WEBVTT - A Brief History of Vehicular Violence 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:02.880 Col Zone Media. 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:12.119 On May fifteenth, nineteen sixty six, the clock ran out 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:15.040 in negotiations between Local twelve thirty four of the United 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:19.840 Auto Workers Union, an aerospace manufacturer, Pratt and Whitney. The 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:23.880 contract expired. They'd been working around the clock to meet 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:26.560 the demand for jet engines for the Vietnam War and 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:30.120 the fuel cells needed for the Apollo program. The company 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:32.959 was producing equipment the United States government desperately needed if 0:00:32.960 --> 0:00:35.280 they hoped to win the war in the space race. 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:39.320 No one could afford a strike, so the union didn't 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:43.120 authorize one. Union leadership agreed to a day by day 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:46.120 extension of the contract as they continued the mediation process, 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.600 but the workers weren't satisfied with that answer. At midnight 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.600 that night, workers at the plant walked off the production 0:00:53.680 --> 0:00:54.880 floor and gathered outside. 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:57.000 It was a wildcat strike. 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.240 The workers picketed through the night, and on the morning 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:05.040 of Monday, May sixteenth, the striking workers were there outside 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:08.800 the plant. Factory workers on first shift stayed away or 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:12.039 joined the picket, but a few dozen office workers showed 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:15.679 up in their cars at the plant for work. Newspaper 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:18.760 reports from May of nineteen sixty six say only that 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:20.360 two cars were damaged. 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:23.399 But fifty four years later and. 0:01:23.360 --> 0:01:25.080 A memoir written by the son of a man who 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.160 drove his car to work at Pratt and Whitney in 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.479 North Haven, Connecticut on the day of that wildcat strike, 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:35.840 a new detail emerged. Kelvin Pierce was just six years 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.759 old in nineteen sixty six. His father was a jet 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:42.120 propulsion researcher at Pratt and Whitney, but he remembers this 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:45.880 day clearly. It was the day his father, William Luther Pierce, 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:48.760 decided to give up his career as a physicist and 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:52.120 go to work full time for the American Nazi Party. 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:54.440 One of the cars that was damaged that Monday morning 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:58.240 was his. The striking workers kicked his car and snapped 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:00.480 off his radio antenna as he attempted to drive his 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:05.040 car directly through the picket line. That was his last 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:06.080 week at Pratt and Whitney. 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:07.200 He quit. 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.600 No one was injured that morning, but the incident was 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:15.560 a turning point for Pierce. He disappeared for a few weeks, 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:19.840 leaving his wife and young sons without any explanation. By 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.760 the time the factory workers had a new contract in June, 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.040 Hears had packed up his family and moved to Virginia 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:28.360 be closer to American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:31.639 and to focus on his own budding career as professional Nazi. 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:35.720 That morning in May, as he sat in his car 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:40.200 outside the plant, staring at the picket line, something changed 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:43.800 as he shifted his foot off of the brake and 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:48.520 onto the gas and drove towards those union workers. I 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:50.680 think he became the man who would eventually write The 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:54.720 Turner Diaries, a novel that has inspired the murders of 0:02:54.800 --> 0:03:15.799 hundreds of people. I'm Molly Conger, is weird that Gods, 0:03:18.320 --> 0:03:22.079 this isn't an episode about William Luther Pierce. He's such 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:24.520 a key figure in the history of American extremism that 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.680 as often as he comes up, I just keep putting 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:32.200 him off. But it is an episode about hitting people 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.240 with your car. Last week we were talking about James 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.560 Alex Fields, the young Nazi from Ohio who murdered Heather 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:43.560 Higher and Charlottesville in twenty seventeen. I wrote about Fields 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.680 because I felt like I had to. I hadn't planned 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:49.760 on ever doing an episode about him. I kind of 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.080 felt like I'd said all I have to say about him. 