WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 67 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.680 Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.359 you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:09.399 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:13.240 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:15.760 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:17.720 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:19.919 there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:28.600 can make your own decisions. This is it could Happen Here. 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.280 I'm Garrison Davis. This episode is going to be a 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:36.280 bit of an update and an interview regarding the Defend 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:40.800 the Atlanta Forest and Cops City movement that's been ongoing 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:45.960 for almost two years now. If you're unfamiliar with the topic, 0:00:46.240 --> 0:00:50.200 I made a three hour, two part deep dive last 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.080 May titled on the Ground at Defend the Atlanta Forest 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.040 that you can find up on the it could Happen 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:01.160 Here feed, and I've been doing random dates like in 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:05.240 our History of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm episodes from 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:09.040 last August. But the TLDR is that the City of 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:13.839 Atlanta and the corporate funded Atlanta Police Foundation are trying 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:16.600 to tear down a large section of the Woolanee or 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:21.080 South River Forest in Decab County to construct a massive, 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:26.240 ninety million dollar militarized, state of the art police training facility, 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:30.520 complete with a mock city on top of that. Ryan 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:34.360 millsaps Black Hall Movie Studios are planning to cut down 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:38.000 an adjacent section of the very same forest to expand 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:42.040 their film production studio in a shady land swap deal 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:46.360 that's currently the subject of a lawsuit. The past couple 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:50.040 of weeks have seen a massive increase in the intensity 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.840 of repression efforts by the state and local police inside 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:58.000 Atlanta and Decab County against the Cops City movement and 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:01.480 people in the forest encampments trying to prevent the construction 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.800 of the police training facility. Last month, on a December 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.240 there was a raid on the forest by a task 0:02:09.280 --> 0:02:13.519 force of local, state, and federal law enforcement. Police were 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.880 shooting pepperballs, rubber tipped metal impact rounds, and tear gas 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:22.359 canisters into the woods. They destroyed treehouses while people were 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:26.400 still inside, and tore part of the infrastructure like the 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.520 communal kitchen that was built inside the forest to support 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:34.600 the encampment. Police fired chemical weapons at tree sitters, arrested 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:38.480 multiple people and pushed others out of the forest at gunpoint. 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.880 One of the things setting this apart from previous raids 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:45.880 is that six people have now been charged with domestic 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.960 terrorism as well as a number of other felonies. The 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.920 people charged were initially denied bail and essentially held as 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.520 political prisoners for trespassing in a forest with the terrorism 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.320 enhancement charge added on top top. The Georgia Bureau of 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:07.080 Investigation alleges quote several people through rocks at police cars 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.880 and attacked E m T s outside the neighboring fire 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:15.200 stations with rocks and bottles. Task Force members use various 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:20.880 tactics to arrest individuals who are occupying makeshift treehouses unquote. 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.960 The Georgia Department of Homeland Security, which was formed as 0:03:24.960 --> 0:03:28.440 the result of a seventeen bill which is also responsible 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:33.280 for the expanded definition of domestic terrorism, has chose to 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:38.000 designate the defend the land of forest as quote domestic 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:42.960 violent extremists unquote, which has led the State Attorney General's 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.920 office to also get involved in the case. I think 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:51.760 it's worth mentioning that this seen domestic terrorism bill was 0:03:51.840 --> 0:03:55.440 first passed by the Georgia legislator in response to the 0:03:55.480 --> 0:03:59.960 neo Nazi Dylan Roof mass shooting at Emmanuel African Methodist 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:04.640 Piscopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, which killed nine people. 0:04:05.600 --> 0:04:09.480 So now we have this law allegedly created in response 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.600 to a murderous white supremacist targeted attack against black people, 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:18.000 now being used for the first time as a bludgeon 0:04:18.160 --> 0:04:22.240 against anti racist protesters who are fighting against the expansion 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:28.000 and further militarization of police facilities. This is a reminder 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.640 that any expansion of state power will always come down 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:35.279 the hardest on people who are actually pushing back against 0:04:35.320 --> 0:04:40.239 the power structures of the state, like the police. After 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:42.960 being held in jail for two weeks on in December, 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:48.240 the six people were finally granted bail, but as of 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.280 two days later, the jail was refusing to comply and 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:56.159 release someone, instead saying that they will be quote held 0:04:56.240 --> 0:05:01.880 well the prosecutor add additional charges unquote. This abnormality was 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:06.640 soon resolved and by December all six people charged were 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:11.080 released on bail thanks to the Solidarity Fund, everyone who donated, 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.800 and people working jail support. Our interview today will be 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:20.279 focusing on the jail support aspect and bail Fund organizing 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.240 and for Note this interview was conducted prior to the 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:29.200 release of the Forest Defenders. With me here today is 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:34.560 James and Ralph. James is from the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee, 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.800 and Ralph is from the Solidarity Fund. Greetings, thank you, 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:41.800 thank you for joining me here, Thank you for having us. 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:44.960 Good to be here. So first I would like to 0:05:44.960 --> 0:05:46.760 see if, if if either of you have any kind 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:50.880 of extra input on what's happened the past few weeks 0:05:51.320 --> 0:05:54.080 and how you think. I mean, I can't. I can't 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:56.960 quite ask you why because you're obviously not not the police, 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.600 but like, what what might be some reasons for some 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:01.920 of the some of the increased repression and the use 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:05.880 extremely extremely high charges being levied at people at this 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:11.240 point in the movement. Yeah, they are extremely high charges. 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:14.400 They're really unprecedented charges in the state of Georgia. I 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:17.040 don't think that, uh does of us in the entire 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.479 questions based I've really ever seen anything like this being 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:22.640 used against protesters, and I think the reason why it's 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.000 pretty clear, and I think that that reason is because 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:30.080 there's been an extremely effective social movement that's involved thousands 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.720 of people from Atlanta and from across the country over 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:35.359 the last year and a half two years that have 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:40.720 brought a serious challenge against a very unpopular proposal from 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:46.279 the city to build a police mega mega compounds. And 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:52.159 I think that the police and various other agencies that 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.880 they're working with, the Atlanta Police, the Atlanta Police Foundation, 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:58.400 the Georgia Bureau Investigation, that the Cap County Police Department, 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:00.760 all of these different agencies, I think at this point 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.880 are are are really frustrated. And I think that really 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.520 shows up in the charges that they've given people, because 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:10.360 what we're talking about are people who have been literally 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.480 pulled out of tree sets. Like this is the most 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.120 like classic example of you know, nonviolent direct action civil 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:18.880 disobedience you can think of, and you have people who 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:20.960 are allegedly being pulled out of tree sets and charged 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:25.840 with domestic terrorism. And I think that really shows it's 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:29.360 both very very scary in terms of the severity of 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:31.960 the charges, but it's also has like an element of 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:36.760 just being a little ridiculous in in terms of using 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:38.720 these types of charges. You know, they make you think 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:42.120 of like you know, the school shootings or you know, 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:44.560 like nine eleven or something like this, like like these 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:46.480 are the sorts of things that come to mind when 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:48.360 you think of domestic terrorism. And yet what we're talking 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:51.080 about here is people who are allegedly being pulled out 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:53.920 of out of tree sets after you know, being shot 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.880 at with pepper balls and tear gasper and hours on 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:03.160 end before they before they were pulled down. And I 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:06.239 think that then the point of that is to scare people. 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.560 It is because they are having a very difficult time 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:13.640 um gaining any sort of public support or sympathy for 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:16.800 this project. And I think they're they're just really out 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:18.360 of at a loss, and so that what they need 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:20.200 right now is they need to scare people. They need 0:08:20.240 --> 0:08:23.040 to shut down this special movement by whatever means that 0:08:23.080 --> 0:08:27.120 they have available, and right now they're the technique that 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.280 they're employing is just fear. And so the point of 0:08:30.320 --> 0:08:32.680 this is to have a chilling effect. It's to say 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.240 that anybody who is protesting, who is a part of 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:41.080 this social movement, could be liable to extremely extremely heavy charges. 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.760 And that's what they're banking on. They want people to 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:48.640 be scared. They want to separate out people from from 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:50.880 the movement. You feel like they can no longer participate 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.520 because the charges or the potential repression is too severe. 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:55.600 They want to be able to scare away people that 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.480 support the movement by saying, look, you're supporting a terrorist movement. 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:02.880 You're supporting something that is uh extreme to to some 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.600 crazy degree. But we know what the what the the 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:09.240 real extreme position here is that they know that the 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:13.640 city doesn't want this. They've had, you know, countless protests 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.920 and all sorts of different different examples of just public 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:19.559 outcry aginst this projects, and they proceeded with it anyway. 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:21.440 And so now they're forced to be in this position 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:23.320 where they're gonna have to they're gonna have to use 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:28.880 whatever sort of either m violence or force or like 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.880 extreme charges to shut it down. Yeah, Atlanta Police Department 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:38.840 since has had a huge, like the largest in the 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:43.360 country by percentage, budgetary increase granted by the city. And 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:46.960 this was done after the most amount of public comment 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:50.360 there ever was in the history of city council, which 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:54.320 was all done to say, to lower the police budget, 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.200 to to defund the police as it were, and to 0:09:57.480 --> 0:10:00.080 send put that money to other use. And then a 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:02.800 second most amount of public comment the city council has 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:07.160 ever received was seventeen hours of public comment were over 0:10:07.200 --> 0:10:11.880 se of the respondents were saying to not build cops city. 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:15.760 They the Atlanta Police Foundation, the Atlanta Police Department in 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.920 the City of Atlanta, does not listen to the popular 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:22.240 will from below from the people that they alleged to represent. 