone's doing something like
Speaker 1: someone's they're not just like you know, it's like everything
Speaker 1: else was just so liberal. Take whether it's marching from
Speaker 1: one place to another or writing to your congress people
Speaker 1: or occupying their office. It was like asking someone else
Speaker 1: to do something which you knew from the beginning they
Speaker 1: were never going to do. And finally this was finally
Speaker 1: someone was like actually getting into it. UM. I think
Speaker 1: the first one of the things that happened here was
Speaker 1: that um they started to avoid UM. There's it was
Speaker 1: kind of a geographical thing. I think, UM for people
Speaker 1: who either don't know Washington Washington, or because they're normal
Speaker 1: people don't know like the port areas of these cities
Speaker 1: very well because it's like like unless you're a long sherman, like,
Speaker 1: why you would you go down to like the port
Speaker 1: of Tacoma. There's nothing there. UM. But they kept moving
Speaker 1: it around because um Olympia is also not very big
Speaker 1: and UM, so it's there's really only two roads into
Speaker 1: the port, which is very small, and so it was
Speaker 1: it's very easy to block it. UM. And so then
Speaker 1: I think The first time that I got involved UM
Speaker 1: was in two thousands seven when they had moved it
Speaker 1: because they kept moving it around to try and switch
Speaker 1: things up. And wait, before they're moving the ship around, No,
Speaker 1: it's like they had to make a military ship met.
Speaker 1: They would UM. It's like like once the ship it
Speaker 1: was in the port, they would just have to go
Speaker 1: through with it. But then UM, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: everything every six months or so they had to make
Speaker 1: another military ship met and they would change the port
Speaker 1: usually each time, UM, to try and let basically to
Speaker 1: avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is like normal crap. Um.
Speaker 1: The first time I had gone down was in um Tacoma,
Speaker 1: which is a much much, much more industrialized port than Olympia.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's like a big port, more normal part,
Speaker 1: I guess, And that one was honestly pretty crazy, UM,
Speaker 1: because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze basically
Speaker 1: at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success
Speaker 1: we had was definitely at the port of Olympia. UM.
Speaker 1: I think the in two thousand seven in Olympia was
Speaker 1: definitely as the glory moment, which was when people were
Speaker 1: able to on and off like actually hold the port
Speaker 1: and control it in the exits. Yeah, and I wanna,
Speaker 1: you know, just emphasize that, like the the one the
Speaker 1: military changing their approach right to avoid us so jumping
Speaker 1: from port to port with these different shipments. They actually
Speaker 1: went so far because we were so successful as a
Speaker 1: movement in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by
Speaker 1: rail out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so
Speaker 1: far as to ports in Texas. Um. But you know
Speaker 1: when one thing that we did is that we built
Speaker 1: up contacts with other activists with long shore workers all
Speaker 1: up and down the West coast in California. There are
Speaker 1: other activists were connected with in Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and New York. There is a desire in the anti
Speaker 1: war movement. Uh. And and you know, in some extent
Speaker 1: maybe it's like it was small, but some folks in
Speaker 1: the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the I LW
Speaker 1: the you know, long shore workers Union, it's a lot
Speaker 1: more militant than say in a place like Olympia. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean people wanted to replicate this model because,
Speaker 1: as Juliana said, we wore successful in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: We shut down the port of Olympia for a total
Speaker 1: of it was essentially two days. They were not they're
Speaker 1: not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades,
Speaker 1: were willing to throw down with the police in the street.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that was cool about that
Speaker 1: blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like
Speaker 1: I said, and one was completely blockaded, and then the
Speaker 1: other one, UM, we had like a moving I don't
Speaker 1: really even know what it was, but something with wheels
Speaker 1: that we could move in and out, um to open
Speaker 1: it up, and so then we could allow like civilian
Speaker 1: cargo to move in and out, but then like we
Speaker 1: feel it back in place, um to block military shipments.
Speaker 1: So we were able to actually like stopped him from
Speaker 1: like what while in in in that oneted to come.
