Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's got to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions. A welcome back to
Speaker 1: it could happen here a podcast about world stuff fallen apart,
Speaker 1: putting it back together, all that good stuff. Today we're
Speaker 1: actually covering something that's at the intersection of all of that,
Speaker 1: both how fucked up things are and the attempt to
Speaker 1: make them more just, more equitable, less nightmarish. We're talking
Speaker 1: about war crimes, the International Criminal Court, and most specifically
Speaker 1: the warrant that was just issued for Vladimir Putin's rest,
Speaker 1: which is something you've probably heard about on the internet.
Speaker 1: People have various takes on this in order to kind
Speaker 1: of talk about what's actually been done, what it actually means,
Speaker 1: and sort of the history of attempts to hold the
Speaker 1: leaders of nations to account for war crimes. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to Nick Waters. Nick, Welcome to the show. Hi, Nick,
Speaker 1: You and I have some connections outside of this. First off,
Speaker 1: you're here on the show today because you work in
Speaker 1: an investigatory investigative capacity. Geez, can you tell that I'm
Speaker 1: not used to waking up this early for Bellingcat where
Speaker 1: we both work together. Your focus has been primarily on
Speaker 1: war crimes. You've been covering Ukraine lately, but you have
Speaker 1: a pretty wide purview and a pretty wide base of experience,
Speaker 1: including crimes in Libya, and yeah, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you a little bit. First off, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much, mate. In of behind the Bostons. I
Speaker 1: have the largest knife I could find in this place
Speaker 1: next to me. It's not quite machete, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I thought I should have one just in case.
Speaker 1: That's that's good I've got um Well, yeah, I actually
Speaker 1: am more or less knifeless here. I do have a
Speaker 1: nine millimeter in the desk, but somewhat more limited span
Speaker 1: of uses. Um now, Nick, you and I. You and
Speaker 1: I have shared one of the strongest bonds that two
Speaker 1: men can share, which is eating some really delicious a repas.
Speaker 1: But um we we we also share an interest in
Speaker 1: the somewhat difficult history of attempts from our species to
Speaker 1: kind of grapple with the nature of war crimes, of
Speaker 1: acts of genocide and hold people to account for them. Um.
Speaker 1: I kind of think before we get into what's happened
Speaker 1: with Putin, we should talk about what the ICC is
Speaker 1: and what its history comes from, because this it actually
Speaker 1: dates back a little over a hundred years attempts to
Speaker 1: make the ICC. I think nineteen nineteen was the first
Speaker 1: convention in which a number of European nations were like, boy,
Speaker 1: we should really have some sort of court put together
Speaker 1: to attempt to hold leaders and individuals to account for
Speaker 1: committing war crimes. Yeah. I'm not that familiar with the
Speaker 1: kind of the very long history of attempts at international justice.
Speaker 1: Suffice to say that so far hasn't worked out quite
Speaker 1: how I think everyone expects it to. That that is
Speaker 1: the tl DR, the international justice good idea hasn't happened
Speaker 1: yet pretty much. Yeah, I mean there's been lots of yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of agreements obviously, kind of everyone knows Geneva Convention,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Lots of other agreements about how not to
Speaker 1: kill people in the most horrific way as possible in war,
Speaker 1: and you know, as part of that like room statue
Speaker 1: which created the ICC. Yeah, it was green in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. So yeah, it's been kind of like one
Speaker 1: hundred years or sort of efforts before the ICC actually
Speaker 1: got here. Yeah, auld probably also I need to say,
Speaker 1: like before we kind of get going anything. I'm not
Speaker 1: a lawyer, which is super important because I know all
Speaker 1: the lawyers out there will be like angry about it.
Speaker 1: So Nick, I want to talk about what in particular
Speaker 1: this decision means, because there's bit like obviously, I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say in the immediate term, probably nothing
Speaker 1: like it's not like the International War and agents are
Speaker 1: going to come out and arrest Vladimir in the Kremlin
Speaker 1: or in his mansion that you see fake photoshopped images
Speaker 1: of on Twitter all the time. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so in kind of like day to day stuff, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have that much an effect. So Russia doesn't
Speaker 1: recognize the jury resdiction of the ICC. So it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, the FSB are going to storm into the
Speaker 1: Kremlin and aar Resputin and like export him to the
Speaker 1: Hague in a you know, different matter bag or something
Speaker 1: that's that's not going to happen, um. But in other
Speaker 1: ways it's it's a big deal in other ways. Um.
Speaker 1: And also it's for me, like really the biggest thing
Speaker 1: about this is that it's an indicator about how seriously
Speaker 1: the ICC is taking taking this war. International justice moves
Speaker 1: so slowly, you know, we're talking like you know, mentioned
Speaker 1: in decades, so to having a restaurants out, yeah, in
Speaker 1: one year is like a really big deal for the
Speaker 1: ICEC at least. Yeah. And this is because if I'm
Speaker 1: an that mistake in the both Putin and the woman,
Speaker 1: because he's not the only one, by the way, that's
Speaker 1: been been charged by the the ICC. UM. There's also
Speaker 1: I'm gonna attempt to get her name right, Maria Lvova Belova,
Speaker 1: who is the Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason why this has happened so rapidly
Speaker 1: is that both Putin and Maria have made pretty unequivocal
Speaker 1: statements about the removal of Ukrainian children from their families,
Speaker 1: forced deportation into Russia, and adoption by Russian families, which
Speaker 1: is that is a war crime, that is an act
Speaker 1: of genocide. Yeah, so I think the actual crime is
Speaker 1: on lawful deportation, or the actual citation is on n
Speaker 1: awful deportation of Ukrainian children, which yes, could be arguably
Speaker 1: and again at this point emphasized to lawyer, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think can feed into the kind of accusations of genocide.
Speaker 1: And so it's a pretty big charge to level against
Speaker 1: Putin and this commissioner this early on. I think it's
Speaker 1: also like one of the easier ones as well, Like
Speaker 1: in the view of the Russian States, this is a
Speaker 1: you know, wonderful thing they're doing. They are essentially kind
Speaker 1: of rescuing these children from and you can't see if
Speaker 1: I'm doing air quotes right now, like Kinian Nazis educating
Speaker 1: them and bring them up as Russian children, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're taking these children away from their culture, their families,
Speaker 1: and their country to basically erase who they are, which
Speaker 1: plays a quite a big part in the accusation that's
Speaker 1: could be part of a act of GENOCIDEA yeah, And
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to me Levova Belova has kind of
Speaker 1: described this like her justification of this, and I think
Speaker 1: the Russian states justification of this is both that, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians Nazis, and also I've I've heard claims from
Speaker 1: her that like, well, we're removing children from a dangerous
Speaker 1: war zone, which you know, that begs the question why
Speaker 1: is it a dangerous war zone right now? Among other things.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that's interesting to me is
Speaker 1: that Levova Belova is not just part of the state
Speaker 1: apparatus of carrying out this act, but has also thanked
Speaker 1: Putin publicly for making it possible for her to adopt
Speaker 1: a child from dun Bass, which is one of the
Speaker 1: Russian occupied parts of Ukraine. So, yeah, it is it
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting the stuff that had to fall
Speaker 1: into place for this to be able to happen in
Speaker 1: such an expeditious manner. Yeah, I think it helps that
Speaker 1: they view all the Russian state views this act is
Speaker 1: something that is beneficial and so they want to say, hey,
Speaker 1: look we're rescuing these children. And you can see kind
Speaker 1: of similar You've seen similar vibes with like basically stealing
Speaker 1: Ukrainian cultural heritage from museums and stuff like that, they
Speaker 1: or the Russian state believes, you know, that they are
Speaker 1: doing the right thing, like we are very proud that
Speaker 1: we have taken these objects away and we are saving
Speaker 1: them again from Ukrainian Nazis. And so they make public
Speaker 1: announcements about it, they say, yeah, we're doing the thing.
Speaker 1: It's awesome, isn't it. Yeah, And so the result is
Speaker 1: quite a lot of evidence that they're doing these pretty
Speaker 1: bad things. And so yeah, there's there's quite lot of
Speaker 1: evidence there. There are statements from his Commissioner for Children
Speaker 1: from Peton, it's pretty clear what's happening. So it's quite
Speaker 1: a I think it's quite an interesting charge to bring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're just so people are aware of the scale.
Speaker 1: President Zelinsky, if Ukraine at least has says that his
Speaker 1: country has recorded about sixteen thousand cases of forcible deportations
Speaker 1: of children. That's not like a final number, just like
Speaker 1: the death talies and whatnot or not final numbers, but
Speaker 1: that's that is the Ukrainian state's estimate of how many
Speaker 1: kids have been taken away, which is a I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty staggering number. I mean, yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: huge number of children. Yeah, yeah, I know, that's an
Speaker 1: absolutely huge number of children. And then you have to
Speaker 1: account you know that it's not just a children, they're
Speaker 1: the victims it's also their families who are the victims.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about like a knock on effect with
Speaker 1: you know, tens of thousands of people who've been affected
Speaker 1: by these arcs. It's not more than that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think probably, I mean, sixteen thousand children are probably higher
Speaker 1: than the tens of thousands in terms of family members
Speaker 1: and whatnot who are impacted by this. In terms of
Speaker 1: what technically this means for Putin, there's about there's I
Speaker 1: think one hundred and twenty signature signatory nations to the
Speaker 1: Rome Statute, and within those countries, theoretically, if if Putin
Speaker 1: or if Maria were to travel there, they would theoretically
Speaker 1: be arrested if they were to set foot in one
Speaker 1: of those signatory nations. Yes, so theoretic theoretically doing a
Speaker 1: lot of walking there, Yeah, doing a lot of heavy lifting. Okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, in theory, if Putin, trup's any of these
Speaker 1: nations who should be arrested. But some of the nations
Speaker 1: don't recognize or believe that heads of states are basically immune,
Speaker 1: and I imagine there will be several of those signatories
Speaker 1: who will likely refuse to extradote Putin. Should mister Putin
Speaker 1: visit them and this has actually happened before, so I
Speaker 1: think it was South Africa refused to extradite a former
Speaker 1: head of states. I think it was a leader of
Speaker 1: South suit done. But yeah, it wasn't it wasn't it
Speaker 1: Elmarba Sheer, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: it was Elmarbasheer. Yeah. So he actually travel around and
Speaker 1: was not arrested and extradited as theoretically should have been. However,
Speaker 1: it still gives mister Putin and especially security details some
Speaker 1: headaches because they're still going to have to check with
Speaker 1: these states when they go and visit you know, hey,
Speaker 1: are you going to like arrest him, which is not
Speaker 1: like a cool usually have to ask, and then if
Speaker 1: they were planning to arrest him, you know, they might
Speaker 1: not tell them that they're planning to arrest them. So
Speaker 1: there's always going to be well at the moment, there's
Speaker 1: still like a cost applied to mister Putin in terms
Speaker 1: of traveling to these countries that would you know, you
Speaker 1: might still like considered the ic jurisdiction of the heads
Speaker 1: of states to be lacking. Um, yeah, yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: still there's still like some some cost deployed. Though if
Speaker 1: I'm remembering correctly, there have been three sitting heads of
Speaker 1: state that have faced ICC charges in office. We talked
Speaker 1: about Omar Bashir, Um, Momar Kadafi uh and now Putin
Speaker 1: is number three. UM, which is, if we're if we're
Speaker 1: looking at the history of the last you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: just since the establishment of the ICC, fewer than the
Speaker 1: number of world leaders who have been involved allegedly in
Speaker 1: uh uh crimes against humanity, I think fair to say um,
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the question of, like, what does
Speaker 1: it mean to be a signatory UM to Rome, to
Speaker 1: the ICC, what does it mean to actually be bound
Speaker 1: by any of these rules? Because both Russia and the
Speaker 1: United States, it was looking at a map earlier that
Speaker 1: kind of lists out every countries relationship to the ICC,
Speaker 1: in both Russia and the United States are in the
Speaker 1: position of like having endorsed aspects of the ICC and
Speaker 1: then not signed on right, yeah, yeah, yeah, again, not
Speaker 1: not that familiar with how the ICC works in practice,
Speaker 1: but basically, if you sign up to the ICC, you
Speaker 1: have to agree to enforce their judgments, you know, including
Speaker 1: a restaurants, which again is something like the US and
Speaker 1: US and Russia haven't done the idea that basically the
Speaker 1: ICC market is itself as markets, itself basically thinks of
Speaker 1: itself as a court of last resort. So you know,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be out there prosecuting individual sold
Speaker 1: or fair unlikely to be prosecuting like individual soldiers who've
Speaker 1: like say executed like temprince and war in a ditch.
Speaker 1: That's something that is unlikely that the ICC is going
Speaker 1: to prosecute. They are going for, you know, high in commanders,
Speaker 1: people who've carried out like extremely civilar acts yea, and
Speaker 1: especially in cases where like a state is not able
Speaker 1: to carry out such prosecution. So for example, take the UK,
Speaker 1: so UK has in theory conducted investigations into allegations of
Speaker 1: war crimes in a rock, conducted by its troops. That
Speaker 1: was I had so the Iraq Historic Allegations Team. It
Speaker 1: was pretty shambolic. It is extremely shambolic. It was a
Speaker 1: really bad investigation. The not just for the victims who
Speaker 1: basically no one really ever got justice from it, Very
Speaker 1: very few people ever got justice from it, but also
Speaker 1: the people who are actually accused were sometimes like investigated
Speaker 1: multiple multiple times. But because the UK made some kind
Speaker 1: of effort to investigate it, even if it was absolutely shambolic.
Speaker 1: It's unlikely that the ICC has ever actually going to
Speaker 1: investigate UK soldiers for walk in Rock, because in theory
Speaker 1: that should be the UK carrying out their investigation, and
Speaker 1: in theory they have carried out their investigation. It's completely
Speaker 1: in other quotes. But yeah, that's that's the justification. That's
Speaker 1: incredibly interesting to me because it does seem like on
Speaker 1: one hand, I can see the logic, and this is
Speaker 1: part of why, like the US, the United States, my
Speaker 1: country's justification for why we are not a signatory is
Speaker 1: that the Constitution does not allow us to agree to
Speaker 1: have our citizens tried for crimes that they are being
Speaker 1: tried for in the United States by an international court
Speaker 1: something along those lines. And I can understand the idea that, like, well,
Speaker 1: national sovereignty, like, the only way we're going to get
Speaker 1: anyone to agree to let this thing exist in abide
Speaker 1: by any aspect of its rulings is if it does
Speaker 1: not overly interview with their national sovereignty and to including
Speaker 1: their ability to prosecute their own soldiers for war crimes.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, the state of affairs, as you've
Speaker 1: just related. The state of affairs is inadequate, right, Like
Speaker 1: that is, the system that has been developed is not
Speaker 1: adequate to to trying or achieving justice in a case
Speaker 1: like the Iraq War, in which there were a lot
Speaker 1: of crimes committed that people have not been punished for.
Speaker 1: And I I mean, obviously you have to kind of
Speaker 1: marry that to the fact that the attempt to do
Speaker 1: something at all in this way is extremely new. As
Speaker 1: we've said, like there are we have, like most of
Speaker 1: the people who work on my show are older than
Speaker 1: the ICC, and so that's that's still an achievement. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I'm wondering kind of like what you see
Speaker 1: is like the positive future for attempts to hold individuals
Speaker 1: and nations to account here, Like is that is it
Speaker 1: continuing to grind like this or do you see kind
Speaker 1: of a more positive opening coming forward as a result
Speaker 1: of particularly the attention that all of these these war
Speaker 1: crimes in Ukraine have gotten. I mean, I think it
Speaker 1: can need to grind. When you look at the history
Speaker 1: of atrocities that have taken place in conflict over the
Speaker 1: last you know, like twenty years, it's just absolutely huge. Yea,
Speaker 1: you know, there's like atrocity upon atrocity upon atrocity, and
Speaker 1: the ICC you can only investigate a tiny number of those.
Speaker 1: The reality is that only a tiny fraction of those
Speaker 1: atrocities will ever actually be investigated in victims faced justice.
Speaker 1: That is the reality of the situation. The ICC does,
Speaker 1: you know, carry out investigations and does carry out prosecutions,
Speaker 1: but again we're talking like the most grave crimes possible,
Speaker 1: and usually you know, really senior people who often are
Speaker 1: able to evade those kind of prosecutions. I think there's
Speaker 1: a better chance of some kind of justice at like
Speaker 1: a national level with universal jurisdiction. So recently, universe or
Speaker 1: jurisdiction was used in Germany to prosecute two Syrian officers
Speaker 1: who basically a torture against the Syrians during during the revolution,
Speaker 1: and those those two syranofsicers have basically fled to fled
Speaker 1: to Germany and related prosecuted that. And so it's not
Speaker 1: just the ICEC, it's also universe jurisdiction. It is you know, trubunals,
Speaker 1: there's other stuff there. But again, like this is only
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of everything that gets investigated. And I've
Speaker 1: been reading going through several different books about Joseph Mengela
Speaker 1: most recently and including some accounts from um. You know
Speaker 1: Jewish doctors who are enslaved and who are forced to
Speaker 1: work at Auschwitz. And I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: the Nate like the different kinds of war crimes. Right,
Speaker 1: you have a group of Australian or US or British
Speaker 1: soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq who commit a massacre, kill
Speaker 1: a number of civilians, and that is a war crime.
Speaker 1: But there's also the kinds of war crime that is
Speaker 1: a war crime that is the result of individuals taking
Speaker 1: individual actions right as opposed to the actions of a state,
Speaker 1: and the actions that are a result of years worth
Speaker 1: of directed cultural efforts, which I think is part a
Speaker 1: way to look at what the Russian state's attitude towards
Speaker 1: Ukrainians are and a lot of the crimes that have
Speaker 1: been committed over there. The denial of the existence of
Speaker 1: Ukrainians as a people is deeper and more complex than
Speaker 1: the kind of crime that a soldier might commit in
Speaker 1: a moment of passion, and fundamentally different from that. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. If you like, for example,
Speaker 1: to go back to Mangola, if you're trying to judge
Speaker 1: Mangola for his crimes, you have to judge the entire
Speaker 1: German medical establishment, which joined the Nazi Party in higher
Speaker 1: numbers than any other group in the country, and which
Speaker 1: was directly implicated in how Auschwitz functioned and why it
Speaker 1: worked the way it did. And there's realistically, like most
Speaker 1: of the doctors Mangela, there were attempts to punish him.
Speaker 1: Obviously he escaped, but the doctors who edge jucated him,
Speaker 1: who taught him, who who inculcated him in the attitudes
Speaker 1: that were directly responsible for the crimes that he committed,
Speaker 1: were never punished. And legally, I don't know how you
Speaker 1: would punish people for that. How do you punish someone
Speaker 1: for promuligating ideas like the ideas that Ukrainians are not
Speaker 1: a people, which leads to a lot of the violence
Speaker 1: that you're seeing over there, Like, how do you like,
Speaker 1: there's not, realistically, in at least in my understanding of
Speaker 1: the law, a way to punish that. But it is
Speaker 1: a factor in these crimes. Yeah, the creation of a
Speaker 1: culture absolutely is and a key Like a really good
Speaker 1: example of this is the radio station Rwanda, Yes who
Speaker 1: you know broadcast basically effectively caused to genocide. And I
Speaker 1: think they were actually ended up being prosecuted by the ICC.
Speaker 1: I think actually as well. I believe, Yeah, I believe
Speaker 1: there were at least attempts. Yeah, the International Criminal Tribunal
Speaker 1: for Rwanda. Yeah, I mean, it's one thing when you're
Speaker 1: talking about like direct incitements to violence. It's another one
Speaker 1: you're talking about like kind of the stuff that Dugan
Speaker 1: is responsible for, which is absolutely a factor, the kind
Speaker 1: of id the ideas that he was one of the
Speaker 1: people who was kind of promuligated under the direction of
Speaker 1: Putin and others in the Russian state are like a
Speaker 1: factor in the behavior that we've seen over there. But
Speaker 1: it also is harder to kind of qualify it as
Speaker 1: a direct call for war crimes in some cases, although
Speaker 1: some of the stuff Dugan has said, I think you
Speaker 1: could you could argue is certainly like a direct call
Speaker 1: to violence. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, well, it's really
Speaker 1: difficult to kind of get that to raise up to
Speaker 1: the threshold of prosecution. It's really difficult thing to do,
Speaker 1: especially if you are external to the culture that is
Speaker 1: or to the organization that is creating that internal culture.
Speaker 1: And I'm like very familiar with this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: having for those of you if you listened to from
Speaker 1: one will be familiar. I was an army officer, so
Speaker 1: like quite a big part of my job was making
Speaker 1: sure that like the culture within my cartoon was a beneficial,
Speaker 1: good culture in which the blokes would knock go off
Speaker 1: and like murder people. And you read about stories like
Speaker 1: my Lie or there's a really good example for this
Speaker 1: book called Black Hearts, this American plating in Iraq, and
Speaker 1: it's really clear where basically institutional culture has completely failed
Speaker 1: or has created a culture in which basically committing atrocities
Speaker 1: or murder is either you know, mildly ignored or actively encouraged.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that that culture is something that is really
Speaker 1: difficult to police because it really has to come from
Speaker 1: within the institution itself, you know, unless you just completely
Speaker 1: destroy the institution itself, which is also another option, which
Speaker 1: is what the Canadians did with their Airborne Regiment after
Speaker 1: some of their guys in Somalia like roasted some poor
Speaker 1: guy alive on a fire. Jesus, the Canadians basically just
Speaker 1: disbanded the entire album regiment. They basically said, like the
Speaker 1: culture in this regiment is not us. It's too far gone. Basically,
Speaker 1: we're going to dispand this entire regiment, which is what
Speaker 1: they did, so you can't do that too. It's quite
Speaker 1: a difficult thing to do, kind of. The last thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to go over is the uh, the most
Speaker 1: recent the response of the Russian state to these warrants.