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:54.360 In my prior coverage of his criminal trial and in 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:56.960 the year's long civil litigation brought by the survivors of 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:01.760 his crime. But in recent weeks, I can't seem to 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:06.680 escape the echoes of that crime. People are talking about 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:11.840 running people over. People are giddy at the very idea 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:16.479 of ramming their cars into crowds of protesters. Florida Governor 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.880 Ron Desanta says you're allowed to do it. Several sheriffs 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:23.480 have voiced their support for it. Trump aligned minor internet 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.839 celebrities are posting memes and jokes, walking right up to 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:32.400 and often over the line to outright calls to action. 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:41.480 Run them over, hit the gas, all lives splatter. Two 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:45.400 weeks ago, on June thirteenth, twenty twenty five, a Twitter 0:04:45.440 --> 0:04:51.239 account called Anti Left Memes post a question what should 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.159 happen to people who block the road. The account has 0:04:55.200 --> 0:04:57.919 more than one hundred and twenty five thousand followers, and 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:01.760 the post received nearly thirty thousand replies. Yes, one of 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.440 the top replies with thousands of likes on the post 0:05:04.560 --> 0:05:08.520 is just an image. It's pretty low quality, the hallmark 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:11.600 of a meme that's been screenshotted, saved, and reposted too 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:16.880 many times. But it's a picture of a white pickup truck. Well, 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:20.200 it's mostly white. The entire front half of the truck 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.600 is splattered and red, and the text over the image 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:30.880 reads the all new Dodge Ram Protester Edition. A day later, 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.599 as millions of Americans took to the streets and cities 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:37.520 across the country to protest the Trump administration, the same meme, 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:42.320 that same blood spattered white truck was posted on Facebook 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:47.479 by James Muller, the Sheriff of Adams County, Pennsylvania. I 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:51.240 found dozens of posts made that weekend alone with that 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:57.000 specific image, and thousands of posts that weekend expressing the 0:05:57.040 --> 0:06:03.520 same sentiment, it's morally and legally acceptable to hit protesters 0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:10.000 with your car, not only that it's funny, it's good, 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.440 and you should do it, and they're not just posting 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.880 it's happening. I found at least six incidents across the 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:22.599 country between June tenth and June fifteenth of cars driving 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:27.000 directly into crowns of protesters. A young woman in Los 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.760 Angeles was left in critical condition, a woman in Chicago 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.080 has a broken arm. A driver in Petaluma hit a 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:38.840 group of protesters while they were in a crosswalk. There's 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:41.120 a lot we still don't know about the specific details 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:44.400 of these most recent incidents, and every one of these 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:49.159 incidents is unique in its specific facts, but there's a 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:56.160 pattern and it's not new. I remember when Summer Taylor died. 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:00.960 It was the fourth of July back in twenty twenty. 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:03.080 Their killer drove the wrong way up a highway on 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.080 ramp and around vehicles that had been parked to form 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:10.080 a barricade to protect the protest. That attack on a 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.200 Black Lives Matter protest in Seattle is one of the 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:17.840 only ones I remember clearly from that summer. I didn't 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:21.160 know Summer, but I know people who did, and they 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:25.960 were just twenty four years old. I remember a few others, 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:29.280 one because it was so close to home, just outside 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:33.240 of Richmond, Virginia. No one was badly hurt, but the 0:07:33.320 --> 0:07:36.040 driver skipped Rogers as a clansman that I've seen at 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:40.679 some Confederate rallies, they all kind of run together. Though 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:46.120 there was so much violence that summer, Apparently there were 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:51.400 over a hundred similar attacks that summer. That's according to 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:53.560 Ari wyl who was at the time a researcher at 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.200 the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University 0:07:56.240 --> 0:08:00.640 of Chicago. He documented one hundred and four incidents of 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.760 vehicular assault on protests during a four month period from 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:09.560 May twenty seventh to September twenty seventh, twenty twenty, with 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.280 the majority of those incidents occurring during Black Lives Matter 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:17.000 protests after the death of George Floyd. According to Wiles analysis, 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.080 there is evidence of malicious intent in at least forty 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:23.480 three of those one hundred and four incidents, and in 0:08:23.520 --> 0:08:26.200 the fall of twenty twenty thirty nine of those drivers 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:31.160 had been criminally charged. The question of how often this 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:35.800 is actually happening, when it started, who's doing it, and 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:37.600 why it is. 