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:26.319 But all of this pressure, the pressure to to charge 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:31.880 non violent protesters with domestic terrorism is coming from their 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:34.959 corporate their corporate sponsors. It's coming from BB and T, 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.640 It's coming from BAC of America, A T and T, Equifax, 0:10:39.200 --> 0:10:42.120 the Arthur Blank, Arthur Blank, who is the billionaire who 0:10:42.200 --> 0:10:45.400 runs Home Depot. Uh, it's it's coming from the people 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:49.800 they actually represent, which is their corporate backers. They're there 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:53.640 seven months behind on this project. Uh, grass Field and Gory, 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:57.680 the company that is the general contractor who also funds 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:02.800 the APF. They're all certainly behind doors, being like, what's 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:06.080 going on. We're seven months behind on this project. Why 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:09.480 have we not broken ground yet? And they're still being 0:11:09.480 --> 0:11:13.679 denied the land, the land disturbance permits because there they 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.960 can't get their own act together. They can't prove that 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:20.400 this would be an environmentally friendly thing to do, because 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:23.880 it's simply isn't. It's leveling over five acres of land 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:28.720 of forested land, and instead they just try to use 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:31.800 brute force because that is what the state knows how 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.640 to do. They know to use brute force, and then 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:38.720 they want to put up trumped up charges onto on, 0:11:38.880 --> 0:11:43.079 onto onto random people who they are trying to pend 0:11:43.160 --> 0:11:46.120 the whole movement on, when the movement is thousands of 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:51.400 people all over the city and all over the country. Yeah, 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.680 from like the from some of the recent some of 0:11:54.679 --> 0:11:59.280 the recent hearings and based on the based on the 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:02.960 DHS documents, they're they're really trying to do the thing 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:09.840 where they frame an autonomous, decentralized movement as a group. 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.560 And if you're part of a group, that means that 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.040 you're you know, involved in in you know, the domestic 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:20.520 violent extremist group, which is just not how these types 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:23.400 of things work. It's the same thing that the right 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.319 has been trying to label things like quote unquote antifa 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.320 as for years. Some prosecutors and cities around the country 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:33.840 have tried to try to charge people with similar kind 0:12:33.840 --> 0:12:38.800 of domestic terrorism or like gang violence charges due to 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:43.360 their involvement with the Antifa group. Um, And it's the same, 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.320 it's the same tactic here and trying to frame a 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:51.200 decentralized movement as like an organized group of people. And 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.400 it seems like one aspect for why this is happening 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.320 is like, like some of you have have mentioned, it's 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.079 it's in the four of like a deterrent right there, 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.560 trying to scare people away, saying that if you associate 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.240 with this movement, we could we will charge you with terrorism. 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:09.040 Right It's it's it's it's this, it's this thing to 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:11.920 try to push people away UM, try to try to 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.400 try to prevent anyone else from from organizing in any 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:19.640 capacity or just showing up, like just just showing up 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:23.360 to the forest. It's it's it's pretty comical, but it's 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:27.360 also quite quite frightening in some ways, which is which 0:13:27.400 --> 0:13:29.680 is part of the intention, part of why I wanted 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:33.160 to talk with h with both of you here today 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.600 is to kind of discuss the role of both the 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:42.400 Solidarity Fund and Anti Repression Organizing UM and just discuss 0:13:42.440 --> 0:13:45.560 the role of that and in how they support like 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.520 activism movements and how they support UM land defense movements 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.080 like like like in the case of Defend the Atlanta 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:55.600 Forest and yeah, what what what kind of what the 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:58.400 role of of this type of organizing is in a 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:03.320 in the kind text of this this type of activism. 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:06.480 I guess, uh, let's let's start with Let's start with 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.080 the Solidarity Fund, because that was you know, one of 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:12.640 the things that I saw in the aftermath of these 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:14.880 charges in the raid is a lot of calls to 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.480 doing it, to doing it, to the Solidarity Fund to 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:23.240 help people out who have been hit with these outrageous charges. So, uh, 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:25.880 I guess a Ralph, we talked a little bit about 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.640 some of some of you know, what what the Solidarity 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.480 Fund is and and uh and kind of how how 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:37.520 this how this type of organizing operates. Yeah, for sure. 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.480 So the Atlanta Solidarity Fund formed just to have a 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.160 bit of context for the organization. We formed in two 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:49.080 thousand sixteen in the lead up to a um count 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:53.320 counter demonstration against uh some ku Klux Klan members who 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:57.600 are trying to burn a cross on Stone Mountain in 0:14:57.680 --> 0:15:00.080 two thousands sixteen. This was like after a sequence of 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:04.640 them having protests there after the Dylan Roof massacre, and 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:08.560 people organized a counter demo, and we thought it would 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:13.600 be intelligent to form a bail fund in case anyone 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:17.720 got arrested because in the past, bail funds in Atlanta 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:20.840 like refused to bail out anyone who they like deemed 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:24.800 as committing crimes that they deemed violent. Uh. And we 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:27.080 wanted to create a b mail fund that does not 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:32.000 discriminate against activists based on what the state alleges that 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:36.000 they did or did not do. And we formed in 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.680 that and like after that, we would at different protests 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:41.360 throughout the years, we would buil people out, we would 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:43.760 fund raised to get them lawyers, and we would support 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:47.640 them however we could, like organizing court vigils um and 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:52.840 court support, and then and also suing the police like 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:57.000 countersuing them for when they did like agreeious acts of 0:15:57.000 --> 0:16:04.080 police brutality or intimidation. And then in with the George 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:08.160 Floyd up rising, we went from being a like small 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:12.600 fail fund to UM getting widespread support. We got tens 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:17.600 of thousands of people donating money to us. And in Atlanta, 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:22.240 over nine people were arrested by the police that summer, 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:26.920 and you know, we supported all of them, all the 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.320 ones who are not giving signature bond. We bailed out 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:31.680 all the ones that were given signature bond, and all 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.480 the other ones we got them lawyers and we have 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:36.920 been supporting them every step in the way. A few 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:41.480 of them have sadly gone to prison, and we support 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.240 them financially while they're in prison. Were like putting money 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.640 on their promissary every month, and we UH pay like 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:50.800 help them out with their phone calls, and we set 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:53.080 aside money for when they get out there. You won't 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:57.400 just be in destitute poverty, which is like what usually 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:01.960 happens to people who have to have sit in prison. UM. 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:07.000 And in the case of the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement, 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:11.360 we've supported it um through anti repression by when people 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:16.200 get arrested, getting them lawyers, failing them out and UM 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.600 when there's been like door knocks or whatever from law 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:23.640 enforcement agencies, we have lawyers who will represent them as well, 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:27.040 because oftentimes those people aren't given charges, but they're being 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:30.280 intimidated by law enforcement, and when you get a lawyer 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:37.280 in between them, that intimidation normally stops. UH. And we 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:39.639 also do jail support for anyone who has to, like 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:41.399 when they get in jail, they have a number that 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:43.760 they can call us and we can help get them 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:47.800 out UM. And for the six people who are currently 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.800 charged with domestic terrorism as at the time of this recording, 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:53.920 they're currently locked up and we are supporting them, and 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:57.240 we've hired lawyers to advocate for them at their bail 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:02.280 at their next bail hearing UM, and hopefully we will 0:18:02.400 --> 0:18:05.240 get them out and they will not have to sit 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:10.200 in jail during their pre trial. We're a volunteer organization, like, 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.199 none of us are paid to do this. Uh. We 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.159 do this because we believe in um the power of 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:20.879 like liberatory social movements, and we want to support those 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:25.960 movements and give them strength. Yeah, because I would say, 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:29.280 I think I think a lot of you know, relatively 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:33.960 big cities around the States have some form of jail 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:40.040 support organization, whether it be formal or informal. UM. And 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:43.760 it's it's this type of organizing which happens kind of 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:47.560 on the periphery of a lot of these types of bouvements. Right, 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:51.639 It's not it's it's not the it's not the like 0:18:51.920 --> 0:18:55.840 excitement of throwing back a tear gas canister at a cop. 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.200 It's it's all of the things that happen afterwards that 0:18:59.680 --> 0:19:05.160 can can can assist people who are who are facing 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:09.520 like in some cases, very significant state state repression. And 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:12.840 it's definitely. It's not it's not the most flashy work, 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.800 but it is I would argue as pretty crucial to 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.720 any to any type of like functioning like system that 0:19:20.760 --> 0:19:23.879 allows protests to happen as a part of democracy, is 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:27.280 a part of you know, long term revolutionary strategy, whatever 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:31.160 kind of whatever kind of ideology you have, These these 0:19:31.200 --> 0:19:34.560 types of these types of like peripheral jail support and 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:38.639 bail fund organizings. It's definitely just as crucial as a 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:40.600 lot of a lot of like the on the ground 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:43.760 support stuff like you know, bringing water bottles or you know, 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:49.880 helping up people in the moment. Totally, Like every movement 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.840 needs a rear guard, Like it needs people like the 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.159 people who are out protesting and organizing there on the 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.320 front lines. And we're able to be the rear guard 0:19:59.600 --> 0:20:02.880 for like when the state does attack, like we're able 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:06.000 to like not have them be completely taken out of 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:08.040 the field, Like they're able to get back, and we're 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:11.840 able to support them and able to keep people safe 0:20:12.000 --> 0:20:15.639 from like police repression and from what essentially amounts to 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:22.000 like legal kidnapping and like torture in the carceral state. Yeah, 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:26.480 and I mean in some cases, like in Portland. That's 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:32.359 it's very much was a legal kidnapping as something that 0:20:32.359 --> 0:20:36.119 people are still are still dealing with on the on 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:39.720 the on like the jail support side and helping people 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:43.440 out with with you know, making sure that the state 0:20:43.480 --> 0:20:47.960 cannot get away with stuff like this, um, because they 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:50.679 the thing they want the most is for nobody to 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.120 push back on it, because that means they have permission 0:20:53.160 --> 0:20:55.359 to do it in the future without you know, without 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:59.080 any possible consequence or even even like even like any 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:04.479 like attempt at concert quins. How could so I know 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:06.880 like that. Nope, A lot a lot of cities have 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.280 have jail support stuff. Um. A lot of this is 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:13.080 also run on donations. What what are what are some 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:18.439 ways that people could could assist in these types of things? Um. 