Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know. This is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads packaged 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. It's Oregon. You don't get
Speaker 1: to consent. That's how you open up the podcast. That's right, baby,
Speaker 1: look up one party consent laws for recording recording. Um,
Speaker 1: this is it could happen here a podcast about when
Speaker 1: you can legally record people without their consent. Hint always
Speaker 1: in the state of Oregon. Um, I'm Robert Evans. We're
Speaker 1: talking about bad things, good things, things that are good
Speaker 1: and bad, all that stuff. Who what do we you
Speaker 1: know what? You know what we should talk about? You
Speaker 1: know what no one has talked about ever on the
Speaker 1: internet lately. Josephine Robinette Rogan. Oh, I've never heard of him.
Speaker 1: What does he do well? He has a podcast? If
Speaker 1: you heard a podcast, Garrison, I'm unfamiliar, but just I'll
Speaker 1: just go with it. Yeah. Well, it's like the radio,
Speaker 1: but easier to spread disinformation, um and also sexier for
Speaker 1: reasons that are hard to explain. Uh. And Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: gets on his podcast and he says a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff that people think is bad, and then everybody gets
Speaker 1: angry at him, and then he makes more money. And
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about how maybe we could
Speaker 1: handle this problem differently, maybe we could not do the
Speaker 1: same thing over and over and there's quite a different result. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and upfront, obviously we're talking about him. We're trying to
Speaker 1: talk less about specifically what he said and more about
Speaker 1: kind of the problem he represents in the ways in
Speaker 1: which there was sponses people have aren't having the results
Speaker 1: they desire. We're gonna avoid using his name in the
Speaker 1: title of the episode or the description because that doesn't
Speaker 1: feed into the algorithm kind of in the same way.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Garrison, you want to kick us off here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've been watching the Rogan thing online and be getting
Speaker 1: kind of frustrated because of the way the discourse is going,
Speaker 1: and it's just repeating the same loops that we see
Speaker 1: every few months and nothing really changes. And Regan just
Speaker 1: gets more popular, so earlier this month or like a
Speaker 1: middle of I guess it was closer to like January. UM,
Speaker 1: there was like a group of like two dred seventy doctors,
Speaker 1: healthcare workers, UM and scientists who are campaigning for Spotify
Speaker 1: to adopt a missuformation policy. UM. This was prompted by
Speaker 1: a few episodes of the Joe Rogan podcast that we've
Speaker 1: already actually talked about, UM about Dr Robert Malone and
Speaker 1: someone else who said some stupid things about the pandemic. UM.
Speaker 1: So I write when when I when we talked about
Speaker 1: these eisodes this last time, I tried to actually talk
Speaker 1: about what these doctors were doing and let not focus
Speaker 1: on Rogan himself, but specifically what these doctors were doing
Speaker 1: and their ideology, because I didn't want to add to
Speaker 1: the whole Rogan side of the discourse. UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: for for this, for this, like a letter that that
Speaker 1: these doctors sent to Spotify, if they were not really
Speaker 1: advocating for Rogan to be removed from the platform, UM
Speaker 1: or even for episodes to be removed, just to have
Speaker 1: Spotify clarify their guidelines regarding medical misinformation, because you know,
Speaker 1: and it's important to note that Joe Rogan has a
Speaker 1: exclusivity contract with Spotify. He does not work for them,
Speaker 1: but Rogan gets paid a lot of money to get
Speaker 1: his podcast only published on Spotify's feed. So it's it's
Speaker 1: not it's it's it's it's like a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a weird kind of set up, and it can give
Speaker 1: a lot of like gray area for like, does Spotify
Speaker 1: count that's as publisher or not. You're like, well, not really,
Speaker 1: because they could he could also just end that contract
Speaker 1: and post to this podcast everywhere. Um, I mean I
Speaker 1: think it would take there. There's probably some sort of
Speaker 1: exclusive time limit on the exclusivity agreement, etcetera. Um, because
Speaker 1: it it is, it is mixed because they did recently
Speaker 1: when it came out that he said the inn word
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of times, Spotify removed those episodes. So
Speaker 1: there's a degree to which they they have acted as
Speaker 1: a publisher. Yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: kind of talk about this on the So the letter
Speaker 1: gwent kind of viral and it prompted this whole kind
Speaker 1: of thing in the middle of January, but like deleting
Speaker 1: your Spotify subscription and then we had musicians, most uh,
Speaker 1: most popularly, Neil Young decides to remove all their music
Speaker 1: from the Spotify platform, um as like a performative thing,
Speaker 1: being like, Okay, if Spotify is gonna host all this
Speaker 1: medical misinformation, we're going to remove this as protest. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, Neil Young then just signed an exclusivity deal
Speaker 1: with Amazon, so oh great, cool. We yes, episode the
Speaker 1: Bastion of moral purity. Yeah, and they're not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think they are probably pay a better rate because
Speaker 1: Spotify is pretty much at the bottom to musicians, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it's good. Um, I think Napster actually
Speaker 1: has the best rate, doesn't the best rate, which I
Speaker 1: mean also, if you want to be actually moral, just
Speaker 1: just just use band camp. But I mean I use
Speaker 1: Spotify because it's really easy, and that's why Spotify works.
Speaker 1: It's because it's super it is. It is a well
Speaker 1: made product. That does not mean it's an ethical product,
Speaker 1: but it does. It does the thing that it's supposed
Speaker 1: to do quite well. So so yeah, it basically We've
Speaker 1: had endless discourse since then about Joe Rogan about Spotify
Speaker 1: is the platform, talking about how bad Spotify is, which yes,
Speaker 1: it is bad, talking about how you know how bad
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan is. And you know the thing is, Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan already had the most popular podcast in the world
Speaker 1: his exclusivity deal with Spotify, and he's currently estimated to
Speaker 1: bring in eleven million listeners per episode of his podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for for some reference, UM, Behind the Bastards is one
Speaker 1: of the largest podcasts out there. Um, and he's on
Speaker 1: average something like ten times our traffic. Uh. Like it's
Speaker 1: and it's not, He's not. He's not just the most
Speaker 1: popular podcast. He helped invent what podcasting podcast? He was
Speaker 1: one of the first, and like he had a foundational
Speaker 1: role in how the entire industry works. Since this letter
Speaker 1: and since he's episodes, there's been a whole lot of
Speaker 1: discourse around if Spotify should remove Joe Rogan from the platform, Um,
Speaker 1: if they should cancel his deal. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people calling on Spotify to do that. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are calling on Spotify to remove certain episodes,
Speaker 1: and Spotify has not been teen too so like, but
Speaker 1: let's and I know, Joe Rogan himself did actually authorize
Speaker 1: the removal of a certain amount of episodes, which for
Speaker 1: reasons we'll talk about later. Um, but what's all this
Speaker 1: discourse and outrage and articles and tweets actually doing to
Speaker 1: Spotify into Rogan? Okay? In my opinion, kind of the
Speaker 1: end result is actually very similar to all of the
Speaker 1: free advertising that companies get whenever they make awoke statement
Speaker 1: that infuriate, that infuriates the actionary right, you know, resulting
Speaker 1: in throwing your kel out your window, flushing your Gillette
Speaker 1: blade down the toilet, and burning your nikes. And it's
Speaker 1: even widely speculated and kind of like a known fact
Speaker 1: that companies will use progressive statements and policies to drum
Speaker 1: up this outrage um to give their company and product
Speaker 1: tons of free advertising and just to get the brand
Speaker 1: name itself in the side consumers heads. And this is
Speaker 1: definitely happening. Was was Rogan and Spotify in terms of
Speaker 1: outrage being used as advertising. It may not be intentional,
Speaker 1: but that is what the result is. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: mean it's very uh. It's it's both sides like to
Speaker 1: make fun of the other for doing this, like folks
Speaker 1: on the left like to make fun of their right
Speaker 1: when they're when they're breaking their carriggs or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: But you know, it happens. It's equally profitable for both sides.
Speaker 1: You just do the opposite, you know, you have someone
Speaker 1: come on and talk about how they're a truth teller
Speaker 1: being canceled, and they get a bunch of attention money
Speaker 1: and and it works equally well both ways, pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So with Spotify and Rogan in the news every day
Speaker 1: for the past like three weeks, the the the end
Speaker 1: is that like the fact that it's just that people
Speaker 1: are hearing these names in their head more often, and
Speaker 1: they're probably subconsciously gonna use Spotify more often because you know,
Speaker 1: despite a few people that might cancel their subscriptions, the
Speaker 1: net effect will be more listeners who seem to Spotify
Speaker 1: because there because the name is in my subconscious it's
Speaker 1: it's it's in there. And all the effect it's gonna
Speaker 1: have on Rogan is giving him a way more publicity
Speaker 1: to attract new listeners, and and it's listeners who themselves
Speaker 1: are like attracted to unconventional ideas outside the mainstream, and
Speaker 1: his more passive listeners are gonna like double down on
Speaker 1: him because there's gonna be like the backfire effect, so
Speaker 1: they will like feel defensive and then become more of
Speaker 1: a fan of his. Because he's seen as a cultural outsider,
Speaker 1: even though he's not an outsider. He is the mainstream,
Speaker 1: he's the biggest podcaster in the world, but he's seen
Speaker 1: as a cultural outsider. So you know, he like brings
Speaker 1: on guests who say things that they're not supposed to say.
Speaker 1: You know, so, who's actually going to be convinced by
Speaker 1: all this outrage to not listen to Rogan via pointing
Speaker 1: out all the wrong things he's said and all the
Speaker 1: slurs he's used, Like, is that really going to stop
Speaker 1: fans from listening to Joe Rogan. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: really pointing out that Donald Trump illegally took classified documents.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I mean that's fucked up and ship,
Speaker 1: but like he's never going to get charged with crimes
Speaker 1: and none of his supporters care. You're the only people
Speaker 1: who are angry about this, and it doesn't matter because
Speaker 1: the people you vote for aren't going to punish him,
Speaker 1: So like, just you know, chill out a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's like all of the outrage is simply inflating the
Speaker 1: importance of jo Rogan on like an entire cultural level.
Speaker 1: It's that he's becoming he's becoming more important to his fans,
Speaker 1: more important to his haters, and more important to himself
Speaker 1: and Spotify as an asset because he generates a lot
Speaker 1: of exclusive listeners and news coverage and buzz around the
Speaker 1: Spotify brand. And it's important to talk about like so
Speaker 1: you have broadly speaking within the field of entertainment, like
Speaker 1: digital entertainment in particular, you have like two ways that
Speaker 1: you can grow your audience. One of them is organic growth,
Speaker 1: which is know, I listened to Garrison's podcast, I like it.
Speaker 1: I tell a friend about Garrison's podcast. They like it.
Speaker 1: They tell a friend about Garrett that that's like organic,
Speaker 1: you know, it's very natural. That's purely the kind of
Speaker 1: quality of the content UM reaching people. And then there
Speaker 1: is in organic growth, which is can be the result
Speaker 1: of like ad campaigns can be the result of UM
Speaker 1: an algorithm. Often in today we're talking about like oh,
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook prioritizes this kind of content. So like
Speaker 1: something article on bright Barred about black on white crime
Speaker 1: that would have been read ten thousand times ten years
Speaker 1: ago gets read a million times because it spreads well
Speaker 1: on this platform for reasons that aren't organic UM. And
Speaker 1: with Joe Rogan, one of the reasons why because we
Speaker 1: can talk about like d platforming, if you want to
Speaker 1: talk about like Alex Jones for example, or Meloianopolis, good
Speaker 1: case that d platforming really reduced both of their reaches. Now,
Speaker 1: Milo uh pretty much wiped out as a person who
Speaker 1: mattered in terms of the dispoce thank christ. Alex Jones
Speaker 1: less so. Um, it definitely hurt his busines this and
Speaker 1: it reduced his reach. But by the time Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and whatnot started throttling him, he he had already
Speaker 1: inorganically increased his reach enough that like he's able to,
Speaker 1: he had he had a large a large enough audience
Speaker 1: to stay somewhat relevant and keep going. The thing about
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan is he did not get famous and popular
Speaker 1: in organically. I'm sure there was some degree of that
Speaker 1: on like social media, but most of his growth before that.
Speaker 1: Like people like him, Like whatever you think of him,
Speaker 1: he's a good broadcaster. That's That's the thing. Even though,
Speaker 1: like you know, for all this research, I don't like him.
Speaker 1: He says horrible things, But you know, I was watching
Speaker 1: I watched all of like Rogan's like um, like uh
Speaker 1: Instagram videos he made like a few ten minute things
Speaker 1: talking about the outrage, and it's it sucks because when
Speaker 1: you listen to him, he's like a really good talker.
Speaker 1: He's very good at what he does. Yeah, he's very
Speaker 1: good at like generating sympathy and generating like good card
Speaker 1: Like It's it sucks because yeah, I wanted to like
Speaker 1: hate this person, but I'm like listening to him talking
Speaker 1: about this issue like oh wow, yeah, like you actually
Speaker 1: have a decent grasp of what's going on here. UM,
Speaker 1: And that's he is, not he part of he gets
Speaker 1: some of his money from playing like a dumb, chill
Speaker 1: stoner dude, but he's not dumb. He's definitely a stoner.
Speaker 1: He's not a dumb man. He's very intell. He's very
Speaker 1: good at what he does. UM. One of the things
Speaker 1: we don't kind of talk about enough when we talk
Speaker 1: about media that I think is important to note is
Speaker 1: that UM being likable in a professional sense is a skill.
Speaker 1: And it's a skill like any technical skill. It's like
Speaker 1: knowing how to how to how to farm or weld. UM.
Speaker 1: It is a thing that you build on over time.
Speaker 1: It is a thing that UM takes a lot of
Speaker 1: trial and error and a lot of education to get right. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is a thing that Joe Rogan has been doing
Speaker 1: for longer than a significant chunk of the people on
Speaker 1: this show, including Garrison, have been alive. Uh. It's like
Speaker 1: like I've been like this is this is more or
Speaker 1: less been my job for like thirteen or fourteen years,
Speaker 1: and it is like a skill that you build and
Speaker 1: the thing that he is really good at is making
Speaker 1: but want to listen to him. And so if you
Speaker 1: were to say, kick him out of Spotify tomorrow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's entirely possible that his that that would increase
Speaker 1: the number of people who when there's there's a case
Speaker 1: to be made that Spotify has limited his maximum audience,
Speaker 1: limiting him to Spotify as opposed to if he was
Speaker 1: just any app he wanted to be on, maybe it'd
Speaker 1: be twenty million, you know, listening to every exactly. Yes,
Speaker 1: Like even if did even a Spotify did drop him
Speaker 1: because of all these you know, outrage you know, and
Speaker 1: all the tweets and all of the petitions, even if
Speaker 1: they did drop him, he would probably not only gain
Speaker 1: more listeners due to the outrage porn and and free
Speaker 1: speech advocates, but also with his exclusivity ending help his
Speaker 1: podcast will just be available and more platforms and more
Speaker 1: people who will to listen to him, like really easily.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he's only going to grow if people get
Speaker 1: what they want. And like that makes you think, like this,
Speaker 1: this outrage isn't actually meant to get the Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan problem taking care of, Like it's this, This
Speaker 1: actually isn't about stop being misinformation. It's this, This isn't
Speaker 1: actually about having they're being less fans of Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: All those outrages about making you feel better because you
Speaker 1: feel like you're doing something right, Like bad thing is
Speaker 1: happening in the world, and it's easier to pretend like
Speaker 1: your actions are hurting it than it is to accept that,
Speaker 1: like maybe there's nothing I can do about this right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a really nice world if the Cho
Speaker 1: Rogan problem could be solved so easily by Spotify dropping
Speaker 1: his exclusivity deal, right, that would that would be great,
Speaker 1: But that's not the world we live in. And tricking
Speaker 1: yourself into thinking that is just kind of delusional. Um,
Speaker 1: And like yeah, it makes you feel better, but like
Speaker 1: that's not actually helping because like, yeah, we can obviously
Speaker 1: compare this to other like D platforming campaigns with people
Speaker 1: for like Alex Jones. But you know, Jones was way
Speaker 1: more niche and way more extreme around the time of
Speaker 1: his like D platforming campaign, and his campaign wasn't about
Speaker 1: ending exclusivity deals. It was about getting him off of
Speaker 1: popular platforms altogether. And that's not happening with Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: because Joe Logan isn't saying the things that are going
Speaker 1: to get him booted from platforms. He's smart, he knows
Speaker 1: what he can and cannot say. He's not He's not
Speaker 1: dumb enough to get banned from these platforms, right and also,
Speaker 1: you know he's a giant financial asset, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: bend him anyway. But like he's he's what he's doing
Speaker 1: is bringing on people who say horrible things to continue
Speaker 1: a cultural conversation, which gets him in the headlines and
Speaker 1: gives a platform like Spotify a whole bunch of room
Speaker 1: to cry free speech and get away with it. Removing
Speaker 1: Alex Jones could be seen as like a monetary decision
Speaker 1: in and of itself, because it is actually removing liability.
Speaker 1: But this is this isn't really the case for Rogan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's um, yeah, it's just not. One of the
Speaker 1: problems is that this kind of does fly in the
Speaker 1: face of a lot of what people want to think.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to be making the case that
Speaker 1: it's as black and white it is, because, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it was bad for someone to
Speaker 1: go through the effort of finding and pointing out, Hey,
Speaker 1: there's like seventy episodes where Joe Rogan drops the inn word,
Speaker 1: um and getting those polls. I don't think that I
Speaker 1: think that that was broadly speaking, a productive thing. But
Speaker 1: keeping Joe Rogan at the forefront of the outrage cycle
Speaker 1: is doing nothing but printing money for the guy. And
Speaker 1: that's that's not an easy thing to deal with because
Speaker 1: it's like, do you want me to just like stay
Speaker 1: quiet in the face of injustice? And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what I want you to do. But I
Speaker 1: do want you to recognize that there are times in
Speaker 1: ways of speaking up that are just yes, putting putting
Speaker 1: gasoline on an injustice fire. It's it's important to remember
Speaker 1: that d platform ng is just a tactic, and and
Speaker 1: single tactics aren't always effective in every situation. That's what
Speaker 1: makes them a tactic, right, Like, in order for a
Speaker 1: tactic to work, you need to understand the scenario that's
Speaker 1: are applying the tactic to and seeing if that tactic
Speaker 1: achieves the goal. And if it doesn't, great, But if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, you need to choose other tactic and stop
Speaker 1: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
Speaker 1: a new result. And this is one of those situations
Speaker 1: where like when you bring up, hey, maybe nothing might
Speaker 1: be the best thing, at least for for most people
Speaker 1: specifically to do. Like the thing that gets brought up
Speaker 1: is like, well do you not want me to uh?
Speaker 1: Or like, well, what do you suggest I do? Like
Speaker 1: you know, you're saying I shouldn't do this, but you're
Speaker 1: not telling me what to do. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's like if somebody gets shot in the leg and
Speaker 1: one person has a tourniquet and the other person has
Speaker 1: a bunch of razor blades that they want to throw
Speaker 1: in their eyes, and it's like, well, what do you
Speaker 1: want me to do? All I have is these razor blades.
Speaker 1: This is the only other thing I can do? Then
Speaker 1: just stand by and do nothing. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: in this case, doing nothing is the best thing to do,
Speaker 1: because it's it's not that's not going to help the problems.
Speaker 1: Boycotts of this scale kind of only tend to benefit
Speaker 1: brands and businesses, right like, because if if if the
Speaker 1: brand of business is a person is smaller in more
Speaker 1: niche like and say like Alex Jones or Richard Spencer,
Speaker 1: right then yes, these tactics about boycotts can really work
Speaker 1: to push things out of the cultural like market and
Speaker 1: also in some cases in terms of businesses like the
Speaker 1: literal market. But when you're dealing with things like Target, Nike,
Speaker 1: and Joe Rogan, that's not the case because those brands
Speaker 1: are way too big. Any any you know, any conservative
Speaker 1: boycott against Target isn't going to have that effect. It
Speaker 1: will probably make weird liberals be like, oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to Target now because the conservatives don't want me to.
Speaker 1: It's so like it's I don't It's not it's it's like,
Speaker 1: it's the problem is It's like Joe Rogan himself isn't
Speaker 1: really the problem either. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: problem can be seen more as like content algorithms that
Speaker 1: boost and reward misinformation and disinformation and conspiracism, and that's
Speaker 1: more of like an actual issue at hand here. Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan is just a business. That's how he hears about
Speaker 1: a lot of these people. Yeah, I go viral somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And in a lot of cases it's an inorganic thing
Speaker 1: that brings them in front of them. It's some fucking
Speaker 1: algorithm that and and that is a case where you
Speaker 1: can target and work on deep exact form and it
Speaker 1: can be more productive that that. That was, That was
Speaker 1: what that was what I was getting again, It's like
Speaker 1: Joe Joe Rogan himself was just a visible outgrowth of
Speaker 1: the core problem. And the core problem is these things
Speaker 1: getting onto his show in the first place. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't stop his show, but maybe we should do
Speaker 1: more work to prevent to like figure out ways to
Speaker 1: do you know, start using these tactics to prevent algorithms
Speaker 1: from boosting these things so that Jojo can sees them
Speaker 1: and then and then invites them on. And yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot more work than just being angry at Spotify.
Speaker 1: And yet maybe it will actually do something. And one
Speaker 1: thing that can do something is with spot and it
Speaker 1: won't work if it's just Spotify. But I am one
Speaker 1: of those people who thinks that maybe it's not the
Speaker 1: worst thing if things like Spotify are seen as publishers
Speaker 1: and thus when they spread misinformation that leads to disastrous
Speaker 1: health consequences, UM, they can be held liable. Right. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's not the worst possible change, although it is a
Speaker 1: problematic one. I don't want to like boil that down
Speaker 1: to a simple question, but I think that's an avenue
Speaker 1: that should be explored, because I don't see that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of difference in Spotify choosing to let something
Speaker 1: go to air or The New York Times printing misinformation. UM.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Spotify is going to reach more people
Speaker 1: because nobody cares what The New York Times says anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Spotify. The Spotify CEO did kind of address the
Speaker 1: ongoing controversy around the you know, internal publishing stuff and
Speaker 1: how they view medical misinformation. UM. They did adopt a
Speaker 1: clarified policy that prohibits content that promotes dangerous, false, or
Speaker 1: dangerous deceptive medical information which may cause offline harm or
Speaker 1: pose a direct threat to public health. UM. And then
Speaker 1: the post also announced that a Spotify would add content
Speaker 1: advisories to any content related to COVID on the platform,
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram have Um No, it's not, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not. Actually it's not. But if you have the operation,
Speaker 1: if you can again, if there is like an actual
Speaker 1: dollar consequence to companies that aired massive disinformation, um, then
Speaker 1: you're not without sort of making Joe Rogan the focus.
Speaker 1: You can make it so that the people that he
Speaker 1: actually is accountable to, which is the people who make
Speaker 1: him give him the money that he gets, how a
Speaker 1: vested interest in tamping down on the worst excesses that
Speaker 1: he's responsible for, Like that might have an impact. I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like part of the problem is that. And
Speaker 1: one thing we should acknowledge here when we're talking about
Speaker 1: like what would work better than what's being done, This
Speaker 1: is a pretty new problem. Versions of it have existed before,
Speaker 1: but without the Internet and without podcasts being what they are,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty new thing to be dealing with.
Speaker 1: And I'm not I don't I'm not saying like this
Speaker 1: is here's the obvious solution to this, But I think
Speaker 1: we are trying to point out, like what folks are
Speaker 1: doing doesn't work. The tactics being applied are not effective,
Speaker 1: and we should be exploring other opportunities to mitigate this harm.
Speaker 1: That are not well, I guess it's time to delete
Speaker 1: another app and post about it on Twitter. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think I think this is especially a thing with like
Speaker 1: because like one of the other things that that's been
Speaker 1: popping up as broken's like weapons great transphobia. So yeah, jeesus,
Speaker 1: and that's that stuff us is horrifying. Like the racism
Speaker 1: is also like really bad. He's extremely sexist. But it's
Speaker 1: like I think misogynists racist all there's a lot of
Speaker 1: money and being that dude. Yeah, well, and I think
Speaker 1: this is sort of you know, this, this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is an inherent problem for the left because fighting
Speaker 1: it like this this kind of sort of like shock
Speaker 1: truck information stuff works better like that that rage economy
Speaker 1: works better for the right thing does for the left.
Speaker 1: And I think in some ways that means like you
Speaker 1: have to fight them in other spaces, like you know,
Speaker 1: you you can't just like keep throwing yourself. It's the
Speaker 1: same thing with like so why why why you don't
Speaker 1: have just like one line where you just run into
Speaker 1: a bunch of cops over and overget in one spot, right, like,
Speaker 1: but we have certainly try. Yeah. Yeah, it's like some
Speaker 1: folks gave the old college, the old college. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you know, it's like in some in some sense, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's it's it's hard to be too
Speaker 1: hard on these on people who doing this, and it's
Speaker 1: like I think they're doing the right thing. But it's
Speaker 1: like you have to you have to pick your battles.
Speaker 1: And you know, if if you're taking a fight that's fair,
Speaker 1: like that's a that's a bad fight, that is a
Speaker 1: bad fight for you. You you you need you need
Speaker 1: to be fighting them in different spheres. You need to
Speaker 1: be you know, I mean, working for example, on stuff
Speaker 1: like tech regulation, like you like working on you know,
Speaker 1: unionizing these places, right like fighting purely finding them in
Speaker 1: information space, we will lose every time. The advantage that
Speaker 1: we have is that we also do other things. And
Speaker 1: it's it's you know, we're we're going to keep losing
Speaker 1: hearing if you know, if we keep fighting them in
Speaker 1: exactly the same way here, we're going to keep losing.
Speaker 1: So we have to you know, like we we we
Speaker 1: we we have to fight in other places. And that's
Speaker 1: hard and it sucks because you know, this is such
Speaker 1: a misspart of just what reality is now is you know,
Speaker 1: yelling people online, but like, you have to stop doing
Speaker 1: that because it's not not not. The problem is that
Speaker 1: we've all gotten fucking caught for quite some time in
Speaker 1: this escalating culture war, and it's not. It's not a
Speaker 1: battleground that can be entirely ignored because when you kind
Speaker 1: of seed ground them, they create conspiracy theories about trans
Speaker 1: people attacking kids that lead to them murdering people in
Speaker 1: the streets, or they spread conspiracy theories about masks that
Speaker 1: lead to them occupying Ottawa. Um. So it can't. The
Speaker 1: culture war battleground cannot be ignored. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, what we should rather than just like
Speaker 1: seeking new ways to engage with it, because the more
Speaker 1: you engage with it, and it is sometime necessary to
Speaker 1: engage with but the more you engage with it, the
Speaker 1: stronger you make this whole thing and the heavier it
Speaker 1: lies on all of us like a cloud. And in
Speaker 1: the only real way to actually win in the long
Speaker 1: run is to find a way to get off of that,
Speaker 1: to get out of this like this fucking treadmill of
Speaker 1: bullshit that has become everything all consuming, and it's it's
Speaker 1: in a lot of people best interest for it to
Speaker 1: stay all consuming um and I there's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot that's going on here, because it's not I think
Speaker 1: sometimes when you criticize people for the actions they take
Speaker 1: in situations like this, they kind of interpreted as you saying, well,
Speaker 1: like you're stupid and you fucked up and never should
Speaker 1: have liked done this, and and the way I think
Speaker 1: of it as more like this is a we have
Speaker 1: found ourselves trapped in a really messy situation and no
Speaker 1: one has figured out how to get out. So it's
Speaker 1: not a situation of like people are are dumb for
Speaker 1: having done something that's not effective. It's a situation of
Speaker 1: we are all trying to figure out what works in
Speaker 1: this new world we have kind of somewhat accidentally somewhat
Speaker 1: purposefully built for ourselves, and it is important to have
Speaker 1: humility and be willing to accept it, like, you know what,
Speaker 1: that's not working and we have to stop doing the
Speaker 1: thing that's not working, rather than you know, treat it
Speaker 1: as if it's sort of a moral failing that something
Speaker 1: we we we tried was not effective. The last thing
Speaker 1: is it's like, really, it's it's not just the non effectiveness,
Speaker 1: but also the the idea that the fact that this
Speaker 1: outrage is said, just a constant is just a constant
Speaker 1: free bannerad for Spotify every everywhere online is like also
Speaker 1: not great. So it's not it's not even not not
Speaker 1: even just not effective. But you're just giving a corporation
Speaker 1: tons of free press. And maybe we can reframe the
Speaker 1: way we approach these things so that we don't do that,
Speaker 1: because in the end, that's just kind of adding to
Speaker 1: promoting the misinformation. That's kind of that's all that's kind
Speaker 1: of really doing. And it's not, that's not nearly as
Speaker 1: you know, impactful as you know, just Rogan doing it himself,
Speaker 1: but it's still is it still is a contributing factor
Speaker 1: and and and it it does contribute to the backfire
Speaker 1: effect of people who listen to his podcast. Maybe people
Speaker 1: who like don't even but they're still gonna get defensive
Speaker 1: over him because they're seeing this attack on him. And
Speaker 1: even though he's even though he is a huge figure,
Speaker 1: he's seen as an outsider. So that that really does
Speaker 1: contribute to that back backfire fact thing of getting people
Speaker 1: more and more vested in him as a content creator.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's really dumb, But the thing we need
Speaker 1: to deal with it it's it's a version of the
Speaker 1: lesson people still didn't learn with Trump, which is that like,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't beat these people by dunking on them.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter that Joe Rogan said something dumb. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that Joe Rogan is inconsistent, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: that like Joe Rogan has tells lies or whatever. That's
Speaker 1: not going to change anybody's mind about the dude, because
Speaker 1: it's not about Joe Rogan. They don't support him because
Speaker 1: they love They support him as much as anything. The
Speaker 1: people who are at least engaging, primarily online about it,
Speaker 1: Most of his fans are just don't think about any
Speaker 1: of this because they're not as online as the rest
Speaker 1: of us. But the people who are kind of engaging
Speaker 1: with this and helping to fuel the culture war side
Speaker 1: of this thing, they don't care there this This isn't
Speaker 1: about his inherent characteristics. This is about it's a chance
Speaker 1: to dunk on the enemy. Um, So you're not going
Speaker 1: to convince them of anything ever. That's all I had
Speaker 1: to say on this. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, because again,
Speaker 1: I really I really resisted writing this episode for a
Speaker 1: long time because I didn't want to add to the
Speaker 1: Rogan discourse. But after a while, the Rogan discourse itself
Speaker 1: became worth talking about. How we talk so because it
Speaker 1: is more of a meta angle, like, okay, that is
Speaker 1: actually worth talking about. But yeah, I am so tired
Speaker 1: of hearing, watching, and seeing the words still Rogan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted by it. I hate that. Like it's a
Speaker 1: bigger story in the United States than the gigantic war
Speaker 1: that might break out in Eastern Europe. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: just just a very frustrating time and the only way
Speaker 1: to win this particular game is not to play. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's that's why we're doing this. We're not going
Speaker 1: to stick his name in the description or the episode title.