Speaker 1: We able to actually like stopped him from moving the
Speaker 1: self all together. Would you when sheally cleared up on
Speaker 1: the police and they moved it, we would eventually get
Speaker 1: cleared out by the police. It's like we were never
Speaker 1: able to It's like we're we we held it for
Speaker 1: two days. That those protests took place over a series
Speaker 1: of two weeks or more or less. Um, we were
Speaker 1: only able to fully hold it for two days before
Speaker 1: eventually they would clear us out. But one of the
Speaker 1: things is that it this does it did create problems
Speaker 1: for the army because when you work with a port,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you've got like a certain time
Speaker 1: frame that you've contracted with the port to do whatever
Speaker 1: it is because you're going to do and it's not
Speaker 1: too happy if you take longer every thing you said
Speaker 1: you would or yeah, yeah. And the other thing I
Speaker 1: want to add is, you know, I think the other
Speaker 1: really important element with this whole movement going on is
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest was um it is specifically western Washington,
Speaker 1: where the two of us were living. It was it was,
Speaker 1: you know, the center and in a sense it was
Speaker 1: the heart of the anti war movement in the country
Speaker 1: at that time. One because of this militant direct action
Speaker 1: that we were, you know, we were building up in
Speaker 1: the streets and trying to throw wrench and the gears
Speaker 1: of the war machine to to at the verily slowed down,
Speaker 1: which in some ways we did, but we're up against
Speaker 1: so much. But the other added element, of course is
Speaker 1: the g I resistance and the soldiers who are resisting
Speaker 1: I've all also known as the Rock Veterans against the
Speaker 1: War was very active there. They set up a g
Speaker 1: I coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the gates for one of the entrances for
Speaker 1: Fort Louis. Um, there are a whole bunch of soldiers
Speaker 1: that were going a wall. We had friends who were
Speaker 1: active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding,
Speaker 1: you know, refusing to go back into the striker brigades
Speaker 1: that joined us in port militarization Resistance. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: a whole you know, long list of soldiers that were
Speaker 1: very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in
Speaker 1: Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons. And so
Speaker 1: we are very much connected with this movement too. And
Speaker 1: I think the higher ups in the military they're they're
Speaker 1: hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to the point of actually spying on us.
Speaker 1: So that's like a whole other element of this story too.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've heard from talking to
Speaker 1: other people were involved this was that like wow, like
Speaker 1: during these protests, like the level of police militarization just
Speaker 1: like skyrocketed. And like I remember I was talking frend
Speaker 1: about this. It was like, you know, if you go
Speaker 1: back and look at like old system of a down videos,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll they'll have these things. Yeah, and you'll
Speaker 1: see these you see these riot police, and like you
Speaker 1: look at them and it's like these people they look
Speaker 1: so much less armored than like the people that we
Speaker 1: have now. And one of the things that I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting about this was that like this is I
Speaker 1: think one of the points where you start getting the
Speaker 1: modern riot police showing up that are just like, you know,
Speaker 1: completely encased in like armor. And yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about just like the police response to this, because
Speaker 1: I think that's that's another thing I think. I think
Speaker 1: there's never there's a kind of a tendency to sort
Speaker 1: of project back what the police look like just onto
Speaker 1: the whole history of police, and I think it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's gotten worse even in the last twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so I lived downtown in Olympia and probably
Speaker 1: just like a six minute walk away from the Port
Speaker 1: of Olympia and and also very conveniently just a few
Speaker 1: blocks away from the police station, so so lucky. So
Speaker 1: we actually saw you know, we could see from the
Speaker 1: front of down on the road, down the sidewalk from
Speaker 1: the front of our house. Uh, some of the military
Speaker 1: shipments going by. And we we we did see that absolutely,
Speaker 1: and at at times it was it was terrifying. I
Speaker 1: mean I lived in an activist house we jokingly called
Speaker 1: h Q because that's just you know where because of
Speaker 1: its proximity to the port, that's where a number of
Speaker 1: us were having meetings, uh, you know, around these protests
Speaker 1: early on in two thousand six, and um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we like they look like RoboCop and it's something
Speaker 1: I had I you know, I hadn't like I had
Speaker 1: been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the r
Speaker 1: n C protests and d NC protests in Boston, New
Speaker 1: York and like in Washington d C uh and so
Speaker 1: I would see these like riot cops. But they were
Speaker 1: I mean ubiquitous in the support protests. It was like
Speaker 1: a whole army of them that was sent out. I
Speaker 1: mean when Juliana said that things got kind of crazy
Speaker 1: at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there was
Speaker 1: like a police riot, you know, like the cops went
Speaker 1: absolutely nuts there, shooting people with tear gas and pepper
Speaker 1: balls and and brutalizing people. I had never before witnessed
Speaker 1: anything like that. And it got to the point in
Speaker 1: you know, in Olympia where we we kind of knew
Speaker 1: early on that we were being traced by the police
Speaker 1: to the extent where, you know, one friend of ours
Speaker 1: was followed from our house to the bus station to
Speaker 1: take a bus to school by the police and then
Speaker 1: was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on the street.
