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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let

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Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode

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Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one

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Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to

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Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If

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Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,

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Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you

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Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. This is it could Happen Here.

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Speaker 1: I'm Garrison Davis. This episode is going to be a

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Speaker 1: bit of an update and an interview regarding the Defend

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Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest and Cops City movement that's been ongoing

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Speaker 1: for almost two years now. If you're unfamiliar with the topic,

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Speaker 1: I made a three hour, two part deep dive last

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Speaker 1: May titled on the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest

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Speaker 1: that you can find up on the it could Happen

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Speaker 1: Here feed, and I've been doing random dates like in

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Speaker 1: our History of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm episodes from

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Speaker 1: last August. But the TLDR is that the City of

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Speaker 1: Atlanta and the corporate funded Atlanta Police Foundation are trying

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Speaker 1: to tear down a large section of the Woolanee or

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Speaker 1: South River Forest in Decab County to construct a massive,

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Speaker 1: ninety million dollar militarized, state of the art police training facility,

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Speaker 1: complete with a mock city on top of that. Ryan

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Speaker 1: millsaps Black Hall Movie Studios are planning to cut down

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Speaker 1: an adjacent section of the very same forest to expand

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Speaker 1: their film production studio in a shady land swap deal

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Speaker 1: that's currently the subject of a lawsuit. The past couple

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Speaker 1: of weeks have seen a massive increase in the intensity

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Speaker 1: of repression efforts by the state and local police inside

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Speaker 1: Atlanta and Decab County against the Cops City movement and

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Speaker 1: people in the forest encampments trying to prevent the construction

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Speaker 1: of the police training facility. Last month, on a December

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Speaker 1: there was a raid on the forest by a task

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Speaker 1: force of local, state, and federal law enforcement. Police were

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Speaker 1: shooting pepperballs, rubber tipped metal impact rounds, and tear gas

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Speaker 1: canisters into the woods. They destroyed treehouses while people were

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Speaker 1: still inside, and tore part of the infrastructure like the

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Speaker 1: communal kitchen that was built inside the forest to support

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Speaker 1: the encampment. Police fired chemical weapons at tree sitters, arrested

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Speaker 1: multiple people and pushed others out of the forest at gunpoint.

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Speaker 1: One of the things setting this apart from previous raids

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Speaker 1: is that six people have now been charged with domestic

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Speaker 1: terrorism as well as a number of other felonies. The

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Speaker 1: people charged were initially denied bail and essentially held as

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Speaker 1: political prisoners for trespassing in a forest with the terrorism

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Speaker 1: enhancement charge added on top top. The Georgia Bureau of

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Speaker 1: Investigation alleges quote several people through rocks at police cars

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Speaker 1: and attacked E m T s outside the neighboring fire

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Speaker 1: stations with rocks and bottles. Task Force members use various

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Speaker 1: tactics to arrest individuals who are occupying makeshift treehouses unquote.

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Speaker 1: The Georgia Department of Homeland Security, which was formed as

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Speaker 1: the result of a seventeen bill which is also responsible

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Speaker 1: for the expanded definition of domestic terrorism, has chose to

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Speaker 1: designate the defend the land of forest as quote domestic

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Speaker 1: violent extremists unquote, which has led the State Attorney General's

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Speaker 1: office to also get involved in the case. I think

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Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning that this seen domestic terrorism bill was

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Speaker 1: first passed by the Georgia legislator in response to the

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Speaker 1: neo Nazi Dylan Roof mass shooting at Emmanuel African Methodist

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Speaker 1: Piscopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which killed nine people.

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Speaker 1: So now we have this law allegedly created in response

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Speaker 1: to a murderous white supremacist targeted attack against black people,

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Speaker 1: now being used for the first time as a bludgeon

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Speaker 1: against anti racist protesters who are fighting against the expansion

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Speaker 1: and further militarization of police facilities. This is a reminder

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Speaker 1: that any expansion of state power will always come down

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Speaker 1: the hardest on people who are actually pushing back against

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Speaker 1: the power structures of the state, like the police. After

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Speaker 1: being held in jail for two weeks on in December,

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Speaker 1: the six people were finally granted bail, but as of

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Speaker 1: two days later, the jail was refusing to comply and

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Speaker 1: release someone, instead saying that they will be quote held

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Speaker 1: well the prosecutor add additional charges unquote. This abnormality was

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Speaker 1: soon resolved and by December all six people charged were

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Speaker 1: released on bail thanks to the Solidarity Fund, everyone who donated,

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Speaker 1: and people working jail support. Our interview today will be

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Speaker 1: focusing on the jail support aspect and bail Fund organizing

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Speaker 1: and for Note this interview was conducted prior to the

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Speaker 1: release of the Forest Defenders. With me here today is

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Speaker 1: James and Ralph. James is from the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee,

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Speaker 1: and Ralph is from the Solidarity Fund. Greetings, thank you,

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Speaker 1: thank you for joining me here, Thank you for having us.

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Speaker 1: Good to be here. So first I would like to

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Speaker 1: see if, if if either of you have any kind

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Speaker 1: of extra input on what's happened the past few weeks

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Speaker 1: and how you think. I mean, I can't. I can't

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Speaker 1: quite ask you why because you're obviously not not the police,

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Speaker 1: but like, what what might be some reasons for some

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Speaker 1: of the some of the increased repression and the use

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Speaker 1: extremely extremely high charges being levied at people at this

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Speaker 1: point in the movement. Yeah, they are extremely high charges.

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Speaker 1: They're really unprecedented charges in the state of Georgia. I

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Speaker 1: don't think that, uh does of us in the entire

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Speaker 1: questions based I've really ever seen anything like this being

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Speaker 1: used against protesters, and I think the reason why it's

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Speaker 1: pretty clear, and I think that that reason is because

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Speaker 1: there's been an extremely effective social movement that's involved thousands

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Speaker 1: of people from Atlanta and from across the country over

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Speaker 1: the last year and a half two years that have

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Speaker 1: brought a serious challenge against a very unpopular proposal from

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Speaker 1: the city to build a police mega mega compounds. And

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Speaker 1: I think that the police and various other agencies that

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Speaker 1: they're working with, the Atlanta Police, the Atlanta Police Foundation,

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Speaker 1: the Georgia Bureau Investigation, that the Cap County Police Department,

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Speaker 1: all of these different agencies, I think at this point

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Speaker 1: are are are really frustrated. And I think that really

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Speaker 1: shows up in the charges that they've given people, because

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Speaker 1: what we're talking about are people who have been literally

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Speaker 1: pulled out of tree sets. Like this is the most

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Speaker 1: like classic example of you know, nonviolent direct action civil

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Speaker 1: disobedience you can think of, and you have people who

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Speaker 1: are allegedly being pulled out of tree sets and charged

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Speaker 1: with domestic terrorism. And I think that really shows it's

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Speaker 1: both very very scary in terms of the severity of

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Speaker 1: the charges, but it's also has like an element of

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Speaker 1: just being a little ridiculous in in terms of using

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Speaker 1: these types of charges. You know, they make you think

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Speaker 1: of like you know, the school shootings or you know,

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Speaker 1: like nine eleven or something like this, like like these

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Speaker 1: are the sorts of things that come to mind when

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Speaker 1: you think of domestic terrorism. And yet what we're talking

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Speaker 1: about here is people who are allegedly being pulled out

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Speaker 1: of out of tree sets after you know, being shot

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Speaker 1: at with pepper balls and tear gasper and hours on

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Speaker 1: end before they before they were pulled down. And I

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Speaker 1: think that then the point of that is to scare people.

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Speaker 1: It is because they are having a very difficult time

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Speaker 1: um gaining any sort of public support or sympathy for

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Speaker 1: this project. And I think they're they're just really out

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Speaker 1: of at a loss, and so that what they need

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Speaker 1: right now is they need to scare people. They need

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Speaker 1: to shut down this special movement by whatever means that

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Speaker 1: they have available, and right now they're the technique that

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Speaker 1: they're employing is just fear. And so the point of

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Speaker 1: this is to have a chilling effect. It's to say

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Speaker 1: that anybody who is protesting, who is a part of

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Speaker 1: this social movement, could be liable to extremely extremely heavy charges.

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Speaker 1: And that's what they're banking on. They want people to

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Speaker 1: be scared. They want to separate out people from from

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Speaker 1: the movement. You feel like they can no longer participate

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Speaker 1: because the charges or the potential repression is too severe.

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Speaker 1: They want to be able to scare away people that

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Speaker 1: support the movement by saying, look, you're supporting a terrorist movement.

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Speaker 1: You're supporting something that is uh extreme to to some

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Speaker 1: crazy degree. But we know what the what the the

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Speaker 1: real extreme position here is that they know that the

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Speaker 1: city doesn't want this. They've had, you know, countless protests

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Speaker 1: and all sorts of different different examples of just public

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Speaker 1: outcry aginst this projects, and they proceeded with it anyway.

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Speaker 1: And so now they're forced to be in this position

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Speaker 1: where they're gonna have to they're gonna have to use

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Speaker 1: whatever sort of either m violence or force or like

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Speaker 1: extreme charges to shut it down. Yeah, Atlanta Police Department

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Speaker 1: since has had a huge, like the largest in the

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Speaker 1: country by percentage, budgetary increase granted by the city. And

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Speaker 1: this was done after the most amount of public comment

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Speaker 1: there ever was in the history of city council, which

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Speaker 1: was all done to say, to lower the police budget,

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Speaker 1: to to defund the police as it were, and to

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Speaker 1: send put that money to other use. And then a

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Speaker 1: second most amount of public comment the city council has

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Speaker 1: ever received was seventeen hours of public comment were over

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Speaker 1: se of the respondents were saying to not build cops city.

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Speaker 1: They the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Atlanta Police Department in

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Speaker 1: the City of Atlanta, does not listen to the popular

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Speaker 1: will from below from the people that they alleged to represent.

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Speaker 1: But all of this pressure, the pressure to to charge

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Speaker 1: non violent protesters with domestic terrorism is coming from their

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Speaker 1: corporate their corporate sponsors. It's coming from BB and T,

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Speaker 1: It's coming from BAC of America, A T and T, Equifax,

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Speaker 1: the Arthur Blank, Arthur Blank, who is the billionaire who

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Speaker 1: runs Home Depot. Uh, it's it's coming from the people

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Speaker 1: they actually represent, which is their corporate backers. They're there

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Speaker 1: seven months behind on this project. Uh, grass Field and Gory,

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Speaker 1: the company that is the general contractor who also funds

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Speaker 1: the APF. They're all certainly behind doors, being like, what's

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Speaker 1: going on. We're seven months behind on this project. Why

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Speaker 1: have we not broken ground yet? And they're still being

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Speaker 1: denied the land, the land disturbance permits because there they

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Speaker 1: can't get their own act together. They can't prove that

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Speaker 1: this would be an environmentally friendly thing to do, because

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Speaker 1: it's simply isn't. It's leveling over five acres of land

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Speaker 1: of forested land, and instead they just try to use

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Speaker 1: brute force because that is what the state knows how

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Speaker 1: to do. They know to use brute force, and then

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Speaker 1: they want to put up trumped up charges onto on,

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Speaker 1: onto onto random people who they are trying to pend

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Speaker 1: the whole movement on, when the movement is thousands of

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Speaker 1: people all over the city and all over the country. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: from like the from some of the recent some of

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Speaker 1: the recent hearings and based on the based on the

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Speaker 1: DHS documents, they're they're really trying to do the thing

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Speaker 1: where they frame an autonomous, decentralized movement as a group.

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Speaker 1: And if you're part of a group, that means that

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Speaker 1: you're you know, involved in in you know, the domestic

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Speaker 1: violent extremist group, which is just not how these types

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Speaker 1: of things work. It's the same thing that the right

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Speaker 1: has been trying to label things like quote unquote antifa

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Speaker 1: as for years. Some prosecutors and cities around the country

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Speaker 1: have tried to try to charge people with similar kind

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Speaker 1: of domestic terrorism or like gang violence charges due to

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Speaker 1: their involvement with the Antifa group. Um, And it's the same,

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Speaker 1: it's the same tactic here and trying to frame a

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Speaker 1: decentralized movement as like an organized group of people. And

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Speaker 1: it seems like one aspect for why this is happening

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Speaker 1: is like, like some of you have have mentioned, it's

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Speaker 1: it's in the four of like a deterrent right there,

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Speaker 1: trying to scare people away, saying that if you associate

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Speaker 1: with this movement, we could we will charge you with terrorism.

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Speaker 1: Right It's it's it's it's this, it's this thing to

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Speaker 1: try to push people away UM, try to try to

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Speaker 1: try to prevent anyone else from from organizing in any

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Speaker 1: capacity or just showing up, like just just showing up

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Speaker 1: to the forest. It's it's it's pretty comical, but it's

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Speaker 1: also quite quite frightening in some ways, which is which

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Speaker 1: is part of the intention, part of why I wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk with h with both of you here today

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Speaker 1: is to kind of discuss the role of both the

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Speaker 1: Solidarity Fund and Anti Repression Organizing UM and just discuss

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Speaker 1: the role of that and in how they support like

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Speaker 1: activism movements and how they support UM land defense movements

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Speaker 1: like like like in the case of Defend the Atlanta

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Speaker 1: Forest and yeah, what what what kind of what the

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Speaker 1: role of of this type of organizing is in a

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Speaker 1: in the kind text of this this type of activism.

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Speaker 1: I guess, uh, let's let's start with Let's start with

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Speaker 1: the Solidarity Fund, because that was you know, one of

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Speaker 1: the things that I saw in the aftermath of these

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Speaker 1: charges in the raid is a lot of calls to

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Speaker 1: doing it, to doing it, to the Solidarity Fund to

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Speaker 1: help people out who have been hit with these outrageous charges. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: I guess a Ralph, we talked a little bit about

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Speaker 1: some of some of you know, what what the Solidarity

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Speaker 1: Fund is and and uh and kind of how how

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Speaker 1: this how this type of organizing operates. Yeah, for sure.

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Speaker 1: So the Atlanta Solidarity Fund formed just to have a

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Speaker 1: bit of context for the organization. We formed in two

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Speaker 1: thousand sixteen in the lead up to a um count

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Speaker 1: counter demonstration against uh some ku Klux Klan members who

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Speaker 1: are trying to burn a cross on Stone Mountain in

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Speaker 1: two thousands sixteen. This was like after a sequence of

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Speaker 1: them having protests there after the Dylan Roof massacre, and

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Speaker 1: people organized a counter demo, and we thought it would

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Speaker 1: be intelligent to form a bail fund in case anyone

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Speaker 1: got arrested because in the past, bail funds in Atlanta

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Speaker 1: like refused to bail out anyone who they like deemed

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Speaker 1: as committing crimes that they deemed violent. Uh. And we

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Speaker 1: wanted to create a b mail fund that does not

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Speaker 1: discriminate against activists based on what the state alleges that

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Speaker 1: they did or did not do. And we formed in

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Speaker 1: that and like after that, we would at different protests

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Speaker 1: throughout the years, we would buil people out, we would

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Speaker 1: fund raised to get them lawyers, and we would support

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Speaker 1: them however we could, like organizing court vigils um and

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Speaker 1: court support, and then and also suing the police like

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Speaker 1: countersuing them for when they did like agreeious acts of

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Speaker 1: police brutality or intimidation. And then in with the George

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Speaker 1: Floyd up rising, we went from being a like small

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Speaker 1: fail fund to UM getting widespread support. We got tens

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Speaker 1: of thousands of people donating money to us. And in Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: over nine people were arrested by the police that summer,

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Speaker 1: and you know, we supported all of them, all the

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Speaker 1: ones who are not giving signature bond. We bailed out

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Speaker 1: all the ones that were given signature bond, and all

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Speaker 1: the other ones we got them lawyers and we have

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Speaker 1: been supporting them every step in the way. A few

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Speaker 1: of them have sadly gone to prison, and we support

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Speaker 1: them financially while they're in prison. Were like putting money

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Speaker 1: on their promissary every month, and we UH pay like

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Speaker 1: help them out with their phone calls, and we set

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Speaker 1: aside money for when they get out there. You won't

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Speaker 1: just be in destitute poverty, which is like what usually

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Speaker 1: happens to people who have to have sit in prison. UM.

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Speaker 1: And in the case of the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement,

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Speaker 1: we've supported it um through anti repression by when people

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Speaker 1: get arrested, getting them lawyers, failing them out and UM

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Speaker 1: when there's been like door knocks or whatever from law

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Speaker 1: enforcement agencies, we have lawyers who will represent them as well,

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Speaker 1: because oftentimes those people aren't given charges, but they're being

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Speaker 1: intimidated by law enforcement, and when you get a lawyer

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Speaker 1: in between them, that intimidation normally stops. UH. And we

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Speaker 1: also do jail support for anyone who has to, like

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Speaker 1: when they get in jail, they have a number that

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Speaker 1: they can call us and we can help get them

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Speaker 1: out UM. And for the six people who are currently

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Speaker 1: charged with domestic terrorism as at the time of this recording,

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Speaker 1: they're currently locked up and we are supporting them, and

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Speaker 1: we've hired lawyers to advocate for them at their bail

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Speaker 1: at their next bail hearing UM, and hopefully we will

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Speaker 1: get them out and they will not have to sit

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Speaker 1: in jail during their pre trial. We're a volunteer organization, like,

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Speaker 1: none of us are paid to do this. Uh. We

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Speaker 1: do this because we believe in um the power of

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Speaker 1: like liberatory social movements, and we want to support those

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Speaker 1: movements and give them strength. Yeah, because I would say,

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Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of you know, relatively

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Speaker 1: big cities around the States have some form of jail

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Speaker 1: support organization, whether it be formal or informal. UM. And

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Speaker 1: it's it's this type of organizing which happens kind of

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Speaker 1: on the periphery of a lot of these types of bouvements. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's not it's it's not the it's not the like

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Speaker 1: excitement of throwing back a tear gas canister at a cop.

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Speaker 1: It's it's all of the things that happen afterwards that

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Speaker 1: can can can assist people who are who are facing

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Speaker 1: like in some cases, very significant state state repression. And

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Speaker 1: it's definitely. It's not it's not the most flashy work,

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Speaker 1: but it is I would argue as pretty crucial to

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Speaker 1: any to any type of like functioning like system that

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Speaker 1: allows protests to happen as a part of democracy, is

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Speaker 1: a part of you know, long term revolutionary strategy, whatever

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Speaker 1: kind of whatever kind of ideology you have, These these

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Speaker 1: types of these types of like peripheral jail support and

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Speaker 1: bail fund organizings. It's definitely just as crucial as a

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Speaker 1: lot of a lot of like the on the ground

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Speaker 1: support stuff like you know, bringing water bottles or you know,

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Speaker 1: helping up people in the moment. Totally, Like every movement

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Speaker 1: needs a rear guard, Like it needs people like the

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Speaker 1: people who are out protesting and organizing there on the

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Speaker 1: front lines. And we're able to be the rear guard

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Speaker 1: for like when the state does attack, like we're able

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Speaker 1: to like not have them be completely taken out of

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Speaker 1: the field, Like they're able to get back, and we're

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Speaker 1: able to support them and able to keep people safe

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Speaker 1: from like police repression and from what essentially amounts to

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Speaker 1: like legal kidnapping and like torture in the carceral state. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I mean in some cases, like in Portland. That's

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Speaker 1: it's very much was a legal kidnapping as something that

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Speaker 1: people are still are still dealing with on the on

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Speaker 1: the on like the jail support side and helping people

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Speaker 1: out with with you know, making sure that the state

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Speaker 1: cannot get away with stuff like this, um, because they

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Speaker 1: the thing they want the most is for nobody to

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Speaker 1: push back on it, because that means they have permission

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Speaker 1: to do it in the future without you know, without

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Speaker 1: any possible consequence or even even like even like any

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Speaker 1: like attempt at concert quins. How could so I know

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Speaker 1: like that. Nope, A lot a lot of cities have

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Speaker 1: have jail support stuff. Um. A lot of this is

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Speaker 1: also run on donations. What what are what are some

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Speaker 1: ways that people could could assist in these types of things? Um.

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Speaker 1: Obviously people can donate to bail funds um. And I

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Speaker 1: think there's a lot of I mean even even just

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Speaker 1: showing up outside of jail or prison after these types

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Speaker 1: of events is something that that happens a lot in

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Speaker 1: terms of in terms of ways to kind of start

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Speaker 1: getting plugged in in this in this type of like

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Speaker 1: peripheral bail fund and jail support organizing totally. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean people should should donate to their local bail funds

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Speaker 1: UH and even become like reoccurring donators. But people can

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Speaker 1: like join jail support teams. There's like we in Atlanta,

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Speaker 1: we have a training and it can get you trained

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Speaker 1: on how to be a jail poor person, and yeah,

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Speaker 1: we have like once you're plugged in, you can like

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Speaker 1: do jail and jail vigil like for when people get

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Speaker 1: out so that they're not alone. Jails are often not always,

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Speaker 1: but often like in like remote areas of the city

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Speaker 1: or even outside of the city, so like it can

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Speaker 1: be hard to like get get a bus back, so

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Speaker 1: you can offer them rides back. You can get plugged

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Speaker 1: into do it in court support and like currently the

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Speaker 1: six people charge of domestic terrorism are like being denied bail.

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Speaker 1: Hopefully that will change. But in the case of like

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Speaker 1: people being held UH, you can write post cards or

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Speaker 1: letters to people and let them know that there are

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Speaker 1: people on the outside who support them. If you're in

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Speaker 1: an area that like doesn't have that doesn't have a

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Speaker 1: group that UM helps people out who are like who

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Speaker 1: are having to sit in jail, like you can put

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Speaker 1: money on their commissary UH directly, and you can write

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Speaker 1: to them and you can send them books. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: in the sense of like people showing up pretty immediately

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Speaker 1: outside of the jail, like it is really inspiring. Uh.

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Speaker 1: What happened the day Uh in the evening after the six,

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Speaker 1: after the first five people were arrested. Uh that that evening,

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Speaker 1: like a crowd of dozens of people showed up outside

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Speaker 1: of the Cab County jail and had a noise demo

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Speaker 1: to like make noise outside of the jail to let

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Speaker 1: the five know that they were not alone and that

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Speaker 1: there's people outside who support them. Now, I think we

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Speaker 1: will shift the conversation over to James. James, you're with

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Speaker 1: the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee. We've already talked about the

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Speaker 1: role of these ridiculous charges as a repression method. Could

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Speaker 1: you briefly explain what the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee is

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Speaker 1: and its role in the periphery of these on the

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Speaker 1: ground decentralized movements. Yeah. Sure, So. The Atlanta Anentire Repression

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Speaker 1: Committee is a group that started in in the aftermathod

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Speaker 1: the George Floyd protests, and we started because we recognized

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Speaker 1: that there was a need for a kind of specific

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Speaker 1: type of UH anti repression work to be done, which

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Speaker 1: is to say that there's a lot of um. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's like the bulk of anti repression. You know that

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Speaker 1: the single most important thing is keeping people safe, right,

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Speaker 1: and so what that entails is a lot of legal

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Speaker 1: defense for people that are arrested, people that are in

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Speaker 1: car story to people that are imprisoned as a result

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Speaker 1: of their activity, and protest movements and social movements, um,

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Speaker 1: fighting for you know, liberation. That said, um, there's also

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Speaker 1: a whole a whole other type of work that needs

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Speaker 1: to be done, which is the sort of what we

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Speaker 1: like to call political defense. So in other words, we

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Speaker 1: want to see these movements continue, we want to see

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Speaker 1: these movements grow, and we want to see these movements

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Speaker 1: be the powerful. And a part of that is understanding

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Speaker 1: the specific mechanisms of repression and fighting back against the

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Speaker 1: narratives that are being used against protesters in the media.

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Speaker 1: So a lot of what we do is media work, um,

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Speaker 1: because there's a lot of things that you know, once

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Speaker 1: you're once you're arrested as a part of a protest movement,

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you can't say, um, but

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Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that need to be said, um,

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Speaker 1: namely that the people that have been arrested, whether we're

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Speaker 1: talking about people in the Black Lives Matter movement of

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Speaker 1: or in the Defensive Forest movement today, are fighting for

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Speaker 1: a just cause. These people should be doing what they're doing,

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Speaker 1: and that's something that that that needs to be spread

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Speaker 1: as as far and wide as possible. Um and so

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Speaker 1: we do a lot of media work to to to

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Speaker 1: justify and support not just the individual protesters, but the

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Speaker 1: things that they're fighting for. And then we also do

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Speaker 1: a lot of essentially research and analysis to understand the

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Speaker 1: overall patterns of repression as they play out. And and

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Speaker 1: so that's something that's like that's really interesting, particularly in

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Speaker 1: this case because you know, I said, we've never seen

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Speaker 1: this before in Georgia, but we have seen this before.

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Speaker 1: We've seen exactly these tactics be used against you know,

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Speaker 1: protesters in the Standing Rock movement. We've seen it used

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Speaker 1: in the Green Scare against U, the Earth Liberation Front

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Speaker 1: against Earth First. We've seen these movements like over and

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Speaker 1: over again come up against this this giant wall, which

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Speaker 1: is these these sorts of charges accusing people of terrorism.

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Speaker 1: And so part of what we do is analyze what

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Speaker 1: those what those strategies are and try to publicize them,

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Speaker 1: try to help people to understand um, because it's it's

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Speaker 1: the the agencies that were up against the all these

435
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:32,360
Speaker 1: different wings of the state and their corporate factors. As

436
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:35,679
Speaker 1: Ralph was saying, they have an institutional memory. They are

437
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: able to look back, you know, twenty years in the

438
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:39,480
Speaker 1: past and beet like, Okay, there was a social movement

439
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 1: over here, um, and we were able to stop it

440
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:44,720
Speaker 1: because we did this, this and this, And they're able

441
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:46,440
Speaker 1: to have that that sort of memory to go back

442
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:48,840
Speaker 1: and look at those tactics. And part of the goal

443
00:26:48,840 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 1: of depression is to cut people out of socialis to

444
00:26:51,520 --> 00:26:55,160
Speaker 1: cut off this sort of generational understanding of the dynamics

445
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: of repression. And so we want to we want to

446
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: increase our our capacity, as people are invested in seeing

447
00:27:01,520 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: social events succeeded, be able to understand these sorts of

448
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:09,040
Speaker 1: repressive tactics and develop strategies against them. And I say

449
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:11,159
Speaker 1: that because we see repression as being a part of

450
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:14,440
Speaker 1: social movements. There are no social movements that are successful

451
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:16,639
Speaker 1: that don't encounter repression. And so we have a we

452
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:18,639
Speaker 1: have a strong need to be able to understand the

453
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,440
Speaker 1: specific mechanisms of state repression, how they were, how different

454
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:26,199
Speaker 1: agencies work, how the specific laws worked, UH, and to

455
00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 1: be able to disseminate that information for and led both

456
00:27:29,320 --> 00:27:33,880
Speaker 1: within movements and also within the mainstream media. At the

457
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 1: public event, one of the sheriff's involved in the involved

458
00:27:37,880 --> 00:27:41,400
Speaker 1: in the raid against the forest offenders UH suggested that

459
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:45,359
Speaker 1: because because one of them is from California and is

460
00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:49,640
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, that makes him a terrorist. This is utterly absurd.

