Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. This is it could Happen Here.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrison Davis. This episode is going to be a
Speaker 1: bit of an update and an interview regarding the Defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest and Cops City movement that's been ongoing
Speaker 1: for almost two years now. If you're unfamiliar with the topic,
Speaker 1: I made a three hour, two part deep dive last
Speaker 1: May titled on the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest
Speaker 1: that you can find up on the it could Happen
Speaker 1: Here feed, and I've been doing random dates like in
Speaker 1: our History of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm episodes from
Speaker 1: last August. But the TLDR is that the City of
Speaker 1: Atlanta and the corporate funded Atlanta Police Foundation are trying
Speaker 1: to tear down a large section of the Woolanee or
Speaker 1: South River Forest in Decab County to construct a massive,
Speaker 1: ninety million dollar militarized, state of the art police training facility,
Speaker 1: complete with a mock city on top of that. Ryan
Speaker 1: millsaps Black Hall Movie Studios are planning to cut down
Speaker 1: an adjacent section of the very same forest to expand
Speaker 1: their film production studio in a shady land swap deal
Speaker 1: that's currently the subject of a lawsuit. The past couple
Speaker 1: of weeks have seen a massive increase in the intensity
Speaker 1: of repression efforts by the state and local police inside
Speaker 1: Atlanta and Decab County against the Cops City movement and
Speaker 1: people in the forest encampments trying to prevent the construction
Speaker 1: of the police training facility. Last month, on a December
Speaker 1: there was a raid on the forest by a task
Speaker 1: force of local, state, and federal law enforcement. Police were
Speaker 1: shooting pepperballs, rubber tipped metal impact rounds, and tear gas
Speaker 1: canisters into the woods. They destroyed treehouses while people were
Speaker 1: still inside, and tore part of the infrastructure like the
Speaker 1: communal kitchen that was built inside the forest to support
Speaker 1: the encampment. Police fired chemical weapons at tree sitters, arrested
Speaker 1: multiple people and pushed others out of the forest at gunpoint.
Speaker 1: One of the things setting this apart from previous raids
Speaker 1: is that six people have now been charged with domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism as well as a number of other felonies. The
Speaker 1: people charged were initially denied bail and essentially held as
Speaker 1: political prisoners for trespassing in a forest with the terrorism
Speaker 1: enhancement charge added on top top. The Georgia Bureau of
Speaker 1: Investigation alleges quote several people through rocks at police cars
Speaker 1: and attacked E m T s outside the neighboring fire
Speaker 1: stations with rocks and bottles. Task Force members use various
Speaker 1: tactics to arrest individuals who are occupying makeshift treehouses unquote.
Speaker 1: The Georgia Department of Homeland Security, which was formed as
Speaker 1: the result of a seventeen bill which is also responsible
Speaker 1: for the expanded definition of domestic terrorism, has chose to
Speaker 1: designate the defend the land of forest as quote domestic
Speaker 1: violent extremists unquote, which has led the State Attorney General's
Speaker 1: office to also get involved in the case. I think
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning that this seen domestic terrorism bill was
Speaker 1: first passed by the Georgia legislator in response to the
Speaker 1: neo Nazi Dylan Roof mass shooting at Emmanuel African Methodist
Speaker 1: Piscopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which killed nine people.
Speaker 1: So now we have this law allegedly created in response
Speaker 1: to a murderous white supremacist targeted attack against black people,
Speaker 1: now being used for the first time as a bludgeon
Speaker 1: against anti racist protesters who are fighting against the expansion
Speaker 1: and further militarization of police facilities. This is a reminder
Speaker 1: that any expansion of state power will always come down
Speaker 1: the hardest on people who are actually pushing back against
Speaker 1: the power structures of the state, like the police. After
Speaker 1: being held in jail for two weeks on in December,
Speaker 1: the six people were finally granted bail, but as of
Speaker 1: two days later, the jail was refusing to comply and
Speaker 1: release someone, instead saying that they will be quote held
Speaker 1: well the prosecutor add additional charges unquote. This abnormality was
Speaker 1: soon resolved and by December all six people charged were
Speaker 1: released on bail thanks to the Solidarity Fund, everyone who donated,
Speaker 1: and people working jail support. Our interview today will be
Speaker 1: focusing on the jail support aspect and bail Fund organizing
Speaker 1: and for Note this interview was conducted prior to the
Speaker 1: release of the Forest Defenders. With me here today is
Speaker 1: James and Ralph. James is from the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee,
Speaker 1: and Ralph is from the Solidarity Fund. Greetings, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining me here, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1: Good to be here. So first I would like to
Speaker 1: see if, if if either of you have any kind
Speaker 1: of extra input on what's happened the past few weeks
Speaker 1: and how you think. I mean, I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: quite ask you why because you're obviously not not the police,
Speaker 1: but like, what what might be some reasons for some
Speaker 1: of the some of the increased repression and the use
Speaker 1: extremely extremely high charges being levied at people at this
Speaker 1: point in the movement. Yeah, they are extremely high charges.
Speaker 1: They're really unprecedented charges in the state of Georgia. I
Speaker 1: don't think that, uh does of us in the entire
Speaker 1: questions based I've really ever seen anything like this being
Speaker 1: used against protesters, and I think the reason why it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear, and I think that that reason is because
Speaker 1: there's been an extremely effective social movement that's involved thousands
Speaker 1: of people from Atlanta and from across the country over
Speaker 1: the last year and a half two years that have
Speaker 1: brought a serious challenge against a very unpopular proposal from
Speaker 1: the city to build a police mega mega compounds. And
Speaker 1: I think that the police and various other agencies that
Speaker 1: they're working with, the Atlanta Police, the Atlanta Police Foundation,
Speaker 1: the Georgia Bureau Investigation, that the Cap County Police Department,
Speaker 1: all of these different agencies, I think at this point
Speaker 1: are are are really frustrated. And I think that really
Speaker 1: shows up in the charges that they've given people, because
Speaker 1: what we're talking about are people who have been literally
Speaker 1: pulled out of tree sets. Like this is the most
Speaker 1: like classic example of you know, nonviolent direct action civil
Speaker 1: disobedience you can think of, and you have people who
Speaker 1: are allegedly being pulled out of tree sets and charged
Speaker 1: with domestic terrorism. And I think that really shows it's
Speaker 1: both very very scary in terms of the severity of
Speaker 1: the charges, but it's also has like an element of
Speaker 1: just being a little ridiculous in in terms of using
Speaker 1: these types of charges. You know, they make you think
Speaker 1: of like you know, the school shootings or you know,
Speaker 1: like nine eleven or something like this, like like these
Speaker 1: are the sorts of things that come to mind when
Speaker 1: you think of domestic terrorism. And yet what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here is people who are allegedly being pulled out
Speaker 1: of out of tree sets after you know, being shot
Speaker 1: at with pepper balls and tear gasper and hours on
Speaker 1: end before they before they were pulled down. And I
Speaker 1: think that then the point of that is to scare people.
Speaker 1: It is because they are having a very difficult time
Speaker 1: um gaining any sort of public support or sympathy for
Speaker 1: this project. And I think they're they're just really out
Speaker 1: of at a loss, and so that what they need
Speaker 1: right now is they need to scare people. They need
Speaker 1: to shut down this special movement by whatever means that
Speaker 1: they have available, and right now they're the technique that
Speaker 1: they're employing is just fear. And so the point of
Speaker 1: this is to have a chilling effect. It's to say
Speaker 1: that anybody who is protesting, who is a part of
Speaker 1: this social movement, could be liable to extremely extremely heavy charges.
Speaker 1: And that's what they're banking on. They want people to
Speaker 1: be scared. They want to separate out people from from
Speaker 1: the movement. You feel like they can no longer participate
Speaker 1: because the charges or the potential repression is too severe.
Speaker 1: They want to be able to scare away people that
Speaker 1: support the movement by saying, look, you're supporting a terrorist movement.
Speaker 1: You're supporting something that is uh extreme to to some
Speaker 1: crazy degree. But we know what the what the the
Speaker 1: real extreme position here is that they know that the
Speaker 1: city doesn't want this. They've had, you know, countless protests
Speaker 1: and all sorts of different different examples of just public
Speaker 1: outcry aginst this projects, and they proceeded with it anyway.
Speaker 1: And so now they're forced to be in this position
Speaker 1: where they're gonna have to they're gonna have to use
Speaker 1: whatever sort of either m violence or force or like
Speaker 1: extreme charges to shut it down. Yeah, Atlanta Police Department
Speaker 1: since has had a huge, like the largest in the
Speaker 1: country by percentage, budgetary increase granted by the city. And
Speaker 1: this was done after the most amount of public comment
Speaker 1: there ever was in the history of city council, which
Speaker 1: was all done to say, to lower the police budget,
Speaker 1: to to defund the police as it were, and to
Speaker 1: send put that money to other use. And then a
Speaker 1: second most amount of public comment the city council has
Speaker 1: ever received was seventeen hours of public comment were over
Speaker 1: se of the respondents were saying to not build cops city.
Speaker 1: They the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Atlanta Police Department in
Speaker 1: the City of Atlanta, does not listen to the popular
Speaker 1: will from below from the people that they alleged to represent.
Speaker 1: But all of this pressure, the pressure to to charge
Speaker 1: non violent protesters with domestic terrorism is coming from their
Speaker 1: corporate their corporate sponsors. It's coming from BB and T,
Speaker 1: It's coming from BAC of America, A T and T, Equifax,
Speaker 1: the Arthur Blank, Arthur Blank, who is the billionaire who
Speaker 1: runs Home Depot. Uh, it's it's coming from the people
Speaker 1: they actually represent, which is their corporate backers. They're there
Speaker 1: seven months behind on this project. Uh, grass Field and Gory,
Speaker 1: the company that is the general contractor who also funds
Speaker 1: the APF. They're all certainly behind doors, being like, what's
Speaker 1: going on. We're seven months behind on this project. Why
Speaker 1: have we not broken ground yet? And they're still being
Speaker 1: denied the land, the land disturbance permits because there they
Speaker 1: can't get their own act together. They can't prove that
Speaker 1: this would be an environmentally friendly thing to do, because
Speaker 1: it's simply isn't. It's leveling over five acres of land
Speaker 1: of forested land, and instead they just try to use
Speaker 1: brute force because that is what the state knows how
Speaker 1: to do. They know to use brute force, and then
Speaker 1: they want to put up trumped up charges onto on,
Speaker 1: onto onto random people who they are trying to pend
Speaker 1: the whole movement on, when the movement is thousands of
Speaker 1: people all over the city and all over the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from like the from some of the recent some of
Speaker 1: the recent hearings and based on the based on the
Speaker 1: DHS documents, they're they're really trying to do the thing
Speaker 1: where they frame an autonomous, decentralized movement as a group.
Speaker 1: And if you're part of a group, that means that
Speaker 1: you're you know, involved in in you know, the domestic
Speaker 1: violent extremist group, which is just not how these types
Speaker 1: of things work. It's the same thing that the right
Speaker 1: has been trying to label things like quote unquote antifa
Speaker 1: as for years. Some prosecutors and cities around the country
Speaker 1: have tried to try to charge people with similar kind
Speaker 1: of domestic terrorism or like gang violence charges due to
Speaker 1: their involvement with the Antifa group. Um, And it's the same,
Speaker 1: it's the same tactic here and trying to frame a
Speaker 1: decentralized movement as like an organized group of people. And
Speaker 1: it seems like one aspect for why this is happening
Speaker 1: is like, like some of you have have mentioned, it's
Speaker 1: it's in the four of like a deterrent right there,
Speaker 1: trying to scare people away, saying that if you associate
Speaker 1: with this movement, we could we will charge you with terrorism.
Speaker 1: Right It's it's it's it's this, it's this thing to
Speaker 1: try to push people away UM, try to try to
Speaker 1: try to prevent anyone else from from organizing in any
Speaker 1: capacity or just showing up, like just just showing up
Speaker 1: to the forest. It's it's it's pretty comical, but it's
Speaker 1: also quite quite frightening in some ways, which is which
Speaker 1: is part of the intention, part of why I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk with h with both of you here today
Speaker 1: is to kind of discuss the role of both the
Speaker 1: Solidarity Fund and Anti Repression Organizing UM and just discuss
Speaker 1: the role of that and in how they support like
Speaker 1: activism movements and how they support UM land defense movements
Speaker 1: like like like in the case of Defend the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Forest and yeah, what what what kind of what the
Speaker 1: role of of this type of organizing is in a
Speaker 1: in the kind text of this this type of activism.
Speaker 1: I guess, uh, let's let's start with Let's start with
Speaker 1: the Solidarity Fund, because that was you know, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I saw in the aftermath of these
Speaker 1: charges in the raid is a lot of calls to
Speaker 1: doing it, to doing it, to the Solidarity Fund to
Speaker 1: help people out who have been hit with these outrageous charges. So, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess a Ralph, we talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of some of you know, what what the Solidarity
Speaker 1: Fund is and and uh and kind of how how
Speaker 1: this how this type of organizing operates. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So the Atlanta Solidarity Fund formed just to have a
Speaker 1: bit of context for the organization. We formed in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen in the lead up to a um count
Speaker 1: counter demonstration against uh some ku Klux Klan members who
Speaker 1: are trying to burn a cross on Stone Mountain in
Speaker 1: two thousands sixteen. This was like after a sequence of
Speaker 1: them having protests there after the Dylan Roof massacre, and
Speaker 1: people organized a counter demo, and we thought it would
Speaker 1: be intelligent to form a bail fund in case anyone
Speaker 1: got arrested because in the past, bail funds in Atlanta
Speaker 1: like refused to bail out anyone who they like deemed
Speaker 1: as committing crimes that they deemed violent. Uh. And we
Speaker 1: wanted to create a b mail fund that does not
Speaker 1: discriminate against activists based on what the state alleges that
Speaker 1: they did or did not do. And we formed in
Speaker 1: that and like after that, we would at different protests
Speaker 1: throughout the years, we would buil people out, we would
Speaker 1: fund raised to get them lawyers, and we would support
Speaker 1: them however we could, like organizing court vigils um and
Speaker 1: court support, and then and also suing the police like
Speaker 1: countersuing them for when they did like agreeious acts of
Speaker 1: police brutality or intimidation. And then in with the George
Speaker 1: Floyd up rising, we went from being a like small
Speaker 1: fail fund to UM getting widespread support. We got tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people donating money to us. And in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: over nine people were arrested by the police that summer,
Speaker 1: and you know, we supported all of them, all the
Speaker 1: ones who are not giving signature bond. We bailed out
Speaker 1: all the ones that were given signature bond, and all
Speaker 1: the other ones we got them lawyers and we have
Speaker 1: been supporting them every step in the way. A few
Speaker 1: of them have sadly gone to prison, and we support
Speaker 1: them financially while they're in prison. Were like putting money
Speaker 1: on their promissary every month, and we UH pay like
Speaker 1: help them out with their phone calls, and we set
Speaker 1: aside money for when they get out there. You won't
Speaker 1: just be in destitute poverty, which is like what usually
Speaker 1: happens to people who have to have sit in prison. UM.