Speaker 1: And we had another fellow activists and you know, a
Speaker 1: roommate of mine who is going out to driving out
Speaker 1: with a few friends, uh few fellow activists from Olympia
Speaker 1: to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's a
Speaker 1: port of Gray's Harbor there, pretty conservative small town. It's
Speaker 1: where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous Kurt
Speaker 1: Cobain teams. McDonald's. They served billions and and billions served
Speaker 1: and that one McDonald's and Kurt Cobain's McDonalds. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the you know, they they were they were following.
Speaker 1: They had orders the Washington State Patrol two, um, you know,
Speaker 1: pull over a car full full of known anarchists. There
Speaker 1: was alert gone out to all the police departments. They
Speaker 1: pulled them, They pulled him over, they made him walk
Speaker 1: the line. He was had you know, wasn't drinking and
Speaker 1: no drugs, like nothing in his system, but they he
Speaker 1: was driving under like one mile per hour under the
Speaker 1: speed limit. They arrested him for d d W I
Speaker 1: you know, eventually fought the chargers, sued um uh and
Speaker 1: you know when a big settlement out of all that.
Speaker 1: But that's just one example of many of the lengths
Speaker 1: that the police would go to h It was pretty severe.
Speaker 1: Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger
Speaker 1: anarchists called a pitch Pipe info shop in Tacoma, and
Speaker 1: that was also a big target. The police were swarming
Speaker 1: around them all the time. They had like camera set
Speaker 1: up like specifically just a side the infishop, Like there
Speaker 1: weren't Surrens cameras there before, but then it was like,
Speaker 1: oh well, just conveniently put them on this one specific
Speaker 1: street corner. Yeah. I think like that was one of
Speaker 1: the things I was reading about this is you have
Speaker 1: that stuff. And then also I think one of the
Speaker 1: steers parts of this is that like Army intelligence gets involved,
Speaker 1: and yeah, do you want to talk about the man
Speaker 1: named quote unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not
Speaker 1: that Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what what
Speaker 1: memories you have of our our good dear friend John
Speaker 1: Jacob Julian. I don't think I ever actually knew him
Speaker 1: in person, but he was the moderator of the list Serve,
Speaker 1: wasn't he. Yes, she's one of the moderators of our
Speaker 1: list serves. Now that I look back on it, I'm
Speaker 1: like the port Militarization Resistance the SERUB was always just
Speaker 1: like this dramatic ship show, and it's like, looking back
Speaker 1: on it, I was like, oh, a cop that did nothing,
Speaker 1: that absolutely nothing to like established order or uh if
Speaker 1: that was on purpose. Yeah, so I think there's definitely
Speaker 1: something that happened, Like, you know, looking back from our
Speaker 1: vantage point today, it's like, Okay, things make a little
Speaker 1: more sense at the time though. And we're in this movement, right,
Speaker 1: and so that means like meeting people where they're at.
Speaker 1: We find all kinds of people that would like want
Speaker 1: to join the movement, like I, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: like active duty soldiers that were joining. So I met
Speaker 1: this guy named John Jacob, and he sent an email
Speaker 1: out to me. I was one of the contacts for
Speaker 1: the Olympia STS group, and it's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: there's kind of like a parent organization that's some old
Speaker 1: like elder activists or in uh to kind of mentor
Speaker 1: us called Movement for a Democratic Society, very small, never
Speaker 1: really took off, but like, I'm interested in getting involved.