461
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 1: Like we live in one country, like we're allowed, we

462
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:59,520
Speaker 1: have the freedom to travel, and we have the Unlike

463
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:04,399
Speaker 1: the police, we regular people have solidarity and can and

464
00:28:04,480 --> 00:28:09,920
Speaker 1: have empathy and can see our own interests in other

465
00:28:10,080 --> 00:28:13,920
Speaker 1: struggles that take place elsewhere, and that it is a

466
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:17,320
Speaker 1: noble thing to be like I have to go somewhere

467
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: support to participate UH. And this is not something that

468
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:24,280
Speaker 1: should be discouraged. And this is not terroristic. This is

469
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:28,199
Speaker 1: a sign of the beautifulness of human empathy and the

470
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 1: ability to see yourself in others and this is what

471
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: the police lack. That's That's definitely something I wanted to

472
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 1: bring up at some point because this is this is

473
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:40,480
Speaker 1: a tactic that we've seen both the Atlanta Police Foundation

474
00:28:40,880 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: of the City Council, and you know, right wing propagandists

475
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: like Andy no have have have tried to frame this,

476
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: have tried to frame this in terms of like the

477
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 1: the outside agitator's angle. Um. There. And you see in

478
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: all of and all of the all of the arrest

479
00:28:58,400 --> 00:29:02,760
Speaker 1: reports um that that that get published, one of the

480
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 1: things they emphasize is that the that people arrested, some

481
00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:10,560
Speaker 1: of them have been born in other states. They always

482
00:29:10,560 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 1: they always mentioned the state that this person was born in, UM,

483
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,920
Speaker 1: which is just a ridiculous notion that people don't have

484
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:22,480
Speaker 1: the freedom to move around the country. Uh, absolutely absurd

485
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:25,920
Speaker 1: that that that that people don't have the freedom to

486
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: move around to places and choose where where they want

487
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: to live. So they're framing they're framing people who are

488
00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:36,280
Speaker 1: arrested that were that happened to be born in other places.

489
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 1: They're they're they're they're using this as a in terms

490
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: of like the outside agitator angle to be like people

491
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:44,000
Speaker 1: are are coming into Atlanta to try to you know,

492
00:29:44,240 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: so chaos and disorder within our city. Um. And look,

493
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: they're they're pulling up people from all from all around

494
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:52,360
Speaker 1: the country. Then they're trying to you know, frame it

495
00:29:52,360 --> 00:29:56,719
Speaker 1: in this like very conspiratorial lens. Um. And that's just

496
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:58,400
Speaker 1: that that is that is that is something that I've

497
00:29:58,440 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: also noticed and found to be uh, a quite interesting tactic.

498
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I would they definitely wanted to be an

499
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:10,720
Speaker 1: effective strategy in terms of the outside agitator angle of

500
00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 1: of you know, people coming coming in from out of

501
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 1: state to get to get involved in this group, this

502
00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: this Antifa alligning terrorist group, as someone like Andy No

503
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: would say, uh, And it's it's it's it's purely it's

504
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:29,080
Speaker 1: purely a propaganda tactic because it relies on the notion

505
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 1: that people can't move around the country and decide where

506
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:36,160
Speaker 1: they want to live, uh, which obviously which obviously is

507
00:30:36,200 --> 00:30:39,480
Speaker 1: an absurd notion um. And I think as as as

508
00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:41,800
Speaker 1: you said, it also kind of you know, the other

509
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:43,640
Speaker 1: side of this is that it highlights the kind of

510
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:48,120
Speaker 1: the beautiful nature of being able to choose where you

511
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 1: want to go and choose to get involved in things

512
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 1: that you feel are important, even if they aren't in

513
00:30:53,360 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: the current place where you are living. Just to add

514
00:30:57,120 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 1: a little bit to this, like it's crazy because it's

515
00:30:59,880 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: like when you read the reports and the news of

516
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 1: the people that they arrest. They always make it a

517
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:05,960
Speaker 1: point to talk about people from out of town, and

518
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,560
Speaker 1: they always seem to omit the people that are from

519
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 1: Atlanta that they've arrested. And not that I'm advocating that

520
00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: they should be publicizing, you know, these people at all,

521
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: but it's just to highlight that what they're doing is

522
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 1: a propaganda tactic, and I think it it has has

523
00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: really fallen on their face in Atlanta, because, you know,

524
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,800
Speaker 1: Atlanta is a city that's famous for the civil rights movement.

525
00:31:26,840 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: Like we're talking about freedom writers were talking about people

526
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: from all over the South, from all over the country

527
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 1: coming to you know, Martin Luther King went to Solma,

528
00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 1: He's from Atlanta. You know, this type of this type

529
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 1: of logic just doesn't really doesn't really seem to work here,

530
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:42,520
Speaker 1: and it's really bizarre to see them try to use

531
00:31:42,600 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: it over and over and over again. It's really just

532
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: like a failed playbook at this point, within the context

533
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: of both how the repression against the Defend the Atlanta

534
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:55,560
Speaker 1: Force movement has evolved and where it's at now with

535
00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 1: what's happened in the past few weeks, and then also

536
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: consider the types of analysis of past ecological and resistance

537
00:32:03,960 --> 00:32:07,320
Speaker 1: movements that we've seen. How do you see some of

538
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:10,720
Speaker 1: the repression by the state evolving as the Atlanta four

539
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:15,520
Speaker 1: stuff continues. Well, I think that that overall, with respect

540
00:32:15,560 --> 00:32:17,640
Speaker 1: to social indiments, we've seen an increase in this this

541
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:20,680
Speaker 1: type of charge that as Ralph was sort of getting at,

542
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's it's a it's a type of

543
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 1: charge that criminalizes your participation in in a in a

544
00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:31,720
Speaker 1: group or in a socialment um. And so if you

545
00:32:31,760 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 1: look at the specific warrants that are using in some

546
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: of these people that they just arrested, um, you know,

547
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of one in particular where it goes into

548
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:43,520
Speaker 1: detail and it says this person is accused of being

549
00:32:43,560 --> 00:32:48,040
Speaker 1: a part of a domestic violence a domestic violent extremist

550
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 1: movement called Defend the Atlanta Forest, and they're responsible for

551
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:55,280
Speaker 1: all of these acts of all of these different crimes

552
00:32:55,320 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 1: from trust passing to UH to arson or whatever, you know.

553
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 1: And so they lump this all together. They say that

554
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 1: an autonomous social movement is a coherent organization, and then

555
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: they say that the individual that they arrested UH confirmed

556
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 1: their participation in this group called Defend the Atlanta forest

557
00:33:17,080 --> 00:33:21,880
Speaker 1: by sitting in a treehouse and wearing camouflage. This is

558
00:33:22,560 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: absurdum because there's there's no evidence in in this in

559
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:30,479
Speaker 1: this example, that this particular person or any of these

560
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:32,760
Speaker 1: people have anything to do with any of these other

561
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,440
Speaker 1: crimes that they are alleging. We're a part of this movement.

562
00:33:36,200 --> 00:33:38,240
Speaker 1: So what they're doing instead, they know that they can't

563
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: arrest them for that. But what they're doing instead is

564
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,200
Speaker 1: they're coming at it from this legal angle where they're

565
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: saying this movement as a whole is a discrete group.

566
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:50,040
Speaker 1: This group is an extremist group, and so your participation

567
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 1: in anything that seems like it's a part of this

568
00:33:52,000 --> 00:33:54,800
Speaker 1: group is criminal in and of itself, and in this case,

569
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:56,920
Speaker 1: terrorists in and of itself. And this is a really

570
00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,600
Speaker 1: disturbing trend that we've seen in over the last few years,

571
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 1: with the grease in the use of conspiracy charges, with

572
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:06,240
Speaker 1: the increase in the use of arrico charges, racketeering charges,

573
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:09,400
Speaker 1: and the point of all of these different legal strategies

574
00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:11,839
Speaker 1: is to hold people accountable for crimes that they did

575
00:34:11,840 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 1: not do, and that's exactly what we're seeing now with

576
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:16,040
Speaker 1: the six people that they just arrested. They want to

577
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 1: hold these people accountable and make them martyrs for an

578
00:34:18,760 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 1: entire movement that's involved hundreds and thousands of people doing

579
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:27,680
Speaker 1: all sorts of things criminal or otherwise. And that is

580
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:31,439
Speaker 1: a disturbing trend um and it's it's especially disturbing because

581
00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 1: if you look at the way that the the law

582
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 1: has written in Georgia with respect to domestic terrorism, so

583
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 1: that's an that's an enhancement charge. It means that you

584
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 1: have to be arrested for another crime, for example, in

585
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 1: in in the in the example of the people that

586
00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 1: they just arrested felony trust passing, they add in a

587
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:49,880
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism enhancement charge to it. And the justification for

588
00:34:49,920 --> 00:34:54,400
Speaker 1: this domestic and domestic terrorism enhancement charge is to basically

589
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 1: saying that they were attempting to change governmental policy by

590
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: into addition, which is an interesting way of saying protesting

591
00:35:05,520 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: is illegal. All protests involves trying to change governmental policy.

592
00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 1: That is what protesting is. And what they what they

593
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: are attempting to do now with these charges is to

594
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,839
Speaker 1: reframe that entirely and say that that is terrorism, and

595
00:35:17,920 --> 00:35:20,399
Speaker 1: that is uh, you know, it's sort of it's we're

596
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:22,360
Speaker 1: on a tricky slope right now, because it's like, on

597
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 1: the one hand, we need to recognize that these charges

598
00:35:24,960 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 1: are absurd and they very likely won't stand up in

599
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,720
Speaker 1: court because they're very clearly unconstitutional at the very least,

600
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: So we need to not be afraid of them on

601
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:35,399
Speaker 1: the one hand, and to show how absurd they are.

602
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:37,880
Speaker 1: On the other hand, we should take this as a

603
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:42,600
Speaker 1: serious threat to social movements all across the United States

604
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 1: in all different sorts of fields and areas, in different

605
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:48,799
Speaker 1: different types of fights for for for different different sorts

606
00:35:48,840 --> 00:35:52,480
Speaker 1: of things, to say like, wow, this is a huge,

607
00:35:52,760 --> 00:35:55,759
Speaker 1: huge stretch that they're trying to pull here because they

608
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 1: have seen like in the last few decades, like a

609
00:35:58,719 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of pollersy in America, all sorts of social

610
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: events that involve you know, Black Lives Matter was twenty

611
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 1: million people. Are these people all terrorists? And and so

612
00:36:08,160 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: that's why it's important to pay attention to what's happening

613
00:36:10,360 --> 00:36:12,400
Speaker 1: now in Atlanta with the struggle to attend the Atlanta

614
00:36:12,440 --> 00:36:15,279
Speaker 1: Forest and the charges that they're putting against these people,

615
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: because if they can succeed with this type of charge,

616
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 1: that's a very very dangerous precedent for people who are

617
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:25,319
Speaker 1: part of all sorts of social events and not just

618
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:27,480
Speaker 1: the left wing either. You know, there's a part of

619
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:31,200
Speaker 1: this that's like since the January six, the you know,

620
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 1: so called insurrection. However you want to however you want

621
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: to characterize that there's been a tremendous push by the

622
00:36:36,239 --> 00:36:40,799
Speaker 1: federal government too to crack down on social movements. They

623
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:43,799
Speaker 1: see this as like threats to into their stability, that

624
00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:47,680
Speaker 1: there are you know, situations where there's thousands or millions

625
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,279
Speaker 1: of people who are participating in in all different sorts

626
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 1: of social movements, and they need to send a clear

627
00:36:52,400 --> 00:36:56,680
Speaker 1: message that people should not be out protesting. Thank you

628
00:36:56,760 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: both for talking with me today. UM Where could people

629
00:36:59,760 --> 00:37:03,960
Speaker 1: but learn more about your respective organizations? And then also

630
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 1: how can people support force defenders who are facing the

631
00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: increasingly harsh state repression. You could visit the just like

632
00:37:16,520 --> 00:37:19,200
Speaker 1: Google or look up on any of the major social

633
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:24,839
Speaker 1: media platforms Atlanta Solidarity Fund UH and you could read

634
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 1: go to our website UM and if you want to

635
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:32,279
Speaker 1: support any force defenders who are facing serious charges, UM,

636
00:37:32,480 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 1: we donate money or you could write write them UM

637
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:38,759
Speaker 1: postcards or if you could send them books that they've

638
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:44,719
Speaker 1: requested UM and when court dates are. When court dates

639
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:48,839
Speaker 1: come up, we'll probably publicize those so that people can

640
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,600
Speaker 1: come out and um show show their support and solidarity

641
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:54,880
Speaker 1: the people facing charges. And you could come out to

642
00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:58,880
Speaker 1: uh do court support and you can get involved in

643
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:03,640
Speaker 1: the movement yourself if you uh feel so inclined. Yeah,

644
00:38:03,680 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 1: and I'll just add to that. The aliena entire re

645
00:38:06,160 --> 00:38:08,200
Speaker 1: Quesion committee can get found on Instagram. You can look

646
00:38:08,239 --> 00:38:10,800
Speaker 1: it up. Uh. And and just generally speaking, this is

647
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:12,760
Speaker 1: something that people need to talk about. So any chance

648
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 1: that you have to to talk about to explain what's

649
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:18,840
Speaker 1: happening in Atlanta, to put a giant light on this situation,

650
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:21,120
Speaker 1: because everybody needs to be paying attention to this because

651
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: this is not just uh, you know, as as as

652
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 1: people in that defend the coursewomen say, it's not just

653
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: a local issue. There national and even international complications for

654
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:32,160
Speaker 1: this type of stuff. And and that's also true with

655
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:34,879
Speaker 1: regards to repression. If they can succeed with these charges here,

656
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: that's a that's a major death blow too to all

657
00:38:39,560 --> 00:38:42,040
Speaker 1: sorts of social evidents, and they'll they'll be trying to

658
00:38:42,080 --> 00:38:45,360
Speaker 1: export this tactic elsewhere. We think it won't stick, but

659
00:38:46,120 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 1: we think it's extremely important for people to be talking

660
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:52,360
Speaker 1: about it and to make this uh the national issue

661
00:38:52,400 --> 00:38:55,520
Speaker 1: that we recognize that it is. Some of those links.

662
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:59,840
Speaker 1: We will also be putting in the description below The

663
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 1: day that this episode is being released just so happens

664
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:06,439
Speaker 1: to be Martin Luther king Junior Day. And also it's

665
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:10,480
Speaker 1: the last day in a weekend of solidarity to stop

666
00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:16,279
Speaker 1: Cops City. This past weekend, there's been events, gatherings, actions,

667
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:20,280
Speaker 1: and rallies in Atlanta and across the country in support

668
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:24,240
Speaker 1: for the Stop Cops City movement and the six individuals

669
00:39:24,520 --> 00:39:29,359
Speaker 1: facing domestic terrorism charges. On Saturday, I saw pictures of

670
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:32,440
Speaker 1: a huge banner hanging outside of a squat in France

671
00:39:32,480 --> 00:39:36,600
Speaker 1: in solidarity with Atlanta and struggles to defend the Atlanta Forest.

672
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 1: It seems the extremely high charges in Georgia have not

673
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:45,720
Speaker 1: dissuade people from across the country from engaging in direct action.

674
00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:50,799
Speaker 1: In December, at List construction offices, one of the contractors

675
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:54,760
Speaker 1: working on Cops City were attacked in Manhattan and Michigan

676
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:59,719
Speaker 1: in solidarity with those arrested defending the Wolani Forest. On

677
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 1: January five, a construction site and offices for Brassfield and Gory,

678
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 1: the main contractors currently working on Cops City, were attacked

679
00:40:07,920 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 1: by anarchists in South Florida, according to a statement published

680
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: on the website Scenes dot No blogs dot org, and

681
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,040
Speaker 1: just days earlier, another post on the site claimed credit

682
00:40:19,120 --> 00:40:21,920
Speaker 1: for setting fire to a Bank of America in Portland.

683
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:24,960
Speaker 1: Bank of America is a major contributor to the Atlanta

684
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:29,800
Speaker 1: Police Foundation. Both of those statements referenced the domestic terrorism charges.

685
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:33,280
Speaker 1: You can check out Defend the Atlanta Forest at Defend

686
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest dot org and most major social media sites.

687
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: You can check out scenes dot no blogs dot org

688
00:40:40,040 --> 00:40:42,880
Speaker 1: for more stories of direct action on the front lines,

689
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:46,040
Speaker 1: and of course you can check out the Atlanta Solidarity

690
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 1: Fund at a t L Solidarity dot org. There you

691
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:54,760
Speaker 1: can donate to bail funds and help people currently facing

692
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 1: state repression. That's all for us today. See you on

693
00:40:58,440 --> 00:41:16,520
Speaker 1: the other side. Yeah, hello everyone, and welcome to another

694
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:19,879
Speaker 1: episode of It Could Happen here once again? Who'sted around?

695
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: Myself Andrew and also joined with Garrison is here as

696
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:31,239
Speaker 1: well and me Mia. I'm awful here and of the

697
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,319
Speaker 1: things that I've been thinking about lately because I've been

698
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:38,240
Speaker 1: reading a lot more fiction um A lot of things,

699
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: and these sorts of sci fi's fair particularly um some Activita,

700
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 1: but um some orcum some Margaret Atwood. I recently read

701
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 1: Orks and Creek. UM. I've just been thinking about a

702
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: lot of these concepts that are presented in stories um

703
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:02,319
Speaker 1: in sci fi. UM. And what is more sci fi

704
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 1: than the idea of computers that sort of digital space.

705
00:42:07,280 --> 00:42:12,439
Speaker 1: And what has become of the digital would um as

706
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:15,719
Speaker 1: of late, as you know, and really since its inception,

707
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:21,720
Speaker 1: as capitalism has sort of chopped it up and privatized

708
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: it and sequested it and monopolized it. As I think

709
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 1: it really um goes against what the principles of the

710
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,360
Speaker 1: Internet should be in terms of how it is run,

711
00:42:35,480 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 1: how it is structured, how it is organized. Because the

712
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 1: Internet as a concept really brings together, um a variety

713
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:50,880
Speaker 1: of people, a variety of spaces and backgrounds and intersections,

714
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 1: and I believe it would be a place of sharing,

715
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:59,239
Speaker 1: a place of collaboration, particularly since the sort of resources

716
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:05,680
Speaker 1: that might be UM limited in the physical world ah

717
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:09,600
Speaker 1: far more abundant in the digital world. UM. I'm thinking

718
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:13,879
Speaker 1: in terms of like educational resources and otherwise of course

719
00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 1: they are you know, infrastructural limitations. But on the cloud,

720
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:23,480
Speaker 1: you know, um, in cyberspace, And I cringe saying that

721
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 1: because it makes me feel like a booma. Um. You know,

722
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: they have the ability to freely and easily copy and

723
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: share and paste wherever and whenever, basically without many limitations. Um.

724
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 1: Instead of really seizing that for what it could be,

725
00:43:46,920 --> 00:43:49,120
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've turned it into this sort of

726
00:43:50,400 --> 00:44:01,359
Speaker 1: um corporate feudalism. Um. We're all these uh digital merritcoporations,

727
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:06,800
Speaker 1: these social media giants basically have carved of the Internet

728
00:44:07,080 --> 00:44:12,160
Speaker 1: into their own little you know, fiefdoms and dominated um

729
00:44:12,400 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: the discourse, you know, dominated how we communicate with each other,

730
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:18,360
Speaker 1: how we tend to communicate each other based in the

731
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:20,800
Speaker 1: main stream side of the Internet, what has become to

732
00:44:20,880 --> 00:44:22,640
Speaker 1: me in stream things, so what most people think of

733
00:44:22,680 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: when they think of the Internet. UM, But I'm not

734
00:44:27,200 --> 00:44:30,719
Speaker 1: a big fan of that idea of the Internet, that perception,

735
00:44:30,840 --> 00:44:35,840
Speaker 1: that conception of the Internet in fact um as something

736
00:44:35,880 --> 00:44:40,640
Speaker 1: that I have been thinking about and developing and discussing

737
00:44:40,719 --> 00:44:43,560
Speaker 1: for the past couple of months and researching for the

738
00:44:43,560 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: past couple of months. I really think that among all

739
00:44:47,000 --> 00:44:52,320
Speaker 1: the other things that I've discussed, unnecessary components, in developing

740
00:44:52,719 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: the commons, in creating and re establishing the commons, I

741
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 1: think digital commons will be just as important because the commons,

742
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 1: uh the rather, the inclusion of the commons is what

743
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:13,960
Speaker 1: really kicked off the establishment of capitalism. I believe the

744
00:45:14,080 --> 00:45:17,880
Speaker 1: re establishments of the commons will be required in that

745
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: transition away from capitalism towards a more collective, more communal, um,

746
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 1: more sustainable way of life. For those who, um, I

747
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 1: guess just tuning in this perhaps your first episode with

748
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: me at least, or perhaps you've never seen any of

749
00:45:39,239 --> 00:45:43,279
Speaker 1: the figures of my channel. UM, I'll take a moment to,

750
00:45:43,600 --> 00:45:48,360
Speaker 1: you know, explain what exactly the commons are. The commons

751
00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:53,440
Speaker 1: referred to the resources accessible to all members of a society,

752
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 1: the totality of the material riches of that part of

753
00:45:57,400 --> 00:46:00,480
Speaker 1: the world, of that world regarded as the inheritor of

754
00:46:01,920 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: humanity as a whole, something to be shared together. The

755
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:08,720
Speaker 1: commons or something that are based on common pool resources

756
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: or cprs, which is any natural or man made system

757
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:15,840
Speaker 1: that is organized to benefit a group of people, but

758
00:46:15,880 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 1: would provide diminished benefits to everyone if each person pursued

759
00:46:20,160 --> 00:46:23,720
Speaker 1: their own self interest and of course, these resource systems,

760
00:46:23,760 --> 00:46:25,880
Speaker 1: like I said, could be natural or man made, so

761
00:46:25,880 --> 00:46:28,799
Speaker 1: they could be forests. You know, traditionally there are things

762
00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:32,600
Speaker 1: like forests and irrigation canals and fisheries and pastures and

763
00:46:32,960 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 1: drown water basins. UM. But I think it's it can

764
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:40,400
Speaker 1: be expanded even food. I mean things like energy infrastructure

765
00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 1: like windmills, WIN two bndes or as um. Going to

766
00:46:45,560 --> 00:46:51,359
Speaker 1: describe different portions of the Internet, different resource systems within

767
00:46:51,400 --> 00:46:53,840
Speaker 1: the interntion of course, the Internet as a whole. I

768
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:59,800
Speaker 1: believe all of those things can um can be brought

769
00:47:00,040 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 1: under the commons UM And of course the Commons. The

770
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:10,040
Speaker 1: theory of commons history of the Commons is its own

771
00:47:11,360 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 1: lengthy discussion. Of course, you could read about it in

772
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:17,440
Speaker 1: Governing the Commons by Eleanor Ostrom. You could listen to

773
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:21,879
Speaker 1: a sort of a condensed version of that in my

774
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 1: video on my channel on the Commons as an institution.

775
00:47:26,760 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 1: But when it comes to you know, information and communication technologies,

776
00:47:30,320 --> 00:47:33,120
Speaker 1: when it comes to I C T S and sort

777
00:47:33,160 --> 00:47:36,239
Speaker 1: of applying that Commons idea to I C T S.

778
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:40,000
Speaker 1: ID like to think about it in terms of these

779
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:44,040
Speaker 1: sort of digital communities bringing together people who share you know,

780
00:47:44,120 --> 00:47:49,959
Speaker 1: common goals to collaboratively build and share those resources through technology.

781
00:47:50,960 --> 00:47:54,960
Speaker 1: So I would say that digital commons are or can be,

782
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:58,120
Speaker 1: and can be because I think some of them already

783
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:02,800
Speaker 1: exist in some form. But they are basically these online

784
00:48:03,000 --> 00:48:09,239
Speaker 1: creation communities where you know, there's a free flu um

785
00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:13,960
Speaker 1: and free access to and free collaboration. Um. You know,

786
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 1: the sharing of this non exclusive digital information and the

787
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 1: collective creation of like knowledge resources. These resources of course

788
00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:27,080
Speaker 1: being owned and used freely between or among the community

789
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: and also available for use by three parties. So and

790
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:35,760
Speaker 1: instead of being exchanged as commodities, you know, these resources

791
00:48:35,800 --> 00:48:44,960
Speaker 1: are used and reused and reused without artificial restrictions to

792
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:49,720
Speaker 1: sort of enforce an artificial scarcity. UM. I just actually

793
00:48:49,719 --> 00:48:53,400
Speaker 1: thought of a really funny example that I hadn't initially

794
00:48:54,040 --> 00:48:57,320
Speaker 1: conceived of in a sort of guideline for this episode.