Speaker 1: And in the case of the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement,
Speaker 1: we've supported it um through anti repression by when people
Speaker 1: get arrested, getting them lawyers, failing them out and UM
Speaker 1: when there's been like door knocks or whatever from law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies, we have lawyers who will represent them as well,
Speaker 1: because oftentimes those people aren't given charges, but they're being
Speaker 1: intimidated by law enforcement, and when you get a lawyer
Speaker 1: in between them, that intimidation normally stops. UH. And we
Speaker 1: also do jail support for anyone who has to, like
Speaker 1: when they get in jail, they have a number that
Speaker 1: they can call us and we can help get them
Speaker 1: out UM. And for the six people who are currently
Speaker 1: charged with domestic terrorism as at the time of this recording,
Speaker 1: they're currently locked up and we are supporting them, and
Speaker 1: we've hired lawyers to advocate for them at their bail
Speaker 1: at their next bail hearing UM, and hopefully we will
Speaker 1: get them out and they will not have to sit
Speaker 1: in jail during their pre trial. We're a volunteer organization, like,
Speaker 1: none of us are paid to do this. Uh. We
Speaker 1: do this because we believe in um the power of
Speaker 1: like liberatory social movements, and we want to support those
Speaker 1: movements and give them strength. Yeah, because I would say,
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of you know, relatively
Speaker 1: big cities around the States have some form of jail
Speaker 1: support organization, whether it be formal or informal. UM. And
Speaker 1: it's it's this type of organizing which happens kind of
Speaker 1: on the periphery of a lot of these types of bouvements. Right,
Speaker 1: It's not it's it's not the it's not the like
Speaker 1: excitement of throwing back a tear gas canister at a cop.
Speaker 1: It's it's all of the things that happen afterwards that
Speaker 1: can can can assist people who are who are facing
Speaker 1: like in some cases, very significant state state repression. And
Speaker 1: it's definitely. It's not it's not the most flashy work,
Speaker 1: but it is I would argue as pretty crucial to
Speaker 1: any to any type of like functioning like system that
Speaker 1: allows protests to happen as a part of democracy, is
Speaker 1: a part of you know, long term revolutionary strategy, whatever
Speaker 1: kind of whatever kind of ideology you have, These these
Speaker 1: types of these types of like peripheral jail support and
Speaker 1: bail fund organizings. It's definitely just as crucial as a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of like the on the ground
Speaker 1: support stuff like you know, bringing water bottles or you know,
Speaker 1: helping up people in the moment. Totally, Like every movement
Speaker 1: needs a rear guard, Like it needs people like the
Speaker 1: people who are out protesting and organizing there on the
Speaker 1: front lines. And we're able to be the rear guard
Speaker 1: for like when the state does attack, like we're able
Speaker 1: to like not have them be completely taken out of
Speaker 1: the field, Like they're able to get back, and we're
Speaker 1: able to support them and able to keep people safe
Speaker 1: from like police repression and from what essentially amounts to
Speaker 1: like legal kidnapping and like torture in the carceral state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean in some cases, like in Portland. That's
Speaker 1: it's very much was a legal kidnapping as something that
Speaker 1: people are still are still dealing with on the on
Speaker 1: the on like the jail support side and helping people
Speaker 1: out with with you know, making sure that the state
Speaker 1: cannot get away with stuff like this, um, because they
Speaker 1: the thing they want the most is for nobody to
Speaker 1: push back on it, because that means they have permission
Speaker 1: to do it in the future without you know, without
Speaker 1: any possible consequence or even even like even like any
Speaker 1: like attempt at concert quins. How could so I know
Speaker 1: like that. Nope, A lot a lot of cities have
Speaker 1: have jail support stuff. Um. A lot of this is
Speaker 1: also run on donations. What what are what are some
Speaker 1: ways that people could could assist in these types of things? Um.
Speaker 1: Obviously people can donate to bail funds um. And I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of I mean even even just
Speaker 1: showing up outside of jail or prison after these types
Speaker 1: of events is something that that happens a lot in
Speaker 1: terms of in terms of ways to kind of start
Speaker 1: getting plugged in in this in this type of like
Speaker 1: peripheral bail fund and jail support organizing totally. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean people should should donate to their local bail funds
Speaker 1: UH and even become like reoccurring donators. But people can
Speaker 1: like join jail support teams. There's like we in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: we have a training and it can get you trained
Speaker 1: on how to be a jail poor person, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we have like once you're plugged in, you can like
Speaker 1: do jail and jail vigil like for when people get
Speaker 1: out so that they're not alone. Jails are often not always,
Speaker 1: but often like in like remote areas of the city
Speaker 1: or even outside of the city, so like it can
Speaker 1: be hard to like get get a bus back, so
Speaker 1: you can offer them rides back. You can get plugged
Speaker 1: into do it in court support and like currently the
Speaker 1: six people charge of domestic terrorism are like being denied bail.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that will change. But in the case of like
Speaker 1: people being held UH, you can write post cards or
Speaker 1: letters to people and let them know that there are
Speaker 1: people on the outside who support them. If you're in
Speaker 1: an area that like doesn't have that doesn't have a
Speaker 1: group that UM helps people out who are like who
Speaker 1: are having to sit in jail, like you can put
Speaker 1: money on their commissary UH directly, and you can write
Speaker 1: to them and you can send them books. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in the sense of like people showing up pretty immediately
Speaker 1: outside of the jail, like it is really inspiring. Uh.
Speaker 1: What happened the day Uh in the evening after the six,
Speaker 1: after the first five people were arrested. Uh that that evening,
Speaker 1: like a crowd of dozens of people showed up outside
Speaker 1: of the Cab County jail and had a noise demo
Speaker 1: to like make noise outside of the jail to let
Speaker 1: the five know that they were not alone and that
Speaker 1: there's people outside who support them. Now, I think we
Speaker 1: will shift the conversation over to James. James, you're with
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee. We've already talked about the
Speaker 1: role of these ridiculous charges as a repression method. Could
Speaker 1: you briefly explain what the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee is
Speaker 1: and its role in the periphery of these on the
Speaker 1: ground decentralized movements. Yeah. Sure, So. The Atlanta Anentire Repression
Speaker 1: Committee is a group that started in in the aftermathod
Speaker 1: the George Floyd protests, and we started because we recognized
Speaker 1: that there was a need for a kind of specific
Speaker 1: type of UH anti repression work to be done, which
Speaker 1: is to say that there's a lot of um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like the bulk of anti repression. You know that
Speaker 1: the single most important thing is keeping people safe, right,
Speaker 1: and so what that entails is a lot of legal
Speaker 1: defense for people that are arrested, people that are in
Speaker 1: car story to people that are imprisoned as a result
Speaker 1: of their activity, and protest movements and social movements, um,
Speaker 1: fighting for you know, liberation. That said, um, there's also
Speaker 1: a whole a whole other type of work that needs
Speaker 1: to be done, which is the sort of what we
Speaker 1: like to call political defense. So in other words, we
Speaker 1: want to see these movements continue, we want to see
Speaker 1: these movements grow, and we want to see these movements
Speaker 1: be the powerful. And a part of that is understanding
Speaker 1: the specific mechanisms of repression and fighting back against the
Speaker 1: narratives that are being used against protesters in the media.
Speaker 1: So a lot of what we do is media work, um,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of things that you know, once
Speaker 1: you're once you're arrested as a part of a protest movement,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you can't say, um, but
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that need to be said, um,
Speaker 1: namely that the people that have been arrested, whether we're
Speaker 1: talking about people in the Black Lives Matter movement of
Speaker 1: or in the Defensive Forest movement today, are fighting for
Speaker 1: a just cause. These people should be doing what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and that's something that that that needs to be spread
Speaker 1: as as far and wide as possible. Um and so
Speaker 1: we do a lot of media work to to to
Speaker 1: justify and support not just the individual protesters, but the
Speaker 1: things that they're fighting for. And then we also do
Speaker 1: a lot of essentially research and analysis to understand the
Speaker 1: overall patterns of repression as they play out. And and
Speaker 1: so that's something that's like that's really interesting, particularly in
Speaker 1: this case because you know, I said, we've never seen
Speaker 1: this before in Georgia, but we have seen this before.
Speaker 1: We've seen exactly these tactics be used against you know,
Speaker 1: protesters in the Standing Rock movement. We've seen it used
Speaker 1: in the Green Scare against U, the Earth Liberation Front
Speaker 1: against Earth First. We've seen these movements like over and
Speaker 1: over again come up against this this giant wall, which
Speaker 1: is these these sorts of charges accusing people of terrorism.
Speaker 1: And so part of what we do is analyze what
Speaker 1: those what those strategies are and try to publicize them,
Speaker 1: try to help people to understand um, because it's it's
Speaker 1: the the agencies that were up against the all these
Speaker 1: different wings of the state and their corporate factors. As
Speaker 1: Ralph was saying, they have an institutional memory. They are
Speaker 1: able to look back, you know, twenty years in the
Speaker 1: past and beet like, Okay, there was a social movement
Speaker 1: over here, um, and we were able to stop it
Speaker 1: because we did this, this and this, And they're able
Speaker 1: to have that that sort of memory to go back
Speaker 1: and look at those tactics. And part of the goal
Speaker 1: of depression is to cut people out of socialis to
Speaker 1: cut off this sort of generational understanding of the dynamics
Speaker 1: of repression. And so we want to we want to
Speaker 1: increase our our capacity, as people are invested in seeing
Speaker 1: social events succeeded, be able to understand these sorts of
Speaker 1: repressive tactics and develop strategies against them. And I say
Speaker 1: that because we see repression as being a part of
Speaker 1: social movements. There are no social movements that are successful
Speaker 1: that don't encounter repression. And so we have a we
Speaker 1: have a strong need to be able to understand the
Speaker 1: specific mechanisms of state repression, how they were, how different
Speaker 1: agencies work, how the specific laws worked, UH, and to
Speaker 1: be able to disseminate that information for and led both
Speaker 1: within movements and also within the mainstream media. At the
Speaker 1: public event, one of the sheriff's involved in the involved
Speaker 1: in the raid against the forest offenders UH suggested that
Speaker 1: because because one of them is from California and is
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, that makes him a terrorist. This is utterly absurd.
Speaker 1: Like we live in one country, like we're allowed, we
Speaker 1: have the freedom to travel, and we have the Unlike
Speaker 1: the police, we regular people have solidarity and can and
Speaker 1: have empathy and can see our own interests in other
Speaker 1: struggles that take place elsewhere, and that it is a
Speaker 1: noble thing to be like I have to go somewhere
Speaker 1: support to participate UH. And this is not something that
Speaker 1: should be discouraged. And this is not terroristic. This is
Speaker 1: a sign of the beautifulness of human empathy and the
Speaker 1: ability to see yourself in others and this is what
Speaker 1: the police lack. That's That's definitely something I wanted to
Speaker 1: bring up at some point because this is this is
Speaker 1: a tactic that we've seen both the Atlanta Police Foundation
Speaker 1: of the City Council, and you know, right wing propagandists
Speaker 1: like Andy no have have have tried to frame this,
Speaker 1: have tried to frame this in terms of like the
Speaker 1: the outside agitator's angle. Um. There. And you see in
Speaker 1: all of and all of the all of the arrest
Speaker 1: reports um that that that get published, one of the
Speaker 1: things they emphasize is that the that people arrested, some
Speaker 1: of them have been born in other states. They always
Speaker 1: they always mentioned the state that this person was born in, UM,
Speaker 1: which is just a ridiculous notion that people don't have
Speaker 1: the freedom to move around the country. Uh, absolutely absurd
Speaker 1: that that that that people don't have the freedom to
Speaker 1: move around to places and choose where where they want
Speaker 1: to live. So they're framing they're framing people who are
Speaker 1: arrested that were that happened to be born in other places.
Speaker 1: They're they're they're they're using this as a in terms
Speaker 1: of like the outside agitator angle to be like people
Speaker 1: are are coming into Atlanta to try to you know,
Speaker 1: so chaos and disorder within our city. Um. And look,
Speaker 1: they're they're pulling up people from all from all around
Speaker 1: the country. Then they're trying to you know, frame it
Speaker 1: in this like very conspiratorial lens. Um. And that's just
Speaker 1: that that is that is that is something that I've
Speaker 1: also noticed and found to be uh, a quite interesting tactic.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would they definitely wanted to be an
Speaker 1: effective strategy in terms of the outside agitator angle of
Speaker 1: of you know, people coming coming in from out of
Speaker 1: state to get to get involved in this group, this
Speaker 1: this Antifa alligning terrorist group, as someone like Andy No
Speaker 1: would say, uh, And it's it's it's it's purely it's
Speaker 1: purely a propaganda tactic because it relies on the notion
Speaker 1: that people can't move around the country and decide where
Speaker 1: they want to live, uh, which obviously which obviously is
Speaker 1: an absurd notion um. And I think as as as
Speaker 1: you said, it also kind of you know, the other
Speaker 1: side of this is that it highlights the kind of
Speaker 1: the beautiful nature of being able to choose where you
Speaker 1: want to go and choose to get involved in things
Speaker 1: that you feel are important, even if they aren't in
Speaker 1: the current place where you are living. Just to add
Speaker 1: a little bit to this, like it's crazy because it's
Speaker 1: like when you read the reports and the news of
Speaker 1: the people that they arrest. They always make it a
Speaker 1: point to talk about people from out of town, and
Speaker 1: they always seem to omit the people that are from
Speaker 1: Atlanta that they've arrested. And not that I'm advocating that
Speaker 1: they should be publicizing, you know, these people at all,
Speaker 1: but it's just to highlight that what they're doing is
Speaker 1: a propaganda tactic, and I think it it has has
Speaker 1: really fallen on their face in Atlanta, because, you know,
Speaker 1: Atlanta is a city that's famous for the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: Like we're talking about freedom writers were talking about people
Speaker 1: from all over the South, from all over the country
Speaker 1: coming to you know, Martin Luther King went to Solma,
Speaker 1: He's from Atlanta. You know, this type of this type
Speaker 1: of logic just doesn't really doesn't really seem to work here,
Speaker 1: and it's really bizarre to see them try to use
Speaker 1: it over and over and over again. It's really just
Speaker 1: like a failed playbook at this point, within the context
Speaker 1: of both how the repression against the Defend the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Force movement has evolved and where it's at now with
Speaker 1: what's happened in the past few weeks, and then also
Speaker 1: consider the types of analysis of past ecological and resistance
Speaker 1: movements that we've seen. How do you see some of
Speaker 1: the repression by the state evolving as the Atlanta four
Speaker 1: stuff continues. Well, I think that that overall, with respect
Speaker 1: to social indiments, we've seen an increase in this this
Speaker 1: type of charge that as Ralph was sort of getting at,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's it's a it's a type of
Speaker 1: charge that criminalizes your participation in in a in a
Speaker 1: group or in a socialment um. And so if you
Speaker 1: look at the specific warrants that are using in some
Speaker 1: of these people that they just arrested, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of one in particular where it goes into
Speaker 1: detail and it says this person is accused of being
Speaker 1: a part of a domestic violence a domestic violent extremist
Speaker 1: movement called Defend the Atlanta Forest, and they're responsible for
Speaker 1: all of these acts of all of these different crimes
Speaker 1: from trust passing to UH to arson or whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: And so they lump this all together. They say that
Speaker 1: an autonomous social movement is a coherent organization, and then
Speaker 1: they say that the individual that they arrested UH confirmed
Speaker 1: their participation in this group called Defend the Atlanta forest
Speaker 1: by sitting in a treehouse and wearing camouflage. This is
Speaker 1: absurdum because there's there's no evidence in in this in
Speaker 1: this example, that this particular person or any of these
Speaker 1: people have anything to do with any of these other
Speaker 1: crimes that they are alleging. We're a part of this movement.
Speaker 1: So what they're doing instead, they know that they can't
Speaker 1: arrest them for that. But what they're doing instead is
Speaker 1: they're coming at it from this legal angle where they're
Speaker 1: saying this movement as a whole is a discrete group.