Speaker 1: Um yeah it is. You know. The title we were
Speaker 1: working with this under that we're not going to use
Speaker 1: so as to not feed into the algorithm was Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan the Egregor And that is really how I think
Speaker 1: about it. If you if you haven't listened to our
Speaker 1: episode on the book about the Flat Earth, book on
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards that talks about as Um and eggs,
Speaker 1: it's basically a god that is made up by the
Speaker 1: kind of directed thoughts of a population of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a costalt deity that exists, like this thought
Speaker 1: form that if people put energy into it, it almost
Speaker 1: gains its own it's it's own like um um independence
Speaker 1: from the people that that like burst it, even though
Speaker 1: it is just like a thought form and it because
Speaker 1: it was just an idea or presence, and now it
Speaker 1: basically is its own god that's self sustaining and it
Speaker 1: can impact the world. Yeah, global capital is an egregor
Speaker 1: And and the more that people kind of feed into
Speaker 1: the discourse around Joe Rogan, the more he turns into
Speaker 1: one kind of outside of his own actions, he this
Speaker 1: idea of him has an influence on everything around us.
Speaker 1: And boy, we don't need that, do we certainly did not.
Speaker 1: Just said we just put that one down, right, try
Speaker 1: something else. Yeah, let's throw a brick at your sheriff instead.
Speaker 1: This will go better for you. I mean sure, sure, Chris, Yeah, Chris,
Speaker 1: Chris said it, not me. Yeah, I mean obviously in
Speaker 1: Minecraft he said bricks. It's fine. Robert Robert, Robert Robert.
Speaker 1: It's not Minecraft anymore. It's the roadblocks the Feds cracked
Speaker 1: in Minecraft. Yeah, you're right, it's going to take weeks
Speaker 1: for them, for them to their computers to realize what
Speaker 1: roadblocks is. The look was a story I think I
Speaker 1: saw on Twitter about like like some yeah, so some
Speaker 1: some kids who actually legitimately got arrested in Brushford, like
Speaker 1: blowing up a building in Minecraft, so like like literally
Speaker 1: so we live in h yeah and instead again it's
Speaker 1: roadblocks where nothing bad happens. Nothing bad happens, all right,
Speaker 1: everybody get on roadblocks, um and don't talk about Joe Royan,
Speaker 1: and don't talk about Joe Rogan. Hundreds of truckers continue
Speaker 1: to rule least and with wards joining the movement. With
Speaker 1: each passing city, feelings towards vaccine mandates have heightened. Advocate
Speaker 1: civil war. If people don't want to stand up, we
Speaker 1: got guns. We'll stand up and we'll bring them off.
Speaker 1: Sucking a guys, let's get pumped for this. Let's go
Speaker 1: to fucking Ottawa. Let's I want to see one of
Speaker 1: those truckers. I wouldn't probably not not known our guys obviously,
Speaker 1: but I would like to see our own January six event.
Speaker 1: See some of those truckers plow right through that sixteen
Speaker 1: football ye, welcome to It could happen here or in
Speaker 1: this case, it did happen here, slashes still happening here,
Speaker 1: and uh the here in this case being Canada in
Speaker 1: recent weeks. The idea of only a few thousand people
Speaker 1: totally choking a major city, holding it hostage to bargain
Speaker 1: for political demands, while overwhelming and getting a foot up
Speaker 1: on law enforcement, taking over and shutting down a sizeable
Speaker 1: portion of a popular metropolitan area and simultaneously blocking off
Speaker 1: supply lines, trade routes, and multiple international border crossings is
Speaker 1: exactly the kind of thing this podcast has been talking
Speaker 1: about for years as a potential anti government resistance tactic
Speaker 1: that could become more common as political tensions rise in
Speaker 1: North America. Specifically, a few weeks ago, when the so
Speaker 1: called Trucker Convoy was still its planning stages, I wasn't
Speaker 1: super eager to cover it on the pod. Actually, I
Speaker 1: assumed it would be a flop and just another dumb
Speaker 1: anti COVID protest in a long line of anti COVID
Speaker 1: protests happening in Canada. Flash forward to me at the
Speaker 1: end of January, and it became apparent that I was
Speaker 1: sorely mistaken and this thing was shaping up to be
Speaker 1: a significant factor in Canada's political ecosystem going forward. In
Speaker 1: my haste to catch up to the moment, I recorded
Speaker 1: two episodes with the wonderful journalist Dan Cullen, explaining the
Speaker 1: situation as it was at the prospective times of recording.
Speaker 1: But as the tensions in Ottawa and all across Canada
Speaker 1: arose and the situation gained more and more complexity, I
Speaker 1: decided that the convoy and subsequent blockades required a more
Speaker 1: researched and scripted deep dive. The more I dug into
Speaker 1: the situation, the more it seems to embody the exact
Speaker 1: thing I was warning about in my two previous scripted
Speaker 1: episodes about Canada and the far right, titled Canadian Fascism A.
Speaker 1: The apologies for the title, but you can find those
Speaker 1: if you scroll through the could Happen Here feed. Don't
Speaker 1: think they came out around November ish. What I wanted
Speaker 1: to get across in those episodes is that Canada is
Speaker 1: often seen as an escape from the more divisive, violent,
Speaker 1: and fascist elements of US politics and culture. But just
Speaker 1: like climate change, capitalism, or any other enveloping force cough cough,
Speaker 1: hyper objects cough cough, fascism and the slide towards it
Speaker 1: can never be truly escaped right. There is no other,
Speaker 1: there is no away, and it's especially hard to see
Speaker 1: it when it's growing on the back of your own head,
Speaker 1: primarily through Islamophobia. Far right ethno nationalist tendencies have been
Speaker 1: bubbling under the surface of Canada for a long while,
Speaker 1: and since Trudeau has taken office in twenty fifteen, there
Speaker 1: has been a perfect politically allowed boogeyman to blame every
Speaker 1: problem onto That can include everything from Trudeau was taking
Speaker 1: away our oil and gas jobs, or Trudeau is bringing
Speaker 1: in Muslim terrorists to Canada, uh, or Trudeau is starving
Speaker 1: your children through health mandates. Canadian right wing protests has
Speaker 1: been steadily growing the past five years. There's been multiple
Speaker 1: flare ups of far right rhetoric with the Canadian Yellow Vests,
Speaker 1: the Westerns that protesced we Exit or Western Exit movement,
Speaker 1: and the pseudo fascist People's Party of Canada. The incorporation
Speaker 1: of pandemic conspiracies and anti vaccine sentiments into the already
Speaker 1: disaffected rural Canadian right wingers starting and continuing to the present,
Speaker 1: has accelerated not only the conspiratorial fall right rhetoric among
Speaker 1: conservative voters, but also what is seen as a valid
Speaker 1: political action in those people's eyes. But before we get
Speaker 1: into how the convoy started with anger concerning COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: health man dates and misinformation concerning empty store shelves, we
Speaker 1: have to first go back in time to even before
Speaker 1: the COVID nineteen virus was a blip on anyone's radar.
Speaker 1: In February, the Canadian Yellow Vests organized something called the
Speaker 1: United We Roll Convoy. The result was around a hundred
Speaker 1: seventy trucks driving cross country through the more liberal East
Speaker 1: to Ottawa. The result was around a hundred seventy trucks
Speaker 1: driving from the West cross country to the more liberal
Speaker 1: East and eventually to Ottawa. The goal was to represent
Speaker 1: the concerns of disenfranchised oil and gas workers in the
Speaker 1: Western provinces and their opposition to propose environmental and new
Speaker 1: energy policies. Yellow Vests Canada was largely founded by individuals
Speaker 1: already associated with Canada's far right, which at the time
Speaker 1: was primarily united through anti Muslim racism and m phobia.
Speaker 1: Inspired by the French Heelovest movement, they copied their aesthetics
Speaker 1: and adopted new grievances and reactionary matoric and we get
Speaker 1: them a much larger audience. By the time United We
Speaker 1: Roll arrived in Ottawa, the media started to catch on
Speaker 1: to the more problematic elements about their organization, Neo Nazi
Speaker 1: faith goal each spoke on a stage, many members of
Speaker 1: hate groups responded in attendance, and with the numbers so low,
Speaker 1: it made their more extreme participants stick out. Instead of
Speaker 1: focusing the message on oil and gas as they claim
Speaker 1: to represent Western alienation from a distant liberal Ottawa, some
Speaker 1: of its participants seemed more interested in protesting Ottawa's immigration
Speaker 1: policies than arguing for specific fixes for Alberta's oil patch. Plus,
Speaker 1: if you peeked inside any Canadian yellow vest Facebook group,
Speaker 1: you would be flooded with hundreds of examples of explicit
Speaker 1: anti Muslim racism and calls for a Prime Minister Justin
Speaker 1: Trudeau's arrest and execution, a theme that remains common among
Speaker 1: COVID conspiracy demonstrations today. But at the end of it,
Speaker 1: United We Roll was widely considered a bust, with only
Speaker 1: a few hundred participants in Ottawa and despite raising almost
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the organizers failed to
Speaker 1: exclose how much of that money was actually spent on
Speaker 1: convoy expenses like gas and food. Afterwards, the Yellowest Canada
Speaker 1: movement started to kind and die out, though some holdouts
Speaker 1: kept smaller demonstrations going for months, particularly in the conservative
Speaker 1: oil province of Alberta. But to us now United we
Speaker 1: Rule can be seen as a small test run for
Speaker 1: the current situation. In fact, it shares many of the
Speaker 1: same organizers and even the same promotional materials, except this
Speaker 1: time they have the added weight of many more people
Speaker 1: radicalized into conspiracism throughout the pandemic, and much more funding.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, let's dive into the components
Speaker 1: of the initial organizing effort. On January two, go fund
Speaker 1: me account was set up for a so called trucker
Speaker 1: convoy ahead of the January fifteenth adoption of the mandate
Speaker 1: requiring all cross border transportation drivers to be fully vaccinated
Speaker 1: against COVID nineteen. Vaccine mandates in Canada have been in
Speaker 1: effect since October for ship crews, railways, and airline workers,
Speaker 1: but effective January, the federal government expanded the requirement to
Speaker 1: truck drivers returning from the States and those who will
Speaker 1: remain unvaccinated will not be able to enter Canada without quarantine.
Speaker 1: One week later, a reciprocal policy went into effect in
Speaker 1: the United States for Canadian truckers crossing into their border,
Speaker 1: which means going forward you cannot really cross the border
Speaker 1: at all, well remaining unvaccinated. At this point in mid January,
Speaker 1: a majority of Canadians still broadly supported health mandates aimed
Speaker 1: at limiting the spread of COVID, but a big part
Speaker 1: of the early propaganda push for the convoy was photos
Speaker 1: alleged to have been from current Canadian grocery stores which
Speaker 1: they were not, with barren empty shelves. The idea was
Speaker 1: that COVID restrictions were already severely impacting the supply line,
Speaker 1: and any additional mandates would begin to start with the
Speaker 1: population and effectively shut down international trade. Put a note
Speaker 1: in this idea, by the way, it will come up later.
Speaker 1: Ideas for another truck convoy like United Wi Roll have
Speaker 1: been tossed around for a while online, and with this
Speaker 1: new mandate on truckers andvaccines, a time presented itself to
Speaker 1: give the convoy idea another go. In the early convoy
Speaker 1: organizing they were primarily four familiar far right faces who
Speaker 1: working together to set things up, none of whom are
Speaker 1: truck drivers. By the way, the originally listed organizers on
Speaker 1: the go fund me page were Tomorrow Lich and b. J. Ditcher,
Speaker 1: Both have notable experience with far right organizing. Tamaraw Litch
Speaker 1: was born in my home province of Saskatchewan, but now
Speaker 1: hails from the town of Medicine Hat, Alberta, where she
Speaker 1: served as an organizer for Yellow Vests Canada, a regional
Speaker 1: coordinator for the separatist Western Exit or Wexit movement in Alberta,
Speaker 1: and now the secretary for the Maverick Party, another far
Speaker 1: right extreme acceparatist movement and fringe political party. Litch started
Speaker 1: attending and boosting yellow Vest events starting in and her
Speaker 1: social media posts from around the time show in one
Speaker 1: moment calling out some hateful rhetoric from within the movement,
Speaker 1: while also posting islamophobe articles of her own and conspiracies
Speaker 1: about the Muslim Brotherhood operating in Canada. A few days
Speaker 1: after the go fund me was created, Benjamin B. J. Ditcher,
Speaker 1: one time Conservative Party of Canada candidate, People's Party of
Speaker 1: Canada booster and co founder of a Canadian far right
Speaker 1: podcast network, appeared as a cool organizer on the go
Speaker 1: fund me page twenty nineteen, he claimed that Islamist entryism
Speaker 1: is rotting away our society like syphilis. Benjamin Ditcher was
Speaker 1: also one of the first people to give a speech
Speaker 1: at the first proto Fascist People's Party of Canada conference
Speaker 1: in Quebec, saying that the Conservative Party of Canada is
Speaker 1: suffering from the stench of cultural relativism and political Islam
Speaker 1: and a whole bunch of stuff you know in that
Speaker 1: general vein. James Botter was another one of the four
Speaker 1: key organizers of the Trucker convoy to Ottawa. Botter is
Speaker 1: an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed Q and on
Speaker 1: and called COVID the biggest political scam in history. He's
Speaker 1: also a former activist with the Yellow Vests Canada and
Speaker 1: United we Roll. Barter's main project, however, is running the
Speaker 1: Canada Unity website, which is one of the original nexus
Speaker 1: points for organizing and spreading word about this convoy. The
Speaker 1: group contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under
Speaker 1: Canada's constitution, the Nuremberg Code, and a host of other
Speaker 1: international conventions. Boter has long been a fringe figure, but
Speaker 1: his movements started picking up steam and support as announcements
Speaker 1: and continuations of restrictions aimed at curbing COVID nineteen spread
Speaker 1: have continued. The supposed plight of the truckers proved to
Speaker 1: be a sympathetic cause on Facebook and attracted an array
Speaker 1: of fellow travelers. The last big major player is Patrick King,
Speaker 1: another former Yellow vestor one time major figure in the
Speaker 1: Wexit movement as well as United we Roll. On January two,
Speaker 1: pet King hosted a live stream for James Botter to
Speaker 1: promote the Canada Unity website and to announce it as
Speaker 1: the official page for the Freedom Trucker Convoy, or as
Speaker 1: they called it, Operation Bear. Hug King is a conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorist and popular streamer that attracts the audience farther right
Speaker 1: than Canada's usual conservatives. Kings made headlines for drumming up
Speaker 1: fear and then following through with his supporters with violence
Speaker 1: at rally's put on by BLM and Antifa. King is
Speaker 1: also known for spreading what are basically neo Nazi talking points.
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to quote from an article by
Speaker 1: the Canadian Anti Hate Network here because they did a
Speaker 1: great job tracking his past extremism quote. In the past,
Speaker 1: King has gone on record about his feelings on the
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon replacement that plans to quote flood Canada with
Speaker 1: refugees and subvert the education system, which is a thin
Speaker 1: rebranding of the Great Replacement theory touted by Ethno nationalists.
Speaker 1: At other points, King is expressed overtly racist and anti
Speaker 1: Semitic statements. In the twenty nineteen stream about the then
Speaker 1: upcoming federal election, King complained that he had to leave
Speaker 1: the movement due to their lack of success, saying, quote
Speaker 1: the election a wo't matter unless you want to change
Speaker 1: your national language to Chinese or Mandarin or Hebrew. He
Speaker 1: then went on to compare Chinese names to the sound
Speaker 1: of change falling downstairs. He has publicly distorted facts, but
Speaker 1: the Holocaust of form of Holocaust denial, saying I do
Speaker 1: know that the Holocaust was reduced to one point five
Speaker 1: million and not the six million that it was said
Speaker 1: to be. He then invoked the anti Semitic conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: that Jewish people are secretly in control of world governance, media,
Speaker 1: and finances, saying, quote the questions that have been asked
Speaker 1: several times to the a d L and to the
Speaker 1: Jewish government and communities. We have Jewish world bankers who
Speaker 1: are dictating our government policies and controlling our politicians unquote.
Speaker 1: So yeah. Considering King's history of saying blatantly fascist things,
Speaker 1: some organizers and convoy supporters tried to distance King from
Speaker 1: the Freedom Convoy movement to not damage the initial fundraising effort.
Speaker 1: The controversy around King resulted in a statement being released
Speaker 1: onto the fundraising page saying King is not and has
Speaker 1: never been affiliate with our movement, nor has he been
Speaker 1: a part of our great team of volunteers. The update
Speaker 1: was afterwards deleted, and then King claimed in a video
Speaker 1: that the statement was a public relations move because he
Speaker 1: was being attacked online. For a while, King was still
Speaker 1: listed as the Northern Alberta contact for the Western portion
Speaker 1: of the convoy. So those are the four people that
Speaker 1: laid the organizing groundwork, that spawned this entire thing and
Speaker 1: put it into motion. But what made this convoy different
Speaker 1: from United We Roll One point, oh, is the almost
Speaker 1: two years of COVID isolation, which has given ample time
Speaker 1: for groups like the Yellow Vests and extreme Far right
Speaker 1: groups to completely fold into the rapidly growing anti vax
Speaker 1: and COVID conspiracy movement in Canada, and along with that,
Speaker 1: using people's seething hatred of Justin Trudeau to radicalize thousands
Speaker 1: of thousands of people online to getting them more comfortable
Speaker 1: with the idea of participating in political protest. It's really
Speaker 1: important to mention that the protests are not organized by
Speaker 1: Canadian trucking unions or really Canadian truckers. The largest trucking
Speaker 1: unions have come out against the protests and they do
Speaker 1: not appear to reflect the values of most Canadians or
Speaker 1: most Canadian truckers. More than of the Canadian public is vaccinated,
Speaker 1: including almost of truckers, according to Canada's Minister of Transport.
Speaker 1: The Canadian Trucking Alliance issued a statement saying it does
Speaker 1: not support and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roads,
Speaker 1: highways or bridges. The Canadian Trucking Alliance president said in
Speaker 1: a joint statement with the Ministers of Labor and Transport
Speaker 1: that the Government of Canada and the Canadian Trucking Alliance
Speaker 1: both agree that vaccination, used in combination with preventative health measures,
Speaker 1: is the most effective tool to reduce the risk of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen for Canadians and to protect public health. According
Speaker 1: to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the mandate could impact around
Speaker 1: twelve to sixteen thousand Canadian commercial drivers, which is just
Speaker 1: about ten to fifteen percent of the industry's cross border
Speaker 1: drivers during the pandemic. Repeated polls have shown that a
Speaker 1: majority of Canadians support public health measures to contain the pandemic,
Speaker 1: but the number of Canadians who would like to see
Speaker 1: restrictions end has risen in recent weeks. With owner crown
Speaker 1: cases on the decline, some provinces are starting to remove
Speaker 1: restrictions and requirements. The public sentiment appears to be moving
Speaker 1: in the direction of opening up communities. Throughout the last
Speaker 1: two weeks of January, the number of Canadians saying that
Speaker 1: they would like to see restrictions end has risen by
Speaker 1: fifteen percentage points to a majority of fifty percent. Demonstrations
Speaker 1: have found a way to tap into pandemic fatigue among
Speaker 1: conservatives across the country. After months of lockdown, more than
Speaker 1: two thirds of Canadians have said they have very little
Speaker 1: in common with how the Autaowa protesters see things, but
Speaker 1: say that they have a lot in common, according to
Speaker 1: a recent survey connected by a Canadian research firm. Though
Speaker 1: the idea of vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers kind of
Speaker 1: prompted what turned into this convoy, very quickly became a
Speaker 1: general battle cry against pandemic restrictions as a whole and
Speaker 1: the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unlike twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: United we Roll, the Freedom Convoy against health mandates was
Speaker 1: able to successfully capitalize on Western feelings of neglect and
Speaker 1: isolation from the ruling liberal elite in the East and
Speaker 1: in the capital of Ottawa. The right ingredients at the
Speaker 1: right time flung the Trucker Freedom Convoy into the conservative zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: The original and go fund me page, set up on
Speaker 1: January fourteenth to financially support convoy participants, was able to
Speaker 1: raise ten million dollars in just under three weeks. As
Speaker 1: the truck convoy idea picked up steam, The first expected
Speaker 1: wave of attendees were planned to arrive in Ottawa on Saturday,
Speaker 1: January twenty ninth. Vehicles started rolling in a few days prior,
Speaker 1: throughout Thursday and the Friday night before the big day.
Speaker 1: On the twenty nine, and as Saturday the twenty nine came,
Speaker 1: the numbers of trucks and protest participants greatly exceeded the
Speaker 1: initial expected numbers that I and many other people had figured,
Speaker 1: while obviously falling short of the heavily marked fifty thousand
Speaker 1: truckers prediction made by some convoy supporters. While writing these episodes,
Speaker 1: I talked with Paul, a citizen of Ovadawa who's been
Speaker 1: living inside the occupied zone since the twenty ninth of January,
Speaker 1: and this is what he had to say about expectations
Speaker 1: leading up to the convoys arrival. There was at least
Speaker 1: a week of lead up where we it was about
Speaker 1: all we heard about. So from when they sort of
Speaker 1: declared their intention to come down to when they started
Speaker 1: rallying in BC and you know, in the west and
Speaker 1: coming across Um, there was an anticipation that something was
Speaker 1: going to happen. And you know, people around here because
Speaker 1: like where I'm sitting right now is less than a
Speaker 1: kilometer from Parliament Hill and directly in between two of
Speaker 1: the streets that they've blocked off sort of on the
Speaker 1: way into town. You know, we were nervous, but we
Speaker 1: kind of were just sort of assuming it was gonna
Speaker 1: be a one day affair. It was gonna be small
Speaker 1: at first, but then you heard I mean, nobody believed
Speaker 1: the fifty trucks and that like that was it. I mean,
Speaker 1: to put in perspective, the numbers that they were claiming
Speaker 1: were on their way here, UM are larger than the
Speaker 1: entire population of the city by like a couple hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people, so that that didn't seem likely. But you know,
Speaker 1: when we were hearing the thirty to forty thousand, when
Speaker 1: we heard about multiple convoys with you know, a hundred
Speaker 1: to two hundred trucks like that was when it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna be great. So people started arriving on
Speaker 1: what Friday, Saturday. The first group started rolling to town
Speaker 1: on Thursday night. UM. They were they were small in numbers.
Speaker 1: They didn't really start blocking anything off because they just
Speaker 1: weren't enough of them. So, but you could hear the
Speaker 1: horns starting on Thursday night, UM, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of some of them were going into hotels. UM.
Speaker 1: They were smaller groups too, mostly from sort of local groups. UM.
Speaker 1: And then around ten or eleven in the morning on Friday, UM,
Speaker 1: we started hearing reports at Kingston, which is about an
Speaker 1: hour issue away, an hour and a half um that
Speaker 1: there was a group moving out of there. So around
Speaker 1: one o'clock in the afternoon Friday, the first group started
Speaker 1: to arrive and started to congregate downtown. And one of
Speaker 1: the things about Ottawa is um it's a lot, like
Speaker 1: a lot of big downtowns, it's a lot of one
Speaker 1: way streets. So the moment you get the trucks starting
Speaker 1: to get into the intersections or near intersections, you're blocking
Speaker 1: off all passage in certain directions. So they started blocking
Speaker 1: off the northbound really quickly, just because that's where how
Speaker 1: they were coming in UM. And there's only like three
Speaker 1: gas stations downtown as well, which is it kind of
Speaker 1: plays a big factor in the route that they took.
Speaker 1: So they all passed by, especially the passenger cars that
Speaker 1: were running mow Um passed by and through that way.
Speaker 1: And yeah, by about two or three o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: every anything south of Summerset, which is about a kilometer
Speaker 1: and a half from Parliament, was pretty much jammed at
Speaker 1: that point. As Saturday night came, much of the group,
Speaker 1: supporters and truckers alike spent that time partying late into
Speaker 1: the night as heavily backed up traffic continued to effectively
Speaker 1: shut down roads and large areas of the city around
Speaker 1: Parliament Throughout the weekend. Businesses in the surrounding areas that
Speaker 1: did not close ahead of the protest were swarmed by customers,
Speaker 1: many refusing to wear masks. A local Homa shelter and
Speaker 1: soup kitchen was harassed by Convoy participants who were turned
Speaker 1: away from restaurants after refusing to wear a mask. A
Speaker 1: large number of the convoy attendees surrounded the shelter, demanding
Speaker 1: to be fed by the facility staff. According to the
Speaker 1: shelters president, convoy participants assaulted a client of the shelter
Speaker 1: and her old racial slurs at a security guard who
Speaker 1: attempted to intervene. Workers and volunteers at the shelter noted
Speaker 1: that parked vehicles blocked the shelter, making it difficult for
Speaker 1: aliences to reach the facility and for staff to assist
Speaker 1: munity members in need. A home in the downtown area
Speaker 1: was pelted with rocks and snow, as well as vandalized
Speaker 1: with human feces, all for showing a Pride flag in
Speaker 1: their window. The operations commander for the Ottawa Paramedic Service
Speaker 1: said that an ambulance was pelted with rocks and paramedics
Speaker 1: checking the damage were called racial slurs by convoy participants.
Speaker 1: Ottawa Paramedics have since requested police escorts, citing safety concerns.
Speaker 1: More public backlash was prompted after reports surface of a
Speaker 1: monument dedicated to commemorating Terry Fox being covered in protest
Speaker 1: signs and being staged to hold an upside down Canadian flag.
Speaker 1: No restroom made Saturday night related to the convoy, but
Speaker 1: as the convoy stuck around even past the weekend, there
Speaker 1: was this growing feeling of downtown residents that they've been
Speaker 1: abandoned by the city and law enforcement, with the whole
Speaker 1: situation and response to the situation making them afraid to
Speaker 1: leave their homes. I asked Paul what his experience on
Speaker 1: the first weekend of the occupation was and the general
Speaker 1: feeling in the area of downtown Ottawa. And you were
Speaker 1: living like right in the middle of this. How much
Speaker 1: has this affected like your day to day life and all,
Speaker 1: like your neighbors and stuff, like what what what are
Speaker 1: you able to do and not do? At this point? Well,
Speaker 1: it's the weekend was it was especially bad, and we're
Speaker 1: all kind of bracing for what this weekend is going
Speaker 1: to be because that's when you had just you know,
Speaker 1: there were between somewhere between ten and fifteen eighteen thousand
Speaker 1: people as the estimates I've heard, um all crowding downtown
Speaker 1: in the streets. So at that point, I mean that
Speaker 1: was when the police we're telling people not to wear
Speaker 1: a mask out, um because you know, you're kind of
Speaker 1: putting yourself at risk, uh, because it'll be targeted for violence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I mean I was like basically anytime I've left
Speaker 1: the house. So we have a mask mandate still in
Speaker 1: effect in Ottawa, so you have to wear them indoors
Speaker 1: pretty much everywhere. Um. So I have to wear at
Speaker 1: my building, I have to wear at the convenience store.
Speaker 1: If I'm gonna go go buy say, you know, pack
Speaker 1: of cigarettes, I'm not going to take it off. It's
Speaker 1: a thirty second walk. And so that was that. The
Speaker 1: harassment around that started on Friday, UM, and and it
Speaker 1: just became anyone who was going about that didn't look
Speaker 1: like they were part of it, UM started getting hassled. UM.
Speaker 1: Other people I know who live in the area, especially women,
Speaker 1: UM have been targeted a great deal. Um, anyone who's
Speaker 1: part of, you know, the LGBTQ community has been it's
Speaker 1: it's not really just it's just not safe to be
Speaker 1: out on the streets and it's not really safe to
Speaker 1: show that you don't support what they're doing. At points
Speaker 1: since the convoy started arriving in Ottawa, the extreme elements
Speaker 1: of the protest have been pretty visible. Among the thousands
Speaker 1: of attendees were recognizable members of white nationalists, hate groups
Speaker 1: you know, not seeing Confederate flags were seen flying. Two
Speaker 1: and on logos were emblazoned on trucks and sides, and
Speaker 1: stickers were pasted on telephone pools around the occupied area
Speaker 1: baring Trudeau's face reading wanted for crimes against humanity, the
Speaker 1: official line from original convoy organizers minus Pat King, of course, however,
Speaker 1: has tried to remain focused. In a Facebook live broadcast,
Speaker 1: James Under of Canada Unity instructed his supporters to stop
Speaker 1: talking about the vaccine and instead stick the messages of freedom.
Speaker 1: The goal of adopting a more restricted and relatable protest
Speaker 1: cause is to hopefully jump up more widespread support and validity,
Speaker 1: and it initially worked in some ways and not in others.
Speaker 1: Numerous members of the Conservative Party have come out to
Speaker 1: meet protesters, especially throughout the first few days now. Former
Speaker 1: Conservative Party leader Eron O'Toole met with convoy participants, albeit
Speaker 1: away from the main protest site. Both People's Party of
Speaker 1: Canada leader Maxie and Bernair and Ontario Member of Provincial
Speaker 1: Parliament and leader of the de facto Ontario arm of
Speaker 1: the PPC, Randy Healer, who has made many recent and
Speaker 1: semitic comments, both gave speeches on Saturday the twenty nine
Speaker 1: in front of the Parliament building. People like Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump have both endorsed the convoy, and Fox
Speaker 1: News has been endlessly broadcasting glowing updates of the convoy
Speaker 1: since its arrival in Ottawa. According to the convoy participants
Speaker 1: and organizers, they are vowing to camp out in front
Speaker 1: of the Parliament until their demands of dropping all COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen health measures are met. While stated grievances can be
Speaker 1: broader and more vast on the ground, the current memorandum
Speaker 1: of understanding posted on the Canada Unity website, which collected
Speaker 1: over thirty signatures, served as a sort of bargaining pitch
Speaker 1: between the convoy and the Canadian government. The Memorandum of Understanding,
Speaker 1: or the m o U, calls on Canada's appointing senators
Speaker 1: and Canada's Governor General, the representative of Queen Elizabeth, the
Speaker 1: second in Canada's constitutional monarchy, to abolish all COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: related restrictions and to allow all unvaccinated workers whose employment
Speaker 1: was terminated because of vaccine mandates to get their jobs back.
Speaker 1: James Potter, the guy who runs Canada Unity, insisted to
Speaker 1: his followers that the m o U would force the
Speaker 1: government's hand and possibly even trigger fresh elections if enough
Speaker 1: people signed. Another Canada Unity organizer went further, saying it
Speaker 1: would require the Senate to after the Prime Minister for
Speaker 1: corruption and fascism, which, of course there's no legal basis
Speaker 1: for any of these claims around the m o you,
Speaker 1: but you know that doesn't really matter in the end,
Speaker 1: because people still believe it, so it's going to have
Speaker 1: an impact on what they do. The more controversial Pat
Speaker 1: King laid out an alternative, however, a more direct plan
Speaker 1: of action to the occupiers. In a January Facebook livestream,
Speaker 1: King said that what we want to focus on is
Speaker 1: our politicians, their houses, their locations. If political pressure doesn't work,
Speaker 1: blocking major supply chains will be later on. So more
Speaker 1: more on that idea later. After the first weekend of
Speaker 1: protests kind of turned occupations, go fund me released a
Speaker 1: reported one million dollars of the total ten million raised
Speaker 1: for the convoy. As the end of the weekend approached,
Speaker 1: many convoy participants who rolled into the nation's capital began
Speaker 1: heading home and the highways on Sunday night saw no
Speaker 1: shortage of vehicles heading away from Ottawa with their approtest
Speaker 1: signs and flags still in tow, but plenty of people
Speaker 1: stuck around to continue the fight. Thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: people and hundreds of vehicles, including a fleet of semitrucks,
Speaker 1: commercial vehicles, r V campers, and regular cars were more
Speaker 1: than enough to keep the roads in a large portion
Speaker 1: of Ottawa around Parliament effectively shut down. I can't help
Speaker 1: but draw comparisons to the fear mongering narrative of bus
Speaker 1: fulls of Antifa, you know, protesters coming from out of
Speaker 1: town into places they don't live, terrorizing locals, shutting down cities.