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:40.200 Hard to answer. As it turns out. 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.679 While I was researching this episode, I read papers and 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:49.719 analysis and speculation and confident pronouncements from journalists, researchers and nonprofits, 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:54.040 analysts and think tanks, papers from government agencies and academic journals, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:59.000 and it's hard to find a clear picture. Fatal encounters 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:03.240 between pedestrians and cars are as old as cars themselves. 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:08.280 Cars are dangerous, people are careless, and about seven thousand 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.920 pedestrians a year are killed by cars in the United States, 0:09:12.640 --> 0:09:15.880 and I'm sure plenty of drivers have independently arrived at 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:17.760 the conclusion that you could use a car. 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.080 As a weapon. They're ubiquitous. 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:23.760 Not everyone can go out and buy a gun, and 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:26.680 most people don't know how to build a bomb, but 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:29.760 almost anybody can find a way to get behind the 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:31.800 wheel of a car, even if you. 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:33.160 Don't own one. 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:36.880 It's cheap, it's accessible, and it can be extremely deadly. 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:42.880 So why doesn't vehicular ramming of groups of pedestrians appear 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:47.720 as an identifiable method of terrorist attack until the nineteen nineties. 0:09:49.880 --> 0:09:53.319 The academic papers I read all seem to agree vehicular 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.480 ramming attacks didn't really start happening until the early nineties, 0:09:57.120 --> 0:09:59.360 and they didn't really catch on until more than two 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:01.840 decades later, starting in around twenty fourteen. 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:05.000 Some earlier recorded. 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:07.600 Incidents are noted in the literature, with one of the 0:10:07.679 --> 0:10:10.679 oft cited studies claiming that the earliest recorded incident they 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:14.880 found was in Japan in nineteen sixty four, but most 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:17.960 researchers seemed to agree that it was Palestinians who invented 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:20.960 the tactic in the early nineties, and there are just 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:24.240 a handful of incidents cited to support this, mostly involving 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:26.560 young men driving into groups of IDF soldiers in the 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:30.400 West Bank. One study published earlier this year in the 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:34.640 European Research Studies Journal incorrectly attributes these attacks in Israel 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:39.640 in the West Bank to Hamas, But aside from being inaccurate, 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:44.400 I think the actual truth here is more illuminating. People 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:48.400 are doing this on their own. A twenty eighteen paper 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:52.240 in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism analyzed data about sixty 0:10:52.280 --> 0:10:55.120 two vehicular attacks in Israel and the West Bank between 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:56.520 twenty twenty sixteen. 0:10:57.679 --> 0:10:58.800 The data was provided to. 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.320 The researchers directly by the Israeli Security Agency, and the 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.960 authors also examined court records, media published in both Hebrew 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:09.040 and Arabic, as well as social media posts made surrounding 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.959 the attacks. And none of those attacks were carried out 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.280 by Hamas. They weren't carried out by a group of 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:21.080 any kind. Only sixteen percent of the attackers in that 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.880 data set had ever been imprisoned for any reason prior 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.959 to the attack, and less than a quarter of them 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.199 even had a family member with any kind of security 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:34.200 or criminal record. The attacks in the nineties were sporadic. 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:37.199 Aside from these couple of incidents in Israel and the 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:39.760 West Bank. There were a handful of incidents elsewhere in 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.800 the world in the nineties and early two thousands. But 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:44.760 if you look at the data included in these studies 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:48.640 and chart it over time, the line shoots off the page, 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:53.040 starting in about twenty fourteen, and suddenly they're happening all 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:58.319 over the world. I think it's worth a little sidebar 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:02.680 here to talk about definitions. What exactly is a vehicle 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:06.240 ramming attack? Most of the papers I read about the 0:12:06.280 --> 0:12:09.200 tactic use that term, abbreviated as just VR. 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:11.559 They're sometimes also called. 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:16.400 VTA's vehicular terrorist attack, and deciding what is or isn't 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:20.480 a VIRA is something every author seems to decide for himself. 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.240 Two of the papers I'm relying on here both included 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:26.360 a description of how they built their own data set 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.640 because there was no comprehensive worldwide list to look at. 