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. Hot fucking Moses, Welcome
Speaker 1: to it could happen here. The podcast that is sometimes
Speaker 1: introduced by me, Robert Evans, other times it's introduced by
Speaker 1: James Stout or Mia Wong, who are both on the
Speaker 1: call today. How's everybody doing? Pretty good? We've we've we've
Speaker 1: declared victory over the balloon. Yeah we we Finally the
Speaker 1: F twenty two gets its first air to air kill.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeahs later. We did it, guys, we did it.
Speaker 1: We really can. Like the F tway two is like
Speaker 1: God's perfect killing machine. Yeah, and it's thus it is
Speaker 1: like it is a six hundred and it was like
Speaker 1: a sixty seven billion dollar aircraft. Completely. It is a
Speaker 1: it is a perfect air It is a perfect air
Speaker 1: superiority craft. Which in modern warfare makes it slightly less
Speaker 1: useful than an eight hundred and fifty dollars DJA i'd
Speaker 1: drone with hand grenades. Yeah yeah, I express. I cannot
Speaker 1: think of like a better metaphor to understand how the
Speaker 1: US Army works than shooting a using it using a
Speaker 1: sixty seven billion dollar aircraft to shoot a three hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty one thousand dollars missile at a balloon. Just
Speaker 1: like listen, somebody several balloons in his life, ammitately, not
Speaker 1: this high up. It is extremely entertaining. And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't fault that pilot. I am deeply disappointed in
Speaker 1: rural America that no crazy rich guy with a cessna
Speaker 1: flew his friend with a fifty cow up to like
Speaker 1: thirty thousand feet drop. That why the seventeen incinerator was
Speaker 1: invented for this specific instance. And yeah, we've been let
Speaker 1: down again. Anyway, what are we talking about today, Maya?
Speaker 1: We're talking about the balloon a little bit, and then
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about something more interesting, which is
Speaker 1: the sort of history of US China relations and how
Speaker 1: it's not what everyone thinks it is. I've been led
Speaker 1: to believe by the media that there is nothing more
Speaker 1: interesting than the balloon, and that we should be focusing
Speaker 1: all our coverage on the balloon. That's true. There have
Speaker 1: been other balloons. There are now a fifth balloon, has
Speaker 1: it the towers? Okay? So yeah, let's let's go yeah.
Speaker 1: So okay, So I want to start off by like,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the balloon,
Speaker 1: which is that. Okay, so we have the American Army's claim,
Speaker 1: but this is a surveillance balloon. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: chance it just was a random balloon. Like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't want to completely discount the fact that it
Speaker 1: was a balloon. I do want to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about sort of balloon surveillance stuff though, because I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of people both on the left and
Speaker 1: also on the right, who are just like, why would
Speaker 1: anyone ever have a spy balloon? It's like, okay, so
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit. In order to do this,
Speaker 1: we need to talk a little bit about surveillance satellites,
Speaker 1: which I come from a family of astronomers, and one
Speaker 1: of the sort of dark secrets of astronomy is that
Speaker 1: the stuff you point up also could be pointed back
Speaker 1: down again and yeah, yeah, so And you know, one
Speaker 1: of the other things about this is that a lot
Speaker 1: of the companies that make telescopes, to make the lenses
Speaker 1: for that, are companies that work heavily with the NRO,
Speaker 1: which is the National Reconnaissance Office, which is a a
Speaker 1: gen du winely terrifying organization with an unfathomable black budget
Speaker 1: to dedicated to just like spying on people from aircrafts
Speaker 1: now from space and more people, more people should be
Speaker 1: like we have a lot of Like people are scared
Speaker 1: of the NSA, people are scared of the CIA, but
Speaker 1: more people should be scared of the NRO, because Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: that stuff is who but on the only head. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the NRROW has a bunch of satellites, right, But
Speaker 1: the thing about satellites that they move. Okay, you can't
Speaker 1: prove that. I will, I will prove I will I will,
Speaker 1: I will, I will do a war thunder, I will
Speaker 1: post classic live underneath of dome. And satellites are stationary.
Speaker 1: The dome rotates in a clockwise direction around them, and
Speaker 1: that's responsible for the illusion of motion in the heavens. Sure, yes,
Speaker 1: there's no competing response today. So okay, all right, So
Speaker 1: so satellite satellites move, they move in stable and pdictable
Speaker 1: orbits and this means a few things, right. One of
Speaker 1: the things that it means is that a satellite is
Speaker 1: only over the area you want it to cover for
Speaker 1: a limited amount of time because it's you know, satellites
Speaker 1: moving around the Earth, right, um. And this means that
Speaker 1: you know, you can you can calculate their orbits, and
Speaker 1: you can calculate when they're going to be in range
Speaker 1: of whatever they want to look at, and you know,
Speaker 1: and this means you can do things like, for example,
Speaker 1: figuring out where the satellite is going to be in
Speaker 1: hiding whatever you're working out when they pass this. This
Speaker 1: is how the CIA, this is how the CIA completely
Speaker 1: missed India's nuclear weapons program, is that they knew when
Speaker 1: that they've been dowhen the flies, the spy satellites you're
Speaker 1: flying over, they just hid all the way puts equipment
Speaker 1: and the CIA never figured out they were building dukes
Speaker 1: base well actually not based its bad, but but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very funny. Yeah yeah, but they do did
Speaker 1: they just paint it like a hot dog or something
Speaker 1: and just be like guy, they lit just like put
Speaker 1: tarps over it. The satellite came around, and then they
Speaker 1: build things under ground. It's very funny. I'm passionating the
Speaker 1: world's biggest hot dog. I dare in case someone else does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Jamie Loftus actually might. If you beat that,
Speaker 1: you don't have to do all to the death. Jamie
Speaker 1: secret something we're not supposed to talk about on the podcast. Well, look,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's like the Israeli secret arsenal. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's an open secret and not a closed secret.
Speaker 1: So okay. You can solve this problem of of sort
Speaker 1: of telescope go move um either by having just a
Speaker 1: bunch of satellites going constantly or by having a geosynchronous satellite,
Speaker 1: which is which is in an orbit where it's like
Speaker 1: basically over the same spot of the Earth at one time.
Speaker 1: The problem is that both of these are like unfathomably expensive,
Speaker 1: and doesn't mean that governments don't do that, Like the
Speaker 1: US is a multi spy satellites like satellites, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's really really expensive, and there's you know, there's a
Speaker 1: few other reasons why you would use a balloon um.
Speaker 1: Which are you know some of the reasons the US
Speaker 1: uses that use them in Afghanistan. One is that you
Speaker 1: have really limited space on a satellite, which means that
Speaker 1: there's there you know, you can only fit certain kinds
Speaker 1: of equipment onto each satellite. There's another issue, which is that, Okay, um,
Speaker 1: if you're putting spy stuff on a satellite that has
Speaker 1: to work in space, and it turns out that space sucks,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I mean wanting to kill you. I didn't
Speaker 1: like it. It's a it's a mark of how like
Speaker 1: bad people are at strategic thinking that they would ever
Speaker 1: ask why would you put spy stuff on a balloon? Especially? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's a little weirder to float it over the
Speaker 1: US if that's what happened. But like, if if you
Speaker 1: are the US or China or Russia engaging in most
Speaker 1: of the conflicts those countries engage in where they're not
Speaker 1: dealing with state level actors, provides perfect surveillance, very cheaply,
Speaker 1: it doesn't require refueling. Like, it's an incredibly reasonable platform
Speaker 1: to spy on people with. Yeah, And I think there's
Speaker 1: another thing which I think has been less talked about,
Speaker 1: which is that, Okay, there's an equipment gap basically between
Speaker 1: when you design a camera for a satellite and when
Speaker 1: the satellite goes up. And this means that whatever you
Speaker 1: whatever kind of cameras and technology you're putting in a
Speaker 1: satellite are going to be by definition a few years
Speaker 1: out of date, because that's just how long it takes
Speaker 1: a design the equipment and putting it and put it
Speaker 1: into the air. But you know, for a balloon, you
Speaker 1: could you can, you could use stuff that's more modern
Speaker 1: than way you would have on a spy satellite now,
Speaker 1: you know. And also like you can you can also
Speaker 1: just put other stuff on the balloon that's such as
Speaker 1: cameras like you can do cig and stuff you can use.
Speaker 1: So okay, well, the moral of this story is that, like,
Speaker 1: the spy balloon is not like a completely implausible thing.
Speaker 1: If if you like put a gun to my head
Speaker 1: and said meo, what happened here, my guests would be
Speaker 1: was like the spy balloon went off course or some
Speaker 1: shit and this lost control of it. Now, yeah, it
Speaker 1: probably was not meant for the continentally United States, because
Speaker 1: that's a weird move. But AGA's happening. So Hi, this
Speaker 1: is Mia in post. So but back when we recorded
Speaker 1: this episode in the heady days of early February, there
Speaker 1: had been but two balloons. There have now been so
Speaker 1: so many more balloons. Oh my god, there the US
Speaker 1: just has balloon mania. We now know a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the sort of suspected Chinese balloon. It does
Speaker 1: that that balloon seems to be an actual balloon at
Speaker 1: the very least. The US government claims that they've recovered
Speaker 1: an enormous amounts of sort of technical and observational equipment
Speaker 1: from it. They said it was, well, what was the
Speaker 1: exact line, the size of three school buses, A bunch
Speaker 1: of signals intelligence stuff, which is something we didn't mention
Speaker 1: an enormous amount. But yeah, like that, that's an Everything
Speaker 1: you can use a balloon for is intercepting phone communications
Speaker 1: or radio communications, etcetera, etcetera. Okay, so like it seems
Speaker 1: like they're like they're the first balloon may have been
Speaker 1: an actual balloo. Every subsequent balloon, however, we have learned
Speaker 1: more so at least one, and my assumption is this
Speaker 1: is every single subsequent balloon after the first balloon. We
Speaker 1: have confirmation that so one of the balloons is shot
Speaker 1: down over Canada by a F twenty two and this
Speaker 1: seems to be a Pico balloon from the Northern Illinois
Speaker 1: Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. These are just like these are these
Speaker 1: just like tiny balloons that people send out so they
Speaker 1: can serve and navigate the globecause these people are just
Speaker 1: like balloon hobbyists. They just they just like balloons, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's just honestly really sad, like these are
Speaker 1: just people who like they just like putting balloons up
Speaker 1: and watching them go around the world. And they were
Speaker 1: met with the entire aerial light of the world's greatest superpower,
Speaker 1: which spent literally more money than I have ever seen
Speaker 1: in my entire life to annihilate literally like about one
Speaker 1: hundred or two hundred dollars worth of essentially foil and
Speaker 1: some GPS equipment. These people apparently tried to contact the
Speaker 1: US government and tell them what was going on. US
Speaker 1: government was like, so, yeah, congratulations to the US government
Speaker 1: which has uh, it has one, it has one an
Speaker 1: important geostrategic victory over the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is this has been this has been breaking news
Speaker 1: from MIA in in the in the balloon war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: enjoy the rest of the episode. But you know, I
Speaker 1: wanted to use this to talk about something more interesting,
Speaker 1: which is again like the sort of arc of US
Speaker 1: China relations and what actually drives it, because I think
Speaker 1: people have a really really not very good understanding of
Speaker 1: how it works and why. Okay, I think it's reasonable
Speaker 1: to ask you why why are you talking about the
Speaker 1: arc of US China relations? Aren't US China relations always bad?
Speaker 1: And the answer is no, In fact, US shaded relations
Speaker 1: to sometimes actually quite good. US China relations are driven
Speaker 1: by these two sort of interlocking forces. Right on the
Speaker 1: one hand, you have the internal domestic and also kind
Speaker 1: of global balance of class forces inside a country, and
Speaker 1: that plays a huge role on a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that are going to happen in Duwish China relationship.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that happens is what you, I
Speaker 1: guess would call geopolitics. And we're going to kind of
Speaker 1: start with the geopolitics sign and then move back and
Speaker 1: forth between that and the sort of class angle on it,
Speaker 1: so you can get get get a kind of understanding
Speaker 1: of how how this stuff actually works and how to
Speaker 1: think about it in ways that are just sort of
Speaker 1: incredibly simplistic and useless. So all right, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: go all the way back to like the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: or whatever, because there are US China relations. We actually
Speaker 1: invaded China at one point in like the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: for some fucking reason, and we actually we did it
Speaker 1: again the nexteen hundred and two. Yeah, but okay, So,
Speaker 1: but in terms of dealing with modern China, dealing with
Speaker 1: USU and modern US China relations is about the US's
Speaker 1: relationship with the CCP, and weirdly dream world War two
Speaker 1: it was the relations were actually really good, um, you know,
Speaker 1: because obviously China, China is the US's ally and World
Speaker 1: War two I were there were also allies with China's
Speaker 1: nationalist part, the KMT. But you know what's interesting about
Speaker 1: this is that there's a faction of the US army
Speaker 1: that is anti KMT and pro CCP. And they're not
Speaker 1: pro CCP because they're communists. They're pro CCP because a
Speaker 1: they're kind of racist and they really don't like the
Speaker 1: KMT kind of out of racism. And the second thing
Speaker 1: that that's going on is that the KMT, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about elsewhere, it's just like incredibly corrupt Esquad party,
Speaker 1: and that means that you know, some of the people
Speaker 1: who have to like the people who have to work
Speaker 1: with them on the ground to World War two or
Speaker 1: like these are literally the worst people who have ever lived.
Speaker 1: Why on earth are we doing this? That means that
Speaker 1: when when the civil war starts, right like the US
Speaker 1: takes the nationalist side, but like nowhere near as strongly
Speaker 1: as they could have. And this creates this sort of
Speaker 1: like this myth around like the loss of China that
Speaker 1: becomes this massive thing in the US. Is because this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that triggers someth McCarthys and
Speaker 1: etceterac Is like everyone becomes convinced it was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, like Truman, like like they lost China, Like
Speaker 1: we could have kept China for the communists, but like
Speaker 1: they lost it, and it's wow, okay. But this has
Speaker 1: another massive impact, which is that it creates this thing
Speaker 1: called the China Lobby. And the China lobby is this
Speaker 1: is this sort of bank of these like incredibly psychopathic
Speaker 1: right wing like anti communist goools and some also people
Speaker 1: who had some also people who were like had been
Speaker 1: rich in China and then about owned by this CCP,
Speaker 1: and they start pushing incredibly aggressively for like regime change
Speaker 1: in China for just the US and try to not
Speaker 1: have a diplomatic relations, and this this star starts to
Speaker 1: sort of like tank relations between the US and China.
Speaker 1: And then obviously like so we we fought. We fought
Speaker 1: a war with China and Korea, a thing that I
Speaker 1: feel like doesn't get talked about as much as you
Speaker 1: would think it would. Yeah, the Korean War is the
Speaker 1: memory hold war in yeah, and in the UK. It's
Speaker 1: why I was in America. But it's the war that
Speaker 1: no one Yeah, I mean the Forgotten War is literally
Speaker 1: like it's it's most common nickname. There's a pretty good
Speaker 1: book by that title too. Yeah. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: like like that were like there are there are US
Speaker 1: and Chinese troops like shooting the shit out of each other,
Speaker 1: like oh yeah, well yeah, like a cross the entire peninsula,
Speaker 1: Like there are there are Chinese troops doing bayonet chargers
Speaker 1: through the road artillery like the American lines. My my,
Speaker 1: the last before I bought my place, my last landlord
Speaker 1: was a Chinese citizen um living in the US on
Speaker 1: a green card, and during a pandemic conversation over some wine.
Speaker 1: We kind of figured out that both of our grandfathers
Speaker 1: wound up at the same battles and made very in
Speaker 1: shooting each other. Yeah, so that's the melting pot, buddy.
Speaker 1: You she became a landlord. M hmm, Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a dream there, you like, there there
Speaker 1: is a reasonable argument that they're in back again. A
Speaker 1: landlord story is the entire course of the of the
Speaker 1: sort of like Chinese Chinese politics in the twentieth century
Speaker 1: any respect to the United States. Yeah, well, and also
Speaker 1: trying to right because landlords are back now. It sucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, land yes, and no Chinese people have become landloads.
Speaker 1: But yeah, many a subject to landloads. Shit. Yeah, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: So like obviously it's really interesting too because when people,
Speaker 1: like when people write about US China relations, they normally
Speaker 1: like the thing that the thing they picked from this
Speaker 1: period tends to be like the Tawanies straight crisis, and
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, yeah there was this, there were this
Speaker 1: race crisis. But again, like the US and China were
Speaker 1: like shooting at each other like before this, like why
Speaker 1: why is this that? Why is this the thing that
Speaker 1: you pick for the downcour of US China relations like
Speaker 1: we were at war. Okay, but baffling stuff, right, But
Speaker 1: you know, and relations are not good to like the
Speaker 1: sixties either, like sort sort of based on very very
Speaker 1: similar sort of lines that you've seen in the fifties.
Speaker 1: You've like, this is a period where people sort of
Speaker 1: take communism anti communism seriously. That stops being true very quickly.