Speaker 1: One of them has been they've announced that they are
Speaker 1: in carrying out an investigation into the ICC, which is it,
Speaker 1: you know, um, I'm sure as meaningful as the sentence
Speaker 1: I just said. And I the other thing that they've
Speaker 1: done is sort of threatened to launch a hypersonic warhead
Speaker 1: at the Hague, which I mean, like, it's not he
Speaker 1: does have a lot of missiles, so it's you can't
Speaker 1: like completely disregard a threat from a nuclear armed nation
Speaker 1: to launch missiles at the Hague. But it's also just
Speaker 1: you know, threats like these are not completely and in fact,
Speaker 1: there's a provision in um what is it called. Let
Speaker 1: me let me double check on the name here. I'm
Speaker 1: so bad at remembering the names of laws. UM, the
Speaker 1: American Service Members Protection Act that does theoretically allow the
Speaker 1: use of military force by the US if American citizens
Speaker 1: are extradited. Um, so like this is this is like
Speaker 1: a much cruder version of that, like if you arrest us,
Speaker 1: will Well will nuke they. But it does like it's
Speaker 1: one of those things we're laughing about it. But if
Speaker 1: you if you were to go back ten years and
Speaker 1: imagine that threat being leveled, like even by Putin, it
Speaker 1: would seem like farcical. Um, I guess it is farcical,
Speaker 1: But we're here. Yeah, it's it's it's completely insane, isn't it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like how do you respond to that? Like right,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna I'm gonna hypersonic They the Hague response,
Speaker 1: it's just like, yeah, it's mad. Like when if you
Speaker 1: go to the Hague, like the ICEC, you know you'll
Speaker 1: have like the security guards sat there with their little
Speaker 1: kind of nine mill pistol and they're kind of buzzing
Speaker 1: through that kind of stuff, and like the idea of
Speaker 1: them kind of you know, trying to fight off like
Speaker 1: a delta force assault on the ICEC in the case
Speaker 1: where like in a recond soldier there is like it's farcical,
Speaker 1: but then the idea that they could do anything because
Speaker 1: like a hypersonic missile is like thirty seconds away from
Speaker 1: like obliterating the entire You gotta really, you gotta really
Speaker 1: leave the missile. I mean, I mean, the only kind
Speaker 1: of benefit I suppose is that like the ICEC is
Speaker 1: on the outskirts of the Hague, so they would irradiate
Speaker 1: actually quite a bit of a residential area and then
Speaker 1: a lot of sand dunes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: one of the appside is that if Russia does nuke
Speaker 1: the Hague, we will have deeper concerns than what to
Speaker 1: do about international criminal law and the wake of that,
Speaker 1: including taking sufficient iodine pills, which I'm not by I mean,
Speaker 1: people everyone gets is antsy about enough today. I don't
Speaker 1: think this is like a realistic threat. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's likely that the Russian state is going to nuke
Speaker 1: the ICC. Unfortunately. Part of why it's unlikely is that
Speaker 1: it's unlikely that Putin is going to face direct justice
Speaker 1: for his actions unless he is somehow overthrown right like
Speaker 1: that is realistically, the only case by which he winds
Speaker 1: up in front of the ICC is if he is
Speaker 1: forced out of power. Yeah, I mean, like when I
Speaker 1: when this you know, news first broke. There are some
Speaker 1: people who are saying, hey, is this a big deal,
Speaker 1: little like will never you know, people mc justice, and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he might, he probably won't, but on the off chance,
Speaker 1: it's always good to have that there. You know, I
Speaker 1: went Slobadamnossovich uh, you know, step down was president president
Speaker 1: of Serbia. You know, there was I think there was
Speaker 1: a law which meant that he couldn't actually be extracted
Speaker 1: to the icc So everyone said the same thing, you know,
Speaker 1: he's never going to face justice, and then he ended
Speaker 1: up at the ICCA. And if there is some kind
Speaker 1: of cool or something, you know, not now, maybe in
Speaker 1: the year's time, two years time, fifteen years time. You know,
Speaker 1: Putin is a very valuable bargaining chip, and being able
Speaker 1: to sent him to the Hague would be an extremely
Speaker 1: powerful message of hey, guys, we're entering a new era
Speaker 1: like Russia. The Russian state doesn't want to be associated
Speaker 1: with what happened under Putin's rule. He go have mister
Speaker 1: Putin put him on trial, and you know, he becomes
Speaker 1: like quite an important bargaining chip, and so yeah, the
Speaker 1: chance of it happening is like pretty small, but it's
Speaker 1: still there. It's still worth doing this and that's I
Speaker 1: think where I land is. I've just been again reading
Speaker 1: about In this winter of nineteen forty four, there was
Speaker 1: a rebellion in Auschwitz by a number of members of
Speaker 1: the Sonder Commando, which was a group of prisoners who
Speaker 1: were tasked with the actual like job of making the
Speaker 1: camp function. And these guys rebelled, they blew up a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff. And the whole attempt, this whole like
Speaker 1: attack that cost hundreds of them their lives, was in
Speaker 1: the hope that one of them would get out and
Speaker 1: tell the story of what had been happening inside. And
Speaker 1: when you think about it that way, what historically, and
Speaker 1: not just going back to the Holocaust, but the entire
Speaker 1: long history of war like human war crimes which go
Speaker 1: back as far as war. The desire of victims to
Speaker 1: have someone be aware of what has happened to them,
Speaker 1: I think makes this a positive move in the middle
Speaker 1: of an incredibly dark chapter in human history and an
Speaker 1: incredibly awful war. The fact that this is happening at all,
Speaker 1: as flawed, as imperfect as the whole and it's you know,
Speaker 1: people keep bringing up things like the inequities of the
Speaker 1: prosecution of like the United States and Israel for a
Speaker 1: number of different acts of their states and militaries. But like,
Speaker 1: even given all that, the fact that this is happening
Speaker 1: at all is I think meaningful. I do think it matters.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a meaningful Like it's very much like a
Speaker 1: statement of intent from the ICC and especially from the
Speaker 1: new prosecutor, the ICC cream Con who came in last
Speaker 1: year and he's kind of like, as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell, come in and shaking a few cages, and
Speaker 1: it's a very clear statement of intent from both himself
Speaker 1: and from the court as well. Yeah, well, I think
Speaker 1: that's as good a note as any to end on. Nick,
Speaker 1: Do you want to direct anybody towards um place they
Speaker 1: can can donate or something they can or a place
Speaker 1: they can go to read up more on this series
Speaker 1: other issues of international criminal justice. I mean, yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: direct people to to Bell and catocom, which is who
Speaker 1: I work for my twitters and non school Waters eighty nine.
Speaker 1: I don't really go on Twitter that much anymore. Something
Speaker 1: happened there, I don't know men, Yeah, but I place
Speaker 1: the occasion every so often. But yeah, felling out the
Speaker 1: con would be you wor'd recommend that's where like our
Speaker 1: work is anyway. Yeah, well, Nick Waters, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on, for lending your expertise here. That's
Speaker 1: going to do it for us here, and it could
Speaker 1: happen here. Sorry for using the word here so many times.
Speaker 1: Have a lovely day, everybody. Hey everyone, this is it
Speaker 1: could happen here a podcast about things falling apart sometimes
Speaker 1: about putting things back together. This is one of the
Speaker 1: former episodes because we are recording this in the immediate wake,
Speaker 1: within a couple of hours of America's the United States
Speaker 1: of America's most recent mass shooting in Tennessee at a
Speaker 1: Christian school called Covenant. You know, obviously there are way
Speaker 1: too many mass shootings in the United States for us
Speaker 1: to cover each one. We are talking about this now
Speaker 1: in a timely manner because there's a bunch of very
Speaker 1: specific disinformation coming out about it, and particularly disinformation that
Speaker 1: is part of the broader targeting by the right wing
Speaker 1: of transgender people. So I'm gonna for the first part
Speaker 1: of this, I'm going to turn things over to Garrison,
Speaker 1: who has been doing specific research on the shooter and
Speaker 1: what we can actually verify at this moment about their identity. Upfront,
Speaker 1: I'll say that the police have identified this person as
Speaker 1: Audrey Hale twenty eight of Nashville NBC News notes quote
Speaker 1: who said she identifies as transgender. Again, this is not
Speaker 1: quite right. We'll talk about it. But the right wing
Speaker 1: is obviously running with the idea that this is a
Speaker 1: transgender shooter and part of a trans a series. They
Speaker 1: will argue of transgender attacks on Christians. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the right wing sort of analysis of this later,
Speaker 1: but first I'm gonna again push to Garrison, who will
Speaker 1: talk about what we actually can verify about this person
Speaker 1: and about this shooting at this point. Yeah, just as
Speaker 1: a note here, throughout this episode, there will be some
Speaker 1: what is probably miss gendering because we're going to be
Speaker 1: quoting from a lot of other people's statements, and also
Speaker 1: there will be a mentions of like a few slurs
Speaker 1: against trans people, just because we are quoting from whole
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff, and some of the details
Speaker 1: regarding the gender of the person in question is relatively
Speaker 1: unknown at the time. So just as a heads up, Okay,
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm gonna just gonna go over a few
Speaker 1: things regarding what we know happened, What the what the
Speaker 1: school was, because I think that kind of that might
Speaker 1: play into it, but that will kind of veer on speculation.
Speaker 1: So we're just going to limit it towards what we
Speaker 1: actually know and then attempt to avoid speculation on this epimosphere. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: someone caring multi fire arms entered a private Christian school
Speaker 1: in Nashville this Monday morning and shot and killed three
Speaker 1: nine year old students and three adult staff members in
Speaker 1: their sixties, including the head of the school, doctor Katherine Khans.
Speaker 1: Police initially claimed the shooter was a teenager, but minutes
Speaker 1: later changed course and described them as a twenty eight
Speaker 1: year old woman from Nashville. It was then reported pretty
Speaker 1: quickly in NBC News that the shooter was identified as
Speaker 1: Audrey Hale, twenty eight, of Nashville, and the police chief
Speaker 1: said she identifies as transgender. NBC has another article out
Speaker 1: there that says Audrey Haile, twenty eight, who police say
Speaker 1: was a transgender woman, quote unquote. So we will get
Speaker 1: into that here in a sec But the shooter entered
Speaker 1: the Covenant School via a side door, according to the
Speaker 1: Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Don Aaron, and was armed with
Speaker 1: at least two quote unquote assault style rifles and a
Speaker 1: handgun unquote. It looks like it's an ar rifle and
Speaker 1: an air pistol and then also a handgun. Nashville Police
Speaker 1: Chief John Drake has said, quote at one point she
Speaker 1: was a student at that school, but we are unsure
Speaker 1: of what year unquote, and that Hale shot through the
Speaker 1: door to gain entry into the school. The shooter made
Speaker 1: their way through the first and second floors at the school,
Speaker 1: firing multiple shots before Hale was killed by police on
Speaker 1: the school's second floor. So it's assumed by the police
Speaker 1: at this point, and they may have evidence that it's
Speaker 1: not been like made public yet that the shooter did
Speaker 1: attend to school, but they are unsure for like exactly
Speaker 1: how long and what years specifically. I think it's it's
Speaker 1: important to mention a few things about the school just
Speaker 1: because this is a very unique mass shooting in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, mass shootings at private schools, let alone
Speaker 1: private Christian schools is very rare. And this is also
Speaker 1: like a preschool through sixth grade school. So the Covenant
Speaker 1: School is a pre school through sixth grade private Christian
Speaker 1: school founded in two thousand and one, and it shares
Speaker 1: the same location as Covenant Presbyterian Church. The website states
Speaker 1: it has thirty three teaching faculty and around two hundred
Speaker 1: enrolled students per year, with tuition at around sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars a year. According to the school's website, to quote,
Speaker 1: the Covenant School is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church
Speaker 1: created to assist Christian parents and the church by providing
Speaker 1: an exceptional academic experience founded upon and informed by the
Speaker 1: Word of God. So, I mean, honestly, this this is
Speaker 1: something that's pretty similar to the type of Christian school
Speaker 1: that I grew up in. It's the school that's attached
Speaker 1: to this church. I also had around two hundred fellow students,
Speaker 1: so that this seems seems to be relatively pretty similar
Speaker 1: and not super uncommon for this type of private Christian school.
Speaker 1: That's kind of all I'm going to get into that here.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I've looked around the school's website a lot,
Speaker 1: and it seems pretty pretty basic in terms of these
Speaker 1: types of Presbyterian private Christian schools. But now we're gonna
Speaker 1: start getting into some of this stuff regarding the identity
Speaker 1: of the shooter and a lot because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of information going around. NBC News is now claiming that
Speaker 1: the shooter is a transgender woman. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: fully accurate. Um, but we're gonna effect quoting directly from
Speaker 1: the car. Yeah. This is to be fair, I mean,
Speaker 1: partly NBC's fault, because more they should have done as
Speaker 1: much research as you did, Garrison. Yeah, but they are
Speaker 1: quoting the police. Yeah. Yes. The gist is that the
Speaker 1: police identified this as a transgender woman. They have a manifesto.
Speaker 1: We don't know what's in the manifesto, but yeah, police
Speaker 1: continue gare Yeah, and I guess I guess one of
Speaker 1: the things that's reported is after police said this was
Speaker 1: a transgender woman, they also talked about how Hale had
Speaker 1: conducted surveillance and prepared for the attack with detailed maps. Um.
Speaker 1: And then also the aforementioned manifesto. But yes, we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna move on to some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: we do know using just basic open source research stuff.
Speaker 1: So there is a LinkedIn page for someone named Audrey
Speaker 1: Hale in the Nashville area. They list a lot of
Speaker 1: various like illustration jobs they've had for the past few years,
Speaker 1: and they do have a little pronoun marker next to
Speaker 1: their name that says he him. Hale appears to have
Speaker 1: had a website for their graphic design portfolio called AH Illustrations,
Speaker 1: so just their initials AH. They have posts in they're
Speaker 1: being tagged from twenty twenty three from twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: so it's been at least up for two years. I
Speaker 1: tried to do like metadata stuff on some of their artwork.
Speaker 1: I did not really get much in terms of what
Speaker 1: year they were posted, but we may be able to
Speaker 1: learn more about that later. The website has an about
Speaker 1: page that introduces the person as Audrey Hale, but it
Speaker 1: also directs you to a now vanished Instagram page called
Speaker 1: at Creative period Aiden. So we're we're going to go
Speaker 1: through some of the rights initials a bit later, because
Speaker 1: they were already calling us a transgender shooting before any
Speaker 1: information came out at all, as a part of the
Speaker 1: Sam Hide joke. Yeah, for reference, Sam Hide is kind
Speaker 1: of a right wing comedian who had a show on
Speaker 1: Adult Swim. For the last several years, it has been
Speaker 1: a meme to every time there's a shooting, there's a
Speaker 1: specific picture of Sam Hide holding a rifle that people
Speaker 1: will post and say, I'm getting this picture that you
Speaker 1: know this was the shooter at whatever. It's been at Parkland,
Speaker 1: it's been at El Paso, it's been at Duvaldi. Every
Speaker 1: single shooting this happens. And with this shooting, someone photoshopped
Speaker 1: some ladies head onto sam hide and claimed immediately that
Speaker 1: it was a transgender person. This also ties into the
Speaker 1: Highland Park shooting, where the shooter wore women's clothing at
Speaker 1: some point to try to escape, and the right continually
Speaker 1: tries to claim that that makes it a transgender shooting. Anyway,
Speaker 1: please continue, gare yes. So, by going through their online
Speaker 1: portfolio dated as far back as twenty twenty two, I
Speaker 1: found a self portrait that has a has a different
Speaker 1: social media user name titled at cree dot tiv Dre.
Speaker 1: I think Dre is for like Audrey, and this also
Speaker 1: appears to be an old Instagram handle before they changed
Speaker 1: it to at Creative. Aiden Hale's website also has another
Speaker 1: self portrait just tagged with the name Aiden and Aiden Creates.
Speaker 1: That one appears to be from maybe slightly after, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of unclear with how the website is laid out.
Speaker 1: So although the Instagram page for this person appears to
Speaker 1: be taken down. It's unknown if they took it down
Speaker 1: or if Instagram took it down, but it is gone
Speaker 1: and there's no archive of it. It appears that Hale
Speaker 1: did have other social media accounts that are still online
Speaker 1: besides the aforementioned LinkedIn. A TikTok account by the name
Speaker 1: of I am Underscore Aiden ten shares a profile picture
Speaker 1: with Hale's own website, and it also links to Hale's
Speaker 1: Instagram page, which is mentioned on Hale's website. The TikTok
Speaker 1: was seldom active, but their first visible post is from
Speaker 1: March fifteenth, twenty twenty two. There are two other posts
Speaker 1: from that month, and all three of these posts are
Speaker 1: like about late nineties early two thousands video game nostalgia,
Speaker 1: and thanks to TikTok's user name embedding feature, we can
Speaker 1: see that the account used to be called Audrey Video
Speaker 1: Game Nerd Underscore ten before being changed to i am
Speaker 1: Aiden ten sometime between March sixteenth and April fifteenth of
Speaker 1: last year. Hale's last visible post is just from over
Speaker 1: a month ago, February ninth, twenty twenty three, and yeah,
Speaker 1: just as a note kind of I've gone over less
Speaker 1: of this than you. But I've I've combed over what's available.
Speaker 1: I don't notice any of the normal red flags. There's
Speaker 1: not even like pictures of this person posing with firearms.
Speaker 1: There's not threats. There's one video where they seem to
Speaker 1: be mourning a friend or a relative, but it's a
Speaker 1: pretty normal, like in memorium style video. None of their
Speaker 1: art strikes me as disturbing in any way. No, it's
Speaker 1: at least one red rum one they have. They have
Speaker 1: one piece of Shining fan art that the Right's been using.
Speaker 1: It sticks out, but also like the Shining is one
Speaker 1: of the most popular movies of all time. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: nothing nothing. As someone who's looked through the social media
Speaker 1: accounts of a lot of shooters, this account is relatively normal,
Speaker 1: like they there's nothing in here that would be immediately
Speaker 1: red flags. They did a lot of like corporate work.
Speaker 1: I think I think they did artwork for the city
Speaker 1: of Denver. Yeah, it looks like it. They were being
Speaker 1: commissioned to do a graphic design for a lot of businesses,
Speaker 1: a lot of like local events in Nashville. Um. There
Speaker 1: is one other thing from their website that I will mentioned, uh,
Speaker 1: part of their bio they have this sentence that says,
Speaker 1: there is a childlike part of me that loves to
Speaker 1: go and run around on the playground, and the rights
Speaker 1: using this in like a like a weird like a
Speaker 1: groomer way, being like this this kid wants, this adult
Speaker 1: wants to go around with two playgrounds and their childlike
Speaker 1: this is this is a completely normal thing to say.
Speaker 1: This is like, this is not a red flag. This
Speaker 1: is I also enjoy going on the playground. This is
Speaker 1: not a red flag either. This is just part of
Speaker 1: weird culture war stuff. Yeah, yeah, I have another thing
Speaker 1: about being a kid forever and ever as well. It
Speaker 1: just seems that they connected with childhood things and those
Speaker 1: kind of things. Yeah, and like psychologically, maybe being kind
Speaker 1: of stuck in the past or whatever is a part
Speaker 1: of how they describe or justify this in their manifesto.
Speaker 1: We just don't know. But the point of the matter
Speaker 1: is if you had looked at this person's social media prior,
Speaker 1: and this is very different from most shooters, you would
Speaker 1: not have thought, oh, this is a person who is
Speaker 1: of danger to people. There's there's just not signs in it.
Speaker 1: I mean, the one thing that is the kind of
Speaker 1: last thing I'll mention is the I think the two
Speaker 1: other adults that were shot. One was a custodian, There
Speaker 1: was a was a I think it was like a
Speaker 1: substitute teacher. Um. They were all in their sixties. Um.
Speaker 1: It's unclear how long those two other people have been
Speaker 1: with the school of the head of the school has
Speaker 1: been been there for a while. Um. But I mean
Speaker 1: because because it is a preschool through sixth grade school, UM,
Speaker 1: Hale would not have been at the school relatively recently.
Speaker 1: I can try to I'm trying. I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: like quick math here to be like if you would
Speaker 1: if you be in sixth grade and you're now twenty eight,
Speaker 1: seventeen years ago, yeah, eleven years old, right, American's five yeah, yeah, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's certainly it's it's started in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one. So yeah, that's that is that is
Speaker 1: that is possible. Yeah. I do want to note a
Speaker 1: couple of things before we move on to the right
Speaker 1: ring wing reaction. One of them just kind of again
Speaker 1: to to sort of boil it down based on what
Speaker 1: is available publicly, we know this person seemed to have
Speaker 1: been born and raised as Audrey Hale, started going by
Speaker 1: Aiden at the latest sometime last year. Their LinkedIn shows
Speaker 1: them at that point as using he him pronouns, but
Speaker 1: still but still with the name Audrey, but still with
Speaker 1: the name Audrey. It is actually very much at this
Speaker 1: point still unclear how they exact precisely identified what pronouns
Speaker 1: they used. We certainly don't know whether or not they
Speaker 1: were on any kind of like hormones, not that that
Speaker 1: would have an impact on any of this, but we
Speaker 1: have very little actual information. The police are saying that
Speaker 1: they identify themselves as transgender in the manifesto. At some
Speaker 1: point we might learn more as a result of that,
Speaker 1: but but it is. It is a lot of what's
Speaker 1: being put out as either unclear or you know, wrong
Speaker 1: in one way or the other. There's just a lot
Speaker 1: of information that is kind of missing about this person.
Speaker 1: People are jumping to conclusions on stuff, So we will
Speaker 1: probably learn more there later. One more note on this.