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.840 A twenty nineteen paper by Keith Hayward and Vincent Miller 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:36.920 and the British Journal of Criminology analyzed one hundred and 0:12:36.960 --> 0:12:40.120 twenty five incidents between nineteen ninety nine and twenty seventeen. 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:43.079 The incidents they included in the data had to meet 0:12:43.120 --> 0:12:46.320 these criteria. A vehicle had to be used as a 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:50.520 weapon on pedestrians or populated vehicles. The vehicle had to 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.520 be the primary weapon. Any other weapons used like knives 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.760 or firearms could only be used once the vehicle was 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:02.480 disabled and not part of an armed or carbomb. The 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:07.160 incident was not part of a kidnapping attempt. Pedestrian casualties 0:13:07.160 --> 0:13:09.559 were intended and not part of a chase of aasion 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:13.880 or accident. The vehicle was not primarily used for demolition, 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:18.720 and the Hayward and Miller paper is more interested in 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.240 the idea of social contagion, how these attacks appear to 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:25.640 come in waves clustered together in time, even when the 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:29.160 attacks themselves have almost nothing else in common aside from 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:33.199 the similarity of the physical act. A paper that same 0:13:33.280 --> 0:13:35.800 year by Brian Michael Jenkins and Bruce Butterworth from the 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:40.239 Minetta Transportation Institute is much more focused within the academic 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:43.240 niche that is terrorism studies. 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:44.600 And it's written by guys. 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.040 Who've been in the business for so long they can't 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:49.559 shift their focus beyond Islamic extremism. 0:13:50.240 --> 0:13:53.600 So there's a lot of package here. And this paper 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:54.120 notes that no. 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.959 Two databases of such incidents will ever agree. But the 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:00.200 authors created a list of one hundred and eighty four 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.839 incidents from nineteen sixty four to twenty nineteen that they 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.320 were able to identify as vehicle attacks on public targets. 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.439 They excluded vehicle ramming incidents that occurred in war zones, 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:14.000 those that occurred while the driver was fleeing a crime 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:17.839 scene or evading police, altercations between motorists, incidents where the 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:22.680 vehicle rammed a government building, accidents, and domestic disputes. And 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.560 while they say they excluded attacks in war zones, they 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:29.080 do not exclude attacks that occurred in the occupied Palestinian territories. 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:32.320 And from both of these studies. 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.040 I was unable to find an appendix that actually list 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:38.280 the events that they included in their data sets, and 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.720 that leads me with a lot of unanswered questions. And 0:14:41.800 --> 0:14:46.280 neither paper really clearly defines what they mean by terrorism either, 0:14:47.720 --> 0:14:48.600 And that's a little. 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:49.480 Bit sticky too. 0:14:50.360 --> 0:14:54.200 It's a loaded word. In post nine to eleven America, 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:59.640 it usually means one thing, Islamic extremism, isis al Kaida, 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:04.720 the Aliban, etc. And in more casual parlance, the word 0:15:04.720 --> 0:15:08.360 gets thrown around a little too casually. It may not 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:10.640 be worth trying to salvage the word by defining it 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.240 in a way that's useful, but it appears in most 0:15:14.320 --> 0:15:17.240 of the writing about this, so I'll take a stab 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:23.160 at telling you what it probably means if you're talking legally. 0:15:23.880 --> 0:15:27.200 The United States Code defines terrorism as activities that involve 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:30.160 acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:33.560 criminal laws in the United States, and those acts appear 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:37.720 to be intended to intimidate orquer civilians, influence government policy 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:40.960 by intimidation or coercion, or to affect the conduct of 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:45.920 a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. The law 0:15:46.000 --> 0:15:49.520 is not the only way to define something. The National 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.320 Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:56.040 at the University of Maryland, which maintains the Global Terrorism Database, 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:59.920 has a lengthy explanation of the definition that they use 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:04.000 in deciding what goes in the database. The short answer 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.600 is the threatened or actual use of illegal force and 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:12.840 violence by a non state actor to attain political, economic, religious, 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:18.480 or social goals through fear, quertion or intimidation. Pretty straightforward, 0:16:19.720 --> 0:16:22.520 but every paper I read us slightly different. Frameworks seemed 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.320 to rely on slightly different definitions, and they all use 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:29.480 their own hand picked data sets. Few actually included information 0:16:29.520 --> 0:16:32.600 about what incidents were in those data sets, but for 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:38.000 the most part, they all agree vras didn't really happen 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:42.080 until Palestinians started doing them in the nineties and then 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:45.520 twenty fourteen era surgeon popularity is mostly discussed in terms 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:48.880 of a handful of very deadly, high profile attacks where 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:53.480 the perpetrator was inspired by an Islamic extremist group. The 0:16:53.560 --> 0:17:00.120 Meneta Transportation Institute paper focuses heavily on Jihadis motivated attacks, 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.680 as their own data shows that only ten percent of 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:06.119 the attacks in that data set fit in that category. 