Speaker 1: On the other hands, these these sort of geopolitics things
Speaker 1: have real material consequences, right. You can look at this
Speaker 1: in the American side, where, for example, the industrial build
Speaker 1: up of the Japanese and Korean economy and also the
Speaker 1: industrial build up like the industrial building of California, right,
Speaker 1: has to do with these sort of trade linkuages that
Speaker 1: are that are being set up in order for US
Speaker 1: to run the war in Korea and run the war
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. And China has its own sort of version
Speaker 1: of this, where which which starts getting more and more
Speaker 1: apparent by it starts around the mid sixties, they have
Speaker 1: this thing called the Third Front, which is okay, so,
Speaker 1: having having now been through like I don't know how literally,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how many wars since the start
Speaker 1: of this century, the CCP goes, Okay, we need to
Speaker 1: shift art. We need to shift our production away from
Speaker 1: sort of the coast and into the middle of the
Speaker 1: country so that they can't be attacked by the Soviets
Speaker 1: and they can't be attacked by the Americans. And this,
Speaker 1: this has, this has a really major effect in terms
Speaker 1: of what sort of Chinese industriization looks like. Over the
Speaker 1: course of the mid twentieth centuries. You get, you get
Speaker 1: this industrial belt that's built up and that is going
Speaker 1: to be destroyed later on. And it's destroyed in part
Speaker 1: because of of what starts happening in the seventies, which
Speaker 1: is the sort of warm up between the US and
Speaker 1: China based on sort of Nick Nixon and Kissingers attempts
Speaker 1: to sort of peel the Chinese away from the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: And you know, like Robert, you've you've talked about this
Speaker 1: ambassadors before, um, but you know, part of part of
Speaker 1: what's going on here is that China like basically gets
Speaker 1: into a war with the Soviet Union in Nitteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: It's not called that, it's technically just called the border dispute,
Speaker 1: but like like there are troops like shooting at each other,
Speaker 1: like all across the border, people are beating each other
Speaker 1: the death with sticks like people are people are shooting
Speaker 1: borders at each other. It's it's it's it's a real war,
Speaker 1: and it's in a grand British tradition of course, calling
Speaker 1: like massive conflicts an emergency or the troubles. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like okay, you know, but but this, but this,
Speaker 1: this this really sort of this this really sort of
Speaker 1: drives Chinese sort of international like relations to the point
Speaker 1: where they're like, okay, so I know we're supposed to
Speaker 1: be communists, but also like the other communist power next
Speaker 1: door might like marching army across the board at any point.
Speaker 1: So you know, you get you you get this sort
Speaker 1: of trying to triangle diplomacy of of of becausin you're
Speaker 1: trying to sort of bring China into the or at
Speaker 1: least away from the Soviet spear and then closer into
Speaker 1: the US beer And you know this starts to work, right,
Speaker 1: and you can ask, you know, there's other there's other
Speaker 1: things going on here, right, It's China's not just playing
Speaker 1: pure geopolitics. Um there there there, there's there's another factor involved,
Speaker 1: which is that part of the sort of conditions for
Speaker 1: US and Chinese sort of like as you called bilatter
Speaker 1: relations or what what whatever sort of geopolitical can't bullshit
Speaker 1: you want to say for like getting along closer is
Speaker 1: the US starts sending these technology transfers over to China,
Speaker 1: like I mean literally like like like taking like sometimes
Speaker 1: like taking factories basically and like taking them apart and
Speaker 1: then putting them in boxes and shipping them over to China.
Speaker 1: And you know, okay, and this is this is this
Speaker 1: is a huge deal for the CCP because like the
Speaker 1: Chinese econ mean, this period has been really bad. And
Speaker 1: part of this is just you know, this is what
Speaker 1: happens when you bow. But a secondary part of this
Speaker 1: is that China's has has had a real basically it's
Speaker 1: it's China's been dealing with this sort of economic crisis
Speaker 1: since like like literally since since they came out of
Speaker 1: World War Two, which is that okay, so, but most
Speaker 1: of China's industrial capacity was completely destroyed you in the
Speaker 1: War of the Parchment that weren't were like there was
Speaker 1: this belt in Macharia that had stuff and that the
Speaker 1: Soviets literally loaded loaded the factories on trains and shipped
Speaker 1: them back and shipped them back east or back west.
Speaker 1: So bye bye bye. By the by the time, by
Speaker 1: the time that the CCP takes over, like China has
Speaker 1: less industrial capacity than like Russia dated at the beginning
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, Jesus. So situations really bleak, right, And
Speaker 1: the other the other thing that's bleak about it is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: so in order to build an industrial base, right, we've
Speaker 1: talked about this a bit on the show. In order
Speaker 1: to build industrial base, you need food. But in order
Speaker 1: to get like increase your agriculture productivity, you need like
Speaker 1: medical goods. But you can't get those mechanical goods unless
Speaker 1: you can increase your jectal capacities. You have this bottleneck.
Speaker 1: And this winds up being one of the solutions to
Speaker 1: the bottleneck is getting technology transfers from the US. And
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of product of this is that
Speaker 1: now all of our products and services which we are
Speaker 1: about to talk about, which you should buy, are made
Speaker 1: in China. So yeah, go go, go, buy, go buy
Speaker 1: those things that are the product of all of this.
Speaker 1: That's no problem. Yeah, don't don't question it, just purchase it.
Speaker 1: Go to Ali Baba, and just finally, their express. Get
Speaker 1: Alie Express and just wire them seven hundred dollars. Within
Speaker 1: I'm going to say two weeks to seventeen months, you'll
Speaker 1: get a package of something yet by a drac. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if you order something from Ali Express, there's no real
Speaker 1: way to know what you will get. That's the beauty
Speaker 1: of Ali Express. Look you you. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: there there there is there is a non zero chance
Speaker 1: you get a collection of really really sick Chinese shirts
Speaker 1: that just have absolutely random on him. It's great Chinese shirts,
Speaker 1: or like knockoff versions of military grade optics that work
Speaker 1: well enough for the Taliban to use. Yeah, they liberating
Speaker 1: people of the world over at the expressed optics. All right,
Speaker 1: and we're back. So okay. The Chinese swing into sort
Speaker 1: of like alignment with the US. They they start doing
Speaker 1: things that are like even a lot of the US's
Speaker 1: right wing allies won't do. Like, for example, China, China
Speaker 1: is one of the first countries to like to diplomatically
Speaker 1: recognize Pinochet Chile, and they like send him a shit
Speaker 1: ton of money. Those loans they send they send him
Speaker 1: with direct cash transfers and like this is a point
Speaker 1: where even like France and like the UK are like,
Speaker 1: oh we woo, that's that's a like we're we're not
Speaker 1: We're not We're not gonna have We're not gonna acknowledge
Speaker 1: his military kindship. And China is like yeah, this rules.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, Pinochet, And you know, they do other stuff
Speaker 1: that's very sort of pro us, right. They invade Vietnam
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine in the war that you know,
Speaker 1: the only war that's more forgot, and then the Korean War. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's the side of wit of ease war. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was some pretty good Twitter threats. That taught me
Speaker 1: a lot about China's non aggression tour to other countries
Speaker 1: last week. Yeah, it's it's a good time. I I
Speaker 1: can we we could all talk about like the Sino
Speaker 1: Indian War in the middle of this where they just
Speaker 1: invade India, which is great, but you know, okay, but
Speaker 1: like what what what this sort of comes up to
Speaker 1: you is in is like you you you get a
Speaker 1: point where the US and China, by by by the
Speaker 1: end of the seventies and going into the eighties, are
Speaker 1: very much on the same side. Like for example, when
Speaker 1: when Dangel Ping came to visit the US. He takes
Speaker 1: he takes like an hour out of his schedule to
Speaker 1: make a secret visit to the CIA so that he
Speaker 1: can set up a joint like USCA Listening posted in
Speaker 1: China to monitor the Soviets. We talk about this a
Speaker 1: lot in the Kissinger episodes from last year, but folks
Speaker 1: should generally be aware that like Chairman maw and Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon legitimately got along, like enjoyed one another's company as
Speaker 1: did and Chowchesscu like they were they were all good friends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is something something one ruling class, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's almost a class analysis you could make the yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, okay, we we're gon're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a slightly different class analysis, which is
Speaker 1: that like, okay, so US Shuna relations are very good
Speaker 1: literally like basically until Tianneman and then everything gets kind
Speaker 1: of messed up because Chianamenianemans. It's a very has a
Speaker 1: set of like very weird and contradictory effects, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we we talked about some of this in our Chaman episodes.
Speaker 1: But it does two things. Right. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: like in the US, people are horrified, right the you know,
Speaker 1: the the entire media classes like watches, this happened the
Speaker 1: outside their windows. There's just like it is an incredible uproar.
Speaker 1: It becomes one of the sort of like central like
Speaker 1: I don't know, like I sort of like it becomes
Speaker 1: it becomes a thing. It's like incredibly central to just
Speaker 1: like the memory of what it is to be an
Speaker 1: Asian American is to sort of like remember uote unquote Tianneman.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, you know, so okay, what
Speaker 1: do you would expect from there, is like the US
Speaker 1: and China break off diplomatic relations, and like the Cold
Speaker 1: War two starts again immediately with the US and China,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't happen like that. And it doesn't happen
Speaker 1: like that because the second thing that that that Tianaman
Speaker 1: does is it finally crushes the Chinese working class. And
Speaker 1: you know, once once, once, the once, the old, once,
Speaker 1: the last deald Chinese working class is just gone, right,
Speaker 1: and all that's left is an incredibly disorganized and incredibly
Speaker 1: desperate sort of market working class. Suddenly, hey, look, we
Speaker 1: have a very highly educated, very poor population that you
Speaker 1: can that you can just you know, just ship labor too.
Speaker 1: And this is what this is what actually happens in
Speaker 1: sort of terms sort of the US and Chinese relationship
Speaker 1: over the nineties, which is that you know, you you
Speaker 1: have these this double D industrialization going on. You have
Speaker 1: a D industrialization in the US where you know, the
Speaker 1: last of the old russbelt falls apart, the sort of
Speaker 1: like mining industrial boom that had happened that the Reagan
Speaker 1: just implodes. And you know, some of this is some
Speaker 1: of this is these jualization something. This is these jobs
Speaker 1: go to like the suburbs and shit, or like places
Speaker 1: like Decalb that are just incredibly accursed. But real call
Speaker 1: out there, man, I look, I'm sorry to anyone who
Speaker 1: lives in Decalb. I wish you best luck fleeing that
Speaker 1: guy's at Decalb tourist board sponsorship we've been looking for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, but but simultaneously there's there there's another
Speaker 1: wave of the industrial relation happening in China too, which
Speaker 1: is that that old third wave industrial belt that I
Speaker 1: was talking about, Right, those people had worked in like
Speaker 1: basically the equivalent of like the Chinese equivalent of sort
Speaker 1: of like good union jobs. Right, They're they're they're working.
Speaker 1: They're working for state for state owned enterprises, so they
Speaker 1: have housing, they have healthcare, they have pensions, and all
Speaker 1: of that is just destroyed. Like all these people lose
Speaker 1: their pensions, they lose everything. There are like millions of
Speaker 1: people who are pushed out of their jobs. And you
Speaker 1: know when when both both of both of these things
Speaker 1: happen at the same time, and a lot of companies
Speaker 1: who are watching the sort of vast Asian companies like
Speaker 1: like economies collapse, We're watching the v B is sorry,
Speaker 1: who are watching the South Korean economy collapse, who are
Speaker 1: watching the Japanese economy collapse, suddenly start looking at China
Speaker 1: and throughout the course of the nineties sort of more
Speaker 1: and more American capital. I mean there's already's been capital
Speaker 1: from East Asia sort of flowing in the China, more
Speaker 1: and more American capital starts flowing in. And what you
Speaker 1: get here is you get this battle between geopolitics and economics,
Speaker 1: right that the sort of geopolitics side and the sort
Speaker 1: of like you know this this this is side that
Speaker 1: like the media is on and the side is at
Speaker 1: this sort of like the sort of intellectual etc. Et cetera,
Speaker 1: like anti China classes on is. You know, they don't
Speaker 1: they don't want to let China into the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't work, right, those guys just get destroyed China.
Speaker 1: China get submitted into the World Trade Organization. Both Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton and George W. Bush support China entering the WTO,
Speaker 1: and they do it because they can they can see
Speaker 1: when I'm partially a little bit of it is because
Speaker 1: they've they've for some like they've they've they've been drinking
Speaker 1: the kool aid and they believe that like, if you
Speaker 1: have capitalism, then democracy will follow, which I and lyrical
Speaker 1: data suggesting yeah, okay, sure sure, indio cons like whatever.
Speaker 1: But you know, but it's also it's also because these
Speaker 1: these these these people have financial backers, and their financial
Speaker 1: backers are telling them like, hey, look, we can you know,
Speaker 1: if if if if if like if all of the
Speaker 1: sort of weird sanction regime shit has worked out, and
Speaker 1: if China's fully integrated into the capital system, like we
Speaker 1: can make a lot of money. And they do that
Speaker 1: that this is what the two thousands is, right, like
Speaker 1: Walmarts and like Walgreens and shit like directly integrate all
Speaker 1: of their supply lines into Chinese supply lines. They make
Speaker 1: deals with the Chinese government in order to do this,
Speaker 1: and suddenly by you know, by in two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: China is i think, like the fourth exporter of goods
Speaker 1: in the world. By two thousand and nine they are
Speaker 1: number one by like an order of what on order
Speaker 1: in magnitude. But they're like very very much the dominant
Speaker 1: export like world's dominant export economy. And this is a problem,
Speaker 1: right because on the one hands, you know, if if
Speaker 1: like American Chinese relations get there, they're actually really good
Speaker 1: around nine to eleven, they're actually really good, right, Like
Speaker 1: the the US like there were there there were guys
Speaker 1: from shing who, like China sends the Guantanamo. It's like here,
Speaker 1: take these people in US, torchis them for China, Like
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, like relations are like relations are good, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, well, okay, hey, we both have like this
Speaker 1: like quote Muslim extremist threat that we're like dealing with,
Speaker 1: you know, and they try to get on the war
Speaker 1: on terror. But eventually relations kind of degrade, like you
Speaker 1: have the whole Olympics thing. You have there's like in
Speaker 1: like the two thousand tens, there's this whole fight over
Speaker 1: these islands that the Philippines claim. But you know, but
Speaker 1: but the problem with this is that, like, okay, so
Speaker 1: you get, on the one hand, a faction of the
Speaker 1: American right that is really and also and also like
Speaker 1: there's actually the American right that's really really hard line
Speaker 1: anti Chinese based on sort of racism. There's American liberalism,
Speaker 1: which you know, has this thing about like the rules
Speaker 1: based international order that like China is violating. They're also racist.
Speaker 1: And then there's like progressives like Elizabeth Warred who are
Speaker 1: also racist and um, and also but you know who's
Speaker 1: thing is like, oh, well, workers rights in China are
Speaker 1: really bad, so we need to do like competition with them.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, that's how you fix it with more capitalism. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: And but they have a political issue, which is that
Speaker 1: there's another massive section of American capital that has enormous
Speaker 1: investments moth sort of financially and in terms of where
Speaker 1: their factories are, where the logistics are, where the supply
Speaker 1: lines are that make them incredibly supportive of sort of
Speaker 1: close to US China relations, or at the very least
Speaker 1: makes them oppose any kind of sort of like real
Speaker 1: like anything that goes beyond kind of geopolitical posturing that
Speaker 1: makes it harder to do business for them. And this
Speaker 1: is something I think people have a tendency to forget
Speaker 1: when they when they try to think about US China
Speaker 1: relationship terms of economics, is that like, Okay, so there,
Speaker 1: the US has a military industrial complex, but that's not
Speaker 1: the that's not the entire US economy. Like, there are
Speaker 1: other people in the US who have lots of money.
Speaker 1: There was an entire financial sector, there was an entire
Speaker 1: tech sector, and those people also have a shit ton
Speaker 1: of money. And even even sort of tech companies, right
Speaker 1: who who have a foot in sort of the American
Speaker 1: contracting business, also often have a bunch of their you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of the places where the technology is built
Speaker 1: is in China, right, So you know, even even people
Speaker 1: who could theoretically be brought into a sort of like
Speaker 1: like an umbiltering industrial complex political coalition against China, like
Speaker 1: have reasons not to do it. And you know, and
Speaker 1: this this works down the board. Right if you look
Speaker 1: at when Trump did the trade war, he you know,
Speaker 1: initially there was a lot of popular support among sort
Speaker 1: of like American like mid sized businesses, who are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we can bring industrial capacity back to the US. And
Speaker 1: then all of them discovered that they had to pay,
Speaker 1: like all of discovered that, like they had to pay
Speaker 1: more for their Chinese goods, and we're like, wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: we fucked up. We've made a mistake. He's actually screwed us.
Speaker 1: And like, you know, there's there's another kind of guy,
Speaker 1: right who there's a lot of people who you expect
Speaker 1: to be really antic CCP who aren't, right, and Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is the best example of this. Like she's the guy.