Speaker 1: You know. The other comparison is to like the chop
Speaker 1: where the chas in Seattle was taking over a large
Speaker 1: portion of the city, and how that was so vilified. Except,
Speaker 1: you know, this is so much bigger and impactful than
Speaker 1: anything so called Antifa or the Black Lives Matter protests
Speaker 1: have ever done, especially in Canada, in terms of actually
Speaker 1: impacting the functionality of a city and restricting the local, national,
Speaker 1: and international capitalist trade. The Freedom Convoy has done everything
Speaker 1: and more its proponents warned that Antifa was going to
Speaker 1: do to Canada. Obviously, part of the reason the Convoy
Speaker 1: protest was able to get to this point is not
Speaker 1: just because of its large size, but also the initial
Speaker 1: hands off approach by police that allowed the Convoy participants
Speaker 1: the opportunity to get a strong foothold within the city.
Speaker 1: The difference in initial law enforcement reaction to the protest
Speaker 1: Convoy made up of largely you know, conservative, middle class
Speaker 1: white Canadians, compared to other protests like you know, the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Better protests, or say the RCMPS typical response
Speaker 1: to First Nations protests and blockings defending their land. The
Speaker 1: comparisons cannot be over analyzed. You know, the latter two
Speaker 1: forms of protest I mentioned actually do challenge societal power
Speaker 1: structures that prop up White Canada, while as this Convoy
Speaker 1: protest does not and instead plays into those very power structures.
Speaker 1: That dynamic played a major role into how the police
Speaker 1: handled or didn't handle the first few days of the protest,
Speaker 1: in which during those early days the convoy attendees were
Speaker 1: free to build infrastructure that resulted in the protest escalating
Speaker 1: into a full scale occupation. The Monday after the first
Speaker 1: initial weekend, the city's mayor, Jim Watson, declared a state
Speaker 1: of emergency, but at that point Attawa Police thought it
Speaker 1: was already too late for the protest to be ended
Speaker 1: by sheer force without vastly increasing the likelihood of severe
Speaker 1: damage and life threatening outcomes to the convoy participants, police officers,
Speaker 1: and regular citizens of Ottawa. On February twod Ottawa Police
Speaker 1: Chief Peter Slowly explicitly said that there may not be
Speaker 1: a police solution to ending the convoy and occupation. There
Speaker 1: are similar demonstrations taking place in many other parts of
Speaker 1: this country, indeed many other parts around this continent in
Speaker 1: the world. What happens here effects there, What happens there
Speaker 1: affects here. We have seen in the last twenty four
Speaker 1: hours attempts by other police and other jurisdictions to do
Speaker 1: just what you have suggested. They were not effective and
Speaker 1: they created additional safety issues, potential life threatening safety issues.
Speaker 1: I have great compassion for those that have been significantly affected,
Speaker 1: if not traumatized, and we know criminally victimized. We will
Speaker 1: do everything we can to hold those who have done
Speaker 1: that to account. Will continue arresting and charging people as
Speaker 1: we have been. But any action taken without understanding the
Speaker 1: totality of the context, the totality of the risk, would
Speaker 1: be irresponsible. You're trying to be responsible, lawful, ethical, and measured.
Speaker 1: My last comment when I wrapped up, I'll share again now.
Speaker 1: The longer this goes on, the more I am convinced
Speaker 1: there may not be a police solution to this demonstration.
Speaker 1: There are police chiefs commissioners across this country that are
Speaker 1: dealing with demonstrations that are starting underway and significantly advanced.
Speaker 1: This is a national issue, not an Autawa issue from
Speaker 1: the start. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been playing down
Speaker 1: the notion of a military response to the ongoing Ottawa protest.
Speaker 1: During the first week, he said that sending in troops
Speaker 1: is not in the cards. Right now. On the February two,
Speaker 1: the Automa police chiefs said that all options are on
Speaker 1: the table, including eventually calling in the military, but one
Speaker 1: must be very very cautious about deploying troops in Canadian
Speaker 1: soil in such cases. Trudeau said that a news conference
Speaker 1: in in the February that it's not something that anyone
Speaker 1: should enter into lightly, with police basically leaving the Ottawa
Speaker 1: residents who live near and within the Convoy occupation to
Speaker 1: fend for themselves. I was curious what sorts of things
Speaker 1: the local community might be doing to live around this massive,
Speaker 1: conspiracy filled group of reactionary out of town campers. What
Speaker 1: sort of things have the has the community been doing
Speaker 1: to kind of help survive this this Like has there
Speaker 1: been like talide projects in the neighborhood to help support
Speaker 1: other neighbors, you know that that sort of thing there
Speaker 1: have Um it's actually been kind of wonderful the way
Speaker 1: the community has been coming together, especially after two years
Speaker 1: of pandemic, where we've all been kind of like Ottawa
Speaker 1: and Ontario have been one of the more restricted jurisdictions
Speaker 1: in North America. UM. I mean, and I say this
Speaker 1: as a restaurant manager, like in my opinion rightly, so,
Speaker 1: like it's about keeping people safe, and we've done a
Speaker 1: fairly good job of that by and large. But the
Speaker 1: thing is that, you know, our community hasn't felt a
Speaker 1: lot like a community in a while, and this week,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the few positives has been UM
Speaker 1: both individuals and organizations. So I mean, Rose and some
Speaker 1: of the other organizations that we mentioned on Friday have
Speaker 1: done a great job. There's also been some really really
Speaker 1: great organic organizing coming out of UM some activists as
Speaker 1: well as just people in the community. So there's a
Speaker 1: a few discord servers set up right now. So there's
Speaker 1: been a huge issue with people, people with disabilities and
Speaker 1: the elderly getting groceries because deliveries aren't possible downtown UM.
Speaker 1: So it started on Twitter, UM, but there's been an
Speaker 1: organization set up to help people get those groceries. Whether
Speaker 1: it's a cost issue or just a physical delivery issue.
Speaker 1: We're ensured people are ensuring that that's happening UM as
Speaker 1: of today. UM there's gonna be a safe Walks program. UM.
Speaker 1: There's well there's two. There's one on discord where it's
Speaker 1: people offering to you know, make sure that you can
Speaker 1: get through the space safe. Today though, um, in a
Speaker 1: positive and more passive sense, we kind of started taking
Speaker 1: the streets back. So um, we had about four or
Speaker 1: five groups of people ranging from ten to fifty just
Speaker 1: just walking the streets and not not confronting anybody, not
Speaker 1: getting getting into any direct engagement, just going out to
Speaker 1: show that we can still walk on our streets and
Speaker 1: letting our you know, our our neighbors know that we
Speaker 1: can actually be together and you know, stand up just
Speaker 1: to be together, which is something that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people have lost over the last week. I mean,
Speaker 1: like the fact that that's even a big step is
Speaker 1: showing how tired the situation is. The fact that just
Speaker 1: get to that point were walking around in a group
Speaker 1: where you feel safe is like a big thing that Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like a really interesting and horrible indicator of what
Speaker 1: the mood has been like there for people like living
Speaker 1: in this area. That is. Yeah, that is a big
Speaker 1: part of it. And it's something that was actually talked
Speaker 1: about a lot today, which was how refreshing it was
Speaker 1: to be able to do it, but also that it
Speaker 1: shouldn't feel radical to take a safe walk in your community,
Speaker 1: but it somehow did um and it speaks a lot
Speaker 1: to the feelings the lack of safety or the loss
Speaker 1: of you know, safety in this community and has been
Speaker 1: pretty immense. I should mention that another community led efforts
Speaker 1: to deal with the occupation is the ram Ranch Resistance,
Speaker 1: a loosely organized counter movement to the Chuck Our Convoy
Speaker 1: that started with people joining the convoys online communications channels
Speaker 1: and blasting the homo erotic country song ram Ranch. The
Speaker 1: song is by a Canadian artist and features some flawless
Speaker 1: lyrics like eighteen naked cowboys wanting to be fucked, cowboys
Speaker 1: in the showers at ram Ranch on their knees wanting
Speaker 1: to suck cowboy cox. Ram Ranch really rocks. The result
Speaker 1: is not only making the Convoy folks uncomfortable because gay,
Speaker 1: but also it is hijacking and making their online communications
Speaker 1: channels kind of useless for any non cowboy cock sucking
Speaker 1: political organizing efforts. Disruptive resistance to the Convoys online communications
Speaker 1: is not just limited to the ram Ranch song, however,
Speaker 1: other vulgar songs have also been introduced into the chats
Speaker 1: as well. I'm gonna just kind of give you a
Speaker 1: brief look at what it's like inside these chats, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna role play it. The
Speaker 1: ram Ranch guys are finally gone. It's about freaking time.
Speaker 1: I've had to shut that stuff off. One person has
Speaker 1: heard saying and a clip from a chat, immediately followed
Speaker 1: by a robotic voice saying, welcome to the come zone.
Speaker 1: Only come inside anime girls, quivering clip, double jointed pussy
Speaker 1: fresh balls. Since then, the movement has taken on as
Speaker 1: something of a life of its own. The ram Ranch
Speaker 1: Resistance hashtag has been used as a way for people
Speaker 1: to share information regarding the convoy, and Welcome to the
Speaker 1: ram Ranch signs have been popping up at convoy counter
Speaker 1: protests around the country. Another ram rancher created the website
Speaker 1: ram Ranch dot c a linking to downtown organizations that
Speaker 1: have been impacted by the trucker convoy, as well as
Speaker 1: charities aiding indigenous people's As the convoy settled in, it
Speaker 1: appeared at the demonstrators and the government had reached a
Speaker 1: sort of stalemate. Currently, there are more than four hundred
Speaker 1: trucks parked downtown and Ottawa Police say that they can't
Speaker 1: move them because the too operators with city contracts are
Speaker 1: refusing to help, making matters only more difficult. Police say
Speaker 1: that families with children are sleeping in approximately a quarter
Speaker 1: of those trucks. To get an idea of what some
Speaker 1: Attawa residents who live within the occupied zone see in
Speaker 1: terms of a potential end in sight, I posed Paul
Speaker 1: this question, how do you even see the situation resolving
Speaker 1: at this point? Like, do do you think they're like
Speaker 1: the truckers and the people who are in the city
Speaker 1: are gonna are gonna back down and leave eventually or
Speaker 1: like or do you think they have to be forced out?
Speaker 1: Like what do you see kind of an end to
Speaker 1: this at this point? Well, it's at this point. Probably
Speaker 1: one of the hardest things to admit is that I don't. Um,
Speaker 1: the hardest core that are here are committed, and they
Speaker 1: have a significant amount of funding behind them. And the
Speaker 1: thing is that you know, with an occupation protests, they
Speaker 1: if you don't nip it in the bud, it's snowballs
Speaker 1: and gathers momentum for a while. Um, And I mean
Speaker 1: eventually they either peter out or they have to be removed.
Speaker 1: And this one is still snowballing. Um, We've seen some
Speaker 1: more extreme elements come into the city this week. Um
Speaker 1: yesterday Romana did Dulo, the human on Queen of Canada
Speaker 1: arrived in birthday Brent the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill,
Speaker 1: which whatever you think about the Canadian flag, and it's
Speaker 1: simple us a similar propression. Um you know, that's not
Speaker 1: a great look for them. But the other side of
Speaker 1: it is is that this is a woman with seventy
Speaker 1: followers who you know, has called for the mass execution
Speaker 1: of her enemies, and you know, is currently parked in
Speaker 1: or Winnebago two and a half blocks from my house
Speaker 1: right now, um so, and with a bunch of her
Speaker 1: followers down with her. And so they're committed. They know.
Speaker 1: They don't know that I did occupy a lot of
Speaker 1: years ago, and the question that people asked us, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it was the police, was what gets you out
Speaker 1: of the park. And in a weird way, there's a
Speaker 1: parallel here, which is that the hardest answer with occupy
Speaker 1: was always kind of like everything is kind of fucked,
Speaker 1: So how do we fix everything? That's the discussion we
Speaker 1: should be having. So in this case, to these people,
Speaker 1: in their worldview, everything is kind of fucked, and there's
Speaker 1: no answer that you can give those kind of people
Speaker 1: in negotiations. The police right now are not looking at
Speaker 1: removal as a serious option, I don't think, or if
Speaker 1: they are, they haven't figured out how to get to
Speaker 1: that place yet. And one of the weird things about
Speaker 1: Ottawa is is that technically in various spaces because the
Speaker 1: way it's designated, there's a whole mishmash of jurisdictions between
Speaker 1: the various police agencies. So like again with occupy that
Speaker 1: we picked the park, like the park that was occupied
Speaker 1: was partially picked because it was on like this weird
Speaker 1: jurisdictional black hole where it was hard to figure out
Speaker 1: who the cops were at, who should police it were,
Speaker 1: um so, And they've ended up in the same park
Speaker 1: where they now have like fifty five cylinders appropane sitting
Speaker 1: about five yards from the Department of National Defense. So it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's tricky to figure out how you how you get
Speaker 1: get out of that because all it's going to take
Speaker 1: is one of them with something in their cab and
Speaker 1: it's done. Yep, ye. Well, do you have any hope
Speaker 1: for anything? Do you have any indicators for how it
Speaker 1: can turn out? Well? I mean in terms of the occupation.
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see how it goes. Um maybe there
Speaker 1: can become some kind of modus vivendi between them and
Speaker 1: the rest of the city. I don't know how that happens,
Speaker 1: but maybe there can be, but I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: the only silver lining I see right now is you know,
Speaker 1: the walk that I was on earlier today and the
Speaker 1: chat that I was having with other people in the
Speaker 1: community and the discord server and everywhere else, like, this
Speaker 1: is a really strong community that cares a great deal
Speaker 1: about itself and sometimes needed to be needs to be
Speaker 1: reminded of that. And uh, I think this is an
Speaker 1: opportunity for that to happen. Then I think that that's
Speaker 1: the positive that can come out, is that we will
Speaker 1: take care of ourselves and we'll take care of each other.
Speaker 1: And that's you know what, what more can you ask
Speaker 1: where I guess out of this. Reports of assaults perpetrated
Speaker 1: by members of the Convoy protest have been steadily ruling
Speaker 1: in the past few weeks, not to mention the seemingly
Speaker 1: constant presence of honking in the downtown area that's been
Speaker 1: affecting residents every day and even into the night. I
Speaker 1: will offer you this short sample to help complete the
Speaker 1: picture of what it's like both indoors and outdoors in
Speaker 1: downtown Ottawa. So apologies about that. Yeah, that was pretty
Speaker 1: bad and as annoying and frustrating as it may be.
Speaker 1: Before I close out part one, I'm going to play
Speaker 1: some audio from one of the truckers or you know,
Speaker 1: just convoy participants as he addresses fellow convoy ors on
Speaker 1: why it's good and in fact revolutionary to hunk horns
Speaker 1: late into the night. I think it gives you some
Speaker 1: valuable insight into how these people frame their actions in
Speaker 1: their own heads. And you know, it will give you
Speaker 1: an opportunity to hear some of these convoy people directly.
Speaker 1: So here we go. Yeah, let's go on. There's quiet
Speaker 1: when I got here, but now they're starting to bring
Speaker 1: this tournament some noise. Now, I get it. I saw
Speaker 1: some comments saying that you want to go from nine
Speaker 1: to five and you want to turn your horns off,
Speaker 1: and you want to you know, be respectful and play
Speaker 1: the optics war. And you've done You've done all the map, man,
Speaker 1: I get it. I we've done everything. Every piece of
Speaker 1: garbage has been picked up. Statistically, there is no crime.
Speaker 1: And when I mean statistically, if you have some drunk
Speaker 1: guy acted, you know, silly on one street quickly gets
Speaker 1: you know, talk to and then the Patriots taken back
Speaker 1: to his car and maybe there was some incident of mission.
Speaker 1: I've heard reports of anti for throwing rocks and trucks,
Speaker 1: tag and stuff. They're the ones committing the crime. But
Speaker 1: other than that, this has been the most well to
Speaker 1: have revolution on earth. And now the big complaint is
Speaker 1: can you get them to only blow their horns between
Speaker 1: nine and five? I'm sorry, what has compliant got you
Speaker 1: guys so far? What is just little by little? Oh?
Speaker 1: Just do this? Yeah, just just don't peep your horns
Speaker 1: between nine and five. That's all we're gonna ask. Then
Speaker 1: were two masks, then just go right back to square one.
Speaker 1: How about you put your blame right where it belongs,
Speaker 1: right in the eye of Sauron And that's who we
Speaker 1: handle this with and every mandate. We're not allowed to
Speaker 1: exist in society. I'm not allowed to go to a movie,
Speaker 1: I'm not allowed to go to a restaurant. I'm not
Speaker 1: allowed to leave the country. You can't even leave you
Speaker 1: can't travel on planes, you can't do anything that Trudeau
Speaker 1: can get his fingers on to discriminate against us in society. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he'll blame us for side effects of his guinea pigs.
Speaker 1: It's an insane world, and you've complied long enough, guys,
Speaker 1: and the madness in the horn stop. But I am
Speaker 1: in no place to go tell these guys, oh excuse me?
Speaker 1: Can you turn your horn off? Can you get used
Speaker 1: to complying again? We want freedom. We're not asking for
Speaker 1: anything unreasonable, and we're doing it on your behalf. The
Speaker 1: least you can do is turn off your televisions and
Speaker 1: stop letting their horrible objections to this revolution, and they're
Speaker 1: horrible false flags and whatever else they bring. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: about the noise complaints. Now, are you sorry about banishing
Speaker 1: me from society and treating me like I'm some sort
Speaker 1: of letter because I want to keep my immune system intach. Sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: the horns stand. Stuff it up your ass. Anyone that
Speaker 1: has a problem with loud noises, we have a problem
Speaker 1: be advanished from society. Apologies for that, But now I
Speaker 1: hope you have a better understanding of the type of
Speaker 1: conspiratorial thinking among the people in this convoy and the
Speaker 1: importance this whole thing means to them. So with this,
Speaker 1: that wraps up my part one of my deep dive
Speaker 1: into the Canadian Freedom Convoy. In the next episode, we'll
Speaker 1: get into the border blockades both in Alberta and the
Speaker 1: Ambassador Bridge which is preventing some international trade. We'll get
Speaker 1: into some of the smaller protests and attempted occupations in
Speaker 1: other cities across Canada, and how the situation is evolving
Speaker 1: in Ottawa and what types of long term political ramifications
Speaker 1: this protest and any attempt to suppress it will have.
Speaker 1: So with that, see you on the other side, welcome
Speaker 1: to it could happen here, And the second part of
Speaker 1: my little mini series going into the occupation and blockade
Speaker 1: protests all across Canada that's been happening the past three weeks.
Speaker 1: For part two, we'll be starting off with a change
Speaker 1: of scenery. Instead of the loud, cramped streets of Data
Speaker 1: and Ottawa and the castle like Parliament building, will be
Speaker 1: taking a detour to the snow covered prairies and oil
Speaker 1: fields of rural Alberta. As the convoy officially arrived in
Speaker 1: Ottawa on January, smaller protests against health mandates were also
Speaker 1: happening across the entire country. One of these mini protests
Speaker 1: was happening in the small city of Lethbridge in southern Alberta,
Speaker 1: but unlike a majority of other non Ottawa protests, the
Speaker 1: one based around left Bridge didn't turn out to be
Speaker 1: a simple weekend of fair. With hundreds of vehicles, including
Speaker 1: some semi trucks, RVs and farm tractors all gathered together.
Speaker 1: It was decided to take part in a little mini
Speaker 1: convoy of their own, but instead of going to a
Speaker 1: capital building, they rolled towards the international border crossing used
Speaker 1: by truckers in the area. I was able to interview
Speaker 1: gen a left Bridge local who also happens to work
Speaker 1: near the area of the Alberta border blockade, and they
Speaker 1: kind of gathered in left Bridge here and took off
Speaker 1: about four thirty in the morning, and so they made
Speaker 1: it down to the village of coots Um, which is
Speaker 1: essentially right on the border, is the last stop before
Speaker 1: you hit the border at Coots Alberta, sweet Grass, Montana.
Speaker 1: And they blocked off the highway completely heading both northbound
Speaker 1: and southbound, and they've been camped out since. So it's
Speaker 1: my understanding that at that point in time throughout you know,
Speaker 1: day one, two and three of their protest, UM, there
Speaker 1: was no getting in or out out of the village
Speaker 1: of Coops, which is it is a small village about
Speaker 1: two d and fifty residents UM. And it was so
Speaker 1: bad that not even emergency services could get through, UM
Speaker 1: again blocking both lanes of the highway in either direction
Speaker 1: in the ditches UM and just weren't letting up. And
Speaker 1: so are they even driving anywhere? Or is it are
Speaker 1: they just like camped there, just camped out there, parked UM.
Speaker 1: And of course you know there's people that will drive
Speaker 1: down to the border and participate for a couple hours
Speaker 1: and you know, turn around and go home kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But there is that core group UM, the majority of
Speaker 1: which are actually farmers bringing down like their tractors, and
Speaker 1: of course there is UM some semitruck drivers who are
Speaker 1: all a part of it and just not allowing anyone
Speaker 1: to get through on either side, so you know, holding
Speaker 1: up a lot of a lot of our supplies, a
Speaker 1: lot of our UM food and things like that. At first,
Speaker 1: local police and RCMP just waited out the blockade, I guess,
Speaker 1: hoping to see if the people would just get tired
Speaker 1: of camping out in the cold and then you know,
Speaker 1: go home. But after a few days that possibility seemed
Speaker 1: less and less likely. Then when the RCMP did start
Speaker 1: to get more actively involved with kind of managing the blockade,
Speaker 1: albeit you know, with a very gentle hand and extremely
Speaker 1: start contrast to how our CMP handles blockades, you know,
Speaker 1: defending indigenous land. But at that point it was already
Speaker 1: kind of too late, and the pacified police action only
Speaker 1: spread the protests efforts. On day four of the blockade
Speaker 1: at the border um, the RCMP had kind of moved
Speaker 1: in a little bit to try to break it up.
Speaker 1: So some of the the protesters had kind of broken
Speaker 1: off and decided to blockade's mother areas. So there was
Speaker 1: a blockade that happened on Highway three just outside of
Speaker 1: the town of Fort McLeod, on the way to the
Speaker 1: town of Brockett, which would be on the Blood Reserve
Speaker 1: here in Alberta. UM. They blockaded the highway and wouldn't
Speaker 1: let anyone through, and then they set up another blockade
Speaker 1: um on Highway twenty three, which of course would be
Speaker 1: the the next north south route. Given that Highway three
Speaker 1: was now blocked off, the Highway three going to Highway two. Um.
Speaker 1: So they've blocked off Highway twenty three. Um at there's
Speaker 1: a traffic circle or a roundabout kind of in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere in the highway at the village of Nobleford, sorry,
Speaker 1: town of Nobleford, and they set up a blockade at
Speaker 1: the roundabout as well. Wouldn't let anyone come in north
Speaker 1: south east west, didn't matter. Uh So that was Tuesday. Tuesday,
Speaker 1: highways to UH four and three. Yeah, effectively shutting down,
Speaker 1: and they kind of like travel for like food and
Speaker 1: supplies for like all four directions pretty much exactly. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of chatter on social media. Um,
Speaker 1: we have a local Facebook group for road conditions, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of chatter, you know, where do
Speaker 1: we go, how do we get around this? What back roads?
Speaker 1: Should I take? Secondary highways? That sort of thing. And thankfully,
Speaker 1: you know, there was still I suppose some ways to
Speaker 1: get around it. The RCMP we're kind of setting up
Speaker 1: detours and things like that, but those main routes were blockaded,
Speaker 1: um on Tuesday, which would have been I guess what
Speaker 1: days that February one. The static highway blockades preventing traffic
Speaker 1: in all four directions were mostly a one day affair.
Speaker 1: The next Wednesday morning, more effort was put back into
Speaker 1: the main blockade at the border near Coots, with some
Speaker 1: folks still participating in the rolling blockades of sorts you know,
Speaker 1: on the surrounding highways. So instead of just blocking the
Speaker 1: roads by staying parked people in vehicles kept a slow
Speaker 1: loop of traffic moving through the highway system to clog
Speaker 1: up travel. And then like the contingent at closer to
Speaker 1: the border has been more consistent, you would say, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: the contingent at the border on highway for like I said,
Speaker 1: at Coots, Alberta, they've been set up all the way
Speaker 1: through since the twenty nine UM. There has been days
Speaker 1: where the tensions are definitely very high where those protesters
Speaker 1: are saying we will not leave until UM or we
Speaker 1: won't even come to the negotiating table until these restrictions
Speaker 1: are gone, like we won't even attempt and so the
Speaker 1: RCMP have been kind of in negotiations with them over
Speaker 1: the last few days. There's been a couple of times
Speaker 1: where they they had resolution to open up lanes of
Speaker 1: travel to get some of these trucks with goods through
Speaker 1: Um and of course there's been people stuck in their
Speaker 1: cars as well for quite a few days without food.
Speaker 1: At that point, UM the protesters originally had come to
Speaker 1: an agreement with the RCNP to let some people through
Speaker 1: and then turn around and decided, well, we don't really
Speaker 1: want to. So that was kind of ongoing from I'm
Speaker 1: going to suggest up until about second UM. On the
Speaker 1: second the RCMP had set up a roadblock at the
Speaker 1: town of Milk River to uh, I guess, dissuade the
Speaker 1: the locals from coming out and adding to the congestion
Speaker 1: and adding to the problems. And at one point UM
Speaker 1: there was a group of people and videos are on TikTok,
Speaker 1: they're on Facebook, they're on Twitter, where people are blasting
Speaker 1: through the barricades, going through the ditch, going through the median,
Speaker 1: just bypassing it completely to get down to the convoy protest.
Speaker 1: As I record this, the border crossing port of entry
Speaker 1: near the town of Coots has been largely impassable for
Speaker 1: over two weeks. It's a major trade hub where millions
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of agricultural products like meat and feed
Speaker 1: trade hands each day. The first day had hundreds of
Speaker 1: vehicles participating in blocking access to the trade route along
Speaker 1: highway for but after a week of blockading the Alberta,
Speaker 1: Montana border crossing, around eighty big rigs continued to remain
Speaker 1: along the highway for a majority of the time. Since
Speaker 1: the twenty nine of January, vehicle access has been either
Speaker 1: completely stopped to and from the border or at least
Speaker 1: substantially slowed down. The occasional day where vehicles are being
Speaker 1: let through on one lane of traffic has an estimated
Speaker 1: seven hours of stall time order to get through just
Speaker 1: that tiny area of road. The blockade of that International
Speaker 1: report of entry at Coots and the only seven commercial
Speaker 1: land crossing in Alberta is a direct threat to the
Speaker 1: economic well being of growers, producers, manufacturers, and many other
Speaker 1: businesses that rely on the movement of both raw materials
Speaker 1: and finished goods in and out along the can m
Speaker 1: X corridor end quote. Lewington has warned that manufacturing plants
Speaker 1: in the region will be forced to either reduce or
Speaker 1: cancel production as their supplies run out and they're unable
Speaker 1: to get their goods to international markets. This is something
Speaker 1: farmers and food producers are dealing with as well as
Speaker 1: agricultural experts are one of the region's main economic drivers.
Speaker 1: In the left Bridge metropolitan area exported nearly one point
Speaker 1: eight billion dollars worth of goods, around eighty percent of
Speaker 1: which went to the United States. A vast majority of
Speaker 1: these exports went through this Coots border crossing. That means
Speaker 1: for the city of lefth Bridge alone, they're facing a
Speaker 1: roughly three million dollar a day impact on the economic
Speaker 1: damage based on the road and rail travel that must
Speaker 1: move through that port of entry. The impact is of
Speaker 1: course four or five times larger than if you consider
Speaker 1: the movement of other Alberta goods in and out of
Speaker 1: that same North South corridor. It's only more ironic and
Speaker 1: frustrating considering that the idea of shutting down international capitalist trade,
Speaker 1: you know, costing millions dollars in losses each and every day,
Speaker 1: is exactly the sort of thing that these same conservatives
Speaker 1: would complain that BLM or Antifa would do, you know, like,
Speaker 1: in terms of anti capitalist action, this is actually more
Speaker 1: successful in causing damage to capital than really anything I've
Speaker 1: seen the Canadian left do in recent memory. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: police response to a left wing protest, you know, doing
Speaker 1: similar tactics would probably greatly differ, you know, Plus the
Speaker 1: fact that these people are participating in these blockades are
Speaker 1: the same types of people that talk about their desire
Speaker 1: to run down protesters in trucks, you know, whenever there's
Speaker 1: marching in the street or an indigenous road blockade to
Speaker 1: an new oil pipeline. Nevertheless, on top of the police inability,
Speaker 1: whether by choice or imagination, to handle the situation, and
Speaker 1: considering both the conspiracy fueled political issues around masks of
Speaker 1: vaccines and health man dates and the growing economic problems
Speaker 1: the blockade is causing, it's not super surprising that the
Speaker 1: Conservative government of Alberta began the process of removing health
Speaker 1: mandates as the protests striked on. And unfortunately, it seems
Speaker 1: like the province is listening and they're taking it seriously.
Speaker 1: I know. Um last night our premier had gone on
Speaker 1: Facebook Live and had an ounce that come Monday, the
Speaker 1: caucus will vote as to whether or not to scrap
Speaker 1: it um, which would mean that, like I said, now
Speaker 1: there's no longer that requirement to access some of these
Speaker 1: these services from private businesses. And then ultimately that would
Speaker 1: lead us back into our letter rip model that we
Speaker 1: had last summer. The Monday vote came in the next day,
Speaker 1: February eighth. Alberta Premiere and premiers are like the you
Speaker 1: know equivalent of governors for the states, but Alberta Premiere
Speaker 1: Jason Kenny announced that the provinces so called COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: vaccine passport program would end immediately, explaining that the restriction
Speaker 1: program had served its purpose, but it is no longer
Speaker 1: needed since Alberta has passed the peak of omercron infections
Speaker 1: about three weeks ago. Capacity limits were also next Tuesday
Speaker 1: night for venues with capacity limits under five hundred, including
Speaker 1: libraries and places of worship. An effect of this past Sunday, February,
Speaker 1: the province will also no longer require masking for children
Speaker 1: and youth in schools and for any Alberton's aged twelve
Speaker 1: and under in any setting. There is a second phase
Speaker 1: for Alberta's COVID restriction removal plan. On March one. The
Speaker 1: province is set to remove any remaining restrictions, including the
Speaker 1: indoor mask mandate, work from home requirements, any remaining capacity limits,
Speaker 1: and limits on social gatherings and screenings for youth activities.