795
00:48:58,080 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you're a lot of familiar with

796
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:07,600
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese, is Gone trov no Okay? So in nine three,

797
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:15,759
Speaker 1: Martin scorsesey developed this film called Gone. It's a historical

798
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:19,800
Speaker 1: epic um a sort of a post war era mafia movie,

799
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:22,840
Speaker 1: and it was directed by Scorsese, and it started Robert

800
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:26,160
Speaker 1: de Niro and Alpuccino and Gene Hackman. It had a

801
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:31,799
Speaker 1: sort of deep Hume eroticism blended with a sort of

802
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:35,799
Speaker 1: exploration of of medal aggression. It's a sort of a

803
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:40,360
Speaker 1: look at the relationship between Gone Shrev, who is a

804
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:46,720
Speaker 1: Russian mafia boss, and his partners slash rival slash old

805
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:50,359
Speaker 1: friend Andrew, who I believe is supposed to be an

806
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:55,400
Speaker 1: Italian mafia boss. But the thing about Gone Sharov and

807
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 1: I mean, you can find posters about it, you can

808
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: find fan art of which you can find many, many,

809
00:50:03,040 --> 00:50:07,440
Speaker 1: many fan fictions about it. Um, But Conture is not

810
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:14,080
Speaker 1: a real movie. It does not exist. Everything I described

811
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:20,080
Speaker 1: it's entirely fake. The litany of colorful side characters that

812
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:25,080
Speaker 1: you know people have developed for this movie, the hundreds

813
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 1: of fan fictions, the dozens of metaalyses and pieces of

814
00:50:28,640 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 1: fin arts people have you know, generated for this movie.

815
00:50:33,040 --> 00:50:36,920
Speaker 1: The movie itself doesn't exist. The movie only exists in

816
00:50:36,960 --> 00:50:44,960
Speaker 1: the collective um co creation of it that took place

817
00:50:45,760 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 1: over a Tumbler of all places, Essentially, a couple of

818
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: Tumbling users basically came up with this idea of this

819
00:50:54,760 --> 00:51:00,120
Speaker 1: lost Martin Scorsese film that everybody has seemingly forgotten. They

820
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:02,000
Speaker 1: would rave about it, and they would come up with

821
00:51:02,080 --> 00:51:05,279
Speaker 1: fake plot points and fake characters, and before you know it,

822
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:09,759
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like this massive Internet phenomenon,

823
00:51:09,880 --> 00:51:13,960
Speaker 1: this sort of inside juke Internet, inside juke UM. One

824
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:16,319
Speaker 1: of people started building on top of it and respecting

825
00:51:16,400 --> 00:51:19,719
Speaker 1: what came before UM, and that sort of spirit of

826
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 1: co creation is what it ended up creating. This Gone

827
00:51:23,719 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 1: this teal of Gone throw, this gone through of fandom,

828
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:32,400
Speaker 1: this whol development of Gone Troop as a character of

829
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:36,560
Speaker 1: the side characters as you know, fully developed characters. And

830
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 1: it all started because you know, one user said to

831
00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:42,920
Speaker 1: another like, oh, don't you know the movie Gone Shroof,

832
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 1: it's only the greatest Mafia movie ever made. On that tagline,

833
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:50,399
Speaker 1: the greatest Mathia movie ever made. Would be built upon

834
00:51:51,000 --> 00:51:58,160
Speaker 1: with further photoshops and embellishments and developments, and there's now

835
00:51:58,239 --> 00:52:00,799
Speaker 1: like a really comprehensive document of a sure off law.

836
00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:05,080
Speaker 1: Um things are added and ingest things added in complete seriousness,

837
00:52:05,120 --> 00:52:08,960
Speaker 1: But it's just a thing that exists. It's a thing

838
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:13,240
Speaker 1: that I believe. Um, it's just one manifestation of many

839
00:52:13,280 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 1: of what the Internet has the capacity to produce. When

840
00:52:18,560 --> 00:52:24,000
Speaker 1: online creation communities are allowed to operate freely UM and develop,

841
00:52:25,000 --> 00:52:32,319
Speaker 1: they wouldn't sort of common creative UM resources. I think

842
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 1: other examples of I guess the seeds of what I'm

843
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: talking about can be seen in UM. I guess, like

844
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:43,040
Speaker 1: role play UM servers and role play communities, role play

845
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: message boards. I think some fandoms also have some of

846
00:52:48,200 --> 00:52:49,719
Speaker 1: the seeds of what I'm talking about. Of course, the

847
00:52:49,760 --> 00:52:54,400
Speaker 1: Minecraft community with everything they've created, modern communities across different games.

848
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:59,760
Speaker 1: They all sort of manifestations of you know, human desire

849
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:04,160
Speaker 1: to read and human desire to share, without you know,

850
00:53:04,160 --> 00:53:12,400
Speaker 1: the artificial restrictions and boundaries of of mainstream couplust imagination.

851
00:53:14,040 --> 00:53:17,080
Speaker 1: I think another manifestation of the digital commons in a

852
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:23,520
Speaker 1: sense can be found in resources like z library, UM

853
00:53:23,640 --> 00:53:28,440
Speaker 1: and a few others that I'm afraid of naming in case,

854
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:32,680
Speaker 1: you know, they get taken down as well. And I

855
00:53:32,760 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 1: mean that's really the sad part of its the libraries loss.

856
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:37,480
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't really been feeling that loss because

857
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:43,160
Speaker 1: I am aware of the alternatives UM, but it's lost

858
00:53:43,200 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 1: on the last because of the way the library is formatted,

859
00:53:45,600 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 1: it was a bit more accessible to a lot of

860
00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:50,960
Speaker 1: people and people aware of it and stuff. Um, but

861
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 1: Z Library, and I'm glad that it's called a library.

862
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: It's called Z Library. It's just you know, one manifestation

863
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:03,840
Speaker 1: of the um the roots of the library as a

864
00:54:03,920 --> 00:54:11,160
Speaker 1: concept and how it can manifest um in the digital speece,

865
00:54:11,280 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 1: how the commons through the I guess the conception of

866
00:54:15,360 --> 00:54:18,760
Speaker 1: the library can manifest in a in a digital space.

867
00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:21,960
Speaker 1: I mean even you know, mainstream ones we have like

868
00:54:23,160 --> 00:54:25,360
Speaker 1: we have, we have stuff like archive dot org and

869
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 1: I know archive dot org is trying to launch something

870
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:31,000
Speaker 1: to host a whole bunch of scientific journals and other

871
00:54:31,120 --> 00:54:33,560
Speaker 1: articles that are harder to access as well, but I

872
00:54:33,640 --> 00:54:38,719
Speaker 1: mean they already host you know, quite impressive plethora of

873
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:44,360
Speaker 1: copyrighted books. Um me and Robert have gotten into arguments

874
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:46,800
Speaker 1: on Twitter dot com with many an author who is

875
00:54:46,840 --> 00:54:51,120
Speaker 1: mad about their book being on archive dot archived dot

876
00:54:51,239 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 1: org of and so that is you know, there is

877
00:54:56,239 --> 00:54:59,040
Speaker 1: there is, There is many resources if you know where

878
00:54:59,080 --> 00:55:01,359
Speaker 1: to look. But sadly some or some someone there no

879
00:55:01,360 --> 00:55:05,320
Speaker 1: longer with us and people have been have been punished

880
00:55:05,320 --> 00:55:09,520
Speaker 1: by the state for trying to provide open access to information. Yeah,

881
00:55:09,640 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: and I mean who controls information right. Well, however, the

882
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:17,840
Speaker 1: same goes I think another as you mentioned, kind of

883
00:55:18,200 --> 00:55:22,839
Speaker 1: another example of that sort of collaborative information sharing can

884
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:27,200
Speaker 1: be seen. And of course Wikipedia, you know. Yeah, as

885
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:30,239
Speaker 1: personal computers and the intent became more more accessible, the

886
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:37,320
Speaker 1: lower barriers of expression and stuff. Um. This Internet culture,

887
00:55:37,360 --> 00:55:41,080
Speaker 1: as it was initially born, it was one with the

888
00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:44,160
Speaker 1: aim of you know, collaboratively great and cultural content did

889
00:55:44,239 --> 00:55:48,440
Speaker 1: not developing and generating you know, universe sell access to knowledge.

890
00:55:49,040 --> 00:55:53,480
Speaker 1: Wikipedia just one example of course, different wikis bluralum. But

891
00:55:53,520 --> 00:55:55,560
Speaker 1: of course the longer called wickiest I think it's called

892
00:55:55,600 --> 00:55:59,719
Speaker 1: fandom that or or something. Now, Yes, unfortunately fandom bought

893
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 1: a bunch of uh different wiki sites that were independently

894
00:56:05,600 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: operated over the course of the past twenty years, and

895
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:15,279
Speaker 1: then they kind of consolidated under the big Fandom company. Yeah.

896
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:17,800
Speaker 1: Now like half of them are unusable because of ads

897
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:22,960
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, it is, it is. It's it's pretty

898
00:56:23,040 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 1: rough to scroll a fandom site. It's not the easiest thing.

899
00:56:27,160 --> 00:56:30,080
Speaker 1: But I will see, as a youth with a few

900
00:56:30,120 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: regulations and my access to the Internet, it was actually

901
00:56:33,200 --> 00:56:36,520
Speaker 1: quite nice to be able to go on to the

902
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 1: fandom and just like well, I was, you know, around

903
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:42,719
Speaker 1: when it was still Wicky. UM. But you know, going

904
00:56:42,760 --> 00:56:45,440
Speaker 1: like Marvel Wicky or going TC Wicky and read up

905
00:56:45,440 --> 00:56:47,840
Speaker 1: on all the different characters I was into at the time.

906
00:56:48,480 --> 00:56:50,600
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, you know I used to go on

907
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:54,239
Speaker 1: like power listing Wicky and like come up with characters,

908
00:56:54,520 --> 00:56:57,960
Speaker 1: you know, piece on certain superpowers. UM. And I also

909
00:56:58,000 --> 00:57:01,920
Speaker 1: created my own Wicky for my own made up, uh

910
00:57:02,080 --> 00:57:06,360
Speaker 1: sort of world building project. UM. And just the fact

911
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:09,919
Speaker 1: that resource was available, you know, that the tools were easy,

912
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:16,960
Speaker 1: were free to access UM, and that easy to understand

913
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:19,680
Speaker 1: as well. UM. And of course they were always tutorials

914
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:21,760
Speaker 1: and stuff available if you don't know how to function

915
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:27,320
Speaker 1: and what to do certain things. Just that that that accessibility,

916
00:57:27,480 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: UM and freedom is something that I think is still exists,

917
00:57:32,920 --> 00:57:36,120
Speaker 1: you know in some sense, despite you know, this company

918
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:40,200
Speaker 1: buying out everything. And I appreciate the fact that you know,

919
00:57:40,400 --> 00:57:44,520
Speaker 1: unlike you know that company, Wikipedias and me and e

920
00:57:44,640 --> 00:57:50,360
Speaker 1: og Wikipedia continues to maintain their steadfast anti ad um

921
00:57:50,400 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 1: you know, standing um and continues to you know, UM

922
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:05,360
Speaker 1: run on I guess donations just just today as of

923
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: the day that we're recording, uh, people whole a whole

924
00:58:11,040 --> 00:58:15,200
Speaker 1: bunch of the right wingers that have coalesced around Musk

925
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 1: after his purchase of Twitter have gotten mad at Wikipedia

926
00:58:19,840 --> 00:58:25,880
Speaker 1: for not for they've They've gotten mad that Wikipedia wasn't

927
00:58:26,240 --> 00:58:34,720
Speaker 1: was wasn't reposting their fake Twitter files drama thing um

928
00:58:34,760 --> 00:58:38,040
Speaker 1: as glowingly as some of them might like. And they're

929
00:58:38,040 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: complaining about Wikipedia's left wing bias, and a whole bunch

930
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:44,160
Speaker 1: of these Musk fan boys are talking about being like, hey,

931
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:48,040
Speaker 1: Elon Musk should buy Wikipedia and fix Wikipedia's left wing

932
00:58:48,120 --> 00:58:51,600
Speaker 1: bias and this this, this one, this, this one guy.

933
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:54,280
Speaker 1: He was like, um, I wonder how much Wikipedia had

934
00:58:54,400 --> 00:58:58,680
Speaker 1: cost to buy at Elon Musk and then the the uh,

935
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:02,440
Speaker 1: the founder of Wikipedia is like, absolutely not, this is

936
00:59:02,440 --> 00:59:06,919
Speaker 1: not for sale. We we are not letting Elon must

937
00:59:06,920 --> 00:59:11,040
Speaker 1: compie Wikipedia. Yeah. I mean, if if conservatives really want

938
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:16,240
Speaker 1: um a platform that badly, there's always conservative Pedia or

939
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:20,680
Speaker 1: whatever it's called. Um, there's always Encyclopedia if they want

940
00:59:20,720 --> 00:59:24,920
Speaker 1: to get really wacky. Um. But yeah, Wikipedia is going

941
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:28,440
Speaker 1: to continue being Wikipedia thankfully. UM. I appreciate the rabbit

942
00:59:28,480 --> 00:59:31,320
Speaker 1: holes it has let me through. I appreciate the Wikipedia

943
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: games that I've been able to play, you know, like

944
00:59:33,520 --> 00:59:36,479
Speaker 1: you have to go from one page to another. Uh,

945
00:59:36,520 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 1: you know that kind of degrees of pages, how you

946
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:45,160
Speaker 1: link two different completely different topics. But yeah, zero advertising

947
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:49,800
Speaker 1: accessible to all many different languages. Of course, you know

948
00:59:49,840 --> 00:59:54,360
Speaker 1: it's not completely flawless. They are sitting UM very contentious

949
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:59,200
Speaker 1: articles of course, UM. They always be attempts to hijack

950
00:59:59,360 --> 01:00:03,840
Speaker 1: that those peaches of the pops of propaganda. Of course,

951
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:08,120
Speaker 1: every article has its bias. But by and Lodge, because

952
01:00:08,200 --> 01:00:10,480
Speaker 1: of the collaborative nature of the project, they have been

953
01:00:10,520 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: ways to mitigate bad actors and respond to UM those

954
01:00:15,240 --> 01:00:18,880
Speaker 1: sorts of attempts at corruption and cooptation. So you know,

955
01:00:18,960 --> 01:00:22,800
Speaker 1: it goes to show that you know, even something as

956
01:00:23,160 --> 01:00:26,760
Speaker 1: I would say, the essentially organized as Wikipedia UM is

957
01:00:26,760 --> 01:00:32,560
Speaker 1: still able to regulate itself collaboratively. Yeah. I think around

958
01:00:32,600 --> 01:00:36,240
Speaker 1: this time last year here on the show, we interviewed

959
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:43,360
Speaker 1: somebody from Wikimedia UM specifically talking about how the talking

960
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:47,120
Speaker 1: about the the regional differences of the wikipedias that are

961
01:00:47,160 --> 01:00:50,440
Speaker 1: in different countries and in different regions, how that impact

962
01:00:50,520 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 1: access access information and how people in their own communities

963
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:58,840
Speaker 1: can work towards providing a fuller better picture of the

964
01:00:58,880 --> 01:01:02,280
Speaker 1: types of information that people are getting. UM and the

965
01:01:02,600 --> 01:01:04,920
Speaker 1: great part about it is that it really does put

966
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:08,200
Speaker 1: the power into anyone's hands. It's not it's it's not

967
01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:14,040
Speaker 1: gate kept the same way a lot of other information is. Yeah, yeah,

968
01:01:14,080 --> 01:01:17,400
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of it. Really, I think another problem

969
01:01:17,400 --> 01:01:20,880
Speaker 1: in case of information sharing or rather file sharing and

970
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:24,120
Speaker 1: just so that I pay it to pay architecture, we

971
01:01:24,200 --> 01:01:28,120
Speaker 1: found in really um, the pirating community could and could

972
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:32,320
Speaker 1: you know, there's facilities, access and the exchange of cultural

973
01:01:32,360 --> 01:01:35,600
Speaker 1: products there might otherwise be lost, you know, as we're

974
01:01:35,600 --> 01:01:38,280
Speaker 1: seeing with a lot of these shows being axed, and

975
01:01:38,920 --> 01:01:43,720
Speaker 1: you know, people's hard earned UM, you know hard people

976
01:01:43,720 --> 01:01:46,400
Speaker 1: who you know, really worked hard on sitting projects and stuff.

977
01:01:46,440 --> 01:01:50,600
Speaker 1: These companies with their you know, tax dodging schemes and whatever,

978
01:01:50,600 --> 01:01:53,520
Speaker 1: you're able to basically sweep all out a side. UM.

979
01:01:53,560 --> 01:01:56,120
Speaker 1: And so the fact that UM, we are able to

980
01:01:56,120 --> 01:01:59,560
Speaker 1: presume and of course in films and view and TV

981
01:01:59,640 --> 01:02:02,840
Speaker 1: shows being taken down by sitting streaming services and not

982
01:02:02,920 --> 01:02:08,480
Speaker 1: eve being able to be found easily physically, UM. You know,

983
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:14,920
Speaker 1: having these files and stuff just accessible online UM, shared

984
01:02:15,120 --> 01:02:18,640
Speaker 1: between payers is it's really great to see, UM, and

985
01:02:18,680 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 1: it really allows for the preservation of things right otherwise

986
01:02:22,640 --> 01:02:26,800
Speaker 1: be lost and of course there's also as another example

987
01:02:26,840 --> 01:02:31,360
Speaker 1: of a sort of digital comments um, the idea of

988
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:34,520
Speaker 1: open source, or really the free software movement, which is

989
01:02:34,680 --> 01:02:41,560
Speaker 1: a social movement aimed at obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms

990
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:44,800
Speaker 1: for software users, you know, to run the software, to

991
01:02:44,880 --> 01:02:48,320
Speaker 1: study software, to modify the software, and to share copies

992
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:51,840
Speaker 1: of that software, whether the modified or not. UM. The

993
01:02:51,880 --> 01:02:54,640
Speaker 1: philosophy of this free software movement, there's really this idea

994
01:02:54,720 --> 01:02:58,160
Speaker 1: that computer you should not lead to people being prevented

995
01:02:58,360 --> 01:03:00,640
Speaker 1: from corporating with other In fact, it should. The opposite

996
01:03:00,680 --> 01:03:05,320
Speaker 1: is be allowing people to cooperate with each other. So

997
01:03:05,480 --> 01:03:10,720
Speaker 1: things like you rejecting restrictions on software, promoting free software,

998
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:17,800
Speaker 1: and liberating people who use some technology, use computers. It's

999
01:03:17,800 --> 01:03:19,880
Speaker 1: really what you know, the free software movement is trying

1000
01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:23,600
Speaker 1: to do. UM. One of the founders of the movement

1001
01:03:23,640 --> 01:03:27,480
Speaker 1: again name is Stilman. He has said that the idea

1002
01:03:27,520 --> 01:03:29,920
Speaker 1: the free software movement is that, you know, by allowing

1003
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:36,040
Speaker 1: free access to software, it allows it promotes, rather than

1004
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:39,440
Speaker 1: hinders a progression of technology, because it means that much

1005
01:03:39,560 --> 01:03:43,720
Speaker 1: of the wasteful duplication of system programming effort can be avoided.

1006
01:03:43,800 --> 01:03:48,480
Speaker 1: You know that AFFLCA instead of going into advancing different projects,

1007
01:03:48,840 --> 01:03:51,200
Speaker 1: so you open source and you know, free software movement,

1008
01:03:51,280 --> 01:03:53,360
Speaker 1: what if you want to call it, it's although I

1009
01:03:53,400 --> 01:03:56,960
Speaker 1: know there's some people make a distinction, Um it is.

1010
01:03:57,200 --> 01:04:00,640
Speaker 1: I would believe I would think a manifest station of

1011
01:04:01,280 --> 01:04:05,960
Speaker 1: digital comments people are able to self organize through the

1012
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:12,400
Speaker 1: associate and really just allowing people to get their hands

1013
01:04:12,440 --> 01:04:17,320
Speaker 1: on some software, to creates, to run, to redistribute, to

1014
01:04:17,440 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 1: change their software, to look to pick apart and learn

1015
01:04:21,800 --> 01:04:29,480
Speaker 1: from certain code. Um I really just allow people to

1016
01:04:30,000 --> 01:04:33,280
Speaker 1: continue to create and share. And the sort of culture

1017
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 1: that open source, that free software creates is one of

1018
01:04:37,120 --> 01:04:40,360
Speaker 1: you know, courtesy, is one of collaborations of helping one

1019
01:04:40,320 --> 01:04:43,480
Speaker 1: another to contribute to a greater whole um, to sort

1020
01:04:43,520 --> 01:04:48,800
Speaker 1: of regulate each other's monitor activity that might jeopardize the project,

1021
01:04:49,640 --> 01:04:51,520
Speaker 1: and we see the benefits of that. You know, a

1022
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:57,000
Speaker 1: lot of the most recognizable, high traffic open software projects

1023
01:04:57,480 --> 01:05:00,000
Speaker 1: uh stable. You know, they're secure and they're very thorough

1024
01:05:00,000 --> 01:05:03,560
Speaker 1: the understood by the people who collaborate to create them,

1025
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:06,040
Speaker 1: compared to a lot of the more clues and proprietary

1026
01:05:06,080 --> 01:05:11,800
Speaker 1: projects that are not as accessible, not as open to

1027
01:05:11,840 --> 01:05:17,360
Speaker 1: scrutiny and study. So it is I think, in a

1028
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:20,720
Speaker 1: sense a phone of of anarchy and um of people

1029
01:05:20,880 --> 01:05:24,280
Speaker 1: governing themselves and cooperating to create a whole greater than

1030
01:05:24,320 --> 01:05:28,640
Speaker 1: any individual could create a loon um. And speaking of

1031
01:05:28,760 --> 01:05:34,640
Speaker 1: you know people I guess coming together and communicating and collaborating. Um.

1032
01:05:34,680 --> 01:05:37,440
Speaker 1: It's this sense that I guess people have been discussing

1033
01:05:38,120 --> 01:05:43,600
Speaker 1: a lot lately of the digital public square and Twitter

1034
01:05:43,680 --> 01:05:47,080
Speaker 1: teams is usually at the center of that conversation. This

1035
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:52,240
Speaker 1: idea that we have this space that you know that

1036
01:05:52,440 --> 01:05:57,360
Speaker 1: shouldn't be privatized, shouldn't that should be freely accessed and

1037
01:05:57,520 --> 01:06:01,400
Speaker 1: everyone could communicate without restrict shown And when you have

1038
01:06:01,440 --> 01:06:06,120
Speaker 1: the free speech, people within that honestly question the value

1039
01:06:06,200 --> 01:06:11,160
Speaker 1: of Twitter pretty much every day. Uh you know, obviously

1040
01:06:11,680 --> 01:06:14,439
Speaker 1: some good let's come out of it. And then really

1041
01:06:14,760 --> 01:06:17,320
Speaker 1: other sort of quote and qude digital public squares, like

1042
01:06:17,360 --> 01:06:21,360
Speaker 1: any sort of me and extreame social media, some good

1043
01:06:21,400 --> 01:06:23,760
Speaker 1: you know comes out to them. You know, you meet people,

1044
01:06:24,160 --> 01:06:26,200
Speaker 1: you able to work in projects. There was a meat

1045
01:06:26,240 --> 01:06:29,200
Speaker 1: like minded folks. All that is is good, but also

1046
01:06:29,200 --> 01:06:33,640
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, terrible, terrible things have come

1047
01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:38,720
Speaker 1: out to these platforms and continue to every single day, um.

1048
01:06:38,880 --> 01:06:41,880
Speaker 1: And so it's it's a mixed bag. But I think

1049
01:06:42,200 --> 01:06:45,520
Speaker 1: any sort of digital commons project will need a space

1050
01:06:46,520 --> 01:06:49,280
Speaker 1: and how that space is conceived what of course need

1051
01:06:49,360 --> 01:06:53,840
Speaker 1: to be unmoored from you know, capitalist magination, um that

1052
01:06:54,600 --> 01:06:57,600
Speaker 1: the an ad whole um you know, potentially economy reach

1053
01:06:57,720 --> 01:07:02,600
Speaker 1: economy that aims to keep us divided and button heads.

1054
01:07:03,640 --> 01:07:07,120
Speaker 1: But I do think they will need be there will

1055
01:07:07,160 --> 01:07:12,040
Speaker 1: need to be a space for communication across boundaries, across

1056
01:07:12,120 --> 01:07:16,520
Speaker 1: regions around the world easily. Last thing I really wanted

1057
01:07:16,600 --> 01:07:20,640
Speaker 1: to touch on on this topic. It's really the sort

1058
01:07:20,640 --> 01:07:24,360
Speaker 1: of the overlap beteen the idea of digital commons and

1059
01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: t growth, so you know, both sort of question that

1060
01:07:28,120 --> 01:07:32,040
Speaker 1: sort of means an idea of consumption um. Digital commons,

1061
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:35,280
Speaker 1: you know, they promote this this idea of someone who

1062
01:07:35,640 --> 01:07:39,960
Speaker 1: both consumes and produces, consumes value and digital space, but

1063
01:07:40,040 --> 01:07:45,440
Speaker 1: also adds to that value that doesn't could modify um

1064
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:50,360
Speaker 1: the resources available in the digital space, but rather you know,

1065
01:07:50,440 --> 01:07:53,920
Speaker 1: makes it accessible and adds to it, contributes to it,

1066
01:07:55,080 --> 01:07:57,080
Speaker 1: and that sort the idea of open access really something

1067
01:07:57,120 --> 01:08:00,480
Speaker 1: to the growth also tries to emphasize, you know, even

1068
01:08:00,520 --> 01:08:04,280
Speaker 1: though we're trying to scale within planetary limits. We still want,

1069
01:08:04,320 --> 01:08:07,600
Speaker 1: you know, a good life for all. We still want

1070
01:08:07,680 --> 01:08:12,720
Speaker 1: people to to collaborate and create um and fract beople

1071
01:08:12,760 --> 01:08:16,519
Speaker 1: more free to do so without limitations that the growth

1072
01:08:16,560 --> 01:08:22,920
Speaker 1: oriented capitalist economy imposes on us. The idea, of course,

1073
01:08:22,960 --> 01:08:26,200
Speaker 1: digital commons also brings the means of production in the

1074
01:08:26,240 --> 01:08:29,240
Speaker 1: digital spare under the control of the communities who use it.