Speaker 1: The police are the ones that initiated the use of
Speaker 1: the term manifesto. Of now, there was no manifesto published
Speaker 1: by the shooter. We do not know if this is
Speaker 1: a quote unquote manifesto like at all. The police have
Speaker 1: claimed that they found writing when they rated this person's house,
Speaker 1: So this writing discussing things around their gender or what
Speaker 1: they were doing this This could be anything from like
Speaker 1: a suicide note to just like a diary or a journal.
Speaker 1: So by using the word manifesto, they're kind of trying
Speaker 1: to tie it into that. We simply at this point
Speaker 1: do not know if this was a manifesto at all,
Speaker 1: Like we just that is that is a very loaded
Speaker 1: term in this context. I think it's notable that the
Speaker 1: shooter did not publish anything. Whereas usually when there's like manifestos,
Speaker 1: they are they are published online, right the shooter, the
Speaker 1: shooter themselves will publish it online and that is kind
Speaker 1: of part of their entire attack. That is not the
Speaker 1: case here. The shooter did not publish anything about this
Speaker 1: attack online that we've or that we've found, or that
Speaker 1: anyone's found. So I think that's an important thing to
Speaker 1: note when we're talking about the use of the word
Speaker 1: manifesto here in terms of like the importance of a manifesto,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking as someone who has written professionally about
Speaker 1: a number of them, Manifestos are obviously useful, especially when
Speaker 1: trying to analyze why someone did something, what their political
Speaker 1: goal may have been, if they're indeed there's a political goal,
Speaker 1: what their radicalization pathway has been. But a crucial thing
Speaker 1: is to never ever take a manifesto purely at face value.
Speaker 1: Manifestos are political writings by terrorists, right, That is what
Speaker 1: a manifesto is, And they are writings that are kind
Speaker 1: of calculated to achieve a goal. And I don't know
Speaker 1: what this person put in their manifesto. Their manifesto muld
Speaker 1: just have been a perfectly like accurate summation of their
Speaker 1: feelings of why they did this terrible thing. That's possible,
Speaker 1: we say, we don't know at this point. But manifestos
Speaker 1: are a part of understanding a shooting and what the
Speaker 1: goal was of the shooting and what the individual hope
Speaker 1: to accomplish. But they cannot and never should be taken
Speaker 1: at face value. And that's what a lot of media
Speaker 1: are going to do if this every does get public.
Speaker 1: So please always show care and skepticism of directly reading
Speaker 1: from a manifesto, like even in the case, you know,
Speaker 1: there's just a lot, like in the christ Church manifesto
Speaker 1: of like bullshit, shit posting, jokes and stuff thrown in
Speaker 1: there with the real stuff. It's generally possible to us
Speaker 1: to get to gather and understand motive from a manifesto,
Speaker 1: and I am you know, I will read it if
Speaker 1: it becomes available, but be very careful with such things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of not being careful, let's talk about the right
Speaker 1: wing response to this, because I think broadly speaking, it's
Speaker 1: fair to characterize it as they are claimed, this is
Speaker 1: part of a line of terror attacks by transgender people.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of folks saying that this is reason
Speaker 1: to ban gender affirming care, to ban hormone therapy, to
Speaker 1: ban trans people from purchasing firearms. This is a pretty
Speaker 1: rampant on the right already. It became very quickly, so
Speaker 1: I actually want to go over one thing I just
Speaker 1: came up and saw while Gare was talking that I
Speaker 1: think is interesting as Candice Owens. Candice Owens is a
Speaker 1: right wing commentator, unfortunately quite influential and has a sizable platform.
Speaker 1: I want to quote from her response. Her initial response,
Speaker 1: this was the immediate response when all the information was out,
Speaker 1: was that there'd been a shooting at this school. I
Speaker 1: live in Green Hills, and I'm positively devastated for the
Speaker 1: families impacted by this tragedy, Please suspend your politics and
Speaker 1: instead do what these families at this Christian school would want. Pray.
Speaker 1: That's a perfectly reasonable response, at least for somebody who
Speaker 1: believes in prayer. Within a matter of like an hour
Speaker 1: or so, it became clear that or information began to
Speaker 1: come out that the shooter was likely transgender, at which
Speaker 1: point Candace suspended her statement about not making it politics.
Speaker 1: She posted shortly after, transgenderism as a mental illness. Keep
Speaker 1: your children away from transgendent individuals and their parents. People
Speaker 1: that support and encourage as air monsters and should be
Speaker 1: kept away from children. They yelled at. Matt Walsh made
Speaker 1: a statement, why haven't would be given the name of
Speaker 1: the mass shooter yet, and Candace responded, because they're wiping
Speaker 1: the socials so they can make things up about the person.
Speaker 1: She noted as to a post by Matt Walsh being like,
Speaker 1: the question is why this culture is producing so many
Speaker 1: people who want to carry out attacks like this. Take
Speaker 1: the guns and you'll still have a country infested by
Speaker 1: homicidal sociopaths. Where they're coming from, what is creating them?
Speaker 1: Candace responded, I would start with the fact that we
Speaker 1: now celebrate clinical insanity while we admonished normalcy. People are
Speaker 1: aspiring to mental illness because they receive attention and off
Speaker 1: times are awarded for perversity. She is essentially taking the
Speaker 1: stance of like, we have to blame this on the
Speaker 1: fact that this person was transgender and being transgenderism mental illness, right,
Speaker 1: That's the stance Canvas is taking. That's the stance a
Speaker 1: lot of folks are taking. One of the most widely
Speaker 1: shared posts from a right winger on this was by
Speaker 1: a guy named dc Underscore. Draino notes himself as a husband, patriot, lawyer, constitutionalist,
Speaker 1: and anti woke. He has six hundred eighty six thousand
Speaker 1: followers on Twitter. He has been relentless in posting about
Speaker 1: this as an act of transgender terror. He has spread
Speaker 1: at some of the information that Garrison added on this
Speaker 1: podcast about this person's social media posts, and his posts
Speaker 1: are some of the most widely read and like that
Speaker 1: I've seen. One of them reads. Unconfirmed reports identify the
Speaker 1: Nashville shooter as Audrey Hale, a biological female that identifies
Speaker 1: as he him on their LinkedIn. Authorities believe the transgender
Speaker 1: shooter previously attended the Christian school. He then follows, we
Speaker 1: will not let this story be swept under the rug.
Speaker 1: Trans terrorism must be confronted head on and stopped. Tennessee
Speaker 1: just passed laws restricting sextualized drag shows for children and
Speaker 1: banning the genital mutilation of children. Was today's mass shooting
Speaker 1: at a Christian school by a transgender killer and act
Speaker 1: of domestic terror? And when will we start talking about
Speaker 1: transgender mass murders targeting innocent school children in our schools?
Speaker 1: Enough as enough? And in this they posted a link
Speaker 1: to a reader's story about a shooting from last year.
Speaker 1: I think it was in Colorado in Denver. This was
Speaker 1: a shooting where two people, one of whom was transgender,
Speaker 1: walked into a school in Denver and shot at several classmates,
Speaker 1: killing one. They claimed it was revenge on classmates over bullying.
Speaker 1: The McKinney, the transgender shooter, has been sentenced recently, so
Speaker 1: it's been in the news. This is being built as
Speaker 1: like a transgender terrorist attack because spoiler, there's very few
Speaker 1: cases of trans people carrying out acts of violence, so
Speaker 1: they're kind of grabbing what they can in order to
Speaker 1: try and make an argument that this is part of
Speaker 1: a trend um. In the absence of any kind of manifesto,
Speaker 1: people are claiming that transidentity motivated the killings. The police
Speaker 1: seem to have helped to jump start this, all right,
Speaker 1: So first off, we're going to play before we continue,
Speaker 1: We're going to play a clip of the police press
Speaker 1: conference where the police chief of Nashville talks about what
Speaker 1: has happened um and talks about the information that they
Speaker 1: have about the shooter based on the apparently the manifesto
Speaker 1: that they have in the maps that they have. So
Speaker 1: we're going to play that. Now. Our investigations tell us
Speaker 1: that she was a former student at the school. I
Speaker 1: don't know what great she's attended or great, but we
Speaker 1: do firm the delite she was a student there. She
Speaker 1: does identify as trends. Yes, history, no history at all,
Speaker 1: and no motive of disappoint anything just go in the
Speaker 1: apartment or house. No, we have a manifesto. We have
Speaker 1: some writings that we're going over that pertain to this day,
Speaker 1: the actual incident. We have a map drawn out of
Speaker 1: how this was all going to take place. Uh, there's
Speaker 1: right now a theory of that's that we may be
Speaker 1: able to talk about later. But it's not confirmed, and
Speaker 1: so we'll we'll put that out as soon as we can.
Speaker 1: There any reason to believe that how she identifies is
Speaker 1: as any motive order targeting school, we can give you
Speaker 1: that at a later time. There is uh some theory
Speaker 1: to that. We're investigating all the leads and once we
Speaker 1: know exactly, we'll let you know. As a target at
Speaker 1: a time, it was a gender man or woman. Don't
Speaker 1: know any history of mental illness at this time, but
Speaker 1: we are looking at that as investigation is ongoing. And
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, or woman a woman? All right? So yeah,
Speaker 1: prison you want to start off here? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: giving like the most charitable reading of that, I think
Speaker 1: it's possible that this police chief does not have as
Speaker 1: a as a full art. I don't think this police
Speaker 1: chief has as an as an in depth understanding of
Speaker 1: gender theory as some of us or the listeners do.
Speaker 1: So it is just confused by that question is it
Speaker 1: a transman or a trans woman? And he answers me
Speaker 1: by saying, yeah, they're trans, but they are a woman.
Speaker 1: So I think that that could be what's going on.
Speaker 1: And then we have outlets like NBC News saying that
Speaker 1: the person's a transgender woman, because they also are, for one,
Speaker 1: not doing like very basic digging online and are also
Speaker 1: just making are just usually enjoy repeating the police's talking
Speaker 1: points when stuff like this happens, because it's just easier. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: Robert here. Shortly after we finish this, the police chief
Speaker 1: of Nashville, John Drake, went on Lester Holtz NBC show
Speaker 1: and gave another statement that was much more accurate than
Speaker 1: the previous statement that we just played you, which the
Speaker 1: right wing is making a lot of hay out of.
Speaker 1: In the statement, they note that the shooter attended the
Speaker 1: school as a child and was resentful of the school
Speaker 1: and of being forced to attend it, that the school
Speaker 1: was the target and not any specific individual, and that
Speaker 1: the victims were random. They also owe in this statement
Speaker 1: to Lester Holt, the police chief makes a lot less
Speaker 1: of a deal about the fact that the shooter was
Speaker 1: trans It seems like the first statement that they made
Speaker 1: was based on either incomplete information or in the heat
Speaker 1: of the moment. But I'm going to play you this
Speaker 1: statement and then we will continue the episode. It sounds
Speaker 1: like things are moving very quickly. You describe this as
Speaker 1: a targeted attack, and you elaborate absolutely. So. The person
Speaker 1: we know as Audrey Hale, she's a twenty eight year
Speaker 1: old NATSH Fillion. We have believe or feel it's very
Speaker 1: strongly that she went to school here in the natural area,
Speaker 1: and she went to that actual school, and and so
Speaker 1: there's some belief that there was some resentment for having
Speaker 1: to go to that school. Don't have all the details
Speaker 1: of that just yet, and and that's why this incident occurred.
Speaker 1: Did Hale target in your mind, did Hale target the
Speaker 1: school or someone in the school? She targeted random students
Speaker 1: in the school, just whoever, and and persons whoever she
Speaker 1: came in contact with, she fired rounds. You recovered what
Speaker 1: you've described as a manifesto. You've also said that Hale
Speaker 1: identified as trans. Do you believe there is a connection
Speaker 1: to that. We feel that he identifies as trans, But
Speaker 1: was still in the initial investigation into all of that,
Speaker 1: And if it actually played a role into this incident.
Speaker 1: As we know more, we'll definitely make that known, but
Speaker 1: right now we'll unsure if that actually played a role.
Speaker 1: But does the manifesto point you in a particular direction
Speaker 1: that you can reveal that has in the initial investigation
Speaker 1: we've turned it over to the FBI. We've looked over
Speaker 1: it as well, and it indicates that there was going
Speaker 1: to be shootings at multiple locations and the school was
Speaker 1: one of them. There was actually a map of the
Speaker 1: school detail and surveillance entry points and how this was
Speaker 1: going to be carried out on this day. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think a big part of this is that after
Speaker 1: a mass shooting in any national paper or other media outlet,
Speaker 1: you're always trying to be first with something, and that
Speaker 1: creates a situation where like, you don't fact yet, you
Speaker 1: don't do the basic ocin looking up right, You just
Speaker 1: like cops have said something, get it out, get the most,
Speaker 1: get a ton of clicks, And that leads to disappointing
Speaker 1: sort of repetition of half well in falsehoods that we're seeing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it leads to it provides a lot of So
Speaker 1: one thing that the right has always understood is that
Speaker 1: the immediate aftermath of a story that breaks into the
Speaker 1: news is you call it the wet cement period, where
Speaker 1: if people are talking about it, if you can, if
Speaker 1: you can lasso a narrative and drag it out in
Speaker 1: front of everybody and get momentum behind it. Then that
Speaker 1: effectively becomes reality for an awful lot of people, and
Speaker 1: it's very important, which is why they're all immediately falling
Speaker 1: into line on this. One of the posts that I
Speaker 1: just ran across is from Benny Johnson, who's a right
Speaker 1: wing media guy. So Benny Johnson says, the Colorado spring
Speaker 1: shooter identified as non binary, the Dinver shooter identified as trans,
Speaker 1: the Aberdeen shooter identified as trans, the Nashville shooter identified
Speaker 1: as trans. One thing is very clear, the modern trans
Speaker 1: movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists. Elon Musk responded to
Speaker 1: this with an exclamation point, which is great. Um, the
Speaker 1: Colorado spring shooter was not non binary. The Colorado springshooters
Speaker 1: lawyers made that claim briefly while they were trying to
Speaker 1: cobble together a defense after this person killed two trans
Speaker 1: people and shot up an LGBT nightclub. The Dinver shooter
Speaker 1: is the person we just talked about. Um well, I
Speaker 1: mean also they also could be referring to that to that, yes,
Speaker 1: probably yeah, yeah, and um yeah, it's uh like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's frustrating, like what they're doing with this stuff here,
Speaker 1: Like it's very obvious, especially in trying to wrap in
Speaker 1: the attack of a right wing terrorist on an lgbt
Speaker 1: UM club to part like to an act of like
Speaker 1: claiming that it's an act of transgender terrorism. UM. A
Speaker 1: lot of this is spreading, particularly among people who paid
Speaker 1: for blue check marks on the new Twitter um, because
Speaker 1: that's like, yeah, this is kind of the first mass
Speaker 1: shoot we have had in the new Elon's kind of
Speaker 1: new check mark thing, where like people are able to
Speaker 1: kind of verify themselves for money, and we're about to
Speaker 1: see all of the old verified accounts. Loves verification. We'll
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about how well that's actually
Speaker 1: working for them later, which is actually less clear, so
Speaker 1: that's possibly a positive thing. But yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious. Andy knows posted about this. He's another He
Speaker 1: works for a place called The Post Millennial. He's a
Speaker 1: right wing gooul. He says the shooting comes amid a
Speaker 1: surge of far left death threats in Tennessee over the states,
Speaker 1: you know, anti trans laws. He provides no evidence of this.
Speaker 1: He does quote or cite an eminem's ad that Audrey
Speaker 1: Hail made that is like a Pride ad that says
Speaker 1: born this way you know, it's like a rainbow of
Speaker 1: Eminem's that says born this way appears to be something
Speaker 1: that they may have done for money. I don't know,
Speaker 1: isn't really relevant to the situation. One of the uglier
Speaker 1: posts that I found on a right comes from a
Speaker 1: guy who identifies himself as an American dissident, Stu Peters.
Speaker 1: He's the executive producer Have Died Suddenly, which is one
Speaker 1: of these right wing attempts to connect every single death
Speaker 1: of a person who got vaccinated to the vaccination, which
Speaker 1: is a ghoulish thing to do anyway. And yeah, they
Speaker 1: they initially leapt into there's a lot of like ugliness
Speaker 1: in here. Stu is one of the more open folks,
Speaker 1: calling them a tranny named Audrey Hale who is a
Speaker 1: former student of Covenant School. They kind of interpret the
Speaker 1: police statement, which is at least very warbly, as the
Speaker 1: police saying this was a direct attack on Christians, which
Speaker 1: the cops have not yet said. Stu posts police admit
Speaker 1: this was a targeted attack on Christians by a demonic
Speaker 1: tranny for some context. Another one of his posts is
Speaker 1: arguing that Zelinski is waging war on Christians. So you
Speaker 1: know this is a should be seen with guys like
Speaker 1: this in addition to being the troubling thing that it
Speaker 1: is part of kind of the broader like echo chamber
Speaker 1: that the right has set up for itself. Like this
Speaker 1: is troubling and problematic and to a degree frightening, and
Speaker 1: they're going to continue to try to push for disarming
Speaker 1: trans people as a result of this. I suspect we'll
Speaker 1: see states introduce bills that are red flag laws just
Speaker 1: for trans people. This is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: I am worried about, but it also is kind of
Speaker 1: worth seeing this as this is very much in line
Speaker 1: with the other kind of right wing echo chamber panic
Speaker 1: stuff that is everywhere, and so far, while this is
Speaker 1: deeply concerning, I'm not seeing evidence that it's breaking out
Speaker 1: of the right and like that doesn't mean it's not
Speaker 1: a problem, but it is kind of worth noting. The
Speaker 1: actual trending tags right now on Twitter are not what
Speaker 1: you'd expect. The Tennessee shooting is not trending on its
Speaker 1: own in a particularly high position. It's substantially lower than
Speaker 1: the Uvaldi and Highland Park shootings, both of which you're
Speaker 1: trending right now. This is based on a Twitter account
Speaker 1: I use that is not my Twitter account. It's just
Speaker 1: a blank account, so I'm hoping to get a little
Speaker 1: bit less of a biased thing. When I looked at
Speaker 1: my own accounts trending, it was Uvaldi and Highland Park
Speaker 1: as well as Columbine was trending. Sam Hyde is trending,
Speaker 1: you know, because he always does after a shooting. As
Speaker 1: a result of this stuff, guns is trending. I think
Speaker 1: a R fifteen was trending on one of my accounts,
Speaker 1: But I'm not yet seeing evidence that this is anywhere
Speaker 1: like that. The ant trand stuff has made it outside
Speaker 1: of the right wing fever swamps. Yea, you are getting
Speaker 1: like again. That does not mean it's not troubling. It
Speaker 1: is deeply troubling, but it's also not when I'm looking
Speaker 1: at sort of liberal and centrist responses to this, it's
Speaker 1: noteworthy that what is trending is Uvaldi and Highland Park
Speaker 1: and Columbine because what's common is people sort of putting
Speaker 1: this within the continuum of America's nightmarish problem with mass shootings,
Speaker 1: particularly at schools, which is the right way to see this.
Speaker 1: This is part of an ongoing series of island acts
Speaker 1: and a mass shooter culture that exists within this country,
Speaker 1: and obviously it's tied to the availability of guns. It's
Speaker 1: tied to a number of things. But it is kind
Speaker 1: of worth noting that when it comes to what most
Speaker 1: people are seeing as a result of this, it is
Speaker 1: another mass shooting in America, and not trans people are
Speaker 1: carrying out terrorist attacks. That is so far, at least
Speaker 1: just like a thing I'm seeing in the right wing
Speaker 1: fever swamps. Yeah, I think. I think Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 1: is one of the first, like sitting politicians to make
Speaker 1: a statement focused on the shooter's gender identity, saying how
Speaker 1: much hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness was
Speaker 1: the transgender Nashville shooter taking. Everyone can stop blaming guns now,
Speaker 1: and like this style of messaging is just blaming the
Speaker 1: shooting on like HRT and and health medication. But there's
Speaker 1: no indication at this point that the shooter was taking
Speaker 1: testosterone or was on any medication. But this is just
Speaker 1: a clear attempt to like tie this shooting into the
Speaker 1: campaign against trans healthcare that that Green has been doing
Speaker 1: for years now, and to make trans healthcare seem like
Speaker 1: the reason that this shooting took place. Yeah, this person
Speaker 1: has kind of already become like like Schrodinger's like gender
Speaker 1: affirming care right where like and you know, suggesting they're
Speaker 1: doing attacks because they can't access gender affirming care. Marju
Speaker 1: Tela Greens is acting that the gender affirming care they
Speaker 1: did access made them become more violent, like the same
Speaker 1: thing with Jack Sobiak, who was saying that testosterone increases aggression. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jack Posobik is an influential Republican advisor and commentator. He's
Speaker 1: a fat he's a fascist, Like, he's a terrible person.
Speaker 1: He's the guy who initially spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: But he is influential on the right because of his
Speaker 1: ability to get stuff to go viral on the base.
Speaker 1: And I guess one thing we should mention that that
Speaker 1: kind of ties into is that Sobiac's been repeating some
Speaker 1: talking points that Tucker Carlson focused on a few nights
Speaker 1: ago during his show. There was an NPR segment about
Speaker 1: trans people who are purchasing firearms to defend themselves that
Speaker 1: interviewed somebody on a number of folks. One of the
Speaker 1: people they interviewed is a person who goes by queer
Speaker 1: armor on Twitter about why they've chosen to be armed
Speaker 1: and like advocate other trans people arm themselves for self defense.
Speaker 1: Tucker took quotes from that person and made a very
Speaker 1: fearmongering piece about how NPR and the liberals want to
Speaker 1: create an army of trans stormtroopers and disarm regular Americans. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the piece, yeah, talking of, like, I guess Americans.