Speaker 1: We met up in public and he seemed like an
Speaker 1: alright guy. I mean he was, um, you know, forty
Speaker 1: is early forties. He had told me, like, you know,
Speaker 1: been in the military for years, and he actually still
Speaker 1: worked at Fort Lewis, so he was always open about that,
Speaker 1: but it only went that far. He didn't ever tell
Speaker 1: us what he actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal
Speaker 1: for you know, we have many folks that worked active duty,
Speaker 1: you know, on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned that, we're in port militarization resistance. So
Speaker 1: he gets involved, and he gets really involved with Port
Speaker 1: Militarization resistance. He goes to protests, He gets pretty close
Speaker 1: with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma,
Speaker 1: UM and he seemed like a really solid guy to
Speaker 1: to most of us. UM. And you know, things happen
Speaker 1: as as we progress and you know, as the military
Speaker 1: responded to our uh, you know how effective we wore
Speaker 1: in the anti war movement and the g I resistance
Speaker 1: movement by changing their tactics. We noticed that a when
Speaker 1: we first started the protests, UM, we we had the
Speaker 1: ability to catch the police by surprise by setting up
Speaker 1: you know, blockade here, we're having a surprise action there
Speaker 1: at this time, or this port, etcetera, etcetera. And as
Speaker 1: time progressed, we found out that you know, we were
Speaker 1: having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy.
Speaker 1: We thought that we're in private and then for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the police kind of knew about where we were going
Speaker 1: to be before we even showed up. And that I
Speaker 1: remember that Paly happening in two thousand seven the Port
Speaker 1: of Olympia. Yeah, and the COMMA. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of things like that. Like there is one time when
Speaker 1: there are like some people who had a meeting in
Speaker 1: a closed room, like all there they had taken the
Speaker 1: batteries out of their cell phones. They had simply written
Speaker 1: on the whiteboard the time and place they're going to
Speaker 1: have their next meeting, which is going to be in
Speaker 1: a diner near the port, and so that way if
Speaker 1: like if for any reason the room with bugs, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be caught up because it was just written on aboard.
Speaker 1: And then it was like a small meeting too, so
Speaker 1: it's like there weren't and then when they got to
Speaker 1: that dinner, there was like full of cops like clearly
Speaker 1: waiting for them. Like at that point, it's like it
Speaker 1: was very clear there was some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think we are from early on, like you know,
Speaker 1: we we knew our history. I mean, you know, one
Speaker 1: of our our fellow activists and p Mars and a
Speaker 1: friend of ours, Peter Boehmer's professor at the Evergreen State College.
Speaker 1: He was in the original Sts back in the sixties,
Speaker 1: and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for
Speaker 1: a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean the FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him. Um
Speaker 1: back in in the seventies when he was active in
Speaker 1: the anti war movement in San Diego. Like we knew,
Speaker 1: you know, former Black Panthers, and we read our history,
Speaker 1: so we knew about the history of cointelpro the counterintelligence
Speaker 1: program of the six season seventies and the war on
Speaker 1: the anti war and civil rights and black power, American
Speaker 1: Indian movements, etcetera. Um, so we knew, you know, just
Speaker 1: intuitively early on. Uh. But there's one thing that happened
Speaker 1: in particular which prompted some of us to file for
Speaker 1: a public records request with the City of Olympia and
Speaker 1: another activists walking down the street in Olympia. I'm a
Speaker 1: member of the Wobblies Industrial Workers of the World Union,
Speaker 1: and we had like a one of those metal newspaper
Speaker 1: boxes downtown and it was locked to a poll um,
Speaker 1: you know, with a bike lock. And there are some
Speaker 1: city workers there with a pickup truck and they're cutting
Speaker 1: the lock to the newspaper box and they threw it
Speaker 1: in their pickup truck and so are you know, this
Speaker 1: friend of ours was there. It was like, what the hell,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? What's going on? And one of
Speaker 1: the workers just kind of strugged and was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, the police told us to do this, and
Speaker 1: they drove off like they stole you know, are essentially
Speaker 1: like union property or whatever. Um. So we had you know,
Speaker 1: our our lawyer friend Larry Hilda's and the National Lawyer's
Speaker 1: Guild you know, call and kind of threatened the city
Speaker 1: and and then a number of us got together like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, let's do like a public records requests UM
Speaker 1: with the City of of Olympia freedom of information law right,
Speaker 1: and so we did. And the request was, you know,
Speaker 1: just requesting any all information the city had UM, any
Speaker 1: exchanges communications by email, etcetera, UM between the police and
Speaker 1: like other agencies about anarchists, I WW, students for a
Speaker 1: Democratic Society UM. And their initial search that the city
Speaker 1: clerk did yielded something like thirty thousand responses. So she's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta narrow this down. And I don't know, I
Speaker 1: was working on the request at the time and for
Speaker 1: some reason, like I don't know where sport protests are
Speaker 1: near a military based communications between the army, not thinking anything.