Speaker 1: This group is an extremist group, and so your participation
Speaker 1: in anything that seems like it's a part of this
Speaker 1: group is criminal in and of itself, and in this case,
Speaker 1: terrorists in and of itself. And this is a really
Speaker 1: disturbing trend that we've seen in over the last few years,
Speaker 1: with the grease in the use of conspiracy charges, with
Speaker 1: the increase in the use of arrico charges, racketeering charges,
Speaker 1: and the point of all of these different legal strategies
Speaker 1: is to hold people accountable for crimes that they did
Speaker 1: not do, and that's exactly what we're seeing now with
Speaker 1: the six people that they just arrested. They want to
Speaker 1: hold these people accountable and make them martyrs for an
Speaker 1: entire movement that's involved hundreds and thousands of people doing
Speaker 1: all sorts of things criminal or otherwise. And that is
Speaker 1: a disturbing trend um and it's it's especially disturbing because
Speaker 1: if you look at the way that the the law
Speaker 1: has written in Georgia with respect to domestic terrorism, so
Speaker 1: that's an that's an enhancement charge. It means that you
Speaker 1: have to be arrested for another crime, for example, in
Speaker 1: in in the in the example of the people that
Speaker 1: they just arrested felony trust passing, they add in a
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism enhancement charge to it. And the justification for
Speaker 1: this domestic and domestic terrorism enhancement charge is to basically
Speaker 1: saying that they were attempting to change governmental policy by
Speaker 1: into addition, which is an interesting way of saying protesting
Speaker 1: is illegal. All protests involves trying to change governmental policy.
Speaker 1: That is what protesting is. And what they what they
Speaker 1: are attempting to do now with these charges is to
Speaker 1: reframe that entirely and say that that is terrorism, and
Speaker 1: that is uh, you know, it's sort of it's we're
Speaker 1: on a tricky slope right now, because it's like, on
Speaker 1: the one hand, we need to recognize that these charges
Speaker 1: are absurd and they very likely won't stand up in
Speaker 1: court because they're very clearly unconstitutional at the very least,
Speaker 1: So we need to not be afraid of them on
Speaker 1: the one hand, and to show how absurd they are.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, we should take this as a
Speaker 1: serious threat to social movements all across the United States
Speaker 1: in all different sorts of fields and areas, in different
Speaker 1: different types of fights for for for different different sorts
Speaker 1: of things, to say like, wow, this is a huge,
Speaker 1: huge stretch that they're trying to pull here because they
Speaker 1: have seen like in the last few decades, like a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of pollersy in America, all sorts of social
Speaker 1: events that involve you know, Black Lives Matter was twenty
Speaker 1: million people. Are these people all terrorists? And and so
Speaker 1: that's why it's important to pay attention to what's happening
Speaker 1: now in Atlanta with the struggle to attend the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Forest and the charges that they're putting against these people,
Speaker 1: because if they can succeed with this type of charge,
Speaker 1: that's a very very dangerous precedent for people who are
Speaker 1: part of all sorts of social events and not just
Speaker 1: the left wing either. You know, there's a part of
Speaker 1: this that's like since the January six, the you know,
Speaker 1: so called insurrection. However you want to however you want
Speaker 1: to characterize that there's been a tremendous push by the
Speaker 1: federal government too to crack down on social movements. They
Speaker 1: see this as like threats to into their stability, that
Speaker 1: there are you know, situations where there's thousands or millions
Speaker 1: of people who are participating in in all different sorts
Speaker 1: of social movements, and they need to send a clear
Speaker 1: message that people should not be out protesting. Thank you
Speaker 1: both for talking with me today. UM Where could people
Speaker 1: but learn more about your respective organizations? And then also
Speaker 1: how can people support force defenders who are facing the
Speaker 1: increasingly harsh state repression. You could visit the just like
Speaker 1: Google or look up on any of the major social
Speaker 1: media platforms Atlanta Solidarity Fund UH and you could read
Speaker 1: go to our website UM and if you want to
Speaker 1: support any force defenders who are facing serious charges, UM,
Speaker 1: we donate money or you could write write them UM
Speaker 1: postcards or if you could send them books that they've
Speaker 1: requested UM and when court dates are. When court dates
Speaker 1: come up, we'll probably publicize those so that people can
Speaker 1: come out and um show show their support and solidarity
Speaker 1: the people facing charges. And you could come out to
Speaker 1: uh do court support and you can get involved in
Speaker 1: the movement yourself if you uh feel so inclined. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'll just add to that. The aliena entire re
Speaker 1: Quesion committee can get found on Instagram. You can look
Speaker 1: it up. Uh. And and just generally speaking, this is
Speaker 1: something that people need to talk about. So any chance
Speaker 1: that you have to to talk about to explain what's
Speaker 1: happening in Atlanta, to put a giant light on this situation,
Speaker 1: because everybody needs to be paying attention to this because
Speaker 1: this is not just uh, you know, as as as
Speaker 1: people in that defend the coursewomen say, it's not just
Speaker 1: a local issue. There national and even international complications for
Speaker 1: this type of stuff. And and that's also true with
Speaker 1: regards to repression. If they can succeed with these charges here,
Speaker 1: that's a that's a major death blow too to all
Speaker 1: sorts of social evidents, and they'll they'll be trying to
Speaker 1: export this tactic elsewhere. We think it won't stick, but
Speaker 1: we think it's extremely important for people to be talking
Speaker 1: about it and to make this uh the national issue
Speaker 1: that we recognize that it is. Some of those links.
Speaker 1: We will also be putting in the description below The
Speaker 1: day that this episode is being released just so happens
Speaker 1: to be Martin Luther king Junior Day. And also it's
Speaker 1: the last day in a weekend of solidarity to stop
Speaker 1: Cops City. This past weekend, there's been events, gatherings, actions,
Speaker 1: and rallies in Atlanta and across the country in support
Speaker 1: for the Stop Cops City movement and the six individuals
Speaker 1: facing domestic terrorism charges. On Saturday, I saw pictures of
Speaker 1: a huge banner hanging outside of a squat in France
Speaker 1: in solidarity with Atlanta and struggles to defend the Atlanta Forest.
Speaker 1: It seems the extremely high charges in Georgia have not
Speaker 1: dissuade people from across the country from engaging in direct action.
Speaker 1: In December, at List construction offices, one of the contractors
Speaker 1: working on Cops City were attacked in Manhattan and Michigan
Speaker 1: in solidarity with those arrested defending the Wolani Forest. On
Speaker 1: January five, a construction site and offices for Brassfield and Gory,
Speaker 1: the main contractors currently working on Cops City, were attacked
Speaker 1: by anarchists in South Florida, according to a statement published
Speaker 1: on the website Scenes dot No blogs dot org, and
Speaker 1: just days earlier, another post on the site claimed credit
Speaker 1: for setting fire to a Bank of America in Portland.
Speaker 1: Bank of America is a major contributor to the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Police Foundation. Both of those statements referenced the domestic terrorism charges.
Speaker 1: You can check out Defend the Atlanta Forest at Defend
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Forest dot org and most major social media sites.
Speaker 1: You can check out scenes dot no blogs dot org
Speaker 1: for more stories of direct action on the front lines,
Speaker 1: and of course you can check out the Atlanta Solidarity
Speaker 1: Fund at a t L Solidarity dot org. There you
Speaker 1: can donate to bail funds and help people currently facing
Speaker 1: state repression. That's all for us today. See you on
Speaker 1: the other side. Yeah, hello everyone, and welcome to another
Speaker 1: episode of It Could Happen here once again? Who'sted around?
Speaker 1: Myself Andrew and also joined with Garrison is here as
Speaker 1: well and me Mia. I'm awful here and of the
Speaker 1: things that I've been thinking about lately because I've been
Speaker 1: reading a lot more fiction um A lot of things,
Speaker 1: and these sorts of sci fi's fair particularly um some Activita,
Speaker 1: but um some orcum some Margaret Atwood. I recently read
Speaker 1: Orks and Creek. UM. I've just been thinking about a
Speaker 1: lot of these concepts that are presented in stories um
Speaker 1: in sci fi. UM. And what is more sci fi
Speaker 1: than the idea of computers that sort of digital space.
Speaker 1: And what has become of the digital would um as
Speaker 1: of late, as you know, and really since its inception,
Speaker 1: as capitalism has sort of chopped it up and privatized
Speaker 1: it and sequested it and monopolized it. As I think
Speaker 1: it really um goes against what the principles of the
Speaker 1: Internet should be in terms of how it is run,
Speaker 1: how it is structured, how it is organized. Because the
Speaker 1: Internet as a concept really brings together, um a variety
Speaker 1: of people, a variety of spaces and backgrounds and intersections,
Speaker 1: and I believe it would be a place of sharing,
Speaker 1: a place of collaboration, particularly since the sort of resources
Speaker 1: that might be UM limited in the physical world ah
Speaker 1: far more abundant in the digital world. UM. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: in terms of like educational resources and otherwise of course
Speaker 1: they are you know, infrastructural limitations. But on the cloud,
Speaker 1: you know, um, in cyberspace, And I cringe saying that
Speaker 1: because it makes me feel like a booma. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: they have the ability to freely and easily copy and
Speaker 1: share and paste wherever and whenever, basically without many limitations. Um.
Speaker 1: Instead of really seizing that for what it could be,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've turned it into this sort of
Speaker 1: um corporate feudalism. Um. We're all these uh digital merritcoporations,
Speaker 1: these social media giants basically have carved of the Internet
Speaker 1: into their own little you know, fiefdoms and dominated um
Speaker 1: the discourse, you know, dominated how we communicate with each other,
Speaker 1: how we tend to communicate each other based in the
Speaker 1: main stream side of the Internet, what has become to
Speaker 1: me in stream things, so what most people think of
Speaker 1: when they think of the Internet. UM, But I'm not
Speaker 1: a big fan of that idea of the Internet, that perception,
Speaker 1: that conception of the Internet in fact um as something
Speaker 1: that I have been thinking about and developing and discussing
Speaker 1: for the past couple of months and researching for the
Speaker 1: past couple of months. I really think that among all
Speaker 1: the other things that I've discussed, unnecessary components, in developing
Speaker 1: the commons, in creating and re establishing the commons, I
Speaker 1: think digital commons will be just as important because the commons,
Speaker 1: uh the rather, the inclusion of the commons is what
Speaker 1: really kicked off the establishment of capitalism. I believe the
Speaker 1: re establishments of the commons will be required in that
Speaker 1: transition away from capitalism towards a more collective, more communal, um,
Speaker 1: more sustainable way of life. For those who, um, I
Speaker 1: guess just tuning in this perhaps your first episode with
Speaker 1: me at least, or perhaps you've never seen any of
Speaker 1: the figures of my channel. UM, I'll take a moment to,
Speaker 1: you know, explain what exactly the commons are. The commons
Speaker 1: referred to the resources accessible to all members of a society,
Speaker 1: the totality of the material riches of that part of
Speaker 1: the world, of that world regarded as the inheritor of
Speaker 1: humanity as a whole, something to be shared together. The
Speaker 1: commons or something that are based on common pool resources
Speaker 1: or cprs, which is any natural or man made system
Speaker 1: that is organized to benefit a group of people, but
Speaker 1: would provide diminished benefits to everyone if each person pursued
Speaker 1: their own self interest and of course, these resource systems,
Speaker 1: like I said, could be natural or man made, so
Speaker 1: they could be forests. You know, traditionally there are things
Speaker 1: like forests and irrigation canals and fisheries and pastures and
Speaker 1: drown water basins. UM. But I think it's it can
Speaker 1: be expanded even food. I mean things like energy infrastructure
Speaker 1: like windmills, WIN two bndes or as um. Going to
Speaker 1: describe different portions of the Internet, different resource systems within
Speaker 1: the interntion of course, the Internet as a whole. I
Speaker 1: believe all of those things can um can be brought
Speaker 1: under the commons UM And of course the Commons. The
Speaker 1: theory of commons history of the Commons is its own
Speaker 1: lengthy discussion. Of course, you could read about it in
Speaker 1: Governing the Commons by Eleanor Ostrom. You could listen to
Speaker 1: a sort of a condensed version of that in my
Speaker 1: video on my channel on the Commons as an institution.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to you know, information and communication technologies,
Speaker 1: when it comes to I C T S and sort
Speaker 1: of applying that Commons idea to I C T S.
Speaker 1: ID like to think about it in terms of these
Speaker 1: sort of digital communities bringing together people who share you know,
Speaker 1: common goals to collaboratively build and share those resources through technology.
Speaker 1: So I would say that digital commons are or can be,
Speaker 1: and can be because I think some of them already
Speaker 1: exist in some form. But they are basically these online
Speaker 1: creation communities where you know, there's a free flu um
Speaker 1: and free access to and free collaboration. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the sharing of this non exclusive digital information and the
Speaker 1: collective creation of like knowledge resources. These resources of course
Speaker 1: being owned and used freely between or among the community
Speaker 1: and also available for use by three parties. So and
Speaker 1: instead of being exchanged as commodities, you know, these resources
Speaker 1: are used and reused and reused without artificial restrictions to
Speaker 1: sort of enforce an artificial scarcity. UM. I just actually
Speaker 1: thought of a really funny example that I hadn't initially
Speaker 1: conceived of in a sort of guideline for this episode.
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you're a lot of familiar with
Speaker 1: Martin Scorsese, is Gone trov no Okay? So in nine three,
Speaker 1: Martin scorsesey developed this film called Gone. It's a historical
Speaker 1: epic um a sort of a post war era mafia movie,
Speaker 1: and it was directed by Scorsese, and it started Robert
Speaker 1: de Niro and Alpuccino and Gene Hackman. It had a
Speaker 1: sort of deep Hume eroticism blended with a sort of
Speaker 1: exploration of of medal aggression. It's a sort of a
Speaker 1: look at the relationship between Gone Shrev, who is a
Speaker 1: Russian mafia boss, and his partners slash rival slash old
Speaker 1: friend Andrew, who I believe is supposed to be an
Speaker 1: Italian mafia boss. But the thing about Gone Sharov and
Speaker 1: I mean, you can find posters about it, you can
Speaker 1: find fan art of which you can find many, many,
Speaker 1: many fan fictions about it. Um, But Conture is not
Speaker 1: a real movie. It does not exist. Everything I described
Speaker 1: it's entirely fake. The litany of colorful side characters that
Speaker 1: you know people have developed for this movie, the hundreds
Speaker 1: of fan fictions, the dozens of metaalyses and pieces of
Speaker 1: fin arts people have you know, generated for this movie.
Speaker 1: The movie itself doesn't exist. The movie only exists in
Speaker 1: the collective um co creation of it that took place
Speaker 1: over a Tumbler of all places, Essentially, a couple of
Speaker 1: Tumbling users basically came up with this idea of this
Speaker 1: lost Martin Scorsese film that everybody has seemingly forgotten. They
Speaker 1: would rave about it, and they would come up with
Speaker 1: fake plot points and fake characters, and before you know it,
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of like this massive Internet phenomenon,
Speaker 1: this sort of inside juke Internet, inside juke UM. One
Speaker 1: of people started building on top of it and respecting
Speaker 1: what came before UM, and that sort of spirit of
Speaker 1: co creation is what it ended up creating. This Gone
Speaker 1: this teal of Gone throw, this gone through of fandom,
Speaker 1: this whol development of Gone Troop as a character of
Speaker 1: the side characters as you know, fully developed characters. And
Speaker 1: it all started because you know, one user said to
Speaker 1: another like, oh, don't you know the movie Gone Shroof,
Speaker 1: it's only the greatest Mafia movie ever made. On that tagline,
Speaker 1: the greatest Mathia movie ever made. Would be built upon
Speaker 1: with further photoshops and embellishments and developments, and there's now
Speaker 1: like a really comprehensive document of a sure off law.
Speaker 1: Um things are added and ingest things added in complete seriousness,
Speaker 1: But it's just a thing that exists. It's a thing
Speaker 1: that I believe. Um, it's just one manifestation of many
Speaker 1: of what the Internet has the capacity to produce. When
Speaker 1: online creation communities are allowed to operate freely UM and develop,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't sort of common creative UM resources. I think
Speaker 1: other examples of I guess the seeds of what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about can be seen in UM. I guess, like
Speaker 1: role play UM servers and role play communities, role play
Speaker 1: message boards. I think some fandoms also have some of
Speaker 1: the seeds of what I'm talking about. Of course, the
Speaker 1: Minecraft community with everything they've created, modern communities across different games.