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:23.919 Obviously people can donate to bail funds um. And I 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.399 think there's a lot of I mean even even just 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:31.840 showing up outside of jail or prison after these types 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:34.879 of events is something that that happens a lot in 0:21:34.960 --> 0:21:37.440 terms of in terms of ways to kind of start 0:21:37.560 --> 0:21:40.679 getting plugged in in this in this type of like 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:45.600 peripheral bail fund and jail support organizing totally. Yeah, I 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:48.840 mean people should should donate to their local bail funds 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.920 UH and even become like reoccurring donators. But people can 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:55.840 like join jail support teams. There's like we in Atlanta, 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:58.880 we have a training and it can get you trained 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:01.400 on how to be a jail poor person, and yeah, 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:03.639 we have like once you're plugged in, you can like 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:07.360 do jail and jail vigil like for when people get 0:22:07.359 --> 0:22:11.200 out so that they're not alone. Jails are often not always, 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:14.400 but often like in like remote areas of the city 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:16.560 or even outside of the city, so like it can 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:18.480 be hard to like get get a bus back, so 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:20.919 you can offer them rides back. You can get plugged 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:24.000 into do it in court support and like currently the 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:28.080 six people charge of domestic terrorism are like being denied bail. 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:30.800 Hopefully that will change. But in the case of like 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:34.280 people being held UH, you can write post cards or 0:22:34.400 --> 0:22:36.840 letters to people and let them know that there are 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.399 people on the outside who support them. If you're in 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.439 an area that like doesn't have that doesn't have a 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:47.320 group that UM helps people out who are like who 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:49.320 are having to sit in jail, like you can put 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.520 money on their commissary UH directly, and you can write 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:55.840 to them and you can send them books. Uh. And 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:58.560 in the sense of like people showing up pretty immediately 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:02.080 outside of the jail, like it is really inspiring. Uh. 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:07.040 What happened the day Uh in the evening after the six, 0:23:07.359 --> 0:23:11.240 after the first five people were arrested. Uh that that evening, 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:14.760 like a crowd of dozens of people showed up outside 0:23:14.880 --> 0:23:17.280 of the Cab County jail and had a noise demo 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:20.000 to like make noise outside of the jail to let 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:22.040 the five know that they were not alone and that 0:23:22.080 --> 0:23:25.399 there's people outside who support them. Now, I think we 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:30.080 will shift the conversation over to James. James, you're with 0:23:30.200 --> 0:23:34.040 the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee. We've already talked about the 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:37.920 role of these ridiculous charges as a repression method. Could 0:23:37.920 --> 0:23:41.679 you briefly explain what the Atlanta Anti Repression Committee is 0:23:42.160 --> 0:23:45.359 and its role in the periphery of these on the 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:51.360 ground decentralized movements. Yeah. Sure, So. The Atlanta Anentire Repression 0:23:51.359 --> 0:23:54.800 Committee is a group that started in in the aftermathod 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:59.080 the George Floyd protests, and we started because we recognized 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:03.200 that there was a need for a kind of specific 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.520 type of UH anti repression work to be done, which 0:24:07.560 --> 0:24:10.359 is to say that there's a lot of um. You know, 0:24:10.400 --> 0:24:12.359 it's like the bulk of anti repression. You know that 0:24:12.480 --> 0:24:15.960 the single most important thing is keeping people safe, right, 0:24:16.400 --> 0:24:19.399 and so what that entails is a lot of legal 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:21.800 defense for people that are arrested, people that are in 0:24:21.840 --> 0:24:24.160 car story to people that are imprisoned as a result 0:24:24.200 --> 0:24:28.040 of their activity, and protest movements and social movements, um, 0:24:28.240 --> 0:24:34.640 fighting for you know, liberation. That said, um, there's also 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:36.400 a whole a whole other type of work that needs 0:24:36.400 --> 0:24:38.439 to be done, which is the sort of what we 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:42.520 like to call political defense. So in other words, we 0:24:42.600 --> 0:24:44.840 want to see these movements continue, we want to see 0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:47.360 these movements grow, and we want to see these movements 0:24:47.400 --> 0:24:50.639 be the powerful. And a part of that is understanding 0:24:50.680 --> 0:24:54.440 the specific mechanisms of repression and fighting back against the 0:24:54.960 --> 0:24:57.679 narratives that are being used against protesters in the media. 0:24:58.119 --> 0:25:00.760 So a lot of what we do is media work, um, 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:02.320 because there's a lot of things that you know, once 0:25:02.320 --> 0:25:05.159 you're once you're arrested as a part of a protest movement, 0:25:05.280 --> 0:25:08.320 there's a lot of things you can't say, um, but 0:25:08.359 --> 0:25:10.840 there's a lot of things that need to be said, um, 0:25:11.000 --> 0:25:13.960 namely that the people that have been arrested, whether we're 0:25:14.000 --> 0:25:16.840 talking about people in the Black Lives Matter movement of 0:25:17.680 --> 0:25:20.280 or in the Defensive Forest movement today, are fighting for 0:25:20.359 --> 0:25:23.560 a just cause. These people should be doing what they're doing, 0:25:24.200 --> 0:25:27.439 and that's something that that that needs to be spread 0:25:27.480 --> 0:25:30.520 as as far and wide as possible. Um and so 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:33.159 we do a lot of media work to to to 0:25:33.280 --> 0:25:36.719 justify and support not just the individual protesters, but the 0:25:36.720 --> 0:25:39.600 things that they're fighting for. And then we also do 0:25:39.680 --> 0:25:43.679 a lot of essentially research and analysis to understand the 0:25:43.720 --> 0:25:47.000 overall patterns of repression as they play out. And and 0:25:47.040 --> 0:25:50.239 so that's something that's like that's really interesting, particularly in 0:25:50.240 --> 0:25:52.400 this case because you know, I said, we've never seen 0:25:52.400 --> 0:25:54.720 this before in Georgia, but we have seen this before. 0:25:54.760 --> 0:25:58.679 We've seen exactly these tactics be used against you know, 0:25:58.800 --> 0:26:03.400 protesters in the Standing Rock movement. We've seen it used 0:26:03.400 --> 0:26:06.800 in the Green Scare against U, the Earth Liberation Front 0:26:06.840 --> 0:26:09.800 against Earth First. We've seen these movements like over and 0:26:09.840 --> 0:26:13.040 over again come up against this this giant wall, which 0:26:13.080 --> 0:26:16.200 is these these sorts of charges accusing people of terrorism. 0:26:16.320 --> 0:26:18.679 And so part of what we do is analyze what 0:26:18.760 --> 0:26:21.719 those what those strategies are and try to publicize them, 0:26:21.760 --> 0:26:25.400 try to help people to understand um, because it's it's 0:26:25.440 --> 0:26:29.360 the the agencies that were up against the all these 0:26:29.359 --> 0:26:32.360 different wings of the state and their corporate factors. As 0:26:32.440 --> 0:26:35.679 Ralph was saying, they have an institutional memory. They are 0:26:35.720 --> 0:26:37.520 able to look back, you know, twenty years in the 0:26:37.560 --> 0:26:39.480 past and beet like, Okay, there was a social movement 0:26:39.520 --> 0:26:42.520 over here, um, and we were able to stop it 0:26:42.560 --> 0:26:44.720 because we did this, this and this, And they're able 0:26:44.760 --> 0:26:46.440 to have that that sort of memory to go back 0:26:46.440 --> 0:26:48.840 and look at those tactics. And part of the goal 0:26:48.840 --> 0:26:51.480 of depression is to cut people out of socialis to 0:26:51.520 --> 0:26:55.160 cut off this sort of generational understanding of the dynamics 0:26:55.160 --> 0:26:57.800 of repression. And so we want to we want to 0:26:57.840 --> 0:27:01.480 increase our our capacity, as people are invested in seeing 0:27:01.520 --> 0:27:05.080 social events succeeded, be able to understand these sorts of 0:27:05.160 --> 0:27:09.040 repressive tactics and develop strategies against them. And I say 0:27:09.080 --> 0:27:11.159 that because we see repression as being a part of 0:27:11.200 --> 0:27:14.440 social movements. There are no social movements that are successful 0:27:14.440 --> 0:27:16.639 that don't encounter repression. And so we have a we 0:27:16.680 --> 0:27:18.639 have a strong need to be able to understand the 0:27:18.720 --> 0:27:22.440 specific mechanisms of state repression, how they were, how different 0:27:22.480 --> 0:27:26.199 agencies work, how the specific laws worked, UH, and to 0:27:26.240 --> 0:27:29.320 be able to disseminate that information for and led both 0:27:29.320 --> 0:27:33.880 within movements and also within the mainstream media. At the 0:27:33.960 --> 0:27:37.840 public event, one of the sheriff's involved in the involved 0:27:37.880 --> 0:27:41.400 in the raid against the forest offenders UH suggested that 0:27:41.480 --> 0:27:45.359 because because one of them is from California and is 0:27:45.400 --> 0:27:49.640 in Atlanta, that makes him a terrorist. This is utterly absurd. 0:27:49.840 --> 0:27:54.080 Like we live in one country, like we're allowed, we 0:27:54.200 --> 0:27:59.520 have the freedom to travel, and we have the Unlike 0:27:59.560 --> 0:28:04.399 the police, we regular people have solidarity and can and 0:28:04.480 --> 0:28:09.920 have empathy and can see our own interests in other 0:28:10.080 --> 0:28:13.920 struggles that take place elsewhere, and that it is a 0:28:14.000 --> 0:28:17.320 noble thing to be like I have to go somewhere 0:28:17.880 --> 0:28:21.040 support to participate UH. And this is not something that 0:28:21.080 --> 0:28:24.280 should be discouraged. And this is not terroristic. This is 0:28:24.520 --> 0:28:28.199 a sign of the beautifulness of human empathy and the 0:28:28.240 --> 0:28:31.960 ability to see yourself in others and this is what 0:28:32.000 --> 0:28:35.000 the police lack. That's That's definitely something I wanted to 0:28:35.040 --> 0:28:36.840 bring up at some point because this is this is 0:28:36.880 --> 0:28:40.480 a tactic that we've seen both the Atlanta Police Foundation 0:28:40.880 --> 0:28:44.040 of the City Council, and you know, right wing propagandists 0:28:44.040 --> 0:28:47.320 like Andy no have have have tried to frame this, 0:28:48.160 --> 0:28:51.480 have tried to frame this in terms of like the 0:28:51.480 --> 0:28:56.160 the outside agitator's angle. Um. There. And you see in 0:28:56.280 --> 0:28:58.320 all of and all of the all of the arrest 0:28:58.400 --> 0:29:02.760 reports um that that that get published, one of the 0:29:02.760 --> 0:29:07.040 things they emphasize is that the that people arrested, some 0:29:07.120 --> 0:29:10.560 of them have been born in other states. They always 0:29:10.560 --> 0:29:13.680 they always mentioned the state that this person was born in, UM, 0:29:13.720 --> 0:29:16.920 which is just a ridiculous notion that people don't have 0:29:17.400 --> 0:29:22.480 the freedom to move around the country. Uh, absolutely absurd 0:29:21.720 --> 0:29:25.920 that that that that people don't have the freedom to 0:29:26.200 --> 0:29:29.200 move around to places and choose where where they want 0:29:29.200 --> 0:29:33.320 to live. So they're framing they're framing people who are 0:29:33.440 --> 0:29:36.280 arrested that were that happened to be born in other places. 0:29:36.440 --> 0:29:39.080 They're they're they're they're using this as a in terms 0:29:39.080 --> 0:29:41.400 of like the outside agitator angle to be like people 0:29:41.400 --> 0:29:44.000 are are coming into Atlanta to try to you know, 0:29:44.240 --> 0:29:48.400 so chaos and disorder within our city. Um. And look, 0:29:48.400 --> 0:29:50.400 they're they're pulling up people from all from all around 0:29:50.400 --> 0:29:52.360 the country. Then they're trying to you know, frame it 0:29:52.360 --> 0:29:56.719 in this like very conspiratorial lens. Um. And that's just 0:29:56.800 --> 0:29:58.400 that that is that is that is something that I've 0:29:58.440 --> 0:30:03.640 also noticed and found to be uh, a quite interesting tactic. 0:30:03.680 --> 0:30:07.000 I mean, I would they definitely wanted to be an 0:30:07.040 --> 0:30:10.720 effective strategy in terms of the outside agitator angle of 0:30:10.720 --> 0:30:13.040 of you know, people coming coming in from out of 0:30:13.080 --> 0:30:17.160 state to get to get involved in this group, this 0:30:17.680 --> 0:30:21.480 this Antifa alligning terrorist group, as someone like Andy No 0:30:21.560 --> 0:30:25.320 would say, uh, And it's it's it's it's purely it's 0:30:25.360 --> 0:30:29.080 purely a propaganda tactic because it relies on the notion 0:30:29.480 --> 0:30:32.760 that people can't move around the country and decide where 0:30:32.760 --> 0:30:36.160 they want to live, uh, which obviously which obviously is 0:30:36.200 --> 0:30:39.480 an absurd notion um. And I think as as as 0:30:39.520 --> 0:30:41.800 you said, it also kind of you know, the other 0:30:41.840 --> 0:30:43.640 side of this is that it highlights the kind of 0:30:44.320 --> 0:30:48.120 the beautiful nature of being able to choose where you 0:30:48.160 --> 0:30:50.600 want to go and choose to get involved in things 0:30:50.640 --> 0:30:53.200 that you feel are important, even if they aren't in 0:30:53.360 --> 0:30:57.120 the current place where you are living. Just to add 0:30:57.120 --> 0:30:59.840 a little bit to this, like it's crazy because it's 0:30:59.880 --> 0:31:01.680 like when you read the reports and the news of 0:31:01.680 --> 0:31:03.480 the people that they arrest. They always make it a 0:31:03.520 --> 0:31:05.960 point to talk about people from out of town, and 0:31:05.960 --> 0:31:09.560 they always seem to omit the people that are from 0:31:09.640 --> 0:31:12.680 Atlanta that they've arrested. And not that I'm advocating that 0:31:12.720 --> 0:31:15.240 they should be publicizing, you know, these people at all, 0:31:15.640 --> 0:31:17.720 but it's just to highlight that what they're doing is 0:31:17.720 --> 0:31:21.280 a propaganda tactic, and I think it it has has 0:31:21.280 --> 0:31:24.280 really fallen on their face in Atlanta, because, you know, 0:31:24.560 --> 0:31:26.800 Atlanta is a city that's famous for the civil rights movement. 