Speaker 1: I think we'd expect Elon Musk to fully support anyone
Speaker 1: who can fully stamp on the face of their working class,
Speaker 1: because that's true. But he's the kind of person, true
Speaker 1: you would expect, by pure racism to be like a
Speaker 1: really hard Lana to CCP guy, and he's not, because
Speaker 1: like he has, there's a class consciousness I think which
Speaker 1: overapes even apartepe boys racism well and and and like
Speaker 1: he has, there's the Tesla has this like oh god,
Speaker 1: it's called the Giga factory, which is a name that
Speaker 1: makes me want to die. Yeah, I mean, but the
Speaker 1: Giga factories in Shanghai, right, And like he ha. He
Speaker 1: has even even dream when like the media was like
Speaker 1: like pretending to care about the weaker genocide, like he
Speaker 1: opened a showroom and shing John like dream that period.
Speaker 1: So you know, and there's also people like Michael Bloomberg
Speaker 1: who are for very like you know, if you if
Speaker 1: you if if you read Michael Bloomberg talking about China,
Speaker 1: like in the media, he also talking about like how
Speaker 1: grave leader Hijinping is and it's you know, it's because
Speaker 1: the people have financial interests there and you know, and
Speaker 1: and this this means that like you know, even even
Speaker 1: the sort of media coverage of this balloon bullshit, right,
Speaker 1: and like China has been like threatening revenge or whatever
Speaker 1: for the shooting down to the balloon, But like this
Speaker 1: isn't going to turn into anything, right, It's it's the
Speaker 1: same in the same way that like the last time
Speaker 1: I watched like straight stuff like didn't turn into anything.
Speaker 1: In the same way that like less seventeen goddamn with
Speaker 1: these scandals isn't going to go anywhere. And it's not
Speaker 1: going to go anywhere because there's a there's an enormous
Speaker 1: like faction of American capital who relies on this stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it serves like the manditary industrial complex and
Speaker 1: the military specifically to have China be like Schrodinger's Next
Speaker 1: World War, right, like that they're always a threat, but
Speaker 1: like then they're not a threat, you know, like we
Speaker 1: can justify so much spending and allocation of resources if
Speaker 1: we can always like wave this stick of potential conflict
Speaker 1: with China. Yeah, And I think there's something that's kind
Speaker 1: of like this important to understand is that like both
Speaker 1: the China Hawks and the China Doves are enemies of
Speaker 1: both the American and Chinese working classes. Like the China
Speaker 1: Hawks thing is they want to like, you know, they
Speaker 1: want to put the Chinese American working classes against each other.
Speaker 1: And it's like national philist fervor in order to get
Speaker 1: everyone to ignore the fact that like both the societies
Speaker 1: are collapsing around them. And by the way, didn't did
Speaker 1: we we have no, I don't. I don't think this
Speaker 1: has really made the news yet, but a Norfolk Southern
Speaker 1: fucking basically set off a chemical weapon in Iowa by
Speaker 1: crashing one by crashing a train full of toxic chemicals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's literally exploding like right now, as as
Speaker 1: we're fucking to recording this episode. It's on fire. Oh good.
Speaker 1: You know. I love how when you deregulate train industry
Speaker 1: so that you can have just like one guy working
Speaker 1: a massive train hauling huge amounts of toxic chemicals, it
Speaker 1: works out great. Yea happens. It's good efficiency. Rub Yeah. Look,
Speaker 1: a train crash like this would have normally taken dozens
Speaker 1: of people to engineers. So we have we have improved
Speaker 1: our efficiency markedly well. And also in terms of efficiency,
Speaker 1: Robert like, think of how bad it could have been
Speaker 1: if we hadn't crossed the rail strikes. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it can been disaster, Yeah, terrible. There might not be
Speaker 1: there might not be a giant poisoned gas clad and
Speaker 1: what is it, Ohio, we can't have that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: in the East Palestine, Ohio. That's it's it's Palestine. They
Speaker 1: don't say, can have American solidarity with with Palestine. NICs. Oh, free,
Speaker 1: free Palestine. That's what I'm saying. That's been done already,
Speaker 1: the first, the first Palestine. This will this will seem
Speaker 1: like it's in bad taste if a lot of people
Speaker 1: wiped up dying. But yeah, yeah, I also want to
Speaker 1: mention here that I'm I'm gonna take this opportunity to
Speaker 1: mention that China is the second large Israel's second largest
Speaker 1: trading partner, and they do like yeah, and like they
Speaker 1: they do like security exchanges with each other where people
Speaker 1: trade each other's military is it's great, it's great. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: but but you know, you could rely if someone is
Speaker 1: oppressing working people they've done a security exchange with Israel.
Speaker 1: That is it's golden lore of cup beating you in
Speaker 1: the head with a stick. So it's never more than
Speaker 1: two degrees removed from the idea. Okay, there's one less
Speaker 1: thing I want to talk about really briefly, which is okay,
Speaker 1: So one of the things you will see people talk
Speaker 1: about who are like pundits or like people on the
Speaker 1: news talked about this thing called decoupling. And the thing
Speaker 1: you need to understand immediately is at the moment someone
Speaker 1: says the word decoupling, you can stop listening to everything
Speaker 1: they're about to say because they are lying to you,
Speaker 1: like it is bullshit. So the what in theory the
Speaker 1: coupling is this thing where like supposedly, like the US
Speaker 1: and Chinese economies are gonna decouple, right, and like all
Speaker 1: the American firms in China are gonna pull out, and
Speaker 1: they're gonna pull out their supply chains and they're gonna
Speaker 1: relocate them to swhere else in the world, and the
Speaker 1: US and Chinese economies suddenly will like not be coupled
Speaker 1: to each other. It's like, no, they're not, Like this
Speaker 1: has never happened. It didn't. It didn't Like if it
Speaker 1: was gonna happen, it would have happened in twos and seventeen,
Speaker 1: and like, doesn't eighteen when Trump was Trump is doing
Speaker 1: the trade war, It didn't happen. Then. The only time
Speaker 1: it's ever happened, or the only time American companies ever
Speaker 1: sort of pulled out of China like on mass or
Speaker 1: tried to was Ironic Green twen two thousand and eleven.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand and eleven they are trying to
Speaker 1: pull out because of the Wukan riots and this like
Speaker 1: mass of surge of strikes in China, and suddenly all
Speaker 1: these companies were like, oh my god, China might not
Speaker 1: be able to keep our I might be not be
Speaker 1: able to suppress the working class hard enough. And then
Speaker 1: they yeah, they got horribly crushed. And well, the other
Speaker 1: thing that happened was like company. They like companies tried
Speaker 1: to go elsewhere and they couldn't do it because no one,
Speaker 1: like no other countries had the combination of like a
Speaker 1: like things like a stable electrical grid and like working roads,
Speaker 1: like an actually highly educated population. So like they didn't
Speaker 1: have all of these things at once. So they all
Speaker 1: came back and you know that that was that was
Speaker 1: close as ever came to happening. Everyone talks about this
Speaker 1: all the time, they're lying to you. Ignore them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not it's not going to happen. The
Speaker 1: US and Chinese economies are inextorably bound to each other,
Speaker 1: and they're going to continue to be. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't run like our economy to a logic extent
Speaker 1: on an economy, but I cast society runs on like
Speaker 1: providing treats to the working class just enough to prevent
Speaker 1: them from a battle angle from trying to radically change anything.
Speaker 1: And like we can't keep the constant stream of treats
Speaker 1: running if if we decouple from China, right, like cheap
Speaker 1: consumer goods. And also like the Chinese economy relies on
Speaker 1: like as an expert economy, right like they've they've they've
Speaker 1: they've been trying to turn to an internal consumption economy
Speaker 1: for a decade. It's like not really working because hilariously,
Speaker 1: it's not working because they don't pay people enough to
Speaker 1: buy shit, and surely no one will ever do that
Speaker 1: because yeah, yeah, so you know, but yeah it's great.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, I guess like the gist of
Speaker 1: what I wanted to say here is that, like like you,
Speaker 1: US China, relations are driven by forces that are more
Speaker 1: complicated than man on TV yell at balloon, and as
Speaker 1: as powerful as man on TV yell at balloon, seems
Speaker 1: like in the moment, it's not actually the thing underlying
Speaker 1: what's going on here. And you need to be able
Speaker 1: to look past man yell at balloon on TV in
Speaker 1: order to look at the sort of the broader, the
Speaker 1: broader political and social forces that are that are going
Speaker 1: on here. And I think beyond that, what we need
Speaker 1: to do is recognize that there's a deep emptiness at
Speaker 1: the center of American society that should have, in this
Speaker 1: case been filled by rich people in cessnas and their
Speaker 1: friends with high caliber precision rifles flying into the sky
Speaker 1: and a noble caxote quest to shoot that fucking balloon down,
Speaker 1: just having Sancho Panza. C'm so disappointed in this country. Um,
Speaker 1: I expected forty or fifty people to die, but that
Speaker 1: balloon to be taken down. There was a time when
Speaker 1: we had a country. Yeah, our founding fathers would have
Speaker 1: dropped that son of a bitch. Yeah, Joe Brandon has
Speaker 1: forced some wan into retirement. Yeah, and China has revealed anyway,
Speaker 1: I hope China sends another balloon. Yeah, what else are
Speaker 1: we going to do? Yeah? I feel like a Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse fucking Frozen balloon. You know, if they do like
Speaker 1: the girl from Frozen, Sure, it would be cool. I'd
Speaker 1: like to see that. They should start pranking us with
Speaker 1: character balloons. I'd fucking love that. Oh God. But but
Speaker 1: but then the US would start sending like Wi the
Speaker 1: Pool balloon. Elizabeth would commission a Moana balloon to like
Speaker 1: illegal for raising fun to happen. We would have like
Speaker 1: a balloon based Cold war where the United States starts
Speaker 1: shooting over balloons across China and the Russians start floating,
Speaker 1: and it's just, yeah, we got to close the balloon gap.
Speaker 1: Becomes the number one world power. Green Chili Jack boots
Speaker 1: stamping over the face of humanity strong minutary capacity. The
Speaker 1: developers of Balloons Tower Defense get hauled before a Senate
Speaker 1: committee for supposedly doing the future. God yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: got a nationalized MYLA production in order to monopolize it.
Speaker 1: All right, well the balloon pause. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: our episode. Yea, all right, until next time, everybody go
Speaker 1: forth in balloon. Yeah yeah. Float a balloon into the
Speaker 1: airspace of a sovereign nation, just to take with them
Speaker 1: a little bit by Cameron Ali Express, put it on
Speaker 1: a balloon, send it somewhere. But you can be be
Speaker 1: the CIA you want to see in the skies over
Speaker 1: a sovereign country on the balloon, spree painted on the side.
Speaker 1: Why not? Why not? What's the harm? What could possibly
Speaker 1: go wrong? Now I'm going to listen. On an unrelated note,
Speaker 1: I'm finally going to listen to the SI song ninety
Speaker 1: nine Red Balloons for the very first time. Changes my
Speaker 1: opinion on what people should do with balloons. All right,
Speaker 1: everyone out, Hi, everyone's it could happen here and today
Speaker 1: it's near and myself and we're doing two interviews, which
Speaker 1: is going to split over two different episodes. What we're
Speaker 1: talking about is a case in Asha, North Carolina, where
Speaker 1: a group of people doing mutual aid work with and
Speaker 1: How's people have been charged with felony littering. Now we're
Speaker 1: going to get a little bit in the episode into
Speaker 1: what felony littering is. Unfortunately, I don't think any of
Speaker 1: us can explain why that exists as a charge for
Speaker 1: individuals and not for like you know, BP or SHELL
Speaker 1: or something, but such as a state. And so in
Speaker 1: the first episode, we're going to talk to Sarah. Sarah
Speaker 1: is one of the people facing these felony littering charges.
Speaker 1: Sarah's also been banned from parks in Nashville and which
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about. So Sarah will explain a
Speaker 1: little bit of the process that led up to those
Speaker 1: felony littering charges, what the situations like in Ashville for
Speaker 1: mutual Aid in front How's people. And then we're going
Speaker 1: to talk to Maniba tomorrow. Maniba is one of the
Speaker 1: lawyers at the ACOU, and she will explain a little
Speaker 1: bit of the legal background to the case and what
Speaker 1: is sort of the way that the ACOU is helping
Speaker 1: these people oppose the ban. So we'll have two separate episodes,
Speaker 1: but we actually recorded them in a different order, so
Speaker 1: you're going to hear Sarah maybe referring to some stuff
Speaker 1: Maniva said, and Maniba saying, Sarah will say some stuff.
Speaker 1: Just know that we recorded Mania first because she had
Speaker 1: a pressing time commitment, But we felt that Sarah's interview
Speaker 1: gives you a better set up for listening to Manya's
Speaker 1: interview tomorrow. Okay, hope you enjoy. We're going to start
Speaker 1: out talking to Sarah. He's one of the people who
Speaker 1: is a quote unquote problem child in Asheville. We can Yeah, yeah, Sarah,
Speaker 1: did like to introduce yourself and tell us where you're
Speaker 1: a problem child? Yeah, my name is Sarah Norris. Um.
Speaker 1: It's so funny to be called something like a problem
Speaker 1: child because I'm mostly like what I am as a
Speaker 1: mom of a little kid. I'm a social work student,
Speaker 1: like I am a career educator. Um. And I am
Speaker 1: also yeah, one of sixteen local organizers who who has
Speaker 1: been facing for almost the last year felony littering charges
Speaker 1: in conjunction with December twenty one. December twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: art spaced protest. Yeah, I'm sorry, did this bizarre thing
Speaker 1: has happened to you. Obviously, like on the face fit felines,
Speaker 1: feloninees ring is a bizarre charge and the fact that
Speaker 1: you are banned from parks is also very weird. Al Right,
Speaker 1: so let's maybe start off with like the situations before this,
Speaker 1: what were you what we were doing in the parks
Speaker 1: that led to you being deemed unsuitable for parks? Gosh,
Speaker 1: no way, you'd have to ask those who deemed who
Speaker 1: so deemed us. But I can talk about what I
Speaker 1: did in parks for for the year prior to being banned. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's a I was part of a collective whom
Speaker 1: who at the beginning of the pandemic um did like
Speaker 1: six times a week meals, coffee, gear distribution in parks. Um.
Speaker 1: By the time I came around and started participating in
Speaker 1: these in these food sharings, in these community gatherings, UM,
Speaker 1: we were at like two or three times a week.
Speaker 1: And um, really what the way I spent my time
Speaker 1: in parks was Saturdays and Sundays. I brought my daughter
Speaker 1: to Aston Park and we brought food with us, gear
Speaker 1: with us, art supplies with us, or nothing with us.
Speaker 1: We just showed up as us and we hung out
Speaker 1: and we distributed food, tents, packs, socks, toothbrow is really
Speaker 1: whatever we could get our hands on. UM. And towards
Speaker 1: the end of the year, we got a little bookshelf
Speaker 1: and uh we were we were in charge of bringing
Speaker 1: books UM on this like little white plastic shelf and
Speaker 1: like talking to people about what they most wanted and
Speaker 1: see if they can match them up with whatever we
Speaker 1: randomly had. UM. It was really like sitting in the
Speaker 1: sunshine and uh making sure the coffee thing was full UM,
Speaker 1: and mostly just talking to people, people who were run house,
Speaker 1: people who are housed, people who walked by and were like,
Speaker 1: what's this? What's this picnic? Why is everybody like using
Speaker 1: glitter glue? Like, oh, because there's a five year old
Speaker 1: and that's what we do. UM. So So that's what
Speaker 1: mostly I did in Parks UM. And this is this
Speaker 1: this activity UM is in the context of a city
Speaker 1: who I think in twenty twenty one, UM, I think
Speaker 1: we know there were at least twenty one sweeps of
Speaker 1: homeless encampments, and a sweep like that name for some
Speaker 1: of us, really connotes violence, but I think it's important
Speaker 1: to name how violent those are. A camp sweep means
Speaker 1: that folks have to leave the place where they've been living,
Speaker 1: and very often their belongings are then considered to be trash,
Speaker 1: are bulldozed over, are are at a minimum lost to them.
Speaker 1: And this had happened over and over again in the
Speaker 1: city of Asheville. And yeah, there's a way that that
Speaker 1: being in the park weekly felt like a thing that
Speaker 1: happened in Ashville that was the opposite of feats that
Speaker 1: was like we're here, We're all here together, like here
Speaker 1: we are. And so the protest itself around which in
Speaker 1: the context of which like these arrests have come, happened
Speaker 1: in December, and it was an arts based protest and
Speaker 1: was really about was in favor of sanctuary camping in
Speaker 1: the city of Ashville with sanitation services. That was the
Speaker 1: point of it. And there were like kind of standard
Speaker 1: protest related events on or sorry, arrests on Christmas night.
Speaker 1: So that's what um Asheville Police did. And I think
Speaker 1: it's important just to note that there were not unhoused
Speaker 1: folks evicted that night on Christmas night, and no one
Speaker 1: who was there was pretending to be unhoused and was arrested.
Speaker 1: That's a strange narrative that the City of full Police
Speaker 1: department has set in open court. Um. But there were
Speaker 1: standard sort of like misdemeanor trespass resisting officer arrest that night, um,
Speaker 1: including of journalists. And then these felony littering cases came
Speaker 1: much later and in a kind of a different context.