Speaker 1: They all sort of manifestations of you know, human desire
Speaker 1: to read and human desire to share, without you know,
Speaker 1: the artificial restrictions and boundaries of of mainstream couplust imagination.
Speaker 1: I think another manifestation of the digital commons in a
Speaker 1: sense can be found in resources like z library, UM
Speaker 1: and a few others that I'm afraid of naming in case,
Speaker 1: you know, they get taken down as well. And I
Speaker 1: mean that's really the sad part of its the libraries loss.
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't really been feeling that loss because
Speaker 1: I am aware of the alternatives UM, but it's lost
Speaker 1: on the last because of the way the library is formatted,
Speaker 1: it was a bit more accessible to a lot of
Speaker 1: people and people aware of it and stuff. Um, but
Speaker 1: Z Library, and I'm glad that it's called a library.
Speaker 1: It's called Z Library. It's just you know, one manifestation
Speaker 1: of the um the roots of the library as a
Speaker 1: concept and how it can manifest um in the digital speece,
Speaker 1: how the commons through the I guess the conception of
Speaker 1: the library can manifest in a in a digital space.
Speaker 1: I mean even you know, mainstream ones we have like
Speaker 1: we have, we have stuff like archive dot org and
Speaker 1: I know archive dot org is trying to launch something
Speaker 1: to host a whole bunch of scientific journals and other
Speaker 1: articles that are harder to access as well, but I
Speaker 1: mean they already host you know, quite impressive plethora of
Speaker 1: copyrighted books. Um me and Robert have gotten into arguments
Speaker 1: on Twitter dot com with many an author who is
Speaker 1: mad about their book being on archive dot archived dot
Speaker 1: org of and so that is you know, there is
Speaker 1: there is, There is many resources if you know where
Speaker 1: to look. But sadly some or some someone there no
Speaker 1: longer with us and people have been have been punished
Speaker 1: by the state for trying to provide open access to information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean who controls information right. Well, however, the
Speaker 1: same goes I think another as you mentioned, kind of
Speaker 1: another example of that sort of collaborative information sharing can
Speaker 1: be seen. And of course Wikipedia, you know. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: personal computers and the intent became more more accessible, the
Speaker 1: lower barriers of expression and stuff. Um. This Internet culture,
Speaker 1: as it was initially born, it was one with the
Speaker 1: aim of you know, collaboratively great and cultural content did
Speaker 1: not developing and generating you know, universe sell access to knowledge.
Speaker 1: Wikipedia just one example of course, different wikis bluralum. But
Speaker 1: of course the longer called wickiest I think it's called
Speaker 1: fandom that or or something. Now, Yes, unfortunately fandom bought
Speaker 1: a bunch of uh different wiki sites that were independently
Speaker 1: operated over the course of the past twenty years, and
Speaker 1: then they kind of consolidated under the big Fandom company. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now like half of them are unusable because of ads
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, it is, it is. It's it's pretty
Speaker 1: rough to scroll a fandom site. It's not the easiest thing.
Speaker 1: But I will see, as a youth with a few
Speaker 1: regulations and my access to the Internet, it was actually
Speaker 1: quite nice to be able to go on to the
Speaker 1: fandom and just like well, I was, you know, around
Speaker 1: when it was still Wicky. UM. But you know, going
Speaker 1: like Marvel Wicky or going TC Wicky and read up
Speaker 1: on all the different characters I was into at the time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, you know I used to go on
Speaker 1: like power listing Wicky and like come up with characters,
Speaker 1: you know, piece on certain superpowers. UM. And I also
Speaker 1: created my own Wicky for my own made up, uh
Speaker 1: sort of world building project. UM. And just the fact
Speaker 1: that resource was available, you know, that the tools were easy,
Speaker 1: were free to access UM, and that easy to understand
Speaker 1: as well. UM. And of course they were always tutorials
Speaker 1: and stuff available if you don't know how to function
Speaker 1: and what to do certain things. Just that that that accessibility,
Speaker 1: UM and freedom is something that I think is still exists,
Speaker 1: you know in some sense, despite you know, this company
Speaker 1: buying out everything. And I appreciate the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: unlike you know that company, Wikipedias and me and e
Speaker 1: og Wikipedia continues to maintain their steadfast anti ad um
Speaker 1: you know, standing um and continues to you know, UM
Speaker 1: run on I guess donations just just today as of
Speaker 1: the day that we're recording, uh, people whole a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of the right wingers that have coalesced around Musk
Speaker 1: after his purchase of Twitter have gotten mad at Wikipedia
Speaker 1: for not for they've They've gotten mad that Wikipedia wasn't
Speaker 1: was wasn't reposting their fake Twitter files drama thing um
Speaker 1: as glowingly as some of them might like. And they're
Speaker 1: complaining about Wikipedia's left wing bias, and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of these Musk fan boys are talking about being like, hey,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk should buy Wikipedia and fix Wikipedia's left wing
Speaker 1: bias and this this, this one, this, this one guy.
Speaker 1: He was like, um, I wonder how much Wikipedia had
Speaker 1: cost to buy at Elon Musk and then the the uh,
Speaker 1: the founder of Wikipedia is like, absolutely not, this is
Speaker 1: not for sale. We we are not letting Elon must
Speaker 1: compie Wikipedia. Yeah. I mean, if if conservatives really want
Speaker 1: um a platform that badly, there's always conservative Pedia or
Speaker 1: whatever it's called. Um, there's always Encyclopedia if they want
Speaker 1: to get really wacky. Um. But yeah, Wikipedia is going
Speaker 1: to continue being Wikipedia thankfully. UM. I appreciate the rabbit
Speaker 1: holes it has let me through. I appreciate the Wikipedia
Speaker 1: games that I've been able to play, you know, like
Speaker 1: you have to go from one page to another. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know that kind of degrees of pages, how you
Speaker 1: link two different completely different topics. But yeah, zero advertising
Speaker 1: accessible to all many different languages. Of course, you know
Speaker 1: it's not completely flawless. They are sitting UM very contentious
Speaker 1: articles of course, UM. They always be attempts to hijack
Speaker 1: that those peaches of the pops of propaganda. Of course,
Speaker 1: every article has its bias. But by and Lodge, because
Speaker 1: of the collaborative nature of the project, they have been
Speaker 1: ways to mitigate bad actors and respond to UM those
Speaker 1: sorts of attempts at corruption and cooptation. So you know,
Speaker 1: it goes to show that you know, even something as
Speaker 1: I would say, the essentially organized as Wikipedia UM is
Speaker 1: still able to regulate itself collaboratively. Yeah. I think around
Speaker 1: this time last year here on the show, we interviewed
Speaker 1: somebody from Wikimedia UM specifically talking about how the talking
Speaker 1: about the the regional differences of the wikipedias that are
Speaker 1: in different countries and in different regions, how that impact
Speaker 1: access access information and how people in their own communities
Speaker 1: can work towards providing a fuller better picture of the
Speaker 1: types of information that people are getting. UM and the
Speaker 1: great part about it is that it really does put
Speaker 1: the power into anyone's hands. It's not it's it's not
Speaker 1: gate kept the same way a lot of other information is. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of it. Really, I think another problem
Speaker 1: in case of information sharing or rather file sharing and
Speaker 1: just so that I pay it to pay architecture, we
Speaker 1: found in really um, the pirating community could and could
Speaker 1: you know, there's facilities, access and the exchange of cultural
Speaker 1: products there might otherwise be lost, you know, as we're
Speaker 1: seeing with a lot of these shows being axed, and
Speaker 1: you know, people's hard earned UM, you know hard people
Speaker 1: who you know, really worked hard on sitting projects and stuff.
Speaker 1: These companies with their you know, tax dodging schemes and whatever,
Speaker 1: you're able to basically sweep all out a side. UM.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that UM, we are able to
Speaker 1: presume and of course in films and view and TV
Speaker 1: shows being taken down by sitting streaming services and not
Speaker 1: eve being able to be found easily physically, UM. You know,
Speaker 1: having these files and stuff just accessible online UM, shared
Speaker 1: between payers is it's really great to see, UM, and
Speaker 1: it really allows for the preservation of things right otherwise
Speaker 1: be lost and of course there's also as another example
Speaker 1: of a sort of digital comments um, the idea of
Speaker 1: open source, or really the free software movement, which is
Speaker 1: a social movement aimed at obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms
Speaker 1: for software users, you know, to run the software, to
Speaker 1: study software, to modify the software, and to share copies
Speaker 1: of that software, whether the modified or not. UM. The
Speaker 1: philosophy of this free software movement, there's really this idea
Speaker 1: that computer you should not lead to people being prevented
Speaker 1: from corporating with other In fact, it should. The opposite
Speaker 1: is be allowing people to cooperate with each other. So
Speaker 1: things like you rejecting restrictions on software, promoting free software,
Speaker 1: and liberating people who use some technology, use computers. It's
Speaker 1: really what you know, the free software movement is trying
Speaker 1: to do. UM. One of the founders of the movement
Speaker 1: again name is Stilman. He has said that the idea
Speaker 1: the free software movement is that, you know, by allowing
Speaker 1: free access to software, it allows it promotes, rather than
Speaker 1: hinders a progression of technology, because it means that much
Speaker 1: of the wasteful duplication of system programming effort can be avoided.
Speaker 1: You know that AFFLCA instead of going into advancing different projects,
Speaker 1: so you open source and you know, free software movement,
Speaker 1: what if you want to call it, it's although I
Speaker 1: know there's some people make a distinction, Um it is.
Speaker 1: I would believe I would think a manifest station of
Speaker 1: digital comments people are able to self organize through the
Speaker 1: associate and really just allowing people to get their hands
Speaker 1: on some software, to creates, to run, to redistribute, to
Speaker 1: change their software, to look to pick apart and learn
Speaker 1: from certain code. Um I really just allow people to
Speaker 1: continue to create and share. And the sort of culture
Speaker 1: that open source, that free software creates is one of
Speaker 1: you know, courtesy, is one of collaborations of helping one
Speaker 1: another to contribute to a greater whole um, to sort
Speaker 1: of regulate each other's monitor activity that might jeopardize the project,
Speaker 1: and we see the benefits of that. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the most recognizable, high traffic open software projects
Speaker 1: uh stable. You know, they're secure and they're very thorough
Speaker 1: the understood by the people who collaborate to create them,
Speaker 1: compared to a lot of the more clues and proprietary
Speaker 1: projects that are not as accessible, not as open to
Speaker 1: scrutiny and study. So it is I think, in a
Speaker 1: sense a phone of of anarchy and um of people
Speaker 1: governing themselves and cooperating to create a whole greater than
Speaker 1: any individual could create a loon um. And speaking of
Speaker 1: you know people I guess coming together and communicating and collaborating. Um.
Speaker 1: It's this sense that I guess people have been discussing
Speaker 1: a lot lately of the digital public square and Twitter
Speaker 1: teams is usually at the center of that conversation. This
Speaker 1: idea that we have this space that you know that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be privatized, shouldn't that should be freely accessed and
Speaker 1: everyone could communicate without restrict shown And when you have
Speaker 1: the free speech, people within that honestly question the value
Speaker 1: of Twitter pretty much every day. Uh you know, obviously
Speaker 1: some good let's come out of it. And then really
Speaker 1: other sort of quote and qude digital public squares, like
Speaker 1: any sort of me and extreame social media, some good
Speaker 1: you know comes out to them. You know, you meet people,
Speaker 1: you able to work in projects. There was a meat
Speaker 1: like minded folks. All that is is good, but also
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, terrible, terrible things have come
Speaker 1: out to these platforms and continue to every single day, um.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's a mixed bag. But I think
Speaker 1: any sort of digital commons project will need a space
Speaker 1: and how that space is conceived what of course need
Speaker 1: to be unmoored from you know, capitalist magination, um that
Speaker 1: the an ad whole um you know, potentially economy reach
Speaker 1: economy that aims to keep us divided and button heads.
Speaker 1: But I do think they will need be there will
Speaker 1: need to be a space for communication across boundaries, across
Speaker 1: regions around the world easily. Last thing I really wanted
Speaker 1: to touch on on this topic. It's really the sort
Speaker 1: of the overlap beteen the idea of digital commons and
Speaker 1: t growth, so you know, both sort of question that
Speaker 1: sort of means an idea of consumption um. Digital commons,
Speaker 1: you know, they promote this this idea of someone who
Speaker 1: both consumes and produces, consumes value and digital space, but
Speaker 1: also adds to that value that doesn't could modify um
Speaker 1: the resources available in the digital space, but rather you know,
Speaker 1: makes it accessible and adds to it, contributes to it,
Speaker 1: and that sort the idea of open access really something
Speaker 1: to the growth also tries to emphasize, you know, even
Speaker 1: though we're trying to scale within planetary limits. We still want,
Speaker 1: you know, a good life for all. We still want
Speaker 1: people to to collaborate and create um and fract beople
Speaker 1: more free to do so without limitations that the growth
Speaker 1: oriented capitalist economy imposes on us. The idea, of course,
Speaker 1: digital commons also brings the means of production in the
Speaker 1: digital spare under the control of the communities who use it.
Speaker 1: We use that resource, who use that service, in complete
Speaker 1: contrast the capitalist them of keeping them perfectly health and
Speaker 1: aiming to serve profit. Digital commons and de growth both
Speaker 1: emphasize access um information, to knowledge, the resources as part
Speaker 1: of our human heritage, as part of our human rights.
Speaker 1: The commons should be something that is openly available rather
Speaker 1: than restricted, commodified, privatized. Of course, unlike traditional commands, um,
Speaker 1: you know, digital commons are not easily exhaustible, not really exhaustible. Um.
Speaker 1: They're not subject to many of the limitations that physical
Speaker 1: commons would have. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: they depend on a certain infrastructure, and infrastructure that relies
Speaker 1: on you know, energy, and that energy has to come
Speaker 1: from somewhere. Being able to access the internet requires um,
Speaker 1: certain tools, certain technologies, computers, phones, whatever UM, and the
Speaker 1: resources required to create those technologies has to come from somewhere. UM.
Speaker 1: The cables and the oceans, the satellites and space, you know,
Speaker 1: the electricity for the computers, the materials for the phones
Speaker 1: and the computers. All of those things UM consume and
Speaker 1: contribute the exhaustion of environmental resources, and so balancing that
Speaker 1: and being common sense of environmental impact, we still have
Speaker 1: to be essential component and you know, any development of
Speaker 1: the digital comments. At the end of the day, I
Speaker 1: believe that humans are sort of pre program to create
Speaker 1: and to collaborate with each other UM, and I think
Speaker 1: digital comments are one way in which we can do that.
Speaker 1: I really appreciated UM the way that a different writers
Speaker 1: and thinkers on the subjects have UM sort of explore
Speaker 1: those ideas. Of course I drew a bit from one
Speaker 1: particular author, Mayo Foster moral UM and the exploration of
Speaker 1: the idea, But there's a lot available if you're interested
Speaker 1: in covering topic and what happened. Of course, the same
Speaker 1: goes for the comments in general. There a lot of
Speaker 1: different resources out there. UM. Eleanor Ostrom's work is creed
Speaker 1: place to start, and I really think it's important that
Speaker 1: we do um get these conversations rolling in the mainstream,
Speaker 1: in the background, in every corner and every space, because
Speaker 1: we stand to benefit a lot from it, and we
Speaker 1: honestly really need it in a time like this. That's
Speaker 1: it from me for this episode. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on YouTube at androids um, on Twitter at and disclosed
Speaker 1: saying true, and on Patreon you can support me. I
Speaker 1: should like Atton dot com slash same true Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can find it could happen here on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: Apparently we have the coolson as a TikTok, a thing
Speaker 1: that we learned. Do we officially have one? I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I okay, well that we did.
Speaker 1: Who knows? We may or we do not have a TikTok.