0:31:26.840 --> 0:31:29.160 Like we're talking about freedom writers were talking about people 0:31:29.200 --> 0:31:32.200 from all over the South, from all over the country 0:31:32.880 --> 0:31:35.280 coming to you know, Martin Luther King went to Solma, 0:31:35.320 --> 0:31:38.160 He's from Atlanta. You know, this type of this type 0:31:38.160 --> 0:31:40.600 of logic just doesn't really doesn't really seem to work here, 0:31:40.600 --> 0:31:42.520 and it's really bizarre to see them try to use 0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:45.240 it over and over and over again. It's really just 0:31:45.280 --> 0:31:48.680 like a failed playbook at this point, within the context 0:31:48.880 --> 0:31:52.360 of both how the repression against the Defend the Atlanta 0:31:52.440 --> 0:31:55.560 Force movement has evolved and where it's at now with 0:31:56.080 --> 0:31:59.240 what's happened in the past few weeks, and then also 0:31:59.440 --> 0:32:03.920 consider the types of analysis of past ecological and resistance 0:32:03.960 --> 0:32:07.320 movements that we've seen. How do you see some of 0:32:07.360 --> 0:32:10.720 the repression by the state evolving as the Atlanta four 0:32:10.800 --> 0:32:15.520 stuff continues. Well, I think that that overall, with respect 0:32:15.560 --> 0:32:17.640 to social indiments, we've seen an increase in this this 0:32:17.720 --> 0:32:20.680 type of charge that as Ralph was sort of getting at, 0:32:21.960 --> 0:32:23.920 it's it's a it's it's a it's a type of 0:32:24.000 --> 0:32:29.320 charge that criminalizes your participation in in a in a 0:32:29.400 --> 0:32:31.720 group or in a socialment um. And so if you 0:32:31.760 --> 0:32:33.920 look at the specific warrants that are using in some 0:32:34.000 --> 0:32:36.440 of these people that they just arrested, um, you know, 0:32:36.440 --> 0:32:39.560 I'm thinking of one in particular where it goes into 0:32:39.600 --> 0:32:43.520 detail and it says this person is accused of being 0:32:43.560 --> 0:32:48.040 a part of a domestic violence a domestic violent extremist 0:32:48.080 --> 0:32:51.680 movement called Defend the Atlanta Forest, and they're responsible for 0:32:52.120 --> 0:32:55.280 all of these acts of all of these different crimes 0:32:55.320 --> 0:33:00.640 from trust passing to UH to arson or whatever, you know. 0:33:00.720 --> 0:33:02.960 And so they lump this all together. They say that 0:33:03.000 --> 0:33:07.840 an autonomous social movement is a coherent organization, and then 0:33:07.880 --> 0:33:12.160 they say that the individual that they arrested UH confirmed 0:33:12.200 --> 0:33:16.680 their participation in this group called Defend the Atlanta forest 0:33:17.080 --> 0:33:21.880 by sitting in a treehouse and wearing camouflage. This is 0:33:22.560 --> 0:33:27.920 absurdum because there's there's no evidence in in this in 0:33:27.960 --> 0:33:30.479 this example, that this particular person or any of these 0:33:30.520 --> 0:33:32.760 people have anything to do with any of these other 0:33:32.880 --> 0:33:35.440 crimes that they are alleging. We're a part of this movement. 0:33:36.200 --> 0:33:38.240 So what they're doing instead, they know that they can't 0:33:38.320 --> 0:33:40.200 arrest them for that. But what they're doing instead is 0:33:40.240 --> 0:33:42.200 they're coming at it from this legal angle where they're 0:33:42.200 --> 0:33:45.600 saying this movement as a whole is a discrete group. 0:33:46.000 --> 0:33:50.040 This group is an extremist group, and so your participation 0:33:50.080 --> 0:33:51.920 in anything that seems like it's a part of this 0:33:52.000 --> 0:33:54.800 group is criminal in and of itself, and in this case, 0:33:54.920 --> 0:33:56.920 terrorists in and of itself. And this is a really 0:33:56.920 --> 0:33:59.600 disturbing trend that we've seen in over the last few years, 0:33:59.600 --> 0:34:03.280 with the grease in the use of conspiracy charges, with 0:34:03.360 --> 0:34:06.240 the increase in the use of arrico charges, racketeering charges, 0:34:06.960 --> 0:34:09.400 and the point of all of these different legal strategies 0:34:09.680 --> 0:34:11.839 is to hold people accountable for crimes that they did 0:34:11.840 --> 0:34:14.200 not do, and that's exactly what we're seeing now with 0:34:14.239 --> 0:34:16.040 the six people that they just arrested. They want to 0:34:16.080 --> 0:34:18.640 hold these people accountable and make them martyrs for an 0:34:18.760 --> 0:34:22.680 entire movement that's involved hundreds and thousands of people doing 0:34:22.719 --> 0:34:27.680 all sorts of things criminal or otherwise. And that is 0:34:27.680 --> 0:34:31.439 a disturbing trend um and it's it's especially disturbing because 0:34:31.440 --> 0:34:33.319 if you look at the way that the the law 0:34:33.360 --> 0:34:36.239 has written in Georgia with respect to domestic terrorism, so 0:34:36.280 --> 0:34:38.440 that's an that's an enhancement charge. It means that you 0:34:38.440 --> 0:34:41.239 have to be arrested for another crime, for example, in 0:34:41.239 --> 0:34:42.719 in in the in the example of the people that 0:34:42.760 --> 0:34:46.040 they just arrested felony trust passing, they add in a 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:49.880 domestic terrorism enhancement charge to it. And the justification for 0:34:49.920 --> 0:34:54.400 this domestic and domestic terrorism enhancement charge is to basically 0:34:54.440 --> 0:34:59.600 saying that they were attempting to change governmental policy by 0:34:59.680 --> 0:35:05.440 into addition, which is an interesting way of saying protesting 0:35:05.520 --> 0:35:09.520 is illegal. All protests involves trying to change governmental policy. 0:35:09.640 --> 0:35:12.440 That is what protesting is. And what they what they 0:35:12.480 --> 0:35:14.600 are attempting to do now with these charges is to 0:35:14.719 --> 0:35:17.839 reframe that entirely and say that that is terrorism, and 0:35:17.920 --> 0:35:20.399 that is uh, you know, it's sort of it's we're 0:35:20.440 --> 0:35:22.360 on a tricky slope right now, because it's like, on 0:35:22.400 --> 0:35:24.920 the one hand, we need to recognize that these charges 0:35:24.960 --> 0:35:27.320 are absurd and they very likely won't stand up in 0:35:27.360 --> 0:35:30.720 court because they're very clearly unconstitutional at the very least, 0:35:31.080 --> 0:35:33.480 So we need to not be afraid of them on 0:35:33.520 --> 0:35:35.399 the one hand, and to show how absurd they are. 0:35:36.160 --> 0:35:37.880 On the other hand, we should take this as a 0:35:37.960 --> 0:35:42.600 serious threat to social movements all across the United States 0:35:42.640 --> 0:35:45.680 in all different sorts of fields and areas, in different 0:35:45.719 --> 0:35:48.799 different types of fights for for for different different sorts 0:35:48.840 --> 0:35:52.480 of things, to say like, wow, this is a huge, 0:35:52.760 --> 0:35:55.759 huge stretch that they're trying to pull here because they 0:35:55.960 --> 0:35:58.560 have seen like in the last few decades, like a 0:35:58.719 --> 0:36:02.080 tremendous amount of pollersy in America, all sorts of social 0:36:02.239 --> 0:36:05.160 events that involve you know, Black Lives Matter was twenty 0:36:05.200 --> 0:36:08.120 million people. Are these people all terrorists? And and so 0:36:08.160 --> 0:36:10.360 that's why it's important to pay attention to what's happening 0:36:10.360 --> 0:36:12.400 now in Atlanta with the struggle to attend the Atlanta 0:36:12.440 --> 0:36:15.279 Forest and the charges that they're putting against these people, 0:36:15.280 --> 0:36:17.920 because if they can succeed with this type of charge, 0:36:17.960 --> 0:36:21.120 that's a very very dangerous precedent for people who are 0:36:21.120 --> 0:36:25.319 part of all sorts of social events and not just 0:36:25.360 --> 0:36:27.480 the left wing either. You know, there's a part of 0:36:27.520 --> 0:36:31.200 this that's like since the January six, the you know, 0:36:31.239 --> 0:36:33.600 so called insurrection. However you want to however you want 0:36:33.600 --> 0:36:36.200 to characterize that there's been a tremendous push by the 0:36:36.239 --> 0:36:40.799 federal government too to crack down on social movements. They 0:36:40.840 --> 0:36:43.799 see this as like threats to into their stability, that 0:36:44.280 --> 0:36:47.680 there are you know, situations where there's thousands or millions 0:36:47.680 --> 0:36:50.279 of people who are participating in in all different sorts 0:36:50.280 --> 0:36:52.360 of social movements, and they need to send a clear 0:36:52.400 --> 0:36:56.680 message that people should not be out protesting. Thank you 0:36:56.760 --> 0:36:59.600 both for talking with me today. UM Where could people 0:36:59.760 --> 0:37:03.960 but learn more about your respective organizations? And then also 0:37:04.280 --> 0:37:08.400 how can people support force defenders who are facing the 0:37:08.880 --> 0:37:16.440 increasingly harsh state repression. You could visit the just like 0:37:16.520 --> 0:37:19.200 Google or look up on any of the major social 0:37:19.200 --> 0:37:24.839 media platforms Atlanta Solidarity Fund UH and you could read 0:37:25.120 --> 0:37:28.000 go to our website UM and if you want to 0:37:28.040 --> 0:37:32.279 support any force defenders who are facing serious charges, UM, 0:37:32.480 --> 0:37:35.600 we donate money or you could write write them UM 0:37:35.600 --> 0:37:38.759 postcards or if you could send them books that they've 0:37:38.760 --> 0:37:44.719 requested UM and when court dates are. When court dates 0:37:44.760 --> 0:37:48.839 come up, we'll probably publicize those so that people can 0:37:48.880 --> 0:37:52.600 come out and um show show their support and solidarity 0:37:52.880 --> 0:37:54.880 the people facing charges. And you could come out to 0:37:55.840 --> 0:37:58.880 uh do court support and you can get involved in 0:37:58.920 --> 0:38:03.640 the movement yourself if you uh feel so inclined. Yeah, 0:38:03.680 --> 0:38:06.120 and I'll just add to that. The aliena entire re 0:38:06.160 --> 0:38:08.200 Quesion committee can get found on Instagram. You can look 0:38:08.239 --> 0:38:10.800 it up. Uh. And and just generally speaking, this is 0:38:10.840 --> 0:38:12.760 something that people need to talk about. So any chance 0:38:12.800 --> 0:38:15.080 that you have to to talk about to explain what's 0:38:15.080 --> 0:38:18.840 happening in Atlanta, to put a giant light on this situation, 0:38:18.880 --> 0:38:21.120 because everybody needs to be paying attention to this because 0:38:21.200 --> 0:38:24.239 this is not just uh, you know, as as as 0:38:24.280 --> 0:38:26.279 people in that defend the coursewomen say, it's not just 0:38:26.360 --> 0:38:29.680 a local issue. There national and even international complications for 0:38:29.719 --> 0:38:32.160 this type of stuff. And and that's also true with 0:38:32.200 --> 0:38:34.879 regards to repression. If they can succeed with these charges here, 0:38:35.400 --> 0:38:39.560 that's a that's a major death blow too to all 0:38:39.560 --> 0:38:42.040 sorts of social evidents, and they'll they'll be trying to 0:38:42.080 --> 0:38:45.360 export this tactic elsewhere. We think it won't stick, but 0:38:46.120 --> 0:38:48.320 we think it's extremely important for people to be talking 0:38:48.400 --> 0:38:52.360 about it and to make this uh the national issue 0:38:52.400 --> 0:38:55.520 that we recognize that it is. Some of those links. 0:38:55.680 --> 0:38:59.840 We will also be putting in the description below The 0:39:00.040 --> 0:39:02.880 day that this episode is being released just so happens 0:39:02.880 --> 0:39:06.439 to be Martin Luther king Junior Day. And also it's 0:39:06.520 --> 0:39:10.480 the last day in a weekend of solidarity to stop 0:39:10.520 --> 0:39:16.279 Cops City. This past weekend, there's been events, gatherings, actions, 0:39:16.320 --> 0:39:20.280 and rallies in Atlanta and across the country in support 0:39:20.440 --> 0:39:24.240 for the Stop Cops City movement and the six individuals 0:39:24.520 --> 0:39:29.359 facing domestic terrorism charges. On Saturday, I saw pictures of 0:39:29.440 --> 0:39:32.440 a huge banner hanging outside of a squat in France 0:39:32.480 --> 0:39:36.600 in solidarity with Atlanta and struggles to defend the Atlanta Forest. 0:39:37.320 --> 0:39:41.440 It seems the extremely high charges in Georgia have not 0:39:41.600 --> 0:39:45.720 dissuade people from across the country from engaging in direct action. 0:39:46.440 --> 0:39:50.799 In December, at List construction offices, one of the contractors 0:39:50.800 --> 0:39:54.760 working on Cops City were attacked in Manhattan and Michigan 0:39:54.880 --> 0:39:59.719 in solidarity with those arrested defending the Wolani Forest. On 0:40:00.040 --> 0:40:03.880 January five, a construction site and offices for Brassfield and Gory, 0:40:04.280 --> 0:40:07.880 the main contractors currently working on Cops City, were attacked 0:40:07.920 --> 0:40:11.480 by anarchists in South Florida, according to a statement published 0:40:11.480 --> 0:40:15.120 on the website Scenes dot No blogs dot org, and 0:40:15.360 --> 0:40:19.040 just days earlier, another post on the site claimed credit 0:40:19.120 --> 0:40:21.920 for setting fire to a Bank of America in Portland. 0:40:22.480 --> 0:40:24.960 Bank of America is a major contributor to the Atlanta 0:40:25.000 --> 0:40:29.800 Police Foundation. Both of those statements referenced the domestic terrorism charges. 0:40:30.840 --> 0:40:33.280 You can check out Defend the Atlanta Forest at Defend 0:40:33.280 --> 0:40:37.200 the Atlanta Forest dot org and most major social media sites. 0:40:37.239 --> 0:40:39.680 You can check out scenes dot no blogs dot org 0:40:40.040 --> 0:40:42.880 for more stories of direct action on the front lines, 0:40:43.480 --> 0:40:46.040 and of course you can check out the Atlanta Solidarity 0:40:46.080 --> 0:40:51.279 Fund at a t L Solidarity dot org. There you 0:40:51.280 --> 0:40:54.760 can donate to bail funds and help people currently facing 0:40:54.800 --> 0:40:58.400 state repression. That's all for us today. See you on 0:40:58.440 --> 0:41:16.520 the other side. Yeah, hello everyone, and welcome to another 0:41:16.520 --> 0:41:19.879 episode of It Could Happen here once again? Who'sted around? 0:41:19.920 --> 0:41:25.560 Myself Andrew and also joined with Garrison is here as 0:41:25.600 --> 0:41:31.239 well and me Mia. I'm awful here and of the 0:41:31.320 --> 0:41:34.319 things that I've been thinking about lately because I've been 0:41:35.000 --> 0:41:38.240 reading a lot more fiction um A lot of things, 0:41:38.239 --> 0:41:42.680 and these sorts of sci fi's fair particularly um some Activita, 0:41:42.719 --> 0:41:49.520 but um some orcum some Margaret Atwood. I recently read 0:41:49.760 --> 0:41:53.920 Orks and Creek. UM. I've just been thinking about a 0:41:53.920 --> 0:41:58.120 lot of these concepts that are presented in stories um 0:41:58.160 --> 0:42:02.319 in sci fi. UM. And what is more sci fi 0:42:02.400 --> 0:42:06.480 than the idea of computers that sort of digital space. 0:42:07.280 --> 0:42:12.439 And what has become of the digital would um as 0:42:12.440 --> 0:42:15.719 of late, as you know, and really since its inception, 0:42:16.040 --> 0:42:21.720 as capitalism has sort of chopped it up and privatized 0:42:21.760 --> 0:42:27.640 it and sequested it and monopolized it. As I think 0:42:27.640 --> 0:42:31.799 it really um goes against what the principles of the 0:42:31.840 --> 0:42:35.360 Internet should be in terms of how it is run, 0:42:35.480 --> 0:42:40.600 how it is structured, how it is organized. Because the 0:42:40.640 --> 0:42:45.759 Internet as a concept really brings together, um a variety 0:42:46.239 --> 0:42:50.880 of people, a variety of spaces and backgrounds and intersections, 0:42:51.080 --> 0:42:54.880 and I believe it would be a place of sharing, 0:42:55.040 --> 0:42:59.239 a place of collaboration, particularly since the sort of resources 0:42:59.280 --> 0:43:05.680 that might be UM limited in the physical world ah 0:43:05.840 --> 0:43:09.600 far more abundant in the digital world. UM. I'm thinking 0:43:09.600 --> 0:43:13.879 in terms of like educational resources and otherwise of course 0:43:13.880 --> 0:43:18.120 they are you know, infrastructural limitations. But on the cloud, 0:43:18.640 --> 0:43:23.480 you know, um, in cyberspace, And I cringe saying that 0:43:24.360 --> 0:43:29.960 because it makes me feel like a booma. Um. You know, 0:43:30.000 --> 0:43:34.680 they have the ability to freely and easily copy and 0:43:34.719 --> 0:43:42.960 share and paste wherever and whenever, basically without many limitations. Um. 0:43:43.120 --> 0:43:46.160 Instead of really seizing that for what it could be, 0:43:46.920 --> 0:43:49.120 you know, we've we've turned it into this sort of 0:43:50.400 --> 0:44:01.359 um corporate feudalism. Um. We're all these uh digital merritcoporations, 0:44:01.400 --> 0:44:06.800 these social media giants basically have carved of the Internet 0:44:07.080 --> 0:44:12.160 into their own little you know, fiefdoms and dominated um 0:44:12.400 --> 0:44:16.200 the discourse, you know, dominated how we communicate with each other, 0:44:16.200 --> 0:44:18.360 how we tend to communicate each other based in the 0:44:18.400 --> 0:44:20.800 main stream side of the Internet, what has become to 0:44:20.880 --> 0:44:22.640 me in stream things, so what most people think of 0:44:22.680 --> 0:44:27.080 when they think of the Internet. UM, But I'm not 0:44:27.200 --> 0:44:30.719 a big fan of that idea of the Internet, that perception, 0:44:30.840 --> 0:44:35.840 that conception of the Internet in fact um as something 0:44:35.880 --> 0:44:40.640 that I have been thinking about and developing and discussing 0:44:40.719 --> 0:44:43.560 for the past couple of months and researching for the 0:44:43.560 --> 0:44:47.000 past couple of months. I really think that among all 0:44:47.000 --> 0:44:52.320 the other things that I've discussed, unnecessary components, in developing 0:44:52.719 --> 0:44:57.120 the commons, in creating and re establishing the commons, I 0:44:57.160 --> 0:45:03.719 think digital commons will be just as important because the commons, 0:45:04.400 --> 0:45:08.520 uh the rather, the inclusion of the commons is what 0:45:08.600 --> 0:45:13.960 really kicked off the establishment of capitalism. I believe the 0:45:14.080 --> 0:45:17.880 re establishments of the commons will be required in that 0:45:18.000 --> 0:45:24.480 transition away from capitalism towards a more collective, more communal, um, 0:45:24.680 --> 0:45:31.560 more sustainable way of life. For those who, um, I 0:45:31.560 --> 0:45:36.560 guess just tuning in this perhaps your first episode with 0:45:36.680 --> 0:45:39.120 me at least, or perhaps you've never seen any of 0:45:39.239 --> 0:45:43.279 the figures of my channel. UM, I'll take a moment to, 0:45:43.600 --> 0:45:48.360 you know, explain what exactly the commons are. The commons 0:45:48.360 --> 0:45:53.440 referred to the resources accessible to all members of a society, 0:45:53.680 --> 0:45:57.400 the totality of the material riches of that part of 0:45:57.400 --> 0:46:00.480 the world, of that world regarded as the inheritor of 0:46:01.920 --> 0:46:05.400 humanity as a whole, something to be shared together. The 0:46:05.480 --> 0:46:08.720 commons or something that are based on common pool resources 0:46:08.840 --> 0:46:12.600 or cprs, which is any natural or man made system 0:46:12.719 --> 0:46:15.840 that is organized to benefit a group of people, but 0:46:15.880 --> 0:46:20.120 would provide diminished benefits to everyone if each person pursued 0:46:20.160 --> 0:46:23.720 their own self interest and of course, these resource systems, 0:46:23.760 --> 0:46:25.880 like I said, could be natural or man made, so 0:46:25.880 --> 0:46:28.799 they could be forests. You know, traditionally there are things 0:46:28.840 --> 0:46:32.600 like forests and irrigation canals and fisheries and pastures and 0:46:32.960 --> 0:46:36.759 drown water basins. UM. But I think it's it can 0:46:36.800 --> 0:46:40.400 be expanded even food. I mean things like energy infrastructure 0:46:40.520 --> 0:46:45.480 like windmills, WIN two bndes or as um. Going to 0:46:45.560 --> 0:46:51.359 describe different portions of the Internet, different resource systems within 0:46:51.400 --> 0:46:53.840 the interntion of course, the Internet as a whole. I 0:46:53.840 --> 0:46:59.800 believe all of those things can um can be brought 0:47:00.040 --> 0:47:06.960 under the commons UM And of course the Commons. The 0:47:06.960 --> 0:47:10.040 theory of commons history of the Commons is its own 0:47:11.360 --> 0:47:13.640 lengthy discussion. Of course, you could read about it in 0:47:13.760 --> 0:47:17.440 Governing the Commons by Eleanor Ostrom. You could listen to 0:47:17.480 --> 0:47:21.879 a sort of a condensed version of that in my 0:47:22.160 --> 0:47:25.480 video on my channel on the Commons as an institution. 