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.359 They acknowledge that the vast majority of vehicle ramming attacks 0:17:10.359 --> 0:17:13.639 in the United States have no connection at all to 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:18.639 Al Qaida or ISIS, but quote in the public's mind, 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:21.320 they are blended with the jihadist attacks and add to 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:25.040 the general level of fear. The Jahadas propaganda machine was 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.520 therefore able to brand the tactic and benefit from its occurrence, 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:32.879 regardless of who was responsible. And now, as much as 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:35.320 I'm sure ISIS would love to take credit for that 0:17:35.440 --> 0:17:40.119 branding success, it looks to me that its Western researchers 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:43.119 were too eager to see this tactic as a jihadist 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:49.840 one that just happens to have leaked out into broader usage. 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:54.440 I read the literature, I took notes, but I also 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:58.560 spent two full days combing through newspaper archives going back 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:01.080 one hundred years, all the way back to the nineteen 0:18:01.119 --> 0:18:04.680 twenties when we started to see widespread car ownership. 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:05.560 In the United States. 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.480 And I think these studies are missing a really particular 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:15.399 category of vehicular attack. People driving through union picket lines. 0:18:16.640 --> 0:18:20.320 It happens all the time. Members of the Communications Workers 0:18:20.359 --> 0:18:24.000 of America wear red shirts every Thursday in memory of 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:28.159 Jerry Horgan. Morgan was a CWA member who was struck 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:30.600 and killed when a scab worker drove through the picket 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:34.399 line in nineteen eighty nine. And just weeks after his death, 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:37.359 out there on the picket line, one of his union 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:39.479 brothers ended up in the hospital after being hit by 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:43.879 a company truck. The president of Jerry's local CWA eleven 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:47.679 oh three told the paper, We're tired of these people 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:48.520 running us over. 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:50.600 It was common. 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:54.399 In March of this year, a member of the Amalgamated 0:18:54.400 --> 0:18:57.199 Transit Union was hospitalized after being intentionally struck by a 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.000 company vehicle during a strike of Santa Clara Valley Transportation 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:03.800 Authority workers. In twenty twenty three, five members of the 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.680 United Autoworkers Union were hit by a car that plowed 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:09.280 through the picket line outside the General Motors Splint Processing 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:13.360 Center in Swartz Creek, Michigan. One of them was hospitalized. 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:16.920 The driver fled the scene and was later convicted of 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:19.560 leaving the scene of an accident, but the plea deal 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:23.520 dropped the charge of assault with a deadly weapon. Even 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.880 with my limited time and ability to search these old records, 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:30.600 I found multiple examples in every decade for the last 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:35.760 century of union workers being hit, sometimes killed, when a 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:41.199 car intentionally drove into their picket line. The earliest of 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.840 these incidents that I could find were in May of 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.720 nineteen twenty nine, during a strike of textile workers at 0:19:47.760 --> 0:19:52.679 the Rayon Manufacturing Plants and Elizabethton, Tennessee. The strike had 0:19:52.720 --> 0:19:56.000 been going on since March and things had gotten pretty violent. 0:19:57.320 --> 0:19:59.880 The National Guard was brought in to beat back the protester, 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:04.080 most of whom were young women. Many of them were teenagers, 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:06.640 and there was at least one incident of a non 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:11.320 union worker driving through the picketers, injuring several of them. 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:13.280 But there was a second. 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:16.600 Incident that I don't think you can deny clearly meets 0:20:16.640 --> 0:20:21.720 the criteria of a vehicular ramming attack. On May sixteenth, 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:26.480 nineteen twenty nine, a bus full of scabs plowed through 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:30.480 the line of striking workers. One of the workers who 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.399 was hit was a teenage girl named Evelyn Heaton, and 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.080 she was so badly injured that onlookers believed that she 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:36.600 had died. 