1075
01:08:29,520 --> 01:08:32,920
Speaker 1: We use that resource, who use that service, in complete

1076
01:08:32,920 --> 01:08:36,519
Speaker 1: contrast the capitalist them of keeping them perfectly health and

1077
01:08:37,520 --> 01:08:46,280
Speaker 1: aiming to serve profit. Digital commons and de growth both

1078
01:08:46,320 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 1: emphasize access um information, to knowledge, the resources as part

1079
01:08:53,600 --> 01:08:55,840
Speaker 1: of our human heritage, as part of our human rights.

1080
01:08:56,439 --> 01:09:01,679
Speaker 1: The commons should be something that is openly available rather

1081
01:09:01,720 --> 01:09:11,800
Speaker 1: than restricted, commodified, privatized. Of course, unlike traditional commands, um,

1082
01:09:11,840 --> 01:09:17,880
Speaker 1: you know, digital commons are not easily exhaustible, not really exhaustible. Um.

1083
01:09:18,000 --> 01:09:21,200
Speaker 1: They're not subject to many of the limitations that physical

1084
01:09:21,280 --> 01:09:24,160
Speaker 1: commons would have. But at the same time, you know,

1085
01:09:24,160 --> 01:09:28,839
Speaker 1: they depend on a certain infrastructure, and infrastructure that relies

1086
01:09:29,120 --> 01:09:33,000
Speaker 1: on you know, energy, and that energy has to come

1087
01:09:33,040 --> 01:09:37,120
Speaker 1: from somewhere. Being able to access the internet requires um,

1088
01:09:37,320 --> 01:09:43,400
Speaker 1: certain tools, certain technologies, computers, phones, whatever UM, and the

1089
01:09:43,439 --> 01:09:47,880
Speaker 1: resources required to create those technologies has to come from somewhere. UM.

1090
01:09:48,000 --> 01:09:52,680
Speaker 1: The cables and the oceans, the satellites and space, you know,

1091
01:09:52,720 --> 01:09:55,759
Speaker 1: the electricity for the computers, the materials for the phones

1092
01:09:55,800 --> 01:10:00,760
Speaker 1: and the computers. All of those things UM consume and

1093
01:10:00,800 --> 01:10:04,360
Speaker 1: contribute the exhaustion of environmental resources, and so balancing that

1094
01:10:04,680 --> 01:10:08,040
Speaker 1: and being common sense of environmental impact, we still have

1095
01:10:08,120 --> 01:10:11,880
Speaker 1: to be essential component and you know, any development of

1096
01:10:11,920 --> 01:10:15,880
Speaker 1: the digital comments. At the end of the day, I

1097
01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:21,679
Speaker 1: believe that humans are sort of pre program to create

1098
01:10:21,800 --> 01:10:26,080
Speaker 1: and to collaborate with each other UM, and I think

1099
01:10:26,120 --> 01:10:29,400
Speaker 1: digital comments are one way in which we can do that.

1100
01:10:30,720 --> 01:10:36,839
Speaker 1: I really appreciated UM the way that a different writers

1101
01:10:36,840 --> 01:10:40,639
Speaker 1: and thinkers on the subjects have UM sort of explore

1102
01:10:40,680 --> 01:10:45,679
Speaker 1: those ideas. Of course I drew a bit from one

1103
01:10:45,720 --> 01:10:52,720
Speaker 1: particular author, Mayo Foster moral UM and the exploration of

1104
01:10:52,800 --> 01:10:57,439
Speaker 1: the idea, But there's a lot available if you're interested

1105
01:10:57,439 --> 01:11:00,639
Speaker 1: in covering topic and what happened. Of course, the same

1106
01:11:00,760 --> 01:11:03,519
Speaker 1: goes for the comments in general. There a lot of

1107
01:11:03,520 --> 01:11:06,880
Speaker 1: different resources out there. UM. Eleanor Ostrom's work is creed

1108
01:11:06,920 --> 01:11:09,800
Speaker 1: place to start, and I really think it's important that

1109
01:11:09,880 --> 01:11:14,720
Speaker 1: we do um get these conversations rolling in the mainstream,

1110
01:11:15,080 --> 01:11:19,920
Speaker 1: in the background, in every corner and every space, because

1111
01:11:20,400 --> 01:11:24,840
Speaker 1: we stand to benefit a lot from it, and we

1112
01:11:24,880 --> 01:11:31,080
Speaker 1: honestly really need it in a time like this. That's

1113
01:11:31,120 --> 01:11:36,280
Speaker 1: it from me for this episode. You can follow me

1114
01:11:36,320 --> 01:11:41,439
Speaker 1: on YouTube at androids um, on Twitter at and disclosed

1115
01:11:41,439 --> 01:11:44,080
Speaker 1: saying true, and on Patreon you can support me. I

1116
01:11:44,120 --> 01:11:49,320
Speaker 1: should like Atton dot com slash same true Yeah, and

1117
01:11:49,360 --> 01:11:52,479
Speaker 1: you can find it could happen here on Twitter and Instagram.

1118
01:11:52,479 --> 01:11:55,360
Speaker 1: Apparently we have the coolson as a TikTok, a thing

1119
01:11:55,400 --> 01:11:58,360
Speaker 1: that we learned. Do we officially have one? I thought, well,

1120
01:11:58,400 --> 01:12:01,679
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I okay, well that we did.

1121
01:12:02,120 --> 01:12:04,000
Speaker 1: Who knows? We may or we do not have a TikTok.

1122
01:12:04,040 --> 01:12:07,800
Speaker 1: You'll never know. By earlier January, we definitely will because

1123
01:12:07,800 --> 01:12:11,920
Speaker 1: we have something special planned. Um. But yes, Twitter, at least,

1124
01:12:11,960 --> 01:12:15,160
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at at happened here. Pondonicles and media

1125
01:12:15,560 --> 01:12:20,120
Speaker 1: still on where despite despite the digital town square collapsing,

1126
01:12:20,160 --> 01:12:24,160
Speaker 1: we are holding out in the in the dystopian ruins

1127
01:12:24,240 --> 01:12:45,160
Speaker 1: of Twitter. UM. So yeah, anyway, welcome to it could

1128
01:12:45,240 --> 01:12:48,679
Speaker 1: happen here a show. I've had a bunch of ship actually,

1129
01:12:49,160 --> 01:12:54,479
Speaker 1: but but our our core is collapse and UH, political

1130
01:12:54,560 --> 01:12:57,160
Speaker 1: violence in the United States. That's that's where we got

1131
01:12:57,200 --> 01:13:00,280
Speaker 1: our bones. And today we're getting back to basics. We're

1132
01:13:00,320 --> 01:13:03,200
Speaker 1: we're going into the roots. UM. Those of you who

1133
01:13:03,240 --> 01:13:06,960
Speaker 1: live in New Mexico are probably broadly familiar with the

1134
01:13:08,280 --> 01:13:11,439
Speaker 1: kind of basics of this story. UM. Many of you

1135
01:13:11,479 --> 01:13:13,960
Speaker 1: probably will have heard aspects of this. But there have

1136
01:13:14,040 --> 01:13:17,080
Speaker 1: been a series of shootings that took place in December

1137
01:13:17,360 --> 01:13:20,599
Speaker 1: of last year in January of this year, UM at

1138
01:13:20,640 --> 01:13:24,640
Speaker 1: the homes of to state legislators and two county commissioners.

1139
01:13:25,040 --> 01:13:29,200
Speaker 1: No one was injured, thankfully, UM. But this was obviously

1140
01:13:29,280 --> 01:13:30,960
Speaker 1: something that was scaring the hell out of a lot

1141
01:13:31,040 --> 01:13:34,439
Speaker 1: of people, UM, liberals and people on the left in

1142
01:13:34,479 --> 01:13:38,000
Speaker 1: New Mexico over the last several weeks because they were

1143
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:42,439
Speaker 1: clearly politically motivated. UM. New Mexico has had shootings at

1144
01:13:42,439 --> 01:13:45,040
Speaker 1: protests and it's its share of the political violence that

1145
01:13:45,080 --> 01:13:47,760
Speaker 1: has swept a large chunk of the country, and this

1146
01:13:47,800 --> 01:13:51,880
Speaker 1: seemed like a real scary years of lead style escalation. UM.

1147
01:13:52,000 --> 01:13:54,200
Speaker 1: Very recently, within the last couple of days of US

1148
01:13:54,200 --> 01:13:57,559
Speaker 1: recording this, it was announced that the police had brought

1149
01:13:57,600 --> 01:14:01,479
Speaker 1: in the guy who was responsible for organizing this UM.

1150
01:14:01,520 --> 01:14:04,000
Speaker 1: He did not carry out the shootings himself. His name

1151
01:14:04,120 --> 01:14:09,360
Speaker 1: is Solomon Penia um and he was a former Republican

1152
01:14:09,880 --> 01:14:15,120
Speaker 1: candidate for local office who hired fore men Um in

1153
01:14:15,240 --> 01:14:19,120
Speaker 1: order to shoot at the homes of elected Democrats. Um.

1154
01:14:19,120 --> 01:14:21,479
Speaker 1: Those are the basics of it. Uh. The arrest Warren

1155
01:14:21,520 --> 01:14:24,840
Speaker 1: affidavit says that penia intended to cause serious harm or

1156
01:14:24,880 --> 01:14:28,040
Speaker 1: cause death to the occupants inside their homes, which seems

1157
01:14:28,280 --> 01:14:32,880
Speaker 1: pretty credible based on what we know objectively about what happened. Um.

1158
01:14:32,920 --> 01:14:36,720
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that Penya had donated repeatedly in

1159
01:14:36,720 --> 01:14:39,080
Speaker 1: the past to Lyndon LaRouche, which I'm sure we'll get

1160
01:14:39,080 --> 01:14:41,000
Speaker 1: into a little bit later. But I want to introduce

1161
01:14:41,040 --> 01:14:43,040
Speaker 1: my guest for this episode, who knows the story much

1162
01:14:43,120 --> 01:14:47,120
Speaker 1: better than I do, a local, uh New Mexico based activist,

1163
01:14:47,560 --> 01:14:50,760
Speaker 1: Lucas Herndon. Lucas, How are you doing today, buddy? I'm

1164
01:14:50,760 --> 01:14:54,040
Speaker 1: doing good man. Glad to be back, sort of really

1165
01:14:54,080 --> 01:14:56,040
Speaker 1: glad to have you back. You've been on the show before.

1166
01:14:56,560 --> 01:14:58,080
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna kind of let you take it from

1167
01:14:58,120 --> 01:15:00,320
Speaker 1: here now that I've sort of laid out the bones

1168
01:15:00,360 --> 01:15:05,000
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. Thanks, and just a couple of clarifying points, um,

1169
01:15:05,080 --> 01:15:10,759
Speaker 1: which only because things have been moving very quickly today. UM.

1170
01:15:10,800 --> 01:15:14,120
Speaker 1: This is the day after he was arrested. There is

1171
01:15:14,160 --> 01:15:17,519
Speaker 1: actually now evidence put out from the A p D

1172
01:15:18,439 --> 01:15:23,720
Speaker 1: that um Penya himself UH was in the car and

1173
01:15:23,800 --> 01:15:28,080
Speaker 1: attempted to fire at least one of the targets. Apparently

1174
01:15:28,400 --> 01:15:30,960
Speaker 1: he had an A R fifteen that quote unquote jammed.

1175
01:15:31,520 --> 01:15:34,920
Speaker 1: It didn't stop that shooting from occurring. His accomplice, who

1176
01:15:35,080 --> 01:15:37,919
Speaker 1: is unnamed at this time, at least to our knowledge,

1177
01:15:38,320 --> 01:15:40,840
Speaker 1: UH did fire a glock out of the car during

1178
01:15:40,880 --> 01:15:42,880
Speaker 1: that that I mean, so that there was still a

1179
01:15:42,920 --> 01:15:45,960
Speaker 1: shooting that happened. But it is worth noting that he

1180
01:15:46,000 --> 01:15:48,560
Speaker 1: was not just the mastermind but also an active participant,

1181
01:15:48,600 --> 01:15:51,240
Speaker 1: at least according to what we know today. Yeah, it

1182
01:15:51,240 --> 01:15:52,720
Speaker 1: looks like the weapon that was used was a tan

1183
01:15:52,840 --> 01:15:55,720
Speaker 1: and black clock with a drum magazine. UM or at

1184
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:59,560
Speaker 1: least the drum was seized at the thing doesn't really matter, UM.

1185
01:15:59,600 --> 01:16:03,439
Speaker 1: But so I'm interested kind of first in if you

1186
01:16:03,439 --> 01:16:05,760
Speaker 1: want to walk us through how you became aware that

1187
01:16:05,800 --> 01:16:08,280
Speaker 1: these shootings had happened and how you would kind of

1188
01:16:08,360 --> 01:16:12,599
Speaker 1: characterize the impact it had on on the community around you,

1189
01:16:12,680 --> 01:16:15,800
Speaker 1: because this obviously is is intensely frightening and is the

1190
01:16:15,880 --> 01:16:18,120
Speaker 1: kind of thing most of us have been paying attention,

1191
01:16:18,160 --> 01:16:20,439
Speaker 1: have been worried about happening for for quite a while.

1192
01:16:21,000 --> 01:16:25,600
Speaker 1: Right exactly that. Yeah, so, um, you know, in in

1193
01:16:25,680 --> 01:16:28,639
Speaker 1: the in the political nonprofit world, which which I work

1194
01:16:28,680 --> 01:16:33,799
Speaker 1: in professionally, UM, it's not uncommon for the whole movement

1195
01:16:33,840 --> 01:16:35,840
Speaker 1: sort of takes the last part of December off for

1196
01:16:35,880 --> 01:16:39,960
Speaker 1: the holidays. UM. So unfortunately, there was sort of not

1197
01:16:40,120 --> 01:16:42,920
Speaker 1: a lot of eyes on stuff in the latter part

1198
01:16:42,920 --> 01:16:45,640
Speaker 1: of December. But as soon as we got back to

1199
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:50,080
Speaker 1: work on the third of January, a series of events

1200
01:16:50,120 --> 01:16:54,520
Speaker 1: happened where there was a realization that there were shootings

1201
01:16:54,520 --> 01:17:01,800
Speaker 1: that happened at different elected officials houses. Right, and UM,

1202
01:17:01,800 --> 01:17:05,240
Speaker 1: it turns out or it looks like that the cops

1203
01:17:05,439 --> 01:17:08,479
Speaker 1: were just starting to put it together themselves. But it

1204
01:17:08,600 --> 01:17:12,840
Speaker 1: came from, um, the fact that the first two targets

1205
01:17:13,000 --> 01:17:19,000
Speaker 1: were at the time ceded county commissioners in berno Leo County. Um.

1206
01:17:19,040 --> 01:17:23,200
Speaker 1: Just for extra added confusion, UM, one of those targets

1207
01:17:23,840 --> 01:17:26,479
Speaker 1: was she finished her term at the end of the year,

1208
01:17:26,520 --> 01:17:30,000
Speaker 1: so she's now she's not technically sitting as a commissioner anymore,

1209
01:17:30,080 --> 01:17:33,799
Speaker 1: just just for clarity UM. But then over the course

1210
01:17:34,040 --> 01:17:36,679
Speaker 1: of of you know, those weeks that we were all out,

1211
01:17:36,920 --> 01:17:40,320
Speaker 1: there were also then shootings at UM one of the

1212
01:17:40,360 --> 01:17:45,240
Speaker 1: state senators homes, and then in January there was also

1213
01:17:45,240 --> 01:17:49,720
Speaker 1: shootings at the campaign office of who the gentleman who

1214
01:17:49,800 --> 01:17:53,880
Speaker 1: is now our state attorney general. Within our sort of

1215
01:17:53,920 --> 01:17:56,439
Speaker 1: movement of people that work on you know, political things,

1216
01:17:56,439 --> 01:18:00,320
Speaker 1: we were all gearing up for the session are into Mexico.

1217
01:18:00,400 --> 01:18:03,960
Speaker 1: Our legislative session kicks off a sixty day term actually

1218
01:18:03,960 --> 01:18:09,000
Speaker 1: started today on January, and it became clear to all

1219
01:18:09,040 --> 01:18:11,880
Speaker 1: of us that this was happening, and we started, you know,

1220
01:18:12,120 --> 01:18:15,800
Speaker 1: talking amongst ourselves, and we really we did find out

1221
01:18:15,840 --> 01:18:18,320
Speaker 1: that at that point the cops had started piecing it together.

1222
01:18:18,320 --> 01:18:22,519
Speaker 1: They were piecing together pieces of information. It turns out

1223
01:18:22,560 --> 01:18:27,040
Speaker 1: that after the shooting on the third UM, the only

1224
01:18:27,080 --> 01:18:32,479
Speaker 1: other named accomplice so far, this guy Jose Trahio, was

1225
01:18:33,040 --> 01:18:36,960
Speaker 1: arrested forty minutes after the shooting. UM a p D

1226
01:18:37,320 --> 01:18:42,800
Speaker 1: because of ongoing issues with UM crime in the in

1227
01:18:42,840 --> 01:18:47,320
Speaker 1: the city of Albuquerque, has like a quick response like

1228
01:18:47,439 --> 01:18:51,360
Speaker 1: system set up that like tracks gunfire and yeah, so

1229
01:18:51,400 --> 01:18:54,240
Speaker 1: they were they were able to track this guy down. Um,

1230
01:18:54,360 --> 01:19:00,000
Speaker 1: he was driving a car that was registered to Penya. Um.

1231
01:18:59,760 --> 01:19:03,720
Speaker 1: And uh, there was other connections obviously that the you know,

1232
01:19:03,800 --> 01:19:07,240
Speaker 1: cops put things together and then yeah, and they executed

1233
01:19:07,240 --> 01:19:10,640
Speaker 1: the search warrant yesterday. There was a SWAT situation. It

1234
01:19:10,680 --> 01:19:16,240
Speaker 1: sounds like it was um preventative more than anything, but

1235
01:19:16,280 --> 01:19:18,360
Speaker 1: it but but some of the stories that have come

1236
01:19:18,360 --> 01:19:21,200
Speaker 1: out is that he was reluctant to leave at first,

1237
01:19:21,280 --> 01:19:25,439
Speaker 1: but there wasn't actually any overt threats of violence. But

1238
01:19:25,479 --> 01:19:27,280
Speaker 1: you know, the cops did respond was swat when they

1239
01:19:27,360 --> 01:19:30,519
Speaker 1: arrested him. Yeah, I mean, given the fact that he

1240
01:19:30,800 --> 01:19:34,280
Speaker 1: had carried out a series of shootings. Uh. Not surprised

1241
01:19:34,320 --> 01:19:38,040
Speaker 1: to hear that. Now, I'm I'm kind of curious. Was

1242
01:19:38,120 --> 01:19:42,599
Speaker 1: there a community response prior to sort of Pinia being

1243
01:19:42,880 --> 01:19:47,680
Speaker 1: exposed and arrested? Was their community response kind of reacting

1244
01:19:47,720 --> 01:19:50,439
Speaker 1: to the fact that there were was an escalating series

1245
01:19:50,439 --> 01:19:55,479
Speaker 1: of shootings targeting local elected leaders. Yeah. So the company

1246
01:19:55,520 --> 01:19:58,320
Speaker 1: I worked for, Progress Now New Mexico, we put out

1247
01:19:59,160 --> 01:20:02,720
Speaker 1: a series of twee eats. Um. Basically as soon as

1248
01:20:02,760 --> 01:20:06,960
Speaker 1: we had started putting two and two together, Um, you know,

1249
01:20:07,040 --> 01:20:12,720
Speaker 1: we we were careful to say that disappears politically motivated.

1250
01:20:12,840 --> 01:20:15,120
Speaker 1: We don't have hard evidence, but it's hard to not

1251
01:20:15,439 --> 01:20:19,280
Speaker 1: put those two things together. We at progress now and

1252
01:20:19,280 --> 01:20:23,000
Speaker 1: and me specifically, having worked here for a very long time, UM,

1253
01:20:23,040 --> 01:20:26,160
Speaker 1: I have been tracking political violence here in the state

1254
01:20:26,439 --> 01:20:30,280
Speaker 1: UM for for a while and and i've i've i've

1255
01:20:30,320 --> 01:20:32,160
Speaker 1: been part of it in the sense that I was

1256
01:20:32,760 --> 01:20:36,559
Speaker 1: threatened and docked in as were some of my other colleagues,

1257
01:20:37,040 --> 01:20:39,400
Speaker 1: and so, you know, these things hit close to home,

1258
01:20:39,520 --> 01:20:41,639
Speaker 1: right and on the and on the one hand, it's

1259
01:20:42,280 --> 01:20:45,879
Speaker 1: it's tough to see these things as anything but political

1260
01:20:45,960 --> 01:20:49,280
Speaker 1: violence for for those of us like you, Robert, that

1261
01:20:49,360 --> 01:20:51,360
Speaker 1: like we see it all the time because we're paying

1262
01:20:51,360 --> 01:20:55,440
Speaker 1: attention to it. On the other hand, there is unfortunately

1263
01:20:55,479 --> 01:20:57,920
Speaker 1: a lot of gun violence in Albuquerque, and you know,

1264
01:20:58,040 --> 01:21:00,439
Speaker 1: so there were there were some pushback people, Oh, I know,

1265
01:21:00,600 --> 01:21:02,320
Speaker 1: this is just you know, there's just that much gun

1266
01:21:02,400 --> 01:21:04,880
Speaker 1: violence quote unquote, but that's you know, that was a

1267
01:21:04,920 --> 01:21:08,760
Speaker 1: silly premise. Honestly, this was very clearly politically motivated. And

1268
01:21:08,880 --> 01:21:11,320
Speaker 1: now that we have a person to attach this to,

1269
01:21:11,520 --> 01:21:15,080
Speaker 1: and we can look at his social media history and

1270
01:21:15,080 --> 01:21:18,080
Speaker 1: and you know, stuff we've found in telegram stuff on

1271
01:21:18,080 --> 01:21:21,720
Speaker 1: his Twitter. It's so clear. I mean he we just

1272
01:21:21,840 --> 01:21:25,040
Speaker 1: actually even today, right before we got on here, we

1273
01:21:25,240 --> 01:21:28,920
Speaker 1: just published another telegram piece that we found on our

1274
01:21:28,960 --> 01:21:32,800
Speaker 1: Twitter that he threatened the Secretary of State after he

1275
01:21:32,840 --> 01:21:36,479
Speaker 1: lost his election, UM telling saying that she should quote

1276
01:21:36,520 --> 01:21:39,719
Speaker 1: unquote hang until she's dead. So yeah, I mean, he's

1277
01:21:39,760 --> 01:21:43,480
Speaker 1: this has been an ongoing part of his um ideology

1278
01:21:43,640 --> 01:21:45,920
Speaker 1: for a while. You know, he has a lot of

1279
01:21:46,040 --> 01:21:51,760
Speaker 1: pro maga posts, UM, a lot of big lie you know,

1280
01:21:52,360 --> 01:21:56,080
Speaker 1: tainted election you know, uh rhetoric all over his social

1281
01:21:56,080 --> 01:22:00,360
Speaker 1: media such as it exists anyway, Now, have this altered

1282
01:22:00,400 --> 01:22:02,759
Speaker 1: it all um, or had an impact on your thinking

1283
01:22:02,840 --> 01:22:05,320
Speaker 1: of um? You know, when when you have attacks or

1284
01:22:05,360 --> 01:22:07,680
Speaker 1: a series of attacks like this, as you said, it's

1285
01:22:07,720 --> 01:22:10,600
Speaker 1: impossible to say prior to kind of knowing who did it,

1286
01:22:10,640 --> 01:22:13,640
Speaker 1: that like this is certainly politically motivated. But at a

1287
01:22:13,680 --> 01:22:17,439
Speaker 1: certain point it becomes kind of reasonable and and safe

1288
01:22:17,560 --> 01:22:20,080
Speaker 1: to make that assumption, and I think also necessary when

1289
01:22:20,080 --> 01:22:23,920
Speaker 1: you're trying to two protect a community and get people

1290
01:22:24,000 --> 01:22:28,360
Speaker 1: prepared for the likelihood that they're going to encounter of violence. UM.

1291
01:22:28,800 --> 01:22:31,080
Speaker 1: We've also had those cases where like it, it is

1292
01:22:31,120 --> 01:22:33,800
Speaker 1: impossible to know, you know, we had a series of

1293
01:22:33,840 --> 01:22:36,160
Speaker 1: attacks on power plants last year. We still don't know

1294
01:22:36,200 --> 01:22:38,720
Speaker 1: who did the ones in North Carolina or who did

1295
01:22:38,760 --> 01:22:41,200
Speaker 1: the ones in Portland. But it turned out that the

1296
01:22:41,240 --> 01:22:45,200
Speaker 1: folks who did that Christmas Day attack UM on power

1297
01:22:45,360 --> 01:22:51,679
Speaker 1: substation and UM Washington State were um uh just robbing

1298
01:22:51,680 --> 01:22:54,760
Speaker 1: a place right effectively non political. So it is kind

1299
01:22:54,800 --> 01:22:57,400
Speaker 1: of impossible to get has this altered it all your

1300
01:22:57,479 --> 01:23:01,240
Speaker 1: kind of feelings on when at what sort of point

1301
01:23:01,320 --> 01:23:04,600
Speaker 1: do we start raising the alarm? Yeah, you know, I

1302
01:23:04,600 --> 01:23:07,320
Speaker 1: mean I think that progress now you know, my my,

1303
01:23:07,320 --> 01:23:10,720
Speaker 1: my organization that I work with, we as soon as

1304
01:23:10,760 --> 01:23:13,240
Speaker 1: we heard something was afoot, we put out the word

1305
01:23:13,400 --> 01:23:15,280
Speaker 1: for us. It was for us, it was a matter

1306
01:23:15,320 --> 01:23:17,519
Speaker 1: of safety as as as people who have lived through

1307
01:23:17,560 --> 01:23:20,960
Speaker 1: it ourselves. Um. This was a time that the community

1308
01:23:21,000 --> 01:23:23,080
Speaker 1: needed to be aware of these things and be thinking

1309
01:23:23,120 --> 01:23:26,840
Speaker 1: about it. Um and and to be honest at you know,

1310
01:23:26,960 --> 01:23:29,280
Speaker 1: our our group discussion about it was it was better

1311
01:23:29,280 --> 01:23:32,480
Speaker 1: to be safe than sorry. If if somehow this wasn't political,

1312
01:23:32,680 --> 01:23:35,960
Speaker 1: or if it was maybe personalized or something like that,

1313
01:23:36,680 --> 01:23:41,040
Speaker 1: um at you know, at these legislators and lawmakers, rather

1314
01:23:41,080 --> 01:23:44,880
Speaker 1: than it being overtly just political ideology. You know, that

1315
01:23:44,920 --> 01:23:47,760
Speaker 1: would be we could walk it back. But again it

1316
01:23:47,840 --> 01:23:49,640
Speaker 1: was for us we made the decision that no, this

1317
01:23:49,720 --> 01:23:53,360
Speaker 1: information needs to be out there. Um. We have, especially

1318
01:23:53,400 --> 01:23:55,320
Speaker 1: as we were gearing up for the session, there was

1319
01:23:55,360 --> 01:23:58,800
Speaker 1: just there's too much on the line. Um. You know,

1320
01:23:59,400 --> 01:24:02,800
Speaker 1: up until years ago, at our state legislature, which we

1321
01:24:02,840 --> 01:24:06,280
Speaker 1: call the Roundhouse because it's a big round building. UM.