Speaker 1: Jason Kenny did deny that the move has has anything
Speaker 1: to do with the protests from those you know demanding
Speaker 1: the repeal of vaccine mandates of all types across the country,
Speaker 1: including the blockade that the government had condemned illegal at
Speaker 1: the Coots border crossing, saying, quote, none of that has
Speaker 1: anything to do with a few trucks participating at the
Speaker 1: Coots border crossing. Um, who added that keeping previous rules
Speaker 1: in place would invite widespread non compliance for no purpose,
Speaker 1: saying why keep this going on for a few days
Speaker 1: when we know that in many areas were already having
Speaker 1: non compliance problems. So yeah, Um, of course, the demonstrations
Speaker 1: have continued despite Alberta dropping multiple health measures and agreeing
Speaker 1: to a demand made by a lot of the anti
Speaker 1: mandate protesters, which implies that this protest is about much
Speaker 1: more than simple COVID health measures. Right. It points to
Speaker 1: the movement being more about taking political power and forcing
Speaker 1: everyone to comply with their own conspiratorial and alienated understanding
Speaker 1: of the world. As someone who's like living in Alberta,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, one of the more conservative provinces
Speaker 1: of Canada, Um, how much do you see this kind
Speaker 1: of this kind of you know, spontaneous revolt and resistance
Speaker 1: to be actually tied to the health man dates and
Speaker 1: how much do you see it? It's more like a
Speaker 1: revolt around like Trudeau and Canada's like Canada's like um
Speaker 1: veneer of liberalism like like like how like how much
Speaker 1: do you did you see? It's more like a urban
Speaker 1: rule divide thing that's now just getting pushed into the
Speaker 1: spotlight because of covid um or do you think it
Speaker 1: really is way more about covid itself? Um, I think
Speaker 1: that the pandemic has definitely had a role to play
Speaker 1: in sparking a lot of this this fearer and this uh,
Speaker 1: this disconnect, But the seeds have been sown for many years,
Speaker 1: through many successive provincial governments and and much rhetoric that um,
Speaker 1: the West has always been ignored by the East, by
Speaker 1: our politic institutions in the East, namely Otto our federal government,
Speaker 1: the seat of our federal government in favor of you know,
Speaker 1: Ontario and Quebec and what they want to Alberton's have
Speaker 1: always seen themselves with a bit of a martyr complex
Speaker 1: where we are the economic powerhouse of the country, but
Speaker 1: we are the ugly stepchild and we are ignored in
Speaker 1: favor of the wonderful children in the East. And so
Speaker 1: that that disconnect and that divide has always been there,
Speaker 1: and the pandemic has been the catalyst. Um. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, whenever there is a federal Liberal party that's
Speaker 1: in in power, the conservatives feel the Conservatives in Alberta
Speaker 1: and in the West they feel even more disenfranchised. They
Speaker 1: feel that this this government doesn't hear them, they don't
Speaker 1: listen to them, they don't you know, follow the whims
Speaker 1: of you know, the died in the world conservatives. And
Speaker 1: so that rhetoric has built and built and built over
Speaker 1: the years, um. And it's all tied into other things
Speaker 1: as well. It's tied into the economic policies and the
Speaker 1: policies of the liberal government with in regards to climate
Speaker 1: change and carbon tax and how how that's been hitting
Speaker 1: um Albertan's you know, they our province is very heavily
Speaker 1: dependent upon the oil and gas sector and it always
Speaker 1: has been for the last I'm gonna suggest fifty six years.
Speaker 1: And so when they see things like in Autumna, where
Speaker 1: they're talking about climate change and they're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: green energy, it makes these conservatives angry because this has
Speaker 1: been our bread and butter for years. This is what's
Speaker 1: fed our families. They don't recognize that, you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is the path forward. All they hear is
Speaker 1: we don't want you, we don't want your jobs, we
Speaker 1: don't want your products. And they're angry and this has
Speaker 1: been the catalyst now where they're just fed up. They're
Speaker 1: up with with not being heard. Unfortunately, all that built
Speaker 1: up anger and resentment towards the government and its leadership
Speaker 1: is ending up being taken out against just any symbol
Speaker 1: of liberalism, not really the government directly. You know. Within
Speaker 1: this worldview, homophobic attacks can be then thought up as
Speaker 1: this weird form of punching up because gainness is associated
Speaker 1: with liberalism, so it's seen as almost this system of power,
Speaker 1: even though it's that's obviously backwards. It's this kind of
Speaker 1: weird backwards thing where you can view like attacking progressive
Speaker 1: things as an attack on the system. So that means
Speaker 1: like being racist or being homophobic, is this rebellion against
Speaker 1: you know, the system itself, even though it just ties
Speaker 1: into all those same systemic issues. Just the other day
Speaker 1: in edmund And there was a business owner, uh, a
Speaker 1: hair salon owner, who's been very outspoken about this Freedom
Speaker 1: Convoy and about how she doesn't agree with their messaging
Speaker 1: and their their ideas, and she was actually hunted down
Speaker 1: on social media, um, hunted down in person. They found her,
Speaker 1: someone found her her business, went to her business and
Speaker 1: confronted her and assaulted her UM at her business, all
Speaker 1: because she uh does not support the convoy, and apparently
Speaker 1: this individual did. UM. You know, we definitely, we definitely
Speaker 1: see here that UM. The feeling is is that if
Speaker 1: you are a liberal in Alberta, this is not the
Speaker 1: place for you. UM. You know, if you if you
Speaker 1: believe in you know, equal rights for everyone, this is
Speaker 1: not the place for you. If you believe in the
Speaker 1: rights of marginalized and minority communities, this is not the
Speaker 1: place for you. And we I've seen that, you know,
Speaker 1: and taking part in various protests I suppose that could
Speaker 1: be branded as liberal protests, like the Black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: protests and um, the protests and rallies that were held
Speaker 1: in support of the indigenous communities last summer upon you know,
Speaker 1: the news that kind of shook the world regarding um
Speaker 1: graves at residential schools, and you know, you see it
Speaker 1: with the indigenous communities that protests pipelines on their traditional
Speaker 1: lands and they block you know, railways, and the same
Speaker 1: people that are screaming for jail time and for violence
Speaker 1: and and police intervention on these various protests are the
Speaker 1: same people that are taking part in a convoy. Protesters
Speaker 1: at the Cootes border crossing will now be charged or
Speaker 1: mind according to the province and the RCMP. R CMP
Speaker 1: Deputy Chief Curtis is A Blocky said in a news
Speaker 1: conference during the start out the second week of the
Speaker 1: Alberta border blockade that police are actively working to diffuse
Speaker 1: situation at the most important border crossing in Alberta, but
Speaker 1: are trying to do so peacefully, saying, make no mistake,
Speaker 1: there are criminal activities taking place at these protest sites
Speaker 1: that violate both criminal code and provincial laws. We've seen
Speaker 1: activities that are both dangerous and reckless and are having
Speaker 1: a very negative effect on Alberton's who live in the area.
Speaker 1: He then pointed to you know, dwindling numbers involving the
Speaker 1: blockade from a high of around two fifty vehicles to
Speaker 1: begin with two around fifty vehicles last Tuesday afternoon. As
Speaker 1: a success of their efforts to this point. But you
Speaker 1: know this isn't convinced everyone, since the blockade is still happening.
Speaker 1: So Acting Justice Minister and Solicitor General Sonia Savage called
Speaker 1: the blockade intolerable and said that those taking part in
Speaker 1: the demonstration can be charged under several different federal and
Speaker 1: provincial laws, including the Federal Criminal Code, the Provincial Traffic
Speaker 1: Safety Act, and the new Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, which
Speaker 1: was enacted right in the middle of during the international
Speaker 1: George Floyd uprising and the certain rail blockades in Canada.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go into many tangent here just because
Speaker 1: of how terrible this bill is. The bill gives law
Speaker 1: enforcement and the judicial system extra power to dish out
Speaker 1: significant monetary fines and extra jail time for actions deemed
Speaker 1: to interfere with so called essential infrastructure quote unquote. The
Speaker 1: stated goal of the bill is harsher penalties and charges
Speaker 1: for quote, damage or interference caused by blockades, protests, or
Speaker 1: similar activities that can cause significant public safety, social, economic,
Speaker 1: and environmental consequences. The Act builds on existing trespassing laws
Speaker 1: to create offenses for trespassing on destroying, damaging, and obstructing
Speaker 1: the use or operation of any essential infrastructure, also under
Speaker 1: the banner of essential infrastructure that includes public and private property.
Speaker 1: By the way, the bill was obviously aimed at left
Speaker 1: wing protest and specifically equal defense and environmental protest and
Speaker 1: or sabotage, as the first two things defined as essential
Speaker 1: infrastructure in the bill are quote, pipelines and related infrastructure
Speaker 1: and oil and gas production and refinery sites. So yeah.
Speaker 1: There's also been pressure from government officials to include forfeiture
Speaker 1: property in the commission of crime through the Civil Forfeiture Act.
Speaker 1: RCMP Deputy chiefs the blockys that charges will be coming
Speaker 1: for those taking part in the protest and could be
Speaker 1: as simple as the way they are illegally parked on
Speaker 1: the highway. He didn't note that the RCMP has attempted
Speaker 1: to hire local towing companies to move the trucks and
Speaker 1: other equipment off the road, but have been unable to
Speaker 1: do so, with the companies citing concerns over damaged their
Speaker 1: business long term or just safety issues in general. This
Speaker 1: has also been a huge factor in attempts to deal
Speaker 1: with the auto occupation. Zablocki said that there are concerns
Speaker 1: over safety and violence in response to the more aggressive
Speaker 1: approaches to breaking up the blockade. So far, the main
Speaker 1: action law enforcement has taken to dissuay people from blocking
Speaker 1: the border is just giving out tickets and fines for
Speaker 1: illegal parking. Premier Jason Kenny said that he is supportive
Speaker 1: of our CMP handling this as they see fit through
Speaker 1: the means that they already have, and has been supportive
Speaker 1: of using the you know, pretty horribly authoritarian Critical Infrastructure
Speaker 1: Defense Act, saying quote, last year we passed the Defense
Speaker 1: of Critical Infrastructure Act, which gives police enormous powers and
Speaker 1: various defines the penalties, including the power of imprisonment. We
Speaker 1: have made it clear to the RCMP, who is our
Speaker 1: provincial policing service, that they can and should use all
Speaker 1: of these powers. They're dealing with a very fluid situation,
Speaker 1: and I have respect for their judgment. Prime Minister Justin
Speaker 1: Trudeau addressed the ongoing blockades and protests across the country
Speaker 1: this past Friday, encouraging demonstrators to leave, while also passing
Speaker 1: the buck on any blame, saying quote, I want to
Speaker 1: remind everybody that politicians don't direct police departments to enforce
Speaker 1: the law. Instead, Trudeau made vague threats around revoking licenses
Speaker 1: and criminal records for those continuing to protest, saying everything
Speaker 1: is on the table because this unlawful blockade has to
Speaker 1: end and will end. The blockade at the Cootes border
Speaker 1: crossing is not the only convoy aligned protest in Alberta.
Speaker 1: There have been many demonstrations in basically every major city
Speaker 1: in Calgary. The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees says that
Speaker 1: frontline healthcare workers, patients and people living around the Sheldon
Speaker 1: Camere Health Center have dealt with protests for weeks, but
Speaker 1: things have only gotten worse since the truck convoy hit
Speaker 1: the news. The vice president of the Alberta Union for
Speaker 1: Provincial Employees said that protesters have blocked the ambulance bain,
Speaker 1: they have harassed workers and patients as they come to
Speaker 1: and from the center. They've banged on the windows of
Speaker 1: the facility and upset people inside, and they have blocked
Speaker 1: the roads around the center. Moving on to the province
Speaker 1: of British Columbia, as the second weekend of protest was
Speaker 1: set to descend on Vancouver the weekend of February five,
Speaker 1: in preparation fearing attacks would be carried out against healthcare
Speaker 1: workers like they have in the past. Vancouver's to health
Speaker 1: authorities issued internal ms telling health workers to hide indoors
Speaker 1: as the convoy pass through the city and to quote
Speaker 1: refrain from wearing scrubs and or your ID badge outside
Speaker 1: the hospital during the demonstration. If you do encounter any protesters,
Speaker 1: please do not engage with them or respond to their questions,
Speaker 1: and please do not ask protesters to put on a
Speaker 1: face mask. Similarly, ahead of a protest in Toronto, the
Speaker 1: Toronto Police sent letters to hospitals advising their workers to
Speaker 1: not wear any clothing or markings that identified them as
Speaker 1: working in healthcare, fearing attacks by protesters. As the second
Speaker 1: wave of the convoy arrived during the second weekend of
Speaker 1: the occupation in Ottawa, some of the on the ground
Speaker 1: organizational structure started to morphin evolves. The police estimated around
Speaker 1: this time that five thousand people were still protesting in
Speaker 1: Ottawa and around one thousand vehicles were clogging the streets
Speaker 1: during the second week of protests. In an effort to
Speaker 1: improve optics, considering the four original organizers explicit connections to
Speaker 1: the far right, a new lead organizational, public relations and
Speaker 1: bargaining team was assembled for the group, calling themselves the
Speaker 1: Freedom Convoy. The new pseudo leadership team consists of Daniel Bulford,
Speaker 1: a former RCMP officer who was on the Prime Minister's
Speaker 1: security detail. He quit last year after refusing to get
Speaker 1: the vaccine and is now the convoy's head of security.
Speaker 1: Tom Quicken, former military intelligence officer who also worked with
Speaker 1: the RCMP and was considered one of the country's top
Speaker 1: counter terrorism experts. And Tom Marazo, an ex military officer who,
Speaker 1: according to his linked in profile, served in the Canadian
Speaker 1: Armed Forces for twenty five years and ours as a
Speaker 1: freelance software developer. And just side note in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, police and former military participating in the protests,
Speaker 1: there was an organization full of retired police that endorsed
Speaker 1: the convoy a few weeks ago and said that they
Speaker 1: have people on the ground there and just got announced
Speaker 1: as as I'm recording this, that two members of Canada's
Speaker 1: military counter terrorism unit is under investigation for allegedly taking
Speaker 1: part in the Ottawa Convoy protests. So yeah, that's fun.
Speaker 1: The occupation has been getting more and more organized on
Speaker 1: the ground the past two weeks and has been able
Speaker 1: to keep one step ahead of any action taken against
Speaker 1: police against the occupation. Even just what the convoy participants
Speaker 1: have physically built is impressive. Less than a week after
Speaker 1: the convoy arrived, you started to see wooden structures being
Speaker 1: built around the roads and a growing stockp all of
Speaker 1: propane and diesel fuel. There is an impressive amount of
Speaker 1: tents and wind structures used for kitchens that local organizers
Speaker 1: have set up, and a whole supply chain has sprung
Speaker 1: up across the city to keep these people fed, working
Speaker 1: and protesting. I'm now going to quote a good article
Speaker 1: in the CBC by Judy Trend quote. The group is
Speaker 1: set up not only near the Parliament in Ottawa, but
Speaker 1: they have also built two encampment areas where they carry
Speaker 1: out logistical and supply work. Recent reporting has painted a
Speaker 1: picture that these areas are far more organized than widely thought.
Speaker 1: The group is also trying out new tactics, such as
Speaker 1: attempting to clog up traffic at the Ottawa Airport. Other
Speaker 1: tactics like swatting have been reported as well. Ottawa Police
Speaker 1: say they're aware of a concerned effort to flood our
Speaker 1: nine one and non emergency police reporting lines, tweeting that
Speaker 1: this endangers lives and is completely unacceptable. Determined to not
Speaker 1: be outdone by their fellow protesters in the West, after
Speaker 1: the second wave arrived, the members of the Ottawa Convoy
Speaker 1: organized away for the Convoy occupation to stay, but also
Speaker 1: put up a border crossing blockade of their own. Starting Sunday,
Speaker 1: February six, scores of truckers blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario,
Speaker 1: to Detroit, Michigan, disrupting the flow of auto parts and
Speaker 1: other products between the two countries. While this protest has
Speaker 1: been conducted more by pickup trucks than big rigs, it
Speaker 1: has been holding up the lanes. The bridge is the
Speaker 1: busiest US Canada border crossing and the key cog in
Speaker 1: both the US and Canadian economies, as it carries around
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of trade between the two countries. The
Speaker 1: effects of the blockade there were felt rapidly. The bridge
Speaker 1: regularly carries around three hundred sixty million dollars a day
Speaker 1: in two way cargoes, but traffic is limited by its
Speaker 1: nineteen nine physical footprint. There's just two lanes each way
Speaker 1: with no shoulders and antiquated customs boots, with the northern
Speaker 1: side just emptying out into the city streets. The bumper
Speaker 1: to bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides the
Speaker 1: border to shut down or scale back production. The halting
Speaker 1: of trade has bottlenecked automaker Ford's ability to get parts
Speaker 1: from the US to its Canadian plants in Windsor and Oaksville.
Speaker 1: Ford to shut down the doors of its Windsor plan
Speaker 1: and reduced the work schedule in Oakville. Ford set in
Speaker 1: a statement, the interruption on the Detroit Windsor Bridge hurts customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities,
Speaker 1: and companies on both sides of the border. We hope
Speaker 1: the situation is resolved quickly because it could have widespread
Speaker 1: impact on all automakers in the US and Canada. Automaker
Speaker 1: Toyota said that it's three D plants in Ontario closed
Speaker 1: for the rest of the week because of parts shortages,
Speaker 1: and production has also been curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky more
Speaker 1: On the U s side of things, GM, Jeep, and
Speaker 1: Honda all had hours cut and assembly lines shut down
Speaker 1: own at their factories across Michigan and Ohio. Michigan Governor
Speaker 1: Gretchen Whittemore urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the stand off,
Speaker 1: saying it's hitting paychecks and production lines and that is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: The federal Public Safety Minister has said that the Royal
Speaker 1: Canadian amount of police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor,
Speaker 1: Ottawa and to Coots, Alberta, where the other border blockade
Speaker 1: is happening. With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor
Speaker 1: Drew Dilkins announced that the city would seek a court
Speaker 1: injunction to end the occupation, saying that the economic harm
Speaker 1: is just not sustainable and it must come to an end.
Speaker 1: On Thursday, February tenth, the Biden administration urged Prime Minister
Speaker 1: Justin Trudeau's government on Thursday to use its federal powers
Speaker 1: to end the truck blockade at the other side of
Speaker 1: the Detroit border. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
Speaker 1: products have been held back for days as fifty to
Speaker 1: sixty vehicles and around a hundred anti mandate protesters camp
Speaker 1: out on the main road that leads on and off
Speaker 1: the bridge. And yes, it is ironic that the same
Speaker 1: people who are trying to sell Canadians fake stories about
Speaker 1: failing supply lines and empty shelves are now causing those
Speaker 1: supply lines to fail and causing those shelves to go empty.
Speaker 1: The irony is not lost on me, but it may
Speaker 1: be lost on the convoy participants. Throughout running these episodes,
Speaker 1: I was fortunate enough to get to talk to multiple
Speaker 1: people who have been on the ground in downtown Ottawa.
Speaker 1: One such of these people's is Peter Smith, an investigative
Speaker 1: journalist for the Canadian Anti Hate Network. We recorded our
Speaker 1: conversation and I'm going to include some audio clips throughout
Speaker 1: the rest of the episode. We started off by discussing
Speaker 1: what made this protest movement pop off in this specific
Speaker 1: time and place. I do you think it was maybe
Speaker 1: capitalizing on a moment, but also a fair amount of luck.
Speaker 1: You know, since two thousand nine, the same organizers have
Speaker 1: attempted to put together other convoys, you know, generally never
Speaker 1: rising to the amount of attention that they had in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Um. You know, this convoy was also
Speaker 1: planned long before they specifically started focusing on truckers, and
Speaker 1: then it was it was a galvanizing issue. It resonated
Speaker 1: with people who are frustrated with the Trudeau government, um,
Speaker 1: and just they're they're handling of of health measures as
Speaker 1: well as just became a like a vehicle for expressing
Speaker 1: their general dissatisfaction with their own provinises, like most of
Speaker 1: our health mandates are provincial, like the Alberta government is
Speaker 1: handing down what's happening in Alberta. Um, so it's it's
Speaker 1: not just it's not just a federal issue, but coming
Speaker 1: down here and occupying the streets of Ottawa and that
Speaker 1: now we're seeing occupying most of our major cities. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, ones like Winnipeg gets significantly less attention, but
Speaker 1: are incredibly disruptive locally, um and in some cases more
Speaker 1: kind of inceniary than the one that we have out here,
Speaker 1: where you know, participants and organizers are desperately trying to
Speaker 1: clamp down on on any individuals who's engaging and harassment
Speaker 1: or uh well or is more common blaming it on
Speaker 1: liberal plants. Um. Yeah, it just it became this kind
Speaker 1: of expression of all of the frustration and very quickly
Speaker 1: drew attention even from people who've been dismissive of it
Speaker 1: very early on because of some of the organizers. Um.
Speaker 1: Once it really started to galvanate, galvanized attention and of
Speaker 1: course money, Uh, people couldn't couldn't stay away. I mean
Speaker 1: to the point that we even have mainstream conservative politicians
Speaker 1: now getting on board with it, including the man who's
Speaker 1: very likely to be the future leader of the Conservative
Speaker 1: Party here. I mean, we're in a very unique moment um,
Speaker 1: you know, are our far right and kind of conspiracy
Speaker 1: culture in Canada has also been getting better at organizing
Speaker 1: over the course of the pandemic. Wants to get like
Speaker 1: all major cities have and many small towns continue to
Speaker 1: have anti mandate um anti lockdown protests. We usually refer
Speaker 1: to them as the COVID conspiracy movement, just because of
Speaker 1: how and heavily heavily informed it is by conspiratorial thinking. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's it's like you had a large amount of
Speaker 1: people kind of spending the past two years and like
Speaker 1: a on the ground boot camp of how to organize
Speaker 1: within these cities and how to get people's attention. And
Speaker 1: of course, like like a lot of the far right here,
Speaker 1: it fragmented. There was a lot of infighting, um and
Speaker 1: then you know, once there became a central point that
Speaker 1: was was galvanizing a lot of attention, it started receiving
Speaker 1: international attention. You know, there's been some questions about the
Speaker 1: source of some of the money, but certainly the initial
Speaker 1: totals seemed to be organically Canadian. Yeah. Um, it just
Speaker 1: became too big to fall apart essentially, at least at
Speaker 1: this point. Um. There has been some spats of infighting,
Speaker 1: but mostly you know, the most polarized and figures are
Speaker 1: either just keeping their head down or in some cases
Speaker 1: even choosing to stay away from the main events so
Speaker 1: as not to be a distraction. Um. There's a lot.
Speaker 1: One of the lines I see a lot is like,
Speaker 1: this is the moment, this is for all the marvels. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a huge amount of importance being placed on that.
Speaker 1: What actually happens, like whether they're able to paint what
Speaker 1: we've the like the actual rolling back of banddates that
Speaker 1: we were already starting to see before the convoy began,
Speaker 1: um as some type of victory for them, um, or
Speaker 1: if this leads to further disillusionment. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: really know at this point, but I think this moment
Speaker 1: is going to be a propaganda tool, um, and kind
Speaker 1: of a a point of I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a propaganda tool and like a point of motivation for
Speaker 1: a long time from your like both on the ground
Speaker 1: stuff and just from monitoring stuff online. What do you
Speaker 1: think like the actual actionable intention was once they arrived
Speaker 1: in Ottawa, Like, do you think they had a clear
Speaker 1: plan of what to do or was it more like
Speaker 1: let's go here and then we'll figure things out. Well,
Speaker 1: initially there there was a manum. Initially there was a
Speaker 1: memorandum of understanding which laid out kind of the points
Speaker 1: of what the inditial organizers were hoping to accomplish, something
Speaker 1: they call the Operation bay or hug Um, which includes
Speaker 1: having the Governor General and our Senate, both of whom
Speaker 1: are unelected, uh dissolved parliament and reform the government immediately
Speaker 1: after we had a federal election. Um. Since then, the
Speaker 1: message has evolved like they're trying to stay very very
Speaker 1: like on script with this just being about freedom, um,
Speaker 1: this just being about mandates. You know, initially there was
Speaker 1: a lot of attempts to even get people to stop
Speaker 1: mentioning the vaccine. Of those seems to kind of fallen
Speaker 1: by the wayside, especially when you start looking at the speakers.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to kind of wonder what the actual
Speaker 1: goal is there. They've started meeting with public officials, you know,
Speaker 1: there is some type of negotiation going on. Um. Obstensively,
Speaker 1: the goal is just to have these border restrictions lifted
Speaker 1: on people on truckers who are unvaccinated returning from the US.
Speaker 1: You know, the obvious thing is the point out that
Speaker 1: the US still has a very similar policy in reverse
Speaker 1: again here would have no impact um on their ability
Speaker 1: to to avoid this quarantine. But um, it seems like
Speaker 1: the goals are fairly murky, and that's almost deliberate because
Speaker 1: then they can declare victory kind of when it suits them.
Speaker 1: Ambiguity around protest goals, demands, and purpose itself can be
Speaker 1: a useful tactic. The Crime Think zine slash article titled
Speaker 1: why we Don't make Demands makes such a case. I
Speaker 1: don't have time to summarize it here, but I recommend
Speaker 1: you give the article a look if you're interested in
Speaker 1: this train of thought as an intentional tactic. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, you know, vague and direction list protest
Speaker 1: without much of a focus on a specific goal can
Speaker 1: also cause protests to peter out without having any lasting
Speaker 1: impact on the world. A discussion worth having is how
Speaker 1: the individual people that make up the convay participants have
Speaker 1: been convinced to take part in an occupation protest, and
Speaker 1: how what is considered valid political action has broadened in
Speaker 1: their own heads if they're the ones doing the action,
Speaker 1: of course, because from their point of view, since they
Speaker 1: are doing it, the cause must be valid and therefore
Speaker 1: the action is justified. In we have the wetsuin rail blockades,
Speaker 1: um that was put on by various members of our
Speaker 1: first nations, and then people who supported them, you know,
Speaker 1: the same politicians they're meeting, um when the truckers embracing them, uh,
Speaker 1: saying that our current prime ministers demonizing them um by
Speaker 1: kind of casting them as under desirables. We're we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're actively calling people sitting on train tracks as terrorists
Speaker 1: who are disrupting our economy. Um. Obviously, in the context
Speaker 1: of the pandemic pandemic that's very different because there has
Speaker 1: been kind of mass disruption too to our economy. But
Speaker 1: this kind of picking and choosing, of of suiting the
Speaker 1: narrative to court far eight voters seems to be popular.
Speaker 1: You know how Conservatives typically aren't seen as the protesting type.
Speaker 1: Right Conservatives are supposed to be the type of people
Speaker 1: who drive by the protest and yell, get a job,
Speaker 1: They're not the ones who are out in the streets picketing.
Speaker 1: But first of all, that's not really true. Historically, in
Speaker 1: just the past one years, there's always been conservative protests
Speaker 1: for you know, regressive and reactionary goals. Also, conservatives have
Speaker 1: been much better at organizing off the street for their
Speaker 1: political policies, specifically around like abortion or Christian dominionism, anti
Speaker 1: queer legislation, or recent stuff around anti CRT and just
Speaker 1: the mainstream racism denial that's been propagated through media. But
Speaker 1: even if there is historical precedent for conservative protest, bridging
Speaker 1: the gap of what is seen as valid political action
Speaker 1: in the minds of these convoy attendees did still take
Speaker 1: place over just the past few years, just the past
Speaker 1: two years, specifically, there's been so much conservative protests around COVID.
Speaker 1: A whole bunch of the people at the Ottawa protest
Speaker 1: probably five years ago would have never seen themselves going
Speaker 1: to protest in the Canadian capital, Right Like, if you
Speaker 1: told them a few years ago that you're gonna drive
Speaker 1: all these kilometers to the Parliament to camp out in
Speaker 1: the cold for weeks to protest against the government and
Speaker 1: its rules for helping not spread the deadliest pandemic in
Speaker 1: a century. They would have probably laughed out of the room.
Speaker 1: So what is the logical agression of conservative people who generally,
Speaker 1: you know, look down on any type of protest, especially
Speaker 1: occupy style protests to the point where they are driving
Speaker 1: all the way to the capital to camp outside the building,
Speaker 1: to Hong Korn's day and night. A lot of that
Speaker 1: political change the past few years correlates to the pandemic,
Speaker 1: to the social isolation and the great opportunity for the
Speaker 1: fast spread of conspiratorial politics that it offered. Over the
Speaker 1: course of the pandemic, there's been this huge blending of
Speaker 1: rhetoric online and especially in Canada, this kind of villainization
Speaker 1: of the other side. Increasingly less and less criticism against
Speaker 1: the current government is less based on its policy and
Speaker 1: more based on its figurehead and the image of Trudeau
Speaker 1: as a globalist politics as opposition to whatever Trudeaux and
Speaker 1: the Liberals are doing. The result of that is just
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of escalation, because you have to keep
Speaker 1: always being antagonistic and always being contrarian no matter what
Speaker 1: the opposition actually does. The thing is a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who used to just be kind of more
Speaker 1: general conservatives. As they get radicalized online and get caught
Speaker 1: up with farther right and extremest elements, most of them
Speaker 1: still view themselves as like the norm. They don't think
Speaker 1: they've politically changed the past five years, but if you
Speaker 1: look at their rhetoric and actions, they definitely have kind
Speaker 1: of substantially, But they still view themselves the same way
Speaker 1: they would when they were voting. Forced to even harper,
Speaker 1: Unless you're a self described extremist, you typically view everything
Speaker 1: that you do and say as normal and reasonable. Like you,
Speaker 1: you are the actual normal. Everyone else is shifted either
Speaker 1: way relative to you. During our talk, I asked investigative
Speaker 1: journalist Peter Smith on his opinions about what sorts of
Speaker 1: political and social factors have allowed the occupation and blockades
Speaker 1: to have enough numbers to last and continue on so long. Um.
Speaker 1: Kind of having spent a lot of time on the
Speaker 1: ground at the Ottawa convoy just talking to people as
Speaker 1: like as a normal guy without my press hat on. Um,
Speaker 1: it does seem like when there's a lot of owner
Speaker 1: operators there, like when it comes to the trucks themselves. Um,
Speaker 1: these people are the business owners um or like very close,
Speaker 1: like they're kind of independent contractors exactly. Um. I think
Speaker 1: there was a report that came out showing a survey
Speaker 1: that done that like roughly half of the people there
Speaker 1: were unemployed. UM. So like the financial promise of all
Speaker 1: the money raised may have been a big draw. Like
Speaker 1: not to say that these people don't legitimately believe the
Speaker 1: reasons absolutely, um, but it created an incentive. UM. But
Speaker 1: then having roughly half of them, you know, still having jobs,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes down to a little bit more
Speaker 1: than just money, Like it's about actual belief, actual ideology. UM.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting for a large amount of people
Speaker 1: who are extremely worried about supply lines about people having
Speaker 1: enough food initially um to kind of creating this self
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy where where that seems to be the main
Speaker 1: tactic is just to grind as much to a halt
Speaker 1: as they can, using as much as many people as
Speaker 1: they can muster. And then just the kind of general
Speaker 1: hands off approach that law enforcement is taking with them,
Speaker 1: um has allowed them to organize better, to evolve their
Speaker 1: tactics to be more effective. UM. Like I certainly don't
Speaker 1: think a policing solution is is what's going to solve this?