Speaker 1: One thing that's also twending is just an incredibly crass
Speaker 1: photo that the representative for that fifties fifth district, which
Speaker 1: the district the school was in, who's called Andy Ogles
Speaker 1: Ogules maybe posted for his Christmas photo. I guess which
Speaker 1: is him. It's a classic Republican politician photo, right, entire family,
Speaker 1: everyone holding a different variant of an AAR fifteen, and
Speaker 1: it's Yeah, look, I think, regardless of what you think
Speaker 1: about guns, is kind of crass to be parading them
Speaker 1: as like culture war tokens like this. And I've noticed
Speaker 1: that's been trending across a lot of at least of
Speaker 1: timeline I'm seeing. Yeah, this is this is at the
Speaker 1: nexus of a number of things that are like fucked
Speaker 1: up about this country. I'm just enjoying Ian Miles Chong's
Speaker 1: timeline unfortunately, and who is he emails shop? Right we
Speaker 1: engagement provocateur. Yeah, he lives in Thailand, Right, Malaysia. I
Speaker 1: believe Malaysia, Malaysia. He has like he has like half
Speaker 1: a million to followers, influential on the online sphere. His
Speaker 1: telegram is Culture war Room, which is, you know, giving
Speaker 1: you what you need to get. I think so I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read this tweet and obviously, like all
Speaker 1: the sort of content warnings you'd expect, today, a mass
Speaker 1: show to murder three children and three adults at a
Speaker 1: Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The murderer pronouns were, was
Speaker 1: transgender and had written a manifesto detailing their intentions, which
Speaker 1: come days after Tennessee passed child protection laws and tended
Speaker 1: to curb children from being subjected to trans surgeries and
Speaker 1: other irreversible procedures. Their heinous actions follow a month of
Speaker 1: media driven rhetoric about a transgenocide and calls for a
Speaker 1: so called trans Day of retribution. In the United States,
Speaker 1: it is conceivable that much of the conservative public derided assists.
Speaker 1: It's now open season for gender extremists who have been
Speaker 1: terrorizing women who dared to speak out against a woke ideology.
Speaker 1: When they tell you what they intend to do, believe them.
Speaker 1: So Hale has posted nothing about a trans Day of Retribution,
Speaker 1: has posted nothing publicly about being trans. Really, there's not
Speaker 1: a single post discussing their gender identity online. This is
Speaker 1: just they're just trying to weird political points by purposely
Speaker 1: like making it sound like this person was writing about
Speaker 1: this stuff online. And there's no evidence that they had
Speaker 1: writing about this stuff, nor is there any of it
Speaker 1: online that we can find. And yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's basic stuff that people like
Speaker 1: him do in the aftermath of like any type of
Speaker 1: event like this. Yeah, you know, we're gonna end now
Speaker 1: because anything pretty much anymore we said would be getting
Speaker 1: into speculation or just belaboring the point about these fucking
Speaker 1: right wing goals. But I do want to end on
Speaker 1: a post from a follower, a Twitter personality who I
Speaker 1: consider to be pretty pretty savvy. They go by Juniper
Speaker 1: on Twitter. They noted this fifteen years ago. Anytime a shooting,
Speaker 1: the would blome it on Muslims, and if it were
Speaker 1: a Muslim, they would go Hogwhile trying to indict all Muslims.
Speaker 1: They're doing that right now with the Nashville school shooting,
Speaker 1: and we'll try to indict all trans people. Just don't engage.
Speaker 1: See a Matt Walsh take that is incredibly aggravating. Ignore it.
Speaker 1: See a politician tweet miss gendering the shooter while simultaneously
Speaker 1: trying to blame all trans people. Ignore it. Anyone with
Speaker 1: a brain and a shred of empathy, we'll see right
Speaker 1: wingers as the psychopaths. They are a lot of trans
Speaker 1: people are rightfully scared in the world right now. People
Speaker 1: hate us without even knowing us, and how amazing we are.
Speaker 1: Just know that you are loved and we will win.
Speaker 1: The world cannot hate us forever. Hey, everybody, Garrison and
Speaker 1: I are going to put together a post, a substack
Speaker 1: post sort of synthesizing their research and what I've got
Speaker 1: so far in the right wing response, and we will
Speaker 1: be posting that up. It'll be at shatter Zone dot
Speaker 1: substack dot com if you want it in an easier
Speaker 1: text version that you can kind of share with people.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Dick it happened here. A podcast for the
Speaker 1: Thing is Not Well, We're Here has temporarily been relocated
Speaker 1: to the UK once again. Oh what I'm awful place
Speaker 1: to be. Lookay, Yeah, I'm your host, Mia Wong, and
Speaker 1: today with me to talk about things in the Kingdom
Speaker 1: that is united for some reason, is Nick, who is
Speaker 1: a resident nurse there. Nick. How are you doing? I'm
Speaker 1: doing all right? Um, A lot better for being a
Speaker 1: holiday right now. Yeah, yeah, getting getting getting to escape
Speaker 1: the sort of dismal swamp of rainy Rainy Island. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So on the other hand, there are things that are
Speaker 1: in motion on Turf Island which are interesting and cool
Speaker 1: and that is on that Okay. So I have no
Speaker 1: idea once again when this is going to come out,
Speaker 1: Like this could be coming out like four weeks from now,
Speaker 1: like there could be six more prime ministers kudos, what's
Speaker 1: going to happen? Um? Yeah, I six could be Richie's
Speaker 1: outlasted the letters unlike our last one. But you know,
Speaker 1: sorry to anyone who's up to British political memes, that's
Speaker 1: going to be arcane and inscrutable. And I'm not connecting that.
Speaker 1: We we we we we ran them through a like
Speaker 1: two hour British politics boot camp a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: so hopefully they still remember. Yeah. But so the reason
Speaker 1: thing is so on on on the day we are recording,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of strikes going on in the UK.
Speaker 1: There have been a bunch of strikes going on in
Speaker 1: the UK for a while. They keep doing this weird okay,
Speaker 1: this is my this is my, my, my, my, my,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna do my one bit of what
Speaker 1: what are you guys doing strategically thing, which is okay.
Speaker 1: So they keep having these strikes and then they'll like
Speaker 1: go off strike for like three weeks as like a
Speaker 1: quote side of good faith for their negotiations, and then
Speaker 1: nothing happens and they go back on strike and it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: like you could just not do this. Yeah, so straight
Speaker 1: strikes have been continuing, and yeah, I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about some of the nurses strikes that's been
Speaker 1: happening and about the sort of organizing that's been going on,
Speaker 1: because that's what's been really cool and not reported on enough.
Speaker 1: I guess the place that I want to start with
Speaker 1: this is with the last rit of deck. Well. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess there's been a lot of usteria the UK,
Speaker 1: but I want to kind of start with the last
Speaker 1: sort of decade of austerity and the damage that's been
Speaker 1: doing to the healthcare system and what what that's looked
Speaker 1: like on your end. So there's a couple of ways
Speaker 1: it's manifests. One is like there's been a centralization of
Speaker 1: healthcare services are closing down of hospitals and making larger
Speaker 1: hospitals and contain more and more specialties. So for instance,
Speaker 1: my hospital that I work in as a result came
Speaker 1: about the clothing downs about I think three smaller hospitals.
Speaker 1: She is, I mean each hospital that was lost, we
Speaker 1: lost about at least a hundred beds for each one
Speaker 1: that was created. They're centralized into our one. There's been
Speaker 1: massive cut back in like lack of funding and preventive
Speaker 1: healthcare and community healthcare. One interesting example of that manifests
Speaker 1: is like they shifted the provision of community healthcare and
Speaker 1: social care for new mothers to being run by the
Speaker 1: local council that's like local either county or city, even
Speaker 1: larger cities level government, and then they would put out
Speaker 1: the process where rather than just it goes automatically to
Speaker 1: the NHS, it needs to be put out to tender
Speaker 1: and give like charities or nonprofits or even private healthcare
Speaker 1: providers an opportunity to bid on providing the service. That's
Speaker 1: and that's a terrible winner on the system. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely insane. It's absolutely insane. And what this And
Speaker 1: then the end result of this is the NHS service
Speaker 1: gets it because they're the only one that can actually
Speaker 1: credit credit provide the service. But they have to essentially
Speaker 1: massively underestimate how much it will cost to run in
Speaker 1: order to run to run the service, because they have
Speaker 1: to they have to underbid the other services that are
Speaker 1: not going to do Yeah. Wow, and that is a
Speaker 1: terribly designed system. Yeah. And then there's also like introduction
Speaker 1: of like trying to in order to cut back on
Speaker 1: the backlogs that like the cutting down and services have
Speaker 1: created by like outsourcing some healthcare, some surgeries and stuff
Speaker 1: to private healthcare, private hospitals. But then they're able to
Speaker 1: just pick and choose the easiest, least whisky, and most
Speaker 1: profitable ones. And of course, any any complications that result
Speaker 1: of the problems with surgery, issues with treatment, adverse reactions,
Speaker 1: the surgeons fucking it up because they were working overnight
Speaker 1: in order to get extra in order to get some
Speaker 1: extra money after doing a shift in the NHS hospital,
Speaker 1: which is often the case, then falls back on the
Speaker 1: NHS proper and then in terms of workforce the average
Speaker 1: on average. This isn't just nurses. There's a universal pay
Speaker 1: scale using the NHS for everyone called the Gender for Change.
Speaker 1: There's a pastry defined that confusing name, but the reason
Speaker 1: for that is it was a very much it was
Speaker 1: a less unified system before, like the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: everyone knew it was messed up. There was a big
Speaker 1: pushed by unions and also by government who wants to
Speaker 1: rationalize the whole thing to make it make more sense
Speaker 1: in theory, tie people's wage to what they were actually
Speaker 1: doing more directly in a more consistent way. Hence Agenda
Speaker 1: for Change because there was an agenda for changing off
Speaker 1: what's happening, but it's been in placed over twenty years.
Speaker 1: And also the name doesn't make sense, but basically everyone
Speaker 1: on Agenda for Change has on average in the last
Speaker 1: ten years had a twenty percent pay cut in real terms.
Speaker 1: Then doctors and dents because they're special boys love them,
Speaker 1: but you know, have on a different pay scale, and
Speaker 1: junior doctors on average have had an even worse paycut
Speaker 1: of about twenty eight percent. Then there are strikes. There
Speaker 1: are on strike like right now. Yeah, they're on strike
Speaker 1: right now, And unlike my union, they haven't pissed about
Speaker 1: the government. They've gone straight to a full three days no.
Speaker 1: Derogation is the term for agreeing to not provide services
Speaker 1: for life or in order to protect patient safety, which
Speaker 1: the RCN went in for in a big way. In
Speaker 1: some ways, they've got it a bit easier, and that
Speaker 1: they can just say, oh, the consultants will do all
Speaker 1: of this, Like that is do you to translate into
Speaker 1: America to American healthcare that would be attending. And so
Speaker 1: this strike of junior doctors includes everyone from like their
Speaker 1: first two years post medical school what we call foundation years.
Speaker 1: Possibly that'd be equivalent to internship in America, and then
Speaker 1: our registrars, so people residing specialty training equivalent of a
Speaker 1: like a resident. I believe the government tried to persuade
Speaker 1: them to call off in order to go into talks,
Speaker 1: but they hadn't made a big show on promise of
Speaker 1: like we will in good faith, we will call off
Speaker 1: strikes and go into negotiations if the government agrees to
Speaker 1: have serious formal talks. So they were able to just
Speaker 1: say to the government, no, you're putting too many preconditions
Speaker 1: on these talks. We're not doing it until you make
Speaker 1: until you stop messing us about, whereas unfortunately, in my union,
Speaker 1: the RCM is addicted to protecting the image of nursing
Speaker 1: and like acting in good faith even when they're dealing
Speaker 1: with someone who have no intention of dealing in good faith. Yeah, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that I don't know as a strategy. It's
Speaker 1: really frustrating because you're just didn't get ent, like you
Speaker 1: can just get locked in endless negotiations, which is nothing
Speaker 1: is happening, And yeah, it's really frustrating. So provide some
Speaker 1: stir called contact with this RCN. In England, Wales and
Speaker 1: Scotland Northern Ires a slightly different story, had never had
Speaker 1: a strike until last year. Historically the RCN was an
Speaker 1: anti strike union. Wait, yeah, yes, that's the thing in
Speaker 1: the UK. Yeah, like I know, I know, like the
Speaker 1: US has a lot of weird, not very good unions,
Speaker 1: but like I don't know, i'much ever heard of really,
Speaker 1: that's yes. Wow, So that changed either in the nineties
Speaker 1: or the early two thousands. I honestly can't remember when
Speaker 1: I tried to look it up, but whenever you trying
Speaker 1: to search this stuff, just your search results are like
Speaker 1: flooded by stuff around the latest round. What you're going
Speaker 1: to understand is the RCN. It's one hundred and six
Speaker 1: years old. It only became a union though about fifty
Speaker 1: years ago. So the RCN is both the union and
Speaker 1: a professional body in that Okay, it also does stuff
Speaker 1: around developed, developed the nursing best practice research and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, and that's what it existed as originally.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like a like a professional association, Yeah, okay, exactly,
Speaker 1: And so it still has a dual structure of its
Speaker 1: union side, it's professional body side that like develops nursing
Speaker 1: practice and stuff like that. Yeah, well I guess, I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess that that raises the sort of question of like,
Speaker 1: like what was so like unbelievably like what what what
Speaker 1: what happened like such that for the first time in
Speaker 1: like one hundred and whatever years they finally went on strike.
Speaker 1: So it's partially a matter of breaking points. The nursing
Speaker 1: turnover in the UK's absolute dog shit. Um, thousands of
Speaker 1: people leave the profession every year. There's this massive pay
Speaker 1: cut that's happened over the last ten years. Nurse and
Speaker 1: nursing was always underpaid in the UK. To be frank
Speaker 1: there's also then there was the cut in the nursing
Speaker 1: bursary about five years ago. So it used to be
Speaker 1: the government would pay for you to train as a nurse.
Speaker 1: It would also give you not not not like enough
Speaker 1: to be equivalent of the ways of the work you
Speaker 1: were doing. Nursing in the UK has a far higher
Speaker 1: amount of practice hours than it does in the US.
Speaker 1: I believe it's part of the degree and like a
Speaker 1: lot of that time you're sensibly working as a as
Speaker 1: a hate c A or CNA as you'd say in America.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what that is for people who don't
Speaker 1: know like medical stuff, so hate a healthcare systet or
Speaker 1: what was it CNA certified nursing assistant. I think what
Speaker 1: stands for is essentially a healthcare worker who does a
Speaker 1: range of like what you describe as nursing tasks button
Speaker 1: but not the role of a registered nurse. So they
Speaker 1: would assist with mobilizing patients, monitoring observations, hygiene, potentially taking blood,
Speaker 1: and some investigations such as setting up an ECG, but
Speaker 1: they wouldn't do more advanced investigations ristanizement, care planning, medication management,
Speaker 1: assessing of patients and that kind of stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like about five years ago, the nursing bursary was cut,
Speaker 1: so then it's became as with every other degree having
Speaker 1: to take out a student loan in order to pursue it.
Speaker 1: And then in twenty eighteen there was a particularly disastrous
Speaker 1: pay deal where the RCM in a number of ways
Speaker 1: just absolutely fun. Not just the RCM, the other healthcare
Speaker 1: unions representing unions representing healthcare workers also messed up hugely,
Speaker 1: but like they really fumbled the ball. It resulted arguably
Speaker 1: some people describe it as the leadership setting up the membership.
Speaker 1: And then after that there was a general an emergency
Speaker 1: general meeting called the RCM. What's resulted in the entire
Speaker 1: executive being booted. Wow, And around this type leading up
Speaker 1: to that, they're being like increasing like grassroots militancy around
Speaker 1: nurses recognizing that this was an awful situation we were
Speaker 1: in there. This also then resulted in like there were
Speaker 1: various grassroots campaigns started such as like a Nurses United UK.
Speaker 1: We started employing organizing the UK to like act to
Speaker 1: take nurses. There was a concerted effort to put pressure
Speaker 1: on the RCM by like I would say, a radical minority,
Speaker 1: but one that represented like a genuine, genuine feeling among
Speaker 1: nurses on the front line to push for the RCN
Speaker 1: to take a more radical stance. Then at the same time,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this was covered in your talk
Speaker 1: in about English politics you're like to our deep dive,
Speaker 1: But Northern I didn't have a government at this point
Speaker 1: because as they are now, the DUP and shin Fain
Speaker 1: had fallen out and legally it has to be both
Speaker 1: of them together as the largest republican and largest unionist
Speaker 1: party Unionists in pro the United Kingdom Party after form
Speaker 1: of government, which meant it was impossible legally for any
Speaker 1: for any pay rise in the NHS in Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: at that time. So there was not a government that
Speaker 1: could legally enact one great and this was and this
Speaker 1: resulted in the twenty nineteen the first strikes by the
Speaker 1: RCN ever and also like the first nursing strikes in
Speaker 1: the NHS in a very long time. I might be
Speaker 1: wrong about this. I think the last ones were like
Speaker 1: in the eighties or the seventies. I might I might
Speaker 1: be wrong about this though, And this was both called
Speaker 1: by the RCN and one of the other biggest trade
Speaker 1: unions in the probably the biggest trade union as it's
Speaker 1: a generalist trade union in the NHS Unison. They both
Speaker 1: called strikes at this time and they were magnificant factor
Speaker 1: in getting the Northern Ireland government back meeting alongside other things.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give ourselves all the credit, but
Speaker 1: it was a significant factor. It off it gets overlooked
Speaker 1: and actually having any pay rise and acted at all
Speaker 1: on the in Northern Ireland. Just to clear for every
Speaker 1: second this this strike was a specifically like a strict
Speaker 1: that was happening for nurses in Northern Ireland. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. I think it's very important. I think that
Speaker 1: triggered something of a sea change in the RCNA. That
Speaker 1: was kind of the culminating point of like trying to
Speaker 1: push for a more militant attitude on the RCN, and
Speaker 1: it really like wrote the thug gates open and made
Speaker 1: what's happening now possible. Even though a lot of nurses
Speaker 1: in England particularly I can't come on the situation in
Speaker 1: Wales and Northern Ireland, like how much people know about
Speaker 1: you about what was going on, But like a lot
Speaker 1: of nurse in England didn't even know about it. And
Speaker 1: when I was going around the wards pushing for people
Speaker 1: to vote in favor of the strike action, a lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't weren't aware that that would been a
Speaker 1: thing that had happened until I told them about it.
Speaker 1: Because people in England, as must as England is determined
Speaker 1: to keep Northern Ireland, don't know what's going on, not
Speaker 1: in to any degree, to a terrifying degree. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, that that sounds like that sounds like
Speaker 1: a thing that happens when you're a colonial power, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Well, like I mean like like there was
Speaker 1: I feel like, well, our equivalent isn't the right term.
Speaker 1: But like around the same time, like people in Puerto
Speaker 1: Rico like ran out their government and almost no one
Speaker 1: in the US, like like in the commental US has
Speaker 1: like ever heard of it. So yeah, yeah, I would
Speaker 1: say if yeah, if there's not forms going off in
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland, people in England aren't paying attention, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. It is also really depressing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would like I would say Northern Irelands in the sub
Speaker 1: maybe in some ways of bets an in Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: in that it actually has a degree of political representation
Speaker 1: in the main in the Westminster and starts, even though
Speaker 1: it obviously should have its independence and might. But yeah,
Speaker 1: HBO doesn't even have that as my understanding. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean there's a whole there's a there's a whole
Speaker 1: thing there, Like the Puerto Rican statehood people are like
Speaker 1: weird reactionaries. The independence people are cooler. But also there's
Speaker 1: this whole sort of I don't know, there's there's a
Speaker 1: kind of like there's a kind of paralysis anywhere. It's
Speaker 1: like that, And it's like DC is kind of similar,
Speaker 1: where there's this whole sort of there's this kind of
Speaker 1: paralysis where like nothing's ever going to be done about
Speaker 1: it other than the US just like basically imposing whatever
Speaker 1: random colonial governor that they've decided to bring in as
Speaker 1: an emergency manager or whatever. Yes, sorrykay, but we are
Speaker 1: getting we are getting far afield from it as I
Speaker 1: want to start before I put my foot in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something about Norman on the whole pistol everyone, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like I didn't even know even less about Bull's got
Speaker 1: about Puerto Rico. Yeah, yeah, I would also say, okay,
Speaker 1: like so so so people don't get mad at me,
Speaker 1: like all of the US is a quality. It's the
Speaker 1: like the substitute of difference between New York and Hawaii
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rico was when like when when we took
Speaker 1: it over. But yeah, yeah, okay, so what we're we're turning,
Speaker 1: We're turning actually, well you know, okay, all right, I
Speaker 1: will I will take this complete interruption of the flows
Speaker 1: as a point to do an ad break. So do
Speaker 1: you know what else is an extensive colonial power that
Speaker 1: who's might cannot be checked. It's it's the products and
Speaker 1: services that support this podcast. Yea, all right and we
Speaker 1: are back. Yeah. So I wanted to move from the
Speaker 1: Northern Ireland strikes to talk about the sort of broader
Speaker 1: strikes that I've been happen in the last like my
Speaker 1: understanding about a year or so, yes, okay, yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: it is is it picul go longer than that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I would you talk about like that? It's like what
Speaker 1: happened to move from the Northern Ireland strikes to the
Speaker 1: current situation so do you mean with specifically NHS strikes
Speaker 1: or like one in the UK specifically with the NHS strikes.