0:47:26.760 --> 0:47:30.279 But when it comes to you know, information and communication technologies, 0:47:30.320 --> 0:47:33.120 when it comes to I C T S and sort 0:47:33.160 --> 0:47:36.239 of applying that Commons idea to I C T S. 0:47:37.200 --> 0:47:40.000 ID like to think about it in terms of these 0:47:40.000 --> 0:47:44.040 sort of digital communities bringing together people who share you know, 0:47:44.120 --> 0:47:49.959 common goals to collaboratively build and share those resources through technology. 0:47:50.960 --> 0:47:54.960 So I would say that digital commons are or can be, 0:47:56.239 --> 0:47:58.120 and can be because I think some of them already 0:47:58.120 --> 0:48:02.800 exist in some form. But they are basically these online 0:48:03.000 --> 0:48:09.239 creation communities where you know, there's a free flu um 0:48:09.280 --> 0:48:13.960 and free access to and free collaboration. Um. You know, 0:48:14.000 --> 0:48:18.040 the sharing of this non exclusive digital information and the 0:48:18.120 --> 0:48:23.080 collective creation of like knowledge resources. These resources of course 0:48:23.120 --> 0:48:27.080 being owned and used freely between or among the community 0:48:27.320 --> 0:48:32.040 and also available for use by three parties. So and 0:48:32.080 --> 0:48:35.760 instead of being exchanged as commodities, you know, these resources 0:48:35.800 --> 0:48:44.960 are used and reused and reused without artificial restrictions to 0:48:45.160 --> 0:48:49.720 sort of enforce an artificial scarcity. UM. I just actually 0:48:49.719 --> 0:48:53.400 thought of a really funny example that I hadn't initially 0:48:54.040 --> 0:48:57.320 conceived of in a sort of guideline for this episode. 0:48:58.080 --> 0:48:59.440 I don't know, if you're a lot of familiar with 0:48:59.680 --> 0:49:07.600 Martin Scorsese, is Gone trov no Okay? So in nine three, 0:49:08.560 --> 0:49:15.759 Martin scorsesey developed this film called Gone. It's a historical 0:49:15.840 --> 0:49:19.800 epic um a sort of a post war era mafia movie, 0:49:19.840 --> 0:49:22.840 and it was directed by Scorsese, and it started Robert 0:49:22.880 --> 0:49:26.160 de Niro and Alpuccino and Gene Hackman. It had a 0:49:26.200 --> 0:49:31.799 sort of deep Hume eroticism blended with a sort of 0:49:32.239 --> 0:49:35.799 exploration of of medal aggression. It's a sort of a 0:49:35.840 --> 0:49:40.360 look at the relationship between Gone Shrev, who is a 0:49:40.440 --> 0:49:46.720 Russian mafia boss, and his partners slash rival slash old 0:49:46.760 --> 0:49:50.359 friend Andrew, who I believe is supposed to be an 0:49:50.400 --> 0:49:55.400 Italian mafia boss. But the thing about Gone Sharov and 0:49:55.440 --> 0:49:59.520 I mean, you can find posters about it, you can 0:49:59.560 --> 0:50:03.000 find fan art of which you can find many, many, 0:50:03.040 --> 0:50:07.440 many fan fictions about it. Um, But Conture is not 0:50:08.600 --> 0:50:14.080 a real movie. It does not exist. Everything I described 0:50:15.200 --> 0:50:20.080 it's entirely fake. The litany of colorful side characters that 0:50:20.360 --> 0:50:25.080 you know people have developed for this movie, the hundreds 0:50:25.120 --> 0:50:28.640 of fan fictions, the dozens of metaalyses and pieces of 0:50:28.640 --> 0:50:32.520 fin arts people have you know, generated for this movie. 0:50:33.040 --> 0:50:36.920 The movie itself doesn't exist. The movie only exists in 0:50:36.960 --> 0:50:44.960 the collective um co creation of it that took place 0:50:45.760 --> 0:50:50.520 over a Tumbler of all places, Essentially, a couple of 0:50:50.520 --> 0:50:54.560 Tumbling users basically came up with this idea of this 0:50:54.760 --> 0:51:00.120 lost Martin Scorsese film that everybody has seemingly forgotten. They 0:51:00.160 --> 0:51:02.000 would rave about it, and they would come up with 0:51:02.080 --> 0:51:05.279 fake plot points and fake characters, and before you know it, 0:51:05.360 --> 0:51:09.759 you know, it's sort of like this massive Internet phenomenon, 0:51:09.880 --> 0:51:13.960 this sort of inside juke Internet, inside juke UM. One 0:51:14.000 --> 0:51:16.319 of people started building on top of it and respecting 0:51:16.400 --> 0:51:19.719 what came before UM, and that sort of spirit of 0:51:19.760 --> 0:51:23.560 co creation is what it ended up creating. This Gone 0:51:23.719 --> 0:51:27.680 this teal of Gone throw, this gone through of fandom, 0:51:27.800 --> 0:51:32.400 this whol development of Gone Troop as a character of 0:51:32.440 --> 0:51:36.560 the side characters as you know, fully developed characters. And 0:51:36.680 --> 0:51:40.000 it all started because you know, one user said to 0:51:40.040 --> 0:51:42.920 another like, oh, don't you know the movie Gone Shroof, 0:51:42.960 --> 0:51:46.719 it's only the greatest Mafia movie ever made. On that tagline, 0:51:46.960 --> 0:51:50.399 the greatest Mathia movie ever made. Would be built upon 0:51:51.000 --> 0:51:58.160 with further photoshops and embellishments and developments, and there's now 0:51:58.239 --> 0:52:00.799 like a really comprehensive document of a sure off law. 0:52:01.520 --> 0:52:05.080 Um things are added and ingest things added in complete seriousness, 0:52:05.120 --> 0:52:08.960 But it's just a thing that exists. It's a thing 0:52:09.040 --> 0:52:13.240 that I believe. Um, it's just one manifestation of many 0:52:13.280 --> 0:52:18.160 of what the Internet has the capacity to produce. When 0:52:18.560 --> 0:52:24.000 online creation communities are allowed to operate freely UM and develop, 0:52:25.000 --> 0:52:32.319 they wouldn't sort of common creative UM resources. I think 0:52:32.360 --> 0:52:35.239 other examples of I guess the seeds of what I'm 0:52:35.239 --> 0:52:38.120 talking about can be seen in UM. I guess, like 0:52:38.320 --> 0:52:43.040 role play UM servers and role play communities, role play 0:52:43.239 --> 0:52:48.200 message boards. I think some fandoms also have some of 0:52:48.200 --> 0:52:49.719 the seeds of what I'm talking about. Of course, the 0:52:49.760 --> 0:52:54.400 Minecraft community with everything they've created, modern communities across different games. 0:52:54.440 --> 0:52:59.760 They all sort of manifestations of you know, human desire 0:52:59.800 --> 0:53:04.160 to read and human desire to share, without you know, 0:53:04.160 --> 0:53:12.400 the artificial restrictions and boundaries of of mainstream couplust imagination. 0:53:14.040 --> 0:53:17.080 I think another manifestation of the digital commons in a 0:53:17.160 --> 0:53:23.520 sense can be found in resources like z library, UM 0:53:23.640 --> 0:53:28.440 and a few others that I'm afraid of naming in case, 0:53:28.560 --> 0:53:32.680 you know, they get taken down as well. And I 0:53:32.760 --> 0:53:35.160 mean that's really the sad part of its the libraries loss. 0:53:35.160 --> 0:53:37.480 I mean, I haven't really been feeling that loss because 0:53:38.800 --> 0:53:43.160 I am aware of the alternatives UM, but it's lost 0:53:43.200 --> 0:53:45.560 on the last because of the way the library is formatted, 0:53:45.600 --> 0:53:47.120 it was a bit more accessible to a lot of 0:53:47.120 --> 0:53:50.960 people and people aware of it and stuff. Um, but 0:53:51.160 --> 0:53:55.120 Z Library, and I'm glad that it's called a library. 0:53:55.120 --> 0:53:59.040 It's called Z Library. It's just you know, one manifestation 0:53:59.200 --> 0:54:03.840 of the um the roots of the library as a 0:54:03.920 --> 0:54:11.160 concept and how it can manifest um in the digital speece, 0:54:11.280 --> 0:54:15.360 how the commons through the I guess the conception of 0:54:15.360 --> 0:54:18.760 the library can manifest in a in a digital space. 0:54:19.600 --> 0:54:21.960 I mean even you know, mainstream ones we have like 0:54:23.160 --> 0:54:25.360 we have, we have stuff like archive dot org and 0:54:25.400 --> 0:54:27.560 I know archive dot org is trying to launch something 0:54:27.600 --> 0:54:31.000 to host a whole bunch of scientific journals and other 0:54:31.120 --> 0:54:33.560 articles that are harder to access as well, but I 0:54:33.640 --> 0:54:38.719 mean they already host you know, quite impressive plethora of 0:54:38.840 --> 0:54:44.360 copyrighted books. Um me and Robert have gotten into arguments 0:54:44.360 --> 0:54:46.800 on Twitter dot com with many an author who is 0:54:46.840 --> 0:54:51.120 mad about their book being on archive dot archived dot 0:54:51.239 --> 0:54:56.040 org of and so that is you know, there is 0:54:56.239 --> 0:54:59.040 there is, There is many resources if you know where 0:54:59.080 --> 0:55:01.359 to look. But sadly some or some someone there no 0:55:01.360 --> 0:55:05.320 longer with us and people have been have been punished 0:55:05.320 --> 0:55:09.520 by the state for trying to provide open access to information. Yeah, 0:55:09.640 --> 0:55:14.160 and I mean who controls information right. Well, however, the 0:55:14.200 --> 0:55:17.840 same goes I think another as you mentioned, kind of 0:55:18.200 --> 0:55:22.839 another example of that sort of collaborative information sharing can 0:55:22.880 --> 0:55:27.200 be seen. And of course Wikipedia, you know. Yeah, as 0:55:27.239 --> 0:55:30.239 personal computers and the intent became more more accessible, the 0:55:30.320 --> 0:55:37.320 lower barriers of expression and stuff. Um. This Internet culture, 0:55:37.360 --> 0:55:41.080 as it was initially born, it was one with the 0:55:41.120 --> 0:55:44.160 aim of you know, collaboratively great and cultural content did 0:55:44.239 --> 0:55:48.440 not developing and generating you know, universe sell access to knowledge. 0:55:49.040 --> 0:55:53.480 Wikipedia just one example of course, different wikis bluralum. But 0:55:53.520 --> 0:55:55.560 of course the longer called wickiest I think it's called 0:55:55.600 --> 0:55:59.719 fandom that or or something. Now, Yes, unfortunately fandom bought 0:55:59.800 --> 0:56:05.600 a bunch of uh different wiki sites that were independently 0:56:05.600 --> 0:56:08.200 operated over the course of the past twenty years, and 0:56:08.239 --> 0:56:15.279 then they kind of consolidated under the big Fandom company. Yeah. 0:56:15.320 --> 0:56:17.800 Now like half of them are unusable because of ads 0:56:17.800 --> 0:56:22.960 and stuff. Yeah, it is, it is. It's it's pretty 0:56:23.040 --> 0:56:26.600 rough to scroll a fandom site. It's not the easiest thing. 0:56:27.160 --> 0:56:30.080 But I will see, as a youth with a few 0:56:30.120 --> 0:56:33.120 regulations and my access to the Internet, it was actually 0:56:33.200 --> 0:56:36.520 quite nice to be able to go on to the 0:56:36.600 --> 0:56:40.680 fandom and just like well, I was, you know, around 0:56:40.680 --> 0:56:42.719 when it was still Wicky. UM. But you know, going 0:56:42.760 --> 0:56:45.440 like Marvel Wicky or going TC Wicky and read up 0:56:45.440 --> 0:56:47.840 on all the different characters I was into at the time. 0:56:48.480 --> 0:56:50.600 Oh yeah, absolutely, you know I used to go on 0:56:50.640 --> 0:56:54.239 like power listing Wicky and like come up with characters, 0:56:54.520 --> 0:56:57.960 you know, piece on certain superpowers. UM. And I also 0:56:58.000 --> 0:57:01.920 created my own Wicky for my own made up, uh 0:57:02.080 --> 0:57:06.360 sort of world building project. UM. And just the fact 0:57:06.400 --> 0:57:09.919 that resource was available, you know, that the tools were easy, 0:57:09.960 --> 0:57:16.960 were free to access UM, and that easy to understand 0:57:17.000 --> 0:57:19.680 as well. UM. And of course they were always tutorials 0:57:19.680 --> 0:57:21.760 and stuff available if you don't know how to function 0:57:21.840 --> 0:57:27.320 and what to do certain things. Just that that that accessibility, 0:57:27.480 --> 0:57:32.880 UM and freedom is something that I think is still exists, 0:57:32.920 --> 0:57:36.120 you know in some sense, despite you know, this company 0:57:36.400 --> 0:57:40.200 buying out everything. And I appreciate the fact that you know, 0:57:40.400 --> 0:57:44.520 unlike you know that company, Wikipedias and me and e 0:57:44.640 --> 0:57:50.360 og Wikipedia continues to maintain their steadfast anti ad um 0:57:50.400 --> 0:57:57.600 you know, standing um and continues to you know, UM 0:57:57.920 --> 0:58:05.360 run on I guess donations just just today as of 0:58:05.920 --> 0:58:11.000 the day that we're recording, uh, people whole a whole 0:58:11.040 --> 0:58:15.200 bunch of the right wingers that have coalesced around Musk 0:58:15.280 --> 0:58:19.040 after his purchase of Twitter have gotten mad at Wikipedia 0:58:19.840 --> 0:58:25.880 for not for they've They've gotten mad that Wikipedia wasn't 0:58:26.240 --> 0:58:34.720 was wasn't reposting their fake Twitter files drama thing um 0:58:34.760 --> 0:58:38.040 as glowingly as some of them might like. And they're 0:58:38.040 --> 0:58:40.720 complaining about Wikipedia's left wing bias, and a whole bunch 0:58:40.760 --> 0:58:44.160 of these Musk fan boys are talking about being like, hey, 0:58:44.200 --> 0:58:48.040 Elon Musk should buy Wikipedia and fix Wikipedia's left wing 0:58:48.120 --> 0:58:51.600 bias and this this, this one, this, this one guy. 0:58:51.640 --> 0:58:54.280 He was like, um, I wonder how much Wikipedia had 0:58:54.400 --> 0:58:58.680 cost to buy at Elon Musk and then the the uh, 0:58:59.280 --> 0:59:02.440 the founder of Wikipedia is like, absolutely not, this is 0:59:02.440 --> 0:59:06.919 not for sale. We we are not letting Elon must 0:59:06.920 --> 0:59:11.040 compie Wikipedia. Yeah. I mean, if if conservatives really want 0:59:11.400 --> 0:59:16.240 um a platform that badly, there's always conservative Pedia or 0:59:16.240 --> 0:59:20.680 whatever it's called. Um, there's always Encyclopedia if they want 0:59:20.720 --> 0:59:24.920 to get really wacky. Um. But yeah, Wikipedia is going 0:59:24.960 --> 0:59:28.440 to continue being Wikipedia thankfully. UM. I appreciate the rabbit 0:59:28.480 --> 0:59:31.320 holes it has let me through. I appreciate the Wikipedia 0:59:31.400 --> 0:59:33.280 games that I've been able to play, you know, like 0:59:33.520 --> 0:59:36.479 you have to go from one page to another. Uh, 0:59:36.520 --> 0:59:40.360 you know that kind of degrees of pages, how you 0:59:40.440 --> 0:59:45.160 link two different completely different topics. But yeah, zero advertising 0:59:45.920 --> 0:59:49.800 accessible to all many different languages. Of course, you know 0:59:49.840 --> 0:59:54.360 it's not completely flawless. They are sitting UM very contentious 0:59:54.480 --> 0:59:59.200 articles of course, UM. They always be attempts to hijack 0:59:59.360 --> 1:00:03.840 that those peaches of the pops of propaganda. Of course, 1:00:04.200 --> 1:00:08.120 every article has its bias. But by and Lodge, because 1:00:08.200 --> 1:00:10.480 of the collaborative nature of the project, they have been 1:00:10.520 --> 1:00:15.240 ways to mitigate bad actors and respond to UM those 1:00:15.240 --> 1:00:18.880 sorts of attempts at corruption and cooptation. So you know, 1:00:18.960 --> 1:00:22.800 it goes to show that you know, even something as 1:00:23.160 --> 1:00:26.760 I would say, the essentially organized as Wikipedia UM is 1:00:26.760 --> 1:00:32.560 still able to regulate itself collaboratively. Yeah. I think around 1:00:32.600 --> 1:00:36.240 this time last year here on the show, we interviewed 1:00:36.280 --> 1:00:43.360 somebody from Wikimedia UM specifically talking about how the talking 1:00:43.400 --> 1:00:47.120 about the the regional differences of the wikipedias that are 1:00:47.160 --> 1:00:50.440 in different countries and in different regions, how that impact 1:00:50.520 --> 1:00:53.440 access access information and how people in their own communities 1:00:53.480 --> 1:00:58.840 can work towards providing a fuller better picture of the 1:00:58.880 --> 1:01:02.280 types of information that people are getting. UM and the 1:01:02.600 --> 1:01:04.920 great part about it is that it really does put 1:01:04.960 --> 1:01:08.200 the power into anyone's hands. It's not it's it's not 1:01:08.360 --> 1:01:14.040 gate kept the same way a lot of other information is. Yeah, yeah, 1:01:14.080 --> 1:01:17.400 that's the beauty of it. Really, I think another problem 1:01:17.400 --> 1:01:20.880 in case of information sharing or rather file sharing and 1:01:21.040 --> 1:01:24.120 just so that I pay it to pay architecture, we 1:01:24.200 --> 1:01:28.120 found in really um, the pirating community could and could 1:01:28.520 --> 1:01:32.320 you know, there's facilities, access and the exchange of cultural 1:01:32.360 --> 1:01:35.600 products there might otherwise be lost, you know, as we're 1:01:35.600 --> 1:01:38.280 seeing with a lot of these shows being axed, and 1:01:38.920 --> 1:01:43.720 you know, people's hard earned UM, you know hard people 1:01:43.720 --> 1:01:46.400 who you know, really worked hard on sitting projects and stuff. 