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a lot of calls for that,
Speaker 1: which is I think just going to result in a
Speaker 1: lot of people getting hurt in the street. Um. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, like it is interesting that how it kind
Speaker 1: of it came from the West mostly and then landed
Speaker 1: in Ottawa and then kind of spread out from there
Speaker 1: once people realized it was effective, once people realized, you know,
Speaker 1: there was there was safety in these numbers. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's drawn, it's drawn so many people to it. It's
Speaker 1: it's honestly shock. It's it has been shocking, truly how
Speaker 1: quickly it is spread and how effective it has been.
Speaker 1: It's not January six in the sense that like people
Speaker 1: are running around Parliament and like trying to find you know,
Speaker 1: every liberal politician, but in the sense that it's a
Speaker 1: large amount of people motivated by conspiracy. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: where I view the parallel and because they and honestly,
Speaker 1: the the actual sincerity of it poses more of a
Speaker 1: political threat than the animosity of January six. Um, in
Speaker 1: terms of like long term, like actual social change and
Speaker 1: using this type of like occupation as a tactic, the
Speaker 1: more sincere you are the more of an actual political
Speaker 1: threat you can be in the long term, because yeah,
Speaker 1: if they start, if they storm Parliament, then I'll get
Speaker 1: shut down in a day and then they will be
Speaker 1: demonized and then then the problem is over, um at
Speaker 1: least at least in the short term. Right. Um. But
Speaker 1: if you actually like do this sincerely and actually get
Speaker 1: people to buckle under pressure, then that's like actual successful politics.
Speaker 1: Like that is you're you're actually doing politics objectively. Well, um,
Speaker 1: and that's more interesting to point out. The problem isn't protesting,
Speaker 1: Like protesting as a concept isn't the issue. The problem
Speaker 1: isn't even blockade. No, the problem is not blockades either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all these things are just tactics, and tactics are value neutral. Um.
Speaker 1: Usually you know, it's until you can take a genocide
Speaker 1: when it's usually that's a kind of kind of kind
Speaker 1: of a downer generally. Um. But in generally I kind
Speaker 1: of you put protest tactics as more value neutral. It's
Speaker 1: about kind of what the underlying cultural motivation is and
Speaker 1: what they want the results to be. And even still,
Speaker 1: you know, some of the some of the points they
Speaker 1: have are not completely invalid um. But once it gets
Speaker 1: caught up in a cultural war kind of mindset. It's
Speaker 1: like you have to oppose it just because they're on
Speaker 1: the other side. Um So I kind of want to
Speaker 1: talk about like the reasons why they are actually kind
Speaker 1: enough bad like like for like on like a very
Speaker 1: sincere way, but then also kind of point out some
Speaker 1: things that are like yeah, maybe the scene, these are
Speaker 1: things we should consider and it shouldn't take this type
Speaker 1: of occupation to have us reconsider some of these rules
Speaker 1: and regulations. Yeah, like completely, Like I think there's no
Speaker 1: issue with having being uncomfortable with mandates, um like, even
Speaker 1: if you feel they're necessary, like being uncomfortable with the
Speaker 1: amount of state power that is being accumulated. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: in Canada, you know there have been sweeping changes to
Speaker 1: the way that we live our lives. Like I know
Speaker 1: that that's been universal. Um but there there is not
Speaker 1: a province that hasn't really suffered, like hasn't really impacted
Speaker 1: people's lives dealing with COVID um. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is one of the biggest issues when trying
Speaker 1: to point out disparate responses in policing. Um. Well, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like so we should treat the convoy participants like
Speaker 1: they treated everybody else, and it's it's like no, like like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the police chief of Ottawa got a
Speaker 1: lot of ship for saying he doesn't think there's a
Speaker 1: policing solution, and it's like, I do agree with the
Speaker 1: criticism of him, because he has attempted to kick responsibility
Speaker 1: to just about every other level of government available. Um,
Speaker 1: but dragging people out, like towing their vehicles and taking
Speaker 1: away their livelihood and dragging a lot of people out
Speaker 1: into the street and then into jail is not gonna
Speaker 1: resolve these issues now, and if anything, it could could
Speaker 1: bring more support. Like again, there was another report today
Speaker 1: that I think it's of people who have camped out
Speaker 1: have children with them, Like, you know, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be an incredibly traumatic experience. It's gonna help radicalize more people,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna lend credence to their cause if they
Speaker 1: just go in and bust heads. And it's like if
Speaker 1: the main focus of this convoy had been ento where
Speaker 1: we have an incredibly aggressive police force when it comes
Speaker 1: to like homeless encampments for instance, Um, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the result could have been very different. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then because a lot of stuff around the question of
Speaker 1: governments and stuff. Yeah, it's it's the type of things
Speaker 1: I can agree with with like right wing libertarians, is, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do have a lot of points I can simplize
Speaker 1: with around the state and around control, but the way
Speaker 1: you address them don't actually address the underlying power structures
Speaker 1: which give the state legitimacy in the first place. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And the world that you kind of want in the
Speaker 1: end is still a world full of hierarchies, just hierarchies
Speaker 1: that make your life easier and skew and your favor
Speaker 1: just like asking for two unelected bodies to reoplate replace
Speaker 1: your democratically elected government. It's like, yeah, we had ten
Speaker 1: years of Stephen Harper, Like, um, people were unhappy and
Speaker 1: extremely critical of that government from the center and from
Speaker 1: the left, But you know, there wasn't this kind of
Speaker 1: broad support for the idea that that government was illegitimate,
Speaker 1: which is I think what we see mostly today, which
Speaker 1: is the most disturbing and kind of anti democratic part
Speaker 1: of the whole pot. Yeah, and that's the kind of
Speaker 1: on the last thing I want to talk about is like,
Speaker 1: what do you see like eventually people will go home
Speaker 1: either out of exhaustion, it'll maybe fizzle away, like like
Speaker 1: the protests in Portland did. Maybe they'll eventually police will
Speaker 1: kind of clear out small sections of like wh who knows,
Speaker 1: But like, this is not going knock one here, but
Speaker 1: this this isn't gonna last like a year, right, It's not.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna like that. I don't think they're gonna
Speaker 1: have thousands of people came out in front of the
Speaker 1: government forever. Um So what but what are the actual
Speaker 1: lumb term political ramifications of this, because we already saw
Speaker 1: the leader of the Conservative Party step down. Um, So
Speaker 1: like I want to talk but like specifically with the
Speaker 1: guy who's probably more most likely to take his place.
Speaker 1: How this just does kind of play into the more
Speaker 1: negative aspects of the convoy, is like how they're going
Speaker 1: to use this as a political symbol and a political
Speaker 1: tool to push for policies and forms the government and
Speaker 1: actions that will end up hurting a lot of of
Speaker 1: and will uphorting a lot of people. Um in terms
Speaker 1: of you know, how how it's going to be used
Speaker 1: in propaganda and rhetoric. Yeah, well, certainly if we have um,
Speaker 1: you know, strong legal ramifications put in place that make
Speaker 1: it easier for provinces, the federal government whatever to crackdown
Speaker 1: on on protests in general, which I think is something
Speaker 1: that might be very attractive to our card and government. Um.
Speaker 1: You know that's going to have obviously very far reaching effects.
Speaker 1: You know. One of our opposition parties, um, which is
Speaker 1: you know, generally further to the left than than the Liberals,
Speaker 1: the n d P UM, their leader was proposing ways
Speaker 1: to stop foreign funding from coming in to supplied to
Speaker 1: the protests. Um. You know, once again, we we had
Speaker 1: protests a couple of years ago by indigenous people and
Speaker 1: people who support indigenous movements. Um. You know that that
Speaker 1: raised money using the same platforms and the same methods.
Speaker 1: You know. So I worry about like one of the
Speaker 1: legal ramifications like to just this this idea, like if
Speaker 1: the government does crack down very hard, this idea of
Speaker 1: real grievance and alienation that the West has already been
Speaker 1: struggling with. Like we've had a real renewed separatist movement,
Speaker 1: not from Quebec um where it's generally been the most successful,
Speaker 1: but from the Western provinces, you know, not not really
Speaker 1: getting close to obtaining any real political power, but you know,
Speaker 1: kind of steadily gaining support, pulling a showing that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a real feeling of Western alienation, that they
Speaker 1: don't feel represented, and you know a lot of the
Speaker 1: ways our government are set up actually makes that true. Um. Yeah. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: as people I think become more and more disenfranchised, Um,
Speaker 1: when government action begins to kind of justify imagined ideas
Speaker 1: of oppression, um, you're gonna have a real hardening. And
Speaker 1: since the government in power is a progressive one is
Speaker 1: or at least one that espouses you know, tries tries
Speaker 1: to reach for progressive values, you know, there's a good
Speaker 1: chance that those issues are gonna get caught up with
Speaker 1: what is just like a quote unquote leftist agenda, Whereas
Speaker 1: up until probably a decade ago, those things were very
Speaker 1: much seen as kind of inherent Canadian values that were
Speaker 1: embraced by both sides. Um. The current candidate for leadership,
Speaker 1: he hasn't been he hasn't won the seat in the
Speaker 1: the Conservative Party yet, but Pierre Pouliver has kind of
Speaker 1: always flirted to some degree with far right talking points
Speaker 1: like I don't I I specialize in hey groups, I
Speaker 1: don't want to make too many pronouncements about mainstream conservatism. Um.
Speaker 1: But even by kind of members of the very far
Speaker 1: right who often have turned against the Conservative Party over
Speaker 1: the course of the pandemic. He's often referred to as
Speaker 1: the adult in the room. Um. And while still a politician,
Speaker 1: kind of their best bet for getting someone in office
Speaker 1: that they would actually like to see in power. Um,
Speaker 1: which could I mean could be interesting to see how
Speaker 1: they if they will be continued support for the PPC
Speaker 1: and two to four years um. But yeah, I just
Speaker 1: think there there is a real hardening of the right.
Speaker 1: And it's not like the Overton window is shifting. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's getting wider, like more and more is
Speaker 1: being incorporated, as opposed to be just going in one
Speaker 1: direction or another. That disenfranchisement is a driving factor. Like
Speaker 1: they view this populist kind of uprising or up swelling
Speaker 1: um that they're seeing now as a function of democracy
Speaker 1: or like part of how democracy is supposed to function.
Speaker 1: So again, like if if you talk to them, they
Speaker 1: will quite earnestly say many of them anyway, we'll quite
Speaker 1: earnestly say it like this is about freedom, is about
Speaker 1: having my voice heard. Yeah, but without a lot of
Speaker 1: thought about how that will actually functioned in a broader scale.
Speaker 1: I mean that just plays into like alienation as like
Speaker 1: a general concepts, right, Like we're so disconnected from everything
Speaker 1: about our lives, disconnected from you know, the way we work,
Speaker 1: disconnected from our interactions with other people, between, disconnected from
Speaker 1: like you know, money, our food, you know, it's all
Speaker 1: the stuff, and like disconnected from politics. Is that the
Speaker 1: only way that you can actually something that feels real,
Speaker 1: the only thing that actually feels like reality, is going
Speaker 1: to do this thing in person because everything else is
Speaker 1: so disjointed. Um, it's the there is so much of
Speaker 1: that space in between the phenomenon and the actual thing
Speaker 1: that is. It leaves you wanting something which you don't
Speaker 1: know quite what. So yeah, you're going to drive to
Speaker 1: Ottawa because that feels so much more real. That feels
Speaker 1: like actual politics, and it kind of it is like
Speaker 1: that's like that's that's that's always when it feels like
Speaker 1: when you're when you're like when you're when you're protesting,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, I'm actually doing politics now, because that's
Speaker 1: how everything gets set up is by that type of
Speaker 1: like you know, getting people on the ground, and it's
Speaker 1: it's such a more personal way to engage than you know,
Speaker 1: putting a no into a box every two to four years,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I I imagine it does feel substantive. And
Speaker 1: then I mean voting power is centered in our urban
Speaker 1: centers as well, so there is there is a real
Speaker 1: disconnect with the representation that that rural people again Western
Speaker 1: the Western provinces received. I now want to specifically talk
Speaker 1: about police response and the way needs this occupation and
Speaker 1: blockades being handled will affect the political organizing in the future.
Speaker 1: I think initially the majority of police concerns and what
Speaker 1: they were actually focused on responding to was fears around
Speaker 1: the convoy storming Parliament or if the convoys were going
Speaker 1: to do something exceedingly violent, which I don't think was
Speaker 1: necessarily the convoy's actionable objective from the beginning, if you
Speaker 1: listen to what they were actually saying, it will it
Speaker 1: was more about choking out the city and applying pressure
Speaker 1: on government officials. But the initial non violence, coupled with
Speaker 1: the shield of being conservative, white and middle class whom
Speaker 1: you know, the police are less likely to react as
Speaker 1: brutally to allowed time for the infrastructure to rise. That
Speaker 1: let the protests turn into a full scale occupation of
Speaker 1: a North American city. The first real action police took
Speaker 1: against the occupation was on the evening of Sunday, February six,
Speaker 1: demonstrators were gathering for dinner than dozens of officers in
Speaker 1: riot gear carrying munitions launchers raided a camp after footage
Speaker 1: of stockpiles and gas cans went viral days previous, in
Speaker 1: an attempt to cut the supply route. Police say they
Speaker 1: seized around three thousand and seven hundred liters of fuel
Speaker 1: and two vehicles, including a diesel tank, but within hours
Speaker 1: of the raid, protesters from the camp broadcast reassurance to
Speaker 1: their supporters and continue to organize just goodalizing smarter tactics.
Speaker 1: The day after the police raid, protesters continued to deliver
Speaker 1: fuel to downtown truckers as they executed a coordinated effort
Speaker 1: to exhaust police resources. Hundreds of demonstrators carried fuel cans,
Speaker 1: some empty, some not, just right past officers who mostly
Speaker 1: stood watched as hundreds of people trolled them with decoy
Speaker 1: cans while others smuggled in more fuel within the safety
Speaker 1: of the large crowd right in the middle of the day.
Speaker 1: Ottawa Police Deputy Chief Steve Bell said the demonstrators were
Speaker 1: filling cast cans with water to distract officers attempting to
Speaker 1: subvert their efforts, and that one officer was swarmed by
Speaker 1: the crowd while trying to confiscate fuel. To date, police
Speaker 1: have made around thirty arrests and issued thousands of tickets,
Speaker 1: launched more than eighty criminal investigations, and four hundred plus
Speaker 1: hate incidents are also being investigated. Earlier this week, Peter
Speaker 1: slowly said that the force would turn up the heat
Speaker 1: as the police started to crack down on anyone bringing
Speaker 1: material aid such as fuel to protesters. Police is mentled
Speaker 1: a protest camp near the Redeau Canal downtown and a
Speaker 1: fuel operation on the Coventry Road east of the Core,
Speaker 1: but some trucks and demonstrators continued to occupy downtown streets
Speaker 1: and the staging area on Coventry. Police say that they
Speaker 1: need an additional eighteen hundred more reinforcements from federal and
Speaker 1: provincial governments to help end the crisis. The entire Ottawa
Speaker 1: Police Force numbers only twelve hundred, but it's been supplemented
Speaker 1: with several hundred officers from the Ontario Provisional Police and
Speaker 1: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as local police
Speaker 1: forces elsewhere in Ontario over the past few weeks. Near
Speaker 1: the end of the second week of occupation, dug Ford,
Speaker 1: the Premier of Ontario, declared a state of emergency for
Speaker 1: the entire province, warning protesters demanding an end to pandemic
Speaker 1: restrictions that if they do not disband, there will be
Speaker 1: consequences and they will be severe. He said that those
Speaker 1: who continue to impede the movement of people and goods
Speaker 1: could face fines of up to one hundred thousand Canadian dollars,
Speaker 1: up to a year in prison, and the revocation of
Speaker 1: their driver's license. During the cold morning of Sunday, February,
Speaker 1: police largely cleared the portion of the self styled freedom
Speaker 1: of Convoy blocking the Ambassador Bridge US Canada border crossing
Speaker 1: on the road between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit. The clearing
Speaker 1: marked a week since the border blockade had begun. Police
Speaker 1: made several arrests and towed vehicles in connection to the
Speaker 1: demonstration that had disrupted traffic and the flow of goods.
Speaker 1: After law enforcement enforced the injunction enacted two days prior or,
Speaker 1: ring truckers and our supporters to leave anticketed and towed vehicles.
Speaker 1: A defined core of some two dozen protesters had remained
Speaker 1: on foot as temperatures dropped below freezing, but around nine
Speaker 1: thirty local time, police had mostly cleared the streets to
Speaker 1: the bridge and were deployed around the area. It was unclear, however,
Speaker 1: how large police presidents would remain to prevent vehicles and
Speaker 1: demonstrators from returning there. Meanwhile, in the capital of Ottawa,
Speaker 1: police grappled with an influx of anti government and anti
Speaker 1: vaccine mandate demonstrators for a third straight weekend. Despite both
Speaker 1: local and provincial officials declaring states of emergency, law enforcement
Speaker 1: appeared to be unsuccessful in attempts to get the Freedom
Speaker 1: Convoy protesters to leave by threatening them with fines, prison time,
Speaker 1: and loss of their licenses. Police have not made any
Speaker 1: large effort to asrupt to the convoys in Ottawa, similar
Speaker 1: to what they did on Sunday in Windsor, Ontario. Ottawa
Speaker 1: police say that over four thousand demonstrators were in this
Speaker 1: city throughout the day. However, on Monday, February fourteenth, police
Speaker 1: action was taken against the blockade at the Coots border
Speaker 1: crossing that had shut down cross border travel. For almost
Speaker 1: three weeks. The RCNP said in a press release early
Speaker 1: Monday morning that they became aware of a small organized
Speaker 1: group within the larger protest at Coots, which led to
Speaker 1: eleven arrests. They say that they hit information that the
Speaker 1: group had access to a cash of firearms and ammunition
Speaker 1: in three trailers. During the raid, officers seized long guns, handguns,
Speaker 1: multiple sets of body armor, a machete, and a large
Speaker 1: commantity of ammunition and some high capacity magazines. Later that day,
Speaker 1: to other arrests were made in connection to the blockade.
Speaker 1: Following the police raid and the thirteen arrests, some other
Speaker 1: organizers of the protest said a decision was reached voluntarily
Speaker 1: to leave the Coots area. Around Tuesday morning. The organizers
Speaker 1: made a statement saying, quote, we were infiltrated by an
Speaker 1: extreme element. Our objective was to be here piece really
Speaker 1: to keep that message going. We want to peacefully leave
Speaker 1: Coots and return to our families. As of Tuesday, both
Speaker 1: the border crossing at the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit and
Speaker 1: the Coot Sport of entry to Montana are open once again,
Speaker 1: as the border opened back up in Coots. The previous blockade,
Speaker 1: protesters and police embraced each other with hugs and handshakes. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergency's Act
Speaker 1: for the first time in Canadian history to give the
Speaker 1: federal government and police extra powers to handle the ongoing
Speaker 1: blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions. Here's how the measures
Speaker 1: were taking today will help get the situation under control.
Speaker 1: The police will be given more tools to restore order
Speaker 1: in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities,
Speaker 1: such as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, the
Speaker 1: Ambassador Bridge and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability
Speaker 1: to impose fines or imprisonment. The government will designate secure
Speaker 1: and protect places and infrastructure that are critical to our
Speaker 1: economy and people's jobs, including border crossings and airports. We
Speaker 1: cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.
Speaker 1: The Emergencies Act will also allow the government to make
Speaker 1: sure essential services are rendered, for example, in order to
Speaker 1: tow vehicles blocking roads. In addition, financial institutions will be
Speaker 1: authorized or directed to render essential services to help address
Speaker 1: the situation, including by regulating and prohibiting the use of
Speaker 1: property to fund or support illegal blockades. Finally, will enable
Speaker 1: the RCMP to enforce municipal by laws and provincial offenses
Speaker 1: were required. This is what the Emergencies Act does. The
Speaker 1: Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, defines a national emergency as a temporary, urgent,
Speaker 1: and critical situation that seriously endangers the lives, health, or
Speaker 1: safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature
Speaker 1: as to extend the capacity of authority of a province
Speaker 1: to deal with it. The unprecedented deployment of the Emergencies
Speaker 1: Act gives police quote more tools to restore order in
Speaker 1: places where public assembly is constitute illegal and dangerous activities,
Speaker 1: such as blockades and occupations. According to Trudeau, but the
Speaker 1: thing is police already had all the tools they needed.
Speaker 1: The illegal occupations and blockades were already illegal, They just
Speaker 1: didn't want to enforce it. You can look at how
Speaker 1: the coots, protesters and the police are hugging right. This
Speaker 1: isn't a matter of having not enough tools. All this
Speaker 1: does is set a terrible precedent for using this type
Speaker 1: of extra power in the future to respond to protests.
Speaker 1: Because the cops are still going to take a very
Speaker 1: gentle approach if they ever are forced to take physical
Speaker 1: action against the Ottawa occupation while using the extra powers
Speaker 1: of the Emergencies Act. The Finance Minister of Canada also
Speaker 1: announced on Monday a broadening of the laws regarding financing
Speaker 1: of crime and terrorism to now include crowdfunding and also
Speaker 1: extra surveillance measures against people who donate and use crowd
Speaker 1: funds for criminal acts, including legal protests. As part of
Speaker 1: invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions. First,
Speaker 1: we are broadening the scope of Canada's anti money laudering,
Speaker 1: laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding
Speaker 1: platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes
Speaker 1: cover all forms of transactions, including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms
Speaker 1: and some of the payment service providers they use are
Speaker 1: not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist
Speaker 1: Financing Act. Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated
Speaker 1: to report to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center
Speaker 1: of Canada or FINTRACK. As of today, all crowdfunding platforms
Speaker 1: and the payment service providers they use must register with fintrack,
Speaker 1: and they must report large and suspicious transactions to fintrack
Speaker 1: h This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms
Speaker 1: receive illicit funds, increase the quality and quantity of intelligence
Speaker 1: received by fintrack, and make more information available to support
Speaker 1: investigations by law enforcement into these illegal blockades. That's kind
Speaker 1: of all the information I have at the time of recording.
Speaker 1: So now I'm going to talk more about the potential
Speaker 1: political effects that this protest could have, not just on Canada,
Speaker 1: but also in how we view protest in general. So
Speaker 1: the actual result of liberal media framing this type of
Speaker 1: protest as scary terrorism is laying the groundwork for brutal
Speaker 1: police actions against massive, mostly non violent, and tactically smart
Speaker 1: protests to be more normalized across Canada, and extremely brutal
Speaker 1: police response and harsh charges are unlikely to be leveled
Speaker 1: against a protest made up of these conservatives, but will
Speaker 1: absolutely happen to any future progressive social justice cause, especially
Speaker 1: if they use occupy style tactics. The more powers police
Speaker 1: obtain and the legal precedents that are set well of
Speaker 1: long lasting implications with legal consequences that will always come
Speaker 1: down harder on the left than they do on the right.
Speaker 1: Police will do a bare minimum to resolve this conservative
Speaker 1: so called freedom protest, but then we'll use it as
Speaker 1: a justification to grab greater resources and power and use
Speaker 1: this movement to justify severe preventative protest suppression in the future.
Speaker 1: If liberals can widely celebrate and thirst for harsh crackdowns
Speaker 1: of a protest made up of white conservatives and their families,
Speaker 1: calling the entire movement a criminal enterprise, and cheering on
Speaker 1: as police steal property of the protesters despite what the
Speaker 1: majority of these protesters are doing, just being kind of
Speaker 1: camping onside of a street. Think of all of the
Speaker 1: ways that consent it can be manufactured to clamped down
Speaker 1: on any future large scale protest, especially when the movement
Speaker 1: isn't made up of a bunch of regular white people
Speaker 1: and their kids, and instead of actually challenges the underlying
Speaker 1: power structures that prop up white Canada, instead of just
Speaker 1: reinforcing it like the Convoy does. I have a similar
Speaker 1: issue around all of the hubbub around the fundraisers right.
Speaker 1: Restricting where crowdfunded resources can come from will only result
Speaker 1: in future political social justice causes to be negatively impacted,
Speaker 1: whether that be bail funds or supporting indigenous blockades from
Speaker 1: out of country. On February ten, the Canadian federal government
Speaker 1: effectively shut down the Freedom Convoys Gives end Go fundraiser,
Speaker 1: making it illegal for the funds to be used in
Speaker 1: any way. Government's setting the precedent for shutting down protest
Speaker 1: crowdfunding is not a good thing now. Any future of
Speaker 1: protest bail funds and crowdfunding for the set In blockade
Speaker 1: will always be in jeopardy, and by no means saying
Speaker 1: that action against a generally hateful, anti democratic, and dangerously
Speaker 1: conspiratorial protest isn't justified, but just when governments start using
Speaker 1: it as reasons for more power and creating new precedents
Speaker 1: for years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: and fines for an occupation. Protest like that shouldn't be
Speaker 1: cheered on because those things will only come back to
Speaker 1: bite progressive causes a lot harder than they will be
Speaker 1: used against the conservative convoyers. There has increasingly been attempts
Speaker 1: at counter protesting the Ottawa Convoy and the various Convoy
Speaker 1: inspired protests around the country. Many of which faced harsher
Speaker 1: police response than any of the convert protests have up
Speaker 1: until this point, but those community led counterprotesting efforts are vital.
Speaker 1: The ram Ranch resistance actions are still ongoing. On Sunday night,
Speaker 1: the u r L for the Gifts Send Go fundraiser
Speaker 1: was hacked by activists who redirected the page to a
Speaker 1: video of the frozen song let It Go, accompanying a
Speaker 1: manifesto condemning the fundraiser and the Convoy. And that's great,
Speaker 1: and that is wonderful counter protesting. That is very in
Speaker 1: terms of effective ways to shut down fundraising efforts for
Speaker 1: basically pseudo fascist you know, anti anti democratic conspiracy lad movement.
Speaker 1: That's great, right, And this was hours after it was
Speaker 1: officially confirmed to via data leaks that around fifty percent
Speaker 1: of gibsend Go donations for the Convoy came from the
Speaker 1: United States, around came from Canada, and then two percent
Speaker 1: came from the UK. Although I think it's worth mentioning
Speaker 1: that for the initial ten million dollar go fund me,
Speaker 1: we only have confirmation that around thirty three thou dollars
Speaker 1: came from the United States. To understand how the Convoy
Speaker 1: flash blockade is working. It's useful to get away from
Speaker 1: painting all the participants themselves as extremists, because the fact
Speaker 1: that regular Canadian right wingers are what's making this possible
Speaker 1: has a whole bunch of other implications that people aren't
Speaker 1: really talking about. I'm seeing a lot of Canadians who
Speaker 1: are just really upset about how the convoys affecting cities
Speaker 1: and the country as a whole, which, you know, reasonable,
Speaker 1: I am, it is a thing to be upset about.
Speaker 1: But then just jumping to insist that it must be inorganic,
Speaker 1: I think is kind of faulty. Focusing instead on theories
Speaker 1: around foreign influences and ashtarf organizing elements of which have
Speaker 1: been present, sure, but also the impact in which is
Speaker 1: I think kind of been overblown. But even if those
Speaker 1: things are completely true and major factors, that still overlooks
Speaker 1: the fact that there are thousands of real Canadians from
Speaker 1: around the country camped up in Ottawa, and the majority
Speaker 1: of those Canadians sitting in the streets are not Nazis
Speaker 1: right or really even extremists, and most of those people
Speaker 1: are not receiving personal funding from dark money billionaires. They
Speaker 1: consider themselves regular, working class, freedom loving Canadians. It's much
Speaker 1: harder to reconcile a homegrown movement full of participants that
Speaker 1: have slid further to the right over the past two
Speaker 1: years due to rampant online misinformation coupled with ineffectual government
Speaker 1: support during the pandemic. It's easy to point to so
Speaker 1: called organizers who are definitely more fashion, large scale sketchy donations,
Speaker 1: and far right media figures who are trying to jump
Speaker 1: support for the convoy. But those things alone don't get
Speaker 1: many of thousands and thousands of people and their kids
Speaker 1: to drive across country for a cause that they earnestly
Speaker 1: believe in the years of political alienation and disenfrantisement that
Speaker 1: caused that to happen is a lot harder to solve
Speaker 1: than just cracking down on organizers and donations. Watching homegrown
Speaker 1: reactionary street politics that one day can grow into an
Speaker 1: actual far right, populist and fascist movement is a lot
Speaker 1: more frightening than the idea of overseas astroturft organizing. Not
Speaker 1: that those things are mutually exclusive always, but I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to make a good point here. Despite cries to
Speaker 1: make this, Canada's January six in a way, the convoys
Speaker 1: more effective than January six in terms of the evolution
Speaker 1: of valid political action. It's pushed the boundary on what
Speaker 1: is deemed as acceptable and even possible for large scale
Speaker 1: occupations and supply line blockades. In the major North American
Speaker 1: urban setting, people who would never consider themselves militant are
Speaker 1: now involved in multiple border crossing blockades. That's cost hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of dollars, and to get to this point,
Speaker 1: so many things need to happen. COVID isolation offered fertile
Speaker 1: ground for people's politics to unknowing these slide more to
Speaker 1: the extreme, the many in person connections that help prevent
Speaker 1: people from falling prey to conspiratorial thinking ceased to exist.
Speaker 1: General frustration at Trudeau and the perceived notion of liberalism
Speaker 1: and elitism has been steadily growing since, and all that
Speaker 1: mounted up frustration is now being released, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the invisible Overton window of acceptable political action has shifted
Speaker 1: right in regular conservatives. My means, and a movement like
Speaker 1: this is hard to dissolve. Police actions have the chance
Speaker 1: of escalating the situation and elongating people's willingness to protest,
Speaker 1: and even if more mandates get removed. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: the protests will stop either. Removing the Alberta mandates didn't
Speaker 1: stop the Coots border blockade, for instance, because you know,
Speaker 1: even if all the mandates in Canada get rescinded, which
Speaker 1: whish they won't and whish they shouldn't, but even if
Speaker 1: they did, that would still leave the US's Vaccine Board
Speaker 1: requirements which are preventing on vaccinated truckers from entering the
Speaker 1: States anyway. Similar tactics and protests inspired by the Canadian
Speaker 1: convoy have broken out overseas in recent weeks. The convoy
Speaker 1: and blocking inspired protests in New Zealand have led to
Speaker 1: frequent clashes with police outside New Zealand's Parliament building. For
Speaker 1: the past two weeks, French protesters formed their own Freedom
Speaker 1: Convoy against the government's vaccine mandates. The convoy converged on
Speaker 1: the Shawn's Aliz in Paris on February second, where protesters
Speaker 1: were met by seven thousand police members and tear gas.