Speaker 1: You'll never know. By earlier January, we definitely will because
Speaker 1: we have something special planned. Um. But yes, Twitter, at least,
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at at happened here. Pondonicles and media
Speaker 1: still on where despite despite the digital town square collapsing,
Speaker 1: we are holding out in the in the dystopian ruins
Speaker 1: of Twitter. UM. So yeah, anyway, welcome to it could
Speaker 1: happen here a show. I've had a bunch of ship actually,
Speaker 1: but but our our core is collapse and UH, political
Speaker 1: violence in the United States. That's that's where we got
Speaker 1: our bones. And today we're getting back to basics. We're
Speaker 1: we're going into the roots. UM. Those of you who
Speaker 1: live in New Mexico are probably broadly familiar with the
Speaker 1: kind of basics of this story. UM. Many of you
Speaker 1: probably will have heard aspects of this. But there have
Speaker 1: been a series of shootings that took place in December
Speaker 1: of last year in January of this year, UM at
Speaker 1: the homes of to state legislators and two county commissioners.
Speaker 1: No one was injured, thankfully, UM. But this was obviously
Speaker 1: something that was scaring the hell out of a lot
Speaker 1: of people, UM, liberals and people on the left in
Speaker 1: New Mexico over the last several weeks because they were
Speaker 1: clearly politically motivated. UM. New Mexico has had shootings at
Speaker 1: protests and it's its share of the political violence that
Speaker 1: has swept a large chunk of the country, and this
Speaker 1: seemed like a real scary years of lead style escalation. UM.
Speaker 1: Very recently, within the last couple of days of US
Speaker 1: recording this, it was announced that the police had brought
Speaker 1: in the guy who was responsible for organizing this UM.
Speaker 1: He did not carry out the shootings himself. His name
Speaker 1: is Solomon Penia um and he was a former Republican
Speaker 1: candidate for local office who hired fore men Um in
Speaker 1: order to shoot at the homes of elected Democrats. Um.
Speaker 1: Those are the basics of it. Uh. The arrest Warren
Speaker 1: affidavit says that penia intended to cause serious harm or
Speaker 1: cause death to the occupants inside their homes, which seems
Speaker 1: pretty credible based on what we know objectively about what happened. Um.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that Penya had donated repeatedly in
Speaker 1: the past to Lyndon LaRouche, which I'm sure we'll get
Speaker 1: into a little bit later. But I want to introduce
Speaker 1: my guest for this episode, who knows the story much
Speaker 1: better than I do, a local, uh New Mexico based activist,
Speaker 1: Lucas Herndon. Lucas, How are you doing today, buddy? I'm
Speaker 1: doing good man. Glad to be back, sort of really
Speaker 1: glad to have you back. You've been on the show before.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna kind of let you take it from
Speaker 1: here now that I've sort of laid out the bones
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah. Thanks, and just a couple of clarifying points, um,
Speaker 1: which only because things have been moving very quickly today. UM.
Speaker 1: This is the day after he was arrested. There is
Speaker 1: actually now evidence put out from the A p D
Speaker 1: that um Penya himself UH was in the car and
Speaker 1: attempted to fire at least one of the targets. Apparently
Speaker 1: he had an A R fifteen that quote unquote jammed.
Speaker 1: It didn't stop that shooting from occurring. His accomplice, who
Speaker 1: is unnamed at this time, at least to our knowledge,
Speaker 1: UH did fire a glock out of the car during
Speaker 1: that that I mean, so that there was still a
Speaker 1: shooting that happened. But it is worth noting that he
Speaker 1: was not just the mastermind but also an active participant,
Speaker 1: at least according to what we know today. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like the weapon that was used was a tan
Speaker 1: and black clock with a drum magazine. UM or at
Speaker 1: least the drum was seized at the thing doesn't really matter, UM.
Speaker 1: But so I'm interested kind of first in if you
Speaker 1: want to walk us through how you became aware that
Speaker 1: these shootings had happened and how you would kind of
Speaker 1: characterize the impact it had on on the community around you,
Speaker 1: because this obviously is is intensely frightening and is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing most of us have been paying attention,
Speaker 1: have been worried about happening for for quite a while.
Speaker 1: Right exactly that. Yeah, so, um, you know, in in
Speaker 1: the in the political nonprofit world, which which I work
Speaker 1: in professionally, UM, it's not uncommon for the whole movement
Speaker 1: sort of takes the last part of December off for
Speaker 1: the holidays. UM. So unfortunately, there was sort of not
Speaker 1: a lot of eyes on stuff in the latter part
Speaker 1: of December. But as soon as we got back to
Speaker 1: work on the third of January, a series of events
Speaker 1: happened where there was a realization that there were shootings
Speaker 1: that happened at different elected officials houses. Right, and UM,
Speaker 1: it turns out or it looks like that the cops
Speaker 1: were just starting to put it together themselves. But it
Speaker 1: came from, um, the fact that the first two targets
Speaker 1: were at the time ceded county commissioners in berno Leo County. Um.
Speaker 1: Just for extra added confusion, UM, one of those targets
Speaker 1: was she finished her term at the end of the year,
Speaker 1: so she's now she's not technically sitting as a commissioner anymore,
Speaker 1: just just for clarity UM. But then over the course
Speaker 1: of of you know, those weeks that we were all out,
Speaker 1: there were also then shootings at UM one of the
Speaker 1: state senators homes, and then in January there was also
Speaker 1: shootings at the campaign office of who the gentleman who
Speaker 1: is now our state attorney general. Within our sort of
Speaker 1: movement of people that work on you know, political things,
Speaker 1: we were all gearing up for the session are into Mexico.
Speaker 1: Our legislative session kicks off a sixty day term actually
Speaker 1: started today on January, and it became clear to all
Speaker 1: of us that this was happening, and we started, you know,
Speaker 1: talking amongst ourselves, and we really we did find out
Speaker 1: that at that point the cops had started piecing it together.
Speaker 1: They were piecing together pieces of information. It turns out
Speaker 1: that after the shooting on the third UM, the only
Speaker 1: other named accomplice so far, this guy Jose Trahio, was
Speaker 1: arrested forty minutes after the shooting. UM a p D
Speaker 1: because of ongoing issues with UM crime in the in
Speaker 1: the city of Albuquerque, has like a quick response like
Speaker 1: system set up that like tracks gunfire and yeah, so
Speaker 1: they were they were able to track this guy down. Um,
Speaker 1: he was driving a car that was registered to Penya. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh, there was other connections obviously that the you know,
Speaker 1: cops put things together and then yeah, and they executed
Speaker 1: the search warrant yesterday. There was a SWAT situation. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it was um preventative more than anything, but
Speaker 1: it but but some of the stories that have come
Speaker 1: out is that he was reluctant to leave at first,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't actually any overt threats of violence. But
Speaker 1: you know, the cops did respond was swat when they
Speaker 1: arrested him. Yeah, I mean, given the fact that he
Speaker 1: had carried out a series of shootings. Uh. Not surprised
Speaker 1: to hear that. Now, I'm I'm kind of curious. Was
Speaker 1: there a community response prior to sort of Pinia being
Speaker 1: exposed and arrested? Was their community response kind of reacting
Speaker 1: to the fact that there were was an escalating series
Speaker 1: of shootings targeting local elected leaders. Yeah. So the company
Speaker 1: I worked for, Progress Now New Mexico, we put out
Speaker 1: a series of twee eats. Um. Basically as soon as
Speaker 1: we had started putting two and two together, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: we we were careful to say that disappears politically motivated.
Speaker 1: We don't have hard evidence, but it's hard to not
Speaker 1: put those two things together. We at progress now and
Speaker 1: and me specifically, having worked here for a very long time, UM,
Speaker 1: I have been tracking political violence here in the state
Speaker 1: UM for for a while and and i've i've i've
Speaker 1: been part of it in the sense that I was
Speaker 1: threatened and docked in as were some of my other colleagues,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, these things hit close to home,
Speaker 1: right and on the and on the one hand, it's
Speaker 1: it's tough to see these things as anything but political
Speaker 1: violence for for those of us like you, Robert, that
Speaker 1: like we see it all the time because we're paying
Speaker 1: attention to it. On the other hand, there is unfortunately
Speaker 1: a lot of gun violence in Albuquerque, and you know,
Speaker 1: so there were there were some pushback people, Oh, I know,
Speaker 1: this is just you know, there's just that much gun
Speaker 1: violence quote unquote, but that's you know, that was a
Speaker 1: silly premise. Honestly, this was very clearly politically motivated. And
Speaker 1: now that we have a person to attach this to,
Speaker 1: and we can look at his social media history and
Speaker 1: and you know, stuff we've found in telegram stuff on
Speaker 1: his Twitter. It's so clear. I mean he we just
Speaker 1: actually even today, right before we got on here, we
Speaker 1: just published another telegram piece that we found on our
Speaker 1: Twitter that he threatened the Secretary of State after he
Speaker 1: lost his election, UM telling saying that she should quote
Speaker 1: unquote hang until she's dead. So yeah, I mean, he's
Speaker 1: this has been an ongoing part of his um ideology
Speaker 1: for a while. You know, he has a lot of
Speaker 1: pro maga posts, UM, a lot of big lie you know,
Speaker 1: tainted election you know, uh rhetoric all over his social
Speaker 1: media such as it exists anyway, Now, have this altered
Speaker 1: it all um, or had an impact on your thinking
Speaker 1: of um? You know, when when you have attacks or
Speaker 1: a series of attacks like this, as you said, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to say prior to kind of knowing who did it,
Speaker 1: that like this is certainly politically motivated. But at a
Speaker 1: certain point it becomes kind of reasonable and and safe
Speaker 1: to make that assumption, and I think also necessary when
Speaker 1: you're trying to two protect a community and get people
Speaker 1: prepared for the likelihood that they're going to encounter of violence. UM.
Speaker 1: We've also had those cases where like it, it is
Speaker 1: impossible to know, you know, we had a series of
Speaker 1: attacks on power plants last year. We still don't know
Speaker 1: who did the ones in North Carolina or who did
Speaker 1: the ones in Portland. But it turned out that the
Speaker 1: folks who did that Christmas Day attack UM on power
Speaker 1: substation and UM Washington State were um uh just robbing
Speaker 1: a place right effectively non political. So it is kind
Speaker 1: of impossible to get has this altered it all your
Speaker 1: kind of feelings on when at what sort of point
Speaker 1: do we start raising the alarm? Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean I think that progress now you know, my my,
Speaker 1: my organization that I work with, we as soon as
Speaker 1: we heard something was afoot, we put out the word
Speaker 1: for us. It was for us, it was a matter
Speaker 1: of safety as as as people who have lived through
Speaker 1: it ourselves. Um. This was a time that the community
Speaker 1: needed to be aware of these things and be thinking
Speaker 1: about it. Um and and to be honest at you know,
Speaker 1: our our group discussion about it was it was better
Speaker 1: to be safe than sorry. If if somehow this wasn't political,
Speaker 1: or if it was maybe personalized or something like that,
Speaker 1: um at you know, at these legislators and lawmakers, rather
Speaker 1: than it being overtly just political ideology. You know, that
Speaker 1: would be we could walk it back. But again it
Speaker 1: was for us we made the decision that no, this
Speaker 1: information needs to be out there. Um. We have, especially
Speaker 1: as we were gearing up for the session, there was
Speaker 1: just there's too much on the line. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: up until years ago, at our state legislature, which we
Speaker 1: call the Roundhouse because it's a big round building. UM.
Speaker 1: Up at the Roundhouse, you could carry firearms into the building. Um.
Speaker 1: It was just a sort of a remnant of New
Speaker 1: Mexico's sort of wild West days, I guess. Yah. But uh,
Speaker 1: but with the with the rise of with the rise
Speaker 1: of far right related violence, and you actually did have
Speaker 1: armed insurrection minded people showing up um in and around
Speaker 1: January six. Um. But even before that, really during during
Speaker 1: up with a lot of the MAGA rallies, the Trump
Speaker 1: trains and all that, the legislature passed their own you
Speaker 1: know rules saying you couldn't bring guns into the into
Speaker 1: the legislature. And that was up even further this year
Speaker 1: by the installation of metal detectors. So but that's new.
Speaker 1: But that was directly related to this, this this looming
Speaker 1: threat over over lawmakers in the state. Um, they didn't
Speaker 1: know if they were going to have anybody in custody
Speaker 1: before things started started today, and so the legislature made
Speaker 1: that decision for themselves that they were going to institute
Speaker 1: that policy and have metal detectors on the way in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that that that that makes sense, and that
Speaker 1: I as I understand it, that it's still the law
Speaker 1: in the state of Texas actually that you can be
Speaker 1: armed inside the Capitol building. I certainly had been during
Speaker 1: protests years ago. It's interesting the watching kind of the
Speaker 1: simultaneous adaptation by the law enforcement, by kind of elected
Speaker 1: in sort of standard centrist Democrats and by the left
Speaker 1: in different ways to this escalation in in political violence,
Speaker 1: and kind of the acceptability on the right of using
Speaker 1: the threat or the practice of violence to try to
Speaker 1: push um for political ideology. Because everyone is kind of
Speaker 1: adapting in real time to it. I'm wondering, how are
Speaker 1: you kind of looking at this from the left, how
Speaker 1: are you how are you feeling about the way in
Speaker 1: which the actual state has responded so far? Yeah, it's complicated.
Speaker 1: Um So, the tradition in New Mexico is on the
Speaker 1: opening day of the legislature, the governor gives the State
Speaker 1: of the State address. UM and I covered that earlier today.
Speaker 1: One of her key points and she and she tied
Speaker 1: it to this very issue, was she is pushing as
Speaker 1: a priority bill this year a quote unquote assault weapons ban. Uh.
Speaker 1: There is also another legislator who is pushing, um a
Speaker 1: what we would call a standard capacity but what they
Speaker 1: call a high capacity magazine ban. And you know, and
Speaker 1: then there's some other ones that are maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit more UM reasonable, like safe storage UM, which is
Speaker 1: something that I can get behind, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think there's a couple of things here to consider and
Speaker 1: and you know, and it gets complicated because people on
Speaker 1: right have dominated the conversation about guns and gun control
Speaker 1: for so long that it's hard to have UM, well
Speaker 1: intentioned conversations from the left, I find UM and and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, speaking personally as a gun owner and
Speaker 1: as somebody who has um made the decision of my
Speaker 1: life to be you know, armed and ready and have
Speaker 1: you know, body armor. And I you know, I don't
Speaker 1: just shoot guns. I train with guns. I train other people.
Speaker 1: I have a group of people that I work with
Speaker 1: and trust that if things ever got real bad, I
Speaker 1: would you know, we would call each other. UM, being
Speaker 1: that guy, I obviously have very strong feelings about being
Speaker 1: told by the state that I don't have a right
Speaker 1: to defend myself with the same types of weapons that
Speaker 1: I know the other side has. Right, so I think
Speaker 1: the answer you know, sorry, that was a little bit
Speaker 1: of a roundabout, But the point is that, UM, the
Speaker 1: person who perpeture to this um Mr Penia. It's unclear,
Speaker 1: but he is a felon. And UM there is some
Speaker 1: hay being made about um how he and others may
Speaker 1: have possessed guns. And you know, the reality we know
Speaker 1: is that it is not hard or difficult. Um two
Speaker 1: try to get guns one way or the other and
Speaker 1: so and and no, you can just drive across the
Speaker 1: border to Texas for one thing, I mean, or Arizona. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: or Arizona. This guy was already what was, in fact
Speaker 1: restricted from being able to own any kind of firearm, right, right,
Speaker 1: And and so it is hard to be somebody who
Speaker 1: works on in the political left, and I work on
Speaker 1: a number of policy issues. My my day to day
Speaker 1: work focuses more on energy issues. Um. But but you know,
Speaker 1: but I have been doing this work long enough that
Speaker 1: I step in whenever there's stuff like this happening and
Speaker 1: cover it for for for my work. But it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's UM, it's gonna be interesting to see. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's the political will in the
Speaker 1: state New Mexico. UM, even you know, moderate Democrats are
Speaker 1: our hunters are recreational shooters, UM. And I think that
Speaker 1: there's you know, there is some strong feelings about gun violence.