1322
01:24:06,360 --> 01:24:10,519
Speaker 1: Up at the Roundhouse, you could carry firearms into the building. Um.

1323
01:24:10,560 --> 01:24:12,439
Speaker 1: It was just a sort of a remnant of New

1324
01:24:12,479 --> 01:24:17,040
Speaker 1: Mexico's sort of wild West days, I guess. Yah. But uh,

1325
01:24:17,200 --> 01:24:20,240
Speaker 1: but with the with the rise of with the rise

1326
01:24:20,320 --> 01:24:24,599
Speaker 1: of far right related violence, and you actually did have

1327
01:24:25,200 --> 01:24:30,000
Speaker 1: armed insurrection minded people showing up um in and around

1328
01:24:30,160 --> 01:24:34,800
Speaker 1: January six. Um. But even before that, really during during

1329
01:24:35,800 --> 01:24:37,519
Speaker 1: up with a lot of the MAGA rallies, the Trump

1330
01:24:37,520 --> 01:24:41,840
Speaker 1: trains and all that, the legislature passed their own you

1331
01:24:41,880 --> 01:24:44,920
Speaker 1: know rules saying you couldn't bring guns into the into

1332
01:24:44,920 --> 01:24:49,200
Speaker 1: the legislature. And that was up even further this year

1333
01:24:49,240 --> 01:24:53,960
Speaker 1: by the installation of metal detectors. So but that's new.

1334
01:24:54,000 --> 01:24:56,879
Speaker 1: But that was directly related to this, this this looming

1335
01:24:57,000 --> 01:25:01,559
Speaker 1: threat over over lawmakers in the state. Um, they didn't

1336
01:25:01,560 --> 01:25:03,280
Speaker 1: know if they were going to have anybody in custody

1337
01:25:03,280 --> 01:25:06,840
Speaker 1: before things started started today, and so the legislature made

1338
01:25:06,840 --> 01:25:09,480
Speaker 1: that decision for themselves that they were going to institute

1339
01:25:09,479 --> 01:25:13,320
Speaker 1: that policy and have metal detectors on the way in. Yeah,

1340
01:25:13,400 --> 01:25:16,439
Speaker 1: I mean that that that that makes sense, and that

1341
01:25:16,760 --> 01:25:19,479
Speaker 1: I as I understand it, that it's still the law

1342
01:25:19,479 --> 01:25:21,200
Speaker 1: in the state of Texas actually that you can be

1343
01:25:21,439 --> 01:25:24,960
Speaker 1: armed inside the Capitol building. I certainly had been during

1344
01:25:24,960 --> 01:25:31,000
Speaker 1: protests years ago. It's interesting the watching kind of the

1345
01:25:31,120 --> 01:25:37,520
Speaker 1: simultaneous adaptation by the law enforcement, by kind of elected

1346
01:25:37,560 --> 01:25:41,759
Speaker 1: in sort of standard centrist Democrats and by the left

1347
01:25:41,800 --> 01:25:47,000
Speaker 1: in different ways to this escalation in in political violence,

1348
01:25:47,040 --> 01:25:50,080
Speaker 1: and kind of the acceptability on the right of using

1349
01:25:50,080 --> 01:25:52,360
Speaker 1: the threat or the practice of violence to try to

1350
01:25:52,400 --> 01:25:57,200
Speaker 1: push um for political ideology. Because everyone is kind of

1351
01:25:57,240 --> 01:26:01,040
Speaker 1: adapting in real time to it. I'm wondering, how are

1352
01:26:01,040 --> 01:26:03,400
Speaker 1: you kind of looking at this from the left, how

1353
01:26:03,400 --> 01:26:05,880
Speaker 1: are you how are you feeling about the way in

1354
01:26:05,920 --> 01:26:11,760
Speaker 1: which the actual state has responded so far? Yeah, it's complicated.

1355
01:26:12,000 --> 01:26:15,320
Speaker 1: Um So, the tradition in New Mexico is on the

1356
01:26:15,360 --> 01:26:18,439
Speaker 1: opening day of the legislature, the governor gives the State

1357
01:26:18,439 --> 01:26:22,600
Speaker 1: of the State address. UM and I covered that earlier today.

1358
01:26:22,920 --> 01:26:25,719
Speaker 1: One of her key points and she and she tied

1359
01:26:25,760 --> 01:26:29,840
Speaker 1: it to this very issue, was she is pushing as

1360
01:26:29,840 --> 01:26:34,519
Speaker 1: a priority bill this year a quote unquote assault weapons ban. Uh.

1361
01:26:34,560 --> 01:26:38,680
Speaker 1: There is also another legislator who is pushing, um a

1362
01:26:39,320 --> 01:26:41,320
Speaker 1: what we would call a standard capacity but what they

1363
01:26:41,320 --> 01:26:44,720
Speaker 1: call a high capacity magazine ban. And you know, and

1364
01:26:44,760 --> 01:26:46,439
Speaker 1: then there's some other ones that are maybe a little

1365
01:26:46,439 --> 01:26:51,800
Speaker 1: bit more UM reasonable, like safe storage UM, which is

1366
01:26:51,840 --> 01:26:54,720
Speaker 1: something that I can get behind, you know. And I

1367
01:26:54,760 --> 01:26:57,120
Speaker 1: think there's a couple of things here to consider and

1368
01:26:57,120 --> 01:26:59,880
Speaker 1: and you know, and it gets complicated because people on

1369
01:27:00,120 --> 01:27:04,000
Speaker 1: right have dominated the conversation about guns and gun control

1370
01:27:04,280 --> 01:27:07,760
Speaker 1: for so long that it's hard to have UM, well

1371
01:27:07,800 --> 01:27:14,960
Speaker 1: intentioned conversations from the left, I find UM and and yeah, yeah,

1372
01:27:15,000 --> 01:27:18,360
Speaker 1: so you know, speaking personally as a gun owner and

1373
01:27:18,400 --> 01:27:22,160
Speaker 1: as somebody who has um made the decision of my

1374
01:27:22,200 --> 01:27:25,800
Speaker 1: life to be you know, armed and ready and have

1375
01:27:26,400 --> 01:27:29,360
Speaker 1: you know, body armor. And I you know, I don't

1376
01:27:29,400 --> 01:27:32,799
Speaker 1: just shoot guns. I train with guns. I train other people.

1377
01:27:33,479 --> 01:27:35,640
Speaker 1: I have a group of people that I work with

1378
01:27:35,680 --> 01:27:38,519
Speaker 1: and trust that if things ever got real bad, I

1379
01:27:38,560 --> 01:27:41,800
Speaker 1: would you know, we would call each other. UM, being

1380
01:27:41,920 --> 01:27:45,720
Speaker 1: that guy, I obviously have very strong feelings about being

1381
01:27:45,760 --> 01:27:47,479
Speaker 1: told by the state that I don't have a right

1382
01:27:47,520 --> 01:27:50,360
Speaker 1: to defend myself with the same types of weapons that

1383
01:27:50,400 --> 01:27:52,760
Speaker 1: I know the other side has. Right, so I think

1384
01:27:52,760 --> 01:27:54,439
Speaker 1: the answer you know, sorry, that was a little bit

1385
01:27:54,439 --> 01:27:58,800
Speaker 1: of a roundabout, But the point is that, UM, the

1386
01:27:59,080 --> 01:28:03,919
Speaker 1: person who perpeture to this um Mr Penia. It's unclear,

1387
01:28:04,080 --> 01:28:08,040
Speaker 1: but he is a felon. And UM there is some

1388
01:28:08,160 --> 01:28:13,120
Speaker 1: hay being made about um how he and others may

1389
01:28:13,120 --> 01:28:17,479
Speaker 1: have possessed guns. And you know, the reality we know

1390
01:28:17,720 --> 01:28:21,760
Speaker 1: is that it is not hard or difficult. Um two

1391
01:28:22,320 --> 01:28:25,280
Speaker 1: try to get guns one way or the other and

1392
01:28:25,439 --> 01:28:28,400
Speaker 1: so and and no, you can just drive across the

1393
01:28:28,400 --> 01:28:32,000
Speaker 1: border to Texas for one thing, I mean, or Arizona. Yeah, yeah,

1394
01:28:32,120 --> 01:28:34,880
Speaker 1: or Arizona. This guy was already what was, in fact

1395
01:28:34,960 --> 01:28:39,080
Speaker 1: restricted from being able to own any kind of firearm, right, right,

1396
01:28:39,240 --> 01:28:44,720
Speaker 1: And and so it is hard to be somebody who

1397
01:28:44,760 --> 01:28:47,720
Speaker 1: works on in the political left, and I work on

1398
01:28:47,760 --> 01:28:50,120
Speaker 1: a number of policy issues. My my day to day

1399
01:28:50,120 --> 01:28:53,519
Speaker 1: work focuses more on energy issues. Um. But but you know,

1400
01:28:53,560 --> 01:28:55,600
Speaker 1: but I have been doing this work long enough that

1401
01:28:55,640 --> 01:28:59,040
Speaker 1: I step in whenever there's stuff like this happening and

1402
01:28:59,120 --> 01:29:02,599
Speaker 1: cover it for for for my work. But it's yeah,

1403
01:29:02,640 --> 01:29:05,360
Speaker 1: it's UM, it's gonna be interesting to see. You know,

1404
01:29:05,400 --> 01:29:07,960
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's the political will in the

1405
01:29:08,000 --> 01:29:12,880
Speaker 1: state New Mexico. UM, even you know, moderate Democrats are

1406
01:29:12,920 --> 01:29:17,840
Speaker 1: our hunters are recreational shooters, UM. And I think that

1407
01:29:17,880 --> 01:29:22,519
Speaker 1: there's you know, there is some strong feelings about gun violence.

1408
01:29:22,760 --> 01:29:27,240
Speaker 1: There was a very tragic death UM involving children last

1409
01:29:27,640 --> 01:29:32,799
Speaker 1: year during our legislative session, UM, where where a middle

1410
01:29:32,800 --> 01:29:35,320
Speaker 1: schooler I believe maybe a high school or a kid

1411
01:29:35,320 --> 01:29:38,640
Speaker 1: either way, UM, took a pistol from his parents, you know,

1412
01:29:38,720 --> 01:29:41,880
Speaker 1: sock drawer basically and shot a kid. And you know,

1413
01:29:42,240 --> 01:29:44,640
Speaker 1: so again, safe storage is one of those things that

1414
01:29:44,680 --> 01:29:48,120
Speaker 1: I think most people generally can get behind, especially if

1415
01:29:48,160 --> 01:29:51,680
Speaker 1: we do something really good like subsidized safe storage, so

1416
01:29:51,720 --> 01:29:54,320
Speaker 1: that if you know, if you're a person who is

1417
01:29:54,360 --> 01:29:56,639
Speaker 1: of lesser means but you still want to protect yourself

1418
01:29:56,640 --> 01:29:58,680
Speaker 1: with a firearm, you can figure out how to get

1419
01:29:58,720 --> 01:30:02,040
Speaker 1: a safe or something like that. Anyway, that's so there

1420
01:30:02,160 --> 01:30:04,960
Speaker 1: there are things that we can do. UM. I think

1421
01:30:05,040 --> 01:30:08,080
Speaker 1: we know that outright bands one don't work and are

1422
01:30:08,120 --> 01:30:12,000
Speaker 1: hard to pass. And things like magazine capacity things, the

1423
01:30:12,120 --> 01:30:15,960
Speaker 1: enforcement level becomes difficult, and um, a good example of

1424
01:30:16,000 --> 01:30:18,160
Speaker 1: that is in New Mexico, we did pass a red

1425
01:30:18,160 --> 01:30:21,120
Speaker 1: flag law a number of years ago, and uh, you know,

1426
01:30:21,160 --> 01:30:23,559
Speaker 1: I've heard, I know you've talked about red flag laws

1427
01:30:23,640 --> 01:30:26,120
Speaker 1: in the past, and you know, and we had what

1428
01:30:26,200 --> 01:30:28,120
Speaker 1: a lot of states have had, which is that a

1429
01:30:28,320 --> 01:30:32,720
Speaker 1: number of sheriffs in conservative counties just very publicly said

1430
01:30:32,760 --> 01:30:35,360
Speaker 1: out loud that they weren't going to enforce it. And

1431
01:30:35,520 --> 01:30:39,360
Speaker 1: sure enough, you know, last year during the summer, when

1432
01:30:39,360 --> 01:30:41,160
Speaker 1: we hit the two year mark of the law being

1433
01:30:41,200 --> 01:30:46,320
Speaker 1: into effect, it had been used less than a dozen times, um, statewide.

1434
01:30:46,720 --> 01:30:49,800
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I mean, and one of the one

1435
01:30:49,800 --> 01:30:52,120
Speaker 1: of the things that's of obvious concern is if you

1436
01:30:52,240 --> 01:30:54,559
Speaker 1: have a lot of people living in these conservative areas

1437
01:30:54,560 --> 01:30:58,120
Speaker 1: where the sheriffs aren't enforcing the laws, um, they effectively

1438
01:30:58,160 --> 01:31:00,839
Speaker 1: have the ability to take the firearms they can acquire

1439
01:31:00,920 --> 01:31:04,760
Speaker 1: there to the areas that have maybe more restrictive gun

1440
01:31:04,800 --> 01:31:07,640
Speaker 1: control where there are elected Democrats and then shoot up

1441
01:31:07,680 --> 01:31:11,519
Speaker 1: their houses. Um. Yeah, I think kind of outside of that,

1442
01:31:11,560 --> 01:31:15,040
Speaker 1: I'm wondering. So, and obviously we're still looking at the

1443
01:31:15,040 --> 01:31:16,600
Speaker 1: fall out of this there's still quite a bit we

1444
01:31:16,600 --> 01:31:18,600
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think there's a lot of context

1445
01:31:18,640 --> 01:31:22,439
Speaker 1: on how Penya found these men that he hired. Um,

1446
01:31:22,479 --> 01:31:25,240
Speaker 1: although I am interested in that, I think it'll be

1447
01:31:25,320 --> 01:31:28,599
Speaker 1: it'll be worth learning. Is there kind of a lessons

1448
01:31:28,680 --> 01:31:31,040
Speaker 1: learned that that you're going through with us here? Has

1449
01:31:31,080 --> 01:31:33,200
Speaker 1: this altered it all kind of going forward? How you

1450
01:31:33,240 --> 01:31:36,640
Speaker 1: think you might respond or your community might respond the

1451
01:31:36,720 --> 01:31:39,519
Speaker 1: next time something like this occurs. Oh yeah, I mean

1452
01:31:39,560 --> 01:31:41,200
Speaker 1: I think there's a couple. I mean, actually, one of

1453
01:31:41,200 --> 01:31:43,760
Speaker 1: the things you just said is that we don't necessarily

1454
01:31:43,760 --> 01:31:47,439
Speaker 1: know how we found these guys. And and that's true

1455
01:31:47,479 --> 01:31:49,800
Speaker 1: because we still don't know the names of some of them.

1456
01:31:50,240 --> 01:31:53,599
Speaker 1: But the one, the one man we do know, um,

1457
01:31:54,439 --> 01:31:56,439
Speaker 1: was one of was a was a person who donated

1458
01:31:56,479 --> 01:31:59,120
Speaker 1: money to him while while he was running because because

1459
01:31:59,160 --> 01:32:01,120
Speaker 1: again remember this this is this was a man who

1460
01:32:01,120 --> 01:32:03,679
Speaker 1: was running for office last year and lost three to one.

1461
01:32:04,560 --> 01:32:08,640
Speaker 1: Um and and yeah, and so this this one accomplice

1462
01:32:08,640 --> 01:32:13,120
Speaker 1: whose name we have, Jose Triho, donated to him. And UM,

1463
01:32:13,160 --> 01:32:17,599
Speaker 1: they're very you know, they're they're clearly, Um, they clearly

1464
01:32:17,720 --> 01:32:20,000
Speaker 1: know each other and have some sort of a connection there.

1465
01:32:20,439 --> 01:32:23,679
Speaker 1: But I think what's worth noting is that going down

1466
01:32:23,760 --> 01:32:27,640
Speaker 1: that path. Right, So when I looked up that guy,

1467
01:32:27,680 --> 01:32:31,479
Speaker 1: I found the political donation from last year. And while

1468
01:32:31,520 --> 01:32:33,679
Speaker 1: I was there looking at political donations, I just happened

1469
01:32:33,720 --> 01:32:35,639
Speaker 1: to look at all the other names, which is how

1470
01:32:35,680 --> 01:32:39,120
Speaker 1: I found the other Uh you know the name of

1471
01:32:39,120 --> 01:32:41,639
Speaker 1: the other man who has this connection to him, um

1472
01:32:42,640 --> 01:32:48,559
Speaker 1: Fletcher and Michael Fletcher, right, and m that guy two

1473
01:32:48,640 --> 01:32:52,360
Speaker 1: years ago, during the you know thetests, drove a car

1474
01:32:52,520 --> 01:32:57,040
Speaker 1: through a crowd of protesters, and thanks to some amazing

1475
01:32:57,439 --> 01:33:01,040
Speaker 1: um you know, anti fascist organized there's here in New Mexico,

1476
01:33:01,080 --> 01:33:03,400
Speaker 1: they were able to identify him, even though the cops

1477
01:33:03,439 --> 01:33:05,960
Speaker 1: never did anything about it. And so I think that

1478
01:33:06,160 --> 01:33:10,240
Speaker 1: if if there's gonna be lessons learned here, it's that

1479
01:33:10,400 --> 01:33:13,200
Speaker 1: these people have been showing their true colors for a

1480
01:33:13,240 --> 01:33:18,040
Speaker 1: long time. And um there's if if if we're going

1481
01:33:18,080 --> 01:33:21,800
Speaker 1: to have police in this world we live in, and

1482
01:33:21,840 --> 01:33:25,679
Speaker 1: we're going to ask them to quote unquote keep us safe, uh,

1483
01:33:25,720 --> 01:33:27,360
Speaker 1: then they have to do their job and they have

1484
01:33:27,439 --> 01:33:30,400
Speaker 1: to follow up with with things like you know, somebody

1485
01:33:30,479 --> 01:33:33,400
Speaker 1: driving through a crowd of people. The video is on

1486
01:33:33,400 --> 01:33:35,720
Speaker 1: our Twitter thread. It's very scary. I mean, I know,

1487
01:33:35,760 --> 01:33:37,400
Speaker 1: people have seen it all over the country. It wasn't

1488
01:33:37,400 --> 01:33:40,360
Speaker 1: just unique to New Mexico. But um, anyway, that guy

1489
01:33:40,560 --> 01:33:44,320
Speaker 1: was Penya's third highest donor, and he's a young man.

1490
01:33:44,439 --> 01:33:48,040
Speaker 1: His his listed profession is security guard and um. And

1491
01:33:48,080 --> 01:33:50,360
Speaker 1: the other guy, Jose Trio, is listed as a cashier.

1492
01:33:50,600 --> 01:33:52,880
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of questions about how how did

1493
01:33:52,880 --> 01:33:57,360
Speaker 1: these young men have so much money with jobs that

1494
01:33:57,439 --> 01:33:59,559
Speaker 1: are you know, you don't necessarily have a lot of

1495
01:33:59,560 --> 01:34:01,759
Speaker 1: money lying around if you're a cashier and security guard,

1496
01:34:02,240 --> 01:34:04,719
Speaker 1: at least at least not to donate to political candidates.

1497
01:34:04,760 --> 01:34:08,200
Speaker 1: Back when I had jobs like that, I didn't anyway, Um,

1498
01:34:08,240 --> 01:34:10,320
Speaker 1: and especially then also for all the guns they have,

1499
01:34:10,520 --> 01:34:13,000
Speaker 1: right Like, there's pictures of these guys with a table

1500
01:34:13,040 --> 01:34:16,479
Speaker 1: full of glocks and um, you know and mag's and

1501
01:34:16,720 --> 01:34:20,040
Speaker 1: that's that stuff is not cheap, so I don't there's

1502
01:34:20,080 --> 01:34:24,840
Speaker 1: there's there is a These people were known to law

1503
01:34:24,920 --> 01:34:27,240
Speaker 1: enforcement one way or the other because again Penya was

1504
01:34:27,280 --> 01:34:31,200
Speaker 1: a felon, and um, I want to be clear, he

1505
01:34:31,240 --> 01:34:34,559
Speaker 1: was able to run into Mexico because in New Mexico

1506
01:34:34,640 --> 01:34:36,720
Speaker 1: we believe felons deserve a second chance for things like

1507
01:34:36,800 --> 01:34:39,080
Speaker 1: running for office. In fact, it'd be great someday to

1508
01:34:39,120 --> 01:34:41,960
Speaker 1: have somebody who's maybe got that life experience to become

1509
01:34:41,960 --> 01:34:47,080
Speaker 1: a legislator. Obviously, there are circumstances like maybe this one

1510
01:34:47,240 --> 01:34:52,599
Speaker 1: that proved that people haven't you know, turned around from

1511
01:34:52,600 --> 01:34:55,240
Speaker 1: whatever life they were leading beforehand. But we're also but

1512
01:34:55,240 --> 01:34:59,120
Speaker 1: we're also not here excluding people from being Um. Being

1513
01:34:59,160 --> 01:35:00,960
Speaker 1: a felon does not make you a bad person, That's

1514
01:35:00,960 --> 01:35:04,320
Speaker 1: what I'm really trying to say here. But a felon

1515
01:35:04,360 --> 01:35:07,040
Speaker 1: who has a history like this and then has clearly

1516
01:35:07,080 --> 01:35:11,120
Speaker 1: demonstrated a will towards violence and hangs out with violent people, UM,

1517
01:35:11,120 --> 01:35:13,360
Speaker 1: maybe there should be some things done to keep an

1518
01:35:13,360 --> 01:35:17,760
Speaker 1: eye on those people. This is one of those situations

1519
01:35:17,840 --> 01:35:22,200
Speaker 1: that there's a number of different solutions too, or I

1520
01:35:22,200 --> 01:35:25,280
Speaker 1: think things that will will lead to solutions, But it's

1521
01:35:25,320 --> 01:35:29,880
Speaker 1: also it's much more muddled than people would like it

1522
01:35:29,960 --> 01:35:33,400
Speaker 1: to be. UM. I think I tend to think that

1523
01:35:33,840 --> 01:35:38,080
Speaker 1: from the perspective of like people who are activists, who

1524
01:35:38,080 --> 01:35:40,479
Speaker 1: are members of the community, one of the better things

1525
01:35:40,560 --> 01:35:44,080
Speaker 1: that we can do is keep an eye, as y'all do,

1526
01:35:44,360 --> 01:35:47,680
Speaker 1: on who's doing what. Like, you know, when you have

1527
01:35:47,800 --> 01:35:52,360
Speaker 1: people who are donating to one of these right wing

1528
01:35:52,960 --> 01:35:57,559
Speaker 1: you know fascist kind of candidates, UM, when they're saying

1529
01:35:57,560 --> 01:35:59,960
Speaker 1: certain things on social media, or the candidates saying so

1530
01:36:00,200 --> 01:36:03,400
Speaker 1: things on social media that are seen as incitements to violence.

1531
01:36:03,439 --> 01:36:08,040
Speaker 1: Like keeping those people on your radar is useful and

1532
01:36:08,120 --> 01:36:10,680
Speaker 1: keeping you know, as you did, being able to kind

1533
01:36:10,720 --> 01:36:15,200
Speaker 1: of document once somebody actually starts acting. Hey, this person

1534
01:36:15,280 --> 01:36:17,880
Speaker 1: has has made further threats in the past. Um, these

1535
01:36:17,880 --> 01:36:20,400
Speaker 1: are groups of people that might be at risk from them.

1536
01:36:20,400 --> 01:36:23,240
Speaker 1: We know this person, Like, here's evidence that this person

1537
01:36:23,400 --> 01:36:26,559
Speaker 1: is and has been a threat. That's all really useful. Um.

1538
01:36:26,960 --> 01:36:29,639
Speaker 1: The question is always is like, how do we actually

1539
01:36:30,600 --> 01:36:34,000
Speaker 1: stop these people before they carry out violence? Um? And

1540
01:36:34,040 --> 01:36:36,400
Speaker 1: this is a question that that to to be certain,

1541
01:36:37,280 --> 01:36:39,880
Speaker 1: law enforcement the state don't have very good answers for

1542
01:36:40,040 --> 01:36:43,920
Speaker 1: because they only kind of come in and take action after, Um,

1543
01:36:44,000 --> 01:36:46,400
Speaker 1: the attacks have started. We just got lucky in this

1544
01:36:46,439 --> 01:36:50,320
Speaker 1: case that nobody was hurt or killed. UM. You know,

1545
01:36:50,400 --> 01:36:53,360
Speaker 1: there have been a couple of of mass shootings averted

1546
01:36:53,400 --> 01:36:57,760
Speaker 1: as a result of anti fascists finding someone who was

1547
01:36:57,840 --> 01:37:01,479
Speaker 1: making threats, who had firearms and in some cases like

1548
01:37:01,640 --> 01:37:04,439
Speaker 1: was not legally supposed to have them, and making that

1549
01:37:04,479 --> 01:37:07,559
Speaker 1: public ahead of time. UM. But more often than not.