Speaker 1: Unlike Canada, where the government failed to stop a blockade
Speaker 1: at the U S border, French authorities got way ahead
Speaker 1: of this protest by stopping at least five hundred vehicles
Speaker 1: before they even got to Paris. Only a few dissent
Speaker 1: cars made it to the Schanz al Liz and the
Speaker 1: police ticketed three hundred protesters who were present at the demonstration.
Speaker 1: Protests against government coronavirus restrictions have cut on in Europe
Speaker 1: and other parts of the world in recent days, but
Speaker 1: they remained more subdued than the Canadian demonstrations. A convoy
Speaker 1: of about five hundred vehicles, mostly from France, who are
Speaker 1: borrowed from entering Brussels of just a few days ago,
Speaker 1: leaving several hundred protesters to gather on foot at a
Speaker 1: city square instead. Another convoy of several hundred vehicles blocked
Speaker 1: access to the seat of the Netherlands government in the
Speaker 1: Hague on February twelve, And of course many political figures
Speaker 1: in the US are really trying to get a convoy
Speaker 1: esque protest kicked off here. In the United States, Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson and Fox News in general has covered the convoy NonStop,
Speaker 1: giving it tons and tons of support. Tucker has said
Speaker 1: that the Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful
Speaker 1: human rights protestant in a generation. Senator Rand Paul So
Speaker 1: that he hopes the truckers come to America and specifically
Speaker 1: two clog up cities. At least nine members of Congress,
Speaker 1: all Republicans, have all publicized their support for the convoy
Speaker 1: participants on Twitter. Self appointed organizers for a US based
Speaker 1: convoy have found quick support from conservative outlets. US convoy
Speaker 1: organizer Brian Brace has been making the rounds on Fox
Speaker 1: News sitting Down with Carlson, as well as the networks
Speaker 1: Fox and Friends Morning Show. Brace says that he hoped
Speaker 1: to organize a cross country convoy from California to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C starting around March fourth. Routes to converge on
Speaker 1: d C from across the country are being planned, while
Speaker 1: the group's telegram channel was actively soliciting volunteers and donations
Speaker 1: of items like tents, generators, and p A systems. I
Speaker 1: kind of hope people on the left can look at
Speaker 1: the tactics being used in Canada, some that have worked
Speaker 1: and some that have faltered. But in terms of like
Speaker 1: anti capitalist action, you can't do much better than causing
Speaker 1: hundreds and millions of dollars and losses to international trade
Speaker 1: between two of the biggest countries in the world. Right now,
Speaker 1: no protest movement can be replicated, But any movement can
Speaker 1: be analyzed and that can inform how folks approach future
Speaker 1: movements as they spontaneously arise, and I, at the very
Speaker 1: least help you have a better idea now of how
Speaker 1: only a few thousand people can totally choke out a
Speaker 1: major city, because we've talked about this possibility before. You know,
Speaker 1: a group of people overwhelming local law enforcement and taking
Speaker 1: over and shutting down a sizeable portion of a popular
Speaker 1: metropolitan area, not to mention simultaneously blocking off supply lines,
Speaker 1: trade routes, and international border crossings. The evolution of these
Speaker 1: medium scale anti government resistance tactics is something we all
Speaker 1: should be paying attention to as the political tensions continue
Speaker 1: to rise right outside our doorstep, because it's always too
Speaker 1: late when you realize the calls coming from inside the house.
Speaker 1: What's incapable of being racist? People joking about Canadians can't
Speaker 1: do it to Canada. Can't do it to Canada? Or
Speaker 1: the Princisi could happen here the French. We can be
Speaker 1: racist against the French. Yeah, speaking of speaking that makes
Speaker 1: Quebec angrier. But like speaking of racism, Chris, what's our
Speaker 1: topic today? Yeah, today's episode is about why I hate
Speaker 1: the cops. Hell. Yeah, specifically it is about is about
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department and the many, many, many, many many
Speaker 1: crimes they have committed. Uh, we're gonna talk about well, okay.
Speaker 1: To lead us in to explain what we're doing here today,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a quote from from the late
Speaker 1: anthropologist David Grabery from this book The Democracy Project. For
Speaker 1: my own part. I find what I call the rape
Speaker 1: torture and Murder test very useful. It's quite simple when
Speaker 1: presented with the political entity of some kind or another,
Speaker 1: whether a government, a social movement, a guerilla army, or
Speaker 1: really any other organized group, and trying to decide whether
Speaker 1: they deserve condemnation or support. First ask do they commit
Speaker 1: or do they order others to commit acts of rape,
Speaker 1: torture or murder. It seems a self evident question. But again,
Speaker 1: it's surprising how rarely, or better, how selectively it is applied.
Speaker 1: Or perhaps it might seem surprising until one starts applying
Speaker 1: it and discovers conventional wisdom. When many will political issues
Speaker 1: instantly turned upside down. In two thousand six, for example,
Speaker 1: most people in the United States read about the Mexican
Speaker 1: government sending federal troops to quell a popular revolt initiated
Speaker 1: by a teachers union against notoriously corrupt governor in the
Speaker 1: southern state of Wahaka. In the US media, this was
Speaker 1: universally presented as a good thing, a restoration of order.
Speaker 1: The rebels, after all, were violent, having thrown rocks and
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktails, even if they only threw them at heavily
Speaker 1: armed police, causing no serious injuries. No one, to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: has ever suggested that the rebels raped, tortured, or murdered anyone. Neither,
Speaker 1: as anyone who knows anything about the events in questions
Speaker 1: seriously contested the fact that forces loyal to the Mexican
Speaker 1: government had raped, tortured, and murdered quite a number of
Speaker 1: people in suppressing the rebellion. Yet somehow such acts, unlike
Speaker 1: the rebels stone throwing, cannot be described as violent at all,
Speaker 1: let alone as rape, torture, or murder, but only appear,
Speaker 1: if at all, as accusations of human rights violations, or
Speaker 1: in some similarly bloodless legalistic language. Yeah, and that that's
Speaker 1: the framework that I want to take the Chicago Police
Speaker 1: Department so people can understand why and how and just
Speaker 1: just sort of get people can get a taste of
Speaker 1: of the sheer horror that anti police organizers and just
Speaker 1: like regular people in Chicago are fighting every day because
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department fails the rape torture murder test again
Speaker 1: and again and again and again. And so we are
Speaker 1: going to tell four stories of torture, rape, and murder
Speaker 1: by the Chicago Police Department. That seems fun. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be great. Happy pants on, kids, go for a cruise,
Speaker 1: you know, take the top down. Um, it's it's time
Speaker 1: for a good old fest. So our our first story
Speaker 1: of torture, rape and murder by the CPD is the
Speaker 1: story of Chicago's infamous torture ring, led by a man
Speaker 1: named John Burch. Yeah. Now, John Bird has been a
Speaker 1: military police sergeant working at a pow camp in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: So so immediately you have a guy who's not only
Speaker 1: a troop cop, but he's he's he's a troop cop
Speaker 1: while he was a troop and then he becomes a
Speaker 1: cop and you know, nothing, nothing good can possibly come
Speaker 1: from that. And the other thing and nothing good can
Speaker 1: possibly come from is the fact that while Burge was
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, the US was doing some just really six
Speaker 1: ships of Viennamese prisoners, including rape, getting rape, rape with
Speaker 1: hard objects, and rape followed by murder. Uh. The electric
Speaker 1: shock called the Bell telephone hour rendered by attaching wires
Speaker 1: to the genitals and keep your keep that one in mind.
Speaker 1: We have not seen the last of that. Uh. And
Speaker 1: rape using eels and snakes, as we have talked about
Speaker 1: on bastards of it before. Um. They're also like they're
Speaker 1: also a huge water boarding fans. So this this is,
Speaker 1: this is the environment that Burge is sort of you know,
Speaker 1: being trained as a copy in right, He's he's one
Speaker 1: of those these these PRW camps and he gets the
Speaker 1: purple heart for his service. Now when when he comes
Speaker 1: back to the US and he becomes a cop, and
Speaker 1: within about three years Burge and his white cop buddy
Speaker 1: start just absolutely beating the crap out of black suspects. UM.
Speaker 1: One of these prisoners, a man named Anthony Holmes, was
Speaker 1: repeatedly tortured with electric shocks and almost suffocated a death
Speaker 1: of a bag put over his head. Holmes was tortured
Speaker 1: so badly he literally thought he was going to die,
Speaker 1: so he confessed to a crime he didn't commit. And
Speaker 1: spent thirty years in prison. Yeah. I actually interviewed one
Speaker 1: of the people tortured by Burge who was had his
Speaker 1: testicles electrocuted. Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna get into that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's horrible. It's it's pretty the worst things
Speaker 1: I've ever read. Uh. Yeah, And Holmes, this case is
Speaker 1: particularly grim because so he tells his lawyers that he's
Speaker 1: been tortured, and his lawyers don't believe him, and so
Speaker 1: you know, he yeah, he he wented to spending thirty
Speaker 1: years in prison that he didn't do Um those shocks.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so okay, So that they have this box, right,
Speaker 1: it's his box as a handcret generator. Burge calls at
Speaker 1: the end word box. Uh. And he just attaches people's
Speaker 1: like it's just attaches it to people. I wonder what,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, it's he's all of these people are
Speaker 1: so indescribably racist. It's like, yeah, he he just like
Speaker 1: he keeps this box like on his desk at at
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police Department. Like it's just on his desk
Speaker 1: at work. Um. Now. The other thing is notable about
Speaker 1: this is that he he and the people around him
Speaker 1: would call just electrocuting people by touching alligator lamps of
Speaker 1: them and putting nine thousand two under vaults into them.
Speaker 1: They called it the Vietnamese treatment because I guess what
Speaker 1: he learned this in Vietnam. Um. Now Burge is so
Speaker 1: called Midnight Crew, had had an incredibly high rate of
Speaker 1: solving crimes, and he has an incredibly high rate of
Speaker 1: quote unquote solving crimes because he's just torturing random black
Speaker 1: people until they confess um. And you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not like people don't know he's doing this. There's
Speaker 1: there's a detective in the seventies who like walks in
Speaker 1: on Burde torturing a guy, and he goes through superiors
Speaker 1: and it's like Burgess, Burgess torturing these people, and that
Speaker 1: detective gets reprimanded and were reprimanded for like reporting the
Speaker 1: torture and transferred to another area. So Burde gets promoted
Speaker 1: to sergeant in nineteen seventy seven and then again to
Speaker 1: lieutenant in nineteen eighty, and he gets he gets put
Speaker 1: in charge of the newly formed violent Crimes unit, and
Speaker 1: from from from this position, his rate of terror intensifies,
Speaker 1: and so so in nineteen eight two, someone shoots two
Speaker 1: white cops. And you know, this is one of one
Speaker 1: of the sort of classic police things. Anytime a cop
Speaker 1: dies the the see the police department just goes fucking ballistic.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And and in this case with with with
Speaker 1: Burge in charge, he basically turns the entire South Side
Speaker 1: into what can only be described as a fascist police state. Um,
Speaker 1: here's this is. This is from the Chicago police torture scandal,
Speaker 1: illegal and political history. In in Cuney's Law Review, police
Speaker 1: kicked down doors and terrorized scores of African Americans. And
Speaker 1: what Jesse Jackson of Operation Push Push and Raynald Robinson
Speaker 1: if the Afro American policely condemned as quote martial law
Speaker 1: that smacked of Nazi Germany. Thirteen witnesses were smothered with
Speaker 1: bags and threatened with bolt cutters and Burgeoness detectives took
Speaker 1: several young men who they wrongly suspected to be the
Speaker 1: killers to police headqure horders and tortured them. And I
Speaker 1: mean they're just like you know that they're buzzing down
Speaker 1: people's doors or dragging people away out in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. They do this for about five days before,
Speaker 1: they arrest two brothers and who again had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this. They just decided that these two were
Speaker 1: the guys and tortured just the absolute shit out of him. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the brothers, Andrew Wilson. But before birds even
Speaker 1: gets there, because this is the everything about birds. It's
Speaker 1: not just birds, right, like everyone he's like around him,
Speaker 1: he is also a torturer. It's just birds sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, but birds the guy like directing a lot
Speaker 1: of it. So even before he gets there, yea, like
Speaker 1: Wilson gets like he's burden with a cigarette lighter. He
Speaker 1: gets strangled with the bag over his head again, and
Speaker 1: they just like beat him a bunch of times. And
Speaker 1: then it gets even worse. Um Burgs like, you know,
Speaker 1: but birds, that's the thing where where he likes he
Speaker 1: straps him to the to the electric box, right, but
Speaker 1: he also straps him against the radiator. And you know
Speaker 1: these are like old Chicago steam radiators, right, if you touch,
Speaker 1: if you like touch them even briefly, you get burned.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, he straps into a radiator and every
Speaker 1: time he like gets shocked, he jerks back into the radiator.
Speaker 1: It gets burned. Yeah, I have a friend who get
Speaker 1: a second degree burned dripped from like briefly touching one
Speaker 1: of those things. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's basically it's
Speaker 1: basically tying someone to an oven that's turns. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it is breasttaking in humanity on a scale
Speaker 1: that is yeah, um pop esque. Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's real. It's real. Cops shit. Um, it's for sure,
Speaker 1: real cop shit. Yeah. So here here, here's an interview,
Speaker 1: uh with Wilson. There's an extractive one from from the
Speaker 1: book Writings from the World of Policing. Wilson said that
Speaker 1: Bird cranked the generator, sending nine thousand, two hundred volts
Speaker 1: of electricity into his body. He put it on my fingers,
Speaker 1: Wilson explained, one of the clamps on one finger and
Speaker 1: one of the other finger, and then he kept cranking
Speaker 1: it and cranking it. And I was hollering and screaming.
Speaker 1: I was calling for help. My teeth was grinding, flickering
Speaker 1: in my head. Pain. It hurts, Wilson continued, But it
Speaker 1: stays in your head. Okay, it stays in your head,
Speaker 1: and it grinds your teeth. It grinds constantly, grinds constantly.
Speaker 1: The pain just stays in your head and your teeth
Speaker 1: cut constantly. Grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and
Speaker 1: grinds and grinds. Now Wilson, They do this to Wilson
Speaker 1: for like a day, and he doesn't confess. He he
Speaker 1: refuses to confess because he didn't do it, and so
Speaker 1: he goes to like they bring him in front of
Speaker 1: a family prosecutor and Wilson tells the prosecutor that he's
Speaker 1: being tortured, and you know, it's incredibly obvious he's being tortured,
Speaker 1: like there's just there's marxal Lover's body, like his his
Speaker 1: face is destroyed. And the prosecutor sends him back to Bird,
Speaker 1: who tortures him more. And but by the time the
Speaker 1: Burge is done with him, Wilson is so visibly fucked
Speaker 1: up that the police lock up keeper like takes a
Speaker 1: look at it, like takes one look at him and goes,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be a part of this and
Speaker 1: refuses to put him in lock up cook Cook County Jails,
Speaker 1: Like Director of Medical Services UM sends a letter going
Speaker 1: like this man was tortured to the police. We found
Speaker 1: a human being. Yeah, yeah, well you know, and it's
Speaker 1: like every one once every like, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: like a hundred pages of reading about this, you find
Speaker 1: one person who is a normal human being. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 1: state's attorney, instead of prosecuting Burge for again attaching attaching
Speaker 1: a man's balls to a hand create generator and then
Speaker 1: electrocuting him. Uh, the state prosecutor and the police superintendent
Speaker 1: both publicly congratulate Birds for his work. Yeah, and Andrew Wilson,
Speaker 1: mean while died in prison in two thousand seven, because
Speaker 1: this world is just the worst. Yeah. Now, you might
Speaker 1: be asking yourself, how does he get away with this?
Speaker 1: And the answer is that the CPD is complicit in
Speaker 1: burges torture at literally every level. Every attempt to stop
Speaker 1: Burge is derailed directly by the departments. And not only
Speaker 1: is he not stopped, he's repeatedly praised and promoted for
Speaker 1: his actions. And yeah, I mean that's how it goes. Yep,
Speaker 1: It's it's great, it's it's it's an institutionalized system of torture,
Speaker 1: rape and murder. That yeah, it's like that we have
Speaker 1: us a little abbo grade right at home, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't worry. Well, well, I guess we won't actually
Speaker 1: get to with grades specifically, but I can, I can do,
Speaker 1: I can I can do an upgrade tie in at
Speaker 1: the end of this part. So the CPD has something
Speaker 1: they call the Code of Silence, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: this more later, but basically, the core of the code
Speaker 1: of Silence is that just no matter what crimes, what atrocities,
Speaker 1: which is in him in Pig Horrors, you see cops
Speaker 1: committing you, stay silent. Now this code you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a code that everyone sort of knows right
Speaker 1: in the police, but it's also directly enforced um and
Speaker 1: and it's enforced by the stuff Burge would you do,
Speaker 1: like just to other cops, Like he would do things
Speaker 1: like if there was a cop who was like unhappy
Speaker 1: with him, he would like walk up behind them when
Speaker 1: they're opening a file cabinet and point a gun at
Speaker 1: their head and then go like bang and then do
Speaker 1: this like a thing that I can really only describe
Speaker 1: as a supervillain monologue about how like the projects are
Speaker 1: a dangerous place, maybe you're gonna turn up dead. It's
Speaker 1: he also he has these street files that he keeps
Speaker 1: on like other cops families so that if another cop
Speaker 1: like goes after him, he can have their family arrested
Speaker 1: and then plant evidence on them. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's like, you know, like in a certain like
Speaker 1: he's doing this to other cops, and it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: like you know what, like what what possible? Like system
Speaker 1: of of of accountability quote on court or police reform
Speaker 1: is like ever going to do anything to a guy
Speaker 1: who will just do this two cops like and you know,
Speaker 1: with the CPD actively backing him, there's there's nothing that
Speaker 1: can stop Burge. And I should mention here that there's
Speaker 1: persistent rumors that Burge as a klansmen um I I
Speaker 1: couldn't find like firm confirmation of it. He's he's certainly
Speaker 1: racist enough, but but I think, yeah, but like why
Speaker 1: would he why would he spend like That's that feels
Speaker 1: like almost he would be like why would I waste
Speaker 1: my time doing that like talking about being racist when
Speaker 1: I can go out and torture people because I'm a
Speaker 1: racist every day? Like the clan already got it going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it's sometimes like, yeah, the question is immaterial.
Speaker 1: He is a member of the Chicago Police Department and
Speaker 1: organization is systematic racial terror, the likes of which the
Speaker 1: modern clan can only dream of. Yeah that's whatever. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like who cares he's he's he's jumped burge. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if he were spending time at clan matings at least
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be torturing people during the time. Yeah, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: love love your police. When if he was a klansman
Speaker 1: that might have been slightly better. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: big thing with like this type of like liberal response
Speaker 1: to the type of extremism. It's like they only view
Speaker 1: it as a problem if you're like explicitly part of this,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's like very obvious to everyone white
Speaker 1: nationalist group. Right, they can watch a cop do all
Speaker 1: these horrible things. It's fine because that's just a cop.
Speaker 1: But if he's a clan member, then that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Like they can excuse all this horrible torture and not
Speaker 1: really be concerned about it. But if but if he
Speaker 1: had a robots closet, then it's suddenly this big issue.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, like the issue is that he was
Speaker 1: doing all this torture anyway, and he doesn't like this.
Speaker 1: You don't need to focus on like just the like
Speaker 1: just that identity, like that weird identity aspect of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the clan is old enough, and where's a uniform
Speaker 1: that is distinct enough that everybody recognizes is it as racist?
Speaker 1: And though the Chicago Police Department is actually much more
Speaker 1: of a threat in terms of racism than the clan today,
Speaker 1: uh and was at that point in time. But you know,
Speaker 1: they're the cops. And if you're a suburban white liberal,
Speaker 1: they're there too, you know, help help keep your lawn
Speaker 1: safe or whatever. Um, So you don't you don't see
Speaker 1: them as the same inherently racial organization exactly, even though
Speaker 1: they are. Yeah, and even though I mean they're dragging
Speaker 1: people out of their homes and like just electrocuting them,
Speaker 1: like this is you know, this is this something also
Speaker 1: that I was very annoyed about when I was reading
Speaker 1: this was like you read a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: and then and you'll you'll get descriptions of it that
Speaker 1: are like, ah, this is something that like only happens
Speaker 1: in the pressure regimes like Kazakhstan, and it's like, have
Speaker 1: you read anything about picture of the US like this
Speaker 1: is like yeah, like we we have the officers over
Speaker 1: to other countries that often teach their police how to
Speaker 1: do ship like this that happens. But when you were
Speaker 1: describing a whole bunch of stuff in the past, like
Speaker 1: you know, twenty minutes, I was thinking in my head
Speaker 1: and like, oh, yeah, this is just like stormtrooper ship.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, it isn't like this just is
Speaker 1: cops shit, and like, like the thing like the fact
Speaker 1: that like elevating it in my brain to it being
Speaker 1: like something other than cops is incorrect. You know, like
Speaker 1: this just is police stuff. It's not it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: stormtrooper ship. It's just is police ship. And the fact
Speaker 1: that those things are so synonymous that should be the
Speaker 1: part that's actually like upsetting is that yeah, it's actually
Speaker 1: there is really no difference and you shouldn't necessarily resort
Speaker 1: to calling it stormtrooper stuff because it is just what
Speaker 1: the police do all the time. There's this whole model
Speaker 1: you see people talking about it where they talk about
Speaker 1: like like the police are using unnecessary force and like
Speaker 1: they're there there there's like a certain threshold where if
Speaker 1: you go past it, like you know, sort of like
Speaker 1: like even you know, like I'm Gonna'm gonna read like
Speaker 1: that Birch has a lot of like when he winds
Speaker 1: up in court, like the judges look at this and
Speaker 1: the are like, oh my god, this is unacceptable. How
Speaker 1: could this have happened? And you know, you get some
Speaker 1: good descriptions of it. I'm gonna this is a district
Speaker 1: judge court describing what Burge is doing. In the early eighties,
Speaker 1: there existed, in two in the City of Chicago, a
Speaker 1: de facto policy practice and or customer of Chicago police
Speaker 1: officers exacting unconstitutional revenge and punishment against persons who they
Speaker 1: alleged had killed or injured a fellow officer. This revenge
Speaker 1: and punishment included beating, kicking, torturing, shooting, and or executing
Speaker 1: such a person for the purpose of inflicting pain, to
Speaker 1: injury and punishment on that person, and also for the
Speaker 1: purpose of forcing that person to make it. Coupled tory
Speaker 1: statements exculpatory yeahculptor yeah, inculpatory yeah yeah yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: and you you get stuff like there's there's there's an
Speaker 1: FBI report than from the Chagol Tepem. I'm going to
Speaker 1: read because it's he left one bullet in the center
Speaker 1: and the cylinder and spun it. A report quoted the
Speaker 1: inmate is saying about Burge in the nineteen incident. He
Speaker 1: then said, you talk, will blow your black EXPELTI presumably
Speaker 1: the end word brains out. Bergs then got up from
Speaker 1: his desk, walked over to the inmate, put the muzzle
Speaker 1: of the revolver against the center of the inmate's forehead
Speaker 1: and pulled the trigger. He spun the cylinder and placed
Speaker 1: it back against his forehead and pulled the trigger again. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's just playing Russian Roulette with people. Like he's playing it.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think. Yeah, yeah, well he's pulling
Speaker 1: up one in the sixth chance of murdering them. They
Speaker 1: are in terror. Uh. There's also a lot of like
Speaker 1: he does like you sexually abuses people. He like after testicles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he like he electrocuted Like well, I mean he's
Speaker 1: also like is like like basically like raping people. Um,
Speaker 1: he like electrocut is a thirteen year old child. And
Speaker 1: you know this is like it's it's it's just so
Speaker 1: bleak that like, I mean, there's so there's a very
Speaker 1: famous art club about this by Chicago Journalist's called the
Speaker 1: House of Screams. But you know, like like Burge isn't
Speaker 1: the only guy doing this, Like one of his loyalists
Speaker 1: is lieutenant, Like is a guy named Byron. He's like
Speaker 1: in charge of the midnight shift at that the area
Speaker 1: true violent crimes. And they become known internally as burgess
Speaker 1: ask kickers at the A team because this is just
Speaker 1: who these people are culturally, and yeah, sure sure, but yeah, um,
Speaker 1: these guys start uh like putting like guns and prisoners mouths.
Speaker 1: But they have one thing where they they stick a
Speaker 1: shotgun in a guy's mouth and they pull the trigger
Speaker 1: and it's not loaded. But there's like they keep doing
Speaker 1: this thing. Yeah, it's it's that is by the way,
Speaker 1: illegal in international law, like internationally, that is a war
Speaker 1: crime if you're military to specifically, fake executions are a
Speaker 1: type of torture and a a war crime under international
Speaker 1: law based on treaties the United States is signed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Byron also so if he does that a lot,
Speaker 1: and then that same guy, the same guy the shotgun
Speaker 1: thing too, he apparently didn't have the box, so he
Speaker 1: stripped the dude and shocked his balls with a cattle
Speaker 1: prod And this is the guy who Lorry Lightfoot sent
Speaker 1: her number two lawyer to defend in court by arguing
Speaker 1: the torture it never happens. Yeah, that's that's that's that's ability. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's the mayor of my city now life Lightfoot. Light
Speaker 1: Foot is on the record as saying that birds tortured
Speaker 1: over a hundred people. But once it came to you know,
Speaker 1: actually putting up or shutting up, she just goes to
Speaker 1: back for the cops. And if this happens in Chicago,
Speaker 1: just so many times with people who used to be
Speaker 1: like who you know who who in the moment you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: bird did torture. We need to reform the police. And
Speaker 1: it's you know, the when they get into power, they
Speaker 1: do this stuff. I mean there there's there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of like incredibly weird stuff that happens here. Like so
Speaker 1: that the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals at one point
Speaker 1: saul A like they saw a case over whether one
Speaker 1: and dollar settlement with a torture victim was fair and
Speaker 1: christ Yeah, in court it's like you read the transcas
Speaker 1: and it's like it's it's the most brutal demolishing of
Speaker 1: like a state's argument I've ever seen, Like they're they're,
Speaker 1: they're just like in court asking them like okay, like
Speaker 1: we're we're, we're This person's judge is supposed to have
Speaker 1: like known in court that he was also torturing other people,
Speaker 1: and like it's you know, the courts just like you know,
Speaker 1: they're turning them apart. And then when it comes time
Speaker 1: to decide the case, uh, the court tosses the case
Speaker 1: out inside with the state. Wow. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on there. It's awful. Yep, this topic. I
Speaker 1: mean that that is the thing about the way the
Speaker 1: whole system works, which is that, you know, the police
Speaker 1: do horrific things. In Chicago, they torture, in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: they have Nazi gangs. You know, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different horrible ship the police do. And then at some
Speaker 1: point point the FBI and the Justice Department come in
Speaker 1: and they provide incredibly They send in very talented investigators
Speaker 1: who produced incredibly detailed lists of all of the things
Speaker 1: that are being done. And then the court says, well,
Speaker 1: but nobody's gonna get punished, or maybe this one guy
Speaker 1: will get punished and then we'll go on back to
Speaker 1: doing things and that the system is supposed to work,
Speaker 1: although we're we're going to read a story about the
Speaker 1: FBI not doing that in the next episode. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they don't know. We don't always get a report. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I have become increased, Like it's very frustrating
Speaker 1: because having these FBI reports on police abuses um is
Speaker 1: useful again for talking to liberals because they tend to
Speaker 1: trust the FBI. But it's also like, boy, I've read
Speaker 1: a lot of detailed FBI reports about how bad police
Speaker 1: departments are, and it seems like nothing ever gets done.
Speaker 1: Like it seems like they just write a thing saying yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad, and then everything continues forever and it's you know,
Speaker 1: this this case, Like so the reason we even know
Speaker 1: any of this is through what I like, what I
Speaker 1: will say, like the a genuinely heroic, decades long campaign
Speaker 1: run by the People's Law Office on behalf of birde
Speaker 1: victims and these people, like they say people's lives like
Speaker 1: that there are people who birdge tortured, who ended up
Speaker 1: on death row for it, and you know, like this
Speaker 1: stuff is so bad that when it comes out, the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court does a ruling on it, and it like
Speaker 1: establishes new precedents for like how people can prove they've
Speaker 1: been tortured. Like you know, it's so bad that like
Speaker 1: Illinois stops running the death pet like we had the
Speaker 1: death penalty and like we still tend to get ethic
Speaker 1: have it, but like we just stopped doing it, Like
Speaker 1: we stopped we stopped executing people because like a Republican governor,
Speaker 1: like on air, gave a giant thing about how this
Speaker 1: system was broken and like this is this is John Ryan, right,
Speaker 1: like this is a man who like he he is
Speaker 1: like this is a man who was corrupted by the
Speaker 1: standards of of of an Illinois politician. And even he
Speaker 1: like on the air, is like yeah, this is like
Speaker 1: you know that this is this is broken. He he
Speaker 1: pardons some Burge victims and in nine three, faced with
Speaker 1: just irrefutable evidence of torture and ruling multiple higher ports
Speaker 1: higher courts, the Police Board finally released a report, although
Speaker 1: the report also doesn't call it torture and is a
Speaker 1: disaster that they finally have Burge fired and some of
Speaker 1: his colleagues who were also torturing people get suspended for
Speaker 1: fifteen months, but Burge isn't prosecuted for, you know, the
Speaker 1: crimes that we have multiple reports of him doing until
Speaker 1: two after the victims literally go to the United Nations
Speaker 1: with a campaign and go in front of the United
Speaker 1: Nations and talk about how they are being systemically tortured
Speaker 1: by the Chicago Police Department. But of course by two ten,
Speaker 1: the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out,
Speaker 1: so uh, he winds up going to jail for three
Speaker 1: stations on torture. Yeah, that's definitely one of the ones
Speaker 1: we should have a cap Yeah, definitely. It's great. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's a great system. Um. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: read something from the Chocolate Tribune that was a description
Speaker 1: of of this. Uh quote. While the jury was out, Burge,
Speaker 1: still unrepentant, allegedly asked the courtroom reserve or whether you
Speaker 1: thought the jury would quote believe a bunch of n words. Wow, dye,
Speaker 1: it's good. Burge Bridge tortured at least a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty five people. That's almost certainly an under account. Undred
Speaker 1: twenty five is the number of people who we have
Speaker 1: who have come forward. A lot of those people probably
Speaker 1: have like people he tortured have probably died by now. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, you'll never will never get an accurate
Speaker 1: account of all the people who were Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: Burge died a freeman and has never served a day
Speaker 1: for his actual crimes. Now, Burge and his crew are
Speaker 1: the most famous of the eighties and seventies and eighties torturers,
Speaker 1: but they're by no means the only one. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about one more in this torture section. Uh
Speaker 1: if you did you know Richard Zuli? Mm hmm okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, Zuli's Zulie is the one that people tend
Speaker 1: not to know. M Zuli was also a Vietnam War vet.