Speaker 1: There was a very tragic death UM involving children last
Speaker 1: year during our legislative session, UM, where where a middle
Speaker 1: schooler I believe maybe a high school or a kid
Speaker 1: either way, UM, took a pistol from his parents, you know,
Speaker 1: sock drawer basically and shot a kid. And you know,
Speaker 1: so again, safe storage is one of those things that
Speaker 1: I think most people generally can get behind, especially if
Speaker 1: we do something really good like subsidized safe storage, so
Speaker 1: that if you know, if you're a person who is
Speaker 1: of lesser means but you still want to protect yourself
Speaker 1: with a firearm, you can figure out how to get
Speaker 1: a safe or something like that. Anyway, that's so there
Speaker 1: there are things that we can do. UM. I think
Speaker 1: we know that outright bands one don't work and are
Speaker 1: hard to pass. And things like magazine capacity things, the
Speaker 1: enforcement level becomes difficult, and um, a good example of
Speaker 1: that is in New Mexico, we did pass a red
Speaker 1: flag law a number of years ago, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I've heard, I know you've talked about red flag laws
Speaker 1: in the past, and you know, and we had what
Speaker 1: a lot of states have had, which is that a
Speaker 1: number of sheriffs in conservative counties just very publicly said
Speaker 1: out loud that they weren't going to enforce it. And
Speaker 1: sure enough, you know, last year during the summer, when
Speaker 1: we hit the two year mark of the law being
Speaker 1: into effect, it had been used less than a dozen times, um, statewide.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I mean, and one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things that's of obvious concern is if you
Speaker 1: have a lot of people living in these conservative areas
Speaker 1: where the sheriffs aren't enforcing the laws, um, they effectively
Speaker 1: have the ability to take the firearms they can acquire
Speaker 1: there to the areas that have maybe more restrictive gun
Speaker 1: control where there are elected Democrats and then shoot up
Speaker 1: their houses. Um. Yeah, I think kind of outside of that,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering. So, and obviously we're still looking at the
Speaker 1: fall out of this there's still quite a bit we
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think there's a lot of context
Speaker 1: on how Penya found these men that he hired. Um,
Speaker 1: although I am interested in that, I think it'll be
Speaker 1: it'll be worth learning. Is there kind of a lessons
Speaker 1: learned that that you're going through with us here? Has
Speaker 1: this altered it all kind of going forward? How you
Speaker 1: think you might respond or your community might respond the
Speaker 1: next time something like this occurs. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think there's a couple. I mean, actually, one of
Speaker 1: the things you just said is that we don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know how we found these guys. And and that's true
Speaker 1: because we still don't know the names of some of them.
Speaker 1: But the one, the one man we do know, um,
Speaker 1: was one of was a was a person who donated
Speaker 1: money to him while while he was running because because
Speaker 1: again remember this this is this was a man who
Speaker 1: was running for office last year and lost three to one.
Speaker 1: Um and and yeah, and so this this one accomplice
Speaker 1: whose name we have, Jose Triho, donated to him. And UM,
Speaker 1: they're very you know, they're they're clearly, Um, they clearly
Speaker 1: know each other and have some sort of a connection there.
Speaker 1: But I think what's worth noting is that going down
Speaker 1: that path. Right, So when I looked up that guy,
Speaker 1: I found the political donation from last year. And while
Speaker 1: I was there looking at political donations, I just happened
Speaker 1: to look at all the other names, which is how
Speaker 1: I found the other Uh you know the name of
Speaker 1: the other man who has this connection to him, um
Speaker 1: Fletcher and Michael Fletcher, right, and m that guy two
Speaker 1: years ago, during the you know thetests, drove a car
Speaker 1: through a crowd of protesters, and thanks to some amazing
Speaker 1: um you know, anti fascist organized there's here in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: they were able to identify him, even though the cops
Speaker 1: never did anything about it. And so I think that
Speaker 1: if if there's gonna be lessons learned here, it's that
Speaker 1: these people have been showing their true colors for a
Speaker 1: long time. And um there's if if if we're going
Speaker 1: to have police in this world we live in, and
Speaker 1: we're going to ask them to quote unquote keep us safe, uh,
Speaker 1: then they have to do their job and they have
Speaker 1: to follow up with with things like you know, somebody
Speaker 1: driving through a crowd of people. The video is on
Speaker 1: our Twitter thread. It's very scary. I mean, I know,
Speaker 1: people have seen it all over the country. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just unique to New Mexico. But um, anyway, that guy
Speaker 1: was Penya's third highest donor, and he's a young man.
Speaker 1: His his listed profession is security guard and um. And
Speaker 1: the other guy, Jose Trio, is listed as a cashier.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of questions about how how did
Speaker 1: these young men have so much money with jobs that
Speaker 1: are you know, you don't necessarily have a lot of
Speaker 1: money lying around if you're a cashier and security guard,
Speaker 1: at least at least not to donate to political candidates.
Speaker 1: Back when I had jobs like that, I didn't anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: and especially then also for all the guns they have,
Speaker 1: right Like, there's pictures of these guys with a table
Speaker 1: full of glocks and um, you know and mag's and
Speaker 1: that's that stuff is not cheap, so I don't there's
Speaker 1: there's there is a These people were known to law
Speaker 1: enforcement one way or the other because again Penya was
Speaker 1: a felon, and um, I want to be clear, he
Speaker 1: was able to run into Mexico because in New Mexico
Speaker 1: we believe felons deserve a second chance for things like
Speaker 1: running for office. In fact, it'd be great someday to
Speaker 1: have somebody who's maybe got that life experience to become
Speaker 1: a legislator. Obviously, there are circumstances like maybe this one
Speaker 1: that proved that people haven't you know, turned around from
Speaker 1: whatever life they were leading beforehand. But we're also but
Speaker 1: we're also not here excluding people from being Um. Being
Speaker 1: a felon does not make you a bad person, That's
Speaker 1: what I'm really trying to say here. But a felon
Speaker 1: who has a history like this and then has clearly
Speaker 1: demonstrated a will towards violence and hangs out with violent people, UM,
Speaker 1: maybe there should be some things done to keep an
Speaker 1: eye on those people. This is one of those situations
Speaker 1: that there's a number of different solutions too, or I
Speaker 1: think things that will will lead to solutions, But it's
Speaker 1: also it's much more muddled than people would like it
Speaker 1: to be. UM. I think I tend to think that
Speaker 1: from the perspective of like people who are activists, who
Speaker 1: are members of the community, one of the better things
Speaker 1: that we can do is keep an eye, as y'all do,
Speaker 1: on who's doing what. Like, you know, when you have
Speaker 1: people who are donating to one of these right wing
Speaker 1: you know fascist kind of candidates, UM, when they're saying
Speaker 1: certain things on social media, or the candidates saying so
Speaker 1: things on social media that are seen as incitements to violence.
Speaker 1: Like keeping those people on your radar is useful and
Speaker 1: keeping you know, as you did, being able to kind
Speaker 1: of document once somebody actually starts acting. Hey, this person
Speaker 1: has has made further threats in the past. Um, these
Speaker 1: are groups of people that might be at risk from them.
Speaker 1: We know this person, Like, here's evidence that this person
Speaker 1: is and has been a threat. That's all really useful. Um.
Speaker 1: The question is always is like, how do we actually
Speaker 1: stop these people before they carry out violence? Um? And
Speaker 1: this is a question that that to to be certain,
Speaker 1: law enforcement the state don't have very good answers for
Speaker 1: because they only kind of come in and take action after, Um,
Speaker 1: the attacks have started. We just got lucky in this
Speaker 1: case that nobody was hurt or killed. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: there have been a couple of of mass shootings averted
Speaker 1: as a result of anti fascists finding someone who was
Speaker 1: making threats, who had firearms and in some cases like
Speaker 1: was not legally supposed to have them, and making that
Speaker 1: public ahead of time. UM. But more often than not.
Speaker 1: It's sort of this case as it as it was
Speaker 1: with Penia, where we're the name comes out, we realize
Speaker 1: who it was, and it's like, yeah, we had we
Speaker 1: had this guy documented. We knew this dude was a threat.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the that is still kind of
Speaker 1: the the thing that we don't have a good answer
Speaker 1: to is what is the actual how do you how
Speaker 1: do you actually take action to stop these people from
Speaker 1: carrying out the attacks because obviously there's a thousand different
Speaker 1: legal issues with that. There's a number of different moral
Speaker 1: issues with that. Because for every guy like Pinia who
Speaker 1: talked about carrying out attacks and then attacked people, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of dozen who talk about ship like this
Speaker 1: and don't do anything. But um, I don't know. This
Speaker 1: is this is something that I think that I think
Speaker 1: has to be answered and it's not on you know,
Speaker 1: you specifically or the New Mexico activist community to figure
Speaker 1: it out, but it is. It is like, this is
Speaker 1: a big part of the struggle. I think because the
Speaker 1: the cops and the state, we'll do the thing that
Speaker 1: they do, which is when there are bodies or when
Speaker 1: there's bullet casings on the ground, generally, eventually someone will
Speaker 1: get arrested, not always, not necessarily, even the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the time. Again, nobody's caught the fuckers who were
Speaker 1: blowing up power stations in North Carolina. But you know, so,
Speaker 1: I think the question for us that and I'm sorry, folks,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be not gonna be saying, here's how
Speaker 1: we solve the problem of armed right wingers carrying out
Speaker 1: attacks on people is how do we how do we
Speaker 1: get from knowing who's a threat to stopping them effect
Speaker 1: effectively stopping them from carrying out actual attacks. And that is,
Speaker 1: you know, as our years of lead, if that is
Speaker 1: what we're in and boy, things like this make me
Speaker 1: think that that's a reasonable way to described the present
Speaker 1: political situation in the United States. Um, this is something
Speaker 1: we're going to have to answer. And obviously you know,
Speaker 1: I've asked you kind of your lessons on it. We don't,
Speaker 1: we don't. I don't think there's much more to say
Speaker 1: at the moment, but it is this is this is
Speaker 1: the question, right, Um, It's a question we ask ourselves.
Speaker 1: I know people are asking themselves up in Portland. Um,
Speaker 1: the guy who carried out an attack almost exactly a
Speaker 1: year ago at a protest in Portland at a long
Speaker 1: history of making threats online, and now one person is
Speaker 1: dead and others paralyzed. Several more have been have been injured.
Speaker 1: You know, these are this is this is a tough
Speaker 1: question and it's it's not one that uh, I think
Speaker 1: just kind of raw ideology actually gives us a very
Speaker 1: good answer on because there's the there's the emotionally satisfying answer,
Speaker 1: which is like, well, we just need to get some
Speaker 1: folks together and go like fuck these people up. And
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you can't. That's actually not a realistic
Speaker 1: because number one, there's so many people making these threats,
Speaker 1: like you don't actually have of the human band with
Speaker 1: two for that to be realistic outside of the fact
Speaker 1: that those people would be destroying their lives and throwing
Speaker 1: themselves into the mall of the state to do it.
Speaker 1: So this is this is a toughie. I do There's
Speaker 1: I mean, there's one there's one part of this that
Speaker 1: I think New Mexico can can offer some some I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's one thing we got right and um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if if you know, everybody out there
Speaker 1: is familiar with the name Coy Griffin or his organization
Speaker 1: Cowboys for Trump. But during the lead up to the election,
Speaker 1: this guy kind of made a name for himself. He
Speaker 1: went around the country on horseback with a bunch of
Speaker 1: dudes and they all dressed up like Larkin as cowboys. Um,
Speaker 1: most of them are not and um, and you know
Speaker 1: they had American flags and they yeah, literally called Cowboys
Speaker 1: for Trump. This guy was a seeded county commissioner in
Speaker 1: Otaro County here in New Mexico, and he went to
Speaker 1: January six and he was the first convicted person from
Speaker 1: the January six fallout, and he lost his seat in
Speaker 1: in Otaro County, which is like the smallest amount of thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's the man should have been locked up. But um.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that is frustrating but also
Speaker 1: maybe good is that probably you know, through my work
Speaker 1: doing what I do, I had been documenting this man
Speaker 1: for years because he'd been saying all kinds of crazy shit. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometime in nineteen I think or maybe it was, he
Speaker 1: like went up on top of a mountain to pray
Speaker 1: this is his words, and recorded himself on a Facebook
Speaker 1: live and like literally said that black people should go
Speaker 1: back to Africa and like this. This video was on
Speaker 1: his Facebook, and I mean it had been out for
Speaker 1: days and nobody said anything about it anywhere until I
Speaker 1: clipped it and put it on Twitter. You know, I
Speaker 1: took I took away the forty minutes of other weird shit,
Speaker 1: he said, and I put that thing out into the
Speaker 1: world and said, this man deserves to be like under
Speaker 1: so much scrutiny, it's ridiculous. And then of course it
Speaker 1: got pressed, and then of course he came under fire,
Speaker 1: and then a couple of people were paying attention. So
Speaker 1: then when he went to January six and again on
Speaker 1: a live video because people can't stop instagramming their crimes,
Speaker 1: he said he was taking all of his guns and
Speaker 1: going to meet his you know, homies in in Washington,
Speaker 1: and so he got arrested. He got arrested there. He
Speaker 1: was one of the few people who got arrested like
Speaker 1: on the ground that day because the FBI and the
Speaker 1: Secret Service were already looking for him because again somebody
Speaker 1: else had been out loud about saying, uh, this man
Speaker 1: literally just said he's taking guns to d C. Is
Speaker 1: somebody please going to do something about this? So I
Speaker 1: don't know it wasn't great, and I feel like more
Speaker 1: could have been done. And again, fortunately no one got hurt.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess people did if you wanted to
Speaker 1: take the whole of January six into into UM mean,
Speaker 1: but I guess. I guess. My point is is that
Speaker 1: it's sort of just a constant vigilism, right, It's like
Speaker 1: you just have to be and it's not you know,
Speaker 1: and obviously one person can't do it, but you have
Speaker 1: to have groups of people that do it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm one guy who works with an organization of
Speaker 1: people and we work on a number of policy things
Speaker 1: in the state. And again I don't necessarily do this
Speaker 1: all the time, but I also know that there's a
Speaker 1: number of amazing people, especially in o Tarot County, UM
Speaker 1: which is a very conservative county. But there's a number
Speaker 1: of amazing people who do really hard work and they
Speaker 1: show up at County commission meetings and they get thrown out,
Speaker 1: and they go to school board meetings and they get
Speaker 1: thrown out, but they go and they document it, and
Speaker 1: they tweet and they TikTok and and it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's that work that puts the word out from these
Speaker 1: little tiny places. You know, the last time I was
Speaker 1: on the show, Robert, we were talking about the school
Speaker 1: board stuff here in Los Cruces and the right wing
Speaker 1: chuds that had showed up to that, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing, right, It's like you don't I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't do it alone, but it doesn't take that
Speaker 1: many people to show up, and as know, and once
Speaker 1: you once you show them that you're not afraid and
Speaker 1: that there's more of us than there are of them,
Speaker 1: they tend to slink away. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: I think that there's value in that, and there's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not the answer that you're talking about, but there's
Speaker 1: there's a modicum of hope they're worth remembering. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's a really good point. That's all. Those are
Speaker 1: all really good points. Um well, Lucas, I think that
Speaker 1: more or less covers what we came to talk about today.
Speaker 1: Did you have anything else you wanted you wanted to
Speaker 1: say to the audience before we kind of roll out
Speaker 1: of here, Anything you wanted to plug place you want
Speaker 1: to well? Yeah, I mean yeah, I'd just like to
Speaker 1: say that, you know, IM the number one donor to
Speaker 1: this guy's campaign is a corporation called Halopeno Corporation. It's
Speaker 1: owned by a billionaire named Harvey Yates. He's part of
Speaker 1: the family that discovered oil in the state of New Mexico.