Speaker 1: But that's what that's what happened around Christmas. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's already pretty weird, but I think, yeah, it gets waited.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So so particularly if you were not arrested,
Speaker 1: then I went home and Chrismasy stuff, and then at
Speaker 1: some point, well a letter comes through your doors saying
Speaker 1: that you've been charged with like felony littering. So my
Speaker 1: own experience was that people organizers in the mutually collective
Speaker 1: that I'm part of, who had been showing up in
Speaker 1: the parks week after week distributing food and gear, started
Speaker 1: getting arrested in mid January. For um, what we learned
Speaker 1: was something you could be arrested for, which was felony
Speaker 1: littering and or aiding into and a betting felony littering,
Speaker 1: which like honestly exactly and and some people had one,
Speaker 1: some people had the other. Some people had both um
Speaker 1: people were and this is you know, our understanding is
Speaker 1: that there's an unstated but generally followed policy by the
Speaker 1: City of Ausha police de forma that they don't go
Speaker 1: arrest people at work. But they went to people's work
Speaker 1: with five cops and arrested them. Um. And this began
Speaker 1: in mid January and it continued um into into February.
Speaker 1: And be arrest I mean, honestly, the charges on the
Speaker 1: on the charge sheets would read like crazy statues that
Speaker 1: weren't even felony littering. It seems like they it really
Speaker 1: seemed like they were making it up as they went along,
Speaker 1: just from the what I can say is, I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't speculate about what they were doing, but there
Speaker 1: was a strangeness to to even like the documentation that
Speaker 1: people who are arrested received. And then at the first
Speaker 1: week of March of last year, the letter that I
Speaker 1: received was similar to others that others other folks received
Speaker 1: that day, which was in an envelope from the Asheville
Speaker 1: Police Department but was on Ashell Parks and arc stationary
Speaker 1: that told me that I had been banned from all
Speaker 1: city parks for a period of three years based on
Speaker 1: the commission of a felony. And this was how I
Speaker 1: found out that I even had any charges, was through
Speaker 1: this letter. And that's true for more than me, that's
Speaker 1: true for a few defends. Um. So you know, not
Speaker 1: everybody who is now we understand to be banned from
Speaker 1: parks has even received one of those letters, but I did,
Speaker 1: and a few of us did, And there was on
Speaker 1: there a sort of like if you would like to
Speaker 1: appeal this, you have seven days, but the letter had
Speaker 1: been dated sort of five days before that, and we
Speaker 1: were like, wow, what are we even doing? And so
Speaker 1: it's hard to it's hard to really communicate the like
Speaker 1: level of um both like sort of desperation and nonsense
Speaker 1: that was involved. The next day, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: so a few of us found this out. We were
Speaker 1: we self surrendered, and because we were a lot of
Speaker 1: us around the courthouse in city hall, we were trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what does this letters even mean? Like
Speaker 1: what does it mean to appeal this? What does it
Speaker 1: need to be banned? And so we trapesed around city hall,
Speaker 1: city offices, the courthouse trying to get some sort of
Speaker 1: answer like what here we've got these what does this mean?
Speaker 1: And every place sent us somewhere where they were like,
Speaker 1: we don't know what that is. Park Snart said, we
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. Go talk to the police.
Speaker 1: We said, we don't know what that is. Go talk
Speaker 1: to the magistrate. The criminal magistrate said, oh, this seems
Speaker 1: like a civil magistrate thing. So there's like a group
Speaker 1: of five mutual aid workers, you know, sort of just
Speaker 1: trapesing around trying to find out like can I do
Speaker 1: I get to go give out sandwiches intense in the
Speaker 1: park this week or not for three years? What is?
Speaker 1: And who can help me figure this out? And no
Speaker 1: one could? And what insod We never got an answer
Speaker 1: that day. We just had city employees looking at us,
Speaker 1: often with a like wow, we don't We're sorry this
Speaker 1: is happening to you. This seems really dumb expression. And eventually,
Speaker 1: via email it became clear that they were like, we
Speaker 1: don't know what this process is, but we're going to
Speaker 1: tell you soon, like thank you for your email, you know,
Speaker 1: saying you're going to appeal it. And over time we
Speaker 1: kind of got a little bit more like okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to schedule the hearings. You will have a hearing eventually,
Speaker 1: like okay, we ask who will be these are like
Speaker 1: for what what is a hearing? And they didn't know,
Speaker 1: and then like, oh, okay, well there will be some
Speaker 1: police officers there and you know, the city representative from
Speaker 1: the City Attorney's office, and you will have a chance
Speaker 1: to provide information. And you know, at this point, like,
Speaker 1: none of us, I think none of us had maybe
Speaker 1: we'd had Adam appearances, but like, at this point, we're
Speaker 1: dealing with felony littering charges that we don't understand. We're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out whether we can continue to provide
Speaker 1: community care in the way we've been doing for years,
Speaker 1: and it seems like what the city is offering is
Speaker 1: a chance to come and maybe entrap ourselves. Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense to us. And so you know,
Speaker 1: those of us who had representation that we could speak
Speaker 1: to said, oh, we're coming, um, and have you heard
Speaker 1: the recordings? No, Well, if you would like them, I'm
Speaker 1: happy to send them. Mine is particularly I can't listen
Speaker 1: to mine. I have a huge nervous system response. Um,
Speaker 1: but mine is my my attorney asking over and over
Speaker 1: again questions of the of the representative, the city attorney.
Speaker 1: It's not it's John Maddox, who's um named in the
Speaker 1: ACLU demand letter. Um, just saying over and over again,
Speaker 1: like what at that point, we haven't even seen any discovery,
Speaker 1: Like we don't know what information this is even based on.
Speaker 1: Like there are two cops in uniform pointing body cams
Speaker 1: that assume I have to assume pointing body cams at me, um,
Speaker 1: and in this in this hearing, and my lawyer is
Speaker 1: just asking over and over again, like upon what evidence
Speaker 1: is this space? And they just said over and over again,
Speaker 1: you're here to give information. We are not giving any information.
Speaker 1: My lawyer asking what is the standard of review here?
Speaker 1: Like how upon what is this base? And the parks
Speaker 1: director just saying like my decision and the and and
Speaker 1: then and then you know, what are the what is
Speaker 1: the remedy if this is if the appeal is denied,
Speaker 1: there's none, then the appeal is denied. Like and so
Speaker 1: it really was for me one of the moments where
Speaker 1: I realized, like, oh, the city is is pretty hell
Speaker 1: bent on keeping a bunch of sweethearts who give out
Speaker 1: tens and sandwiches out of the park, and they're gonna
Speaker 1: like they're they're up to something here. Um. But I'm
Speaker 1: happy to share that recording. We have all of them reported. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd like that performance of like suitable legal ceremony well
Speaker 1: and again and and like pseudo in a dangerous and
Speaker 1: extra judicial way, like I had no protections there, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, like yeah, there's something to respond to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like these these are these, these are Star Chamber proceedings,
Speaker 1: like like the King of France is going to walk out.
Speaker 1: I just think it seems like such a British thing,
Speaker 1: like yeah, you told me this in Britain and you've
Speaker 1: been like shooting the Queen's swans or something. I'd buy it.
Speaker 1: You know. Here we are in the land of the free.
Speaker 1: You know that well, And I think the equivalent of
Speaker 1: shooting the Queen's swunts here is um hanging out with
Speaker 1: poor folks in a park um and in ways that
Speaker 1: inconvenience or that apparently inconvenience the folks who go who
Speaker 1: pay money because you have to to play tennis at
Speaker 1: a public tennis court which is like right by Aston
Speaker 1: Park and and we can go in in a minute
Speaker 1: as much as you want to to what you saw
Speaker 1: as far as like their attempts after their attempts to
Speaker 1: pass to sneak through an ordinance. Um. Now we know
Speaker 1: quite clearly from public records directed at at food sharing
Speaker 1: in Austin Park. Yeah, it's really I keep thinking about
Speaker 1: that that Helder Kamara aligned I. When I give food
Speaker 1: to the poor, they called me a saint. When I
Speaker 1: asked why the air poor? They call me a communist.
Speaker 1: But it's like they really seem to have blown all
Speaker 1: the way, Like they didn't even get to part two.
Speaker 1: They were just like, wait, hold on, you're giving food
Speaker 1: to the poor, like it is time for a military response.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just horrible. Yeah, and being banned from
Speaker 1: parks for three years has a pretty big effect on
Speaker 1: my on my little life, you know, like there are
Speaker 1: constitutional um aspects to it that matter far beyond me
Speaker 1: and and which matter in many ways more too. But
Speaker 1: the fact right now is that like I can't legally
Speaker 1: take my young child like to the park, buy her
Speaker 1: house without risking a rest for misdemeanor trust house. Um
Speaker 1: and and to my knowledge I won't be able to
Speaker 1: for three years. Um. And you know, they've succeeded in
Speaker 1: getting us out of the park. They caused the harm
Speaker 1: to they disrupted community care Um, they did it. They
Speaker 1: didn't need the ordinance. Um, you know, it does happen.
Speaker 1: Food distribution happens, but it's in a place that really
Speaker 1: isn't the same. Like my daughter can't go there. She
Speaker 1: has some sensory stuff like being in the loud place
Speaker 1: that it is right now, it really doesn't work. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's this. There's this very um like the
Speaker 1: scopes of all of this um from how Asheville as
Speaker 1: a city views and treats the folks who live on
Speaker 1: the street here who the city has most abandoned. There's
Speaker 1: the legal mechanisms, the like very strange way they are
Speaker 1: like doubling down on criminalization of folks doing community care.
Speaker 1: And then there's just like the really day to day
Speaker 1: personal personal bits of this that affect all of us
Speaker 1: in different ways, and a felony would affect lots of
Speaker 1: us in different ways, Like it endangers professional licensure, Like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get a social work license, like people,
Speaker 1: it endangers professional licensure. Of course, I right to vote,
Speaker 1: housing and employment. And you know, I'm the like middle aged, white,
Speaker 1: middle class mom, second graduate degree person in the group.
Speaker 1: I am not really representative of our group. Like folks
Speaker 1: are in a lot less folks are in a lot
Speaker 1: more precarious and material circumstances than I am, and so
Speaker 1: much so that like, you know, it feels safe for
Speaker 1: me to come on this podcast. It doesn't feel safe
Speaker 1: for everybody to come on a podcast. It feels safe
Speaker 1: for me to have my name out, like, um, it
Speaker 1: doesn't for everybody. And I think, um, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that that's something that has to be named too. Of
Speaker 1: like how what I threat this is to folks future
Speaker 1: material will being as well as currently Like folks have
Speaker 1: most housing over this, Folks have lost employment over this,
Speaker 1: like um Jesus Christ. Yeah, like even if you're found
Speaker 1: completely innocent or whatever, like this has robbed your time
Speaker 1: or people at the housing or people's their jobs. It
Speaker 1: caused stress and in that way, you know, it does
Speaker 1: feel and often to us like the like the punishment
Speaker 1: is the process. Yeah, it's just harassment. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if I feel are updated on like there are
Speaker 1: five of us being taken to trial. Is that something
Speaker 1: you know? Okay, yeah so yeah yeah, but our listeners
Speaker 1: probably aren't. So it's lain like so right after this
Speaker 1: happened or at some point, Alt's happening. So I know
Speaker 1: when we started speaking, I was like, oh, well, I'd
Speaker 1: pr ra this shit out of Aya City council people,
Speaker 1: and you were like we already have. Yeah, so because
Speaker 1: there was some stuff in there that was just weirdly Yeah,
Speaker 1: can you what you got from, like this has got
Speaker 1: a problem job Montaka come from, among other things. Sure, yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: it's so even talking about it, I have such a
Speaker 1: reaction and um that I can feel um and I
Speaker 1: should say, you know, I speak about this to my
Speaker 1: not not about the city of the text necessarily, but
Speaker 1: I speak about the situation to a lot of people
Speaker 1: because it does feel to us like you know, they're
Speaker 1: also I think they would like us to be ashamed,
Speaker 1: but we're not ashamed of what is happening to I mean,
Speaker 1: that's part of the degradation of a quick system. And
Speaker 1: so you know, all of my neighbors know what is
Speaker 1: happening to me, all of the people that I work
Speaker 1: with in the various like uh, school related jobs and
Speaker 1: such that I do. And to a person, everyone in
Speaker 1: Asheville starts with disbelief. They're like no, and then I'm
Speaker 1: like yes, and then they're just so disappointed, like they're
Speaker 1: just they're so appalled. Often people say the number in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, Like often people are like, wow, I
Speaker 1: really I didn't know. Some people did know, you know
Speaker 1: that the city was was like this. UM, but you
Speaker 1: know that's that's sort of paralleled my experience in a way,
Speaker 1: just like disbelief and then and then disappointment. UM. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we recently it's intensified recently seeing the publicly available communication
Speaker 1: between council members UM, and I think, UM, I want
Speaker 1: to be careful and I don't have it in front
Speaker 1: of me, and so I don't want to I don't
Speaker 1: want to misquote it. But what I can say, UM,
Speaker 1: is that anybody can go find on the City of
Speaker 1: ashtables public records or busts. Anybody can go get those
Speaker 1: now because they've been requested UM. And so they're publicly available.
Speaker 1: And we have texts between council members that UM, that
Speaker 1: are kind of debate that that are in contemplation of
Speaker 1: an ordinance that would restrict food sharing in public places
Speaker 1: to to require permitting in contemplation of that, like we
Speaker 1: have we have texts from council members calling um, those
Speaker 1: who do those who do fouturing and ask and park
Speaker 1: problem children, um and saying that it's a shame that
Speaker 1: the problem children have ruined it for the rest of
Speaker 1: the class. We have. We have one saying like, you know,
Speaker 1: probably if if we go ahead, we city council go
Speaker 1: ahead with this, with this ordinance, there will be a
Speaker 1: lot of protests and a lot of pushbacks, which of
Speaker 1: course there was once it came out. UM. And we
Speaker 1: have the other council members saying like, yeah, that might
Speaker 1: be UM, but if permitting is the only way to
Speaker 1: get them to stop, then so be it. And any
Speaker 1: I mean I read that, and I have a variety
Speaker 1: of reactions, but mostly just like a kind of nauseous
Speaker 1: disappointment UM. In And this is not true of all
Speaker 1: council UM, because some of some some folks have tried
Speaker 1: to like understand the gap being filled by folks who
Speaker 1: give out food and gear in a park. UM. And
Speaker 1: I think some of the council and have recognize it
Speaker 1: as a gap um that is being filled. And I
Speaker 1: think some are are so aware of what it says
Speaker 1: about the city that folks have to show up in
Speaker 1: a park and give out food and gear and there's
Speaker 1: never enough of either. Um. They're so aware of what
Speaker 1: that lays there, about the abandonment that the city practices
Speaker 1: of those who live here, that they can only see that,
Speaker 1: and they can only be angry with us, right and
Speaker 1: call us problem children like forty three. Yeah, well you
Speaker 1: can see the sort of like like the kind of
Speaker 1: just like petty dictatorship mind that they've gotten themselves into.
Speaker 1: Were like they can't see the people who like you know,
Speaker 1: nominally they're supposed to be serving, right, but like, okay,
Speaker 1: we know how far that goes, but they can't see
Speaker 1: like you as anything other than just like a child.
Speaker 1: Because that's the kind of like this is the sort
Speaker 1: of dictator brain that they've that they've from like holding
Speaker 1: this power. It's it kind of reminds me of like
Speaker 1: how you see with the fourteenth he said, like the
Speaker 1: state is me and therefore a tax on my reputation
Speaker 1: or like a tax against the state. Like yeah, that's
Speaker 1: how it feels like you're being treated us by making
Speaker 1: them look bad. And I don't know if you saw
Speaker 1: this also in there, but um on the day that
Speaker 1: the arrests happen. So so those discussions about the ordinance
Speaker 1: were I think a little earlier in January that we
Speaker 1: should actually too that. Um, but there's a there's one
Speaker 1: that came right on the day of the first arrests
Speaker 1: for felany lettering that um or someone asks like can
Speaker 1: those arrested be banned from certain places? Um? And and
Speaker 1: we know now yes, but it is it's a lot
Speaker 1: to see that. It's a lot to see what looks, um,
Speaker 1: what looks so deliberately like depriving us of a sorry
Speaker 1: to be in a perk? Yeah? Yeah? And so where
Speaker 1: is where's the five you are going to trial? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Unknown number of people are banned from parks in Nashville. Yes, yes.
Speaker 1: My understanding is that someone has been told, um, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't keep records of that, which also doesn't make
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Yeah, how can you force a
Speaker 1: bath if we don't have a record of who's bay? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I shouldn't be quoted on that, but um, but
Speaker 1: my understanding is that, like, um, is that that has
Speaker 1: been the It's like, oh no, there aren't records that
Speaker 1: we can that can be made public about that, because
Speaker 1: there's some police aren't for records. UM do that just
Speaker 1: seems like that's just just like incredibly bizarre secret police shit.