Speaker 1: And so the initial responses who actually got um you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred hundred thirty years so different documents, just
Speaker 1: copies of emails, etcetera. That UM, we're little puzzle pieces
Speaker 1: for this massive puzzle. And it was just a few
Speaker 1: of them. Uh, and it was you know, there was
Speaker 1: an email talking about our guy in the Navy going
Speaker 1: to a PMR meeting to get some intel. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of things like that. There are
Speaker 1: a few emails in particular, UM and the email address
Speaker 1: was something like John John J. Towry at you know,
Speaker 1: Army dot us whatever the email address was. So there's
Speaker 1: a crew of activists that got together, put their heads together,
Speaker 1: did some research quietly for a few months, and eventually
Speaker 1: found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records
Speaker 1: and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club
Speaker 1: called like that I don't know, like the Brown Beauque
Speaker 1: Club or the Brown Butt Club or something, and and
Speaker 1: the like. Found out that this John Towery guy that
Speaker 1: was in this motorcycle club and had his you know,
Speaker 1: was registered to vote outside of Tacoma, in this town there.
Speaker 1: It was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that
Speaker 1: we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist UM and
Speaker 1: and a friend, you know, I thought he was a
Speaker 1: personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially
Speaker 1: an Army intelligence officer working for something called the Force
Speaker 1: Protection Unit at uh AT Joint Face Joint based Lewis
Speaker 1: McCord and also working with a whole list of different
Speaker 1: agencies and what turned out to be like a massive
Speaker 1: surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was
Speaker 1: sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us,
Speaker 1: to aspire on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that there's one of the things that have always
Speaker 1: so much really steak. So like I learned about from
Speaker 1: militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around the
Speaker 1: history of like informists and I ran into this and
Speaker 1: I was like what because and then that was what
Speaker 1: I thought. One of the things I thought was really
Speaker 1: interesting about this is that like, like I think that
Speaker 1: this chapter of the anti war movement is even on
Speaker 1: the left, is like not very well known, but like
Speaker 1: the seriousness is which the Army seems to have taken
Speaker 1: itsily is really remarkable. Yeah, I'm wondering what you to
Speaker 1: think about that. One thing we have to emphasize is
Speaker 1: is that we were not a large group of people. Yeah, Like, um,
Speaker 1: the number of people who are actively involved in portmoloitaris agast.
Speaker 1: My assistance at its peak was how many people do
Speaker 1: you think it was Brandon. Well, it depends. I mean
Speaker 1: I'd say they're probably like at its peak, maybe probably
Speaker 1: four year to fifty people that would like consistently show
Speaker 1: up to things, you know, maybe a slightly smaller, very
Speaker 1: core group. But we would have demonstrations with like and
Speaker 1: then like four people you know, yeah, and like that
Speaker 1: would be like the max like there is it's like
Speaker 1: there are like the peaceful like kind of like support actions.
Speaker 1: You know, you would get like a couple hundred people
Speaker 1: and then like for the stuff like where it's like
Speaker 1: the first night that that the part of the entrance
Speaker 1: to the part of Olympia was occupied, it would be like, Um,
Speaker 1: these were not These were not very large groups of people. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like and like I said, it's like one
Speaker 1: thing that we need to keep in mind was that, um,
Speaker 1: the peace police were much stronger back then than they
Speaker 1: are now nowadays. Lating like as we saw last year,
Speaker 1: it's like people in the US of Blurn to throw down,
Speaker 1: but that was not the case at the time. And
Speaker 1: so this is a very very small group of people. Um.