Speaker 1: He becomes a detective in nine. Um, what's interesting about him?
Speaker 1: Zuli is never part of Burgess Candre Right Burgess Cadres
Speaker 1: working out Verrea too. They're on the south Side. They're
Speaker 1: in an overwhelmingly black part of the south Side. Zuli
Speaker 1: works in areas three and six on the north side.
Speaker 1: You know what what what what I want need to
Speaker 1: mention off the bat is that Zuli is no less
Speaker 1: racist than Burge is. He wants to rested a black
Speaker 1: dude for just like having a car and wearing a
Speaker 1: watch and like like those are both felonies in the
Speaker 1: city of Chicago. Right, well, if you famously never know
Speaker 1: what time it is because you're a law abiding citizen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well law abidings isn't. And also don't be black while
Speaker 1: doing this because yeah, he throws him in a cell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it gets it gets you. Zuli screaming no end
Speaker 1: word is supposed to live like this? Oh boy, oh boy,
Speaker 1: it's you know we we people like talk about cops
Speaker 1: doing stuff for that reason, but it's it's, you know,
Speaker 1: they're so racist. Just get a direct quote. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I can't emphasize it, Like they're just they're so racist.
Speaker 1: It's like ingrained into the d like the cop d NA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just saying the loud part loud. Yeah, like they're
Speaker 1: just scribby like that. We're going to do with One
Speaker 1: of the things in the next episode is the cops
Speaker 1: will just drive around like blasting the end. We're out
Speaker 1: of their out of their like cops stereos because Christ. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: Zuli in a lot of ways is a more modern
Speaker 1: torture than birdges. You know, bird is very big on
Speaker 1: your like overt physical violence, right, you're beating. Your execution
Speaker 1: is suffocation. The problem with these techniques from a torture
Speaker 1: of perspectives that they leave incredibly obvious marks. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is how birde goes down, right, It's it's too
Speaker 1: obvious what he's doing. There are people who can just
Speaker 1: like show up to a court and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: look at my neck, like here are all these burns.
Speaker 1: Zuli is much smarter about it. Um, you know she
Speaker 1: I mean, she does some beatings because cops are literally
Speaker 1: animals and are incapable of resisting the urge to beat
Speaker 1: the living share of anyone who falls into their grasp.
Speaker 1: But you know, mostly what he does is he does
Speaker 1: things like he'll just shackle so much to a wall
Speaker 1: for twenty four hours, and you know, and he'll be like, okay,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna shock you to this wall and until
Speaker 1: you sign this confession, I won't let you leave. And
Speaker 1: also you can't talk to anyone. You can't talk to
Speaker 1: you lawyer, you can't talk to h like, you can't
Speaker 1: talk to your family. And in the next episode we're
Speaker 1: say this, this this is how modern CPD torture works, except
Speaker 1: Zuli is doing this in the eighties. Now, zuli Is
Speaker 1: is a naval intelligence officer who's he's so he's still
Speaker 1: technically in the reserves when he joins the cops. And
Speaker 1: that meant when the CIA's torture is like Autnomo base
Speaker 1: stalled out, they needed a hero and that hero was
Speaker 1: zuli Um. Zuli Is was the most active. Like that.
Speaker 1: The thing is the most active in is the torture
Speaker 1: of Mohammad o old Sali, who is famously known as
Speaker 1: the most tortured manic autonomo Um. He's yeah, at least
Speaker 1: he gotten a guinness. Yeah, he yeah. They do sleep deprivation.
Speaker 1: I mean they some of it's like the standards sort
Speaker 1: of like get most stuff, which is like they don't
Speaker 1: let you sleep. They blast like sounds until you sell
Speaker 1: all the time him. They like beat you. There's molestations
Speaker 1: and but there's also stuff that's like like you know
Speaker 1: the tharnt of attack by dogs, but like the wh'll
Speaker 1: do things like like he'll like soap people like get
Speaker 1: soaked in ice water or like they stuffed him in
Speaker 1: this like straight jacket thing that didn't let him breathe
Speaker 1: properly and then stuffed full of ice and then Zuli also, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's bad. And he also like threatens to
Speaker 1: kidnap his mother and have recent to Guantanamo to be
Speaker 1: braved because these people are again jazz monsters. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Zuli is still alive today and romes the streets as
Speaker 1: a freeman, having received literally no consequences whatsoever for being
Speaker 1: a torturer. So good in the CPD that the CIA
Speaker 1: was like, we're gonna bring this guy into the torture.
Speaker 1: That's great, it's great. It's yep yep ah. And and
Speaker 1: that that that brings us to our first interlude, which
Speaker 1: is every year Chicago Police Office go to the grave
Speaker 1: of the Deputy Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton's,
Speaker 1: who they assassinated in a police rate after drug the
Speaker 1: n um. They go to his grave to shoot his
Speaker 1: fucking tombstone. They do this literally every year. The families
Speaker 1: they keep getting you tombstones, they shoot them every They
Speaker 1: shoot them every year. It just doesn't matter. Uh, the
Speaker 1: CPD just keeps shooting it. And there's a quote from
Speaker 1: the Great Trinity Daddy and marchis historian C. L. R. James,
Speaker 1: And I think about a lot that goes when history
Speaker 1: is written as it ought to be written. It is
Speaker 1: the moderation and long patience of the masses at which
Speaker 1: people will will wonder, not their ferocity. Yep. I really
Speaker 1: hope there's a moment of people doing things to cops
Speaker 1: that makes generations in the future marvel at their ferocity. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I can say that without it legally being incitement. Yes.
Speaker 1: I'll make one other fun note, which is that five
Speaker 1: Chicago police officers died last year from COVID. So that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's make it fifty officer Dad. Look, they're working on it.
Speaker 1: They don't they won't wear masks. Back to critical support
Speaker 1: to the Chicago police who don't wear masks. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're they're they're having their police Academy exams
Speaker 1: in person. Now, oh that's good, that's good. You know what,
Speaker 1: critical support spend more time indoors together without masks. Guys,
Speaker 1: avoid those vaxes. Yeah, yeah, great, will happen. Okay, So
Speaker 1: story two, which is a shorter one but no less bleak.
Speaker 1: I think. On October fourteen, officer Jason Van Dyke fired
Speaker 1: sixteen shots at Lakwon McDonald, who had turned around and
Speaker 1: was walking away from him. Here's from the people of
Speaker 1: the state of Illinois. Walking away aggressively, Chris, Yeah, oh boy,
Speaker 1: violently exiting. Yeah, I walking away while black, which I
Speaker 1: guess in the minds of like half of the United States.
Speaker 1: Is someone at defended legal right to shoot people in
Speaker 1: the back who are trying to a way. Yeah, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: great country, We're nailing it. From the Chicago Tribune and
Speaker 1: analysis of the video. This is this is from the
Speaker 1: court case, but in the child Tribune. An analysis of
Speaker 1: the video establishes that fourteen to fifteen seconds passed from
Speaker 1: the time the defendant Van Dyke fired his first shot
Speaker 1: to clear visual confirmation of the final shot. For approximately
Speaker 1: thirteen of those seconds, McDonald is lying on the ground,
Speaker 1: so he he fires literally every bullet in he's gone
Speaker 1: at a man who is, by those like second shot,
Speaker 1: lying dead, like well it's not quite dead yet, but
Speaker 1: like lying on the ground. It's just Yeah. From the
Speaker 1: cops perspective, like why not like that? That's like that,
Speaker 1: like like they have the ability to do that. If
Speaker 1: they get the chance, Oh I get to kill a
Speaker 1: black person and it doesn't matter, then why like you know,
Speaker 1: that's like if you if you you have to, you
Speaker 1: have to think through like what they're actually processing this as.
Speaker 1: And they don't see them as like a they don't
Speaker 1: see them as like an equivalent human life. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't like it's it's they don't it doesn't like you
Speaker 1: can't like apply the same rules of civility that like
Speaker 1: we should all kind of agree upon because cops have
Speaker 1: such a higher hierarchical viewpoint that with them at the top,
Speaker 1: that they can never actually exist within any kind of
Speaker 1: humane society. That's why again unspeakable ferocity of the masses
Speaker 1: fingers crossed one day. Yeah, yeah, well you know, and
Speaker 1: I think that the thing, you know, Okay, so look,
Speaker 1: if this is the price of a liberal democracy, right,
Speaker 1: if if you're going to if you're going to live
Speaker 1: in a society that has like you know that that
Speaker 1: where laws are enforced by the police, the police are
Speaker 1: going to murder people like that's that that that's what
Speaker 1: you're signing on for. And I think that I think
Speaker 1: that's an absolutely unacceptable price. And but we shouldn't do this.
Speaker 1: Um Now. The other aspect of this is because you
Speaker 1: have to keep all of these just absolutely like just
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty burderers on the leash. And because also all the
Speaker 1: people who are actually in the governments are just genuinely
Speaker 1: the asplicable human beings. Uh. Immediately after I mean, like
Speaker 1: really before the shots have stopped firing, like, there's a
Speaker 1: coper up that stretches from like includes everyone from the
Speaker 1: officers on the scene all the way up to may
Speaker 1: Raw Emmanuel. So for example, mysteriously none of the multiple
Speaker 1: dashboard cameras on the scene we're recording audio for reasons
Speaker 1: only the discerning listener can guess at yep, Like everyone
Speaker 1: across the entire chain of command again going right up
Speaker 1: to the mayor's office immediately goes we we cannot let
Speaker 1: this video get out because it's it's so bad that
Speaker 1: even the CPD s like this is gonna look bad
Speaker 1: for us. Because the thing gets out, then people will
Speaker 1: want to do bad things to cops and they can't
Speaker 1: have that. And you know, so this this, this is
Speaker 1: this tape is concealed for over a year until the
Speaker 1: journalist Brandon Smith like literally gets a like sues them
Speaker 1: and literally gets the judge to like order the state
Speaker 1: to release it. And while this is going on, that
Speaker 1: the cops are doing this massive pr blitz featuring this
Speaker 1: just like incredible pack of racist lies, including that McDonald
Speaker 1: had lunge for it yet Van Dyke with a knife. No,
Speaker 1: he didn't, He was literally walking away from them. That
Speaker 1: McDonald had a gun, which is initiesting one because not
Speaker 1: only like they didn't even have time to like plant
Speaker 1: like they killed him so fast, they didn't have time
Speaker 1: to plant a gun on him, like there's no gun.
Speaker 1: But the multiple officers will are are like you can
Speaker 1: you can find news things of them talking about how
Speaker 1: this guy, oh, he had a gun. It's like there's
Speaker 1: no gun. Um. Yeah. The classic one is that like
Speaker 1: Van Dyke feared for his life and uh, no he didn't.
Speaker 1: He probably should now, but he does not. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: should never. He should never live awaking or sleeping moments
Speaker 1: where he's not in constant fear of someone cutting his
Speaker 1: head off, just as like in terms of the horror
Speaker 1: that should be viewed inside people who do these things,
Speaker 1: they should never like they shouldn't have been able to
Speaker 1: like sit down and be comfortable. The closest we've ever
Speaker 1: gotten in to justice for one of these guys is
Speaker 1: when that mob surrounded Uh, Derek Chauvin's house. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it would have been actual justice if they had gotten
Speaker 1: through the door. Yep, yeah, it's yeah, so you know
Speaker 1: all and you ever like so there's all there's there's
Speaker 1: this huge coterie of cops. We're all just lying about this.
Speaker 1: They're lying in the press. They're lying just there lying.
Speaker 1: They they start they lie like on the stand um.
Speaker 1: And you know, the strategy works for a while because
Speaker 1: this country is just the racist tellhole until the court
Speaker 1: forces him to release the video. And when it becomes
Speaker 1: clear of the video is going to come out, the
Speaker 1: state immediately charges him, like they charged him, and then
Speaker 1: later that day they released a video. Now, now keep
Speaker 1: this in mind, they had this video for a fucking year.
Speaker 1: It's what it's all. It's all fake and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they only charged him with the alternative was literally
Speaker 1: being run into the sea by an entire mob of
Speaker 1: the totally the entire population of Chicago. Um. So, Van
Speaker 1: Dyke is suspended without pay, right, but he immediately gets
Speaker 1: hired by the by the police union. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Van Dyke Van Dyke eventually, i mean he
Speaker 1: goes down. Eventually he gets convicted of you know, of
Speaker 1: second green murder and sixteen counts of battery. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a later report that describes the involvement
Speaker 1: of sixteen other officers in the cover up. Uh. Four
Speaker 1: officers were eventually fired for lying about the case, three
Speaker 1: were tried for the cover up and acquitted, and four
Speaker 1: officers were given a one week suspension for the mysterious
Speaker 1: lack of camera audio. Honestly, more is more than usually happens. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean this is like this video is so bad
Speaker 1: that like this video is so I mean, Raw Emmanuel
Speaker 1: doesn't really mean he that the consequence he suffers is
Speaker 1: that he decides not to run again because it will
Speaker 1: be bad for him. But Raw Emmanuel is currently now
Speaker 1: that his his consequence is that he's the American ambassador
Speaker 1: of Japan and death. You know, I I will also
Speaker 1: say this, the people of Japan do not deserve Raw Emmanual.
Speaker 1: The Liberal Democratic Party, on the other hand, are maybe
Speaker 1: the only people on earth who actually deserve him. Like,
Speaker 1: if you didn't want us to palm row Mammanuel off
Speaker 1: on you, you shouldn't have taken all that CIA money
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties and let them run your
Speaker 1: political campaigns. So Liberal Democratic Party, lie down with dogs,
Speaker 1: get fleas um. But yeah, Jason van Dyke was released
Speaker 1: from prison two weeks ago after serving less than half
Speaker 1: a sentence. Mcwam McDonald's remains dead. Yeah. I mean the
Speaker 1: really depressing part is that that is more consequences than
Speaker 1: usually ever happens, and that that only happened because of,
Speaker 1: you know, like an incredible amount of organization, and like
Speaker 1: I think of all of the times where there is
Speaker 1: no video, Think of all the times where there's nothing
Speaker 1: and things just happened, no one watches it, and then
Speaker 1: dead bodies get kicked into a ditch um. And that's
Speaker 1: way more common than anything where there's a type of
Speaker 1: like recordings or even where there needs to be cover ups.
Speaker 1: You know, you you both are probably too young for
Speaker 1: this movie. But in one of the Transformers movies, after
Speaker 1: they beat all the bad Transformers, okay, you know where
Speaker 1: the navy lifts them all up and drops them into
Speaker 1: the sea. Yes, what if we did that with the
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department. Just drop him in the sea, big old,
Speaker 1: big them up, drop him in the sea. Yea, Now
Speaker 1: we put them in a bag. There's no swimming Okay,
Speaker 1: that's fair. Look, look they one one, they get one
Speaker 1: bag individual, each individual against one bag for each bag.
Speaker 1: They put over someone's head and strangled them with I
Speaker 1: think that's fair, and then right into the sea and
Speaker 1: solves all problems. The blessing, like I do, I do
Speaker 1: genuinely want to say, is that like if if you
Speaker 1: read this story over and over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: you get people who are like you get the governor
Speaker 1: going like the system is fundamentally broken to must reformat.
Speaker 1: You get the courts saying the system is fundamentally broken
Speaker 1: and blush reformat and it never changes. They just keep
Speaker 1: killing people, they keep inslaving people, they keep doing like,
Speaker 1: they keep troaturing people, they keep murdering people, they keep
Speaker 1: raving people, and this will not end until you abolish
Speaker 1: the police. Like there is no alternative if you if
Speaker 1: your car is fun is broken on a fundamental level,
Speaker 1: you can't you can't reform your car to make it better.
Speaker 1: There's a certain point where it's total and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess that kind It's like Asian block is shattered
Speaker 1: and you're like, we fixes the tires, so it ought
Speaker 1: to go now. No, It's like if it's broken on
Speaker 1: the fundamental level, you can't reform it. Those words like
Speaker 1: those words don't go together, yea, like throw out, throw
Speaker 1: out your car and build a train. That's that's what
Speaker 1: you have to do. Walk to get a bicycle, honestly, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I stuck a bottle onto the rail of my A
Speaker 1: R fifteen. So it's not a gun anymore. No, it's
Speaker 1: it's still is gone. Um. Yeah, this is really really
Speaker 1: sad um and it's good stuff. Pretty depressing. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go watch Two Eights The Dark Night and
Speaker 1: feel feel great about myself. Yeah all right, Well that's
Speaker 1: gonna do it for us, and it could happen here
Speaker 1: today until next time. Uh, hope that more Chicago police
Speaker 1: officers get COVID there there is that. There's that fun
Speaker 1: scene in the Dark Knight where the Joker goes into
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police building and blows up the prison block
Speaker 1: with all those cops inside. That is that is a
Speaker 1: fun scene. Yeah anyway, Um, oh my goodness, it's could
Speaker 1: happen here. All right. Well that's the introduction. I'm Robert
Speaker 1: Evans and my work's done for today. Chris, Yeah, it's me.
Speaker 1: It's Christopher. We are We are back with two more
Speaker 1: stories of rape, torture, and murder from the Chicago Police Department.
Speaker 1: Yeah we have Yeah, well you know, okay, this one, this,
Speaker 1: this one will be more fun than last time because okay,
Speaker 1: so basically, since since I started showing up on this show,
Speaker 1: I have made a case. I have been dropping references
Speaker 1: to the fact that Chicago Police Department is literally a cartel,
Speaker 1: and today I am finally telling the story of how
Speaker 1: this is a little unfair. But yeah, also, also I
Speaker 1: didn't mention this before we go win. There's also a
Speaker 1: bonus cartel because while I was doing research on one
Speaker 1: of the cartels, I realized that I couldn't actually talk
Speaker 1: about it without talking about the other cartel. So there's two.
Speaker 1: There are two completely unrelated CPD cartels that are will
Speaker 1: show up in this story. Uh yeah, it's great. So
Speaker 1: all right, this is the story of Ronald Watts. Now,
Speaker 1: Ronard Wats joined the CPD in nine after serving in
Speaker 1: the Army, making him yet another example of the fabled
Speaker 1: troop cop combination that produces the worst people on earth.
Speaker 1: Um what. Wats was assigned to patrol Chicago's old public
Speaker 1: housing like projects now wants is from housing himself. Um,
Speaker 1: there's okay. So some of the people who knew him
Speaker 1: before he went into the police claimed that, like he
Speaker 1: was just always like a drug dealer, and that he
Speaker 1: went into the police too like drug deal more. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's true, because I mean, he's also
Speaker 1: in the army for a while, so I I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's sort of unclear. But you know, he's for the projects.
Speaker 1: He he knows that terign well, and that's why he
Speaker 1: was an extremely effective agent of terror in a place
Speaker 1: where officers would regularly drive by blasting the N word
Speaker 1: and other racial slurs out of their cop car speakers.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, here here, here's the intercept describing what like
Speaker 1: Chicago cops are just doing at the projects. They were
Speaker 1: officers who found it amusing to toy with those under
Speaker 1: their power, arranging the foot race of heroin addics determined
Speaker 1: who would go to jail, for example, or forcing a
Speaker 1: woman they had searched on the street to walk home
Speaker 1: naked from the waist down. It's yeah, people who find
Speaker 1: joint exerting their power over other people and they think
Speaker 1: it's funny. Yeah, why they become cops. Yep. Well, and
Speaker 1: you know and the other reason to become a cop
Speaker 1: is is the the second thing that they do constantly,
Speaker 1: which is they just walk into the lobbies of these
Speaker 1: buildings just start taking everyone's money. And like they literally
Speaker 1: call the lobbies of the public housing buildings like quote
Speaker 1: their ATM machine. So they're just doing this constantly. There's
Speaker 1: also cops and this is not every cop that they're
Speaker 1: specific cops you do this who would show up on
Speaker 1: the first and the fifteenth of the month, wait for
Speaker 1: everyone to catch their paychecks and then rob them. And
Speaker 1: you know, and the thing I think is important about
Speaker 1: this is that, Okay, so like WATS and like the
Speaker 1: specific cartels do this, but this isn't just WATS. This
Speaker 1: is like, this is everyone who's working at these projects
Speaker 1: is just walking up like to like the poorest people
Speaker 1: in Chicago and just robbing them constantly. Um yeah, like
Speaker 1: this is this is you know, this this is just
Speaker 1: how regular policing works. And the elite units are even worse.
Speaker 1: So Cartel number one or I guess, I guess you're
Speaker 1: trying about choose since we've introduced WATTS. But so there
Speaker 1: used to be an elite unit in the Chicago Police
Speaker 1: Force called the Special Operations Section or s OS. And
Speaker 1: these guys, these guys are different because they you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're not attached to like an area or
Speaker 1: certific you know, they're they're just completely their own thing.
Speaker 1: They're just like they're the Special Response Team. And s
Speaker 1: OS would just go into projects and just ransacked the
Speaker 1: entire building like they would go room by room like
Speaker 1: taking people stuff and just looting it and then just
Speaker 1: like walking out. And you know, it's not even like
Speaker 1: there's not just that they're taking cash, like they're taking TVs.
Speaker 1: And I mean the thing that the thing the thing
Speaker 1: you if when you when you read interview some people
Speaker 1: who lived through this, like they're not just taking like
Speaker 1: stuff that's like you know, let's use that are expensive there.
Speaker 1: They'll take people's like lamps, like they're just walk out
Speaker 1: with anything like literally anything they can sell um. And
Speaker 1: you know, I get like these are these are the
Speaker 1: people living in these projects are like huge, like a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of these postures literally like segregation era, right,
Speaker 1: and so they're they're almost entirely black and they're just
Speaker 1: take like they're just getting robbed, but constantly by both
Speaker 1: regular cops a special operation section, and there's not even
Speaker 1: like you know, like cops nowadays have like they have
Speaker 1: like civil asset forfature where there's this like pseudo legal
Speaker 1: framework and no, no no, no, there's like they're not even
Speaker 1: this is the nights, They're not even doing that. They're
Speaker 1: just literally walking in and robbing these people at gunpoint. Um.
Speaker 1: S OS like they eventually get shut down deals and
Speaker 1: seven after so there's a series of scangles about them.
Speaker 1: They they steal like hundreds of thousands of dollars and people,
Speaker 1: they do shakedowns with drug dealers, they start kidnapping people. Um.
Speaker 1: At one point in s OS, dude like tried to
Speaker 1: hire his coworker to do a hit on someone who
Speaker 1: was like going to report them to the Feds. And yeah,
Speaker 1: but s OS isn't the main story today because Watts
Speaker 1: is writing is running an even larger version of this operation. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, well I's proways researching this. I had
Speaker 1: the realization that, like, so I've talked to people in
Speaker 1: Chicago about like the CPD Cartel's right, and I had
Speaker 1: the realization that there are conversations that I've had people
Speaker 1: where we've been we've both been talking about different ones,
Speaker 1: and we both we both thought we were talking about this,
Speaker 1: Like I've had people talking backwards like oh, they were
Speaker 1: talking about the West. I was like, no, No No, I
Speaker 1: met the Watts one. It's it's it's great. It's love
Speaker 1: love our institutionalized just robbery system. Yeah. So the other
Speaker 1: thing I want to mention because so the intercepted like
Speaker 1: really good, like four like huge four part series on
Speaker 1: on the Watts. H like cartel. But I think it's
Speaker 1: worth mentioning that, Like even you know that there's like
Speaker 1: two quote unquote good cops who like go after Watts
Speaker 1: and for years and they've met your him down. But
Speaker 1: like even those cops are doing things that are objectively horrifying.
Speaker 1: Like most of the actual cop work in this story
Speaker 1: is done by is literally just the good cops. Like
Speaker 1: they know a homeless guy they called Chewbaka who they
Speaker 1: paid to be an informant in like blankets, sleeping bags
Speaker 1: and food and like it's like it should be fair
Speaker 1: Chebaca like genuinely like likes the two of them, But
Speaker 1: Cheubaca is the guy who does all of the work here,
Speaker 1: Like what Wastz gets like like he's the guy who's
Speaker 1: like wearing the wire. He's the guy who knows everything
Speaker 1: the cops. The cops don't know anything, and Chibaka has
Speaker 1: known that everything that was going on from the beginning.
Speaker 1: They just don't ask him for years. But like in
Speaker 1: Chiubaca like goes to prison at one point because Wats Okay,
Speaker 1: so what Watson Wats is just like a drug dealer, right,
Speaker 1: um so wants and uh so so Cheebaca would like,
Speaker 1: you know, he he was like he was like a
Speaker 1: sort of low level like runner. Right, you'd get a bag,
Speaker 1: he'd like move it sometimes times And one time in
Speaker 1: Watchaws these new for informations. So one time, like Watts
Speaker 1: was like trying to get information on where a drug
Speaker 1: stash was we could rob it and then like well
Speaker 1: time so he could do a police raid on it
Speaker 1: and then take the drugs and sell them. And Chibaka
Speaker 1: just like didn't know. So Wat's just like through be
Speaker 1: in prison for two years and it's just like you know,
Speaker 1: this this stuff this time happens constantly. That there are
Speaker 1: so many people who are just you know, like people
Speaker 1: trying to survive in the city and then oh, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't have the exact specific information that this cop
Speaker 1: wants on this drug thing. So we're just gonna send
Speaker 1: you to prison for two years. And Chivaca, who like
Speaker 1: risks his life wearing a wire and brings down one
Speaker 1: of the biggest cartels in the CPD, as best I
Speaker 1: can tell, is still living on the street because the
Speaker 1: society is just broken in ways that like are difficult
Speaker 1: to comprehend and incredibly bleak. Yeah mm hmm. Yeah. So okay,
Speaker 1: back to Watch this operation. Watts has this thing called
Speaker 1: the Watts Tax, and the Watch tex is if you
Speaker 1: run drugs, you pay the tax to Wats and this
Speaker 1: this tax gives you production from the police. If if if
Speaker 1: you don't pay the Watch tax, the cops show up,
Speaker 1: they put you in prison, they take all your cash,
Speaker 1: they raid your drugs, and then Watch resolves your drugs
Speaker 1: that are profit I mean that is like objectively, that
Speaker 1: is a decent grift, Like in terms of it's pretty
Speaker 1: good logistical plans, like yeah, okay, I can I can
Speaker 1: see how how this would actually be very profitable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's genius and like and and the other thing about
Speaker 1: these taxes, like these taxes are enormous amounts of money,
Speaker 1: Like if if so, if if, if you're running a drug,
Speaker 1: that's like, okay, so you have a drug that you
Speaker 1: move and the drugs I've I've ran drugs for thirty years,
Speaker 1: I know. Yeah, so the tax for the for that
Speaker 1: single drug can be as high as fifty dollars a week.
Speaker 1: So he is he is making a lot of money,
Speaker 1: so much money, just an incomprehensible amount of money off
Speaker 1: of this, I guess, I guess you would have to
Speaker 1: become cops. I have an idea for a pivot. Do
Speaker 1: it in the car, tell pivot. This is how we give,
Speaker 1: this is how we get funded by this in a
Speaker 1: lower care And we've always been a cartel, but that's well,
Speaker 1: when we moved from podcasting into drugs, we can partner
Speaker 1: with our friends at the scene, a lower cartel. Yea
Speaker 1: would be great. Eventually, there's a guy named Big Shorty
Speaker 1: who's another like player in the scene. And yeah, all
Speaker 1: the people in this name of this great names. Yeah
Speaker 1: it's great. So Big Shorty is like, I'm not paying
Speaker 1: like fifty k a week per drug to do this anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to the Feds and so so be
Speaker 1: short like he threatens to go to the feeds and
Speaker 1: he goes to the d A and then like a
Speaker 1: couple of days later, she's gunned down the street by
Speaker 1: yeah you never yeah no, like yeah, well if you do,
Speaker 1: you have to make sure they like disappear you because uh,
Speaker 1: you never threaten it, like that's the yeah, yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: you don't. These worlds you mentioned like cops and going
Speaker 1: to in any combination, and everyone around you just like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, this person's got to be dead. That's
Speaker 1: just how that's gotta go. Yeah, it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: not the best move I've ever seen. It's yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, And and this is when this is when
Speaker 1: the cops, the two cops are gonna bring Watch down,
Speaker 1: like actually started to take notice because literally for years,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're all sorry about this, like people
Speaker 1: they'd be locking people up and people would say things
Speaker 1: like why are you going after me for two bags?
Speaker 1: And Watts is running the dope and just no one
Speaker 1: believes them, Like the cops are being told constantly for
Speaker 1: years like that the cops who aren't in on the
Speaker 1: on the intel I being told literally for years that
Speaker 1: that this whole thing is you know that that oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well why why are you bothering me? Watts is running
Speaker 1: this operation. They don't believe them, and they don't they
Speaker 1: don't believe them basically until Big Shorty gets shot. Because
Speaker 1: when when Big Shorty goes down like another they get
Speaker 1: another guy who's like pretty big in the scene, the
Speaker 1: guy's like, oh, yeah, no, he got shot by Wats,
Speaker 1: and they're like, wait, hold on now, the cops go
Speaker 1: to the FBI, and the FBI, it turns out, of
Speaker 1: has been trying and failing to put again put together
Speaker 1: a case against Watts for so long that like they're
Speaker 1: on there like second like agent who they've had in
Speaker 1: charge of the case because the first guy, like I
Speaker 1: just could do it and laugh. And so they had
Speaker 1: another guy and almost immediately after this, uh there's there's
Speaker 1: another guy. There's another dealer named Fears who he has
Speaker 1: this Fierce has this great grift which is like all
Speaker 1: of his people wear Obama shirts just like just like
Speaker 1: you do eight but he doesn't know, doesn't seven or something?
Speaker 1: But yeah, so like that, all all the people doing
Speaker 1: this thing, they wear Obama shirts and they call the
Speaker 1: drugs like Obama and so what everyone they have their
Speaker 1: lines called Hope. So and like this this this actually
Speaker 1: works on the FBI, Like the FBI doesn't understand that
Speaker 1: they're running drugs because they think that they're that Like
Speaker 1: all the Messa references of Obama are just like they're
Speaker 1: talking about like Obama. It's like there's there's so many,
Speaker 1: there's so many great like FBI weird incompetences to the
Speaker 1: story like that. There's one point where the cops are
Speaker 1: going through the documents and they see the word they
Speaker 1: see Lou, and it's just Lose, a short for lieutenant, right,
Speaker 1: But the FBI thinks that Lou is like a name,
Speaker 1: and so they kind of tracked down this guy named Lou,
Speaker 1: which is just it's it's ah, just baffling, incredible and
Speaker 1: coms never thrilled when they have to investigate cops. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: even though it is literally their job. Yep. But hey,
Speaker 1: I hate doing my job too, so please continue, Chris. So,
Speaker 1: so if that fears guy who choose doing the Obama thing,
Speaker 1: like take seventeen rounds to the chest, and so the
Speaker 1: FBI number rounds to take to the chest, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a lot. It's it's it's interesting number two right, because
Speaker 1: like like it does difficult significance. Guess yeah. What would
Speaker 1: also like like is did they like reload, Like do
Speaker 1: they have a gun that has seventeen round man? Yeah? No, no,
Speaker 1: there's yeah, there's that's not that's not it. Is it
Speaker 1: like a handgun or is it a rifle? I think
Speaker 1: it's a gun, yeah, or like Baltimo people with hangdguns
Speaker 1: block seventeens have seventeen round magazines. That makes sense, yeah, yes.