Speaker 1: Of like, yeah, I know we have like we have
Speaker 1: we have lists that don't exist of people who are
Speaker 1: banned from spaces and we won't tell you what they
Speaker 1: are because I don't existe. Yeah, you'll find out when
Speaker 1: this what team comes from behind the swings and yeah
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, yeah terrible. So yeah, you're banned from the park,
Speaker 1: you're facing you're going to trial. Yeah, five of us
Speaker 1: um have been have been scheduled for trial and the
Speaker 1: other folks UM have been kind of it's called taken
Speaker 1: off the calendar, so they don't have nothing's dismissed um
Speaker 1: but um, but they're not scheduled. There's no there's no
Speaker 1: next quart date for them. Okay, so when when will
Speaker 1: you if you don't mind saying, when would your trial
Speaker 1: date be? Our trial date right now is set for
Speaker 1: February twenty seventh. Well okay, so you're coming up, it's
Speaker 1: coming right up. Yeah, that's tough. We'll make sure we
Speaker 1: get this out before then. How can people support you,
Speaker 1: support the work that you uh not doing in parks anymore?
Speaker 1: How can people help you through this? I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: a really stressful trial prices, Yeah, thank you for asking. Um,
Speaker 1: so we post updates in a few different places. UM,
Speaker 1: But we don't have our own Instagram right now because
Speaker 1: we're we just don't. But our our defendant statements get
Speaker 1: released in a few different places, including UM at a
Speaker 1: V survival on Instagram. We also have a website where
Speaker 1: we always post our own statements and also all the
Speaker 1: press that comes out about us, and that is abl
Speaker 1: Solidarity dot no blogs dot org. We have a VENMO
Speaker 1: which is used that those funds are used for attorney
Speaker 1: fees and and frankly, like you know when someone loses
Speaker 1: housing or their car breaks down and they have had
Speaker 1: trouble finding employment because they have fell any lettering churches
Speaker 1: against them, and it's also used for material needs in
Speaker 1: that way, and that is a VL defendant fund And
Speaker 1: all that's actually on the website too. You can find
Speaker 1: those UM. And honestly, it matters so much that people
Speaker 1: just know this is happening, you know, when I tell
Speaker 1: people in Ashville, like more people know now than did before. UM,
Speaker 1: when I tell people outside of Asheville, there's very much
Speaker 1: like I thought about coming there. I heard it was cool.
Speaker 1: It's like they do want those who make not just
Speaker 1: like a living from tourism but those who make tons
Speaker 1: of money from tourism are certainly invested in you thinking
Speaker 1: that it's really cool and tell me to spend your
Speaker 1: money here. And it's not cool in the ways that
Speaker 1: they want you to think it's cool. It is cool
Speaker 1: because neighbors show up for each other and you can
Speaker 1: come here and we'll talk to you about that. But
Speaker 1: there's a way that, like people knowing what this place
Speaker 1: is really like does matter. And there's a way that honestly,
Speaker 1: people just like sending us like they're beautiful energy and
Speaker 1: hope really matters too, Like that actually that actually really
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. So they can send us through beautiful energy
Speaker 1: and hope and material contributions as they might have them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure people will because horrifically fucked up. I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask, what is the sentence range for felony littering? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's the lowest class of felony. As it happens
Speaker 1: none of us have any criminalstery. Yeah, we'd be facing
Speaker 1: felony probation and so that could that there's a range
Speaker 1: there of whether that probation is supervised or unsupervised. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a range of how long it would be there's
Speaker 1: a range um of restitution in terms of community service,
Speaker 1: um and and I actually don't have the paper in
Speaker 1: front of me that says what the range of those
Speaker 1: things are, but I feel like it's eight twelve months
Speaker 1: on probation um and a lot of that is simply
Speaker 1: at the discretion of incentencing um and um And I
Speaker 1: think that that there are some puzzible restrictions on just
Speaker 1: like being able to leave the state. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, probation. Sorry, christ Like, this is fully
Speaker 1: fucking sent me now. Because a guy, a man called
Speaker 1: Robert Wilson in San Diego was arrested for hate crimes
Speaker 1: because he assaulted his gay neighbor. Since he was arrested,
Speaker 1: he's riven around San Diego and La dressed as a Nazi,
Speaker 1: sometimes with horrifically anti semitic slogan. Has just left the
Speaker 1: country and is living in Poland because because fucking like somehow, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I love it. This is fully fully sent
Speaker 1: me now too. Yeah, yeah, what is wrong with this ship?
Speaker 1: Yeah there's something else you wanted to get to you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I wanted to name so, you know, people
Speaker 1: are so in a way like I wish I had
Speaker 1: a super cut of everyone I've ever said the word
Speaker 1: felony lettering too, just like their faces over and over again.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll come to Asheville and just vox pops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's a way that you know, of course that's
Speaker 1: just like and with you add on eating and a betting,
Speaker 1: which we've all been bumped up to felony lettering but
Speaker 1: or sort of but but but the myst miyor is
Speaker 1: conspiracy to commit no, yeah, what's next greco charge? Yes,
Speaker 1: so so um so on its face, you know, it
Speaker 1: has this ring of absurdity, and of course like it is.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of the press about us, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll go talk to someone at the School of Government
Speaker 1: who says, like, well, this is baffling and at the
Speaker 1: very least seems like a misapplication of the statute, which
Speaker 1: is about um huge amounts of waste often being like
Speaker 1: dumped by businesses. Um. But I think it's it's it's
Speaker 1: telling that a couple maybe a month or two ago,
Speaker 1: there was an article in the Citizen Times, a local paper,
Speaker 1: about US and a company, Waste pro which had dumped
Speaker 1: um an entire dumpster's worth of trash um. Now I'm
Speaker 1: like out somewhere outside of um where it should have
Speaker 1: been like in the in the landfillm um. And but
Speaker 1: it was all about like how actually they had followed
Speaker 1: procedure because there was like maybe a little bit of
Speaker 1: a battery fire or something. There was something going on
Speaker 1: with it where they they weren't supposed to bring it in,
Speaker 1: so they just had to dump it. But in the
Speaker 1: course of this article, they interviewed a lot of people
Speaker 1: about like, well, what's going on with like litter in
Speaker 1: general and like big amounts of litter, and our case
Speaker 1: was never mentioned, but they did talk to some folks
Speaker 1: who who do river clean up, an organization called GreenWorks,
Speaker 1: and that person said, you know, sometimes there are like
Speaker 1: there's huge amounts of dumping that happens, and we call
Speaker 1: the city and they say, yeah, that's illegal, but we
Speaker 1: don't actually prosecute that. And like seeing you know, that's
Speaker 1: the sort of thing also that seeing in print, I'm
Speaker 1: just like, what what sort of strange like dystopian novel
Speaker 1: am I living in where the city is so upfront
Speaker 1: that like, oh no, like we wouldn't prosecute felony littering,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to aiming to disrupt a kind
Speaker 1: of community care and political speech that they don't like. Um,
Speaker 1: they're willing to expend an incredible amount of resources on it,
Speaker 1: you know, like the number of resources that have gone
Speaker 1: into this would have funded like sanctuary camping with sanitation
Speaker 1: services like for years, for years, and you know, I
Speaker 1: think you alluded though maybe this is in the future
Speaker 1: of the podcast, like to the way the City of
Speaker 1: Asheville or our lawyers have been clear that when you
Speaker 1: when you look at the City of Asheville's like public
Speaker 1: apronouncements and the way that that they talk about um homelessness,
Speaker 1: it does seem like, oh wow, we're really we're really
Speaker 1: trying to get on this UM. But at a recent
Speaker 1: meeting where a consultant group often referred to as like yeah,
Speaker 1: that other that that consultant group from now because it's
Speaker 1: happened to over and over again, presented findings about like
Speaker 1: what should actually be done to end unsheltered homelessness. Here
Speaker 1: presented finding to the city council and accounting commissioners. No
Speaker 1: one was allowed to talk except for this huge meeting.
Speaker 1: No one was allowed to talk except for council members
Speaker 1: and commissioners and those who were presenting. But a man
Speaker 1: who actually has experience, was experience with homelessness, got up
Speaker 1: and talked anyways, and he was interrupted by the mayor
Speaker 1: and like that's telling in its own right. That's that's
Speaker 1: telling in its own right. Also telling is that later
Speaker 1: also not allowed to speak. A local pastor got up
Speaker 1: and said, you know, I saw that happen. You know,
Speaker 1: like what we need to be doing is actually listening
Speaker 1: to the folks who've experienced this and like data, yes,
Speaker 1: we need data, but we also need to like actually
Speaker 1: listen to the voices of what's going on. And he
Speaker 1: used the phrase, which I think was echoing the man
Speaker 1: who had spoken earlier, spiritual death, and said that this
Speaker 1: he thinks as a pastor, that Ashville is in a
Speaker 1: moment of spiritual death. And in a way, that's why
Speaker 1: I say, like we need you, We need your material
Speaker 1: contributions to us as defendants to collective care. Like when
Speaker 1: we have extra money in that defendive fund, we just
Speaker 1: give it away. Some people can buy more tents, and
Speaker 1: we need like we need some hope because Ashville is
Speaker 1: in this momentum where it's as a city, it's making
Speaker 1: choices that seem so misaligned, not just with like the
Speaker 1: image that it would like to sell to tourists, but
Speaker 1: like with the people who live here and are actually
Speaker 1: like about it day to day in a neighbor's caring
Speaker 1: for a neighbor's way, like really misaligned with what we
Speaker 1: actually want and what we actually are capable of offering
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, yeah, it is deeply sad, but like
Speaker 1: we've created this abstraction of society which is being entirely
Speaker 1: anti social, like no one wants, no one, ye, no
Speaker 1: reasonable person would do that, But we've got the state,
Speaker 1: which in theory acts on our behalf and is doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, which also is probably to editorialize for a second.
Speaker 1: Often people will make this argument, I see it specifically
Speaker 1: around gun laws, but with other laws, to where this
Speaker 1: law won't always be enforced and only use it if
Speaker 1: they need it if they have to get a bad person.
Speaker 1: They will use it if anybody threatens their interest, their
Speaker 1: shit right, Like it was extensively mobilized for a ghost
Speaker 1: gun law here, which made some bizarre things illegal, like
Speaker 1: the bank stick which you use for spear fishing, is
Speaker 1: now a ghost gun and a felony, and like there
Speaker 1: were definitely boomers who have dozens of those in their
Speaker 1: garage right and don't keep up on local audiences and
Speaker 1: are now, in theory at risk of committing a felony.
Speaker 1: And then obviously the response to that from the councilors, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't charge them, like who we can't us the
Speaker 1: state to be benevolent when it's your experience is shown
Speaker 1: it's anything but and you know we And I can
Speaker 1: say this personally because I've spoken I've spoken to people
Speaker 1: in city government or in state government who I've just
Speaker 1: said like, hey, did you know this is happening? Um?
Speaker 1: And and they're clear about how Um sure it sounds
Speaker 1: nettie but the city but like that, but that that
Speaker 1: we as a group have been painted as particularly dangerous.
Speaker 1: And that part to me is like, I mean, don't
Speaker 1: do this to anybody, you know, don't do it to anybody.
Speaker 1: But the part where where what's going on is like,
Speaker 1: it's is this strange justification, um, with the idea that
Speaker 1: that we are dangerous people who deserve to be taken
Speaker 1: you know, who need to be taken out of a part,
Speaker 1: who need to not be allowed to be in a park.
Speaker 1: You know is particularly easily disproved by anyone who actually
Speaker 1: like hangs out with us, knows what, knows who we
Speaker 1: are and what we've done. But not when it's just
Speaker 1: like a weird whisper campaign in the in the halls
Speaker 1: of city government, like oh no, they're bad, Like they're
Speaker 1: just bad. Um. Like we we've heard the lies that
Speaker 1: they've told about us, some of them we have in
Speaker 1: um in you know, public records requests like um that
Speaker 1: we haven't even talked about. But it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a really strange thing to be to be painted that way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's design. Again. I'm sorry it's happening to you. And
Speaker 1: so I think to wrap up, maybe again, you could
Speaker 1: just give that venmost people can support materially and yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's any other social media account where
Speaker 1: people can follow along, where people can send their support
Speaker 1: and best wishes, that yeah, that's great. Um our venmo
Speaker 1: is a VL defendant fund and um yeah you can
Speaker 1: so on Instagram. We're easy to get you through a
Speaker 1: VL survival and there's a way to contact us through
Speaker 1: our website. We can have a little we have a
Speaker 1: little email. I'll be so cute to get some supportive emails,
Speaker 1: and that website is a VL solidarity dot no blogs
Speaker 1: dot org. Amazing. Thank you all so much, thank you
Speaker 1: for giving us your time. I'm sorry that you're dealing
Speaker 1: with the fairy US state bullshit. All right, So that
Speaker 1: wraps up. Are into you with Sarah. Tomorrow we'll be
Speaker 1: talking to Maniba from the ACOU, the American Civil Liberties Union,
Speaker 1: and he will be giving us a legal perspective and
Speaker 1: some more insight into this case. We'll look forward to
Speaker 1: talking to you then. Hi everyone, it's James again. I
Speaker 1: just want to remind you that this is part two
Speaker 1: of a two parta and if you haven't listened to
Speaker 1: yesterday's podcast, today's might not make a lot of sense,
Speaker 1: So I would suggest starting there. Obviously, you know of
Speaker 1: your own lifetill you want, but you're going to understand
Speaker 1: today's a lot more if you start with yesterday's. Today
Speaker 1: we speaking to Menieba with the ACLU about the legal
Speaker 1: response to some of the bizarre things City of Asheville
Speaker 1: has been doing. If you hear reference to Pip in
Speaker 1: this episode, that's because Pip is another of the activists.
Speaker 1: They weren't able to make our call but we're going
Speaker 1: to be speaking to them as well in our ongoing
Speaker 1: coverage of this. So hope you enjoy today's episode know
Speaker 1: that we'll keep you updated as this moves forward. All right,
Speaker 1: so our first guest today is Niba and Minnie. But
Speaker 1: would you like to introduce yourself explain your relationship to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today. Yeah. Sure, So my name
Speaker 1: is Maniba Talister. I'm a stop attorney with the ACLU
Speaker 1: Narth CAREL I know, and I represent some of these
Speaker 1: wonderful folks that you'll be talking to actor me and UM,
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate that we met this way, um, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be working with them. So basically I
Speaker 1: can go into it or do you want to ask
Speaker 1: me questions about it? Or I think it'd be great
Speaker 1: if you could start off by sort of walking us
Speaker 1: through how Mutual Aid seems to have met with this
Speaker 1: bizarre prosecution. Yeah, of course. UM, so we got connected
Speaker 1: to um, you know our now clients, UM, this group
Speaker 1: of individuals whom you know have been doing important advocacy
Speaker 1: and rachel Aid work on the house of on house folks,
Speaker 1: um in ethel and UM we were connected by this
Speaker 1: other organization called Center for Constitutional Rights and kind of
Speaker 1: filled in quickly about how this group of people were
Speaker 1: not only banned from perks, but these bands were based
Speaker 1: on this absurd criminal charge called felony littering um, which
Speaker 1: you know, it sounds as crazy as it is. Um.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, you know, I think, um, my colleagues
Speaker 1: and I at the ECLU, we were eager to talk
Speaker 1: to these folks and learn more about what happened and
Speaker 1: see what we can do and um uh and you know,
Speaker 1: start talking about some of the legal issues that um
Speaker 1: that arise from when a city tries to ban a
Speaker 1: large group of people from from one of the few
Speaker 1: places that they have to convene and to protest um
Speaker 1: and demonstrate, which you know, one of the first things
Speaker 1: I learned in law school is like how or like
Speaker 1: one of the first things I think I learned as
Speaker 1: someone living in the US, like you you always hear
Speaker 1: kids say, oh, I have free speech, like you know,
Speaker 1: free speeches. So it's such a central part of being
Speaker 1: in this or like growing up in this country and
Speaker 1: being a citizen or a member of this country. Is
Speaker 1: just the way that is thrown around, sometimes inaccurately, but
Speaker 1: people generally know that that speech should be protected and
Speaker 1: cannot be restricted except in very narrow ways by the government. UM,
Speaker 1: not by like you know, your mom. You don't have
Speaker 1: free speech in front of your mom. Like that's not
Speaker 1: that I learned that. Um. Yeah when I took my
Speaker 1: being an American test, I took I became a citisen
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago. And there's like only like
Speaker 1: fifty questions they can ask you, And I think two
Speaker 1: of them are like, what it's free speech? Like like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: can you claim free speech when you get banned from
Speaker 1: Twitter dot com? Like yeah, it's something, Yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think, um, I think you know it's UM
Speaker 1: it's absurd to criminalize protest, of course, UM, but it's
Speaker 1: it's also like equally as troubling to take away this
Speaker 1: this important public space from people that UM, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in a city like Ashville, if you've been there,
Speaker 1: it's one of the few public spaces that people can
Speaker 1: convene and um get together and enjoy each other's company. UM.
Speaker 1: You know that that being separate from also one of
Speaker 1: the few places that you can protest and and um
Speaker 1: engage and discussion about how to fix problems. So it's
Speaker 1: really troubling, um that the City of Bashville has had
Speaker 1: taken that route. So when the ACIL you got involved,
Speaker 1: we thought it would be best to list out some
Speaker 1: of these legal issues. UM. You know, I mentioned the
Speaker 1: First Amendment UM and free speech, but there are also
Speaker 1: a lot of procedural due process problems that um are
Speaker 1: issues that come up when you then folks from a park. Um.