1:01:46.440 --> 1:01:50.600 These companies with their you know, tax dodging schemes and whatever, 1:01:50.600 --> 1:01:53.520 you're able to basically sweep all out a side. UM. 1:01:53.560 --> 1:01:56.120 And so the fact that UM, we are able to 1:01:56.120 --> 1:01:59.560 presume and of course in films and view and TV 1:01:59.640 --> 1:02:02.840 shows being taken down by sitting streaming services and not 1:02:02.920 --> 1:02:08.480 eve being able to be found easily physically, UM. You know, 1:02:08.560 --> 1:02:14.920 having these files and stuff just accessible online UM, shared 1:02:15.120 --> 1:02:18.640 between payers is it's really great to see, UM, and 1:02:18.680 --> 1:02:22.000 it really allows for the preservation of things right otherwise 1:02:22.640 --> 1:02:26.800 be lost and of course there's also as another example 1:02:26.840 --> 1:02:31.360 of a sort of digital comments um, the idea of 1:02:31.400 --> 1:02:34.520 open source, or really the free software movement, which is 1:02:34.680 --> 1:02:41.560 a social movement aimed at obtaining and guaranteeing certain freedoms 1:02:41.600 --> 1:02:44.800 for software users, you know, to run the software, to 1:02:44.880 --> 1:02:48.320 study software, to modify the software, and to share copies 1:02:48.360 --> 1:02:51.840 of that software, whether the modified or not. UM. The 1:02:51.880 --> 1:02:54.640 philosophy of this free software movement, there's really this idea 1:02:54.720 --> 1:02:58.160 that computer you should not lead to people being prevented 1:02:58.360 --> 1:03:00.640 from corporating with other In fact, it should. The opposite 1:03:00.680 --> 1:03:05.320 is be allowing people to cooperate with each other. So 1:03:05.480 --> 1:03:10.720 things like you rejecting restrictions on software, promoting free software, 1:03:10.720 --> 1:03:17.800 and liberating people who use some technology, use computers. It's 1:03:17.800 --> 1:03:19.880 really what you know, the free software movement is trying 1:03:19.920 --> 1:03:23.600 to do. UM. One of the founders of the movement 1:03:23.640 --> 1:03:27.480 again name is Stilman. He has said that the idea 1:03:27.520 --> 1:03:29.920 the free software movement is that, you know, by allowing 1:03:29.960 --> 1:03:36.040 free access to software, it allows it promotes, rather than 1:03:36.200 --> 1:03:39.440 hinders a progression of technology, because it means that much 1:03:39.560 --> 1:03:43.720 of the wasteful duplication of system programming effort can be avoided. 1:03:43.800 --> 1:03:48.480 You know that AFFLCA instead of going into advancing different projects, 1:03:48.840 --> 1:03:51.200 so you open source and you know, free software movement, 1:03:51.280 --> 1:03:53.360 what if you want to call it, it's although I 1:03:53.400 --> 1:03:56.960 know there's some people make a distinction, Um it is. 1:03:57.200 --> 1:04:00.640 I would believe I would think a manifest station of 1:04:01.280 --> 1:04:05.960 digital comments people are able to self organize through the 1:04:06.040 --> 1:04:12.400 associate and really just allowing people to get their hands 1:04:12.440 --> 1:04:17.320 on some software, to creates, to run, to redistribute, to 1:04:17.440 --> 1:04:21.680 change their software, to look to pick apart and learn 1:04:21.800 --> 1:04:29.480 from certain code. Um I really just allow people to 1:04:30.000 --> 1:04:33.280 continue to create and share. And the sort of culture 1:04:33.840 --> 1:04:37.040 that open source, that free software creates is one of 1:04:37.120 --> 1:04:40.360 you know, courtesy, is one of collaborations of helping one 1:04:40.320 --> 1:04:43.480 another to contribute to a greater whole um, to sort 1:04:43.520 --> 1:04:48.800 of regulate each other's monitor activity that might jeopardize the project, 1:04:49.640 --> 1:04:51.520 and we see the benefits of that. You know, a 1:04:51.520 --> 1:04:57.000 lot of the most recognizable, high traffic open software projects 1:04:57.480 --> 1:05:00.000 uh stable. You know, they're secure and they're very thorough 1:05:00.000 --> 1:05:03.560 the understood by the people who collaborate to create them, 1:05:03.600 --> 1:05:06.040 compared to a lot of the more clues and proprietary 1:05:06.080 --> 1:05:11.800 projects that are not as accessible, not as open to 1:05:11.840 --> 1:05:17.360 scrutiny and study. So it is I think, in a 1:05:17.440 --> 1:05:20.720 sense a phone of of anarchy and um of people 1:05:20.880 --> 1:05:24.280 governing themselves and cooperating to create a whole greater than 1:05:24.320 --> 1:05:28.640 any individual could create a loon um. And speaking of 1:05:28.760 --> 1:05:34.640 you know people I guess coming together and communicating and collaborating. Um. 1:05:34.680 --> 1:05:37.440 It's this sense that I guess people have been discussing 1:05:38.120 --> 1:05:43.600 a lot lately of the digital public square and Twitter 1:05:43.680 --> 1:05:47.080 teams is usually at the center of that conversation. This 1:05:47.200 --> 1:05:52.240 idea that we have this space that you know that 1:05:52.440 --> 1:05:57.360 shouldn't be privatized, shouldn't that should be freely accessed and 1:05:57.520 --> 1:06:01.400 everyone could communicate without restrict shown And when you have 1:06:01.440 --> 1:06:06.120 the free speech, people within that honestly question the value 1:06:06.200 --> 1:06:11.160 of Twitter pretty much every day. Uh you know, obviously 1:06:11.680 --> 1:06:14.439 some good let's come out of it. And then really 1:06:14.760 --> 1:06:17.320 other sort of quote and qude digital public squares, like 1:06:17.360 --> 1:06:21.360 any sort of me and extreame social media, some good 1:06:21.400 --> 1:06:23.760 you know comes out to them. You know, you meet people, 1:06:24.160 --> 1:06:26.200 you able to work in projects. There was a meat 1:06:26.240 --> 1:06:29.200 like minded folks. All that is is good, but also 1:06:29.200 --> 1:06:33.640 a lot of you know, terrible, terrible things have come 1:06:33.640 --> 1:06:38.720 out to these platforms and continue to every single day, um. 1:06:38.880 --> 1:06:41.880 And so it's it's a mixed bag. But I think 1:06:42.200 --> 1:06:45.520 any sort of digital commons project will need a space 1:06:46.520 --> 1:06:49.280 and how that space is conceived what of course need 1:06:49.360 --> 1:06:53.840 to be unmoored from you know, capitalist magination, um that 1:06:54.600 --> 1:06:57.600 the an ad whole um you know, potentially economy reach 1:06:57.720 --> 1:07:02.600 economy that aims to keep us divided and button heads. 1:07:03.640 --> 1:07:07.120 But I do think they will need be there will 1:07:07.160 --> 1:07:12.040 need to be a space for communication across boundaries, across 1:07:12.120 --> 1:07:16.520 regions around the world easily. Last thing I really wanted 1:07:16.600 --> 1:07:20.640 to touch on on this topic. It's really the sort 1:07:20.640 --> 1:07:24.360 of the overlap beteen the idea of digital commons and 1:07:24.640 --> 1:07:28.000 t growth, so you know, both sort of question that 1:07:28.120 --> 1:07:32.040 sort of means an idea of consumption um. Digital commons, 1:07:32.080 --> 1:07:35.280 you know, they promote this this idea of someone who 1:07:35.640 --> 1:07:39.960 both consumes and produces, consumes value and digital space, but 1:07:40.040 --> 1:07:45.440 also adds to that value that doesn't could modify um 1:07:45.520 --> 1:07:50.360 the resources available in the digital space, but rather you know, 1:07:50.440 --> 1:07:53.920 makes it accessible and adds to it, contributes to it, 1:07:55.080 --> 1:07:57.080 and that sort the idea of open access really something 1:07:57.120 --> 1:08:00.480 to the growth also tries to emphasize, you know, even 1:08:00.520 --> 1:08:04.280 though we're trying to scale within planetary limits. We still want, 1:08:04.320 --> 1:08:07.600 you know, a good life for all. We still want 1:08:07.680 --> 1:08:12.720 people to to collaborate and create um and fract beople 1:08:12.760 --> 1:08:16.519 more free to do so without limitations that the growth 1:08:16.560 --> 1:08:22.920 oriented capitalist economy imposes on us. The idea, of course, 1:08:22.960 --> 1:08:26.200 digital commons also brings the means of production in the 1:08:26.240 --> 1:08:29.240 digital spare under the control of the communities who use it. 1:08:29.520 --> 1:08:32.920 We use that resource, who use that service, in complete 1:08:32.920 --> 1:08:36.519 contrast the capitalist them of keeping them perfectly health and 1:08:37.520 --> 1:08:46.280 aiming to serve profit. Digital commons and de growth both 1:08:46.320 --> 1:08:53.479 emphasize access um information, to knowledge, the resources as part 1:08:53.600 --> 1:08:55.840 of our human heritage, as part of our human rights. 1:08:56.439 --> 1:09:01.679 The commons should be something that is openly available rather 1:09:01.720 --> 1:09:11.800 than restricted, commodified, privatized. Of course, unlike traditional commands, um, 1:09:11.840 --> 1:09:17.880 you know, digital commons are not easily exhaustible, not really exhaustible. Um. 1:09:18.000 --> 1:09:21.200 They're not subject to many of the limitations that physical 1:09:21.280 --> 1:09:24.160 commons would have. But at the same time, you know, 1:09:24.160 --> 1:09:28.839 they depend on a certain infrastructure, and infrastructure that relies 1:09:29.120 --> 1:09:33.000 on you know, energy, and that energy has to come 1:09:33.040 --> 1:09:37.120 from somewhere. Being able to access the internet requires um, 1:09:37.320 --> 1:09:43.400 certain tools, certain technologies, computers, phones, whatever UM, and the 1:09:43.439 --> 1:09:47.880 resources required to create those technologies has to come from somewhere. UM. 1:09:48.000 --> 1:09:52.680 The cables and the oceans, the satellites and space, you know, 1:09:52.720 --> 1:09:55.759 the electricity for the computers, the materials for the phones 1:09:55.800 --> 1:10:00.760 and the computers. All of those things UM consume and 1:10:00.800 --> 1:10:04.360 contribute the exhaustion of environmental resources, and so balancing that 1:10:04.680 --> 1:10:08.040 and being common sense of environmental impact, we still have 1:10:08.120 --> 1:10:11.880 to be essential component and you know, any development of 1:10:11.920 --> 1:10:15.880 the digital comments. At the end of the day, I 1:10:15.920 --> 1:10:21.679 believe that humans are sort of pre program to create 1:10:21.800 --> 1:10:26.080 and to collaborate with each other UM, and I think 1:10:26.120 --> 1:10:29.400 digital comments are one way in which we can do that. 1:10:30.720 --> 1:10:36.839 I really appreciated UM the way that a different writers 1:10:36.840 --> 1:10:40.639 and thinkers on the subjects have UM sort of explore 1:10:40.680 --> 1:10:45.679 those ideas. Of course I drew a bit from one 1:10:45.720 --> 1:10:52.720 particular author, Mayo Foster moral UM and the exploration of 1:10:52.800 --> 1:10:57.439 the idea, But there's a lot available if you're interested 1:10:57.439 --> 1:11:00.639 in covering topic and what happened. Of course, the same 1:11:00.760 --> 1:11:03.519 goes for the comments in general. There a lot of 1:11:03.520 --> 1:11:06.880 different resources out there. UM. Eleanor Ostrom's work is creed 1:11:06.920 --> 1:11:09.800 place to start, and I really think it's important that 1:11:09.880 --> 1:11:14.720 we do um get these conversations rolling in the mainstream, 1:11:15.080 --> 1:11:19.920 in the background, in every corner and every space, because 1:11:20.400 --> 1:11:24.840 we stand to benefit a lot from it, and we 1:11:24.880 --> 1:11:31.080 honestly really need it in a time like this. That's 1:11:31.120 --> 1:11:36.280 it from me for this episode. You can follow me 1:11:36.320 --> 1:11:41.439 on YouTube at androids um, on Twitter at and disclosed 1:11:41.439 --> 1:11:44.080 saying true, and on Patreon you can support me. I 1:11:44.120 --> 1:11:49.320 should like Atton dot com slash same true Yeah, and 1:11:49.360 --> 1:11:52.479 you can find it could happen here on Twitter and Instagram. 1:11:52.479 --> 1:11:55.360 Apparently we have the coolson as a TikTok, a thing 1:11:55.400 --> 1:11:58.360 that we learned. Do we officially have one? I thought, well, 1:11:58.400 --> 1:12:01.679 I don't know. I I okay, well that we did. 1:12:02.120 --> 1:12:04.000 Who knows? We may or we do not have a TikTok. 1:12:04.040 --> 1:12:07.800 You'll never know. By earlier January, we definitely will because 1:12:07.800 --> 1:12:11.920 we have something special planned. Um. But yes, Twitter, at least, 1:12:11.960 --> 1:12:15.160 Twitter and Instagram at at happened here. Pondonicles and media 1:12:15.560 --> 1:12:20.120 still on where despite despite the digital town square collapsing, 1:12:20.160 --> 1:12:24.160 we are holding out in the in the dystopian ruins 1:12:24.240 --> 1:12:45.160 of Twitter. UM. So yeah, anyway, welcome to it could 1:12:45.240 --> 1:12:48.679 happen here a show. I've had a bunch of ship actually, 1:12:49.160 --> 1:12:54.479 but but our our core is collapse and UH, political 1:12:54.560 --> 1:12:57.160 violence in the United States. That's that's where we got 1:12:57.200 --> 1:13:00.280 our bones. And today we're getting back to basics. We're 1:13:00.320 --> 1:13:03.200 we're going into the roots. UM. Those of you who 1:13:03.240 --> 1:13:06.960 live in New Mexico are probably broadly familiar with the 1:13:08.280 --> 1:13:11.439 kind of basics of this story. UM. Many of you 1:13:11.479 --> 1:13:13.960 probably will have heard aspects of this. But there have 1:13:14.040 --> 1:13:17.080 been a series of shootings that took place in December 1:13:17.360 --> 1:13:20.599 of last year in January of this year, UM at 1:13:20.640 --> 1:13:24.640 the homes of to state legislators and two county commissioners. 1:13:25.040 --> 1:13:29.200 No one was injured, thankfully, UM. But this was obviously 1:13:29.280 --> 1:13:30.960 something that was scaring the hell out of a lot 1:13:31.040 --> 1:13:34.439 of people, UM, liberals and people on the left in 1:13:34.479 --> 1:13:38.000 New Mexico over the last several weeks because they were 1:13:38.040 --> 1:13:42.439 clearly politically motivated. UM. New Mexico has had shootings at 1:13:42.439 --> 1:13:45.040 protests and it's its share of the political violence that 1:13:45.080 --> 1:13:47.760 has swept a large chunk of the country, and this 1:13:47.800 --> 1:13:51.880 seemed like a real scary years of lead style escalation. UM. 1:13:52.000 --> 1:13:54.200 Very recently, within the last couple of days of US 1:13:54.200 --> 1:13:57.559 recording this, it was announced that the police had brought 1:13:57.600 --> 1:14:01.479 in the guy who was responsible for organizing this UM. 1:14:01.520 --> 1:14:04.000 He did not carry out the shootings himself. His name 1:14:04.120 --> 1:14:09.360 is Solomon Penia um and he was a former Republican 1:14:09.880 --> 1:14:15.120 candidate for local office who hired fore men Um in 1:14:15.240 --> 1:14:19.120 order to shoot at the homes of elected Democrats. Um. 1:14:19.120 --> 1:14:21.479 Those are the basics of it. Uh. The arrest Warren 1:14:21.520 --> 1:14:24.840 affidavit says that penia intended to cause serious harm or 1:14:24.880 --> 1:14:28.040 cause death to the occupants inside their homes, which seems 1:14:28.280 --> 1:14:32.880 pretty credible based on what we know objectively about what happened. Um. 1:14:32.920 --> 1:14:36.720 It's also worth noting that Penya had donated repeatedly in 1:14:36.720 --> 1:14:39.080 the past to Lyndon LaRouche, which I'm sure we'll get 1:14:39.080 --> 1:14:41.000 into a little bit later. But I want to introduce 1:14:41.040 --> 1:14:43.040 my guest for this episode, who knows the story much 1:14:43.120 --> 1:14:47.120 better than I do, a local, uh New Mexico based activist, 1:14:47.560 --> 1:14:50.760 Lucas Herndon. Lucas, How are you doing today, buddy? I'm 1:14:50.760 --> 1:14:54.040 doing good man. Glad to be back, sort of really 1:14:54.080 --> 1:14:56.040 glad to have you back. You've been on the show before. 1:14:56.560 --> 1:14:58.080 I'm just gonna kind of let you take it from 1:14:58.120 --> 1:15:00.320 here now that I've sort of laid out the bones 1:15:00.360 --> 1:15:05.000 of it. Yeah. Thanks, and just a couple of clarifying points, um, 1:15:05.080 --> 1:15:10.759 which only because things have been moving very quickly today. UM. 1:15:10.800 --> 1:15:14.120 This is the day after he was arrested. There is 1:15:14.160 --> 1:15:17.519 actually now evidence put out from the A p D 1:15:18.439 --> 1:15:23.720 that um Penya himself UH was in the car and 1:15:23.800 --> 1:15:28.080 attempted to fire at least one of the targets. Apparently 1:15:28.400 --> 1:15:30.960 he had an A R fifteen that quote unquote jammed. 1:15:31.520 --> 1:15:34.920 It didn't stop that shooting from occurring. His accomplice, who 1:15:35.080 --> 1:15:37.919 is unnamed at this time, at least to our knowledge, 1:15:38.320 --> 1:15:40.840 UH did fire a glock out of the car during 1:15:40.880 --> 1:15:42.880 that that I mean, so that there was still a 1:15:42.920 --> 1:15:45.960 shooting that happened. But it is worth noting that he 1:15:46.000 --> 1:15:48.560 was not just the mastermind but also an active participant, 1:15:48.600 --> 1:15:51.240 at least according to what we know today. Yeah, it 1:15:51.240 --> 1:15:52.720 looks like the weapon that was used was a tan 1:15:52.840 --> 1:15:55.720 and black clock with a drum magazine. UM or at 1:15:55.760 --> 1:15:59.560 least the drum was seized at the thing doesn't really matter, UM. 1:15:59.600 --> 1:16:03.439 But so I'm interested kind of first in if you 1:16:03.439 --> 1:16:05.760 want to walk us through how you became aware that 1:16:05.800 --> 1:16:08.280 these shootings had happened and how you would kind of 1:16:08.360 --> 1:16:12.599 characterize the impact it had on on the community around you, 1:16:12.680 --> 1:16:15.800 because this obviously is is intensely frightening and is the 1:16:15.880 --> 1:16:18.120 kind of thing most of us have been paying attention, 1:16:18.160 --> 1:16:20.439 have been worried about happening for for quite a while. 