Speaker 1: But I guess we can talk about the broader way
Speaker 1: you want you or two. So obviously all the ship
Speaker 1: with COVID happened. Yeah, and then we came to the
Speaker 1: payoffer of last year. And at this point they've been
Speaker 1: general building of an attitude that we don't just need
Speaker 1: a decent pay guys that keeps up inflation, we need
Speaker 1: one that goes towards restoring loss to pay. And the
Speaker 1: RCM leadership after the kicking out of the entire executive
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen kind of on the back foot, kind
Speaker 1: of like wanting to appiece the membership go along with
Speaker 1: it a bit more. Also, we had knew General Secretary
Speaker 1: Pat Collin, who was the Secretary of the Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: SEC of the RCN during the Northern Island strikes, took
Speaker 1: a more militant position in the pain negotiation in the
Speaker 1: Joint Union pain negotiations with the government towards the end
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of last year, where the RCN took
Speaker 1: a position of we need inflation plus five percent. Now
Speaker 1: this is a bit of inside baseball, which like I
Speaker 1: don't think I've ever seen officially, but what I know
Speaker 1: from various people involved in these things and like statements
Speaker 1: by different unions, what my understanding it is the biggest
Speaker 1: of the trade unions in the NHS in general. The
Speaker 1: Unison put forward line it was only willing to go
Speaker 1: for a generic significantly better than inflation paid back like
Speaker 1: pay demand from the government, which the RCM was due
Speaker 1: to like changing attitude of its membership. What happened when
Speaker 1: it accepted ship a bad deal last time, was not
Speaker 1: willing to go for a result of the RCM splitting
Speaker 1: from the Joint Union Like Pay Council like the Joint
Speaker 1: Union Council over this issue, which then the offer the
Speaker 1: government's pay thing came in. It said we will do
Speaker 1: a flat one thousand, four hundred for everyone, like on
Speaker 1: all bands, so not a percentage like it normally does.
Speaker 1: And you know, to be honest, if it was a
Speaker 1: significantly higher amount that was better, bigger than inflation for
Speaker 1: the lower bands, like the lower page works in the NHS,
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. But this
Speaker 1: one thousand, four hundred isn't good enough for anyone and
Speaker 1: while I'm talking about this, I'm talking about specifically in England.
Speaker 1: It was slightly different in Wales and Scotland. I think
Speaker 1: generally slightly better, but it's still far lower than it
Speaker 1: should have been, than it needs to be. And so
Speaker 1: the RCM was the first of the any unions in
Speaker 1: the NHS to say it was balloting, it was doing
Speaker 1: a paid ballot, and this kind of sprung on the
Speaker 1: other unions like a week, two weeks, three weeks later
Speaker 1: all said that they were doing it as well. The
Speaker 1: RCM also, at the same time hired a load of
Speaker 1: organized like paid organizers to support the paid ballot effort.
Speaker 1: And what I'll say is obviously paid organizers. There no
Speaker 1: substitute for rank and file militancy. But it was very helpful,
Speaker 1: to be honest, because I think there was a lot
Speaker 1: of like militan, a lot of militant sentiment of the RCM.
Speaker 1: But although there were some like rank and file initiatives
Speaker 1: which had had a massive impact on like pushing the
Speaker 1: RCM to a stronger position, I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: that could have materialized, and there wasn't enough people like
Speaker 1: actually who had an idea about organizing about what it
Speaker 1: meant to go and push through this kind of thing
Speaker 1: to get what we needed in that time frame. Sadly
Speaker 1: I wish that wasn't the case, but I do think
Speaker 1: these paid organizers much is not what I think the
Speaker 1: correcting model for workplace organizing is. Did help a lot,
Speaker 1: and this then resulted in the RCM strike ballot passing
Speaker 1: in one hundred and seventy six NHS trusts across the UK.
Speaker 1: Let me just yeah, check that I've got that right, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is huge. It's not all, but it is. It's
Speaker 1: over fifty percent. It's pretty much all trusts in Scotland,
Speaker 1: all trust in Scotland, all trusts in Northern Ireland, I think,
Speaker 1: all by one or two in Wales, and the majority
Speaker 1: in England. It's also worth pointing out the ones that
Speaker 1: didn't pass it. They didn't pass by less than a percentage. Wow,
Speaker 1: they they didn't pass by like ten votes in all cases.
Speaker 1: I think the one in Wales that didn't pass it
Speaker 1: was literally by three votes. And it's also worked. I
Speaker 1: think in two thousand and sixteen or two fifteen, anti
Speaker 1: union legislation was passed by the Conservative government which raised
Speaker 1: the bar you need in order to have to have
Speaker 1: legal strike industrial action, and under the law as it
Speaker 1: existed a decade ago, every NHS trust that the RCM
Speaker 1: ballot didn't would have passed the ballot. Also unfortunate timing.
Speaker 1: It was happening at the same time as the posts,
Speaker 1: as postal strikes were happening, and in the UK industrial
Speaker 1: ballots for industrial actions to be legal have to happen
Speaker 1: by post. A little bit sad. Yeah, it's like guys, yeah,
Speaker 1: full power two of you. Oh God, I wish the
Speaker 1: timing had been slightly different. Yeah. Yeah. And of all
Speaker 1: the of all the trust, of all the unions in
Speaker 1: the in the NHS that were passing ballots, the RCM
Speaker 1: was the most successful. We passed it in significantly more
Speaker 1: places than other unions did. Um to my shock, to
Speaker 1: be honest, because like when I was going around balloting
Speaker 1: or like um talking to people, like on my days off,
Speaker 1: like going on the wards talking talk to people while
Speaker 1: I was at work, everyone was like, yes it was
Speaker 1: in other unions like yes, I'm voting for it. I'm
Speaker 1: waiting on tender hicks, have my ballot. When's my ballot arriving?
Speaker 1: Why is my union not opened their ballot? Yet and
Speaker 1: so like when particularly like other unions didn't pass in
Speaker 1: my trust, I was really shocked. I was really confused,
Speaker 1: and it seems like a lot of them didn't actually
Speaker 1: want to fight to a degree in that like they
Speaker 1: were opening it because the RCN had opened it. I'm
Speaker 1: certain people in those unions might discrib me, but that's
Speaker 1: really I find it really hard to understand how these
Speaker 1: unions that have historically they're all none of them are
Speaker 1: that that militant, you know, but they all have a
Speaker 1: history of strikes and other sectors or organizing for this.
Speaker 1: They'd never had been anti strike unions unis in particular.
Speaker 1: It was there came about like several unions being collamorated,
Speaker 1: like joining together, including unions that have been founded by
Speaker 1: nurses in the seventies in reacting to like the RCM
Speaker 1: being anti strike and going on like that was the
Speaker 1: last big wave of nursing strikes at that time. So
Speaker 1: that really shocked me. This has been It can happen here.
Speaker 1: I join us tomorrow for approchu of the interview, and
Speaker 1: in the meantime you can find us on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: That happened here a pod and you can find us
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at call Zone Media. Welcome to it
Speaker 1: can happen here a podcast increasingly about nurses strikes and yeah,
Speaker 1: this is part two of our inter of you with Nick,
Speaker 1: a nurse in the UK. Enjoy. We've entered the tafty
Speaker 1: turfy land where the RCNC used to be the people
Speaker 1: who are like leading on the militancy in this in
Speaker 1: this front where yeah, yeah, and I think part of
Speaker 1: it comes down to us because the RCM was historically
Speaker 1: a sneaking part city was not a union, became a
Speaker 1: union later in the day for then eight was for
Speaker 1: ages anti strike. A lot of unions because like we
Speaker 1: could talk about the John critique of unions and particularly
Speaker 1: like institutional unions, how they service providers, how they build
Speaker 1: up like a protective bureaucracy against merchants ruggle or against
Speaker 1: like glass roots militancy. Then it's not a particularly democratic
Speaker 1: as these things go, but it doesn't have that kind
Speaker 1: of built up institutional inertia in the trade union side
Speaker 1: because historically hasn't needed it. And that meant I think
Speaker 1: it was actually far more susceptible. It's two grassroots pressure
Speaker 1: and militancy then some of the other more established unions
Speaker 1: were and that's sorry no, and that kind of like
Speaker 1: was the thin end of the webs for the rcenter
Speaker 1: takers boastrong stance over the pay rise in response to
Speaker 1: like glass roots organizing and like a demand from the
Speaker 1: grassroots to do that, which then results in them like
Speaker 1: bad tip strike action first, which then meant other unions
Speaker 1: had to and then we got the and then the
Speaker 1: cascade of like strikes in the NHS have occurred since then.
Speaker 1: So this this is a very very broad question to
Speaker 1: be asking, But how have the strikes been going. That's
Speaker 1: kind of a difficult one to say. So Scotland, for instance,
Speaker 1: has not been called out, has not actually had any
Speaker 1: strike dage because the Scottish government went into negotiations to
Speaker 1: begin with and then made an offer, it was rejected,
Speaker 1: strikes were announced, they made another, agreed to come back
Speaker 1: to negotiations. So like it's been effective been getting something
Speaker 1: moving in Scotland. Their current offer of fifteen percent over
Speaker 1: two years, so six something this year, five something next
Speaker 1: year is currently being voted on by the RCA membership.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not a good but it's a significant
Speaker 1: movement of what came before. Wales the Welsh government after
Speaker 1: saying no, we can't have any more money. We can't
Speaker 1: we literally cart because Westminster controls our budget. Westminster work
Speaker 1: give us any more budget for this has now made
Speaker 1: an improved, an improved offer. It's crap, but it's like
Speaker 1: something it's foresome to shift when they were claiming it
Speaker 1: was physically impossible for them to do it, which every
Speaker 1: single time, Like I can think of exactly one time
Speaker 1: ever where I've seen an employer make that demand and
Speaker 1: it was actually true. But this is not like that.
Speaker 1: That was that was like what Norfolk Southern in like
Speaker 1: like the nineteen seventies, and it's it was only true
Speaker 1: once and it's never been true ever since then. Like
Speaker 1: you will hear this from every fucking employer who you
Speaker 1: attempt to go on track against, and they're always lying,
Speaker 1: like every single time. What I will say is like
Speaker 1: in the case of Wales, it is very true. The
Speaker 1: Welsh Government's budget is set by Westminster, by the central government.
Speaker 1: So it's a lie, but it's a plausible lie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Wales is generally massively Wales is like some of
Speaker 1: the highest rates of child poverty outside of Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: In Europe, the reasons. Part of the reasons for this
Speaker 1: is because the Welsh government is chronically underfunded. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: due to political decisions made in England, but it's still
Speaker 1: not true. And then in England, right, it's got to
Speaker 1: the point where a government who are categorically opposed to
Speaker 1: any negotiations with trade unions have actually come to the
Speaker 1: negotiating tables. So from that, although a suspectible loads of
Speaker 1: preconditions that haven't been publicly talked about, and they're going
Speaker 1: to not make a credible offer in my view and
Speaker 1: as a stalling tactic, but the fact they even chose
Speaker 1: to come to the table atol. I hate saying this
Speaker 1: because it makes it's the kind of thing that makes
Speaker 1: people complace ship. But that is actually quite big that
Speaker 1: the Conservative government actually agreed to do it, to come
Speaker 1: to negotiating table. Stopped hiding behind oh there's an independent
Speaker 1: paybody that decides these things. Stop saying it's we can't
Speaker 1: afford to fund the NHS anymore. Actually just coming and
Speaker 1: sitting at the table atoll to negotiate. It's like a
Speaker 1: big movement of itself. Now, if we talk about numbers
Speaker 1: of participation in strikes, there's been a lot of difficulties,
Speaker 1: a lot of nowhere near as many people have participated
Speaker 1: into strikes as should have been. I will be frank
Speaker 1: and say so now we're going to talk about the delegations,
Speaker 1: the situation delegations, which is like the RCN voluntarily saying
Speaker 1: we will allow this many people to continue working day
Speaker 1: these days and these areas in order to maintain patient safety,
Speaker 1: which is, on one hand, we don't want any patients
Speaker 1: to die obviously. On the other hand, it's a very
Speaker 1: easily abused stance to take. And there are just nurses
Speaker 1: who are in other trade unions who who aren't a
Speaker 1: trade unions as well, and ultimately, if they want that
Speaker 1: not to happen, they need to just come to the
Speaker 1: table earlier. And so this result in a process where
Speaker 1: so I to you, and like time sensitive chemo and
Speaker 1: pediatric A and e'es were derogated by default, and then
Speaker 1: there was an agreement of if the wards had less
Speaker 1: than like nighttime numbers, we would agree for a small
Speaker 1: amount of our of our membership to go in to
Speaker 1: work on those wards to maintain nighttime numbers for the
Speaker 1: sake of patients safety. But that had to be applied
Speaker 1: for them on a case by case bas basis. But
Speaker 1: there's a couple of problems with this one. Trust just
Speaker 1: not taking it seriously, lying and not trying to establish
Speaker 1: these things to make accurate requests, leaving it to the
Speaker 1: last minute, and then asking for blanket derogations. We don't
Speaker 1: know if it's going to be safe or not. Managers
Speaker 1: like ward managers not actually knowing what was agreed and
Speaker 1: to giving incorrect information to their staff, people not understanding
Speaker 1: what was and wasn't derogated, And just generally it was
Speaker 1: a system that was very open abuse and so like
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of things were just left
Speaker 1: open in general or like that shouldn't have been. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I know that it didn't happen
Speaker 1: in every case, but like there was a lot of
Speaker 1: success in like going memps, the strike committee going around
Speaker 1: wards and saying no, you're over number, you need to
Speaker 1: come out, and people doing it. Of like surgeries being canceled,
Speaker 1: like elective surgeries, nontime sensitive surgeries being canceled due to it,
Speaker 1: of like really making hospital managers sweat over like proving
Speaker 1: each thing needed to happen, they wanted and needed to
Speaker 1: happen those days. All of it's built up. Even if
Speaker 1: we didn't get the full amount of people we should
Speaker 1: have had out on strike, on strike really built up
Speaker 1: the pressure significant degrees on them to them, put the
Speaker 1: pressure up the chain of the NHS to the governments,
Speaker 1: like we can't keep on going on like this. And
Speaker 1: at the same time each set of strikes, the where
Speaker 1: people participating did increase, so like for instance, I've just
Speaker 1: got the government statistics from that the fifteenth of December,
Speaker 1: I think it is, so this was the first strike
Speaker 1: day that was called. It was nine thousand, nine hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety nine absences due to industrial action. Then on
Speaker 1: the twentieth it was eleven thousand, five hundred and nine.
Speaker 1: Then on the eighteenth and nineteenth of January, and just
Speaker 1: one important fact that they didn't call all hospitals out
Speaker 1: at once again I think a mistatus. Strategic mistakes should
Speaker 1: have gone hard, gone hard fast. But the ivory was
Speaker 1: we just we don't have the facilities to organize all
Speaker 1: of this effectively on all of these last amounts, because
Speaker 1: like it was a huge amount of trusts they needed
Speaker 1: to do that with. But then on those days it
Speaker 1: was then eleven thousand, three hundred and sixty three and
Speaker 1: eleven thousand, two hundred and nineteen across those two days.
Speaker 1: Then in February it was fifteen thousand, nine hundred ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and then I'm fourteen on the second day, fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: and then fifty eight people, which is far lower than
Speaker 1: it should have been. I can't remember how many people
Speaker 1: there are nurses are on the NHS, so I should
Speaker 1: have had that statistic relity, but it's not an inconsiderate amount.
Speaker 1: It meant lots about patients appointments being canceled, a lot
Speaker 1: of surgeries being canceled, a lot of chaos and stress
Speaker 1: for managers of the NHS and therefore for the government.
Speaker 1: Are looking really bad for them, And it's a clear
Speaker 1: upwards trajectory, which meant that when they are seeing announced
Speaker 1: we're going to do two days consecutive, we're not. We're
Speaker 1: going to keep it going through the night, which they
Speaker 1: hadn't done previously, and we're not doing derogations. It to you,
Speaker 1: we'll be staffed, nothink, we're not doing anything else. I
Speaker 1: think no, even it tou wasn't staffed. We'd considered on
Speaker 1: a case by case spaceis we won't be considered what
Speaker 1: sorry intensive care? I see you for America? Okay yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So that meant that at that point the government prob like, okay,
Speaker 1: we need to move to a new delaying tactic. They're
Speaker 1: not just going to give up. And I think with that,
Speaker 1: as it went on, like people were itching an itching
Speaker 1: to go further. And so for instance, like A and
Speaker 1: E was derogated, So which is the area I work in?
Speaker 1: But like a lot of people and this is reflective
Speaker 1: of like most areas that were derogated. When I spoke
Speaker 1: to people, we weren't them like, no, we need to
Speaker 1: be out, we need to be out the picket line.
Speaker 1: And like after the first two rounds, there was also
Speaker 1: a growing effort to like try and find out from
Speaker 1: the membership what the actual situation was so there on
Speaker 1: like staffing on the wards, because all wards are chronically understaffed.
Speaker 1: So when they said, oh, well we need this are
Speaker 1: people say, no, we know that's alive, we know one
Speaker 1: nights there's that's the only three redisted nurses. There's not
Speaker 1: the four you're claiming, and stuff like that. It's again
Speaker 1: I think it was a really positive move in like
Speaker 1: embedding a kind of like workers inquiry of workers knowledge
Speaker 1: about their workplace into the organizing of the strike that
Speaker 1: had been quite a top down process. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of worried about how this delay and break
Speaker 1: in the strike action will affect that momentum that had
Speaker 1: been building up. I think, like to a large degree,
Speaker 1: people are like itching to go again, and I think
Speaker 1: that desire to go again is building as it goes.
Speaker 1: Like when it initially happened, when this starts initially called off,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like trust, like in like
Speaker 1: the big WhatsApp groups and stuff and talk to people,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like people thinking of at
Speaker 1: least I don't know if this was represent general opinion,
Speaker 1: but people being quite vocal a because I know, we
Speaker 1: need to trust like Pat knows what she's doing, they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have called it off of this thing. It's like
Speaker 1: it's getting more and more those people being like, no,
Speaker 1: we need to, we need to go, we need to
Speaker 1: we need to get back on the picket line. And
Speaker 1: there's been a petition that's been going around that's been
Speaker 1: getting quite a bit of news, like setting out some
Speaker 1: hard lines like four to the end R and c
Speaker 1: leadership about what kind of stuff is should accept, like saying, no,
Speaker 1: we need to stick to the above inflation busting, we
Speaker 1: need to not compromise on this, we need to not
Speaker 1: compromising this, which is I think got eight hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty signatures at the moment. It doesn't sound like a
Speaker 1: huge amount, but like again you're going through quite a
Speaker 1: lot of immersial of like attitude of like you've got
Speaker 1: to leave it to the leadership among the membership, even
Speaker 1: when they were unhappy with it. And it's only a
Speaker 1: thousand signatures that are necessary in the RCNS where the
Speaker 1: RCM works to call an extraordinary general meeting, which they
Speaker 1: can do pretty much whatever it wants. And that's how
Speaker 1: the leadership in two and eighteen was kicked out after
Speaker 1: the bad pay deal. Then, But that's really interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like the RCN very undemocratic except for this one
Speaker 1: particular thing. Yeah, is it Is it a normal thing? That?
Speaker 1: Is it like a normal thing for unions in the
Speaker 1: in the UK? Or is that just like a most
Speaker 1: most I think all unions have an amount of people,
Speaker 1: a set amount where if like memberships calling for an
Speaker 1: extraordinary general meeting, they have to do it. The RCNS
Speaker 1: one is really low interesting essentially, and like there were
Speaker 1: some moves were like people in the r C leads
Speaker 1: to say, oh, we need to change it, we need
Speaker 1: to give into that, we need we need to raise
Speaker 1: it to be more in line with other unions. But
Speaker 1: that again is something that will have to that if
Speaker 1: that does happen, that kind of change we'd have to
Speaker 1: go to like a membership wide vote. It's not something
Speaker 1: the executive leadership could just impose that's good. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So like there is a process of like these strikes
Speaker 1: were like a result of like increasing general level of
Speaker 1: militancy were among nurses in general and among NHS workers,
Speaker 1: and I think particularly because everyone knows it's awful the situation,
Speaker 1: and then with like a slightly more organized than spear
Speaker 1: and if they're resulted in that in that petition in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen arguing for stuff at like congresses and things,
Speaker 1: and then that's what actual strike has like got the
Speaker 1: membership feeling like they should have a more active role.
Speaker 1: And I think it's pushing things in a positive direction,
Speaker 1: even though I think the rc and leaderships has gotten
Speaker 1: to a point where by mistake, it ended up way
Speaker 1: ahead of the other unions and it's now trying to
Speaker 1: bear battle. But I don't I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of potential for like more grassroots organized by the membership
Speaker 1: to prevent that happening. Yeah. We are in a difficult
Speaker 1: position though that the time is running out. Strike mandates
Speaker 1: in the UK only last for six months. We are
Speaker 1: and the government that Greek negotiations were at two and
Speaker 1: a half months left of the mandate, it's now two
Speaker 1: months left of the mandate. You have to give two
Speaker 1: weeks notice before strike action. Oh so that's that that
Speaker 1: that's that's what to sort of like run out the
Speaker 1: clock strategies about on their side. Okay, that makes sense exactly. Now,
Speaker 1: nothing's to stop us from reballoting. Yeah, but it will
Speaker 1: be a whole process. It has to be a month.