Speaker 1: One of you know, one of the things that the
Speaker 1: city didn't do is provide proper notice. So a few
Speaker 1: of our clients never received notice that they were banned
Speaker 1: from the park, and you know, found out that they
Speaker 1: were banned either through the discovery process in their criminal
Speaker 1: cases or by doing like very intense investigation of their
Speaker 1: own which you know, that is not a that's just
Speaker 1: not okay, Like a city needs to you need to
Speaker 1: at this is like a very basic thing, right, notice
Speaker 1: and hearing. Those are the tenets of procedural due process.
Speaker 1: And the city fails there. The city then sails again
Speaker 1: at providing hearing and providing opportunity to appeal these bands,
Speaker 1: Like there is no pre deprivation hearing. First of all,
Speaker 1: like the bands, once our clients received them, they're banned.
Speaker 1: They're banned from the parks and cannot go and don't
Speaker 1: how didn't have any opportunity to defend um why they
Speaker 1: shouldn't be banned or be heard about why they shouldn't
Speaker 1: be banned before that band happened, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's not okay. I think a pre deprivation hearing
Speaker 1: is really important when you're taking away an interest, like
Speaker 1: like the First Amendment interests that I laid out, and
Speaker 1: and then the hearing that was provided was problematic in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. For one, these were very short
Speaker 1: cursory hearing um that lasted from I want to say
Speaker 1: like five to thirty minutes, but I'll let Sarah and
Speaker 1: Tip confirm. And they they had people from Ashville Police
Speaker 1: Department who are you know, arguably also involved in the
Speaker 1: criminal case as that that several of our clients are
Speaker 1: still sattling through. They were not allowed to ask questions,
Speaker 1: and you know, several of our clients do not have
Speaker 1: the resources to have proper legal representations, so it's sometimes
Speaker 1: our clients were there alone and had to fend for
Speaker 1: themselves and navigate that tricky area of not saying something
Speaker 1: that could hurt you in your criminal case, and you know,
Speaker 1: the hearing was just a mess in all of the ways.
Speaker 1: How does the city like legally justify banning someone from parks?
Speaker 1: I guess they're like a way which they can do that.
Speaker 1: So they have this policy called the Restricted Access to
Speaker 1: City Parks falls policy, and it is I think we
Speaker 1: should call it the park bound policy. They basically allows
Speaker 1: the city to to ban folks from parks based on
Speaker 1: certain violations of I think the categories are city park rules,
Speaker 1: city Parks and Recreation Department program rules, city ordinances, state laws,
Speaker 1: and federal laws. So what's interesting is there is no
Speaker 1: there's nowhere in the policy that says when a person
Speaker 1: has committed or that defines what a violation of any
Speaker 1: of these rules are like. Is that a conviction? Is
Speaker 1: that a formal like citation there the policy does not
Speaker 1: provide that. So this is important, I think, especially here
Speaker 1: where our clients, none of them, or actually I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say none of them. Three three of our clients have
Speaker 1: pled to lesser misdemeanor charges, but everyone else has an
Speaker 1: open case and they have not been formally convicted of anything.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's strange that you know, you can
Speaker 1: ban someone based off of the steleny charge that hasn't
Speaker 1: even been fully litigated. Yeah, have they banned there like
Speaker 1: a record of the city banning people from parks or
Speaker 1: have they just like dug this one up from the
Speaker 1: bowels of legislation to ban these people. Oh, that's a
Speaker 1: really interesting question, and I'd love to know the answer myself.
Speaker 1: We did submit a public records request to try to
Speaker 1: figure out if they have, but I imagine the city
Speaker 1: is not going to want to tell us. And I think, Sarah,
Speaker 1: you could speak to this later. But I don't think
Speaker 1: they have. They. I think they've rejected PRRs that you
Speaker 1: all have done and have not provided that elusive restricted
Speaker 1: access list which they have of like folks that they've
Speaker 1: spanned from the perks and and maybe that list is
Speaker 1: just you know, our clients, which yeah, I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: they have. I don't know what's worse, like if they
Speaker 1: have a parks black list and they're just not notifying
Speaker 1: people until like they send a swat team after them,
Speaker 1: or if it's if it's only people who are helping
Speaker 1: unhouse people and they just don't want to admit that.
Speaker 1: Both those are pretty dark on the topic of weird
Speaker 1: legal things. What on earth is felony littering? I'd love
Speaker 1: to know. I'd love to know what felony littering is, because, um,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. When I told my partner, like,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, did you know they're something called
Speaker 1: felony littering? And he's like, I hope that's when corporations
Speaker 1: get punished for, you know, dumping toxic waste into the sea.
Speaker 1: But no, it's apparently when community members come together for
Speaker 1: a demonstration and the city is mad about what's left behind, which, um,
Speaker 1: you know that's uh. I think it's really telling that
Speaker 1: the city has chosen to to prosecute folks on this
Speaker 1: like felony littering charge, which you know hasn't I think
Speaker 1: in the past ten years there's only been one felony
Speaker 1: littering case out of Buncombe County, where Ashville is Okay,
Speaker 1: So I think that's really telling, and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's really troubling that's city of Aashville seems to be
Speaker 1: really taking out a position in silencing speech. It does
Speaker 1: not like yeah, yeah, go ahead, No, they just seem
Speaker 1: to be taking like the most bizarre and ran around
Speaker 1: the first amendment that they can. Yeah, it must be
Speaker 1: a lot of munds. You a lot of like the
Speaker 1: Occupy era stuff where like all of these cities suddenly
Speaker 1: realized that like wait, hold on, these people can actually
Speaker 1: use a park for political activity. And then immediately like
Speaker 1: suddenly that all these like organizes started appearing where like
Speaker 1: everyone has to like clear out of the park by
Speaker 1: ten pms leaking clean it or something that eventually just
Speaker 1: were just like was used to force people out. And
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems like there's there's something interesting
Speaker 1: too about Like it seems like it's it's almost when
Speaker 1: whenever like a city government tries to something, because it
Speaker 1: seems like they always like immediately reach for sanitation ordinances.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I was saying like that was that was
Speaker 1: like the big occupy thing, Like they're doing this here too,
Speaker 1: and it's it's I don't know. I think all around
Speaker 1: the country we're seeing the government fish out these weird
Speaker 1: ordinances and make new laws to criminalize poverty and um
Speaker 1: and to criminalize unhoused people existing. And I think that trend,
Speaker 1: unfortunately carries even in places like Ashville, UM that are
Speaker 1: seeing especially after COVID, you know, there's been a rising
Speaker 1: and house population everywhere, and so it's it's really upsetting,
Speaker 1: but it is the truth that these these ordinances and
Speaker 1: laws that are being fished out are being fished out
Speaker 1: to targets folks and um and new laws that lawmakers
Speaker 1: are creating. Now, I was thinking about this. I remembering
Speaker 1: there there's a whole sort of anthropological literature about like
Speaker 1: how colonial states use use like sanitation ordinances as a
Speaker 1: way to sort of destroy like indigenous public spaces and
Speaker 1: the places they colonize. And I guess, like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like there's there's a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: throughput I guess between like the sort of old like
Speaker 1: colonial government's regimes and the way that people still use
Speaker 1: sanitation is like the default way to sort of cleanse
Speaker 1: people out of public spaces. I think it's interesting how
Speaker 1: like um an analogy one can make me visit there
Speaker 1: are people with rights and people without rights, even when
Speaker 1: in theory we all have rights, and like this attempt
Speaker 1: to sort of use sanitation to be like all of
Speaker 1: these people's rights don't matter what. They don't have those
Speaker 1: rights at all. Yeah, it's not not linked to the
Speaker 1: way like metropolits rural colonies. I think also just you know,
Speaker 1: going back to this position that the Ashville is taking. Um,
Speaker 1: what's really troubling is like the different angles that they're
Speaker 1: coming at this issue with. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at some of the press
Speaker 1: releases and blog posts on the city's website about the
Speaker 1: house population, you might get a sense that they're trying
Speaker 1: to find solutions to address what they seem to acknowledge
Speaker 1: as a big problem. But then you know, on the
Speaker 1: flip side, you see these actions that directly contradict that sentiment,
Speaker 1: and you know, these part funds. That's that's one of
Speaker 1: the ways that UM, the City of Aashville kind of
Speaker 1: indirectly is like no, please, like, let us do our thing.
Speaker 1: We don't want to hear anything bad about what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Like we're trying our hardest. You know, that's rich on
Speaker 1: its own, but you know, there's so there's a felony
Speaker 1: littering charges, there's the park bands, and then you know,
Speaker 1: alongside all of this, Like a few weeks ago, we
Speaker 1: followed the petition in Bunkham Truntium Superior Court petitioning for
Speaker 1: the release of police body camera footage of the arrest
Speaker 1: of two journalists for the release of um the footage
Speaker 1: that UM that shows the arrests of these journalists covering
Speaker 1: covering the eviction of encampments of unhoused folks in Aston
Speaker 1: Park on Christmas night in twenty twenty one, so around
Speaker 1: the same time that several of our clients, UM, you
Speaker 1: know are being hit with these felony charges and then
Speaker 1: shortly after with park bands and UM, the rest of
Speaker 1: journalists in a democracy is very or should be very
Speaker 1: rare and should be troubling. Uh. And these journalists, like
Speaker 1: just to give you some context, UM, we're not shy
Speaker 1: about their critique of the city and how it's handling
Speaker 1: done housed community. And UM that critique is protected by
Speaker 1: the First Amendment. The city of Asheville, I think, is
Speaker 1: just you know, doing its own thing when it's allowing
Speaker 1: arrests of journalists and and UM, the release of that
Speaker 1: body camera footage we think is important to m just
Speaker 1: show what happened, because that's that's that's kind of strange,
Speaker 1: like just in the same way that felony littering is strange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem like there is there is kind of
Speaker 1: a Yeah, bipassies and commitment to not wanting journalists to
Speaker 1: meddle with you, harassing and house people. It seems to
Speaker 1: be like very much a democrat thing is one of
Speaker 1: the Republican thing. What did were those journalists charged anything
Speaker 1: or were they dis arrested? They were also charged with UM,
Speaker 1: I want to say second degree trust pass UM. And
Speaker 1: they've been pretty vocal about UM their arrests and and
Speaker 1: UM and I think what's been happening. Like their names
Speaker 1: are uh, Veronica Quite and Matilda Bliss. UM. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: Sarah if you want to add more to that, but UM,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's like another thread that's important to
Speaker 1: this story is like all of the different ways that
Speaker 1: Asheville is operating to silence folks and and and to
Speaker 1: continue doing what they're doing, which you know, in a
Speaker 1: like if you look at UM just their own narrative
Speaker 1: where they talk about, oh, yes, we've you know, evicted
Speaker 1: these folks as a success story, and you know, like
Speaker 1: they'll they'll maybe list like all of the hotels, like
Speaker 1: free hotel nights that UM, these folks got for one
Speaker 1: or two nights. But that's obviously not a sustainable solution
Speaker 1: to UM. To you know the plight of that community. Yeah, certainly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes things get done because things look good
Speaker 1: on a press release around them, because it gives anyone
Speaker 1: like longto Maxis to housing. So I wonder what's the situation.
Speaker 1: Several of your clients are now facing felony charges? Are serious? Right?
Speaker 1: If people maybe on in the US or don't realize,
Speaker 1: maybe you could explain, like a felony follows you around
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life, right, Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: just to be clear where the AFLU is not defending
Speaker 1: m the on the criminal charges. Um, I think all
Speaker 1: of our clients have suffer representation for their criminal charges
Speaker 1: we've taken on the charge of um addressing these parts
Speaker 1: bands and how we think they're constitutional. So I'm sure
Speaker 1: like I can I can speak a little to this,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think, um, you know, maybe getting getting
Speaker 1: one of the criminal defense attorneys to talk if they
Speaker 1: can about the criminal case might be more helpful for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe can you explain this in general terms what a
Speaker 1: felony would mean for someone living in North Carolina in
Speaker 1: terms of just how would affect their life going forward? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's there's a lot I think, you know, um, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not a criminal lawyer, but let me just think
Speaker 1: of a few things. Uh, you know, having a felony
Speaker 1: on your criminal record just on its own, nobody nobody
Speaker 1: wants a criminal record in a country and state that
Speaker 1: is still looking and you know, allowing background checks for
Speaker 1: certain jobs and having to explain that in any context
Speaker 1: like I will just you know, you know, let me
Speaker 1: just talk from my own experience where I've whenever I
Speaker 1: am getting admitted to a bar. I've moved a couple
Speaker 1: of times in the past few years and had to
Speaker 1: deal with the unfortunate process of being admitted into that
Speaker 1: state's bar. There's several intrusive questions and many of those
Speaker 1: involved like what kind of what your background is, and
Speaker 1: that means what your criminal background is, Like we have
Speaker 1: to do like I have gone through the moral character
Speaker 1: fitness tests for stage now, and um, it's never fun.
Speaker 1: It's you know, as someone who is privileged and does
Speaker 1: not have a criminal history background, it's not fun for
Speaker 1: me because I like the number of questions they ask you.
Speaker 1: It's like you really like you know, have to dig
Speaker 1: back into the past, like your whole life, Like they
Speaker 1: ask all of the addresses that you've lived at in
Speaker 1: the past fifteen years and if you get it wrong,
Speaker 1: you're lying. So you're okay, I'm going out unattention. But
Speaker 1: the point is, like any any sort of certification or
Speaker 1: job or UM new opportunity that is that is something
Speaker 1: a criminal record is something that's looked at and considered
Speaker 1: and oftentimes in in a negative way and can result
Speaker 1: in people not getting jobs. UM. It's I think Sarah
Speaker 1: and like other Saharan tips maybe can explain more about
Speaker 1: like what the consequences would be like if you've had
Speaker 1: conversation with your attorneys. But I also have some background
Speaker 1: in immigrants race work, and I know that if any
Speaker 1: any kind of criminal charges slash convictions that you're facing
Speaker 1: can be used by UM, can be used by ICE,
Speaker 1: can be used by USBIS to deny you immigration privileges
Speaker 1: and and UM and to deport you, to detain you
Speaker 1: before they deport you and UM. So you know, beyond that,
Speaker 1: like having to have this hang over your head where
Speaker 1: the the process is not short, it's not easy, is
Speaker 1: mentally taxing and UM it's honestly degrading to go through
Speaker 1: our criminal legals them and it's decorating for everyone UM
Speaker 1: and and I mean, that's that's all I can say
Speaker 1: of like someone, um who does like general civil rights work.
Speaker 1: But if you talk to someone who's doing criminal defense
Speaker 1: work and in this all the time, I'm sure they're
Speaker 1: they're you know, can paint a better picture of how
Speaker 1: dark that that processes and how dark it can be
Speaker 1: to have that on um a record. I think another
Speaker 1: thing with this is, um about Okay, I'm not a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm also not like your lawyer, legal advice, eta, et cetera. UM,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure the way it works in North
Speaker 1: Carolina is that if you if if you have a
Speaker 1: felony conviction, you can't vote until you serve out the
Speaker 1: time Jesus. So yeah, like in country. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's that's another thing. And um, I'm fairly muted in
Speaker 1: North Carolina and I moved here in March, so almost
Speaker 1: a year but not quite so. But I do know
Speaker 1: that the hoops that you have to jump through just
Speaker 1: to vote are a lot more than other states that
Speaker 1: I've lived in. And you know, of course that is
Speaker 1: that is also another thing done on purpose to silence
Speaker 1: certain voices. Yeah, that's dark and certainly like you'll lose
Speaker 1: your Second Amendment right, So be jobs you can't do.
Speaker 1: There will be things that you have access to, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: your rights will go away potentially forever, which is bad
Speaker 1: when you're just trying to help some people who need
Speaker 1: to help. It's pretty unconstable. Yeah, I think that's the
Speaker 1: other like really wild thing about all of this is
Speaker 1: like a lot the folks that are, you know, being
Speaker 1: banned on, being targeted on this way are providing really
Speaker 1: important services in a way that the city haven't been
Speaker 1: able to and hasn't and it's filling in this this
Speaker 1: really important role of like making sure that folks stay
Speaker 1: alive and have support and are fed and clothes and um,
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate to have that taken a way like being
Speaker 1: banned from a park means being banned from one of
Speaker 1: the few spaces that our clients had to do this
Speaker 1: work and where they were able to distribute food and
Speaker 1: other aid to folks who don't have a home. And
Speaker 1: it's just it's wild that that kind of action is
Speaker 1: being taken when when we know that this is a
Speaker 1: crisis that the city is just not addressing. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: like taking action against people pointing to the crisis rather
Speaker 1: than the crisis itself, which is yeah, very sad. So
Speaker 1: what stage is you are? I know you have to
Speaker 1: go in a second here, what stage is your lucky
Speaker 1: sabco you with challenging the park ban? How has that?