1:16:21.000 --> 1:16:25.600 Right exactly that. Yeah, so, um, you know, in in 1:16:25.680 --> 1:16:28.639 the in the political nonprofit world, which which I work 1:16:28.680 --> 1:16:33.799 in professionally, UM, it's not uncommon for the whole movement 1:16:33.840 --> 1:16:35.840 sort of takes the last part of December off for 1:16:35.880 --> 1:16:39.960 the holidays. UM. So unfortunately, there was sort of not 1:16:40.120 --> 1:16:42.920 a lot of eyes on stuff in the latter part 1:16:42.920 --> 1:16:45.640 of December. But as soon as we got back to 1:16:45.760 --> 1:16:50.080 work on the third of January, a series of events 1:16:50.120 --> 1:16:54.520 happened where there was a realization that there were shootings 1:16:54.520 --> 1:17:01.800 that happened at different elected officials houses. Right, and UM, 1:17:01.800 --> 1:17:05.240 it turns out or it looks like that the cops 1:17:05.439 --> 1:17:08.479 were just starting to put it together themselves. But it 1:17:08.600 --> 1:17:12.840 came from, um, the fact that the first two targets 1:17:13.000 --> 1:17:19.000 were at the time ceded county commissioners in berno Leo County. Um. 1:17:19.040 --> 1:17:23.200 Just for extra added confusion, UM, one of those targets 1:17:23.840 --> 1:17:26.479 was she finished her term at the end of the year, 1:17:26.520 --> 1:17:30.000 so she's now she's not technically sitting as a commissioner anymore, 1:17:30.080 --> 1:17:33.799 just just for clarity UM. But then over the course 1:17:34.040 --> 1:17:36.679 of of you know, those weeks that we were all out, 1:17:36.920 --> 1:17:40.320 there were also then shootings at UM one of the 1:17:40.360 --> 1:17:45.240 state senators homes, and then in January there was also 1:17:45.240 --> 1:17:49.720 shootings at the campaign office of who the gentleman who 1:17:49.800 --> 1:17:53.880 is now our state attorney general. Within our sort of 1:17:53.920 --> 1:17:56.439 movement of people that work on you know, political things, 1:17:56.439 --> 1:18:00.320 we were all gearing up for the session are into Mexico. 1:18:00.400 --> 1:18:03.960 Our legislative session kicks off a sixty day term actually 1:18:03.960 --> 1:18:09.000 started today on January, and it became clear to all 1:18:09.040 --> 1:18:11.880 of us that this was happening, and we started, you know, 1:18:12.120 --> 1:18:15.800 talking amongst ourselves, and we really we did find out 1:18:15.840 --> 1:18:18.320 that at that point the cops had started piecing it together. 1:18:18.320 --> 1:18:22.519 They were piecing together pieces of information. It turns out 1:18:22.560 --> 1:18:27.040 that after the shooting on the third UM, the only 1:18:27.080 --> 1:18:32.479 other named accomplice so far, this guy Jose Trahio, was 1:18:33.040 --> 1:18:36.960 arrested forty minutes after the shooting. UM a p D 1:18:37.320 --> 1:18:42.800 because of ongoing issues with UM crime in the in 1:18:42.840 --> 1:18:47.320 the city of Albuquerque, has like a quick response like 1:18:47.439 --> 1:18:51.360 system set up that like tracks gunfire and yeah, so 1:18:51.400 --> 1:18:54.240 they were they were able to track this guy down. Um, 1:18:54.360 --> 1:19:00.000 he was driving a car that was registered to Penya. Um. 1:18:59.760 --> 1:19:03.720 And uh, there was other connections obviously that the you know, 1:19:03.800 --> 1:19:07.240 cops put things together and then yeah, and they executed 1:19:07.240 --> 1:19:10.640 the search warrant yesterday. There was a SWAT situation. It 1:19:10.680 --> 1:19:16.240 sounds like it was um preventative more than anything, but 1:19:16.280 --> 1:19:18.360 it but but some of the stories that have come 1:19:18.360 --> 1:19:21.200 out is that he was reluctant to leave at first, 1:19:21.280 --> 1:19:25.439 but there wasn't actually any overt threats of violence. But 1:19:25.479 --> 1:19:27.280 you know, the cops did respond was swat when they 1:19:27.360 --> 1:19:30.519 arrested him. Yeah, I mean, given the fact that he 1:19:30.800 --> 1:19:34.280 had carried out a series of shootings. Uh. Not surprised 1:19:34.320 --> 1:19:38.040 to hear that. Now, I'm I'm kind of curious. Was 1:19:38.120 --> 1:19:42.599 there a community response prior to sort of Pinia being 1:19:42.880 --> 1:19:47.680 exposed and arrested? Was their community response kind of reacting 1:19:47.720 --> 1:19:50.439 to the fact that there were was an escalating series 1:19:50.439 --> 1:19:55.479 of shootings targeting local elected leaders. Yeah. So the company 1:19:55.520 --> 1:19:58.320 I worked for, Progress Now New Mexico, we put out 1:19:59.160 --> 1:20:02.720 a series of twee eats. Um. Basically as soon as 1:20:02.760 --> 1:20:06.960 we had started putting two and two together, Um, you know, 1:20:07.040 --> 1:20:12.720 we we were careful to say that disappears politically motivated. 1:20:12.840 --> 1:20:15.120 We don't have hard evidence, but it's hard to not 1:20:15.439 --> 1:20:19.280 put those two things together. We at progress now and 1:20:19.280 --> 1:20:23.000 and me specifically, having worked here for a very long time, UM, 1:20:23.040 --> 1:20:26.160 I have been tracking political violence here in the state 1:20:26.439 --> 1:20:30.280 UM for for a while and and i've i've i've 1:20:30.320 --> 1:20:32.160 been part of it in the sense that I was 1:20:32.760 --> 1:20:36.559 threatened and docked in as were some of my other colleagues, 1:20:37.040 --> 1:20:39.400 and so, you know, these things hit close to home, 1:20:39.520 --> 1:20:41.639 right and on the and on the one hand, it's 1:20:42.280 --> 1:20:45.879 it's tough to see these things as anything but political 1:20:45.960 --> 1:20:49.280 violence for for those of us like you, Robert, that 1:20:49.360 --> 1:20:51.360 like we see it all the time because we're paying 1:20:51.360 --> 1:20:55.440 attention to it. On the other hand, there is unfortunately 1:20:55.479 --> 1:20:57.920 a lot of gun violence in Albuquerque, and you know, 1:20:58.040 --> 1:21:00.439 so there were there were some pushback people, Oh, I know, 1:21:00.600 --> 1:21:02.320 this is just you know, there's just that much gun 1:21:02.400 --> 1:21:04.880 violence quote unquote, but that's you know, that was a 1:21:04.920 --> 1:21:08.760 silly premise. Honestly, this was very clearly politically motivated. And 1:21:08.880 --> 1:21:11.320 now that we have a person to attach this to, 1:21:11.520 --> 1:21:15.080 and we can look at his social media history and 1:21:15.080 --> 1:21:18.080 and you know, stuff we've found in telegram stuff on 1:21:18.080 --> 1:21:21.720 his Twitter. It's so clear. I mean he we just 1:21:21.840 --> 1:21:25.040 actually even today, right before we got on here, we 1:21:25.240 --> 1:21:28.920 just published another telegram piece that we found on our 1:21:28.960 --> 1:21:32.800 Twitter that he threatened the Secretary of State after he 1:21:32.840 --> 1:21:36.479 lost his election, UM telling saying that she should quote 1:21:36.520 --> 1:21:39.719 unquote hang until she's dead. So yeah, I mean, he's 1:21:39.760 --> 1:21:43.480 this has been an ongoing part of his um ideology 1:21:43.640 --> 1:21:45.920 for a while. You know, he has a lot of 1:21:46.040 --> 1:21:51.760 pro maga posts, UM, a lot of big lie you know, 1:21:52.360 --> 1:21:56.080 tainted election you know, uh rhetoric all over his social 1:21:56.080 --> 1:22:00.360 media such as it exists anyway, Now, have this altered 1:22:00.400 --> 1:22:02.759 it all um, or had an impact on your thinking 1:22:02.840 --> 1:22:05.320 of um? You know, when when you have attacks or 1:22:05.360 --> 1:22:07.680 a series of attacks like this, as you said, it's 1:22:07.720 --> 1:22:10.600 impossible to say prior to kind of knowing who did it, 1:22:10.640 --> 1:22:13.640 that like this is certainly politically motivated. But at a 1:22:13.680 --> 1:22:17.439 certain point it becomes kind of reasonable and and safe 1:22:17.560 --> 1:22:20.080 to make that assumption, and I think also necessary when 1:22:20.080 --> 1:22:23.920 you're trying to two protect a community and get people 1:22:24.000 --> 1:22:28.360 prepared for the likelihood that they're going to encounter of violence. UM. 1:22:28.800 --> 1:22:31.080 We've also had those cases where like it, it is 1:22:31.120 --> 1:22:33.800 impossible to know, you know, we had a series of 1:22:33.840 --> 1:22:36.160 attacks on power plants last year. We still don't know 1:22:36.200 --> 1:22:38.720 who did the ones in North Carolina or who did 1:22:38.760 --> 1:22:41.200 the ones in Portland. But it turned out that the 1:22:41.240 --> 1:22:45.200 folks who did that Christmas Day attack UM on power 1:22:45.360 --> 1:22:51.679 substation and UM Washington State were um uh just robbing 1:22:51.680 --> 1:22:54.760 a place right effectively non political. So it is kind 1:22:54.800 --> 1:22:57.400 of impossible to get has this altered it all your 1:22:57.479 --> 1:23:01.240 kind of feelings on when at what sort of point 1:23:01.320 --> 1:23:04.600 do we start raising the alarm? Yeah, you know, I 1:23:04.600 --> 1:23:07.320 mean I think that progress now you know, my my, 1:23:07.320 --> 1:23:10.720 my organization that I work with, we as soon as 1:23:10.760 --> 1:23:13.240 we heard something was afoot, we put out the word 1:23:13.400 --> 1:23:15.280 for us. It was for us, it was a matter 1:23:15.320 --> 1:23:17.519 of safety as as as people who have lived through 1:23:17.560 --> 1:23:20.960 it ourselves. Um. This was a time that the community 1:23:21.000 --> 1:23:23.080 needed to be aware of these things and be thinking 1:23:23.120 --> 1:23:26.840 about it. Um and and to be honest at you know, 1:23:26.960 --> 1:23:29.280 our our group discussion about it was it was better 1:23:29.280 --> 1:23:32.480 to be safe than sorry. If if somehow this wasn't political, 1:23:32.680 --> 1:23:35.960 or if it was maybe personalized or something like that, 1:23:36.680 --> 1:23:41.040 um at you know, at these legislators and lawmakers, rather 1:23:41.080 --> 1:23:44.880 than it being overtly just political ideology. You know, that 1:23:44.920 --> 1:23:47.760 would be we could walk it back. But again it 1:23:47.840 --> 1:23:49.640 was for us we made the decision that no, this 1:23:49.720 --> 1:23:53.360 information needs to be out there. Um. We have, especially 1:23:53.400 --> 1:23:55.320 as we were gearing up for the session, there was 1:23:55.360 --> 1:23:58.800 just there's too much on the line. Um. You know, 1:23:59.400 --> 1:24:02.800 up until years ago, at our state legislature, which we 1:24:02.840 --> 1:24:06.280 call the Roundhouse because it's a big round building. UM. 1:24:06.360 --> 1:24:10.519 Up at the Roundhouse, you could carry firearms into the building. Um. 1:24:10.560 --> 1:24:12.439 It was just a sort of a remnant of New 1:24:12.479 --> 1:24:17.040 Mexico's sort of wild West days, I guess. Yah. But uh, 1:24:17.200 --> 1:24:20.240 but with the with the rise of with the rise 1:24:20.320 --> 1:24:24.599 of far right related violence, and you actually did have 1:24:25.200 --> 1:24:30.000 armed insurrection minded people showing up um in and around 1:24:30.160 --> 1:24:34.800 January six. Um. But even before that, really during during 1:24:35.800 --> 1:24:37.519 up with a lot of the MAGA rallies, the Trump 1:24:37.520 --> 1:24:41.840 trains and all that, the legislature passed their own you 1:24:41.880 --> 1:24:44.920 know rules saying you couldn't bring guns into the into 1:24:44.920 --> 1:24:49.200 the legislature. And that was up even further this year 1:24:49.240 --> 1:24:53.960 by the installation of metal detectors. So but that's new. 1:24:54.000 --> 1:24:56.879 But that was directly related to this, this this looming 1:24:57.000 --> 1:25:01.559 threat over over lawmakers in the state. Um, they didn't 1:25:01.560 --> 1:25:03.280 know if they were going to have anybody in custody 1:25:03.280 --> 1:25:06.840 before things started started today, and so the legislature made 1:25:06.840 --> 1:25:09.480 that decision for themselves that they were going to institute 1:25:09.479 --> 1:25:13.320 that policy and have metal detectors on the way in. Yeah, 1:25:13.400 --> 1:25:16.439 I mean that that that that makes sense, and that 1:25:16.760 --> 1:25:19.479 I as I understand it, that it's still the law 1:25:19.479 --> 1:25:21.200 in the state of Texas actually that you can be 1:25:21.439 --> 1:25:24.960 armed inside the Capitol building. I certainly had been during 1:25:24.960 --> 1:25:31.000 protests years ago. It's interesting the watching kind of the 1:25:31.120 --> 1:25:37.520 simultaneous adaptation by the law enforcement, by kind of elected 1:25:37.560 --> 1:25:41.759 in sort of standard centrist Democrats and by the left 1:25:41.800 --> 1:25:47.000 in different ways to this escalation in in political violence, 1:25:47.040 --> 1:25:50.080 and kind of the acceptability on the right of using 1:25:50.080 --> 1:25:52.360 the threat or the practice of violence to try to 1:25:52.400 --> 1:25:57.200 push um for political ideology. Because everyone is kind of 1:25:57.240 --> 1:26:01.040 adapting in real time to it. I'm wondering, how are 1:26:01.040 --> 1:26:03.400 you kind of looking at this from the left, how 1:26:03.400 --> 1:26:05.880 are you how are you feeling about the way in 1:26:05.920 --> 1:26:11.760 which the actual state has responded so far? Yeah, it's complicated. 1:26:12.000 --> 1:26:15.320 Um So, the tradition in New Mexico is on the 1:26:15.360 --> 1:26:18.439 opening day of the legislature, the governor gives the State 1:26:18.439 --> 1:26:22.600 of the State address. UM and I covered that earlier today. 1:26:22.920 --> 1:26:25.719 One of her key points and she and she tied 1:26:25.760 --> 1:26:29.840 it to this very issue, was she is pushing as 1:26:29.840 --> 1:26:34.519 a priority bill this year a quote unquote assault weapons ban. Uh. 1:26:34.560 --> 1:26:38.680 There is also another legislator who is pushing, um a 1:26:39.320 --> 1:26:41.320 what we would call a standard capacity but what they 1:26:41.320 --> 1:26:44.720 call a high capacity magazine ban. And you know, and 1:26:44.760 --> 1:26:46.439 then there's some other ones that are maybe a little 1:26:46.439 --> 1:26:51.800 bit more UM reasonable, like safe storage UM, which is 1:26:51.840 --> 1:26:54.720 something that I can get behind, you know. And I 1:26:54.760 --> 1:26:57.120 think there's a couple of things here to consider and 1:26:57.120 --> 1:26:59.880 and you know, and it gets complicated because people on 1:27:00.120 --> 1:27:04.000 right have dominated the conversation about guns and gun control 1:27:04.280 --> 1:27:07.760 for so long that it's hard to have UM, well 1:27:07.800 --> 1:27:14.960 intentioned conversations from the left, I find UM and and yeah, yeah, 1:27:15.000 --> 1:27:18.360 so you know, speaking personally as a gun owner and 1:27:18.400 --> 1:27:22.160 as somebody who has um made the decision of my 1:27:22.200 --> 1:27:25.800 life to be you know, armed and ready and have 1:27:26.400 --> 1:27:29.360 you know, body armor. And I you know, I don't 1:27:29.400 --> 1:27:32.799 just shoot guns. I train with guns. I train other people. 1:27:33.479 --> 1:27:35.640 I have a group of people that I work with 1:27:35.680 --> 1:27:38.519 and trust that if things ever got real bad, I 1:27:38.560 --> 1:27:41.800 would you know, we would call each other. UM, being 1:27:41.920 --> 1:27:45.720 that guy, I obviously have very strong feelings about being 1:27:45.760 --> 1:27:47.479 told by the state that I don't have a right 1:27:47.520 --> 1:27:50.360 to defend myself with the same types of weapons that 1:27:50.400 --> 1:27:52.760 I know the other side has. Right, so I think 1:27:52.760 --> 1:27:54.439 the answer you know, sorry, that was a little bit 1:27:54.439 --> 1:27:58.800 of a roundabout, But the point is that, UM, the 1:27:59.080 --> 1:28:03.919 person who perpeture to this um Mr Penia. It's unclear, 1:28:04.080 --> 1:28:08.040 but he is a felon. And UM there is some 1:28:08.160 --> 1:28:13.120 hay being made about um how he and others may 1:28:13.120 --> 1:28:17.479 have possessed guns. And you know, the reality we know 1:28:17.720 --> 1:28:21.760 is that it is not hard or difficult. Um two 1:28:22.320 --> 1:28:25.280 try to get guns one way or the other and 1:28:25.439 --> 1:28:28.400 so and and no, you can just drive across the 1:28:28.400 --> 1:28:32.000 border to Texas for one thing, I mean, or Arizona. Yeah, yeah, 1:28:32.120 --> 1:28:34.880 or Arizona. This guy was already what was, in fact 1:28:34.960 --> 1:28:39.080 restricted from being able to own any kind of firearm, right, right, 1:28:39.240 --> 1:28:44.720 And and so it is hard to be somebody who 1:28:44.760 --> 1:28:47.720 works on in the political left, and I work on 1:28:47.760 --> 1:28:50.120 a number of policy issues. My my day to day 1:28:50.120 --> 1:28:53.519 work focuses more on energy issues. Um. But but you know, 1:28:53.560 --> 1:28:55.600 but I have been doing this work long enough that 1:28:55.640 --> 1:28:59.040 I step in whenever there's stuff like this happening and 1:28:59.120 --> 1:29:02.599 cover it for for for my work. But it's yeah, 1:29:02.640 --> 1:29:05.360 it's UM, it's gonna be interesting to see. You know, 1:29:05.400 --> 1:29:07.960 I don't know if there's the political will in the 1:29:08.000 --> 1:29:12.880 state New Mexico. UM, even you know, moderate Democrats are 1:29:12.920 --> 1:29:17.840 our hunters are recreational shooters, UM. And I think that 1:29:17.880 --> 1:29:22.519 there's you know, there is some strong feelings about gun violence. 1:29:22.760 --> 1:29:27.240 There was a very tragic death UM involving children last 1:29:27.640 --> 1:29:32.799 year during our legislative session, UM, where where a middle 1:29:32.800 --> 1:29:35.320 schooler I believe maybe a high school or a kid 1:29:35.320 --> 1:29:38.640 either way, UM, took a pistol from his parents, you know, 1:29:38.720 --> 1:29:41.880 sock drawer basically and shot a kid. And you know, 1:29:42.240 --> 1:29:44.640 so again, safe storage is one of those things that 1:29:44.680 --> 1:29:48.120 I think most people generally can get behind, especially if 1:29:48.160 --> 1:29:51.680 we do something really good like subsidized safe storage, so 1:29:51.720 --> 1:29:54.320 that if you know, if you're a person who is 1:29:54.360 --> 1:29:56.639 of lesser means but you still want to protect yourself 1:29:56.640 --> 1:29:58.680 with a firearm, you can figure out how to get 1:29:58.720 --> 1:30:02.040 a safe or something like that. Anyway, that's so there 1:30:02.160 --> 1:30:04.960 there are things that we can do. UM. I think 1:30:05.040 --> 1:30:08.080 we know that outright bands one don't work and are 1:30:08.120 --> 1:30:12.000 hard to pass. And things like magazine capacity things, the 1:30:12.120 --> 1:30:15.960 enforcement level becomes difficult, and um, a good example of 1:30:16.000 --> 1:30:18.160 that is in New Mexico, we did pass a red 1:30:18.160 --> 1:30:21.120 flag law a number of years ago, and uh, you know, 1:30:21.160 --> 1:30:23.559 I've heard, I know you've talked about red flag laws 1:30:23.640 --> 1:30:26.120 in the past, and you know, and we had what 1:30:26.200 --> 1:30:28.120 a lot of states have had, which is that a 1:30:28.320 --> 1:30:32.720 number of sheriffs in conservative counties just very publicly said 1:30:32.760 --> 1:30:35.360 out loud that they weren't going to enforce it. And 1:30:35.520 --> 1:30:39.360 sure enough, you know, last year during the summer, when 1:30:39.360 --> 1:30:41.160 we hit the two year mark of the law being 1:30:41.200 --> 1:30:46.320 into effect, it had been used less than a dozen times, um, statewide. 