1550
01:37:07,800 --> 01:37:09,600
Speaker 1: It's sort of this case as it as it was

1551
01:37:09,640 --> 01:37:12,960
Speaker 1: with Penia, where we're the name comes out, we realize

1552
01:37:12,960 --> 01:37:14,720
Speaker 1: who it was, and it's like, yeah, we had we

1553
01:37:14,760 --> 01:37:17,920
Speaker 1: had this guy documented. We knew this dude was a threat.

1554
01:37:18,400 --> 01:37:20,880
Speaker 1: And I think that's the that is still kind of

1555
01:37:20,920 --> 01:37:24,000
Speaker 1: the the thing that we don't have a good answer

1556
01:37:24,280 --> 01:37:27,960
Speaker 1: to is what is the actual how do you how

1557
01:37:28,000 --> 01:37:33,120
Speaker 1: do you actually take action to stop these people from

1558
01:37:33,200 --> 01:37:36,960
Speaker 1: carrying out the attacks because obviously there's a thousand different

1559
01:37:37,040 --> 01:37:39,759
Speaker 1: legal issues with that. There's a number of different moral

1560
01:37:39,840 --> 01:37:42,760
Speaker 1: issues with that. Because for every guy like Pinia who

1561
01:37:42,800 --> 01:37:45,760
Speaker 1: talked about carrying out attacks and then attacked people, there's

1562
01:37:45,760 --> 01:37:48,240
Speaker 1: a couple of dozen who talk about ship like this

1563
01:37:48,320 --> 01:37:51,120
Speaker 1: and don't do anything. But um, I don't know. This

1564
01:37:51,200 --> 01:37:53,280
Speaker 1: is this is something that I think that I think

1565
01:37:53,320 --> 01:37:55,320
Speaker 1: has to be answered and it's not on you know,

1566
01:37:55,640 --> 01:37:59,240
Speaker 1: you specifically or the New Mexico activist community to figure

1567
01:37:59,240 --> 01:38:02,640
Speaker 1: it out, but it is. It is like, this is

1568
01:38:02,640 --> 01:38:05,920
Speaker 1: a big part of the struggle. I think because the

1569
01:38:05,720 --> 01:38:09,120
Speaker 1: the cops and the state, we'll do the thing that

1570
01:38:09,200 --> 01:38:11,559
Speaker 1: they do, which is when there are bodies or when

1571
01:38:11,600 --> 01:38:15,800
Speaker 1: there's bullet casings on the ground, generally, eventually someone will

1572
01:38:15,800 --> 01:38:18,799
Speaker 1: get arrested, not always, not necessarily, even the vast majority

1573
01:38:18,840 --> 01:38:21,400
Speaker 1: of the time. Again, nobody's caught the fuckers who were

1574
01:38:21,400 --> 01:38:26,320
Speaker 1: blowing up power stations in North Carolina. But you know, so,

1575
01:38:26,880 --> 01:38:30,240
Speaker 1: I think the question for us that and I'm sorry, folks,

1576
01:38:30,240 --> 01:38:32,400
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be not gonna be saying, here's how

1577
01:38:32,439 --> 01:38:36,519
Speaker 1: we solve the problem of armed right wingers carrying out

1578
01:38:36,520 --> 01:38:39,360
Speaker 1: attacks on people is how do we how do we

1579
01:38:39,439 --> 01:38:45,240
Speaker 1: get from knowing who's a threat to stopping them effect

1580
01:38:45,320 --> 01:38:49,720
Speaker 1: effectively stopping them from carrying out actual attacks. And that is,

1581
01:38:50,479 --> 01:38:54,120
Speaker 1: you know, as our years of lead, if that is

1582
01:38:54,160 --> 01:38:57,720
Speaker 1: what we're in and boy, things like this make me

1583
01:38:57,760 --> 01:39:01,000
Speaker 1: think that that's a reasonable way to described the present

1584
01:39:01,200 --> 01:39:07,000
Speaker 1: political situation in the United States. Um, this is something

1585
01:39:07,040 --> 01:39:09,680
Speaker 1: we're going to have to answer. And obviously you know,

1586
01:39:10,000 --> 01:39:12,800
Speaker 1: I've asked you kind of your lessons on it. We don't,

1587
01:39:12,880 --> 01:39:15,120
Speaker 1: we don't. I don't think there's much more to say

1588
01:39:15,120 --> 01:39:17,800
Speaker 1: at the moment, but it is this is this is

1589
01:39:17,840 --> 01:39:20,559
Speaker 1: the question, right, Um, It's a question we ask ourselves.

1590
01:39:20,840 --> 01:39:24,000
Speaker 1: I know people are asking themselves up in Portland. Um,

1591
01:39:24,040 --> 01:39:26,280
Speaker 1: the guy who carried out an attack almost exactly a

1592
01:39:26,320 --> 01:39:28,320
Speaker 1: year ago at a protest in Portland at a long

1593
01:39:28,439 --> 01:39:31,600
Speaker 1: history of making threats online, and now one person is

1594
01:39:31,600 --> 01:39:34,439
Speaker 1: dead and others paralyzed. Several more have been have been injured.

1595
01:39:34,479 --> 01:39:36,800
Speaker 1: You know, these are this is this is a tough

1596
01:39:36,920 --> 01:39:41,759
Speaker 1: question and it's it's not one that uh, I think

1597
01:39:42,920 --> 01:39:45,840
Speaker 1: just kind of raw ideology actually gives us a very

1598
01:39:45,840 --> 01:39:49,599
Speaker 1: good answer on because there's the there's the emotionally satisfying answer,

1599
01:39:49,680 --> 01:39:50,960
Speaker 1: which is like, well, we just need to get some

1600
01:39:51,280 --> 01:39:53,320
Speaker 1: folks together and go like fuck these people up. And

1601
01:39:53,320 --> 01:39:55,480
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you can't. That's actually not a realistic

1602
01:39:56,080 --> 01:39:58,839
Speaker 1: because number one, there's so many people making these threats,

1603
01:39:58,880 --> 01:40:03,120
Speaker 1: like you don't actually have of the human band with

1604
01:40:03,360 --> 01:40:05,880
Speaker 1: two for that to be realistic outside of the fact

1605
01:40:05,920 --> 01:40:08,519
Speaker 1: that those people would be destroying their lives and throwing

1606
01:40:08,520 --> 01:40:10,320
Speaker 1: themselves into the mall of the state to do it.

1607
01:40:10,439 --> 01:40:15,120
Speaker 1: So this is this is a toughie. I do There's

1608
01:40:15,200 --> 01:40:17,160
Speaker 1: I mean, there's one there's one part of this that

1609
01:40:17,240 --> 01:40:21,960
Speaker 1: I think New Mexico can can offer some some I

1610
01:40:21,960 --> 01:40:25,200
Speaker 1: don't know, there's one thing we got right and um,

1611
01:40:25,240 --> 01:40:27,680
Speaker 1: I don't know if if you know, everybody out there

1612
01:40:27,720 --> 01:40:30,720
Speaker 1: is familiar with the name Coy Griffin or his organization

1613
01:40:30,760 --> 01:40:35,000
Speaker 1: Cowboys for Trump. But during the lead up to the election,

1614
01:40:35,080 --> 01:40:38,120
Speaker 1: this guy kind of made a name for himself. He

1615
01:40:38,200 --> 01:40:41,600
Speaker 1: went around the country on horseback with a bunch of

1616
01:40:41,680 --> 01:40:45,519
Speaker 1: dudes and they all dressed up like Larkin as cowboys. Um,

1617
01:40:45,680 --> 01:40:49,680
Speaker 1: most of them are not and um, and you know

1618
01:40:49,680 --> 01:40:52,519
Speaker 1: they had American flags and they yeah, literally called Cowboys

1619
01:40:52,560 --> 01:40:55,400
Speaker 1: for Trump. This guy was a seeded county commissioner in

1620
01:40:55,439 --> 01:40:59,880
Speaker 1: Otaro County here in New Mexico, and he went to

1621
01:41:00,160 --> 01:41:03,920
Speaker 1: January six and he was the first convicted person from

1622
01:41:03,920 --> 01:41:07,960
Speaker 1: the January six fallout, and he lost his seat in

1623
01:41:07,960 --> 01:41:11,840
Speaker 1: in Otaro County, which is like the smallest amount of thing, right,

1624
01:41:11,840 --> 01:41:14,880
Speaker 1: Like it's the man should have been locked up. But um.

1625
01:41:15,000 --> 01:41:18,120
Speaker 1: But one of the things that is frustrating but also

1626
01:41:18,240 --> 01:41:22,880
Speaker 1: maybe good is that probably you know, through my work

1627
01:41:22,920 --> 01:41:25,920
Speaker 1: doing what I do, I had been documenting this man

1628
01:41:26,000 --> 01:41:29,400
Speaker 1: for years because he'd been saying all kinds of crazy shit. Um.

1629
01:41:30,280 --> 01:41:33,840
Speaker 1: Sometime in nineteen I think or maybe it was, he

1630
01:41:34,200 --> 01:41:36,439
Speaker 1: like went up on top of a mountain to pray

1631
01:41:36,720 --> 01:41:40,000
Speaker 1: this is his words, and recorded himself on a Facebook

1632
01:41:40,080 --> 01:41:44,080
Speaker 1: live and like literally said that black people should go

1633
01:41:44,160 --> 01:41:49,000
Speaker 1: back to Africa and like this. This video was on

1634
01:41:49,080 --> 01:41:52,360
Speaker 1: his Facebook, and I mean it had been out for

1635
01:41:52,479 --> 01:41:55,960
Speaker 1: days and nobody said anything about it anywhere until I

1636
01:41:56,160 --> 01:41:58,640
Speaker 1: clipped it and put it on Twitter. You know, I

1637
01:41:58,920 --> 01:42:01,479
Speaker 1: took I took away the forty minutes of other weird shit,

1638
01:42:01,560 --> 01:42:03,680
Speaker 1: he said, and I put that thing out into the

1639
01:42:03,680 --> 01:42:07,360
Speaker 1: world and said, this man deserves to be like under

1640
01:42:07,439 --> 01:42:10,280
Speaker 1: so much scrutiny, it's ridiculous. And then of course it

1641
01:42:10,320 --> 01:42:12,639
Speaker 1: got pressed, and then of course he came under fire,

1642
01:42:13,000 --> 01:42:15,000
Speaker 1: and then a couple of people were paying attention. So

1643
01:42:15,040 --> 01:42:17,600
Speaker 1: then when he went to January six and again on

1644
01:42:17,640 --> 01:42:20,559
Speaker 1: a live video because people can't stop instagramming their crimes,

1645
01:42:21,200 --> 01:42:22,880
Speaker 1: he said he was taking all of his guns and

1646
01:42:22,920 --> 01:42:26,040
Speaker 1: going to meet his you know, homies in in Washington,

1647
01:42:26,560 --> 01:42:28,559
Speaker 1: and so he got arrested. He got arrested there. He

1648
01:42:28,600 --> 01:42:30,040
Speaker 1: was one of the few people who got arrested like

1649
01:42:30,080 --> 01:42:32,559
Speaker 1: on the ground that day because the FBI and the

1650
01:42:32,600 --> 01:42:35,960
Speaker 1: Secret Service were already looking for him because again somebody

1651
01:42:35,960 --> 01:42:38,760
Speaker 1: else had been out loud about saying, uh, this man

1652
01:42:38,920 --> 01:42:41,280
Speaker 1: literally just said he's taking guns to d C. Is

1653
01:42:41,320 --> 01:42:44,920
Speaker 1: somebody please going to do something about this? So I

1654
01:42:44,960 --> 01:42:47,400
Speaker 1: don't know it wasn't great, and I feel like more

1655
01:42:47,479 --> 01:42:50,559
Speaker 1: could have been done. And again, fortunately no one got hurt.

1656
01:42:50,720 --> 01:42:52,680
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess people did if you wanted to

1657
01:42:52,720 --> 01:42:57,320
Speaker 1: take the whole of January six into into UM mean,

1658
01:42:58,760 --> 01:43:00,760
Speaker 1: but I guess. I guess. My point is is that

1659
01:43:01,240 --> 01:43:05,080
Speaker 1: it's sort of just a constant vigilism, right, It's like

1660
01:43:05,200 --> 01:43:07,439
Speaker 1: you just have to be and it's not you know,

1661
01:43:07,479 --> 01:43:09,280
Speaker 1: and obviously one person can't do it, but you have

1662
01:43:09,320 --> 01:43:10,800
Speaker 1: to have groups of people that do it. I mean,

1663
01:43:10,840 --> 01:43:13,479
Speaker 1: I'm I'm one guy who works with an organization of

1664
01:43:13,479 --> 01:43:15,400
Speaker 1: people and we work on a number of policy things

1665
01:43:15,400 --> 01:43:17,400
Speaker 1: in the state. And again I don't necessarily do this

1666
01:43:17,439 --> 01:43:21,439
Speaker 1: all the time, but I also know that there's a

1667
01:43:21,520 --> 01:43:24,640
Speaker 1: number of amazing people, especially in o Tarot County, UM

1668
01:43:24,680 --> 01:43:27,360
Speaker 1: which is a very conservative county. But there's a number

1669
01:43:27,360 --> 01:43:29,559
Speaker 1: of amazing people who do really hard work and they

1670
01:43:29,560 --> 01:43:31,920
Speaker 1: show up at County commission meetings and they get thrown out,

1671
01:43:32,280 --> 01:43:34,200
Speaker 1: and they go to school board meetings and they get

1672
01:43:34,200 --> 01:43:36,320
Speaker 1: thrown out, but they go and they document it, and

1673
01:43:36,320 --> 01:43:39,479
Speaker 1: they tweet and they TikTok and and it's it's you know,

1674
01:43:39,560 --> 01:43:42,280
Speaker 1: it's that work that puts the word out from these

1675
01:43:42,320 --> 01:43:44,439
Speaker 1: little tiny places. You know, the last time I was

1676
01:43:44,439 --> 01:43:46,519
Speaker 1: on the show, Robert, we were talking about the school

1677
01:43:46,520 --> 01:43:48,840
Speaker 1: board stuff here in Los Cruces and the right wing

1678
01:43:48,920 --> 01:43:52,120
Speaker 1: chuds that had showed up to that, and you know,

1679
01:43:52,120 --> 01:43:55,320
Speaker 1: it's the same thing, right, It's like you don't I mean,

1680
01:43:55,360 --> 01:43:57,720
Speaker 1: you can't do it alone, but it doesn't take that

1681
01:43:57,760 --> 01:44:00,639
Speaker 1: many people to show up, and as know, and once

1682
01:44:00,680 --> 01:44:02,840
Speaker 1: you once you show them that you're not afraid and

1683
01:44:02,880 --> 01:44:05,280
Speaker 1: that there's more of us than there are of them,

1684
01:44:05,320 --> 01:44:08,479
Speaker 1: they tend to slink away. And I think that there's

1685
01:44:09,000 --> 01:44:11,120
Speaker 1: I think that there's value in that, and there's you know,

1686
01:44:11,439 --> 01:44:13,639
Speaker 1: it's not the answer that you're talking about, but there's

1687
01:44:13,840 --> 01:44:17,280
Speaker 1: there's a modicum of hope they're worth remembering. Yeah, I

1688
01:44:17,280 --> 01:44:19,120
Speaker 1: think that's a really good point. That's all. Those are

1689
01:44:19,120 --> 01:44:22,920
Speaker 1: all really good points. Um well, Lucas, I think that

1690
01:44:23,040 --> 01:44:25,439
Speaker 1: more or less covers what we came to talk about today.

1691
01:44:25,560 --> 01:44:27,680
Speaker 1: Did you have anything else you wanted you wanted to

1692
01:44:27,720 --> 01:44:29,519
Speaker 1: say to the audience before we kind of roll out

1693
01:44:29,520 --> 01:44:31,559
Speaker 1: of here, Anything you wanted to plug place you want

1694
01:44:31,560 --> 01:44:34,280
Speaker 1: to well? Yeah, I mean yeah, I'd just like to

1695
01:44:34,320 --> 01:44:39,400
Speaker 1: say that, you know, IM the number one donor to

1696
01:44:39,439 --> 01:44:44,040
Speaker 1: this guy's campaign is a corporation called Halopeno Corporation. It's

1697
01:44:44,040 --> 01:44:48,280
Speaker 1: owned by a billionaire named Harvey Yates. He's part of

1698
01:44:48,320 --> 01:44:51,519
Speaker 1: the family that discovered oil in the state of New Mexico.

1699
01:44:51,600 --> 01:44:54,320
Speaker 1: New Mexico is the second largest producer of oil in

1700
01:44:54,360 --> 01:44:59,000
Speaker 1: the United States. Harvey Yates donated to every Republican candidate

1701
01:44:59,080 --> 01:45:03,000
Speaker 1: this cycle. And I think that what I want to,

1702
01:45:03,120 --> 01:45:06,760
Speaker 1: like just just say out loud, because again, my my

1703
01:45:06,920 --> 01:45:11,280
Speaker 1: job is normally I talk about energy issues, is that

1704
01:45:12,280 --> 01:45:15,280
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you know, we have questions about

1705
01:45:15,280 --> 01:45:18,240
Speaker 1: where some of these young men who have you know,

1706
01:45:18,320 --> 01:45:21,320
Speaker 1: cashier jobs and security guard jobs, where they came up

1707
01:45:21,320 --> 01:45:23,679
Speaker 1: with four thousand dollars to donate to a political candidate

1708
01:45:23,760 --> 01:45:27,160
Speaker 1: over the course of a few months. It's not unsurprising

1709
01:45:27,320 --> 01:45:30,840
Speaker 1: that an oil corporation donated five thousand dollars, right, But

1710
01:45:30,880 --> 01:45:35,719
Speaker 1: but what's worth remembering is is that, you know, these

1711
01:45:37,080 --> 01:45:40,360
Speaker 1: these mega corporations of it of all stripes, but especially

1712
01:45:40,400 --> 01:45:45,720
Speaker 1: oil and gas um are the backbone of the political

1713
01:45:45,800 --> 01:45:48,800
Speaker 1: movement that we are talking about. You know, even if

1714
01:45:48,800 --> 01:45:51,120
Speaker 1: we're sort of beating around the bush right, there's there's

1715
01:45:51,160 --> 01:45:55,280
Speaker 1: one side here that is dominated very heavily by this

1716
01:45:55,400 --> 01:46:00,479
Speaker 1: far right extremism, and they and they and the their

1717
01:46:00,520 --> 01:46:03,280
Speaker 1: funders treat them all the same, right, Like, oil and

1718
01:46:03,320 --> 01:46:05,880
Speaker 1: gas companies don't care if you're a quote unquote moderate

1719
01:46:05,920 --> 01:46:09,719
Speaker 1: Republican or a hardcore right wing maga guy or a

1720
01:46:09,760 --> 01:46:13,280
Speaker 1: literal Nazi. They just want somebody who's gonna like get

1721
01:46:13,320 --> 01:46:18,120
Speaker 1: in there and you know, give them tax subsidies. Um.

1722
01:46:18,240 --> 01:46:22,120
Speaker 1: And you know, and I just the fight over energy

1723
01:46:22,200 --> 01:46:28,120
Speaker 1: issues in this country is often framed around climate change,

1724
01:46:28,800 --> 01:46:30,840
Speaker 1: as it should be, because I mean, obviously the climate

1725
01:46:30,840 --> 01:46:33,800
Speaker 1: crisis is something we can't ignore, but it's so much

1726
01:46:33,880 --> 01:46:36,439
Speaker 1: worse than that, and you know, we could do a

1727
01:46:36,439 --> 01:46:39,120
Speaker 1: whole other thing about that someday, but I just it's

1728
01:46:39,160 --> 01:46:42,320
Speaker 1: just so important. I can't let it go. Um. You know,

1729
01:46:42,479 --> 01:46:45,080
Speaker 1: looking looking at at this at this what I'm gonna

1730
01:46:45,080 --> 01:46:48,800
Speaker 1: call it domestic terrorists donation sheet, you know, and seeing

1731
01:46:48,800 --> 01:46:50,800
Speaker 1: that the number one, you know, his number one donor

1732
01:46:50,880 --> 01:46:53,680
Speaker 1: was this oil and gas guy. Like, it's just not

1733
01:46:53,760 --> 01:46:57,600
Speaker 1: a coincidence. It really isn't, and it's it's worth remembering.

1734
01:46:57,800 --> 01:46:59,679
Speaker 1: So that's that's the last thing I want to plug,

1735
01:46:59,800 --> 01:47:02,400
Speaker 1: or last thing I want to say in terms of plugs.

1736
01:47:02,439 --> 01:47:05,719
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter I'm just Lucas E. Herndon,

1737
01:47:06,360 --> 01:47:09,479
Speaker 1: and if you are interested in New Mexico politics things,

1738
01:47:09,520 --> 01:47:12,439
Speaker 1: you can follow us now at Progress. Now I am awesome.

1739
01:47:13,080 --> 01:47:15,760
Speaker 1: Uh well you cannot find me there, but you can

1740
01:47:15,760 --> 01:47:20,120
Speaker 1: find me elsewhere. Um, you'll figure it out. Thank you, Lucas.

1741
01:47:20,160 --> 01:47:23,800
Speaker 1: This has been really I mean, good is a weird word,

1742
01:47:23,840 --> 01:47:28,920
Speaker 1: but I appreciate it. That's what happened last time too. Yeah. Well,

1743
01:47:29,080 --> 01:47:30,960
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll have you back on in the near future,

1744
01:47:31,000 --> 01:47:34,360
Speaker 1: and we will be back tomorrow with some more ship

1745
01:47:34,640 --> 01:47:39,280
Speaker 1: that is hopefully, uh fun fun stuff, maybe fun stuff.

1746
01:47:39,600 --> 01:47:41,639
Speaker 1: I always get the episodes where it's not it could

1747
01:47:41,640 --> 01:47:45,080
Speaker 1: happen here, it's it did happen here, A thing has occurred.

1748
01:47:47,280 --> 01:48:06,200
Speaker 1: All thanks Robert, thank you. Welcome to Dick it Happened

1749
01:48:06,240 --> 01:48:12,240
Speaker 1: Here podcast about things being absolutely atrocious. I'm your host,

1750
01:48:12,320 --> 01:48:14,960
Speaker 1: Meo Ball, and today we're going to do something a

1751
01:48:14,960 --> 01:48:19,240
Speaker 1: little different. Instead of our normal sort of escapades through

1752
01:48:19,560 --> 01:48:22,519
Speaker 1: the torment and the sort of crumbles of the modern world,

1753
01:48:23,439 --> 01:48:25,519
Speaker 1: We're going to take a step back into history to

1754
01:48:25,680 --> 01:48:29,960
Speaker 1: trace through the history and class psychology of a kind

1755
01:48:30,000 --> 01:48:33,160
Speaker 1: of guy who is a recurring character in the history

1756
01:48:33,160 --> 01:48:37,360
Speaker 1: of North America and who are responsible, to a greater

1757
01:48:37,439 --> 01:48:40,160
Speaker 1: extent than you think, for some of the worst atrocities

1758
01:48:40,240 --> 01:48:44,760
Speaker 1: this world has ever seen. Now, I hesitate to use

1759
01:48:44,800 --> 01:48:49,280
Speaker 1: the word class as a way to actually describe these people,

1760
01:48:49,439 --> 01:48:52,800
Speaker 1: because the people were going to be talking about are

1761
01:48:52,960 --> 01:48:57,519
Speaker 1: from completely different economies, completely different class structures, completely different

1762
01:48:57,520 --> 01:49:02,639
Speaker 1: systems of production. So we're sticking with the loose term

1763
01:49:02,760 --> 01:49:07,160
Speaker 1: kind of guy. And this kind of guy is a

1764
01:49:07,280 --> 01:49:09,759
Speaker 1: kind of guy that I have termed the debtor slaver.

1765
01:49:10,880 --> 01:49:15,559
Speaker 1: Now this, at first glance, this this is a confusing term.

1766
01:49:15,640 --> 01:49:18,360
Speaker 1: My word processor, at the very least, gets very very

1767
01:49:18,400 --> 01:49:20,479
Speaker 1: angry with me every time I try to write it

1768
01:49:20,520 --> 01:49:22,960
Speaker 1: and insist that no, no, no, I must in fact

1769
01:49:23,040 --> 01:49:27,759
Speaker 1: mean debtor slave. But no, I do not mean debtor slave.

1770
01:49:28,880 --> 01:49:31,880
Speaker 1: What I'm actually referring to as a kind of guy

1771
01:49:31,960 --> 01:49:35,200
Speaker 1: who is both hopelessly in debt and also in command

1772
01:49:35,240 --> 01:49:40,880
Speaker 1: of enormous economic abilitary resources, most often slaves. To get

1773
01:49:40,880 --> 01:49:42,640
Speaker 1: a sense of what I'm talking about here, we're going

1774
01:49:42,680 --> 01:49:47,120
Speaker 1: to start with the archetypical debtor slaver. Her Nan Cortes.