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:40.200 But she didn't die, and. 0:20:40.160 --> 0:20:42.600 When Evelyn Heaton was released from the hospital, she swore 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:45.240 out a criminal complaint for attempted murder against the driver, 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:49.239 a man named Joe Calhoun. But she also swore out 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:53.040 a complaint of aiding in a betting attempted murder, and 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:57.320 this one was against Tennessee National Guard Adjutant General W. C. 0:20:57.520 --> 0:20:57.920 Boyd. 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:04.119 Heaton acqus void of ordering the attack, of personally directing 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:08.240 the bus to drive into the workers, and he didn't 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.760 deny it. He said he'd ordered the path to the 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:17.280 plant to be cleared. He was arrested, questioned, and released 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:22.240 on bond, but a grand jury never indicted him. I 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:24.520 couldn't help get a little lost down this rabbit hole. 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:27.840 The whole incident looks like a fascinating chapter of labor 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:31.000 history that I'd never heard of. The same week his 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:33.919 charges were dropped, Boyd got into a little trouble with 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:37.280 the Secretary of War. You see, the governor of Tennessee 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:42.639 hadn't actually deployed the National Guard, at least not correctly. 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:47.320 He didn't deploy the National Guard. He had the National 0:21:47.359 --> 0:21:51.359 guardsmen sworn in as state troopers before deploying them as 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:55.480 strike breakers. So as they're tear gassing these teenage girls 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:59.800 from the textile mill, they're wearing their United States Army uniforms, 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.359 carrying weapons that were federal government property. But that was 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.520 illegal because they were not acting in their capacity as guardsmen. 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.680 From what I can find, violating federal law and ordering 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:14.840 a bus driver to plow through a crowd of teenage 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:19.320 girls didn't seem to affect his career. W. C. Boyd 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.640 didn't retire from the Tennessee National Guard until the year 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:39.439 before he died two decades later. But back to the 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:43.000 issue at hand, though, I found scores of these incidents 0:22:43.000 --> 0:22:45.320 over the last century in which striking workers are hit 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:49.040 by cars. These kinds of incidents don't tend to have 0:22:49.080 --> 0:22:52.600 a high fatality rate, and some of them are definitely 0:22:52.680 --> 0:22:56.560 just accidents. Picket Lines are often in close proximity to 0:22:56.640 --> 0:22:59.640 vehicular traffic, and any time a pedestrian is near a. 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:01.080 Car there's a risk. 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:04.720 But in the stories where it appears to be intentional, 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:08.760 of which there are many, it's usually a scab worker 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:12.000 or a boss driving through the crowd when entering or 0:23:12.040 --> 0:23:16.159 exiting the area around the workplace. You could argue that 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:19.879 this kind of incident is different. This isn't a driver 0:23:20.040 --> 0:23:23.479 seeking out a confrontation with a pedestrian. This is a 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:27.879 pedestrian who is in some cases very intentionally blocking the 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:30.840 path of that vehicle because that is his goal. The 0:23:30.880 --> 0:23:33.240 striking worker does not want the scab to cross the 0:23:33.240 --> 0:23:37.160 picket line and enter the job site. But you can't 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:41.160 argue that it's not political. Union workers have a right 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:46.840 to strike. What they're doing is not illegal. Hitting them 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:50.639 with a car is, and the people hitting them with 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:55.600 those cars have a motive. Remember those definitions. A vehicle 0:23:55.680 --> 0:23:58.159 ramming attack is just the intentional use of a vehicle 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:02.239 as a weapon, intending because in to a pedestrian. And 0:24:02.280 --> 0:24:06.120 what's terrorism the threatened or actual use of illegal force 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:09.920 and violence by a non state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, 0:24:10.000 --> 0:24:15.480 or social goal their fear, coercion, or intimidation. I'm not 0:24:15.640 --> 0:24:18.840 saying we should charge scabs who run over someone's foot 0:24:18.880 --> 0:24:21.159 with terrorism. That doesn't make any sense. That's not the 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:24.320 point I'm trying to make here. I just think that 0:24:24.400 --> 0:24:28.840 ignoring this entire category of vehicular assaults is missing something important. 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:34.879 Because people are using cars as weapons to intimidate, harass, 0:24:34.920 --> 0:24:38.040 and injure workers who are exercising their right to engage 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:43.159 in strikes. They're threatening and carrying out violence against a 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:47.400 particular group of people, and there is an identifiable political 0:24:47.800 --> 0:24:53.560 and economic motivation to frighten these people off the picket line. 0:24:53.640 --> 0:24:56.080 And after all that time searching all those old newspapers, 0:24:56.800 --> 0:24:58.600 it's not just picket lines that I feel like the 0:24:58.640 --> 0:25:03.000 researchers overlooked. The narrative in these studies seems to be 0:25:03.080 --> 0:25:07.840