Speaker 1: So so after this, the FBI investigation intensifies, and so
Speaker 1: the FBI goes to the Internal Affairs Division or i
Speaker 1: a D, who are like the most hated cops of
Speaker 1: all cops by other cops, because there're people who are
Speaker 1: supposed investigate the police and you know, so, so they
Speaker 1: tell that you guys who are going after watch, they're
Speaker 1: going to be protected. And this works for like a
Speaker 1: year and then the head of a I D changes
Speaker 1: and it's like a cop cop guy instead of so
Speaker 1: they had this like they brought an FBI guy who
Speaker 1: had been had of a D and that he gets
Speaker 1: kicked out and they bring in like a cop and
Speaker 1: that cop just immediately tells literally everyone that that the
Speaker 1: two cops are running an investigation. It gives Watts, and
Speaker 1: so uh do they die with the next few months
Speaker 1: there studdingly no, I espect. I can tell Watts seemed
Speaker 1: to have thought that like they wouldn't just wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to get him see too much protection, which worked
Speaker 1: for a while. Um yeah, it's yeah, he has a
Speaker 1: lot of power. Yeah. Well, and also, I mean the
Speaker 1: other thing about this is she just like his stuff,
Speaker 1: starts getting wilder. So he goes after this guy. He
Speaker 1: tries to go after the drugs of this guy named Monk,
Speaker 1: and like Muk is carrying a bunch of drugs, he's
Speaker 1: trying to He's trying to rob bunk Um from the
Speaker 1: intercept a wild car chase and suit on the Dan
Speaker 1: Ryan Expressway like Sure Drive, and ultimately into the Hyde
Speaker 1: Park neighborhood, where Monk lost control of the car and
Speaker 1: crashed in a park. He fled on foot. Watson his
Speaker 1: team seized the dope and cash. They didn't even check
Speaker 1: on the condition of the women and infant who remained
Speaker 1: in the car, which is great. And also that's that's standard.
Speaker 1: That that's that that's like standard CPD procedure. I have
Speaker 1: literally seen this happen like in Hyde Park, like I
Speaker 1: have there. When I was in college, I almost got
Speaker 1: run over in his seat and like the CPD almost
Speaker 1: ran me over in this like car chase that went
Speaker 1: bad and this giant multi car crash and like there's
Speaker 1: like sixteen cops, right, they all just run past the
Speaker 1: car crash after the two guys are chasing and like
Speaker 1: have to go make sure no one died. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I, this is great. You have just almost
Speaker 1: murdered me. And then also you're not checking on all
Speaker 1: of these people in this car even in the wreck.
Speaker 1: I Oh, I hate a CPD. I hate them a lot.
Speaker 1: This took the sound. This sound nice. Yeah, it's great
Speaker 1: there there. Yeah, this just happens like all the time,
Speaker 1: like often enough that like literally in the same place,
Speaker 1: which like all of these big because you've got like
Speaker 1: a few really big, shitty, big city police departments. You've
Speaker 1: got your l A p D, You're n Y p D,
Speaker 1: You've got your Chicago Police Department. By god, you've got St.
Speaker 1: Louis cops. And they're all they're all shitty and simultaneously
Speaker 1: the same in different ways. Like there there, it's the
Speaker 1: same basic idea. It's brutality, it's violence, it's robbery. Um,
Speaker 1: but they they find unique ways to do those shitty things,
Speaker 1: which is fascinating. Yeah, Like I've always like like they
Speaker 1: n y p DS, like they're big thing is if
Speaker 1: you get a large number of people together, the NYPD
Speaker 1: is just going to annihilate you, like l A p
Speaker 1: D has like the Nazi gangs. CPD thing. CPDS thing
Speaker 1: just seems to be crime torture. It's torture and yeah St.
Speaker 1: Louis Police Department will attack you with dogs if you're
Speaker 1: not a white person. Like, yeah, they've all got they've
Speaker 1: they've they've they've chosen their cops subclass. Yeah. Now okay,
Speaker 1: so but back in the investigation, the two cops in
Speaker 1: investigating Watts are like even so basically all the researchers
Speaker 1: get cut off. It's literally just them to watch. Note
Speaker 1: like basically knows that he's they're coming from them, and
Speaker 1: they almost get him anyways, because cops are just not
Speaker 1: very smart. Um, and you know they're about to get
Speaker 1: him on a sting for drug running and then right
Speaker 1: before like look, I think it's like the day of
Speaker 1: that they're running the sting, they suddenly get like transferred
Speaker 1: to the police academy, and they basically just like get
Speaker 1: attained in this police academy for like weeks and it's
Speaker 1: it's purely weird. And eventually, like and you know, this
Speaker 1: is when like everything just completely comes apart with the
Speaker 1: liaison between the CPD and the FBI literally tells them
Speaker 1: they can't move on the case because if they move
Speaker 1: on the case, it's going to reveal that Watts murdered
Speaker 1: a dude, because well they so they don't have good
Speaker 1: evidence some big shorty, but they have they have evidence
Speaker 1: that they have good evidence that he killed Fears and
Speaker 1: h And the head of Internal Affairs basically tells them like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I won't do anything about Watts because it comes
Speaker 1: out that another CPD unit had gone rogue after s OS,
Speaker 1: I'll be done for so I'm just gonna cover for them.
Speaker 1: The second cartel is too much. Only one cartels It's great, Um,
Speaker 1: I can excuse one cartel, but I try the line
Speaker 1: too but once you hit four cartels back too good,
Speaker 1: which is why I am such a big fan of
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Police Department. It's great, Look you got it,
Speaker 1: you got you got you just you just gotta get
Speaker 1: over the cartel hump and once you're over, Yeah, you got.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like growing out your your hair. Right,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be that period where it looks really awkward.
Speaker 1: That's when. That's when you've got two cartels, and then
Speaker 1: you get hot at four cartels. Then you're fuckable again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. So there's an interesting description from one of
Speaker 1: the two cops that don't want to read because it
Speaker 1: gets out how the code of Silence works. Um from
Speaker 1: the intercept he had, she said, this is about the
Speaker 1: the A A D. Guy he had, She said, made
Speaker 1: too many deals, there by neutralizing his ability to act,
Speaker 1: attributing her understanding of this dynamic largely the conversations with
Speaker 1: Rivera himself, conversations she denied ever occurred. She described him
Speaker 1: as ensnared in a web of mutual blackmail at which
Speaker 1: bosses have leverage over one another by virtue of their
Speaker 1: shared knowledge of the deals they've made. She gave an example,
Speaker 1: I'll make the cr get your guy go away if
Speaker 1: you promote my guy within your unit. The code of
Speaker 1: silence and cloud or thus entwined Rivera. She recalled once
Speaker 1: remarked to her that the bosses quote trade crs for
Speaker 1: favors like baseball cards. So yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: what the code of silence is. It's it's it's an
Speaker 1: informal code sort of. That's also called the thin blue line,
Speaker 1: which is great, uh yeah, but basically it says that costs,
Speaker 1: you know, it's that cops will protect the road. But
Speaker 1: but it's more than that. If if if you if
Speaker 1: you cross the name blue line and you break the
Speaker 1: code of silence, you will be formally retaliated against by
Speaker 1: your commanders. And but when when when I say breaking
Speaker 1: the code of silence, what that means literally is if
Speaker 1: you take any action against another cop, like it literally
Speaker 1: doesn't like they can be torturing people, they could be
Speaker 1: literally running a cartel. It doesn't matter. If you say
Speaker 1: anything about them, you will be like formally retaliated against
Speaker 1: by every other cop. And so the two cops who
Speaker 1: are investigating wats like, they get arrested by internal affairs.
Speaker 1: Internal affairs like tries to like basically make a fake
Speaker 1: case against them, and they eventually get out, but their
Speaker 1: you know, their careers are over right because they you know,
Speaker 1: attempted to like do the thing sort of that cops
Speaker 1: are nominally supposed to do and they just immediately get arrested. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, and they have a lot of other
Speaker 1: stuff happened to them. Like one of the two cops
Speaker 1: comes home to a bell box literally full of ship,
Speaker 1: with a note that says, since you like ship so much,
Speaker 1: thought you'd enjoy this amazing. Yeah, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like that's fun. That's fun. That should happen more often,
Speaker 1: Just that should happen a lot more off other other scenarios. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it sucks that these are the cops that this
Speaker 1: is happening. Like, of all of the this is like
Speaker 1: the only time I like do not approve of like
Speaker 1: sending cops ship like this is this is the wrong
Speaker 1: reason for the wrong reason to sender. You're gone. That's true.
Speaker 1: They have probably stuff, they have done stuff. I will
Speaker 1: make sure it's better. It can be safer if it's
Speaker 1: If dogshit is used, then d N a K is
Speaker 1: harder to track anyone. You know what the safest ship
Speaker 1: of all to use. No, I don't ship, panther ship.
Speaker 1: Panther ship. See I can Yeah, I think I p
Speaker 1: I is never going to figure that one out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get the technology, get right on. I'll get right
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, we're gonna go to go collect panther ship.
Speaker 1: We'll be gone for a month. It could be their
Speaker 1: unibomber for like fifteen years. They're trying to track down
Speaker 1: what kind of ship is getting put in people's mailboxes
Speaker 1: until your brother sends them a letter saying I know
Speaker 1: someone who has access to a lot of panther Ship
Speaker 1: and grudge tragic tail as time and then you can
Speaker 1: get uh an HBO miniseries where they make you like
Speaker 1: look slightly like you're in a boy band, only slightly.
Speaker 1: It's like you were in a boy band but aged out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you were in. So the coat of silence also extends
Speaker 1: their friendly politicians. Here's some the Interset report. Soon after
Speaker 1: he came to the confidential section, he was given the
Speaker 1: assignment of investigating a deputy superintendent. The allegation was at
Speaker 1: the officer. The official lived outside the city. Mills worked
Speaker 1: on the case for months and concluded the allegation was true.
Speaker 1: He produced a thick file. Take months. I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: have to take months. There cops allowances for the caper
Speaker 1: of where does this guy who works here? Yeah? Very funny.
Speaker 1: The next day the file came back to him. It
Speaker 1: was mart There was a yellow post with the handwritten
Speaker 1: message and make it unfounded. So that's fun, awesome, amazing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: make it cops are cops are a breed of their
Speaker 1: own poetry. Poetry. Yeah. So actually, there there's a long
Speaker 1: history of like, yeah, politicians do something cops all the time.
Speaker 1: Like remember the story, right, like rama, Manuel's like nephew
Speaker 1: or something killed the guy in a car crash and
Speaker 1: the CPD he got Manuel got the CPD to just
Speaker 1: like that, never investigated it. They just were like, oh,
Speaker 1: someone died in the car crash and it just went away.
Speaker 1: It's it's real fun. Um. Yeah. So so eventually shortly
Speaker 1: after this sort of those two cops get like detained
Speaker 1: at the police academy. The FBI and the in the
Speaker 1: CPT move on wattson his partner Mohammed and no one else. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: because again, if you think about this for about five seconds,
Speaker 1: they were an enormous number of people who either know
Speaker 1: about this operation or are actively involved in running a
Speaker 1: fucking drug cartel that is one of the biggest players
Speaker 1: on the South Side, who are still just cops. And
Speaker 1: like the CPD goes after exactly two people, there are
Speaker 1: like dozens of people who were actively involved of them
Speaker 1: this who are still cops um and and you know,
Speaker 1: and the only real tradition to this is that the
Speaker 1: FBI and the CPD are complicit, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, so parts of the CPD want to keep doing,
Speaker 1: keep keep running the cartel. The FBI is like, both
Speaker 1: the FBI and the CBD also have an interest in
Speaker 1: keeping this covered up because they don't want like, you know,
Speaker 1: oh hey, look at the look at the loss of
Speaker 1: trust in in in law enforcement. It comes out that
Speaker 1: there were actually two cartels running in the same place
Speaker 1: at the same time, parallel to each other, and then
Speaker 1: we didn't catch them. Like yeah, but it's great because
Speaker 1: literally nothing happens to these people. They're still out there,
Speaker 1: they're still doing cops shit. Uh yeah, only two people
Speaker 1: went down for that, and yeah, so the cartel is
Speaker 1: just still there. It's that's good, it's still well. It
Speaker 1: proves that if you put in the work, you can
Speaker 1: really build something that lasts. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: lesson we all should be inspired by. Pull yourself up
Speaker 1: by your uh jack bootstraps, and oh yeah, that's good stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: so so interlude number two. On May four, six, someone
Speaker 1: threw a stick of dynamite at some cops and Haymarket
Speaker 1: Square in Chicago, tree the general strike for the eight
Speaker 1: hour work day they started. The cops fired wildly into
Speaker 1: the crowd, and the state rounded up a bunch of
Speaker 1: completely random anarchists who, by their own admission, had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it, and had them executed. Now the cops,
Speaker 1: for their part, built a statue for the cops at Haymarket. Now,
Speaker 1: the first of these statues were destroyed on May fourth
Speaker 1: by a guy who just right, so he he had
Speaker 1: he was like, he's a street car driver, right, and
Speaker 1: he had to like every single day he had to
Speaker 1: go past the statue of the Haymarket cop. And one
Speaker 1: day he was just like no, and he he ran
Speaker 1: his street car off of the on rails, right, He
Speaker 1: random off of the rails and rammed it into the statue.
Speaker 1: This guy rules dope. So the cops build another statue,
Speaker 1: and that that second statue was blown up by the
Speaker 1: weather Underground in October nineteen nine. Uh, the costs make
Speaker 1: another statue. The third statue is also blown up by
Speaker 1: the weather Underground in October. It was like that was
Speaker 1: less than a year later. Yep. Yeah, and so the
Speaker 1: continue they originally they rebuilt it again, right, and originally
Speaker 1: they have it under like a twenty four hour armed
Speaker 1: guard Jesus and then and then and then. But you know,
Speaker 1: even then they were like, okay, we can't protect it.
Speaker 1: So they moved it into an enclosed courtyard in the
Speaker 1: middle of the of Chicago Police Academy because they're too
Speaker 1: cowardly to show it in public. Awesome, that's good. That's
Speaker 1: a win. That's a win everyone so much that they
Speaker 1: have to hide the statue to the assholes who got killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. One day, one day, that fourth statue will
Speaker 1: follow the first three. One day, one day by the
Speaker 1: mere cosmic forces of the universe, by entropy. The force
Speaker 1: of entropy will one day destroyed the statue. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: So onto story number four. Story number four is the
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department's black site. So the Chicago Police Department
Speaker 1: has a black site called Home and Square. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so normally, you know, you go to a police station
Speaker 1: and you get booked, right, they book you, they put
Speaker 1: you into the system, and you know, because you're in
Speaker 1: the system, like you know where Um, like people people
Speaker 1: can find you, right because you can just look someone up.
Speaker 1: You can look someone up in the system. Uh. At
Speaker 1: Home and Square, they don't book people if you just
Speaker 1: if you go there, you just disappear. There's no record
Speaker 1: of you. Uh, there's no there's no way to contact
Speaker 1: a lawyer if you're in there. Uh, your lawyer doesn't
Speaker 1: know where you are because again there's no records of
Speaker 1: where you are. You've just been grabbed off the street
Speaker 1: and taken to a building. Um. Yeah. And and this
Speaker 1: is a so store storage of people there tends to
Speaker 1: be pretty short. They don't tend to hold people longer
Speaker 1: than a couple of days. But what it's therefore is
Speaker 1: this is this is a confession machine. This is the
Speaker 1: way to force confessions have a UM by just you know,
Speaker 1: literally disappearing them uh and denying them access to lawyers
Speaker 1: or literally anyone knowing where they are. And they're just
Speaker 1: holding them until they confess. Uh. And also yeah, so
Speaker 1: so at Home and Square prisoners are routinely shackled for
Speaker 1: for hours, like like tens of hours, sometimes twenty four hours, beaten,
Speaker 1: denied phone calls, and robbed constantly. This is this is
Speaker 1: another fun sepety tradition is Yeah, they'll just take you
Speaker 1: to this black site and then rob you and then
Speaker 1: maybe they'll release you, but you know they've still robbed you.
Speaker 1: And yes, you know they do these beatings, and these
Speaker 1: beatings are incredibly intense, like you know that they're punching people.
Speaker 1: They're doing like knee strikes and doing elbow strikes. You're
Speaker 1: hitting people with batons. Sometimes they're tassering people. Uh. We
Speaker 1: we have a report that that the cops filed of
Speaker 1: listening listened as a cop being assaulted. And the thing
Speaker 1: that they're listening as a non it was like like
Speaker 1: non like fist assault. Was the guy spat blood? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well and they listened to as an assault blood on them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great, it's yeah. They also do things like they
Speaker 1: put like flex cuffs around people's necks. Torture. Yeah yeah
Speaker 1: they Yeah, that's a way for someone to die. But
Speaker 1: it's almost like that's maybe part of the intention is
Speaker 1: that someone will quote accidentally die. Oh we'll get to that. Okay,
Speaker 1: well so not great, Yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's bad. There's another guy who Okay, so the
Speaker 1: cops are completely convinced this guy who was completely innocent. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: I do want to say, like I'm gonna say a
Speaker 1: lot of people are innocent because they are. But also like,
Speaker 1: even if you're guilty, you no one deserves this, Like
Speaker 1: maybe the cops doing it deserve it. But even then
Speaker 1: it's I don't even think they do, Like yeah, you don't,
Speaker 1: yeah people, yeah, like so this guy, you might knock
Speaker 1: down a statue or three, but yeah, like you know,
Speaker 1: like it's yeah, it's it's really grim like yeah. So
Speaker 1: they hold this guy's mouth open with a pen, right,
Speaker 1: and then they keep elbowing him in the stomach until
Speaker 1: he throws up. Um. And so she tries to get
Speaker 1: medical attention because he keeps throwing up because he has asthma,
Speaker 1: I mean also because she just got elbowed in the
Speaker 1: stomach repeat his mouth yeah um. And instead of giving
Speaker 1: him medical treatment, even though he like easily could have died,
Speaker 1: the cops just beat him up for asking. There's another
Speaker 1: guy who gets uh sexually abused with the barrel of
Speaker 1: a gun, and when he starts screaming, the guard the
Speaker 1: gun goes on a ranch about how he needs to
Speaker 1: be careful or he might accidentally pull the trigger. Oh boy,
Speaker 1: it's it's bad. Um. This this is all within that
Speaker 1: specific yeah, this is this is this is this is
Speaker 1: all just in Homeland square. Um. He claims that like
Speaker 1: the cell he's being held in, he doesn't get any food,
Speaker 1: doesn't get any water. They keep him there for hours
Speaker 1: and the like the cell just smells like blood and
Speaker 1: like feces because yeah, they don't let people go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom to other individuals. Uh. Stephanie Martinez and Calvin
Speaker 1: Cofy described relieving themselves will shackled in a Home and
Speaker 1: Square and interrogation room. Martinez locked up with two thousand
Speaker 1: and six, was told by a guard that she did
Speaker 1: not have the key to Martinez has handcuffs and could
Speaker 1: not take her to the bathroom. Kofi, taken to Home
Speaker 1: and Square on the sixth of February two fifteen on
Speaker 1: suspicion of narcotic activity, defecated on the floor after two hours,
Speaker 1: fruitlessly requesting for the bathroom. A police officer made Calvin
Speaker 1: clean it up with his skull cap. The lawsuit alleges
Speaker 1: it's these people are sick there. It's it's yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they hate that it's like yeah, and you know the
Speaker 1: things they're holding children in here, like they have people
Speaker 1: as young as fifteen who are being literally everything about
Speaker 1: this is that when so sometimes sometimes you get sort
Speaker 1: of like arrested normally, although again I should mention that
Speaker 1: the Constitution does not exist, like it's it's fake, it's
Speaker 1: a lie. No one ever gets read the miranda rights.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter because the constitution doesn't exist if you're poor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sort of exists if you're not, but I will
Speaker 1: guarantee you they're reading their miranda rights to people who
Speaker 1: look like they got yeah, yeah, yeah, no, these people
Speaker 1: there's actually a story of these two point rieking guys
Speaker 1: who got brought in and they like the cops are
Speaker 1: like trying to get them, give us something, and they
Speaker 1: just like they start name dropping like civil rights lawyers,
Speaker 1: and the cops are like, okay, okay, uh, we're good.
Speaker 1: We'll we'll we'll drive you back. If you don't talk,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll drive we'll drive you back to like where
Speaker 1: you came from. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's extremely grim. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They just want to funk with people who can't defend themselves. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know and then the way they do this right,
Speaker 1: like they they do these raids where like everyone's they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're not wearing badges. Everyone's just like wearing
Speaker 1: matt like like black armor and like black masks. And
Speaker 1: so people describe getting like dragged out of their house
Speaker 1: and they don't know if they're getting robbed or like
Speaker 1: if they're being kidnapped. And then they are being kidnapped
Speaker 1: by just being kidnapped like by the cops, and they
Speaker 1: get dragged and then again they're they're dragging like fifteen
Speaker 1: year olds into into this thing. Uh. There there's one
Speaker 1: guy who gets found unresponsive in an interrogation room. Um, now,
Speaker 1: the police say that they died from heroin overdose. But
Speaker 1: this makes literally no sense. So the first reason why
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense is that the cops initially
Speaker 1: lie about where he about where he like had the
Speaker 1: overdose and died because they don't want to reveal that
Speaker 1: he uh you know, was in their secret black site,
Speaker 1: so they like lied and that he was another he
Speaker 1: was at another site. Now, the other thing you know
Speaker 1: that that contradicts the claimed that this guy was had
Speaker 1: a heroin overdose is that the hospital when he when
Speaker 1: when the hospital saw him, they wrote that he was sober,
Speaker 1: So I mean he could have he could have had
Speaker 1: a heroin overdose in terms of the cops injecting him
Speaker 1: full of yeah, like yeah, that's the most likely thing,
Speaker 1: Like it does nothing part of this. So so this
Speaker 1: guy was selling cocaine right, um, but again he's selling cocaine,
Speaker 1: not heroin. And the other and you know, his his partner,
Speaker 1: like there was another guy he was he was selling
Speaker 1: cocaine with like his partner, when everyone who knew him
Speaker 1: was completely insistant that you know he does he doesn't
Speaker 1: do drugs, right, he sells them because you know, do
Speaker 1: you sell drugs? But yeah, and and the cops and
Speaker 1: you know, there are things that the cops do. The
Speaker 1: comp thing where they they changed their story twice. So
Speaker 1: originally they said that he like committed suicide by heroin overdosing,
Speaker 1: and then they changed their story too. He died by accidents. Um.
Speaker 1: The The other thing that that indicates that he probably
Speaker 1: did not in fact die from heroin overdose is that
Speaker 1: there's bruises all over his face. He has a busted lip,
Speaker 1: his neck is super red, and none of that shows
Speaker 1: up in the in the police autopsy and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this all reads just like a standard Burge error interrogation,
Speaker 1: so that like they beat him, they put a bag
Speaker 1: over set to suffocate him, and then you plant heroin
Speaker 1: on him and you know, you you call him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the day's work. Yeah yeah, and you know, and
Speaker 1: there's there's another thing that that that I should mention
Speaker 1: here about the story, which is that, Okay, so this
Speaker 1: guy is in a Chicago Police Department black site, right,
Speaker 1: how did he get heroin in? Like everyone in his
Speaker 1: black site is literally shackled to a wall, Like there's
Speaker 1: no the old, the oldly place the hair we could
Speaker 1: possibly have come from is the cops. So it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, and independent autopsy says he dies of hissphyxiation.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, I'm gonna read something from the Guardian
Speaker 1: about the guy who uh, the guy's partner who was
Speaker 1: in the next cell over. The other partner who requested
Speaker 1: to be cited as John Dowell. He rebuilds his life
Speaker 1: post conviction, was in a Home and Square interrogation room
Speaker 1: near Galvin's. While Dobe was unable to see inside, he
Speaker 1: told the Guardian he heard a lot of commotion, then
Speaker 1: booming and banging, and then a gagging sound coming from
Speaker 1: his friend's cell his partner. Yeah, so this this guy,
Speaker 1: uh like his partner, Like he's that guy's also like
Speaker 1: chained to a wall for like twelve hours. Um here
Speaker 1: here's he he's with them today. I heard a holler.
Speaker 1: I heard officers talking to him. After that, I just
Speaker 1: heard a lot of commotion like boom boom boom boom
Speaker 1: and banging boom boom, boom, boom boom, And then I
Speaker 1: didn't hear nothing after that. My door was kind of
Speaker 1: cracked and then they shut it. After that, they shut
Speaker 1: my door all the way before the police shut the
Speaker 1: door dozed, I heard a gagging sound like he makes
Speaker 1: a choking noise, like choking, like somebody was choking after
Speaker 1: the commotion, like choking. Yeah, oh yeah, it's it's very
Speaker 1: it's very obviously from the get go. Yeah. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: they tortured this guy to death and yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the other fun part about Homelod squares Homeles
Speaker 1: Square is also used to torture political prisoners. All right, So,
Speaker 1: Brian Brian Jacob Church is a member of the NATO three,
Speaker 1: which is a group of anti NATO protesters and twelve
Speaker 1: who got set up by an incredibly elaborate government entrapment
Speaker 1: scheme and arrested for it. Um and he was taken
Speaker 1: immediately to Homeland Square. He's never read his branda rights.
Speaker 1: He's cuffed to a bench for seventeen hours, um, and
Speaker 1: he he asked to call his lawyer because like a
Speaker 1: good leftist, he has the National Lawyers Field number written
Speaker 1: on his arm. And you know, this is something that's important.
Speaker 1: So the Guardian talked to like dozens of people who
Speaker 1: were held here right Um. Exactly two of them were
Speaker 1: able to contact a lawyer, and they were both white
Speaker 1: and church Church is one of them. And this is
Speaker 1: actually how uh part of how Home and Score goes
Speaker 1: public because Brian Jacob Church like talks to the press
Speaker 1: about it and Spencer Ackerman it's a great journalist, does
Speaker 1: a bunch of incredible reporting and like brings the black
Speaker 1: site to light. And so there's there's seven thousand and
Speaker 1: eighty five people we can prove we're taken to Home
Speaker 1: and Square. Uh, six thousand of those people are black.
Speaker 1: Less than one percent of those people had their rest logged,
Speaker 1: which means the cops just vanished them. Uh, it's almost
Speaker 1: certainly more people. Now, I'm going to read something about
Speaker 1: this from from the book Writings from the World of Policing.
Speaker 1: This Home and Score revelation seems to me to be
Speaker 1: an institutionalization of practices that date back more than forty years,
Speaker 1: said Flint Taylor, the civil rights lawyer and most associated
Speaker 1: with pursuing area to Commander John Burge. Back when I
Speaker 1: first started working on torture cases started representing criminal defense
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, Taylor continued. My my clients
Speaker 1: often told me they've been taken from one police station
Speaker 1: to another before ending up an area to where they
Speaker 1: were tortured. That way, the police prevent their families and
Speaker 1: lawyers from seeing them until they could coerci the torture
Speaker 1: or other means confession from them. So, yeah, that that's
Speaker 1: our fucking police reform. Instead of having a instead of
Speaker 1: taking the police station to police station, the police have
Speaker 1: now been reformed so that they have one institutionalized black
Speaker 1: site instead of multiple ones. Home and Square is still
Speaker 1: open to this day. That this came out in FI,
Speaker 1: there have been like over half a decade of protest
Speaker 1: against it. Um, so supposedly the rules have changed and
Speaker 1: if you get a rested they have to put you
Speaker 1: in the system. But square is still open. There's probably
Speaker 1: another one like somewhere that they've just they've they've they've
Speaker 1: they've switched which side they're doing their black sites on.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well, yeah, I have I have a have
Speaker 1: a closing statement. It is it is an inhuman crime
Speaker 1: that a single one of these fucking demons is allowed
Speaker 1: to roam our streets with the badge and the authority
Speaker 1: to rape, torture and murder us and the certainty system
Speaker 1: will beat us into a pulp if we attempt, even
Speaker 1: in the smallest way both symbolic way possible, to resist them.
Speaker 1: The police must be abolished. There is no alternative. For
Speaker 1: the sake of our survival, for the survival of children,
Speaker 1: and for the sake of every generation that is bore
Speaker 1: its horrors before us. We could only abolish the police,
Speaker 1: salt the earth upon which it stands, and drive the
Speaker 1: very concept of policing into a space of such infamy
Speaker 1: and terror that even the worst among us would not
Speaker 1: dare to even propose bringing it back. Also, get rid
Speaker 1: of that last statue. Yeah, that one destroyed. Let's knock
Speaker 1: that one out of there too. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like everyone who's ever been to that site has
Speaker 1: should have the the the like universal right to take
Speaker 1: a hammer and maybe you know, maybe maybe an RPG
Speaker 1: and just like do whatever they want to that building. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the men who continued to like in women
Speaker 1: who continued to work in CPD, like anyone who was
Speaker 1: ever arrested by them or or otherwise brutalize them should
Speaker 1: just forever have the right to just give him like
Speaker 1: a solid shot to the balls, you know, like just
Speaker 1: just like they get to wear a little sign around
Speaker 1: their neck and it's like, oh that guy used to
Speaker 1: that guy was you know, it was one of Burgess dudes.
Speaker 1: So anybody who sees them can just give him, give
Speaker 1: him a little haymaker right in the right in the
Speaker 1: bread basket. That is a proposal, that is I'm running
Speaker 1: from the mayor of Chicago. I mean, I I'd look,
Speaker 1: our bears all suck, so you know, move move over here,
Speaker 1: and we we we we can propose a solution to
Speaker 1: this problem that is so unbelievably not proportionately violence to
Speaker 1: what the police have been doing that it boggles belief,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure I can still manage to be corrupt. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's Chicago, you can't not. I mean, I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean life was sort of corrupt. Life's less corrupt
Speaker 1: than normal. She's just bad. But yeah, it's Chicago. You'll
Speaker 1: you'll find corrupt, corruption will be foisted upon you. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm actually fine with that. Well, another another uplifting episode
Speaker 1: of It could happen. Yeah, I will say this, like
Speaker 1: Garrison named it last yet earlier today, Hi, here's a
Speaker 1: problem by you know, and I will say any any time,
Speaker 1: any time someone tells you that, like, no, it's fine,
Speaker 1: we're going to reform the police, just like remind them
Speaker 1: that reforming the Chicago Police Department went was that the
Speaker 1: reform was that we don't have black sites. We do
Speaker 1: have we don't have consulidated the black We were from
Speaker 1: multiple black sites to one black site. And also they
Speaker 1: probably moved it again just you just have to get
Speaker 1: rid of that is the essence of police report. Yeah. Anyway, Yep,
Speaker 1: there's a problem. Okay, bye bye. Hey, We'll be back
Speaker 1: Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
Speaker 1: heat Death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot
Speaker 1: com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for it could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.