1775
01:49:49,400 --> 01:49:52,839
Speaker 1: Her name Cortes is, by all reputable accounts, an enormous

1776
01:49:52,880 --> 01:49:57,040
Speaker 1: piece of ship, a broke noble born in Spain in

1777
01:49:57,120 --> 01:50:01,439
Speaker 1: five Cortes managed to parlay an inn initially successful career

1778
01:50:01,520 --> 01:50:05,080
Speaker 1: as a sort of adventurer into a slave plantation in

1779
01:50:05,160 --> 01:50:08,000
Speaker 1: Cuba after he helped after he helped conquer the island

1780
01:50:08,080 --> 01:50:12,679
Speaker 1: in fifteen eleven. From there, through a combination of I shoot,

1781
01:50:12,720 --> 01:50:14,839
Speaker 1: you know this is this is actually what the historical

1782
01:50:14,880 --> 01:50:19,320
Speaker 1: records say about him, wearing too many gold chains and

1783
01:50:19,520 --> 01:50:24,240
Speaker 1: spending too much money on his wife, his finances imploded

1784
01:50:24,240 --> 01:50:27,400
Speaker 1: and he fell into debt. This led him to embark

1785
01:50:27,520 --> 01:50:32,719
Speaker 1: on his infamous conquest of Mexican attempt to pay office creditors. Here,

1786
01:50:32,720 --> 01:50:34,840
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn to the work of the anthropologist

1787
01:50:34,880 --> 01:50:40,880
Speaker 1: David Graber. Rest in Peace, Smissy Buddy. Graver describes the

1788
01:50:40,960 --> 01:50:46,080
Speaker 1: absolute horror of entire population sold into slavery, slaves with

1789
01:50:46,200 --> 01:50:49,000
Speaker 1: faces covered in brands indicating who they've been bought and

1790
01:50:49,120 --> 01:50:54,520
Speaker 1: sold by, Entire populations worked to death and minds empires

1791
01:50:54,600 --> 01:50:57,040
Speaker 1: drained of wealth by men whose lust for gold and

1792
01:50:57,080 --> 01:51:01,320
Speaker 1: silver seemed to know no end. And he somehow, both

1793
01:51:01,400 --> 01:51:03,640
Speaker 1: Cortes and his men seemed to have come out of

1794
01:51:03,680 --> 01:51:08,000
Speaker 1: the other end of one of the most important conquests

1795
01:51:08,000 --> 01:51:13,479
Speaker 1: in human history. Completely broke. Now it's easier to explain

1796
01:51:13,720 --> 01:51:16,720
Speaker 1: how Cortes as men came out of this broke. They

1797
01:51:16,720 --> 01:51:20,000
Speaker 1: came out of his broke because Cortes and his officers

1798
01:51:20,320 --> 01:51:23,800
Speaker 1: were extorting and robbing them mercilessly at literally every step

1799
01:51:23,800 --> 01:51:27,720
Speaker 1: of the campaign, by charging them utterly exorbitant prices for

1800
01:51:27,760 --> 01:51:31,640
Speaker 1: everything from bandages to like having to buy their own weapons,

1801
01:51:32,160 --> 01:51:34,280
Speaker 1: which were being sold by guests who Cortes and his

1802
01:51:34,439 --> 01:51:36,960
Speaker 1: officers who had to sort of cabal going on with

1803
01:51:37,000 --> 01:51:41,800
Speaker 1: everyone who could sell things. And once the conquest was done,

1804
01:51:41,840 --> 01:51:44,640
Speaker 1: Cortes as officers simply seized most of the share of

1805
01:51:44,680 --> 01:51:47,080
Speaker 1: the loot from their men as payment for all of

1806
01:51:47,080 --> 01:51:50,200
Speaker 1: the stuff that they needed. And I mentioned this not

1807
01:51:50,280 --> 01:51:54,280
Speaker 1: to inspire sympathy for the conquistadors like these are. These

1808
01:51:54,280 --> 01:51:56,400
Speaker 1: are some of the worst human beings who have ever lived,

1809
01:51:56,479 --> 01:51:59,960
Speaker 1: and managing to somehow lose money on one of the

1810
01:52:00,040 --> 01:52:02,479
Speaker 1: most brutal sackings of a city in human history is

1811
01:52:02,560 --> 01:52:10,080
Speaker 1: like the least of the punishment they deserve. But on

1812
01:52:10,120 --> 01:52:13,240
Speaker 1: the other hand, their debt and the debt of Cortez

1813
01:52:13,360 --> 01:52:18,000
Speaker 1: himself goes a long way to explain what happened next.

1814
01:52:18,840 --> 01:52:22,439
Speaker 1: Here's Graper. These were the men who ended up in

1815
01:52:22,479 --> 01:52:27,240
Speaker 1: control of the provinces and who established local administration, taxes

1816
01:52:27,280 --> 01:52:31,080
Speaker 1: and labor regimes, which makes it a little easier to

1817
01:52:31,200 --> 01:52:34,920
Speaker 1: understand the descriptions of Indians with their faces covered by names,

1818
01:52:34,960 --> 01:52:38,960
Speaker 1: like so many counterindorsed checks, with the mind surrounded by

1819
01:52:39,000 --> 01:52:43,680
Speaker 1: miles of rotting corpses. We are not dealing with psychology

1820
01:52:43,760 --> 01:52:48,120
Speaker 1: of cold, calculating greed, but a more complicated mix of

1821
01:52:48,240 --> 01:52:52,760
Speaker 1: shame and righteous indignation and of the frantic urgency of

1822
01:52:52,880 --> 01:52:57,519
Speaker 1: debts that would only compound and accumulate. These were almost

1823
01:52:57,560 --> 01:53:02,639
Speaker 1: certainly interest bearing loans, in the outrage at the idea that,

1824
01:53:02,920 --> 01:53:05,840
Speaker 1: after all they had gone through, they should be held

1825
01:53:05,840 --> 01:53:09,960
Speaker 1: to owe anything to begin with. Now, this is the

1826
01:53:10,000 --> 01:53:13,519
Speaker 1: sort of trademark psychology of the debtor slaver. It's an

1827
01:53:13,520 --> 01:53:20,040
Speaker 1: incredibly toxic mix of shame, indignation, outrage, and desperation that

1828
01:53:20,080 --> 01:53:24,800
Speaker 1: breathes an incredible kind of violence and is determined in

1829
01:53:24,880 --> 01:53:28,400
Speaker 1: large part by the conditions of modern compound debt itself.

1830
01:53:29,160 --> 01:53:34,200
Speaker 1: Here's Graver again. Money always has the potential to become

1831
01:53:34,240 --> 01:53:38,120
Speaker 1: a moral imperative one too itself allow it to expand,

1832
01:53:38,360 --> 01:53:41,080
Speaker 1: and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that

1833
01:53:41,200 --> 01:53:45,840
Speaker 1: all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the

1834
01:53:45,960 --> 01:53:50,160
Speaker 1: world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools,

1835
01:53:50,240 --> 01:53:55,720
Speaker 1: and potential merchandise. Even human relationships become a matter of

1836
01:53:55,760 --> 01:54:00,960
Speaker 1: cost benefit calculation. Clearly, this is the way the conquistadors

1837
01:54:01,040 --> 01:54:06,120
Speaker 1: viewed the worlds that they set out to conquer. Now

1838
01:54:06,160 --> 01:54:09,000
Speaker 1: it doesn't take long until not only human relations but

1839
01:54:09,160 --> 01:54:14,400
Speaker 1: human beings themselves become a matter of cost benefit calculation,

1840
01:54:14,720 --> 01:54:19,519
Speaker 1: a set of merchandise that value could be extracted from.

1841
01:54:19,600 --> 01:54:28,479
Speaker 1: And here emerges the debtor slaver. Now, very clearly, all

1842
01:54:28,560 --> 01:54:32,320
Speaker 1: debtors do not behave like this. In fact, almost all

1843
01:54:32,400 --> 01:54:36,480
Speaker 1: debtors across all places, in all times do not behave

1844
01:54:36,560 --> 01:54:38,480
Speaker 1: this way, or the world would be a place that

1845
01:54:38,520 --> 01:54:41,160
Speaker 1: makes even how we live in now look like a paradise.

1846
01:54:43,080 --> 01:54:46,080
Speaker 1: There's another factor at work here that distinguishes the debtor

1847
01:54:46,160 --> 01:54:51,280
Speaker 1: from the debtor slaver, and that's power. The debder slaver

1848
01:54:51,440 --> 01:54:57,280
Speaker 1: already wields, or has wielded, enormous power over other people,

1849
01:54:58,080 --> 01:55:02,680
Speaker 1: either through direct violence or, as we'll see later, through

1850
01:55:02,680 --> 01:55:06,240
Speaker 1: the command of economic power. This is one of the

1851
01:55:06,280 --> 01:55:10,720
Speaker 1: products of the righteous indignation Grapery described earlier. These are

1852
01:55:10,760 --> 01:55:13,360
Speaker 1: people who are used to wielding power, who are suddenly

1853
01:55:13,400 --> 01:55:16,720
Speaker 1: now beholden in a real and immediate way to someone else,

1854
01:55:19,040 --> 01:55:21,920
Speaker 1: and so they set about solving the problem the way

1855
01:55:22,000 --> 01:55:27,960
Speaker 1: they've solved everything else in their life, throwing violence at it. Now,

1856
01:55:28,720 --> 01:55:32,040
Speaker 1: if you've been paying attention closely, you might realize that

1857
01:55:32,080 --> 01:55:35,640
Speaker 1: I've actually been describing two different sort of ranks of

1858
01:55:35,720 --> 01:55:39,680
Speaker 1: debtor slaves who sort of fuse into one mass, and

1859
01:55:39,760 --> 01:55:46,520
Speaker 1: Quarte has his conquisadors. On the lower end, the people

1860
01:55:46,560 --> 01:55:49,800
Speaker 1: who kind of loosely be called adventurers, essentially a kind

1861
01:55:49,800 --> 01:55:54,200
Speaker 1: of mercenary out for a big score, be that slaves,

1862
01:55:54,320 --> 01:55:58,760
Speaker 1: be that land, be that stolen loot that could vault

1863
01:55:58,760 --> 01:56:01,600
Speaker 1: them out of debton into the aristocracy. This is the

1864
01:56:01,600 --> 01:56:05,800
Speaker 1: sort of built general military base of the conquisator army itself.

1865
01:56:06,760 --> 01:56:10,320
Speaker 1: On the higher end, of people like Cortez, who having

1866
01:56:10,360 --> 01:56:12,960
Speaker 1: already technically who you know who are who are already

1867
01:56:12,960 --> 01:56:16,920
Speaker 1: technically plantation owners, but their own ineptitude, have still managed

1868
01:56:16,960 --> 01:56:21,040
Speaker 1: to become heavily indebted. Combined, they form a group responsible

1869
01:56:21,120 --> 01:56:23,320
Speaker 1: for three centuries of the greatest evil the world has

1870
01:56:23,360 --> 01:56:27,040
Speaker 1: ever seen. Now, these two groups, in a broad sense,

1871
01:56:27,160 --> 01:56:34,600
Speaker 1: need each other. The adventurers may have weapons, they may

1872
01:56:34,640 --> 01:56:37,720
Speaker 1: have some training, but at the end of the day,

1873
01:56:37,760 --> 01:56:41,560
Speaker 1: they have very little in terms of liquid capital at

1874
01:56:41,600 --> 01:56:44,040
Speaker 1: Liquid capital is something that you need in order to

1875
01:56:44,080 --> 01:56:47,360
Speaker 1: run a military campaign, because in order to keep all

1876
01:56:47,400 --> 01:56:50,320
Speaker 1: of these people, all of these sort of adventurers, all

1877
01:56:50,320 --> 01:56:52,120
Speaker 1: of these sort of debt or slavers, all of these

1878
01:56:52,120 --> 01:56:56,120
Speaker 1: sort of would be conquistadors in the field, you have

1879
01:56:56,280 --> 01:56:59,800
Speaker 1: to produce, you know, things like food, things like boots,

1880
01:57:00,200 --> 01:57:04,280
Speaker 1: things like medical supplies. And this is where the plantation

1881
01:57:04,320 --> 01:57:07,640
Speaker 1: owners come in, because those are people who, even though

1882
01:57:07,640 --> 01:57:10,440
Speaker 1: they're enormously in debt, and even though very often they're

1883
01:57:10,480 --> 01:57:13,760
Speaker 1: either fleeing their debtors or their all of their debts

1884
01:57:13,800 --> 01:57:16,080
Speaker 1: about to be called in, these are people who still

1885
01:57:16,120 --> 01:57:20,840
Speaker 1: technically have lines of credit open and they and you

1886
01:57:20,880 --> 01:57:24,280
Speaker 1: know also there are also people who sometimes have allies

1887
01:57:24,800 --> 01:57:28,320
Speaker 1: in more sort of solvent people in the same class,

1888
01:57:28,400 --> 01:57:31,920
Speaker 1: so they're able to sort of funnel liquid capital into

1889
01:57:31,960 --> 01:57:35,360
Speaker 1: these sort of ventures. And this is a process that

1890
01:57:35,440 --> 01:57:41,640
Speaker 1: we are going to see again after these ads and

1891
01:57:41,880 --> 01:57:45,720
Speaker 1: we're back moving forward in time a few hundred years

1892
01:57:45,720 --> 01:57:49,080
Speaker 1: and north a few thousand miles, we come into another

1893
01:57:49,120 --> 01:57:52,960
Speaker 1: scene of debt, subjugation, and violence, the plantations of the

1894
01:57:53,000 --> 01:57:59,120
Speaker 1: American South. Now this is not the primitive, unhallowed fifteen hundreds,

1895
01:57:59,160 --> 01:58:01,560
Speaker 1: where slaves would be marked like tally sticks as they

1896
01:58:01,560 --> 01:58:04,640
Speaker 1: were passed back and forth between sword and pike wielding

1897
01:58:04,680 --> 01:58:08,040
Speaker 1: Spanish barbarians as they slaughtered their way through one of

1898
01:58:08,080 --> 01:58:11,760
Speaker 1: the greatest cities the world had ever known. This is

1899
01:58:11,800 --> 01:58:14,880
Speaker 1: the benighted eight hundreds. This is the age of steam

1900
01:58:14,920 --> 01:58:18,120
Speaker 1: power and railroads, the age of electricity, the advent of

1901
01:58:18,160 --> 01:58:23,040
Speaker 1: the global telecommunications network. What would come of this new

1902
01:58:23,120 --> 01:58:26,560
Speaker 1: era of progress. One of the greatest of all world

1903
01:58:26,600 --> 01:58:31,120
Speaker 1: historical crimes the conversion of human beings into increasingly complex

1904
01:58:31,160 --> 01:58:36,280
Speaker 1: financial instruments. Plantation owners, contrary to their depiction in media,

1905
01:58:36,480 --> 01:58:39,760
Speaker 1: which they've gotten almost those those people have gotten almost

1906
01:58:39,760 --> 01:58:43,560
Speaker 1: as good pr as cops, which is fairly incredible considering

1907
01:58:43,920 --> 01:58:48,320
Speaker 1: they haven't really existed as the sort of slave owning

1908
01:58:48,320 --> 01:58:52,320
Speaker 1: classes that used to be in you know what, hundred

1909
01:58:52,480 --> 01:58:58,480
Speaker 1: hundred years, I don't know. Discuss among yourselves when you

1910
01:58:58,520 --> 01:59:01,280
Speaker 1: think share cropping has so to decrease to an amount

1911
01:59:01,320 --> 01:59:03,800
Speaker 1: where these people like are no no longer around as

1912
01:59:03,840 --> 01:59:07,600
Speaker 1: a class. But you know, okay, just despite the sort

1913
01:59:07,600 --> 01:59:11,240
Speaker 1: of pr but these like Southern gentlemen get these people

1914
01:59:11,360 --> 01:59:16,919
Speaker 1: are constantly in debt, and they're you know, constantly attempting

1915
01:59:16,960 --> 01:59:18,960
Speaker 1: to solve the problem of them being in debt with

1916
01:59:19,120 --> 01:59:21,880
Speaker 1: the only thing they know how to do, which is slavery.

1917
01:59:22,560 --> 01:59:24,520
Speaker 1: And when I say they're trying to solve this problem

1918
01:59:24,560 --> 01:59:26,720
Speaker 1: through slavery, um, we're We're going to get to the

1919
01:59:26,760 --> 01:59:28,839
Speaker 1: more complicated ways to try to solve this with slavery.

1920
01:59:29,080 --> 01:59:31,040
Speaker 1: One of the big ways they try to solve this

1921
01:59:31,080 --> 01:59:36,560
Speaker 1: with slavery is just whipping people harder. It's brutal and horrible,

1922
01:59:37,440 --> 01:59:42,520
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know this, this this is a system

1923
01:59:42,600 --> 01:59:45,640
Speaker 1: that is who's the the efficiency of which is just

1924
01:59:45,720 --> 01:59:50,960
Speaker 1: built on profound human violence. So let's let's let's just

1925
01:59:51,120 --> 01:59:53,280
Speaker 1: establish that right off the bat. This is the worst

1926
01:59:53,320 --> 01:59:59,040
Speaker 1: kind of slavery anyone's really ever done. Yeah, now, you know,

1927
01:59:59,440 --> 02:00:02,720
Speaker 1: another actor for these people essentially turning into debtor slavers

1928
02:00:02,920 --> 02:00:06,320
Speaker 1: is the fact that these people are constantly putting themselves

1929
02:00:06,320 --> 02:00:10,640
Speaker 1: in self inflicted debt in order to do speculation. And

1930
02:00:11,640 --> 02:00:15,040
Speaker 1: this is the part where they start doing ship that

1931
02:00:15,240 --> 02:00:18,720
Speaker 1: is difficult for me to even try to explain will

1932
02:00:18,760 --> 02:00:23,680
Speaker 1: adequately capturing the horror of the process. The Southern planters

1933
02:00:23,680 --> 02:00:27,720
Speaker 1: began to create an entire separate financial network based entirely

1934
02:00:27,760 --> 02:00:30,640
Speaker 1: off of the quote unquote value of their slaves and

1935
02:00:30,880 --> 02:00:37,760
Speaker 1: their land. From the historian Edward B. Baptiste. Yet enslavers

1936
02:00:37,800 --> 02:00:41,760
Speaker 1: had already by the end of the eighteen twenties created

1937
02:00:41,800 --> 02:00:47,040
Speaker 1: a highly innovative alternative to existing financial structure. The Consolidated

1938
02:00:47,040 --> 02:00:52,280
Speaker 1: Association of Louisiana Planters, despite his name that c APL

1939
02:00:52,520 --> 02:00:55,920
Speaker 1: was still a bank, created more leverage for enslaveris at

1940
02:00:56,000 --> 02:01:00,520
Speaker 1: less cost and on longer terms. It did so by

1941
02:01:00,560 --> 02:01:06,240
Speaker 1: securitizing slaves, hedging even more effectively against the individual investors

1942
02:01:06,320 --> 02:01:10,240
Speaker 1: loss so long as the financial system itself did not fail.

1943
02:01:11,000 --> 02:01:15,560
Speaker 1: Here is how it worked. Potential borrowers mortgage slaves and

1944
02:01:15,640 --> 02:01:20,000
Speaker 1: cultivated land to the c APL, which entitled them to

1945
02:01:20,080 --> 02:01:22,840
Speaker 1: borrow up to half of the assessed value of their

1946
02:01:22,880 --> 02:01:28,120
Speaker 1: property from the CIAPL and bank notes to convince others

1947
02:01:28,160 --> 02:01:31,720
Speaker 1: to accept the banknotes thus distributed at face value. The

1948
02:01:31,800 --> 02:01:36,360
Speaker 1: ci ap L convinced the Louisiana legislature to back two

1949
02:01:36,360 --> 02:01:40,840
Speaker 1: point five million dollars in bank bonds do win ten

1950
02:01:40,920 --> 02:01:45,080
Speaker 1: to fifteen years bearing five percent interest. With the faith

1951
02:01:45,160 --> 02:01:48,720
Speaker 1: and credit of the people of the state, the Great

1952
02:01:48,760 --> 02:01:52,680
Speaker 1: British Merchant Bank bearing brothers agreed to advance the ci

1953
02:01:52,760 --> 02:01:56,720
Speaker 1: APL the equivalent of two point five million dollars in

1954
02:01:56,880 --> 02:02:00,680
Speaker 1: Sterling bills. By the way, that is a on fathomable

1955
02:02:00,680 --> 02:02:04,000
Speaker 1: amount of money. Now that's not five million dollars status,

1956
02:02:04,480 --> 02:02:06,040
Speaker 1: that is it. That is an amount of money that

1957
02:02:06,080 --> 02:02:09,360
Speaker 1: will make your ears bleed the equivalent of two point

1958
02:02:09,400 --> 02:02:12,760
Speaker 1: five million and sterling bills, and market the bonds on

1959
02:02:12,840 --> 02:02:18,880
Speaker 1: European securities markets. The bonds effectively converted in Slaver's biggest investment,

1960
02:02:19,680 --> 02:02:25,000
Speaker 1: human beings or quote unquote hands from Maryland and Virginia

1961
02:02:25,040 --> 02:02:29,760
Speaker 1: and North Carolina and Kentucky into multiple streams of income,

1962
02:02:30,280 --> 02:02:35,240
Speaker 1: all under their control. Since all borrowers were officially stakeholders

1963
02:02:35,240 --> 02:02:39,040
Speaker 1: in the bank, the sale of the bonds created a

1964
02:02:39,120 --> 02:02:42,200
Speaker 1: high quality credit pool to be lent back to the

1965
02:02:42,240 --> 02:02:46,720
Speaker 1: planters at a significantly lower rate, sorry at a rate

1966
02:02:46,760 --> 02:02:49,960
Speaker 1: significantly lower than the rate of return they could expect

1967
02:02:49,960 --> 02:02:53,920
Speaker 1: that money to produce. The pool could be used for

1968
02:02:53,960 --> 02:02:58,520
Speaker 1: all sorts of income generating purposes, buying more slaves to

1969
02:02:58,680 --> 02:03:02,520
Speaker 1: produce more cotton and sugar and hence more income, or

1970
02:03:02,640 --> 02:03:07,480
Speaker 1: lending to other enslavers. Ver borrowers could pure amid their

1971
02:03:07,560 --> 02:03:11,400
Speaker 1: leverage even higher by borrowing on the same collateral from

1972
02:03:11,520 --> 02:03:17,560
Speaker 1: multiple lenders, while also getting unsecured short term commercial loans

1973
02:03:17,600 --> 02:03:21,360
Speaker 1: from the c APL by purchasing new slaves with the

1974
02:03:21,400 --> 02:03:25,800
Speaker 1: money they borrowed and borrowing on them too. They had

1975
02:03:25,840 --> 02:03:31,120
Speaker 1: mortgaged their slaves, sometimes multiple times, and sometimes they even

1976
02:03:31,160 --> 02:03:35,800
Speaker 1: mortgage fictitious slaves. But in contrast to what Walsh had promised,

1977
02:03:35,880 --> 02:03:41,360
Speaker 1: Nulty in this type of mortgage gave the enslaver tremendous

1978
02:03:41,440 --> 02:03:46,120
Speaker 1: margins control and flexibility. It was hard to imagine that

1979
02:03:46,160 --> 02:03:50,560
Speaker 1: such borrows would be foreclosed even if they fell behind

1980
02:03:50,560 --> 02:03:55,200
Speaker 1: on their payments. After all, the borrowers owned the bank.

1981
02:03:56,520 --> 02:03:59,800
Speaker 1: Using the c A p L model, slave owners were

1982
02:03:59,800 --> 02:04:03,160
Speaker 1: now were able to monetize their slaves by securitizing them

1983
02:04:03,200 --> 02:04:10,720
Speaker 1: and then leveraging them multiple times on the international financial markets. Now, okay,

1984
02:04:10,840 --> 02:04:15,160
Speaker 1: having having just spent a decent amount of time running

1985
02:04:15,160 --> 02:04:17,160
Speaker 1: through the sort of finance of this, I need to

1986
02:04:17,200 --> 02:04:20,960
Speaker 1: reiterate these are human beings who are being enslaved and

1987
02:04:21,040 --> 02:04:26,400
Speaker 1: tortured constantly, the ownership of whom is being mortgaged to

1988
02:04:26,480 --> 02:04:29,800
Speaker 1: a bank and then sold and traded as assets on

1989
02:04:29,840 --> 02:04:33,920
Speaker 1: the financial markets. What what they have done here is

1990
02:04:34,480 --> 02:04:39,720
Speaker 1: like two thousand eight style financial collapse, like set of

1991
02:04:39,760 --> 02:04:45,440
Speaker 1: collateralized loan obligations, except the loans are backed by fucking

1992
02:04:45,520 --> 02:04:49,480
Speaker 1: human beings they've forced into slavery. It is a level

1993
02:04:49,560 --> 02:04:54,880
Speaker 1: of evil that is almost incomprehensible because the very financial

1994
02:04:54,960 --> 02:04:58,920
Speaker 1: language that is necessary to explain what they're doing, by

1995
02:04:59,000 --> 02:05:02,640
Speaker 1: necessity can feels the horror of what's actually being done

1996
02:05:03,520 --> 02:05:07,080
Speaker 1: and was actually being done here is hundreds of thousands

1997
02:05:07,080 --> 02:05:10,960
Speaker 1: of people are being sold into slavery and forced to

1998
02:05:11,000 --> 02:05:14,280
Speaker 1: clear land and work on land that has just been

1999
02:05:14,320 --> 02:05:18,440
Speaker 1: stolen literally like you know sometimes in some cases like

2000
02:05:18,600 --> 02:05:21,480
Speaker 1: the day before, by indigenous people who have just been

2001
02:05:21,520 --> 02:05:24,640
Speaker 1: sent on the trail of tears. And this is this

2002
02:05:24,720 --> 02:05:28,360
Speaker 1: is being done to fuel these new financial instruments. Now,

2003
02:05:28,840 --> 02:05:33,160
Speaker 1: in a somewhat ironic twist, the product of this entire thing,

2004
02:05:33,200 --> 02:05:35,839
Speaker 1: the product of all of this land clearing, the product

2005
02:05:35,880 --> 02:05:39,400
Speaker 1: of Andrew Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the US,

2006
02:05:40,160 --> 02:05:42,720
Speaker 1: the product of all of this sort of speculation is

2007
02:05:44,160 --> 02:05:47,640
Speaker 1: the plantations wind up producing too much cotton, too much

2008
02:05:47,640 --> 02:05:54,000
Speaker 1: slave cotton, and this quickly becomes an absolute fiasco. Debt

2009
02:05:54,040 --> 02:05:58,880
Speaker 1: suddenly outpaced the entire value of the slave crop, and

2010
02:05:58,960 --> 02:06:01,880
Speaker 1: you know, the entire financial system begins to implode. So

2011
02:06:02,000 --> 02:06:04,520
Speaker 1: it starts, it starts in sort of the UK and

2012
02:06:04,560 --> 02:06:06,920
Speaker 1: the European markets that had taken a bunch of these

2013
02:06:07,040 --> 02:06:11,760
Speaker 1: these sort of slave bonds. But eventually the financial collapse

2014
02:06:11,800 --> 02:06:14,000
Speaker 1: spreads and you know, as we heard in the article,

2015
02:06:14,160 --> 02:06:16,360
Speaker 1: right the way these banks are set off, the way

2016
02:06:16,400 --> 02:06:20,120
Speaker 1: these again, like these these banks that are just all

2017
02:06:20,160 --> 02:06:23,280
Speaker 1: of the bank is just slaves. And I guess I

2018
02:06:23,480 --> 02:06:25,920
Speaker 1: guess I should also take an aside here to mention that,

2019
02:06:26,600 --> 02:06:29,440
Speaker 1: like the normal banks are also doing stuff like this.