Speaker 1: New Mexico is the second largest producer of oil in
Speaker 1: the United States. Harvey Yates donated to every Republican candidate
Speaker 1: this cycle. And I think that what I want to,
Speaker 1: like just just say out loud, because again, my my
Speaker 1: job is normally I talk about energy issues, is that
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you know, we have questions about
Speaker 1: where some of these young men who have you know,
Speaker 1: cashier jobs and security guard jobs, where they came up
Speaker 1: with four thousand dollars to donate to a political candidate
Speaker 1: over the course of a few months. It's not unsurprising
Speaker 1: that an oil corporation donated five thousand dollars, right, But
Speaker 1: but what's worth remembering is is that, you know, these
Speaker 1: these mega corporations of it of all stripes, but especially
Speaker 1: oil and gas um are the backbone of the political
Speaker 1: movement that we are talking about. You know, even if
Speaker 1: we're sort of beating around the bush right, there's there's
Speaker 1: one side here that is dominated very heavily by this
Speaker 1: far right extremism, and they and they and the their
Speaker 1: funders treat them all the same, right, Like, oil and
Speaker 1: gas companies don't care if you're a quote unquote moderate
Speaker 1: Republican or a hardcore right wing maga guy or a
Speaker 1: literal Nazi. They just want somebody who's gonna like get
Speaker 1: in there and you know, give them tax subsidies. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, and I just the fight over energy
Speaker 1: issues in this country is often framed around climate change,
Speaker 1: as it should be, because I mean, obviously the climate
Speaker 1: crisis is something we can't ignore, but it's so much
Speaker 1: worse than that, and you know, we could do a
Speaker 1: whole other thing about that someday, but I just it's
Speaker 1: just so important. I can't let it go. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: looking looking at at this at this what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: call it domestic terrorists donation sheet, you know, and seeing
Speaker 1: that the number one, you know, his number one donor
Speaker 1: was this oil and gas guy. Like, it's just not
Speaker 1: a coincidence. It really isn't, and it's it's worth remembering.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the last thing I want to plug,
Speaker 1: or last thing I want to say in terms of plugs.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter I'm just Lucas E. Herndon,
Speaker 1: and if you are interested in New Mexico politics things,
Speaker 1: you can follow us now at Progress. Now I am awesome.
Speaker 1: Uh well you cannot find me there, but you can
Speaker 1: find me elsewhere. Um, you'll figure it out. Thank you, Lucas.
Speaker 1: This has been really I mean, good is a weird word,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate it. That's what happened last time too. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll have you back on in the near future,
Speaker 1: and we will be back tomorrow with some more ship
Speaker 1: that is hopefully, uh fun fun stuff, maybe fun stuff.
Speaker 1: I always get the episodes where it's not it could
Speaker 1: happen here, it's it did happen here, A thing has occurred.
Speaker 1: All thanks Robert, thank you. Welcome to Dick it Happened
Speaker 1: Here podcast about things being absolutely atrocious. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Meo Ball, and today we're going to do something a
Speaker 1: little different. Instead of our normal sort of escapades through
Speaker 1: the torment and the sort of crumbles of the modern world,
Speaker 1: We're going to take a step back into history to
Speaker 1: trace through the history and class psychology of a kind
Speaker 1: of guy who is a recurring character in the history
Speaker 1: of North America and who are responsible, to a greater
Speaker 1: extent than you think, for some of the worst atrocities
Speaker 1: this world has ever seen. Now, I hesitate to use
Speaker 1: the word class as a way to actually describe these people,
Speaker 1: because the people were going to be talking about are
Speaker 1: from completely different economies, completely different class structures, completely different
Speaker 1: systems of production. So we're sticking with the loose term
Speaker 1: kind of guy. And this kind of guy is a
Speaker 1: kind of guy that I have termed the debtor slaver.
Speaker 1: Now this, at first glance, this this is a confusing term.
Speaker 1: My word processor, at the very least, gets very very
Speaker 1: angry with me every time I try to write it
Speaker 1: and insist that no, no, no, I must in fact
Speaker 1: mean debtor slave. But no, I do not mean debtor slave.
Speaker 1: What I'm actually referring to as a kind of guy
Speaker 1: who is both hopelessly in debt and also in command
Speaker 1: of enormous economic abilitary resources, most often slaves. To get
Speaker 1: a sense of what I'm talking about here, we're going
Speaker 1: to start with the archetypical debtor slaver. Her Nan Cortes.
Speaker 1: Her name Cortes is, by all reputable accounts, an enormous
Speaker 1: piece of ship, a broke noble born in Spain in
Speaker 1: five Cortes managed to parlay an inn initially successful career
Speaker 1: as a sort of adventurer into a slave plantation in
Speaker 1: Cuba after he helped after he helped conquer the island
Speaker 1: in fifteen eleven. From there, through a combination of I shoot,
Speaker 1: you know this is this is actually what the historical
Speaker 1: records say about him, wearing too many gold chains and
Speaker 1: spending too much money on his wife, his finances imploded
Speaker 1: and he fell into debt. This led him to embark
Speaker 1: on his infamous conquest of Mexican attempt to pay office creditors. Here,
Speaker 1: I'm going to turn to the work of the anthropologist
Speaker 1: David Graber. Rest in Peace, Smissy Buddy. Graver describes the
Speaker 1: absolute horror of entire population sold into slavery, slaves with
Speaker 1: faces covered in brands indicating who they've been bought and
Speaker 1: sold by, Entire populations worked to death and minds empires
Speaker 1: drained of wealth by men whose lust for gold and
Speaker 1: silver seemed to know no end. And he somehow, both
Speaker 1: Cortes and his men seemed to have come out of
Speaker 1: the other end of one of the most important conquests
Speaker 1: in human history. Completely broke. Now it's easier to explain
Speaker 1: how Cortes as men came out of this broke. They
Speaker 1: came out of his broke because Cortes and his officers
Speaker 1: were extorting and robbing them mercilessly at literally every step
Speaker 1: of the campaign, by charging them utterly exorbitant prices for
Speaker 1: everything from bandages to like having to buy their own weapons,
Speaker 1: which were being sold by guests who Cortes and his
Speaker 1: officers who had to sort of cabal going on with
Speaker 1: everyone who could sell things. And once the conquest was done,
Speaker 1: Cortes as officers simply seized most of the share of
Speaker 1: the loot from their men as payment for all of
Speaker 1: the stuff that they needed. And I mentioned this not
Speaker 1: to inspire sympathy for the conquistadors like these are. These
Speaker 1: are some of the worst human beings who have ever lived,
Speaker 1: and managing to somehow lose money on one of the
Speaker 1: most brutal sackings of a city in human history is
Speaker 1: like the least of the punishment they deserve. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, their debt and the debt of Cortez
Speaker 1: himself goes a long way to explain what happened next.
Speaker 1: Here's Graper. These were the men who ended up in
Speaker 1: control of the provinces and who established local administration, taxes
Speaker 1: and labor regimes, which makes it a little easier to
Speaker 1: understand the descriptions of Indians with their faces covered by names,
Speaker 1: like so many counterindorsed checks, with the mind surrounded by
Speaker 1: miles of rotting corpses. We are not dealing with psychology
Speaker 1: of cold, calculating greed, but a more complicated mix of
Speaker 1: shame and righteous indignation and of the frantic urgency of
Speaker 1: debts that would only compound and accumulate. These were almost
Speaker 1: certainly interest bearing loans, in the outrage at the idea that,
Speaker 1: after all they had gone through, they should be held
Speaker 1: to owe anything to begin with. Now, this is the
Speaker 1: sort of trademark psychology of the debtor slaver. It's an
Speaker 1: incredibly toxic mix of shame, indignation, outrage, and desperation that
Speaker 1: breathes an incredible kind of violence and is determined in
Speaker 1: large part by the conditions of modern compound debt itself.
Speaker 1: Here's Graver again. Money always has the potential to become
Speaker 1: a moral imperative one too itself allow it to expand,
Speaker 1: and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that
Speaker 1: all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the
Speaker 1: world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools,
Speaker 1: and potential merchandise. Even human relationships become a matter of
Speaker 1: cost benefit calculation. Clearly, this is the way the conquistadors
Speaker 1: viewed the worlds that they set out to conquer. Now
Speaker 1: it doesn't take long until not only human relations but
Speaker 1: human beings themselves become a matter of cost benefit calculation,
Speaker 1: a set of merchandise that value could be extracted from.
Speaker 1: And here emerges the debtor slaver. Now, very clearly, all
Speaker 1: debtors do not behave like this. In fact, almost all
Speaker 1: debtors across all places, in all times do not behave
Speaker 1: this way, or the world would be a place that
Speaker 1: makes even how we live in now look like a paradise.
Speaker 1: There's another factor at work here that distinguishes the debtor
Speaker 1: from the debtor slaver, and that's power. The debder slaver
Speaker 1: already wields, or has wielded, enormous power over other people,
Speaker 1: either through direct violence or, as we'll see later, through
Speaker 1: the command of economic power. This is one of the
Speaker 1: products of the righteous indignation Grapery described earlier. These are
Speaker 1: people who are used to wielding power, who are suddenly
Speaker 1: now beholden in a real and immediate way to someone else,
Speaker 1: and so they set about solving the problem the way
Speaker 1: they've solved everything else in their life, throwing violence at it. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've been paying attention closely, you might realize that
Speaker 1: I've actually been describing two different sort of ranks of
Speaker 1: debtor slaves who sort of fuse into one mass, and
Speaker 1: Quarte has his conquisadors. On the lower end, the people
Speaker 1: who kind of loosely be called adventurers, essentially a kind
Speaker 1: of mercenary out for a big score, be that slaves,
Speaker 1: be that land, be that stolen loot that could vault
Speaker 1: them out of debton into the aristocracy. This is the
Speaker 1: sort of built general military base of the conquisator army itself.
Speaker 1: On the higher end, of people like Cortez, who having
Speaker 1: already technically who you know who are who are already
Speaker 1: technically plantation owners, but their own ineptitude, have still managed
Speaker 1: to become heavily indebted. Combined, they form a group responsible
Speaker 1: for three centuries of the greatest evil the world has
Speaker 1: ever seen. Now, these two groups, in a broad sense,
Speaker 1: need each other. The adventurers may have weapons, they may
Speaker 1: have some training, but at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: they have very little in terms of liquid capital at
Speaker 1: Liquid capital is something that you need in order to
Speaker 1: run a military campaign, because in order to keep all
Speaker 1: of these people, all of these sort of adventurers, all
Speaker 1: of these sort of debt or slavers, all of these
Speaker 1: sort of would be conquistadors in the field, you have
Speaker 1: to produce, you know, things like food, things like boots,
Speaker 1: things like medical supplies. And this is where the plantation
Speaker 1: owners come in, because those are people who, even though
Speaker 1: they're enormously in debt, and even though very often they're
Speaker 1: either fleeing their debtors or their all of their debts
Speaker 1: about to be called in, these are people who still
Speaker 1: technically have lines of credit open and they and you
Speaker 1: know also there are also people who sometimes have allies
Speaker 1: in more sort of solvent people in the same class,
Speaker 1: so they're able to sort of funnel liquid capital into
Speaker 1: these sort of ventures. And this is a process that
Speaker 1: we are going to see again after these ads and
Speaker 1: we're back moving forward in time a few hundred years
Speaker 1: and north a few thousand miles, we come into another
Speaker 1: scene of debt, subjugation, and violence, the plantations of the
Speaker 1: American South. Now this is not the primitive, unhallowed fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: where slaves would be marked like tally sticks as they
Speaker 1: were passed back and forth between sword and pike wielding
Speaker 1: Spanish barbarians as they slaughtered their way through one of
Speaker 1: the greatest cities the world had ever known. This is
Speaker 1: the benighted eight hundreds. This is the age of steam
Speaker 1: power and railroads, the age of electricity, the advent of
Speaker 1: the global telecommunications network. What would come of this new
Speaker 1: era of progress. One of the greatest of all world
Speaker 1: historical crimes the conversion of human beings into increasingly complex
Speaker 1: financial instruments. Plantation owners, contrary to their depiction in media,
Speaker 1: which they've gotten almost those those people have gotten almost
Speaker 1: as good pr as cops, which is fairly incredible considering
Speaker 1: they haven't really existed as the sort of slave owning
Speaker 1: classes that used to be in you know what, hundred
Speaker 1: hundred years, I don't know. Discuss among yourselves when you
Speaker 1: think share cropping has so to decrease to an amount
Speaker 1: where these people like are no no longer around as
Speaker 1: a class. But you know, okay, just despite the sort
Speaker 1: of pr but these like Southern gentlemen get these people
Speaker 1: are constantly in debt, and they're you know, constantly attempting
Speaker 1: to solve the problem of them being in debt with
Speaker 1: the only thing they know how to do, which is slavery.
Speaker 1: And when I say they're trying to solve this problem
Speaker 1: through slavery, um, we're We're going to get to the
Speaker 1: more complicated ways to try to solve this with slavery.
Speaker 1: One of the big ways they try to solve this
Speaker 1: with slavery is just whipping people harder. It's brutal and horrible,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you know this, this this is a system
Speaker 1: that is who's the the efficiency of which is just
Speaker 1: built on profound human violence. So let's let's let's just
Speaker 1: establish that right off the bat. This is the worst
Speaker 1: kind of slavery anyone's really ever done. Yeah, now, you know,
Speaker 1: another actor for these people essentially turning into debtor slavers
Speaker 1: is the fact that these people are constantly putting themselves
Speaker 1: in self inflicted debt in order to do speculation. And
Speaker 1: this is the part where they start doing ship that
Speaker 1: is difficult for me to even try to explain will
Speaker 1: adequately capturing the horror of the process. The Southern planters
Speaker 1: began to create an entire separate financial network based entirely
Speaker 1: off of the quote unquote value of their slaves and
Speaker 1: their land. From the historian Edward B. Baptiste. Yet enslavers
Speaker 1: had already by the end of the eighteen twenties created
Speaker 1: a highly innovative alternative to existing financial structure. The Consolidated
Speaker 1: Association of Louisiana Planters, despite his name that c APL
Speaker 1: was still a bank, created more leverage for enslaveris at
Speaker 1: less cost and on longer terms. It did so by
Speaker 1: securitizing slaves, hedging even more effectively against the individual investors
Speaker 1: loss so long as the financial system itself did not fail.
Speaker 1: Here is how it worked. Potential borrowers mortgage slaves and
Speaker 1: cultivated land to the c APL, which entitled them to
Speaker 1: borrow up to half of the assessed value of their
Speaker 1: property from the CIAPL and bank notes to convince others
Speaker 1: to accept the banknotes thus distributed at face value. The
Speaker 1: ci ap L convinced the Louisiana legislature to back two
Speaker 1: point five million dollars in bank bonds do win ten
Speaker 1: to fifteen years bearing five percent interest. With the faith
Speaker 1: and credit of the people of the state, the Great
Speaker 1: British Merchant Bank bearing brothers agreed to advance the ci
Speaker 1: APL the equivalent of two point five million dollars in
Speaker 1: Sterling bills. By the way, that is a on fathomable
Speaker 1: amount of money. Now that's not five million dollars status,
Speaker 1: that is it. That is an amount of money that
Speaker 1: will make your ears bleed the equivalent of two point
Speaker 1: five million and sterling bills, and market the bonds on
Speaker 1: European securities markets. The bonds effectively converted in Slaver's biggest investment,
Speaker 1: human beings or quote unquote hands from Maryland and Virginia
Speaker 1: and North Carolina and Kentucky into multiple streams of income,
Speaker 1: all under their control. Since all borrowers were officially stakeholders
Speaker 1: in the bank, the sale of the bonds created a
Speaker 1: high quality credit pool to be lent back to the
Speaker 1: planters at a significantly lower rate, sorry at a rate
Speaker 1: significantly lower than the rate of return they could expect
Speaker 1: that money to produce. The pool could be used for
Speaker 1: all sorts of income generating purposes, buying more slaves to
Speaker 1: produce more cotton and sugar and hence more income, or
Speaker 1: lending to other enslavers. Ver borrowers could pure amid their
Speaker 1: leverage even higher by borrowing on the same collateral from
Speaker 1: multiple lenders, while also getting unsecured short term commercial loans
Speaker 1: from the c APL by purchasing new slaves with the
Speaker 1: money they borrowed and borrowing on them too. They had
Speaker 1: mortgaged their slaves, sometimes multiple times, and sometimes they even
Speaker 1: mortgage fictitious slaves. But in contrast to what Walsh had promised,
Speaker 1: Nulty in this type of mortgage gave the enslaver tremendous
Speaker 1: margins control and flexibility. It was hard to imagine that
Speaker 1: such borrows would be foreclosed even if they fell behind
Speaker 1: on their payments. After all, the borrowers owned the bank.