Speaker 1: I think we accomplished a lot from with how small
Speaker 1: it was. Um, if it had been larger, it would
Speaker 1: have accomplished way more. Um, but even that small core
Speaker 1: of like people with maybe expanding out to like a
Speaker 1: larger group of a couple of hundred, had them that
Speaker 1: scared that they went that far. They're trying to disrupt it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and this is one of the things I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about a lot recently of this seems to be
Speaker 1: a very consistent thing, which is it like the two
Speaker 1: things that are guaranteed to like just have a hammer
Speaker 1: drop on you if you touch them is pipelines and ports.
Speaker 1: And that that was that was something you know, we
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot on here about pipeline protests, um.
Speaker 1: But I was interested in what you too think about
Speaker 1: because this this is like a very particular moment right
Speaker 1: now in what you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures.
Speaker 1: And I was wondering if, if you do, you think
Speaker 1: there's anything that we can learn from how your versions
Speaker 1: of the sort of of port demonstrations worked for potentially
Speaker 1: trying to leverage that in the future, especially with like
Speaker 1: contract negotiations for port workers in Oakland coming up next year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. You know, that is this old
Speaker 1: saying and the I w W direct action gets goods, right,
Speaker 1: and I think it really boils down to that it's
Speaker 1: building up uh you know, mass movements and social movements
Speaker 1: from below that rely on direct action, that rely on
Speaker 1: civil resistance, civil disobedience. Um yeah, and the pipeline protests
Speaker 1: that have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on
Speaker 1: the front lines of that for many, many years now.
Speaker 1: I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we
Speaker 1: face really pales in comparison to the kinds of you know,
Speaker 1: surveillance of repression that folks were facing at Standing Rock
Speaker 1: for example. Um. You know, I think, of course, one
Speaker 1: of the well one of the main differences is that
Speaker 1: it was primarily the military you know, with us, right
Speaker 1: that was surveilling us, because this is very specifically, you know,
Speaker 1: a war issue and a military issue. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think, um, you know, like I think
Speaker 1: there's a big questions like what what do we have
Speaker 1: to do? That's that's new And to me, I say,
Speaker 1: you know, for both that kind of militant action, but
Speaker 1: also for the labor movements, like it's not you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are things
Speaker 1: that have tried and true track record of getting the
Speaker 1: goods and that is you know, these more disruptive kind
Speaker 1: of actions and movements. Um, and so one of them
Speaker 1: would be you know, I guess my suggestion would be
Speaker 1: to like go back to the basics. And even like
Speaker 1: I would say, now, you know this, remember this at
Speaker 1: a time when like Facebook was around, right, like, but
Speaker 1: we weren't really using that for our organizing. We really
Speaker 1: relied on like face to face meetings, you know, phone
Speaker 1: calls and building up trust with people and building up
Speaker 1: our capacity to like take actions and make change. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I'm not saying throw out everything that you know,
Speaker 1: that at least some of the good that social media
Speaker 1: has to offer, but like I think going beyond that
Speaker 1: and going back to these older tactics. And then for
Speaker 1: the labor movement, like the big thing is you know,
Speaker 1: and it's just like a bigger question for for mainstream
Speaker 1: unions in particular, I mean, they're that the whole idea
Speaker 1: of like union contracts is that workers also lose a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they get some things, but uh, business owners and bosses
Speaker 1: have rights carved out in in those contracts. And with
Speaker 1: the longshore workers, I mean, the difficult thing with that
Speaker 1: of course, is like there would be some symbolic strikes that,
Speaker 1: of course, like longshore workers have done and continue to do,
Speaker 1: you know, around like the war Iraq historically supporting movie
Speaker 1: a bou Jamal mayde a, etcetera, like in Oakland, Um,
Speaker 1: but they have some things for that written into their contracts,
Speaker 1: and you know, for all these other like unions, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we can't strike at all for for the
Speaker 1: next two years, the next three years, whatever the life
Speaker 1: of the contract is. Like, I think it's a bigger
Speaker 1: question and challenge for the labor movement to move beyond
Speaker 1: that and not be putting this strait jacket of contracts
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, I think that that, particularly, like the
Speaker 1: the no strike clause part of contracts, I think an
Speaker 1: interesting thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean,
Speaker 1: there are some unions that will actually do stuff around
Speaker 1: fighting it, but mostly people just sort of don't care.