Speaker 1: You have to go through the mail. Yeah, it will
Speaker 1: be drawn out. We'll buy them a lot more time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's post. The workers, I think are on strike again
Speaker 1: today too, I think maybe I think so, let me,
Speaker 1: I've got the strike calendar up on my computer. Let's
Speaker 1: see who's on strike and absolutely fraud. I have it
Speaker 1: on my other computer, but I don't have it on
Speaker 1: this one. Yeah, so it shays the fifteen today, Amazon's
Speaker 1: on striking Coventry, the BBC's regil services, the civil service,
Speaker 1: which it would kind of be equivalent to like a
Speaker 1: federal stuff um in America. So like fince, it's my dad,
Speaker 1: who's a health and safety inspector is on strike today,
Speaker 1: h MRC, which is the tax officers on strike, junior
Speaker 1: doctors on strike, offstead. The school has structs on spike strike,
Speaker 1: the l the two main rail unions on strike, teaches
Speaker 1: on strike, and university stuff on strike. Not the postal
Speaker 1: service today. But yeah, yeah, well, I guess I guess
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask a bit about that too, about
Speaker 1: sort of just what what's been happening. I don't know
Speaker 1: what what what you see as sort of the potential
Speaker 1: of the of the broader strikes have been happened, because
Speaker 1: this is this is a I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not it's not like a like it's
Speaker 1: it's not like a nineteen seventies style like strike wave,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a lot of strikes for the UK
Speaker 1: in the last decade. It's it's big. There isn't the
Speaker 1: level of cross union cooperation and talks that you would want.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like people turning up to each
Speaker 1: other's picket lines. There's a lot of like solidarity present,
Speaker 1: but it's not coalescing into like a into like a
Speaker 1: unified movement which is hoping to be. Although I do
Speaker 1: think if something doesn't change, it is moving in that direction.
Speaker 1: And like the Conservative government is at like an all
Speaker 1: time loan it's popularity ratings. Yeah, I think. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you're aware from this quote from Margaret that's
Speaker 1: yet about how her main political goal was remaking the
Speaker 1: soul of Britain away because like up until that period
Speaker 1: there was a very strong trade union movement in the
Speaker 1: UK that it had like one of the best social
Speaker 1: democracies in the world, like comparable to Scandinavia today. It
Speaker 1: was it was far more like active attitude in the UK.
Speaker 1: And like Margaret factor is explicit, I kind of the
Speaker 1: exact quote, but explicit project and the project or the
Speaker 1: Conservative Party at the time. Let's not put it all
Speaker 1: on her, great woman theor of histories as bad as
Speaker 1: great man of history to move the soul of the
Speaker 1: like general social attitude and personality of like people in
Speaker 1: Britain away from that like orientations like community and the
Speaker 1: collective struggle and action. And there is a part of
Speaker 1: me that feels like this is a move away from
Speaker 1: that because like everyone you go to there's winging about
Speaker 1: like an inconvenience cause by strike, but pretty much everyone
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, those they have it, it's awful for them.
Speaker 1: It's all the strike drivers. Good on them for standing
Speaker 1: up for themselves. Good on the teachers for standing up
Speaker 1: for themselves. Good on postal workers were standing up for themselves.
Speaker 1: Good on nurses were standing up for themselves. Like the
Speaker 1: amount of like stuff I've been brought by people on
Speaker 1: the picket lines has been in credits, Like I each
Speaker 1: day I've just been like rolling down for hill from
Speaker 1: my hospital to my house like a bloated stomach from
Speaker 1: like stuff members of the public import and drop top
Speaker 1: of the pick it line. It's um. It makes me
Speaker 1: feel like it's there is the optimist part of me.
Speaker 1: It does feel like there is a reorientation in general
Speaker 1: of British public to the idea that we don't have
Speaker 1: to put up with this, yeah, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to struggle and try and get it on your own.
Speaker 1: And like it's early days yet, but I do see
Speaker 1: something positive moving in that direction in the UK. As
Speaker 1: to this strike wave, Yeah, that's a that is I
Speaker 1: don't know that that is great news from a place
Speaker 1: that does not usually generate great news. This is like
Speaker 1: the this is the deeply optimistic part of me. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, you have like bad a lot of
Speaker 1: bad news coming out of the UK. Yeah, like this
Speaker 1: strike wave is good news. It is the fact that
Speaker 1: it's happening in the NHS in particular, which has been
Speaker 1: so resist to industrial action historically, and also just because
Speaker 1: of how what significant part of the economy it is
Speaker 1: as well, because like you know, the NHS is the
Speaker 1: eighth biggest employer in the world. Wow, you know it's
Speaker 1: in the world. That's that's wild. Yeah, Like it used
Speaker 1: to be like the fifth biggest in the world. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it used to only be that the American Army,
Speaker 1: the Chinese army, mcdawns of Walmart would be it would
Speaker 1: be overtaken by Amazon and such. Now but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like like strike action, so like from like a workers' perspective,
Speaker 1: like strike action of like the largest section of the workforce,
Speaker 1: nurses in the NHS, the biggest in plowing the world,
Speaker 1: leaving aside the situation for everything else in the UK,
Speaker 1: leaving aside their history of the opposition, like the active
Speaker 1: opposition to the idea of striking within nursing the historically
Speaker 1: in the UK is huge news and something to be
Speaker 1: hopeful about. And then put into context of the more
Speaker 1: broader strikeway in the UK and within the NHS in general,
Speaker 1: this is huge and it is a sign I think,
Speaker 1: or positive change and like reontation towards workplace struggle occurring.
Speaker 1: I think. So I've now heard two different places do this,
Speaker 1: which was I heard this in Chile in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: and I heard this also on my picket line at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago in twenty nineteen, which is, I like,
Speaker 1: I this is the place dear liberalism was born, and
Speaker 1: we will kill it here. And I mean those are
Speaker 1: the three places, Yeah, Chicago and the UK. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: I think also arguably Germany, although that has a whole
Speaker 1: other rdal libs are all the libs. From my understanding
Speaker 1: of it, from listening to some things about years ago,
Speaker 1: it's it's more of a family resemblance than the exact
Speaker 1: same thing as near liberalism. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: if we're gonna I think they got absorbed into the
Speaker 1: neoliberal bubble so far as like like they're they're the
Speaker 1: order libs are where the neo liberals got the sort
Speaker 1: of like we need to have like an international bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: like the legal bureaucracy from like hyak is also like
Speaker 1: heavy of all. Yeah that that's that's the whole of this, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, like it is. It is encouraging to me
Speaker 1: that it's like, I don't know, like like the it
Speaker 1: really does seem like in the places where the liberals
Speaker 1: was bored, it's like it's starting to come apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, I know people people have been predicting
Speaker 1: the death of neoliberalism for like long, well almost as
Speaker 1: long as I've been alive. But I don't know this
Speaker 1: this like the fact that it's happening in these places
Speaker 1: seems different than it does seem. I think it is significant.
Speaker 1: I think I'm I am cautiously excited every time I
Speaker 1: hope something bad happens, but I am hopeful now. And
Speaker 1: you know, my brain is a magic so it can't
Speaker 1: be a cause of effect there. Yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you are the second person I've interviewed
Speaker 1: from the UK who actually seemed to be like somewhat
Speaker 1: optimistic above the direction you could possibly be going, which
Speaker 1: is the first time I've heard that in Like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you're people who are optimistic about Corbin, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is this is the first sort
Speaker 1: of like signs of that since I don't know a
Speaker 1: long time, and I think, yeah, look like if I
Speaker 1: was host of the American listens, like, if turf Island
Speaker 1: isn't doomed, then we're not doomed either. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Here's what I gonna say, Well, you're taking us on
Speaker 1: that it's true. Yeah we have Yeah, I am Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know when this is coming out, but I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna be honest man. Like, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ways the UK is better than the magic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the US, like is it's a it's a real disaster,
Speaker 1: like it's it's yeah. Yeah, I mean I think we're
Speaker 1: both equally banned a lot of ways. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the things and the things that like people in the
Speaker 1: US look at England say this is awful of the
Speaker 1: things people in the UK look at the US and
Speaker 1: say this is awful. It's it's kind of a a
Speaker 1: child looking at their parent and being pissed off at them,
Speaker 1: and a child and a child and a parent looking
Speaker 1: at their child and being disappointed in them. No, no,
Speaker 1: you both suck. It's family resemblance. It's we hate us
Speaker 1: for It's a narcissism of small differences like yeah, between
Speaker 1: the US and the UK K a lot of the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess do you have anything else do you want
Speaker 1: to say about the strikes? I think the fact it
Speaker 1: got this far is incredible. There's so much supermor that
Speaker 1: needs to go. Um. I'm really excited and I'm really scared.
Speaker 1: I think this is the potential for like a turning
Speaker 1: point around, both for the NHS but for my profession
Speaker 1: for nursing and also like in general in the context
Speaker 1: the wide strike bastion for the UK. But you know,
Speaker 1: the higher the stakes, the higher the perils. Like this
Speaker 1: is our I think this is our fight to lose, essentially,
Speaker 1: Like I think if we do it, if we go
Speaker 1: seriously and like the membership takes controls of it from
Speaker 1: like the leader, from their union leadership, which is very cautious,
Speaker 1: which has been put put into position of being more
Speaker 1: miller of like unprecedented millings to see almost by accident,
Speaker 1: we're trying to appease the membership. We can achieve something incredible,
Speaker 1: but it's really the book's open. It can go either way,
Speaker 1: and like I'm excited and I'm terrified by it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if people want to support the strikes, where can they go?
Speaker 1: Is there a strike they can donate to? The RCM
Speaker 1: has an open strike fund. I would invite anyone listening
Speaker 1: to donate too. I would also like find the articles
Speaker 1: about the petition that've been going around, like the mind
Speaker 1: of the rcmle ship takes a stronger stance, and like
Speaker 1: just share that around generally create more visibility on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll put links to both of those in the description. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those are the main things I would suggest. Again, the
Speaker 1: national nature of this struggle and the fact that it's
Speaker 1: not even really against our direct employers makes it harder
Speaker 1: to talk specifically about this thing or that thing in
Speaker 1: some ways. But yeah, those are the two things I
Speaker 1: would ask, Like, the big our strike pot, the easier
Speaker 1: it is to argue for more aggressive action, and the
Speaker 1: more visibility goes on that petition, the more you'll take
Speaker 1: a lot more than a petition to like shifts things
Speaker 1: to the roots, to being in the forefront and the
Speaker 1: leadership position of this. But it's something that will make
Speaker 1: people feel more empowered to put more pressure on the leadership.
Speaker 1: It's like a small stepping point towards what we need.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to recommend a book to anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to find out more about the history of the
Speaker 1: NHS and the current situation. Some comrades of mine like
Speaker 1: from a group called the Ambi Workers and also revolution.
Speaker 1: I always forget the other group. They did it with
Speaker 1: his name, This is embarrassing. Yeah, anarchist communist group wrote
Speaker 1: and Healthcare Workers United, which is like a network I'm
Speaker 1: involved in, put together a book called Sick of It,
Speaker 1: which is like a collection of workers inquiries and reflections
Speaker 1: on the NHS. It's history, it's potentials and what and stuff.
Speaker 1: That's really a great book. Sadly not available as any book,
Speaker 1: but it's it's an excellent read and like it will
Speaker 1: tell you. We'll give you a real insight into what
Speaker 1: the NHS has been historically and what it is now
Speaker 1: for anyone who's interested in that. That's awesome. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: angry workers are really cool. By the way, they're on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I probably should have. It's probably just angry workers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah it is. Oh wait, no, I'm wrong, it's it's workers.
Speaker 1: It's at workers angry I think wait, no, no, it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's at work. Is angry? It is? Yeah. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not on Twitter. I don't. I don't know about these things.
Speaker 1: It is. It is a cursed place. Um yeah, getting works.
Speaker 1: Oh god. Yeah. If you want to want to find
Speaker 1: us at Twitter, we are at cools one Media. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: we're also on Instagram. I'm told we're on Instagram. I
Speaker 1: don't have one, so I don't know. This is what
Speaker 1: I've been being told from many years. If we don't,
Speaker 1: don't tell me. Uh yeah, And thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1: And yeah, go do your own strikes at make boss's lives, mister. Please.
Speaker 1: The more strikes are going on, the more people want
Speaker 1: to go on strike. Hey, okay, hello, and welcome to
Speaker 1: it could happen here a podcast. It is about today,
Speaker 1: about labor organizing and about what happens after a strike
Speaker 1: in a labor organization. I'm joined, I'm James. If you
Speaker 1: hadn't guessed and I'm joined by several people from the
Speaker 1: UCSD Dollar Lunch Club. We're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: UC strike and we're going to talk about mutual aid
Speaker 1: organizing in the wake of the strike. If you would
Speaker 1: like to introduce yourselves, that would be great. I'm Alex.
Speaker 1: I use she, they pronounce I'm Matt and I use
Speaker 1: he him. Hi. Everyone, my name is Maria. I am
Speaker 1: a PhD student at UCSD, and I use she her
Speaker 1: pronounce I'm anna and I use the pronounce amazing. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much, guys. So I think people probably haven't
Speaker 1: heard much from us about the uc strike since we
Speaker 1: last sort of had some episodes around December and January,
Speaker 1: and obviously it's been a couple of months since then.
Speaker 1: So the resolution of that strike was kind of contentious, right,
Speaker 1: And a lot of the organizing that you guys have
Speaker 1: been doing came out of the campaign to vote no
Speaker 1: on the I guess the ballot after the strike right
Speaker 1: to vote no and the tentative agreement, which ultimately didn't succeed. Right,
Speaker 1: the tentative agreement, there was a yes vote, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could all explain kind of like it's
Speaker 1: obvious how the yes vote was organized right within the
Speaker 1: structure of a union which which exists, to which I
Speaker 1: had obviously made disagreement with the you see in this case,
Speaker 1: and then it's a job of the people who made
Speaker 1: that agreement to then get a yes vote on that agreement.
Speaker 1: But can you explain a little bit about how the
Speaker 1: no vote campaign came together and maybe if someone could
Speaker 1: also made some of the substantive issues that you felt
Speaker 1: would satisfactory resolved in that intensive agreement. Yeah, the no
Speaker 1: vote was the end of a very long process of
Speaker 1: us feeling like the bargaining team was making progressively worse
Speaker 1: and worse decisions and basically using submission as a tactic
Speaker 1: to improve gains in bargaining. We felt like that was
Speaker 1: not a great tactic. So the upshot of the no
Speaker 1: vote campaign was that fundamentally we felt that the bargaining
Speaker 1: team had not fought hard enough. They had made repeated
Speaker 1: U sacrifices of our core demands UH drastically cutting our
Speaker 1: fifty four thousand U wage demands are cola, and that
Speaker 1: we felt, particularly since it was during the winter break
Speaker 1: and we had his home time to you know, stretch
Speaker 1: it out a little bit further, that if we had
Speaker 1: gone back to the bargaining table at that point, that
Speaker 1: we would have been able to recoup some of those demands.
Speaker 1: I don't think there was like a consensus that it
Speaker 1: was like obvious that uh, like union resources would exclusively
Speaker 1: be used for yes vote stuff either maybe partially, but
Speaker 1: that was one part of like the major conflict was that,
Speaker 1: like when some of us were trying to do like
Speaker 1: a text banking campaign for like, uh no vote stuff,
Speaker 1: I know of at least one person who like feared
Speaker 1: for their career because like their colleague was like, you're
Speaker 1: misusing like per personally a personal information that like this
Speaker 1: isn't why people like agreed to give it to the union,
Speaker 1: and like you can't just take it and use it
Speaker 1: for like, you know, campaigning for your no vote stuff.
Speaker 1: But then we were like, this is for a union purpose,
Speaker 1: why can't we like contact people on the same topic
Speaker 1: that all of us are getting a bajillion mass texts
Speaker 1: about um and so like I do think that was
Speaker 1: also a point of contention within that like like the
Speaker 1: union does not share resources amongst, like amongst people who
Speaker 1: are campaigning for different sides of like ballad issues, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like there wasn't like a like an
Speaker 1: open channel where like people could have an open discussion,
Speaker 1: but at least using the text banking function at least. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we have been old um that in the event
Speaker 1: that a variument chain did not have a unanimous vote
Speaker 1: in favor of TAA, the agreement that both sides would
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to use union resources learned to campaign
Speaker 1: for their their preference, and that that didn't turn actually
Speaker 1: the case. Yeah, that's that's upsetting. And so how did
Speaker 1: you organize because it was it wasn't like the nervote
Speaker 1: campaign is only the four people here right, Like it
Speaker 1: was a very substantive campaign that the large number of
Speaker 1: people supported and voted for. It wasn't like this is
Speaker 1: a kind of ninety nine percent yes situations. How did
Speaker 1: you all organize for the nervote campaign when you didn't
Speaker 1: have access to those resources. It was a pretty distributed
Speaker 1: network of for instance, signal chats, so a lot of
Speaker 1: signal what'sapp discord groups, and it was it was very grassroots.
Speaker 1: So if you knew someone in one of those groups,
Speaker 1: they would add you. M Yeah, I'm sure Matt and
Speaker 1: Allison have more to add, I think they were in
Speaker 1: some very large group chats. Yes, and those group chats
Speaker 1: on were both on the UC San Diego campus as
Speaker 1: well as statewide, so you know, this this wasn't just
Speaker 1: something that UC San Diego was voting on, right, this
Speaker 1: was all of the California campuses. We also had a
Speaker 1: strike Center which involved in towards the end of our
Speaker 1: active picketing before winter break, a number of people from
Speaker 1: all different departments migrated from their pickets. Who was more
Speaker 1: central location And although it was not synonymous with and
Speaker 1: it was unofficially kind of seen as the dissidents side,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people who participated in the strike
Speaker 1: center were I ended up being no voters when the
Speaker 1: time came. I think Anna is pretty right in saying
Speaker 1: that a lot of the organization was like a distributed,
Speaker 1: decentralized thing across signal chats. Like in my experience, there was,
Speaker 1: for example, the Disability Justice Coalition, who've done a lot
Speaker 1: on you know, accommodations and disability rights and things like that,
Speaker 1: and so they were approaching things from different angles than
Speaker 1: other chats that were like, you know, doing like oh,
Speaker 1: here is a list of emails from you know, uci
Speaker 1: of grad students in this department, please feel free to
Speaker 1: email it. And you know, like so there was like
Speaker 1: a diversity of tactics there, if that makes sense. So
Speaker 1: it was like a lot of like petitioning emails, talking
Speaker 1: one on one with people, so me personally, and several
Speaker 1: people that I know like set up meetings with like
Speaker 1: their labmates and just be like, hey, how are you doing,
Speaker 1: so have you heard of what's going on? Things like that,
Speaker 1: which I think are very normal union things to do.
Speaker 1: I did find that like official, like not maybe not official,
Speaker 1: but in my department, we had two people kind of
Speaker 1: take up like union liaison roles, and they tended to
Speaker 1: be more like yes voters rather than no voters, And
Speaker 1: I found that their form of communication to us never
Speaker 1: had that kind of like reaching out to other people.
Speaker 1: They would say like, hey, there's a campus oc happening
Speaker 1: at five pm, but they wouldn't reach out to members
Speaker 1: of the department to get everyone's opinion until like week three,
Speaker 1: week four of the strike. So you know, I think
Speaker 1: what no Voters did excel at was reaching out to
Speaker 1: people individually and like actually like going out to different labs,
Speaker 1: two different departments and talking with people like either one
Speaker 1: on one or within small groups. So me personally as
Speaker 1: well as another member of the Dollar Lunch Club actually
Speaker 1: canvassed around graduate housing. So we during the ratification, but
Speaker 1: we were literally like holding stacks of paper and saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is kind of the layout of what you'll be
Speaker 1: paid for each month that the union, like the UAW
Speaker 1: is not showing you, Like if you're in you know,
Speaker 1: in this year, you're going to be getting a barely
Speaker 1: like two hundred dollar raise for these several months. That
Speaker 1: kind of thing, which is like very you know, that
Speaker 1: information just was not made accessible or made clear by
Speaker 1: the UAWN. For me, that was purposefully done, at least
Speaker 1: in my opinion, that was purposefully done. So I think
Speaker 1: the diversity of tactics there that the no voters incorporated.
Speaker 1: And it was only after we started canvassing around graduate
Speaker 1: housing that we started seeing yes, voters also canvassing around
Speaker 1: graduate housing and tearing down the posts that we had
Speaker 1: put on other people's doors. Yeah, so it got contentious,
Speaker 1: but I think because we didn't have those official resources
Speaker 1: that the UAW usually or at least our chapter of
Speaker 1: the UAW usually can depend on, such as like oh,
Speaker 1: an official mailing list, and then we'll just like send
Speaker 1: you or basically spam you a bunch of updates. We
Speaker 1: had to work around that by doing more personal meetings by,
Speaker 1: for example, in the last week of the strike, facilitating
Speaker 1: group lunches right where multiple departments would come together, bring food,
Speaker 1: cook like nine ten in the pots worth of stews
Speaker 1: for everyone, and then that would be an opportunity for
Speaker 1: me to talk to people that I have never talked
Speaker 1: to in my life, from like completely different departments and
Speaker 1: tell them like, hey, I don't think this is looking
Speaker 1: really good for us, especially like we have very different conditions,
Speaker 1: very different working conditions, and just overall you may be
Speaker 1: part of the SRU, I'm part of two eight six five,
Speaker 1: here's how we should talk. So again, that was because
Speaker 1: the UAWU was not utilizing those avenues of getting people
Speaker 1: to talk to each other. So I'm not sure I
Speaker 1: kind of went off topic, but I wanted to like
Speaker 1: really hammer home that because we didn't have all those resources,
Speaker 1: we had to rely on kind of these like how
Speaker 1: should they say, like very distributed, piecemeal strategies of like
Speaker 1: oh well let's do something here. This isn't going to work.