2020
02:06:29,960 --> 02:06:33,360
Speaker 1: It's just that the South not being content to just

2021
02:06:33,440 --> 02:06:37,080
Speaker 1: have normal banks taking you know, doing mortgages like they're

2022
02:06:37,120 --> 02:06:41,120
Speaker 1: taking out mortgages on houses with slaves is collateral. Uh,

2023
02:06:41,200 --> 02:06:43,640
Speaker 1: They've they've credit sided to create like their in their

2024
02:06:43,680 --> 02:06:47,960
Speaker 1: own entire financial network that's just slaves and nothing else. Well,

2025
02:06:48,080 --> 02:06:52,600
Speaker 1: land too, but yeah, slaves in the land. This entire

2026
02:06:52,640 --> 02:06:57,960
Speaker 1: thing sort of just collapses in on itself, and this

2027
02:06:58,080 --> 02:07:02,240
Speaker 1: leads to it to an even larger mass of dead

2028
02:07:02,280 --> 02:07:06,320
Speaker 1: or slavery plantation doners. And this is where we turned

2029
02:07:06,480 --> 02:07:11,880
Speaker 1: from plantation slavery to some good old fashioned conquistadoring. What

2030
02:07:12,080 --> 02:07:15,200
Speaker 1: of the sort of myths of slavery with the way

2031
02:07:15,200 --> 02:07:18,720
Speaker 1: that you know, slavery has been sort of understood in

2032
02:07:19,360 --> 02:07:22,960
Speaker 1: the West, particularly in sort of Europe, well, particularly in

2033
02:07:22,960 --> 02:07:25,520
Speaker 1: the U S and the UK, which have these sort

2034
02:07:25,560 --> 02:07:33,080
Speaker 1: of like complexes about, you know, like this sort of

2035
02:07:33,120 --> 02:07:39,440
Speaker 1: inevitability of ebolitionism and the sort of benevolent empire against

2036
02:07:39,720 --> 02:07:43,120
Speaker 1: abolition or whatever. You know, there's there's this sort of

2037
02:07:43,160 --> 02:07:45,280
Speaker 1: like that you get these economic organis to that that

2038
02:07:45,360 --> 02:07:48,480
Speaker 1: the people people will argue that you know, slavery was

2039
02:07:48,560 --> 02:07:52,680
Speaker 1: like going to collapse anyways, like people just let it go,

2040
02:07:52,920 --> 02:07:56,480
Speaker 1: it would have fell on apart, and that that is

2041
02:07:56,520 --> 02:07:58,960
Speaker 1: just sort of nonsense. And one of the things that

2042
02:07:59,000 --> 02:08:01,640
Speaker 1: this could one of the things that this conceals is

2043
02:08:01,680 --> 02:08:07,760
Speaker 1: that slave power was constantly expansionary. It's never sort of

2044
02:08:07,760 --> 02:08:11,000
Speaker 1: like slavery was never a system that was sort of

2045
02:08:11,040 --> 02:08:15,040
Speaker 1: just contained in one place, right. It was always pushing,

2046
02:08:15,080 --> 02:08:17,720
Speaker 1: it was always attempting to you know, seize new land.

2047
02:08:18,280 --> 02:08:20,440
Speaker 1: It was always attempting to seize new slaves. Was it

2048
02:08:20,520 --> 02:08:23,560
Speaker 1: was a system that could only really survive if it

2049
02:08:23,640 --> 02:08:26,600
Speaker 1: was constantly able to seize new territory and seize new

2050
02:08:26,600 --> 02:08:31,200
Speaker 1: slaves in order to work it. And so there's a

2051
02:08:31,200 --> 02:08:34,800
Speaker 1: lot of sort of products of this, right One of

2052
02:08:34,840 --> 02:08:37,760
Speaker 1: the sort of earlier ones, you get these settlers pushing west,

2053
02:08:37,880 --> 02:08:40,480
Speaker 1: attempting to turn sort of new states and the slave states.

2054
02:08:41,280 --> 02:08:43,920
Speaker 1: And these are you know, these are often, like the

2055
02:08:43,960 --> 02:08:46,920
Speaker 1: settlers here, often the sort of men like ephemistically described

2056
02:08:46,960 --> 02:08:49,280
Speaker 1: as adventurers with like you know, these are people who

2057
02:08:49,480 --> 02:08:53,400
Speaker 1: portize right like, they are people desperately attempting to stay

2058
02:08:53,440 --> 02:08:55,880
Speaker 1: one step ahead of their creditors by invoking the time

2059
02:08:55,920 --> 02:08:59,400
Speaker 1: honored American tradition of slaughtering indigenous people for their land,

2060
02:09:00,080 --> 02:09:02,360
Speaker 1: which you know, could then be turned over to speculators,

2061
02:09:02,360 --> 02:09:04,720
Speaker 1: you could be turned over to the short of wealthier backers.

2062
02:09:06,280 --> 02:09:09,040
Speaker 1: And these men and in this period, these are almost

2063
02:09:09,080 --> 02:09:13,360
Speaker 1: always men. I thought that's going to change pretty soon.

2064
02:09:14,640 --> 02:09:16,960
Speaker 1: But these men are so violent and so disruptive that

2065
02:09:17,000 --> 02:09:19,360
Speaker 1: at various points in the late seventeen hundreds and early

2066
02:09:19,400 --> 02:09:23,560
Speaker 1: eight the US like attempts to stop them from settling

2067
02:09:23,600 --> 02:09:27,640
Speaker 1: any further less, they sort of disturb American foreign policy efforts. Um.

2068
02:09:27,680 --> 02:09:30,880
Speaker 1: And these efforts fail, and the product of this is

2069
02:09:30,880 --> 02:09:34,360
Speaker 1: that manifest destinies. You know, trail of corpses pushes even

2070
02:09:34,400 --> 02:09:39,160
Speaker 1: further and further west. Now by the by the eighteen fifties,

2071
02:09:39,240 --> 02:09:41,720
Speaker 1: there there's a new sort of conquistador who's setting out

2072
02:09:41,760 --> 02:09:43,920
Speaker 1: to you know, conquering the name of the cross and

2073
02:09:43,960 --> 02:09:48,120
Speaker 1: paying off their creditors. And they're called filibusters. Now this

2074
02:09:48,200 --> 02:09:51,680
Speaker 1: is actually where these people are where the term filibuster

2075
02:09:51,800 --> 02:09:55,120
Speaker 1: as a sort of like like thing that you do

2076
02:09:55,280 --> 02:09:57,480
Speaker 1: in the sentence and not let people do stuff like that. This,

2077
02:09:57,480 --> 02:10:00,440
Speaker 1: this is where that comes from. It's these people. Um,

2078
02:10:00,480 --> 02:10:05,760
Speaker 1: these are okay, So you know, the official descriptions of

2079
02:10:05,800 --> 02:10:10,400
Speaker 1: them will say things like private armies. I there are

2080
02:10:10,480 --> 02:10:14,560
Speaker 1: more these kind of like ragged bands of like slavery

2081
02:10:14,640 --> 02:10:18,800
Speaker 1: mongering gennis ideas who are backed by you know, largely

2082
02:10:18,800 --> 02:10:22,040
Speaker 1: by southern plantation owners, sometimes by southern states, occasionally by

2083
02:10:22,080 --> 02:10:25,240
Speaker 1: just northern banks. Because the place they're trying to go

2084
02:10:25,400 --> 02:10:27,640
Speaker 1: somewhere the banks. The northern banks want to sort of

2085
02:10:27,640 --> 02:10:30,760
Speaker 1: seize control of. And you know, these people set out

2086
02:10:30,800 --> 02:10:34,040
Speaker 1: to conquer new slave states by you know, straight up

2087
02:10:34,040 --> 02:10:38,080
Speaker 1: season control of places like Cuba or Mexico. They do

2088
02:10:38,080 --> 02:10:41,360
Speaker 1: a bunch of this stuff in Texas doesn't really work,

2089
02:10:41,440 --> 02:10:45,920
Speaker 1: but you know, they mean part of the complicated thing

2090
02:10:45,920 --> 02:10:49,960
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the filibusters is that like, in some sense,

2091
02:10:50,360 --> 02:10:54,160
Speaker 1: the most successful like attempt to do something like this

2092
02:10:54,440 --> 02:10:57,840
Speaker 1: was actually Texas, but those people weren't really feel about

2093
02:10:57,840 --> 02:11:01,480
Speaker 1: like the people who actually successful le sees control of Texas,

2094
02:11:01,560 --> 02:11:05,280
Speaker 1: like Sam Adam and his sort of crew of merry

2095
02:11:05,360 --> 02:11:09,320
Speaker 1: miscreant slave owners. Those guys aren't technically filibusters, but you know,

2096
02:11:09,360 --> 02:11:13,040
Speaker 1: they they do sort of succeed in bringing in Texas

2097
02:11:13,360 --> 02:11:17,480
Speaker 1: as a slave state. But yeah, you know, I mean

2098
02:11:17,520 --> 02:11:20,240
Speaker 1: these people are they keep they keep launching invasions of

2099
02:11:20,320 --> 02:11:23,600
Speaker 1: fucking Cuba, They keep launching us invasions everywhere. There's a

2100
02:11:23,600 --> 02:11:27,400
Speaker 1: really great movie called Walker that's a sort of fictionalized

2101
02:11:27,400 --> 02:11:30,280
Speaker 1: account of probably the most famous filibuster, a guy named

2102
02:11:30,320 --> 02:11:33,600
Speaker 1: William Walker, and well, okay, so it starts with his

2103
02:11:33,640 --> 02:11:38,080
Speaker 1: attempt to like conquered Mexico, which doesn't go well, but

2104
02:11:38,160 --> 02:11:40,680
Speaker 1: then it sets out for his attempt to conquered Nicaragua,

2105
02:11:40,720 --> 02:11:43,960
Speaker 1: which like kind of works like he actually takes Nicaragua

2106
02:11:44,080 --> 02:11:47,760
Speaker 1: for a little bit. You know, but this this this

2107
02:11:47,760 --> 02:11:49,760
Speaker 1: movie version of it's also like it's an anti war

2108
02:11:49,840 --> 02:11:53,839
Speaker 1: film about the US backing the contrast, and it rules.

2109
02:11:53,880 --> 02:11:56,360
Speaker 1: I'm talking about it because nobody's ever watched this thing.

2110
02:11:56,920 --> 02:12:00,280
Speaker 1: And the studio when when they they actually figure about

2111
02:12:00,320 --> 02:12:03,080
Speaker 1: what Walker was and that it was, you know, like

2112
02:12:03,080 --> 02:12:07,680
Speaker 1: an an anti war film about the contrast, they literally

2113
02:12:07,760 --> 02:12:11,880
Speaker 1: killed the entire movie and the director Alex Cox, here's

2114
02:12:11,880 --> 02:12:13,840
Speaker 1: the guy you should repo man like he literally never

2115
02:12:13,840 --> 02:12:18,240
Speaker 1: worked in Hollywood again after this. So yeah, go watch Walker.

2116
02:12:18,400 --> 02:12:21,000
Speaker 1: Understand it's a little it's a bit fictionalized. It's mostly

2117
02:12:21,040 --> 02:12:23,800
Speaker 1: an anti war film about the contrast. But you know,

2118
02:12:24,160 --> 02:12:25,839
Speaker 1: part of what you trying to trace out and personally

2119
02:12:25,840 --> 02:12:28,680
Speaker 1: that is very important about this is that you know,

2120
02:12:28,800 --> 02:12:33,480
Speaker 1: the there's this there's these sort of lineages of American colonialism,

2121
02:12:33,560 --> 02:12:36,960
Speaker 1: and part of these linear edges is that you know,

2122
02:12:37,080 --> 02:12:40,560
Speaker 1: like the that literally does not matter like what century

2123
02:12:40,560 --> 02:12:42,240
Speaker 1: you're in, the US is trying to see his control

2124
02:12:42,280 --> 02:12:45,800
Speaker 1: of Nicaragua. Now, okay, so but back back to the

2125
02:12:45,800 --> 02:12:49,720
Speaker 1: solo philibusters mainline. Unlike the conquistadors who were kind of

2126
02:12:49,720 --> 02:12:53,160
Speaker 1: like I don't know, they had a combination of being

2127
02:12:53,160 --> 02:12:59,000
Speaker 1: really really lucky and also like GENU widely having some

2128
02:12:59,040 --> 02:13:02,360
Speaker 1: pretty good leadership even though you know, good leadership but

2129
02:13:02,560 --> 02:13:08,440
Speaker 1: for evil I those guys were really sucessful. The Philipbuzzers

2130
02:13:09,200 --> 02:13:13,480
Speaker 1: they mostly failed because again this is these these are

2131
02:13:13,480 --> 02:13:17,200
Speaker 1: mostly sort of just like bands of like marauders. They

2132
02:13:17,200 --> 02:13:21,040
Speaker 1: don't they barely have supply lines, like I don't know.

2133
02:13:21,160 --> 02:13:25,800
Speaker 1: Sometimes they have real weapons, but they're not especially competent.

2134
02:13:26,160 --> 02:13:30,440
Speaker 1: But what what what they did do is they kill

2135
02:13:30,480 --> 02:13:33,120
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And this this is one of

2136
02:13:33,120 --> 02:13:38,080
Speaker 1: those things that's sort of like I don't know, it

2137
02:13:38,160 --> 02:13:41,120
Speaker 1: gets sort of romanticized or gets sort of like brushed over.

2138
02:13:41,360 --> 02:13:44,840
Speaker 1: Is that like, yeah, I know, these these people like

2139
02:13:46,280 --> 02:13:50,200
Speaker 1: they're they're like these groups are basically like rolling lynch mobs,

2140
02:13:51,160 --> 02:13:54,280
Speaker 1: and so you know, there they'll they'll be doing something

2141
02:13:54,360 --> 02:13:56,800
Speaker 1: that run into a town. They'll just they'll just kill everyone.

2142
02:13:56,880 --> 02:14:00,360
Speaker 1: They will enslave people, they were rape people, they do

2143
02:14:00,600 --> 02:14:05,640
Speaker 1: ship that is just they're absolutely imborrant and that's that's

2144
02:14:05,680 --> 02:14:08,600
Speaker 1: the sort of legacy of this stuff. And you know

2145
02:14:08,680 --> 02:14:11,120
Speaker 1: they probably would have kept doing it, and you know,

2146
02:14:11,160 --> 02:14:13,440
Speaker 1: except they were stopped right one of One of the

2147
02:14:13,480 --> 02:14:17,440
Speaker 1: sort of like legacies of these people is eventually the

2148
02:14:17,480 --> 02:14:22,480
Speaker 1: sort of slave powers like wind up and Bleeding Kansas,

2149
02:14:22,520 --> 02:14:24,360
Speaker 1: which is the sort of semi civil war between the

2150
02:14:24,400 --> 02:14:27,560
Speaker 1: pro slavery anti slavery forces in Kansas that leads to

2151
02:14:27,560 --> 02:14:31,040
Speaker 1: the regular civil war. But you know, I mean, I

2152
02:14:31,280 --> 02:14:33,440
Speaker 1: think I think it's sort of important to understand about

2153
02:14:35,360 --> 02:14:38,280
Speaker 1: this entire thing is that these people just kept accumulating

2154
02:14:38,280 --> 02:14:40,640
Speaker 1: power and kept accumulating power and kept a commulating power

2155
02:14:40,800 --> 02:14:44,200
Speaker 1: or someone stopped them. And that was also true of

2156
02:14:44,280 --> 02:14:46,400
Speaker 1: the conquisadors, right, Like I mean, you know, and like

2157
02:14:46,520 --> 02:14:49,640
Speaker 1: arguably arguably the sort of sentence those people are still

2158
02:14:49,680 --> 02:14:54,200
Speaker 1: in power, but like you know, the Spanish were not

2159
02:14:54,360 --> 02:14:57,640
Speaker 1: run out of the places that they had conquered until

2160
02:14:57,640 --> 02:15:02,160
Speaker 1: people sort of fought them. Now, the last thing I

2161
02:15:02,200 --> 02:15:06,040
Speaker 1: want to do is we're also not free of this

2162
02:15:06,200 --> 02:15:10,680
Speaker 1: kind of guy. Um. It kind of manifests in different

2163
02:15:10,680 --> 02:15:14,680
Speaker 1: ways in sort of more recent times. I think probably

2164
02:15:14,760 --> 02:15:18,200
Speaker 1: the the closest we have to the sort of like

2165
02:15:18,240 --> 02:15:21,920
Speaker 1: corporate cortes thing are the people behind the sort of

2166
02:15:22,320 --> 02:15:24,680
Speaker 1: it gets it gets rereaded as emergency and acquisitions, but

2167
02:15:24,720 --> 02:15:31,320
Speaker 1: the people behind the like leverage, buy out um like

2168
02:15:31,960 --> 02:15:35,760
Speaker 1: corporate radar stuff on Wall Street in the eighties, who

2169
02:15:36,280 --> 02:15:38,000
Speaker 1: you know. And then the reason, the reason they sort

2170
02:15:38,000 --> 02:15:40,360
Speaker 1: of they behave and they think in a lot of

2171
02:15:40,400 --> 02:15:42,160
Speaker 1: the very in a lot of the same ways as

2172
02:15:42,240 --> 02:15:44,240
Speaker 1: as these sort of as a sort of debtor or slavers,

2173
02:15:45,160 --> 02:15:49,800
Speaker 1: is that they're their financial techniques leave them in basically

2174
02:15:49,840 --> 02:15:54,360
Speaker 1: the same situation as um as as as your cortes,

2175
02:15:54,480 --> 02:15:56,640
Speaker 1: which is that the way that these people take over

2176
02:15:56,680 --> 02:15:59,080
Speaker 1: a company and these these are basically financed people. These

2177
02:15:59,120 --> 02:16:01,880
Speaker 1: are investors who have figured out a way to seize

2178
02:16:01,920 --> 02:16:03,760
Speaker 1: control of companies. And the way they figured out to

2179
02:16:03,760 --> 02:16:08,160
Speaker 1: do it is they they essentially they still bonds to

2180
02:16:08,160 --> 02:16:11,880
Speaker 1: other investors. So the short version of it is that, yeah,

2181
02:16:11,920 --> 02:16:15,320
Speaker 1: they they go into an enormous amount of debt personally

2182
02:16:15,560 --> 02:16:17,440
Speaker 1: right in order to you know, have enough money to

2183
02:16:17,560 --> 02:16:20,600
Speaker 1: just buy up the stock prices of the company. And

2184
02:16:20,640 --> 02:16:23,480
Speaker 1: you know, they say, okay, we're gonna buy say say

2185
02:16:23,480 --> 02:16:25,440
Speaker 1: say your stock price thirty five dollars. They're like, okay,

2186
02:16:25,440 --> 02:16:28,640
Speaker 1: we're gonna buy the stock at forty and unless the

2187
02:16:28,640 --> 02:16:31,840
Speaker 1: company can you know, like somehow raise or stock price

2188
02:16:31,880 --> 02:16:34,640
Speaker 1: above that in order to fend them off, you know,

2189
02:16:34,760 --> 02:16:36,920
Speaker 1: this one person who's taking on an enormous amount of

2190
02:16:36,959 --> 02:16:39,480
Speaker 1: debt now suddenly just owns the company, and he could

2191
02:16:39,480 --> 02:16:41,080
Speaker 1: transfer the debt onto the company, and then he has

2192
02:16:41,120 --> 02:16:43,320
Speaker 1: to start, you know, just stripping assets from it, right.

2193
02:16:44,000 --> 02:16:45,720
Speaker 1: He has to find ways to make money. He has

2194
02:16:45,760 --> 02:16:49,119
Speaker 1: to find ways to sort of raise the stock price

2195
02:16:49,120 --> 02:16:51,400
Speaker 1: of this thing, you know, and this is usually done

2196
02:16:51,440 --> 02:16:55,520
Speaker 1: by like stripping people's pensions, by firing people, by just

2197
02:16:55,640 --> 02:17:00,280
Speaker 1: destroying entire like entire sort of like people's lively, this

2198
02:17:00,360 --> 02:17:02,960
Speaker 1: is done by just dismantling companies wholesale like toys. R

2199
02:17:03,040 --> 02:17:05,600
Speaker 1: Us is the last company that sort of famously had

2200
02:17:05,640 --> 02:17:07,480
Speaker 1: this happened to them. They just get completely dismembered. And

2201
02:17:07,480 --> 02:17:12,880
Speaker 1: they get completely dismembered because the people who buy these companies, right,

2202
02:17:13,680 --> 02:17:16,560
Speaker 1: and you know this eventually shot transiento firms instead, etcetera, etcetera.

2203
02:17:16,600 --> 02:17:22,360
Speaker 1: But those people are also unbelievably in debt, right, and

2204
02:17:22,920 --> 02:17:24,760
Speaker 1: you know, it's that that they've imposed on themselves. It

2205
02:17:24,840 --> 02:17:27,840
Speaker 1: isn't that you know, the sort of psychological effects of

2206
02:17:27,879 --> 02:17:33,120
Speaker 1: it are very similar. And you know, I think I

2207
02:17:33,160 --> 02:17:39,279
Speaker 1: think the thing about sort of like the late century

2208
02:17:39,320 --> 02:17:43,800
Speaker 1: is that the violence gets outsourced. So you know, these

2209
02:17:43,840 --> 02:17:47,440
Speaker 1: people still have slaves, but the slaves are like you

2210
02:17:47,480 --> 02:17:50,280
Speaker 1: know that the slaves are owned by a contractor who's

2211
02:17:50,320 --> 02:17:55,680
Speaker 1: our contractor of a contractor like somewhere way down the line.

2212
02:17:58,000 --> 02:18:01,920
Speaker 1: But you know, the the sort of strategic stuff and

2213
02:18:02,000 --> 02:18:05,240
Speaker 1: the way that these people behave is very similar. And

2214
02:18:05,480 --> 02:18:07,360
Speaker 1: I think it's worth knowing that there's there's two there's

2215
02:18:07,360 --> 02:18:08,959
Speaker 1: people who there's coop of people who come out of

2216
02:18:08,959 --> 02:18:12,360
Speaker 1: this era who are very important now. One is that

2217
02:18:12,400 --> 02:18:13,640
Speaker 1: one of the people who comes out of this sort

2218
02:18:13,640 --> 02:18:16,200
Speaker 1: of eighties and nineties era who was also constantly in

2219
02:18:16,240 --> 02:18:18,760
Speaker 1: debt and it's also just sort of like a murderous,

2220
02:18:19,000 --> 02:18:23,760
Speaker 1: like incredibly vengeful person who who's also sort of dealing

2221
02:18:24,000 --> 02:18:28,840
Speaker 1: with these same kinds of like you know, who's tapping

2222
02:18:28,879 --> 02:18:30,600
Speaker 1: into the sort of emotions of the sort of like

2223
02:18:30,680 --> 02:18:36,320
Speaker 1: indignation and outrage and desperation, like is Donald Trump and

2224
02:18:36,440 --> 02:18:38,560
Speaker 1: you know in Toronald Trump, I think is a sort

2225
02:18:38,560 --> 02:18:40,040
Speaker 1: of tragedy version of it. And then you get to

2226
02:18:40,080 --> 02:18:44,440
Speaker 1: see it We've been getting to see it with with

2227
02:18:44,480 --> 02:18:46,520
Speaker 1: Elon Musk as the sort of fest version of it

2228
02:18:46,560 --> 02:18:48,920
Speaker 1: where he's you know, increasingly desperate that try to like

2229
02:18:49,000 --> 02:18:51,879
Speaker 1: dig himself out of the hole that he got by

2230
02:18:51,920 --> 02:18:54,879
Speaker 1: buying by having to leverage himself so much to buy Twitter.

2231
02:18:56,280 --> 02:18:58,920
Speaker 1: But yeah, we are we we remain haunted by the

2232
02:18:58,959 --> 02:19:03,039
Speaker 1: specter of this kind of guy. And they've done they've

2233
02:19:03,040 --> 02:19:05,280
Speaker 1: done enormous harm to the world. They're probably going to

2234
02:19:05,360 --> 02:19:10,440
Speaker 1: keep doing enormous harm in the world. And yeah, but

2235
02:19:10,440 --> 02:19:15,800
Speaker 1: but again, I I think it is worth thinking about

2236
02:19:15,959 --> 02:19:19,480
Speaker 1: them psychologically and worth understanding that it's not that, you know,

2237
02:19:19,560 --> 02:19:22,680
Speaker 1: like at the core of sort of like the capitalist

2238
02:19:22,680 --> 02:19:26,120
Speaker 1: death machine, are not necessarily these like incredibly cold, rational,

2239
02:19:26,200 --> 02:19:28,680
Speaker 1: calculating people. It's a bunch of people who are frantic,

2240
02:19:28,720 --> 02:19:31,880
Speaker 1: who are desperate, who are very very angry, and that

2241
02:19:31,920 --> 02:19:33,800
Speaker 1: doesn't make them sort of you know, it doesn't make

2242
02:19:33,840 --> 02:19:39,119
Speaker 1: them more sympathetic. It just makes them more violence. Hey,

2243
02:19:39,200 --> 02:19:42,320
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from

2244
02:19:42,320 --> 02:19:44,879
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could

2245
02:19:44,920 --> 02:19:47,240
Speaker 1: Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For

2246
02:19:47,400 --> 02:19:50,120
Speaker 1: more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

2247
02:19:50,160 --> 02:19:52,160
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the

2248
02:19:52,160 --> 02:19:54,880
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

2249
02:19:54,920 --> 02:19:57,680
Speaker 1: to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could happen here,

2250
02:19:57,760 --> 02:20:01,200
Speaker 1: updated monthly at cool Zone Media, dot Calm, slash sources.

2251
02:20:01,400 --> 02:20:02,240
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.