Speaker 1: Using the c A p L model, slave owners were
Speaker 1: now were able to monetize their slaves by securitizing them
Speaker 1: and then leveraging them multiple times on the international financial markets. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: having having just spent a decent amount of time running
Speaker 1: through the sort of finance of this, I need to
Speaker 1: reiterate these are human beings who are being enslaved and
Speaker 1: tortured constantly, the ownership of whom is being mortgaged to
Speaker 1: a bank and then sold and traded as assets on
Speaker 1: the financial markets. What what they have done here is
Speaker 1: like two thousand eight style financial collapse, like set of
Speaker 1: collateralized loan obligations, except the loans are backed by fucking
Speaker 1: human beings they've forced into slavery. It is a level
Speaker 1: of evil that is almost incomprehensible because the very financial
Speaker 1: language that is necessary to explain what they're doing, by
Speaker 1: necessity can feels the horror of what's actually being done
Speaker 1: and was actually being done here is hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people are being sold into slavery and forced to
Speaker 1: clear land and work on land that has just been
Speaker 1: stolen literally like you know sometimes in some cases like
Speaker 1: the day before, by indigenous people who have just been
Speaker 1: sent on the trail of tears. And this is this
Speaker 1: is being done to fuel these new financial instruments. Now,
Speaker 1: in a somewhat ironic twist, the product of this entire thing,
Speaker 1: the product of all of this land clearing, the product
Speaker 1: of Andrew Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the US,
Speaker 1: the product of all of this sort of speculation is
Speaker 1: the plantations wind up producing too much cotton, too much
Speaker 1: slave cotton, and this quickly becomes an absolute fiasco. Debt
Speaker 1: suddenly outpaced the entire value of the slave crop, and
Speaker 1: you know, the entire financial system begins to implode. So
Speaker 1: it starts, it starts in sort of the UK and
Speaker 1: the European markets that had taken a bunch of these
Speaker 1: these sort of slave bonds. But eventually the financial collapse
Speaker 1: spreads and you know, as we heard in the article,
Speaker 1: right the way these banks are set off, the way
Speaker 1: these again, like these these banks that are just all
Speaker 1: of the bank is just slaves. And I guess I
Speaker 1: guess I should also take an aside here to mention that,
Speaker 1: like the normal banks are also doing stuff like this.
Speaker 1: It's just that the South not being content to just
Speaker 1: have normal banks taking you know, doing mortgages like they're
Speaker 1: taking out mortgages on houses with slaves is collateral. Uh,
Speaker 1: They've they've credit sided to create like their in their
Speaker 1: own entire financial network that's just slaves and nothing else. Well,
Speaker 1: land too, but yeah, slaves in the land. This entire
Speaker 1: thing sort of just collapses in on itself, and this
Speaker 1: leads to it to an even larger mass of dead
Speaker 1: or slavery plantation doners. And this is where we turned
Speaker 1: from plantation slavery to some good old fashioned conquistadoring. What
Speaker 1: of the sort of myths of slavery with the way
Speaker 1: that you know, slavery has been sort of understood in
Speaker 1: the West, particularly in sort of Europe, well, particularly in
Speaker 1: the U S and the UK, which have these sort
Speaker 1: of like complexes about, you know, like this sort of
Speaker 1: inevitability of ebolitionism and the sort of benevolent empire against
Speaker 1: abolition or whatever. You know, there's there's this sort of
Speaker 1: like that you get these economic organis to that that
Speaker 1: the people people will argue that you know, slavery was
Speaker 1: like going to collapse anyways, like people just let it go,
Speaker 1: it would have fell on apart, and that that is
Speaker 1: just sort of nonsense. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: this could one of the things that this conceals is
Speaker 1: that slave power was constantly expansionary. It's never sort of
Speaker 1: like slavery was never a system that was sort of
Speaker 1: just contained in one place, right. It was always pushing,
Speaker 1: it was always attempting to you know, seize new land.
Speaker 1: It was always attempting to seize new slaves. Was it
Speaker 1: was a system that could only really survive if it
Speaker 1: was constantly able to seize new territory and seize new
Speaker 1: slaves in order to work it. And so there's a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of products of this, right One of
Speaker 1: the sort of earlier ones, you get these settlers pushing west,
Speaker 1: attempting to turn sort of new states and the slave states.
Speaker 1: And these are you know, these are often, like the
Speaker 1: settlers here, often the sort of men like ephemistically described
Speaker 1: as adventurers with like you know, these are people who
Speaker 1: portize right like, they are people desperately attempting to stay
Speaker 1: one step ahead of their creditors by invoking the time
Speaker 1: honored American tradition of slaughtering indigenous people for their land,
Speaker 1: which you know, could then be turned over to speculators,
Speaker 1: you could be turned over to the short of wealthier backers.
Speaker 1: And these men and in this period, these are almost
Speaker 1: always men. I thought that's going to change pretty soon.
Speaker 1: But these men are so violent and so disruptive that
Speaker 1: at various points in the late seventeen hundreds and early
Speaker 1: eight the US like attempts to stop them from settling
Speaker 1: any further less, they sort of disturb American foreign policy efforts. Um.
Speaker 1: And these efforts fail, and the product of this is
Speaker 1: that manifest destinies. You know, trail of corpses pushes even
Speaker 1: further and further west. Now by the by the eighteen fifties,
Speaker 1: there there's a new sort of conquistador who's setting out
Speaker 1: to you know, conquering the name of the cross and
Speaker 1: paying off their creditors. And they're called filibusters. Now this
Speaker 1: is actually where these people are where the term filibuster
Speaker 1: as a sort of like like thing that you do
Speaker 1: in the sentence and not let people do stuff like that. This,
Speaker 1: this is where that comes from. It's these people. Um,
Speaker 1: these are okay, So you know, the official descriptions of
Speaker 1: them will say things like private armies. I there are
Speaker 1: more these kind of like ragged bands of like slavery
Speaker 1: mongering gennis ideas who are backed by you know, largely
Speaker 1: by southern plantation owners, sometimes by southern states, occasionally by
Speaker 1: just northern banks. Because the place they're trying to go
Speaker 1: somewhere the banks. The northern banks want to sort of
Speaker 1: seize control of. And you know, these people set out
Speaker 1: to conquer new slave states by you know, straight up
Speaker 1: season control of places like Cuba or Mexico. They do
Speaker 1: a bunch of this stuff in Texas doesn't really work,
Speaker 1: but you know, they mean part of the complicated thing
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the filibusters is that like, in some sense,
Speaker 1: the most successful like attempt to do something like this
Speaker 1: was actually Texas, but those people weren't really feel about
Speaker 1: like the people who actually successful le sees control of Texas,
Speaker 1: like Sam Adam and his sort of crew of merry
Speaker 1: miscreant slave owners. Those guys aren't technically filibusters, but you know,
Speaker 1: they they do sort of succeed in bringing in Texas
Speaker 1: as a slave state. But yeah, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: these people are they keep they keep launching invasions of
Speaker 1: fucking Cuba, They keep launching us invasions everywhere. There's a
Speaker 1: really great movie called Walker that's a sort of fictionalized
Speaker 1: account of probably the most famous filibuster, a guy named
Speaker 1: William Walker, and well, okay, so it starts with his
Speaker 1: attempt to like conquered Mexico, which doesn't go well, but
Speaker 1: then it sets out for his attempt to conquered Nicaragua,
Speaker 1: which like kind of works like he actually takes Nicaragua
Speaker 1: for a little bit. You know, but this this this
Speaker 1: movie version of it's also like it's an anti war
Speaker 1: film about the US backing the contrast, and it rules.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about it because nobody's ever watched this thing.
Speaker 1: And the studio when when they they actually figure about
Speaker 1: what Walker was and that it was, you know, like
Speaker 1: an an anti war film about the contrast, they literally
Speaker 1: killed the entire movie and the director Alex Cox, here's
Speaker 1: the guy you should repo man like he literally never
Speaker 1: worked in Hollywood again after this. So yeah, go watch Walker.
Speaker 1: Understand it's a little it's a bit fictionalized. It's mostly
Speaker 1: an anti war film about the contrast. But you know,
Speaker 1: part of what you trying to trace out and personally
Speaker 1: that is very important about this is that you know,
Speaker 1: the there's this there's these sort of lineages of American colonialism,
Speaker 1: and part of these linear edges is that you know,
Speaker 1: like the that literally does not matter like what century
Speaker 1: you're in, the US is trying to see his control
Speaker 1: of Nicaragua. Now, okay, so but back back to the
Speaker 1: solo philibusters mainline. Unlike the conquistadors who were kind of
Speaker 1: like I don't know, they had a combination of being
Speaker 1: really really lucky and also like GENU widely having some
Speaker 1: pretty good leadership even though you know, good leadership but
Speaker 1: for evil I those guys were really sucessful. The Philipbuzzers
Speaker 1: they mostly failed because again this is these these are
Speaker 1: mostly sort of just like bands of like marauders. They
Speaker 1: don't they barely have supply lines, like I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they have real weapons, but they're not especially competent.
Speaker 1: But what what what they did do is they kill
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And this this is one of
Speaker 1: those things that's sort of like I don't know, it
Speaker 1: gets sort of romanticized or gets sort of like brushed over.
Speaker 1: Is that like, yeah, I know, these these people like
Speaker 1: they're they're like these groups are basically like rolling lynch mobs,
Speaker 1: and so you know, there they'll they'll be doing something
Speaker 1: that run into a town. They'll just they'll just kill everyone.
Speaker 1: They will enslave people, they were rape people, they do
Speaker 1: ship that is just they're absolutely imborrant and that's that's
Speaker 1: the sort of legacy of this stuff. And you know
Speaker 1: they probably would have kept doing it, and you know,
Speaker 1: except they were stopped right one of One of the
Speaker 1: sort of like legacies of these people is eventually the
Speaker 1: sort of slave powers like wind up and Bleeding Kansas,
Speaker 1: which is the sort of semi civil war between the
Speaker 1: pro slavery anti slavery forces in Kansas that leads to
Speaker 1: the regular civil war. But you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think I think it's sort of important to understand about
Speaker 1: this entire thing is that these people just kept accumulating
Speaker 1: power and kept accumulating power and kept a commulating power
Speaker 1: or someone stopped them. And that was also true of
Speaker 1: the conquisadors, right, Like I mean, you know, and like
Speaker 1: arguably arguably the sort of sentence those people are still
Speaker 1: in power, but like you know, the Spanish were not
Speaker 1: run out of the places that they had conquered until
Speaker 1: people sort of fought them. Now, the last thing I
Speaker 1: want to do is we're also not free of this
Speaker 1: kind of guy. Um. It kind of manifests in different
Speaker 1: ways in sort of more recent times. I think probably
Speaker 1: the the closest we have to the sort of like
Speaker 1: corporate cortes thing are the people behind the sort of
Speaker 1: it gets it gets rereaded as emergency and acquisitions, but
Speaker 1: the people behind the like leverage, buy out um like
Speaker 1: corporate radar stuff on Wall Street in the eighties, who
Speaker 1: you know. And then the reason, the reason they sort
Speaker 1: of they behave and they think in a lot of
Speaker 1: the very in a lot of the same ways as
Speaker 1: as these sort of as a sort of debtor or slavers,
Speaker 1: is that they're their financial techniques leave them in basically
Speaker 1: the same situation as um as as as your cortes,
Speaker 1: which is that the way that these people take over
Speaker 1: a company and these these are basically financed people. These
Speaker 1: are investors who have figured out a way to seize
Speaker 1: control of companies. And the way they figured out to
Speaker 1: do it is they they essentially they still bonds to
Speaker 1: other investors. So the short version of it is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they go into an enormous amount of debt personally
Speaker 1: right in order to you know, have enough money to
Speaker 1: just buy up the stock prices of the company. And
Speaker 1: you know, they say, okay, we're gonna buy say say
Speaker 1: say your stock price thirty five dollars. They're like, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna buy the stock at forty and unless the
Speaker 1: company can you know, like somehow raise or stock price
Speaker 1: above that in order to fend them off, you know,
Speaker 1: this one person who's taking on an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: debt now suddenly just owns the company, and he could
Speaker 1: transfer the debt onto the company, and then he has
Speaker 1: to start, you know, just stripping assets from it, right.
Speaker 1: He has to find ways to make money. He has
Speaker 1: to find ways to sort of raise the stock price
Speaker 1: of this thing, you know, and this is usually done
Speaker 1: by like stripping people's pensions, by firing people, by just
Speaker 1: destroying entire like entire sort of like people's lively, this
Speaker 1: is done by just dismantling companies wholesale like toys. R
Speaker 1: Us is the last company that sort of famously had
Speaker 1: this happened to them. They just get completely dismembered. And
Speaker 1: they get completely dismembered because the people who buy these companies, right,
Speaker 1: and you know this eventually shot transiento firms instead, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But those people are also unbelievably in debt, right, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's that that they've imposed on themselves. It
Speaker 1: isn't that you know, the sort of psychological effects of
Speaker 1: it are very similar. And you know, I think I
Speaker 1: think the thing about sort of like the late century
Speaker 1: is that the violence gets outsourced. So you know, these
Speaker 1: people still have slaves, but the slaves are like you
Speaker 1: know that the slaves are owned by a contractor who's
Speaker 1: our contractor of a contractor like somewhere way down the line.
Speaker 1: But you know, the the sort of strategic stuff and
Speaker 1: the way that these people behave is very similar. And
Speaker 1: I think it's worth knowing that there's there's two there's
Speaker 1: people who there's coop of people who come out of
Speaker 1: this era who are very important now. One is that
Speaker 1: one of the people who comes out of this sort
Speaker 1: of eighties and nineties era who was also constantly in
Speaker 1: debt and it's also just sort of like a murderous,
Speaker 1: like incredibly vengeful person who who's also sort of dealing
Speaker 1: with these same kinds of like you know, who's tapping
Speaker 1: into the sort of emotions of the sort of like
Speaker 1: indignation and outrage and desperation, like is Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: you know in Toronald Trump, I think is a sort
Speaker 1: of tragedy version of it. And then you get to
Speaker 1: see it We've been getting to see it with with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk as the sort of fest version of it
Speaker 1: where he's you know, increasingly desperate that try to like
Speaker 1: dig himself out of the hole that he got by
Speaker 1: buying by having to leverage himself so much to buy Twitter.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we are we we remain haunted by the
Speaker 1: specter of this kind of guy. And they've done they've
Speaker 1: done enormous harm to the world. They're probably going to
Speaker 1: keep doing enormous harm in the world. And yeah, but
Speaker 1: but again, I I think it is worth thinking about
Speaker 1: them psychologically and worth understanding that it's not that, you know,
Speaker 1: like at the core of sort of like the capitalist
Speaker 1: death machine, are not necessarily these like incredibly cold, rational,
Speaker 1: calculating people. It's a bunch of people who are frantic,
Speaker 1: who are desperate, who are very very angry, and that
Speaker 1: doesn't make them sort of you know, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: them more sympathetic. It just makes them more violence. Hey,
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.