Speaker 1: For this department. Let's do that for this department. You know,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. It does. I think it's really
Speaker 1: cool because I think that's how there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people can learn if they're interested in organizing their own workplaces. Right,
Speaker 1: whether it's organizing for a vote unattenative agreement, or it's
Speaker 1: just organizing to form collective bargaining in the first place,
Speaker 1: or to deal with a particular issue with your bosses,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, there's grassroots things work, especially when you
Speaker 1: don't have the this giant, sort of massive union apparatus.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say, like, um, just with like what
Speaker 1: it feels like like to be in like all of
Speaker 1: the different chats, um, because like, at at the peak
Speaker 1: of everything, I was like probably sending you like a
Speaker 1: dozen different Google docs a day. Um, it was all
Speaker 1: just like like, we'll start a different group chat for
Speaker 1: It was all just we'll start a different group chat
Speaker 1: for the specific purpose of like nobody's talking about disability justice,
Speaker 1: and so we want to talk about disability justice in here,
Speaker 1: and we've decided this forum is not good. And then
Speaker 1: somebody in the chat goes like, well, I'm with people
Speaker 1: who are also interested in like furthering this topic. And
Speaker 1: I don't see them any of them doing something like
Speaker 1: you know, um like analyzing uh like reanalyzing the like
Speaker 1: housing market data and not just like taking the uaw's
Speaker 1: word for it, or like like doing a little bit
Speaker 1: of like forensic accounting on the university and then posting
Speaker 1: the Google doc and saying like, hey, I did some
Speaker 1: like forensic accounting on the university. This is something that
Speaker 1: we can use in arguments and also is like evidence
Speaker 1: of X or YU. So yeah, just a lot of people.
Speaker 1: It helps. Also it helps to be any union full
Speaker 1: of grad students. Yeah, you do. You have a lot
Speaker 1: of useful skills. It can also be very taxing organizing
Speaker 1: that way, Like it can be really I know, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of being on your phone, and it's a
Speaker 1: lot of like your phone vibrating and and you're having
Speaker 1: to switch your focus from some like in depth discussion
Speaker 1: of disability justice to a discussion of like why the
Speaker 1: rent is so damn high in Santa Cruz and so
Speaker 1: like it can be really like I guess, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a person who does well with that kind
Speaker 1: of shit, and so like I wonder if there's anything
Speaker 1: because this happened a lot in twenty twenty two. Right
Speaker 1: when we look at how the George Floyd uprising or
Speaker 1: the uprising for back Lives, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: was organized. There was also a whole lot of signal
Speaker 1: chats that I know for a lot of people I
Speaker 1: spoke to like they just couldn't handle the signal chats.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if there's anything that you learned during
Speaker 1: that organizing process that you would like to pass on
Speaker 1: to people who are interested in organizing going forward. One
Speaker 1: thing I'll say is it became pretty clear that, you know,
Speaker 1: the people who had created the signal chats or the
Speaker 1: WhatsApp chats were the ones who were able to monitor, manipulate,
Speaker 1: shut it down, which happens to our campus picket leaders
Speaker 1: organizing chat after the no vote had already failed. Was
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later during the Joint Council meeting
Speaker 1: of the aw and UM. You know, the the discourse
Speaker 1: and the arguments that were happening there, while certainly very
Speaker 1: painful and vociferous, were also you know, very connecting to
Speaker 1: the campus. Lots of different departments were on there, so
Speaker 1: we still got a lot of ideas about you know,
Speaker 1: what other departments were thinking of, UM And with the
Speaker 1: locking down of that chat, which was kind of a
Speaker 1: unilateral action on the part of one of the moderators,
Speaker 1: that just really ended a lot of campus discussion and
Speaker 1: in my opinion, further the divide between the two sides.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that I'll say is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really hard from a historical perspective, from a communications
Speaker 1: perspective to see like that people who are typing slower
Speaker 1: are not getting their opinions out. People who are in
Speaker 1: multiple chats are getting certain types of information that other
Speaker 1: people are not getting. And my words of advice to
Speaker 1: any any mass movement that is attempting to use these
Speaker 1: kinds of chat applications are one to be sure that
Speaker 1: you are monitoring for accountability. I've realized very late in
Speaker 1: the game that you can actually download WhatsApp transcripts, So
Speaker 1: I download the entire strandscript just in case you've got
Speaker 1: newt screenshots. Also, you know, people would so why I
Speaker 1: said this, and you know to this persons who know
Speaker 1: you know, somebody took screenshot at out before you've deleted it. UM.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is, you know, to always have backups.
Speaker 1: Always have back channels, because there were so many instances
Speaker 1: of of you know, moderator lead or UAW sanctions chats
Speaker 1: that did not permit discussion. And yeah, since you know
Speaker 1: we were talking about that ship in our in our
Speaker 1: back channels. Yeah, I think I think that's that's good advice.
Speaker 1: Kenn has just joined us, and I'm just going to
Speaker 1: allow them to introduce themselves before we go forward with
Speaker 1: discussing these organizing tactics. Go ahead, Ken Hi, I'm Ken.
Speaker 1: I am a graduate student in the literature department. UM.
Speaker 1: So I've been organizing with Dollar Lunch Club from day
Speaker 1: like week zero before the strike started with um with
Speaker 1: anna and yeah, and well that was from day one,
Speaker 1: that's true. I wanted to say, um, with respect to
Speaker 1: the question about like, uh just on my phone fatigue. UM,
Speaker 1: I think a large like part of like why we
Speaker 1: are now like this group of us here is Dollar
Speaker 1: Lunch Club is because we were just like we all
Speaker 1: have on my phone fatigue and we want to do
Speaker 1: something actually like community building and like meaningful, uh, for
Speaker 1: like ourselves and other grad students. UM. And yeah, getting
Speaker 1: off the phone and making soup together has been very
Speaker 1: h very good. For that. Yeah, Ray, do you want
Speaker 1: to add to that. Yeah, I I was going to
Speaker 1: say the same, like, because I think I think phone
Speaker 1: chats are vital, right, Like I'm thinking about how important
Speaker 1: Facebook messenger chats were to the teacher strike a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, So those were like really important, and
Speaker 1: they were really important in our strike as well. But
Speaker 1: I think because of the limitations of like as Matt mentioned,
Speaker 1: someone can just unilaterally say none of you can reply
Speaker 1: only I can post updates, people can like erase their messages,
Speaker 1: they can nuke the entire chat, disable it. All of that.
Speaker 1: Because of that, it really tells you like, oh, you
Speaker 1: can't just rely on online organizing a lot of times
Speaker 1: You're going to have to do in person organizing, which, again,
Speaker 1: as Alex said, really well, part of that is just
Speaker 1: community building. Like to me, what Dollar Lunch Club is,
Speaker 1: it's like a continuation of that community building so that
Speaker 1: we maintain contacts, so that we maintain having conversations with
Speaker 1: people that generally we wouldn't really be meeting every day,
Speaker 1: or maybe wouldn't even be meeting like like once a quarter,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. You know, there's people that I
Speaker 1: talked to in grips that I never would have talked
Speaker 1: to if we weren't doing some of these lunches together
Speaker 1: and finding out their situations. So they're in a kind
Speaker 1: of tough situation that I think would be good to
Speaker 1: talk about in soon. But I guess what I would
Speaker 1: say as advice for other people who are trying to
Speaker 1: unionize their workplace is to get people kind of engaged.
Speaker 1: You have to start with some of that community building,
Speaker 1: and I think food is one of those really good
Speaker 1: places to start community building. It could be also other
Speaker 1: types of activities. So all throughout the strike, there was
Speaker 1: you know, times when people would be like, hey, let's
Speaker 1: do yoga by the beach, you know, or let's do
Speaker 1: yoga on this picket, or let's do a dance on
Speaker 1: this picket, or let's do like a fashion show on
Speaker 1: this picket. Those are all like fun activities that I
Speaker 1: think people who do not want to be at their
Speaker 1: workplace all the time, people who just want to catch
Speaker 1: a break. You can engage those like disengaged people that
Speaker 1: are just not paying attention to politics by offering activities
Speaker 1: that are important for community building and forgetting to meet
Speaker 1: people that you wouldn't have talked to before. So I
Speaker 1: think that's kind of like vital to a union functioning
Speaker 1: is building all of these contacts. And then when you
Speaker 1: have talked to someone several times, when you have had
Speaker 1: lunch with them several times, then you can really get
Speaker 1: into the nitty gritty of like, well, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about the contract, how do you feel about you know, unionizing,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about so and so. I think
Speaker 1: that kind of community building is something that like our
Speaker 1: the UAW two eight sixty five at least, really just
Speaker 1: like neglected. So my example here is on one of
Speaker 1: the pickets, not the picket that I was on, but
Speaker 1: on one of the pickets. I later talked to a
Speaker 1: guy who was saying like, oh yeah, our picket is
Speaker 1: really militant. We're supposed to be like shouting at people
Speaker 1: the street the entire time. And you know, our picket leader,
Speaker 1: she's like going all out and she you know, has
Speaker 1: lost her voice because of that and all of that.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, like, okay, but what do you
Speaker 1: don't you want to arrest? You know, like what like
Speaker 1: do you do anything for fun to keep people going
Speaker 1: to the picket Because his picket had dropped in numbers
Speaker 1: so much that they had to combine numbers with another
Speaker 1: picket right, And to me that was like you are
Speaker 1: making this really really stressful for people. That's not to
Speaker 1: say that you know, like preventing people from parking there
Speaker 1: isn't important. It is, but most people can only do
Speaker 1: that for a couple of days and then they're like
Speaker 1: stressed out and they do not want to contribute to
Speaker 1: that strike situation anymore. They just want to sit at
Speaker 1: home and not do work right, which is kind of
Speaker 1: what a strike can be. But to keep people on
Speaker 1: the picket lines and to keep in contact with them
Speaker 1: because they're coming on campus or you know, at the
Speaker 1: workplace every day, you have to make it like pleasant
Speaker 1: to be there. And so that that was one of
Speaker 1: the things that I learned from one of those pickets,
Speaker 1: where like you aren't doing any community building, Like your
Speaker 1: community building is a single basketball hoop that you brought
Speaker 1: and you put on the parking lot, and like that's
Speaker 1: not enough. You have to do like food, you have
Speaker 1: to do some kind of rest, you have to do
Speaker 1: some kind of art. So in one of the other
Speaker 1: pickets that I participated in, there was like chalking everywhere
Speaker 1: we were playing we were making like you know, like
Speaker 1: a monopoly board, but like you would just be losing
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars every time you passed a step and
Speaker 1: things like that. Right, you have to let people express
Speaker 1: themselves in this way for them to keep coming back
Speaker 1: and back and being engaged, for you to be able
Speaker 1: to facilitate conversations as to ask like, hey, what do
Speaker 1: you think about the contract? Hey, what do you want
Speaker 1: to do? I think community building is the most important thing,
Speaker 1: and that can be online, but it also should have
Speaker 1: an in person component to it. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty well said. Fun is a way like like intentionally
Speaker 1: making time and space and energy for having fun as
Speaker 1: a community and just like doing things that are just
Speaker 1: like like this is because all of us need to
Speaker 1: eat and all of us need to break. Like that
Speaker 1: is a way to like keep up your to like
Speaker 1: keep up your stamina and like help people keep up
Speaker 1: your stamina for something taxing like a strike, and also
Speaker 1: like to help people find the kind of meaning that
Speaker 1: helps them like want to come back and continue devoting
Speaker 1: energy to the thing. And yeah that I just wanted
Speaker 1: to echo that like that, like it was only through
Speaker 1: like finding this group that I was able to like
Speaker 1: find people of similar minds on It was not in
Speaker 1: the like UAW department organizing committee meetings that I could
Speaker 1: find like minds on this our picket, I don't think
Speaker 1: ever like like died off like other pickets did, and
Speaker 1: our picket I'm referring to, like most of the other
Speaker 1: people here, we were together on one picket. Part of
Speaker 1: that is because we were allowing like space for so
Speaker 1: many different activities to do. Like there is one person
Speaker 1: in my department who kept coming despite my department being
Speaker 1: like really politically disengaged, because we had like a button
Speaker 1: maker and we could make buttons, and he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: this is fun. I'm just gonna like continue drawing buttons
Speaker 1: for people. I like doing that. And it was like,
Speaker 1: go for it, you know, like as long as you're here,
Speaker 1: as long as we can communicate with you and like
Speaker 1: hear your opinions and see what you want to out
Speaker 1: of the contract, and you keep on coming, Like we
Speaker 1: love that. You know, Like if you allow space for
Speaker 1: different people to do different things, if there's like a
Speaker 1: diversity of tactics, I think you're going to get people
Speaker 1: a lot more engaged than if you have this like
Speaker 1: top down, like, no, we should only be preventing people
Speaker 1: from parking here, we should only be shouting at students
Speaker 1: to not go to class like they has to be
Speaker 1: a diversity of tactics. That will be a good time
Speaker 1: I think for us to explain exactly what dollar lunch
Speaker 1: club is and what it does. So does someone want
Speaker 1: to take take on explaining that a dollar and lunch
Speaker 1: club is very much like I would say, ground up
Speaker 1: organizing tactics. I guess it's it's everything is sort of
Speaker 1: collectively decided in a weekly meeting, and in the past
Speaker 1: quarter it's it's been lunch. It's we've been providing lunch
Speaker 1: for UM. It's targeted at grad students, but really welcoming
Speaker 1: all of all community members regardless of like affiliation with UCSD,
Speaker 1: although it's mostly UCSD students, been grad students that have
Speaker 1: been attending. But um, we've been doing lunch for a
Speaker 1: dollar two to three times a week in different places
Speaker 1: on the UCSD campus, sort of like a Some of
Speaker 1: it is just lunches. Of it is sort of like
Speaker 1: ad hoc catering I would say, of different kinds of
Speaker 1: organizing efforts, or like interdepartmental lunches, So it's not it's
Speaker 1: not totally fixed in terms of location or affiliation, and
Speaker 1: all of the members are doing this totally voluntarily, and
Speaker 1: the one dollar that we collect for the lunches, or
Speaker 1: or greater donations if community members want UM go straight
Speaker 1: into UM just sustaining the lunch project and groceries and
Speaker 1: but mostly Yeah, there's been a lot of efforts to
Speaker 1: sort of diversify and make the make our lunches as
Speaker 1: sustainable cost wise as possible. So this last quarter, folks
Speaker 1: have been working with the Food Recovery Network to sort
Speaker 1: of supply some of the ingredients. It is very much
Speaker 1: donate what you want. As Ken said, we generally suggested
Speaker 1: dollar donation, but it's I think one of our signs
Speaker 1: says eat first, donate maybe, So it is very much
Speaker 1: pay what you want, pay what you can. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I wanted to say, and like Matt was most directly
Speaker 1: involved in this transition, but what it grew out of
Speaker 1: was the fact that like the Humanity's Picket started doing
Speaker 1: daily lunches together and after the strike ended because of
Speaker 1: ratification vote UM, Uh, Matt and UH some other folks
Speaker 1: who had been doing those lunches were just like we
Speaker 1: should keep doing this. This feels good and right. And um,
Speaker 1: more of people like me jumped on afterwards. Um, and
Speaker 1: we all have been making it into this mutual leid
Speaker 1: thing for like we need to like you know, humanize
Speaker 1: ourselves to each other and like you know, shore up
Speaker 1: the like community bonds that we noticed we're missing. Um,
Speaker 1: so that way, maybe in the future, like people will
Speaker 1: care a little more about like people that maybe they
Speaker 1: couldn't care less about this time around. I want to
Speaker 1: just jump in and give credit where credit is due.
Speaker 1: Or An and Anna actually were the original eights of
Speaker 1: the strike food and I jumped on in day one
Speaker 1: because I knew for I used a professional cook for
Speaker 1: a while, I'm really in the food and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do that. And so I guess you could say
Speaker 1: it was the three of us, and then it expanded
Speaker 1: her fair fair, I don't I don't have my origin
Speaker 1: story nailed down. Yeah, you got to get it on, Pat.
Speaker 1: It's it's something I missed greatly from like leftist organizing
Speaker 1: in certainly in like southern Europe, which is you know
Speaker 1: where I spent a lot of my life, Like you're
Speaker 1: always well fed at anything where you're in Spain or
Speaker 1: Italy or even in France and like American labor organizing
Speaker 1: black set, so it's cool to see you guys doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Kind of to summarize what Alex was saying. For me,
Speaker 1: the goal is very much too from one is food justice.
Speaker 1: Um so food for everyone. I think everyone should have it.
Speaker 1: It's great to hear that that's kind of a building
Speaker 1: thing in Europe. I didn't know that, but it sounds
Speaker 1: pretty on brand. Disappointingly, that is not the case here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, everyone needs food, So that's that's one goal.
Speaker 1: And then for me, the other goal is to get
Speaker 1: people talking across departments. So I think a big issue
Speaker 1: in the strike was that some departments were paid much
Speaker 1: more than others, and I think for that reason, the
Speaker 1: ones who were paid more were often less radical because
Speaker 1: they were kind of already slightly more comfortable. Of course,
Speaker 1: no one has paid a huge amount as a grad student,
Speaker 1: but they had. I guess you can say more to lose,
Speaker 1: and maybe we're less pressed to urgently start earning more.
Speaker 1: And of course accessibility needs and there are many other considerations. Basically,
Speaker 1: if you're already somewhat comfortable with your living situation, you're
Speaker 1: less likely to be super radical, and so I think
Speaker 1: just not even being in the same spheres together, people
Speaker 1: in those more comfortable departments kind of did not really
Speaker 1: have any reason to interact with people in the less
Speaker 1: comfortable departments, and they just didn't see them at all.
Speaker 1: And so, just like what Alex is saying, that food
Speaker 1: is a way to humanize us all to each other.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to have everyone in the same room
Speaker 1: together without you know, seeing and talking to each other.
Speaker 1: So food was away for us to do that, and
Speaker 1: I thought that that was a really important, continued, slow
Speaker 1: moving goal. So weekly lunches are away for us to
Speaker 1: invite people from across the campus and say, hey, there's
Speaker 1: free food here and it's also really good, so you
Speaker 1: should come by and eat them. And while you're here,
Speaker 1: talk to some students from the Humanities department and recognize
Speaker 1: that they have real needs and they are people too,
Speaker 1: And maybe next time you vote you should keep their
Speaker 1: thoughts in mind, UM and vote a little bit less
Speaker 1: selfishly if you can. UM. So that that's what it
Speaker 1: is for me. I think getting a little deeper and
Speaker 1: dig a little deeper into the origin of like how
Speaker 1: this all started. My department has been like very suspicious,
Speaker 1: I guess of the the UAW previous efforts for fair
Speaker 1: for fair reasons, you know, um, And so in terms
Speaker 1: of getting folks out to strike and then also to
Speaker 1: be on the picket line, it was definitely a struggle,
Speaker 1: not just not really so much in that folks didn't
Speaker 1: believe in the cause, but they were like pretty aware that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, as as literature students, you're not the university
Speaker 1: or the union's priority. Um, you know, because humanity's you
Speaker 1: know that, you know that trend, right, And so there
Speaker 1: was also a lot of the whole strike pay systems
Speaker 1: scared a lot of folks, and it was like I
Speaker 1: have to switch from this, you know, like different kind
Speaker 1: of labor, which is not really about me physically being
Speaker 1: in a place for twenty hours a week, into this
Speaker 1: labor that is like me walking around for twenty hours
Speaker 1: a week in order to make sure that I am
Speaker 1: not going to go broke. And basically there was not
Speaker 1: a funded There wasn't funded snacks or lunch by the UAW.
Speaker 1: And I had actually Matt and I or yeah, Matt
Speaker 1: and I had asked at an early meeting. I guess
Speaker 1: about getting a sort of like seed fund of like
Speaker 1: maybe fifty dollars to just get us rolling on the lunch,
Speaker 1: and the UAW staff was like, Nope, lunch is just
Speaker 1: not included in our budget. Sorry about that, Like, if
Speaker 1: you want to do that, you'll have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get this organizing going on your own. And
Speaker 1: so part of doing the fundraising from the beginning was
Speaker 1: about that, and actually the strike food funds that I
Speaker 1: also want to throw some credit to Anna also as
Speaker 1: like one of the people that was like most focused
Speaker 1: on building sort of the fundraising materials and actively fundraising
Speaker 1: in different places and making sure that then ultimately in
Speaker 1: terms of being able to supply food lunch funds to
Speaker 1: other pickets. That was something that we started doing about
Speaker 1: midway through the strike because we had had some fundraising
Speaker 1: success and it was kind of crazy because it was
Speaker 1: I remember just like the last day of the strike itself,
Speaker 1: just being at another pick get where you know that
Speaker 1: had sort of developed more of its own like lunch culture,
Speaker 1: like using some of that like that fundraised cash and
Speaker 1: like also using efforts from other folks, but um, just
Speaker 1: the picket being like somebody at the picket being like
Speaker 1: Damn they got to get on that lunch thing next time.
Speaker 1: This was key And I was just like no, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like exactly the lunch is key, Like how
Speaker 1: you how are you going to expect to have people
Speaker 1: building community, you know, and you know the cheapest, the
Speaker 1: cheapest like lunch you can. I mean outside of basically
Speaker 1: during the strike, people were eating all of the food
Speaker 1: out of them the food co Op, which is another
Speaker 1: community group that supplies food on campus. Um, but outside
Speaker 1: of that, pretty much there is not a meal to
Speaker 1: be had on campus for less than like thirteen dollars
Speaker 1: without packs. So yeah, that's that's about that, Alex. Can
Speaker 1: I add something like before you just like a tiny thing?
Speaker 1: Based on Ken's point, I was going to say, at
Speaker 1: one point, I think it was week two or week
Speaker 1: three of the strike, we were making so much food.
Speaker 1: We were feeding like probably one hundred people, and then
Speaker 1: we would have leftovers and we would literally walk the
Speaker 1: leftovers or to the other pickets, and it surprised me
Speaker 1: so much that the other picket would just be eating
Speaker 1: like chips and donuts, and here I am like dropping
Speaker 1: off like cooked you know, like being burritos or like
Speaker 1: salads or things like that, like actual food for them.