Speaker 1: And I think you wind up in a situation where
Speaker 1: it seems like you you kind of have to plan
Speaker 1: your tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you can't actually get people to do anything more in
Speaker 1: like a one day symbolic strike. Yeah, and or you
Speaker 1: know the challenges, like, you know, we have this great
Speaker 1: American tradition that's not unique to the US. It's universal really,
Speaker 1: and it's one that resonates with me breaking the law
Speaker 1: right and like we're you know, we're like civil disobedience.
Speaker 1: That is that what we were doing in the streets
Speaker 1: and blocking the ports. We were breaking the law and
Speaker 1: we knew it. And that's what the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: the Black freedom movement did in in the nineties sixties.
Speaker 1: But like we have recent examples of workers breaking the
Speaker 1: law and mass like the West Virginia teacher strikes that
Speaker 1: have been a few years ago, like teachers in every
Speaker 1: single county in that state went on strike. They broke
Speaker 1: the law and and they want something out of that.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what we really need to encourage people,
Speaker 1: is this idea of breaking out of like the norm
Speaker 1: and and breaking the laws which you know, the laws
Speaker 1: that are in place, which are not there to you know,
Speaker 1: expand our freedom. There there too, contract it. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of one of my friends kind of joke about what
Speaker 1: was the exact line. It was, it's it's only illegal
Speaker 1: if you get caught, and it only matters if you lose,
Speaker 1: which I think is a good way of thinking about
Speaker 1: both breaking. Yeah, and you know, yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: also like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides,
Speaker 1: the law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they
Speaker 1: just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly.
Speaker 1: So don't don't bind yourself if if you can, if
Speaker 1: you can, not get caught and not like good a
Speaker 1: prison for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself
Speaker 1: by a bunch of like paper that the other side
Speaker 1: just doesn't care about. Yeah, And that's an excellent point,
Speaker 1: because that's the big thing, you know, with the army
Speaker 1: and law enforcement in general, like surveillance of us. They
Speaker 1: were in the police just their actions, their brazen actions
Speaker 1: on the street, like the riot police. Um, they were
Speaker 1: just breaking the law all the time. They absolutely have
Speaker 1: a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights, of
Speaker 1: civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were a
Speaker 1: number of, you know, court cases that sprung out of um,
Speaker 1: you know, this movement. There was a case called Panagocus Vitari.
Speaker 1: Another Juliana Panagoucus was another PMR member co plaintiff in
Speaker 1: that case, and you know, is it a case against
Speaker 1: the army that you know, we we waged and brought
Speaker 1: up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and you know,
Speaker 1: eventually lost and it could have brought it to the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court but didn't. But you know, like the the
Speaker 1: other thing is like the violation of the posse Commentatus Act.
Speaker 1: It was a whole other thing. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: have to get like so tied up into like the
Speaker 1: legalistic thing. But like the point your point is valid,
Speaker 1: Like they don't care about the laws that are already there.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll just intentionally break them, break their own laws
Speaker 1: that they have set up, and you know, they'll just
Speaker 1: get a slap on the wrist because that's really all
Speaker 1: that's all that happens to them. I think, I think
Speaker 1: I think that's a good note to end on break
Speaker 1: the law. It's fake. It's also bad. Um. Do you
Speaker 1: do have anything you want to plug other than that,
Speaker 1: other than you know, encouraging people to break the cage
Speaker 1: your local port? Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's
Speaker 1: you know, I guess just encourage people to do is
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds like what were you're doing by
Speaker 1: having us on the show, and like there are some
Speaker 1: in our very recent history, um, you know, movements and
Speaker 1: winds that we all as activists today can still learn from.
Speaker 1: And I think part of that, um you know, I
Speaker 1: don't want to call us elders because we're not that old,
Speaker 1: but like one part of that is like making sure
Speaker 1: like our movements are still like a multi generational and
Speaker 1: like we we learned from each other and also as
Speaker 1: as Juliana and I did, like I mentioned earlier, like
Speaker 1: we learned from the movements of the past, sts, the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement, etcetera. Um, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot that you know, these these struggles I think
Speaker 1: have to offer us today. All right, thank thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you both for talking coming down and talking with us.
Speaker 1: You're for having us. Thank you. Well, this is this
Speaker 1: has when it could happen here find us at happened
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