Speaker 1: How's that gone for you? So so far? We've spent
Speaker 1: a demand letter to the city. The city have responded
Speaker 1: to that letter with UM right now kind of wishywashie
Speaker 1: commitments of like reviewing the policy and UM. While while
Speaker 1: I think that's a great first step, I do think
Speaker 1: the city needs to commit to doing more and UM
Speaker 1: to commit to retracting the bands for all of our
Speaker 1: clients and potentially others who have been affected by this policy.
Speaker 1: They also need to change the policy. Like reviewing the policy,
Speaker 1: that's a great first step, but you know, I want
Speaker 1: to see, like what are the things that they are
Speaker 1: building in to make sure that folks are getting proper notice,
Speaker 1: that this policy isn't being abused and used by UM
Speaker 1: actual police department others in an unfair way, and that
Speaker 1: there's like you know, basic standards of like when the
Speaker 1: policy can be instituted, Like is there a conviction involved
Speaker 1: and what are the convictions? Like doesn't make sense to
Speaker 1: then someone from a park for I don't know, like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of like something, um felony, literate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it is bizarre. And I think, like, you know,
Speaker 1: historically park bends from what I know, is like they've
Speaker 1: been used against like people who have committed like sexual
Speaker 1: offenses and um, and so it's kind of it's kind
Speaker 1: of out of lust field to and and I'll just
Speaker 1: say this, that's a city like in their response, they
Speaker 1: cited to one of the cases that are two cases
Speaker 1: unsolved sexual offenders who are banned from parks, which you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: some peaceful demonstrators who provided aids to folks who are unhoused.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's not really there. The comparison
Speaker 1: is not there. And I think I hope the city
Speaker 1: can be honest and um if they are not willing
Speaker 1: to put the network and to take some of um,
Speaker 1: do the actions that I've laid out. I do think
Speaker 1: that we will continue to challenge these park bands and um,
Speaker 1: you know, will continue to prepare to file suit if
Speaker 1: that's necessary, great, And how can people follow along with
Speaker 1: that or if they want to sort of donate or
Speaker 1: support it, is there a place they can do that. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, our website UM is a great space to
Speaker 1: our website. I think our socials like Twitter, UM and Instagram,
Speaker 1: like our comms team is amazing and they update on
Speaker 1: our work frequently and often and UM and we try
Speaker 1: to we try to provide updates there. But also UM
Speaker 1: kind of engage with our work and what it means
Speaker 1: broadly for UM books across North Carolina and across the US. Yeah. Great,
Speaker 1: And that's just a CLU North Carolina. There would be
Speaker 1: the socials. I shouldn't know that. That's fine of UM.
Speaker 1: So it's a CLU of North Carolina dot org. And
Speaker 1: if you go to our website you'll find our socials
Speaker 1: that it's probably a very cho Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for giving us some of your time.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, that's great, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Dick had happened here? Once again the folks
Speaker 1: from It's Going Down are taking over the show as
Speaker 1: today we do a deep dive into how autonomous organizers
Speaker 1: are pushing back against a wave of far right attacks
Speaker 1: on reproductive freedom and autonomy across the United States. A
Speaker 1: note to our listeners, this episode will include discussion on
Speaker 1: both sexual and far right violence. I'm your host, Mike Andrews.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. In May of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: Politico first reported on the historic league from the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court about the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the landmark
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three decision, which ruled under the Fourteenth Amendment,
Speaker 1: that a pregnant person has the right to privacy, including
Speaker 1: the liberty to abort their fetus. In June of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, the Dab's Decisions struck down Row, ruling that
Speaker 1: the Constitution does not guarantee a person the right to
Speaker 1: an abortion, triggering a wave of state governments rolling back
Speaker 1: abortion rights in access for many. However, the fall of
Speaker 1: Row only further cemented a lack of access to reproductive
Speaker 1: healthcare has already been the norm for millions. As The
Speaker 1: Hill wrote, quote as of twenty twenty, six states had
Speaker 1: only one abortion clinic each, and eighty nine percent of
Speaker 1: America's counties had no abortion clinic at all, the cumulative
Speaker 1: effect of decades of restrictions authored by anti abortion lawmakers.
Speaker 1: This is not to say that things haven't gotten worse.
Speaker 1: They have in the months following the Dabbs decision. In
Speaker 1: states like Ohio, where access has been attacked, a rape
Speaker 1: survivor was forced to travel out of state to find
Speaker 1: an abortion, while local politicians, including the state's Republican Attorney general,
Speaker 1: claimed on Fox News that the story was totally fabricated.
Speaker 1: In other instances, people in Ohio have been denied care
Speaker 1: even though they face potentially life threatening complications. In Texas,
Speaker 1: one woman nearly died due to sepsis because she was
Speaker 1: initially barred access to an abortion by doctors. And these
Speaker 1: are only some of the stories that have made headlines.
Speaker 1: The deeper impact on this countrywide attack and reproductive health
Speaker 1: has hit low income and communities of color the hardest.
Speaker 1: A recent study from the University of San Francisco found
Speaker 1: that quote a third of American women of reproductive age
Speaker 1: now face excessive travel times to obtain an abortion, while
Speaker 1: twice as many are being forced to travel more than
Speaker 1: an hour to reach an abortion provider. In short, attacks
Speaker 1: on abortion, coupled with the already exploding wealth gap, lack
Speaker 1: of access to healthcare, the rising cost of living, and
Speaker 1: the continuing COVID nineteen pandemic, will only expand existing in equalities,
Speaker 1: especially for people of color, the disabled, and queer and
Speaker 1: trans folks in particular. On the legal front, some states
Speaker 1: have pushed to expand abortion access, and many are challenging
Speaker 1: attacks in the courtroom. Minnesota, for instance, most recently became
Speaker 1: the first state to enshrine abortion is a right. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: many continue to donate to abortion funds, and nonprofits like
Speaker 1: Planned Parenthood are even launching mobile clinics to provide care
Speaker 1: and areas hit the hardest due to recent bands. But
Speaker 1: as our first two guests, Beck's part of a clinic
Speaker 1: defense group in New York City. In ashe, an abortion
Speaker 1: doula in North Carolina, reported, many autonomous organizers aren't putting
Speaker 1: their faith in the courts, the cops, or the state.
Speaker 1: You know, living in New York City, abortion is legal,
Speaker 1: and it is legal before a row, and it's been
Speaker 1: legal after row. But that doesn't really necessarily mean anything
Speaker 1: kind of is what we've seen. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that we've seen is we've seen on anti abortion
Speaker 1: protesters and activists coming up from red states to target
Speaker 1: blue states now, and so we've definitely seen their presence
Speaker 1: increasing outside of the clinic that we defend, and SOHO
Speaker 1: in Manhattan and so that's I would say is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things that we've seen is that they
Speaker 1: really are targeting Blue states, are targeting New York City.
Speaker 1: There I'm actively trying to recruit people to come to
Speaker 1: New York City. Is I think the biggest thing that
Speaker 1: we've seen, and that also in New York City we've
Speaker 1: been struggling a lot with a really escalatory police presence
Speaker 1: at our clinics. So that's the other thing that we're
Speaker 1: definitely really really struggling with is the response of the
Speaker 1: state after doubs. So the first thing that I want
Speaker 1: folks to know is that people abortion has people who
Speaker 1: might have abortions. Where I am in time and space,
Speaker 1: they have always already been navigating some of these post
Speaker 1: roar realities that a lot of folks are just getting
Speaker 1: hip to, like after that Fateful Friday in June last year.
Speaker 1: And so I want to name here that we've always
Speaker 1: had a seventy two hour waiting period in North Carolina,
Speaker 1: which is one of the longest waiting periods in the country.
Speaker 1: And there's a slew of other things that we find
Speaker 1: both hostile and restrictive, and I'm using those words to
Speaker 1: describe a situation, an ongoing situation, because these are the
Speaker 1: words that are being used to describe North Carolina now
Speaker 1: as we're seeing an influx of folks coming to North Carolina.
Speaker 1: So I'm saying that for the folks who live here
Speaker 1: always already like they've been dealing with a restrictive, hostile climate.
Speaker 1: Becks just shared a little bit about like the presence
Speaker 1: of anti abortion protesters, so we've always been dealing with that.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, the abortion clinic that I had two
Speaker 1: abortions at in my life, they saw the most anti
Speaker 1: abortion protesters in the Southeast, and we continue to see this.
Speaker 1: We also continue to see as we see these anti
Speaker 1: abortion protesters right a police presence, and we know or
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about what that means for black folks having abortions,
Speaker 1: for people who are undocumented, and for people who otherwise
Speaker 1: like don't want the police all up in their business.
Speaker 1: In addition to what's changed, since jobs are not change, right,
Speaker 1: but change, we have semen influx of folks coming to
Speaker 1: North Carolina from states where abortion is illegal or there
Speaker 1: are bands kind of early ingestation, and we're seeing those
Speaker 1: folks come to the clinics and access the services and
Speaker 1: the support networks that we have here in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: I think that one thing with the group that I
Speaker 1: work with called ad VIC for Abortion Rights, one thing
Speaker 1: that we've been working really hard on is not only
Speaker 1: talking about abortion, not only talking about you know, going
Speaker 1: beyond just legalizing it, but also really focusing on like
Speaker 1: our communities and building mutual aid networks, building repro justice networks,
Speaker 1: and also just working overall on like community defense. So
Speaker 1: we work with a lot of mutual aid organizations all
Speaker 1: over the city of New York. And that's one thing
Speaker 1: that we're doing, like Ash was saying, is we're focusing
Speaker 1: on you know, how do these people who are outside
Speaker 1: of our clinics are not only anti abortion, but they're
Speaker 1: also anti LGBTQ. They are fascist, That is something that
Speaker 1: we should be saying. They are also pro police. None.
Speaker 1: None of these things happen inside of a vacuum. They're
Speaker 1: all interconnected. And I think that that's one thing that
Speaker 1: we really really have to do is talk about how
Speaker 1: the issue of abortion bridge is out to so many
Speaker 1: other things, and we can't only fight one issue. We
Speaker 1: have to fight all of them. But we also have
Speaker 1: to fight the root of where these things are coming from,
Speaker 1: and they're coming from this mass conservative movement that's been
Speaker 1: being built since the nineteen seventies, you know, groups like
Speaker 1: Focus on the Family, like the Federalist Society. These groups
Speaker 1: have so much influence in our society, and we need
Speaker 1: to be going after all of it. We can't only
Speaker 1: be going after you know, one tiny, you know, sector
Speaker 1: of the massive problem, because like Ash said, it is
Speaker 1: all interconnected. Here, I'm thinking about like some political education
Speaker 1: that needs to happen, like and that is the framework
Speaker 1: and the theories of reproductive Justice. I know that they
Speaker 1: recognize so many it recognizes so many things. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that grounds me that it recognizes that
Speaker 1: r J recognizes is that dismantling white supremacy is key
Speaker 1: to achieving reproductive justice. It also says, it posits that
Speaker 1: we live interconnected lives and not single issue lives. And
Speaker 1: it also for me yields that, like, we can't rely
Speaker 1: on the state to provide what we need. I'm seeing
Speaker 1: abortion doulas, clinic escorts, abortion funds, and other organizers and
Speaker 1: organizations really come together to support people having abortions and
Speaker 1: resist criminalization and state violence right now, and we need
Speaker 1: to see more of that. You know, you talk about
Speaker 1: pro choice, I think it's so whack, like the logics
Speaker 1: of pro choice. We need to go further beyond the
Speaker 1: logics of pro choice and understand that RJ says that
Speaker 1: there is no choice without access. And furthermore, RJ posits
Speaker 1: that the key to controlling entire communities is to controlling bodies.
Speaker 1: So if they're coming for the trans people on their
Speaker 1: HRT and their access to gender affirming and medical care,
Speaker 1: then they're gonna come for everyone else. Then they're gonna
Speaker 1: come for the abortion hovers. They've been coming for the
Speaker 1: poor people. I think that, like again, when we go
Speaker 1: back to that reproductive justice framework, we can begin to
Speaker 1: like make these connections. And I'm also saying this as
Speaker 1: an organizer, like reproductive justice is my lane, but so
Speaker 1: as like environmental justice and SOS racial justice, and I'm
Speaker 1: on the front lines of different movements, and I go
Speaker 1: back to this framework because it acknowledges that, like black
Speaker 1: people need an end to anti black racism, and we
Speaker 1: need an end to the police and clean fucking water.
Speaker 1: Right now, I don't know of a framework that says that,
Speaker 1: like we ought to demand all of those things right
Speaker 1: fucking now, and that we actually can't live self determined
Speaker 1: lives without all of that shit. And so I'm ready
Speaker 1: to talk about r J like I'm ready to do
Speaker 1: that political education. I think it's ongoing work and right like,
Speaker 1: you don't have to be an abortion dou lah or
Speaker 1: a frontline organizer to help someone get to their appointment,
Speaker 1: to fund an abortion, to affirm someone's decision and support
Speaker 1: their decision to have an abortion, and so we really
Speaker 1: need that, like, we need that vibe right now. We
Speaker 1: need people to show up that way. I think that
Speaker 1: my biggest frustrate with Democrats is they've been telling us
Speaker 1: for years, like, oh, you know, vote for us, vote
Speaker 1: for us. They've been fundraising off of the issue of
Speaker 1: abortion for decades now. They have done absolutely nothing, And
Speaker 1: I think that what they've really done is they've really
Speaker 1: made us, made us, as in the general like American
Speaker 1: populace feel as though voting is the only way that
Speaker 1: we can change things, and that voting is the only
Speaker 1: way that we can like show our impact and like
Speaker 1: help our communities, when in reality, it isn't. It's going
Speaker 1: out onto the streets. It's also you know, doing abortion
Speaker 1: do the work. It's also you know, going out defunding clinics.
Speaker 1: It's doing all of this work. And we don't need
Speaker 1: the Democrats to do that. And what we need to
Speaker 1: be doing is we need to be talking about the
Speaker 1: state and how we can go beyond the state. I
Speaker 1: also want to say here, like fuck Row. Like Row
Speaker 1: is the kind of legal infrastructure that made abortion possible.
Speaker 1: But it also made it possible for like both the Democrats,
Speaker 1: the Republicans, the Christian Evangelicals, anyone who was checking for it,
Speaker 1: to take abortion away. So like fuck Row. It also
Speaker 1: gave us the trimester framework, which is like really black,
Speaker 1: and it also kind of made it more possible for
Speaker 1: the states and the federal government to put in bands
Speaker 1: and restrictions on abortion. That's something that we need to
Speaker 1: get clear about as well as we fight to decriminalize
Speaker 1: and not legislate further abortion. Stay with us, it could
Speaker 1: happen here. We'll return after these words from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: On July twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six, Eric Rudoff set
Speaker 1: off a nail bomb during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: The explosion killed one person immediately, while over one hundred
Speaker 1: more were horrifically injured in the communicate. Claiming responsibility for
Speaker 1: the bombing, Rudolf denounced the Olympics, abortion, and LGBTQ rights
Speaker 1: with talking points that seemed ripped right out of Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson's nightly news headlines. He wrote, the world converged upon
Speaker 1: Atlanta to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. The purpose
Speaker 1: of my attack the Washington government sanctioning of abortion on demand.
Speaker 1: Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American
Speaker 1: society is the considered effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality,
Speaker 1: whether it's gay marriage, homosexual adoption, hate crime laws including gays,
Speaker 1: or the attempt to introduce a homosexual normalizing curriculum into
Speaker 1: our schools. All of these efforts should be ruthlessly opposed.
Speaker 1: The existence of our culture depends on it. Rudolph would
Speaker 1: go on to carry out more deadly attacks against abortion
Speaker 1: clinics in a queer nightclub, releasing communications under the banner
Speaker 1: of the Army of God, a group which endorsed leaderless
Speaker 1: resistance and was linked to the white supremaci Christian identity movement,
Speaker 1: and the murder of multiple abortion providers. The Army of
Speaker 1: God was just one formation that grew out of Christian identity,
Speaker 1: a mix of white supremacy in Christianity, the preach that
Speaker 1: Jews were Satanic and people of color were subhuman and
Speaker 1: need to be destroyed in a racial holy war. Christian
Speaker 1: and inde adherents set up paramilitary compounds, Bible camps, radio stations,
Speaker 1: and churches from the Aryan Nations to the Covenant of
Speaker 1: the Sword in the Arm of the Lord, and they
Speaker 1: helped usher in a wave of homegrown terrorist groups such
Speaker 1: as The Order and individuals like Timothy Vey carried out
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma City bombing. Meanwhile, above ground groups like Operation
Speaker 1: Rescue cheered on the violence against abortion providers while organizing
Speaker 1: mass protests at clinics with the aim of shutting them down.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, when a gunman killed three people in
Speaker 1: a mass shooting at a clinic in Colorado Springs, the
Speaker 1: far right anti abortion movement had carried out eight murders,
Speaker 1: seventeen attempted murders, forty two bombings in one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty six arsons, all targeted against abortion clinics and providers.