Speaker 1: So like, to me, this was like not even a
Speaker 1: failure on the uaw's part. It was like very intentional
Speaker 1: of like, well you're kind of on your own, you know,
Speaker 1: So that's like the power of food to me is like,
Speaker 1: well fed people are going to keep coming back, you know,
Speaker 1: people that don't have to spend like a bunch of
Speaker 1: money on getting like donuts. I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: they're going to keep coming back, you know. Yeah. What
Speaker 1: Ken was saying earlier about props to Anna, nobody moves
Speaker 1: a second hand insta pot in San Diego County without
Speaker 1: Anna knowing about it is one of our group jokes.
Speaker 1: Yeah I love you, yeah, um, but yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to offer some contrast to like, uh, how uh like
Speaker 1: the other folks's departments have been, um, like have been
Speaker 1: responsive to things and like what the attitudes are. Um.
Speaker 1: So I am in the computer science department. Uh, we
Speaker 1: have plenty of money comparatively, um and we are I
Speaker 1: think steps with the previous steps were like steps eight
Speaker 1: and nine, um, and we organize a lot with like
Speaker 1: the Electrical engineering department, which is like step like also
Speaker 1: like steps seven to eight nine, um. And I remember
Speaker 1: very vividly this town hall we had before the ratification
Speaker 1: vote got announced, where like, uh, there was some temperature
Speaker 1: checking about like how does everybody feel about this, um,
Speaker 1: like if we if we put this up for a vote, um,
Speaker 1: and everybody was just like, uh, you know, it looks
Speaker 1: all right to me. I think, I, uh, this like
Speaker 1: you know, not not incredible, but like I'd be able
Speaker 1: to handle this. And then I come in and get
Speaker 1: my turn and go like, guys, Um, everything I'm hearing
Speaker 1: from the other side of campus is them panicking and
Speaker 1: very upsets. Um. I don't think we should do this
Speaker 1: if the rest of the campus is panicking and upsets
Speaker 1: And I was just like not heard and kind of
Speaker 1: ignored U. So yeah, UM. A lot of the community
Speaker 1: building stuff, like when we talk about like trying to
Speaker 1: get people to like humanize like other people that they
Speaker 1: didn't seem to care about. UM, we're talking about like
Speaker 1: the departments that didn't need as much help like some
Speaker 1: of mine. And like the strike for me personally was
Speaker 1: like it definitely transformed a lot of like my friendships
Speaker 1: or that reason, because like I don't know how to
Speaker 1: be friends with people that are like I see and
Speaker 1: hear that the people that you're talking to, I see
Speaker 1: and hear that you're talking to people who are absolutely
Speaker 1: freaking the hell out because like, we'll have struck for
Speaker 1: six weeks or so and they'll still be poor. But like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to be friends after that. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to catch a little bit more on the
Speaker 1: idea of feeding strikers and the massive logistical boon that
Speaker 1: that was for a movement. Does anybody we call offhand
Speaker 1: how many weeks to strike went on? Oor, say six
Speaker 1: u AW rules who were in order to twentify for
Speaker 1: strike pay, we needed to have twenty hours of striking
Speaker 1: a week, So that boiled down to three ships. You
Speaker 1: could do them every you know, you could do two
Speaker 1: in one day and one another day. But by and large,
Speaker 1: at least most of the people on I Paint were there,
Speaker 1: you know, five days a week. But let's just say
Speaker 1: you got three ships. Lunch, as we've already established at
Speaker 1: the UC San Diego campus, is around thirteen dollars a person, right,
Speaker 1: So that's thirty nine dollars you're spending just on lunch,
Speaker 1: not on gas, which for me is quite expensive because
Speaker 1: they live somewhat far from campus, So thirty nine times
Speaker 1: six is two hundred and thirty four dollars. And when
Speaker 1: we struck for for these these high wages, you know
Speaker 1: that was worth it. We put in our effort and
Speaker 1: I sweat, But at the end of the day, those
Speaker 1: of us in the arts and humanities and the ass
Speaker 1: are seeing this year two hundred dollars base for a month,
Speaker 1: So just in our lunch that would have obviated the
Speaker 1: raises that we got during the strike. So I think,
Speaker 1: you know, this show's really the necessity or a mutual
Speaker 1: aid in workers' movements like this, because you know, we
Speaker 1: we if nobody else is going to beat us, we
Speaker 1: have to beat ourselves. Yeah, I think that's pretty It's
Speaker 1: good to put numbers on it, like it's a serious
Speaker 1: expensive it's not getting any cheaper. Another way that I
Speaker 1: see this is it's not just for workers, like the
Speaker 1: way that I see what Dollar Lunch Club is doing
Speaker 1: biased saying hey, we will provide either free or very
Speaker 1: cheap a dollar, you know, for lunch on these days
Speaker 1: of the week, basically every week. Whoever wants to come
Speaker 1: can come, whoever wants to help can help go for it.
Speaker 1: That to me is basically like a soup kitchen, like
Speaker 1: it is a The way that I see it is
Speaker 1: it's like a communist anarchist type project of like I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I can say it's building power, but
Speaker 1: I feel that it's not just building community, but like
Speaker 1: allowing people to worry less about expenses, which means that
Speaker 1: they can put their energy into a lot of other things.
Speaker 1: Like the way that I would want Dollar Lunch Club
Speaker 1: to continue to evolve is that we would be able
Speaker 1: to offer lunch for, you know, people who can't afford
Speaker 1: the like twelve dollars campus lunches every day of the week,
Speaker 1: all week. Like imagining the difference of you know, like, okay,
Speaker 1: there's ten weeks in a quarter, five days in a week,
Speaker 1: so like fifty days that like you might be buying
Speaker 1: lunch at least half of those days. The difference of
Speaker 1: one dollar lunch versus like ten dollars lunch is like
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars, right, So to me, if we can
Speaker 1: provide that, you know, as we grow in time to
Speaker 1: all five days of the week, you know, on several
Speaker 1: locations on campus, and we provide that for a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred students or community members or what have you.
Speaker 1: We will be making a material difference in these people's lives,
Speaker 1: and we will be showing them a different way that
Speaker 1: like organizing or not even just organizing, but like that
Speaker 1: accessibility to food can be organized. If that makes sense
Speaker 1: that it doesn't, you know, like getting food doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be this like capitalist project of like I am
Speaker 1: ordering this sort of thing and I am getting this back.
Speaker 1: It can be like the more along the terms of
Speaker 1: like what we're doing, which is like we are seeing
Speaker 1: what food has been donated to the pantry that we
Speaker 1: work a lot with the Basic Needs Hub, the food
Speaker 1: pantry and so on to get a bunch of like
Speaker 1: donated produce out of which we make foods. Right, so
Speaker 1: we're reducing food waste. We're trying to you know, contribute
Speaker 1: to like food justice, making food as free as cheap
Speaker 1: as possible and allowing people to be like, hey, actually
Speaker 1: the cafeterias that you see on campus, you getting lunch
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: you know, like you pay you know, like two bucks
Speaker 1: for an apple or things like that. And then another
Speaker 1: thing that occasionally we've been doing is also foraging. So
Speaker 1: here in southern California, there's a lot of edible non
Speaker 1: native species such as like mustard, curly doc wild radish,
Speaker 1: things like that, and so we can like forage those
Speaker 1: and even make food out of them along with food
Speaker 1: from the food pantry. So, I you know, not that
Speaker 1: we're really doing this right now, but my dream would
Speaker 1: be to really kind of revolutionize the way that food
Speaker 1: culture is in UCSC and show people like, no, it
Speaker 1: can't be a food kitchen where you don't have to
Speaker 1: like expressly worry about where you're getting your your meal
Speaker 1: the next day. You don't have to pay three dollars
Speaker 1: for a banana, you don't have to do any of that.
Speaker 1: You can have like a better future you can't have
Speaker 1: like a better experience at the university or just like
Speaker 1: in life in general. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: that's really no. I know, like I teach the community
Speaker 1: college sometimes, so it's a little different from the UC
Speaker 1: but maybe not as different as people might imagine. And
Speaker 1: like one thing that I've noticed, like I always have
Speaker 1: food in my office and a lot of my students
Speaker 1: are in food procarity and have been for a while,
Speaker 1: and like certainly around like the time of the fucking
Speaker 1: travel band when when people's parents were stuck outside the
Speaker 1: country and they defend for themselves. It's a way that
Speaker 1: like we can move from this moment of alien nation,
Speaker 1: which is like you know, your interaction with pandor express
Speaker 1: where you give money and you get a box of
Speaker 1: food you eat by yourself, to like a moment of solidarity,
Speaker 1: which is cool. Um, yeah, it's great. You're foraging too.
Speaker 1: I want to do a foraging episode one day, so
Speaker 1: I'll have to have you back for that. I want
Speaker 1: to like finish up maybe by just talking about some
Speaker 1: logistical stuff. And anarchists have been feeding people communists or
Speaker 1: leftists or whatever like for quite a long time, right,
Speaker 1: like I can. Some of my best food memories are
Speaker 1: like eating beans with people, you know, like food not
Speaker 1: bombs things. At the I do a lot of work
Speaker 1: with refugees, so like food not bomb things in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen with a migrant caravan, or people making pancakes at
Speaker 1: the G eight protest in the early two thousands. Like
Speaker 1: some of my best memories not of just food, but
Speaker 1: like of forming community around food. So like when you're
Speaker 1: doing this stuff, like it's there only if someone wants
Speaker 1: to someone here is they say like, hell, yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to do that on my campus, at my workplace,
Speaker 1: in my town whatever. Like logistically it sounds like you
Speaker 1: guys have a corner on the insta pot market. But like,
Speaker 1: aside from that, like a cooking vegan food so it's
Speaker 1: it's more accessible for more people. You know, what kind
Speaker 1: of stuff like that would you advise for people? I
Speaker 1: can jump in on this, ye, cooking cooking to scale
Speaker 1: is an entirely different beast than cooking for yourself at home.
Speaker 1: And um, you've already identified beans as being really legumes
Speaker 1: and grains bought in bulk machine kind of a surprise
Speaker 1: to anybody who who's thought about it for ever a
Speaker 1: hot second that that when you buy in bulk, it's
Speaker 1: far cheaper, but it also comes with downsides like when
Speaker 1: you're soaking beans, you often you know, have to soak
Speaker 1: those beans a long time ahead of time. Um, And
Speaker 1: what we have been doing, which I think that my
Speaker 1: my comrades have touched on, is sourcing from a great
Speaker 1: variety of local food banks and barns and donation both
Speaker 1: during the strike and afterwards. One thing that I would
Speaker 1: say we struggled with in the initial phases of Dollar
Speaker 1: Lunch Club when we were still actively striking, was that
Speaker 1: you know, the absolute best of goodwill in the world.
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted to donate foodstuffs, um, and that meant that
Speaker 1: our meal planning was was significantly harder because you know,
Speaker 1: we have half a can of tomato paste and we
Speaker 1: have twenty five cans of pinto beans and you know,
Speaker 1: ten bulbs of pentel and three crackers. Like definitely, we
Speaker 1: found that it was easier to solicit both cash financially,
Speaker 1: you know, setting up what's what's it called a venmo
Speaker 1: um and also you know for people who can't give money, um,
Speaker 1: we put them to work. And and that was you know,
Speaker 1: because people want to help, and we felt kind of
Speaker 1: bad after while turning people away, who are you offering
Speaker 1: to go to the store. And at one point in
Speaker 1: the strikeway, I think we got like twenty five prepackaged
Speaker 1: Indian meals which we ended up giving out to people
Speaker 1: for lunch. But as far as feeding people on site,
Speaker 1: you know, being very specific about what kinds of things
Speaker 1: you're looking for ahead of time, meal planning in a
Speaker 1: well in advance with a sort of basic framework of okay,
Speaker 1: we got a bean and we got a starch what
Speaker 1: we have to throw into the bean pot. The last
Speaker 1: thing I would say is as as Anna has rightly
Speaker 1: been champion for the actual cooking devices are super important too,
Speaker 1: and that was one of that has perpetually been one
Speaker 1: of our biggest struggles because you know, we don't have
Speaker 1: a call ender, so we can't drain the beans. And
Speaker 1: we have four insta pots, but they're different sizes, and
Speaker 1: the lives for two don't work with wear and tear.
Speaker 1: Stuff is you know, breaking right when you need it
Speaker 1: the most. So you know, if you are getting money donations,
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to budget for the pots
Speaker 1: and the pans and can openers and these kinds of
Speaker 1: things that really make a difference in getting Blue hot
Speaker 1: and out on time and large numbers. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's very good advice. Maria had something to add. I
Speaker 1: have actually a lot of things to add logistics wise,
Speaker 1: because in our meetings we talk about some some some
Speaker 1: parts of this, and so one of the big things
Speaker 1: that we talked about over the strike but also after
Speaker 1: the strike when we were like, hey, let's let's continue
Speaker 1: this project, is how much of our things should be
Speaker 1: like reusable versus like disposable right. That was like a
Speaker 1: big topic of like, well, okay, we're using disposable forks,
Speaker 1: and we don't like that environmentally because we're putting like
Speaker 1: a bunch of plastic into you know, the trash, right,
Speaker 1: and we have to buy plastic each time. But then
Speaker 1: like we don't know, okay, you know, like should we
Speaker 1: should we buy like, you know, a bunch of metal spoons,
Speaker 1: but they're going to be a little bit more expensive
Speaker 1: than the disposable ones, but you know, maybe the costs
Speaker 1: will even out after a while, and like that. That
Speaker 1: kind of you know, discussion has to be had about
Speaker 1: like everything, so you know, about like bowls, about like
Speaker 1: the pans in which we cook in like mixing bowls,
Speaker 1: like all kinds of things like that where we're thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, like based on the funds that we have,
Speaker 1: based on our usage of some of these products, is
Speaker 1: it worth it getting you know, like reusable things, which
Speaker 1: unfortunately will have to like clean afterwards, so they add
Speaker 1: to the labor but thankfully they don't you know, pollute
Speaker 1: the environment and the way that disposable things do so
Speaker 1: for us, because we do care a lot about lowering
Speaker 1: our usage of plastic. We did pivot to using more
Speaker 1: reusable things. So I think for a group that may
Speaker 1: be interested in, you know, like facilitating something like this
Speaker 1: in their workplace or in their university or something like that,
Speaker 1: I think that is one important discussion that you want
Speaker 1: to have. What is the time course that you see
Speaker 1: of this project continuing and is it worth it getting
Speaker 1: you know, like reusable versus disposable tools for the people
Speaker 1: that possibly you're going to feed. Another thing that is
Speaker 1: related to this is when you're first starting to cook,
Speaker 1: really you're trying to borrow things from other people. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that like during the strike,
Speaker 1: we had just borrowed people's instapots, Like people brought in
Speaker 1: their instapots, they labeled them like, oh, this is you know,
Speaker 1: Dana's instapot, and then we use those instapots. After the strike,
Speaker 1: we couldn't do that anymore. But there were some people
Speaker 1: that were willing to be like, Hey, I'm actually like
Speaker 1: moving out and I'll donate all these tupperware to you.
Speaker 1: And so we took the tupperware and now we have
Speaker 1: like a little tupperware program where if people don't forget
Speaker 1: to bring their tupperware to put lunch in. We just
Speaker 1: like label it. You see a Z dollar lunch club,
Speaker 1: you see a mutual aid and we just give away
Speaker 1: the tupperware and oftentimes you know it's brought back to
Speaker 1: us that kind of thing, and that again facilitates food usage.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of places where you can find
Speaker 1: things that you might need in this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: so can openers. I have found a bunch of jars
Speaker 1: that people you know, after they're moving away, they lead
Speaker 1: for free around graduate housing. So like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of things that you can get which don't really require
Speaker 1: funds for There's also buying nothing groups on Facebook that
Speaker 1: I think are particularly effective for this. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people that are just like, oh yeah, I'm like
Speaker 1: updating my kitchen, I'm throwing away a bunch of these
Speaker 1: utensils that you can just get for free. So that's
Speaker 1: been really helpful for us as well, and as someone
Speaker 1: who does a lot of sourcing as well, so we
Speaker 1: tend to shop from goodwill and other thrift stores to
Speaker 1: make sure that you know, are buying in the consumption
Speaker 1: of some of these tools is as ethical if you
Speaker 1: can call it that, as possible. And then a third
Speaker 1: thing that I would like to add for anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to, you know, start a project like this is
Speaker 1: I think you have to make it be fun for you,
Speaker 1: the person that's cooking and cleaning and organizing, apart from
Speaker 1: making it fun for everyone else who gets you know,
Speaker 1: like free food, cheap food, tasty food. Right. So, something
Speaker 1: that I really like about Dollar Lunch Club is that
Speaker 1: we've been really allowing our members to like run wild
Speaker 1: with the ideas that they have. Right So, for example,
Speaker 1: we Anna and I have been talking about utilizing all
Speaker 1: the frozen bread that has been donated to us and
Speaker 1: making French toast vegan French toast out of that. So
Speaker 1: we're really excited for doing something fun like that because
Speaker 1: usually in a lot of like Sue Kitchen places, you
Speaker 1: you have foods that are like, hey, this is nutritious,
Speaker 1: but you know, like I don't want to eat beans
Speaker 1: all day, and someone who like does like beans, but
Speaker 1: not everyone else wants to just eat you know, like
Speaker 1: mashed beans all day, that kind of thing. And so
Speaker 1: having a like a variety of things that we cook,
Speaker 1: like we pretty much like cook all kinds of curries,
Speaker 1: a lot of like rice dishes, a lot of stews,
Speaker 1: pesto and spaghetti like pasta, you know, just like all
Speaker 1: very different kinds of meals that make it fun for
Speaker 1: the people who are arriving. So, like I mentioned pesto,
Speaker 1: I made pesto a couple of times, and like a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, ooh, pesto basil, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be great. And that was with like the forge mustard
Speaker 1: that I was talking about before, And like when you
Speaker 1: have that kind of variety and when you have like
Speaker 1: interesting fun foods, when you can like make boba in
Speaker 1: an install pot, or you could grab a toaster oven
Speaker 1: and make garlic bread, which is things that we've done,
Speaker 1: you make it a lot more fun for the people
Speaker 1: that are cooking as well, and it just becomes like
Speaker 1: a community building thing, not just for the people eating,
Speaker 1: but for the people doing that labor. So that's like,
Speaker 1: that's what I would advise people, Like, yes, you are
Speaker 1: under very tight budgetary constraints. We try to like for
Speaker 1: some meals, like because there's so much donations, sometimes there's
Speaker 1: zero dollars. Sometimes we have to buy things and we
Speaker 1: try to have it be less than twenty dollars so
Speaker 1: we can like feed thirty to forty people, and you
Speaker 1: can like have that you know, money that's donated for
Speaker 1: like one dollar. Have that be for like next time
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, did I Yeah, so like make
Speaker 1: it fun for yourself so you can like continue doing
Speaker 1: that work and you won't burn out in the way
Speaker 1: that you might otherwise even as you are trying to budget. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say, um, Like, in terms of roles, Um,
Speaker 1: so we always have like somebody who like knows how
Speaker 1: to like pull a recipe together. More Um, we always
Speaker 1: have to have somebody who like does dish washing. And
Speaker 1: like each of these roles can have like one or
Speaker 1: two or three people in it in it and then
Speaker 1: there's always like people who just like do the like
Speaker 1: labor of prep um and um. Like, yeah, that could
Speaker 1: be all the same person and or it can be
Speaker 1: multiple for each um. And I want to say, usually
Speaker 1: I am a person who either like like I show
Speaker 1: up to peel veggies that people tell me need to
Speaker 1: be peeled, and I show up to wash dishes. Um,
Speaker 1: because I'm not a person who is like I have
Speaker 1: trouble making decisions about food. I do not want to
Speaker 1: be in charge of food stuff. And that has been
Speaker 1: like okay, And that has meant that like I do
Speaker 1: not have to like get nervous and worked up about
Speaker 1: like I don't know how to make decisions about food.
Speaker 1: Here I can just show up in peel carrots and
Speaker 1: it's like kind of helped me, um, like maybe get
Speaker 1: a little bit of a better feel for like cooking stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: So that way when I am like just cooking for myself, UM,
Speaker 1: I do just think of like, okay, if I was
Speaker 1: like if I was in you know, like dollar lunch
Speaker 1: prep mode, Um, I know I have rice, and I
Speaker 1: know I have beans, and so I'm set, um and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, and a lot a lot of times just
Speaker 1: like taking away the like the dirty dish bin and
Speaker 1: sort of like leaving out maybe like a few washed
Speaker 1: bowls by the sink along with a sponge and a
Speaker 1: bit of soap. People get the queue and they'll wash
Speaker 1: their on dishes. It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's great. Actually having space for different skill sets and
Speaker 1: different preferences within your organizing is always key, okay, guys,
Speaker 1: And where can people find like if they want to
Speaker 1: ask you for bean recipes or follow along cepages whatever
Speaker 1: it is, like a dollar lunch club social media they
Speaker 1: can find or do you have individual ones you want
Speaker 1: to share? Uh so, I think Alex can talk about
Speaker 1: the website. I have a website. Yes, I made us.
Speaker 1: I made us a website. Um. So we are most
Speaker 1: active on Instagram. Un can put our handle in the
Speaker 1: chat is Dollar Underscore Lunch Underscore Club on Instagram. Um
Speaker 1: and yeah, the website is Dollar Lunch Club UCSD, separated
Speaker 1: by dashes and then dot get hub, dot io because
Speaker 1: you can get free domain names if it's your get
Speaker 1: hub user name. Hot tip of the day, but uh yeah,
Speaker 1: primarily on Instagram. Nice. Yeah, it's great. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for your time, guys. I already
Speaker 1: appreciate it, and yeah, I hope more people do the same, because,
Speaker 1: as you said, I think this is really important way
Speaker 1: to organize. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Hey,
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the universe. It could
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