Speaker 1: Wanted to know more about the history of far attacks
Speaker 1: on abortion access if they were indeed rising in the
Speaker 1: current post stops period, We sat down with Bullets of
Speaker 1: Fowler of the National Abortion Federation. Unfortunately, since abortion was
Speaker 1: legalized with the ROVERSUS Weight decision, there has been a
Speaker 1: really coordinated campaign of harassment and violence to target abortion
Speaker 1: providers and try to stop access to legal abortion. And
Speaker 1: we've been tracking this since the late seventies. There have
Speaker 1: been a number of escalating events, everything from clinic protests
Speaker 1: and clinic blockades all the way up to arsons and
Speaker 1: murders of providers just because they do this work. So
Speaker 1: when we talk about this, it's very real. It's a
Speaker 1: very real threat, and it is really terrorism that's happening
Speaker 1: by a coordinated group of people and individuals who really
Speaker 1: are aimed at stopping any access to legal abortion care.
Speaker 1: So we definitely and have seen for a long time
Speaker 1: that there is an overlap between the people that target
Speaker 1: abortion providers and the people that are involved in other
Speaker 1: types of violent streamist movements, including white nationalists. We've known
Speaker 1: that for a long time. It's existed many years. In fact,
Speaker 1: in the eighties, the KKK began creating one imposters listing
Speaker 1: the personal information of abortion providers, and the first provider
Speaker 1: who was murdered, doctor David Gunn, who was murdered in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, was murdered by someone who was a
Speaker 1: white supremacist who had been mentored by someone who was
Speaker 1: a former KKK member. And so we've seen the overlap
Speaker 1: of these groups, and in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: we've seen that overlap be more coordinated and more public.
Speaker 1: So on January sixth, at the insurrection, a lot of
Speaker 1: our members were watching on TV and recognized people because
Speaker 1: they were the same people that protest at their clinics.
Speaker 1: In fact, providers that even noted that day of pulling
Speaker 1: in the parking lot and not seeing their usual protesters
Speaker 1: and wondering what was going on because they saw less
Speaker 1: people outside of clinics, And we later found out it's
Speaker 1: because many of them were at the capitol. And you know,
Speaker 1: a number of people who are active in the anti
Speaker 1: abortion movement have boasted about being at the insurrection, posted
Speaker 1: video and pictures of themselves at the insurrection, and so
Speaker 1: it's it's very clear to us and we very much
Speaker 1: see that overlap. We also see more more of these
Speaker 1: right wing groups actually showing up and participating at anti
Speaker 1: abortion events, so attending some of the marches around the
Speaker 1: country in a more visible way than we've seen in
Speaker 1: the past. Sometimes these right wing groups will do quote
Speaker 1: unquote security for the anti abortion movement, So when they
Speaker 1: have people who are speaking or they're holding large events
Speaker 1: to target providers, they'll get security assistance from white nationalist groups.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, it's particularly disturbing to see. It
Speaker 1: doesn't surprise us because we've been We've known that there's
Speaker 1: an overlap in these groups for a really long time.
Speaker 1: But as we've seen in recent years, as people seem
Speaker 1: to be more okay being more visible about their membership
Speaker 1: in these groups or more vocal about their hate, we're
Speaker 1: seeing it more publicly. The anti abortion movement is not
Speaker 1: doing anything to distance themselves from these groups. So since
Speaker 1: the leak happened last May, we immediately saw an increase
Speaker 1: in harassment and online posts that were threatening toward abortion providers.
Speaker 1: Even though we got a preview of the decision and
Speaker 1: we knew what was coming and that it would lead
Speaker 1: to clinics closing, that wasn't enough for some people. We
Speaker 1: saw calls for people to go and burn clinics or
Speaker 1: go and take matters into their own hands and not
Speaker 1: wait for the decision to go and try and stop
Speaker 1: abortions from being provided that moment, and so we track
Speaker 1: those types of online posts. We saw a real spike
Speaker 1: in May and June around the decision, and we also
Speaker 1: started immediately hearing from our member clinics that they were
Speaker 1: seeing increase in protesters and increase in threats, and it
Speaker 1: increase in the intensity and hostility of those activities, so
Speaker 1: more really aggressive protesters that were touching patients and staff,
Speaker 1: yelling at patients and staff, photographing patients and staff, and
Speaker 1: you know, since the decision, we have seen a number
Speaker 1: of clinics close in places that are considered more hostile
Speaker 1: to abortion rights. But we know from our past experience
Speaker 1: that when a clinic closes, the protesters don't just give
Speaker 1: up and go home. In many cases, anti abortion individuals
Speaker 1: will travel the same paths the patients are traveling, and
Speaker 1: they will go to other states where abortion remains successible
Speaker 1: and target the clinics there. So we are seeing an
Speaker 1: increase in activity in the places where abortion is remaining
Speaker 1: legal and where patients are going to get care. And
Speaker 1: we're still you know, we're just now collecting the numbers
Speaker 1: for twenty twenty two, so we don't we don't have
Speaker 1: those for a little bit, but we do know anecdotally
Speaker 1: and what we're hearing from members and what we're seeing
Speaker 1: on the ground is that there is an increase in
Speaker 1: that activity. There have been a few arsons this year
Speaker 1: who are also seeing clinic invasions continue, and these are
Speaker 1: instances where people might pose as patients. In some cases,
Speaker 1: they go to a lot of work to try and
Speaker 1: infiltrate the clinic and find out about their practices for
Speaker 1: making appointments, and then they will pose as patients, make
Speaker 1: fake appointments and try to get into the clinic forcibly
Speaker 1: if they if they have to, and then once they're inside,
Speaker 1: they're harassing patients, they refuse to leave. In some cases
Speaker 1: they hand out flowers or seeing or yell. In California,
Speaker 1: they walked through the halls screaming the name of the doctor,
Speaker 1: ordering the doctor to come out and face them, and
Speaker 1: it was very traumatic for staff. They didn't know if
Speaker 1: this person was armed or what they were doing. And
Speaker 1: you know, they had patients in procedure rooms with them
Speaker 1: or in counseling rooms, and they were locking the door
Speaker 1: and shelf ring in place and was very frightening, and
Speaker 1: we continue to see these types of invasions happen across
Speaker 1: the country. Ironically, however, laws passed in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: designed to protect people seeking abortions and reproductive healthcare have
Speaker 1: now been weaponized against those who have been taking action
Speaker 1: in the wake of the Daub's decision, most notably under
Speaker 1: the banner of Jane's Revenge, a moniker used by anonymous
Speaker 1: activists taking action, usually in the former broken windows and
Speaker 1: graffiti against anti choice, crisis pregnancy centers and beyond. As
Speaker 1: Natasha Leonard wrote in the Intercept, Congress passed the Face
Speaker 1: Act in nineteen eighty four, allowing the assassinations and mass
Speaker 1: clinic blockades, making the physical obstruction of clinics a federal offense,
Speaker 1: as well as threats of force and violence against clinic
Speaker 1: workers and clinic property. In its thirty years on the
Speaker 1: books has been used sparingly. Now this law has been
Speaker 1: used to prosecute to reproductive rights activists who allegedly spray
Speaker 1: painted the outside walls of misleading and dangerous crisis pregnancy
Speaker 1: centers known as CPCs and now face up to twelve
Speaker 1: years in prison for the graffiti. This use of the
Speaker 1: Face Act against those fighting to protect reproductive freedom and
Speaker 1: autonomy by weaponizing laws supposedly aimed at those threatening it
Speaker 1: mirrors the numerous domestic terrorism charges lodged against forest defenders
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, made possible by a bill in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: following the massacre of nine black parishioners by the white
Speaker 1: supremist Dylan Roof. Stay with us, it could happen here,
Speaker 1: will return after these words from our sponsors. As the
Speaker 1: culture war is deepened on the right and even mainstream
Speaker 1: GEOP leaders have embraced white nationalists talking points, many openly
Speaker 1: neo nazi and white supremist groups have come to see
Speaker 1: the anti choice movement as a lucrative recruiting ground and
Speaker 1: a point of engagement with the wider right wing base.
Speaker 1: Again we hear from clinic defender Becks in New York,
Speaker 1: an abortion doula ash in North Carolina. In our case
Speaker 1: in New York City, the group that we defend, the
Speaker 1: Clinic Front, is its Catholic group that gets an armed
Speaker 1: escort from the NYPD. So that's one thing that really
Speaker 1: really scares me. You know, when we talk about a
Speaker 1: far right is that the NYPD has been aiding these
Speaker 1: far right groups and getting them escorts for a very
Speaker 1: very long time. And so I think that kind of
Speaker 1: like goes to a lot of the fears that a
Speaker 1: lot of us have when it comes to this kind
Speaker 1: of collaboration and the changing face of anti abortion protesters.
Speaker 1: We already know down here that cops and clay go
Speaker 1: hand in hand, and unfortunately, like newly white radicalized I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can call them that, but like
Speaker 1: politicized white women who want to defend clinics, they saw
Speaker 1: they they realize these realities, like the cops are not
Speaker 1: here to defend you or people who want to have abortions,
Speaker 1: and we actually don't need the cops to have abortions
Speaker 1: and to make reproductive justice a real possibility in all
Speaker 1: of our lives. I'm thinking here also about like the
Speaker 1: need to decriminalize abortion and not legalize abortion again. As
Speaker 1: an abolitionist, as an abortion do and as someone who's
Speaker 1: had abortions, I'm making these connections and as a trans
Speaker 1: person right, I'm making these connections that like the folks
Speaker 1: who are standing outside of abortion clinics, the anti choice
Speaker 1: the anti abortion folks. These are the same people who
Speaker 1: are pro police people. These are the same people who
Speaker 1: are racist in our communities, who are classist, who are
Speaker 1: anti black, who are fascists, and furthermore, right like these
Speaker 1: people who stand outside of abortion clinics, they are the
Speaker 1: same people perpetuating these rhetorics that like gay people are groomers,
Speaker 1: but also that like critical race theory, for examples, shouldn't
Speaker 1: be taught in school. I am making these connections and
Speaker 1: I'm also going back to that reproductive justice framework that
Speaker 1: reminds me that, like, what do we have to do
Speaker 1: now is that we have to fight together, and one
Speaker 1: of the ways we can do that is by making
Speaker 1: these connections. Right, like these people are Christian evangelicals, they
Speaker 1: are fascists. Explicitly, we need to say that, and it
Speaker 1: behooves all of us to really fight together along those lines.
Speaker 1: In the year since the attempted pro Trump coup on
Speaker 1: January six, neo Nazis, white supremacists, and Proud Boys have
Speaker 1: ramped up their presence at anti choice events. The neo
Speaker 1: Nazi group Patriot Front has shut up to march alongside
Speaker 1: various anti abortion groups, often to be bent with handshakes
Speaker 1: from anti abortion activists and police escorts to protect them
Speaker 1: from anti fascists. Several weeks ago, openly fascist groups took
Speaker 1: part in the yearly Walk for Life rally in San Francisco, California.
Speaker 1: US Thousands took to the city streets after being bust
Speaker 1: in from across the state. Marching alongside them were proud
Speaker 1: boys decked out in your uniforms and mass neo Nazis
Speaker 1: holding openly racist banners. Wanting to know more about this
Speaker 1: continued crossover, we spoke with anti fascist journalists Paschal Singh,
Speaker 1: based in southern California. In the wake of the reversal
Speaker 1: of Rovy Way, there was big spike in demonstrations from
Speaker 1: the right wing where they were targeting clinics, they were
Speaker 1: targeting any kind of school boards with any kind of
Speaker 1: reproductive health anything. They were doing it for several months
Speaker 1: in places like California where abortion is still provided and
Speaker 1: still accessible. That makes a lot of the anti abortion
Speaker 1: movement still feel like they're the victim of something, even
Speaker 1: though they just had this massive political victory, and at
Speaker 1: least in southern California, I've noticed that they've continued to
Speaker 1: rally they've had some pretty large rallies, especially for the
Speaker 1: pro life thing that happened recently. We're cities around the country,
Speaker 1: including San Francisco, had some pretty alarmingly sized anti abortion rallies,
Speaker 1: and some of them, like in San Francisco, you had
Speaker 1: some of the more extremest elements, white supremacist elements showing
Speaker 1: up quite explicitly, quite proudly, and here in Southern California,
Speaker 1: I've seen that starting to pick up again. It's almost
Speaker 1: building off of the momentum from all these rallies, targeting
Speaker 1: drags shows, which have been excellent networking opportunities for different
Speaker 1: right wing groups to work with more far right extremists
Speaker 1: and even about all out white supremacists. Once they get
Speaker 1: into a groove together, even if these groups don't always
Speaker 1: get along, they have a revolving door of enemies, and
Speaker 1: if it's time to target somebody because they think there's
Speaker 1: an advantage to it in the moment, then they're going
Speaker 1: to do it. And right now it does seem like
Speaker 1: reproductive rights is back in the crosshairs alongside LGBTQ rights.
Speaker 1: Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a rally
Speaker 1: in southern California outside of a outside of a Walgreens
Speaker 1: shareholders meeting where a lot of right wing activists were
Speaker 1: marching through the hotel chanting that Walgreens is killing people
Speaker 1: because they because you can get an abortion fill through them.
Speaker 1: I think this has created a very tenuous situation where
Speaker 1: there's always someone to go after. If it's not planned
Speaker 1: parenthood this week, next week, go after your local pharmacy,
Speaker 1: go after your local click, go after your local doctor.
Speaker 1: The anti abortion movement is very malleable, it's very fluid,
Speaker 1: and right now they're taken whoever they can get, and
Speaker 1: that includes a lot of openly radical militant groups who
Speaker 1: they turn to as groups that can do quote unquote
Speaker 1: security work, you know, because they're afraid of the left
Speaker 1: coming and attacking them. The anti abortion movement isn't sewing down,
Speaker 1: as our guests from across the country of discuss, the
Speaker 1: more mainstream organizations with deep pockets also aren't attempting to
Speaker 1: distance themselves from the street level fascist groups flocking to
Speaker 1: right wing demonstrations, especially at a time when far right
Speaker 1: violence is escalating across the country. And our last segment,
Speaker 1: IGD correspondent Marcella speaks on recent anti choice demonstrations which
Speaker 1: brought together both the mainstream and the fringe, organized in
Speaker 1: part by Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising, which weaponizes feminist and
Speaker 1: progressive language against drug store giants CBS and Walgreens an
Speaker 1: effort to stop them from selling abortion medication. Anti abortion
Speaker 1: people protest it outside like CBS and Walgreens it's past Saturday,
Speaker 1: like in multiple places, to prevent pharmacies from selling abortion pills.
Speaker 1: I'm honestly, like really angry at this, not only because
Speaker 1: these people are trying to make sure they completely take
Speaker 1: away our rights to bodily autonomy, but because you're also
Speaker 1: making me have to defend CVS and Walgreens. I've also
Speaker 1: thought about protesting outside CVS and Walgreens, but not because
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with other people's to productive organs. I'm tired
Speaker 1: of them putting everything I need behind a glass anyway,
Speaker 1: Like these abortion protests outside CBS and Walgreens were organized
Speaker 1: by the Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising. Yes, I will say
Speaker 1: that again, the Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising PAAU, which claims
Speaker 1: to want to dismantle the abortion industrial complex. Honestly, it
Speaker 1: sounds like the pa You think that you can just
Speaker 1: add industrial complex to something to make it sound bad,
Speaker 1: or they're just trying to sound cool to make people
Speaker 1: forget that they are fascists. Like, one interesting thing about
Speaker 1: PAU is they want to be so cool that their
Speaker 1: lead organizer, Lauren Handy, calls herself a femt. I honestly
Speaker 1: can't believe that I have to say this, but being
Speaker 1: anti abortion immediately disqualifies you from being a feminist. Fun
Speaker 1: fact about Laura in Handy is that she randomly, she
Speaker 1: didn't randomly. She was caught with five fetuses in her
Speaker 1: apartment and was indicted from blocking a clinic in Washington,
Speaker 1: DC in twenty and twenty. So she's out here blocking
Speaker 1: clinics collecting fetuses, just like doing the worst. This is
Speaker 1: like just the tip of the berg about how like
Speaker 1: these people are trying to act like their freedom fighters. Well,
Speaker 1: the PAU spokesperson literally said, and I quote, their vision
Speaker 1: to turn pharmacies into abortion businesses, which will exploit and
Speaker 1: kill disproportionately low income people and people of color for
Speaker 1: profit will be met with non violent resistance at every turn.
Speaker 1: That's hilarious. These people are literally trying to make fascism
Speaker 1: sound like freedom fighting like, if PAU actually cared about
Speaker 1: low income people and people of color, they would be
Speaker 1: giving away abortion pills that like every corner, not trying
Speaker 1: to stop people from buying them. And also they'd be
Speaker 1: boycotting cb US on Walgreens for totally different reasons. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't be boycotting Walgreens and CBS, we're trying to sell
Speaker 1: people abortion fills. What they'll be doing is that there
Speaker 1: would be boycotting Walgreens and CBS for putting toothpaste behind
Speaker 1: a locked glass, which makes it much harder for poor
Speaker 1: people to get a five finger discount on things that
Speaker 1: they need. That is going to do it for us today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in once again. This has been It's
Speaker 1: going Down occupying the offices of it could Happen here.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us online It's Going Down dot org,
Speaker 1: on Macedon, at igd, Underscore News until next time. 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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