1:30:46.720 --> 1:30:49.800 And so yeah, I mean, and one of the one 1:30:49.800 --> 1:30:52.120 of the things that's of obvious concern is if you 1:30:52.240 --> 1:30:54.559 have a lot of people living in these conservative areas 1:30:54.560 --> 1:30:58.120 where the sheriffs aren't enforcing the laws, um, they effectively 1:30:58.160 --> 1:31:00.839 have the ability to take the firearms they can acquire 1:31:00.920 --> 1:31:04.760 there to the areas that have maybe more restrictive gun 1:31:04.800 --> 1:31:07.640 control where there are elected Democrats and then shoot up 1:31:07.680 --> 1:31:11.519 their houses. Um. Yeah, I think kind of outside of that, 1:31:11.560 --> 1:31:15.040 I'm wondering. So, and obviously we're still looking at the 1:31:15.040 --> 1:31:16.600 fall out of this there's still quite a bit we 1:31:16.600 --> 1:31:18.600 don't know. I don't think there's a lot of context 1:31:18.640 --> 1:31:22.439 on how Penya found these men that he hired. Um, 1:31:22.479 --> 1:31:25.240 although I am interested in that, I think it'll be 1:31:25.320 --> 1:31:28.599 it'll be worth learning. Is there kind of a lessons 1:31:28.680 --> 1:31:31.040 learned that that you're going through with us here? Has 1:31:31.080 --> 1:31:33.200 this altered it all kind of going forward? How you 1:31:33.240 --> 1:31:36.640 think you might respond or your community might respond the 1:31:36.720 --> 1:31:39.519 next time something like this occurs. Oh yeah, I mean 1:31:39.560 --> 1:31:41.200 I think there's a couple. I mean, actually, one of 1:31:41.200 --> 1:31:43.760 the things you just said is that we don't necessarily 1:31:43.760 --> 1:31:47.439 know how we found these guys. And and that's true 1:31:47.479 --> 1:31:49.800 because we still don't know the names of some of them. 1:31:50.240 --> 1:31:53.599 But the one, the one man we do know, um, 1:31:54.439 --> 1:31:56.439 was one of was a was a person who donated 1:31:56.479 --> 1:31:59.120 money to him while while he was running because because 1:31:59.160 --> 1:32:01.120 again remember this this is this was a man who 1:32:01.120 --> 1:32:03.679 was running for office last year and lost three to one. 1:32:04.560 --> 1:32:08.640 Um and and yeah, and so this this one accomplice 1:32:08.640 --> 1:32:13.120 whose name we have, Jose Triho, donated to him. And UM, 1:32:13.160 --> 1:32:17.599 they're very you know, they're they're clearly, Um, they clearly 1:32:17.720 --> 1:32:20.000 know each other and have some sort of a connection there. 1:32:20.439 --> 1:32:23.679 But I think what's worth noting is that going down 1:32:23.760 --> 1:32:27.640 that path. Right, So when I looked up that guy, 1:32:27.680 --> 1:32:31.479 I found the political donation from last year. And while 1:32:31.520 --> 1:32:33.679 I was there looking at political donations, I just happened 1:32:33.720 --> 1:32:35.639 to look at all the other names, which is how 1:32:35.680 --> 1:32:39.120 I found the other Uh you know the name of 1:32:39.120 --> 1:32:41.639 the other man who has this connection to him, um 1:32:42.640 --> 1:32:48.559 Fletcher and Michael Fletcher, right, and m that guy two 1:32:48.640 --> 1:32:52.360 years ago, during the you know thetests, drove a car 1:32:52.520 --> 1:32:57.040 through a crowd of protesters, and thanks to some amazing 1:32:57.439 --> 1:33:01.040 um you know, anti fascist organized there's here in New Mexico, 1:33:01.080 --> 1:33:03.400 they were able to identify him, even though the cops 1:33:03.439 --> 1:33:05.960 never did anything about it. And so I think that 1:33:06.160 --> 1:33:10.240 if if there's gonna be lessons learned here, it's that 1:33:10.400 --> 1:33:13.200 these people have been showing their true colors for a 1:33:13.240 --> 1:33:18.040 long time. And um there's if if if we're going 1:33:18.080 --> 1:33:21.800 to have police in this world we live in, and 1:33:21.840 --> 1:33:25.679 we're going to ask them to quote unquote keep us safe, uh, 1:33:25.720 --> 1:33:27.360 then they have to do their job and they have 1:33:27.439 --> 1:33:30.400 to follow up with with things like you know, somebody 1:33:30.479 --> 1:33:33.400 driving through a crowd of people. The video is on 1:33:33.400 --> 1:33:35.720 our Twitter thread. It's very scary. I mean, I know, 1:33:35.760 --> 1:33:37.400 people have seen it all over the country. It wasn't 1:33:37.400 --> 1:33:40.360 just unique to New Mexico. But um, anyway, that guy 1:33:40.560 --> 1:33:44.320 was Penya's third highest donor, and he's a young man. 1:33:44.439 --> 1:33:48.040 His his listed profession is security guard and um. And 1:33:48.080 --> 1:33:50.360 the other guy, Jose Trio, is listed as a cashier. 1:33:50.600 --> 1:33:52.880 So there's a lot of questions about how how did 1:33:52.880 --> 1:33:57.360 these young men have so much money with jobs that 1:33:57.439 --> 1:33:59.559 are you know, you don't necessarily have a lot of 1:33:59.560 --> 1:34:01.759 money lying around if you're a cashier and security guard, 1:34:02.240 --> 1:34:04.719 at least at least not to donate to political candidates. 1:34:04.760 --> 1:34:08.200 Back when I had jobs like that, I didn't anyway, Um, 1:34:08.240 --> 1:34:10.320 and especially then also for all the guns they have, 1:34:10.520 --> 1:34:13.000 right Like, there's pictures of these guys with a table 1:34:13.040 --> 1:34:16.479 full of glocks and um, you know and mag's and 1:34:16.720 --> 1:34:20.040 that's that stuff is not cheap, so I don't there's 1:34:20.080 --> 1:34:24.840 there's there is a These people were known to law 1:34:24.920 --> 1:34:27.240 enforcement one way or the other because again Penya was 1:34:27.280 --> 1:34:31.200 a felon, and um, I want to be clear, he 1:34:31.240 --> 1:34:34.559 was able to run into Mexico because in New Mexico 1:34:34.640 --> 1:34:36.720 we believe felons deserve a second chance for things like 1:34:36.800 --> 1:34:39.080 running for office. In fact, it'd be great someday to 1:34:39.120 --> 1:34:41.960 have somebody who's maybe got that life experience to become 1:34:41.960 --> 1:34:47.080 a legislator. Obviously, there are circumstances like maybe this one 1:34:47.240 --> 1:34:52.599 that proved that people haven't you know, turned around from 1:34:52.600 --> 1:34:55.240 whatever life they were leading beforehand. But we're also but 1:34:55.240 --> 1:34:59.120 we're also not here excluding people from being Um. Being 1:34:59.160 --> 1:35:00.960 a felon does not make you a bad person, That's 1:35:00.960 --> 1:35:04.320 what I'm really trying to say here. But a felon 1:35:04.360 --> 1:35:07.040 who has a history like this and then has clearly 1:35:07.080 --> 1:35:11.120 demonstrated a will towards violence and hangs out with violent people, UM, 1:35:11.120 --> 1:35:13.360 maybe there should be some things done to keep an 1:35:13.360 --> 1:35:17.760 eye on those people. This is one of those situations 1:35:17.840 --> 1:35:22.200 that there's a number of different solutions too, or I 1:35:22.200 --> 1:35:25.280 think things that will will lead to solutions, But it's 1:35:25.320 --> 1:35:29.880 also it's much more muddled than people would like it 1:35:29.960 --> 1:35:33.400 to be. UM. I think I tend to think that 1:35:33.840 --> 1:35:38.080 from the perspective of like people who are activists, who 1:35:38.080 --> 1:35:40.479 are members of the community, one of the better things 1:35:40.560 --> 1:35:44.080 that we can do is keep an eye, as y'all do, 1:35:44.360 --> 1:35:47.680 on who's doing what. Like, you know, when you have 1:35:47.800 --> 1:35:52.360 people who are donating to one of these right wing 1:35:52.960 --> 1:35:57.559 you know fascist kind of candidates, UM, when they're saying 1:35:57.560 --> 1:35:59.960 certain things on social media, or the candidates saying so 1:36:00.200 --> 1:36:03.400 things on social media that are seen as incitements to violence. 1:36:03.439 --> 1:36:08.040 Like keeping those people on your radar is useful and 1:36:08.120 --> 1:36:10.680 keeping you know, as you did, being able to kind 1:36:10.720 --> 1:36:15.200 of document once somebody actually starts acting. Hey, this person 1:36:15.280 --> 1:36:17.880 has has made further threats in the past. Um, these 1:36:17.880 --> 1:36:20.400 are groups of people that might be at risk from them. 1:36:20.400 --> 1:36:23.240 We know this person, Like, here's evidence that this person 1:36:23.400 --> 1:36:26.559 is and has been a threat. That's all really useful. Um. 1:36:26.960 --> 1:36:29.639 The question is always is like, how do we actually 1:36:30.600 --> 1:36:34.000 stop these people before they carry out violence? Um? And 1:36:34.040 --> 1:36:36.400 this is a question that that to to be certain, 1:36:37.280 --> 1:36:39.880 law enforcement the state don't have very good answers for 1:36:40.040 --> 1:36:43.920 because they only kind of come in and take action after, Um, 1:36:44.000 --> 1:36:46.400 the attacks have started. We just got lucky in this 1:36:46.439 --> 1:36:50.320 case that nobody was hurt or killed. UM. You know, 1:36:50.400 --> 1:36:53.360 there have been a couple of of mass shootings averted 1:36:53.400 --> 1:36:57.760 as a result of anti fascists finding someone who was 1:36:57.840 --> 1:37:01.479 making threats, who had firearms and in some cases like 1:37:01.640 --> 1:37:04.439 was not legally supposed to have them, and making that 1:37:04.479 --> 1:37:07.559 public ahead of time. UM. But more often than not. 1:37:07.800 --> 1:37:09.600 It's sort of this case as it as it was 1:37:09.640 --> 1:37:12.960 with Penia, where we're the name comes out, we realize 1:37:12.960 --> 1:37:14.720 who it was, and it's like, yeah, we had we 1:37:14.760 --> 1:37:17.920 had this guy documented. We knew this dude was a threat. 1:37:18.400 --> 1:37:20.880 And I think that's the that is still kind of 1:37:20.920 --> 1:37:24.000 the the thing that we don't have a good answer 1:37:24.280 --> 1:37:27.960 to is what is the actual how do you how 1:37:28.000 --> 1:37:33.120 do you actually take action to stop these people from 1:37:33.200 --> 1:37:36.960 carrying out the attacks because obviously there's a thousand different 1:37:37.040 --> 1:37:39.759 legal issues with that. There's a number of different moral 1:37:39.840 --> 1:37:42.760 issues with that. Because for every guy like Pinia who 1:37:42.800 --> 1:37:45.760 talked about carrying out attacks and then attacked people, there's 1:37:45.760 --> 1:37:48.240 a couple of dozen who talk about ship like this 1:37:48.320 --> 1:37:51.120 and don't do anything. But um, I don't know. This 1:37:51.200 --> 1:37:53.280 is this is something that I think that I think 1:37:53.320 --> 1:37:55.320 has to be answered and it's not on you know, 1:37:55.640 --> 1:37:59.240 you specifically or the New Mexico activist community to figure 1:37:59.240 --> 1:38:02.640 it out, but it is. It is like, this is 1:38:02.640 --> 1:38:05.920 a big part of the struggle. I think because the 1:38:05.720 --> 1:38:09.120 the cops and the state, we'll do the thing that 1:38:09.200 --> 1:38:11.559 they do, which is when there are bodies or when 1:38:11.600 --> 1:38:15.800 there's bullet casings on the ground, generally, eventually someone will 1:38:15.800 --> 1:38:18.799 get arrested, not always, not necessarily, even the vast majority 1:38:18.840 --> 1:38:21.400 of the time. Again, nobody's caught the fuckers who were 1:38:21.400 --> 1:38:26.320 blowing up power stations in North Carolina. But you know, so, 1:38:26.880 --> 1:38:30.240 I think the question for us that and I'm sorry, folks, 1:38:30.240 --> 1:38:32.400 I'm not gonna be not gonna be saying, here's how 1:38:32.439 --> 1:38:36.519 we solve the problem of armed right wingers carrying out 1:38:36.520 --> 1:38:39.360 attacks on people is how do we how do we 1:38:39.439 --> 1:38:45.240 get from knowing who's a threat to stopping them effect 1:38:45.320 --> 1:38:49.720 effectively stopping them from carrying out actual attacks. And that is, 1:38:50.479 --> 1:38:54.120 you know, as our years of lead, if that is 1:38:54.160 --> 1:38:57.720 what we're in and boy, things like this make me 1:38:57.760 --> 1:39:01.000 think that that's a reasonable way to described the present 1:39:01.200 --> 1:39:07.000 political situation in the United States. Um, this is something 1:39:07.040 --> 1:39:09.680 we're going to have to answer. And obviously you know, 1:39:10.000 --> 1:39:12.800 I've asked you kind of your lessons on it. We don't, 1:39:12.880 --> 1:39:15.120 we don't. I don't think there's much more to say 1:39:15.120 --> 1:39:17.800 at the moment, but it is this is this is 1:39:17.840 --> 1:39:20.559 the question, right, Um, It's a question we ask ourselves. 1:39:20.840 --> 1:39:24.000 I know people are asking themselves up in Portland. Um, 1:39:24.040 --> 1:39:26.280 the guy who carried out an attack almost exactly a 1:39:26.320 --> 1:39:28.320 year ago at a protest in Portland at a long 1:39:28.439 --> 1:39:31.600 history of making threats online, and now one person is 1:39:31.600 --> 1:39:34.439 dead and others paralyzed. Several more have been have been injured. 1:39:34.479 --> 1:39:36.800 You know, these are this is this is a tough 1:39:36.920 --> 1:39:41.759 question and it's it's not one that uh, I think 1:39:42.920 --> 1:39:45.840 just kind of raw ideology actually gives us a very 1:39:45.840 --> 1:39:49.599 good answer on because there's the there's the emotionally satisfying answer, 1:39:49.680 --> 1:39:50.960 which is like, well, we just need to get some 1:39:51.280 --> 1:39:53.320 folks together and go like fuck these people up. And 1:39:53.320 --> 1:39:55.480 it's like, well, you can't. That's actually not a realistic 1:39:56.080 --> 1:39:58.839 because number one, there's so many people making these threats, 1:39:58.880 --> 1:40:03.120 like you don't actually have of the human band with 1:40:03.360 --> 1:40:05.880 two for that to be realistic outside of the fact 1:40:05.920 --> 1:40:08.519 that those people would be destroying their lives and throwing 1:40:08.520 --> 1:40:10.320 themselves into the mall of the state to do it. 1:40:10.439 --> 1:40:15.120 So this is this is a toughie. I do There's 1:40:15.200 --> 1:40:17.160 I mean, there's one there's one part of this that 1:40:17.240 --> 1:40:21.960 I think New Mexico can can offer some some I 1:40:21.960 --> 1:40:25.200 don't know, there's one thing we got right and um, 1:40:25.240 --> 1:40:27.680 I don't know if if you know, everybody out there 1:40:27.720 --> 1:40:30.720 is familiar with the name Coy Griffin or his organization 1:40:30.760 --> 1:40:35.000 Cowboys for Trump. But during the lead up to the election, 1:40:35.080 --> 1:40:38.120 this guy kind of made a name for himself. He 1:40:38.200 --> 1:40:41.600 went around the country on horseback with a bunch of 1:40:41.680 --> 1:40:45.519 dudes and they all dressed up like Larkin as cowboys. Um, 1:40:45.680 --> 1:40:49.680 most of them are not and um, and you know 1:40:49.680 --> 1:40:52.519 they had American flags and they yeah, literally called Cowboys 1:40:52.560 --> 1:40:55.400 for Trump. This guy was a seeded county commissioner in 1:40:55.439 --> 1:40:59.880 Otaro County here in New Mexico, and he went to 1:41:00.160 --> 1:41:03.920 January six and he was the first convicted person from 1:41:03.920 --> 1:41:07.960 the January six fallout, and he lost his seat in 1:41:07.960 --> 1:41:11.840 in Otaro County, which is like the smallest amount of thing, right, 1:41:11.840 --> 1:41:14.880 Like it's the man should have been locked up. But um. 1:41:15.000 --> 1:41:18.120 But one of the things that is frustrating but also 1:41:18.240 --> 1:41:22.880 maybe good is that probably you know, through my work 1:41:22.920 --> 1:41:25.920 doing what I do, I had been documenting this man 1:41:26.000 --> 1:41:29.400 for years because he'd been saying all kinds of crazy shit. Um. 1:41:30.280 --> 1:41:33.840 Sometime in nineteen I think or maybe it was, he 1:41:34.200 --> 1:41:36.439 like went up on top of a mountain to pray 1:41:36.720 --> 1:41:40.000 this is his words, and recorded himself on a Facebook 1:41:40.080 --> 1:41:44.080 live and like literally said that black people should go 1:41:44.160 --> 1:41:49.000 back to Africa and like this. This video was on 1:41:49.080 --> 1:41:52.360 his Facebook, and I mean it had been out for 1:41:52.479 --> 1:41:55.960 days and nobody said anything about it anywhere until I 1:41:56.160 --> 1:41:58.640 clipped it and put it on Twitter. You know, I 1:41:58.920 --> 1:42:01.479 took I took away the forty minutes of other weird shit, 1:42:01.560 --> 1:42:03.680 he said, and I put that thing out into the 1:42:03.680 --> 1:42:07.360 world and said, this man deserves to be like under 1:42:07.439 --> 1:42:10.280 so much scrutiny, it's ridiculous. And then of course it 1:42:10.320 --> 1:42:12.639 got pressed, and then of course he came under fire, 1:42:13.000 --> 1:42:15.000 and then a couple of people were paying attention. So 1:42:15.040 --> 1:42:17.600 then when he went to January six and again on 1:42:17.640 --> 1:42:20.559 a live video because people can't stop instagramming their crimes, 1:42:21.200 --> 1:42:22.880 he said he was taking all of his guns and 1:42:22.920 --> 1:42:26.040 going to meet his you know, homies in in Washington, 1:42:26.560 --> 1:42:28.559 and so he got arrested. He got arrested there. He 1:42:28.600 --> 1:42:30.040 was one of the few people who got arrested like 1:42:30.080 --> 1:42:32.559 on the ground that day because the FBI and the 1:42:32.600 --> 1:42:35.960 Secret Service were already looking for him because again somebody 1:42:35.960 --> 1:42:38.760 else had been out loud about saying, uh, this man 1:42:38.920 --> 1:42:41.280 literally just said he's taking guns to d C. Is 1:42:41.320 --> 1:42:44.920 somebody please going to do something about this? So I 1:42:44.960 --> 1:42:47.400 don't know it wasn't great, and I feel like more 1:42:47.479 --> 1:42:50.559 could have been done. And again, fortunately no one got hurt. 1:42:50.720 --> 1:42:52.680 I mean, I guess people did if you wanted to 1:42:52.720 --> 1:42:57.320 take the whole of January six into into UM mean, 1:42:58.760 --> 1:43:00.760 but I guess. I guess. My point is is that 1:43:01.240 --> 1:43:05.080 it's sort of just a constant vigilism, right, It's like 1:43:05.200 --> 1:43:07.439 you just have to be and it's not you know, 1:43:07.479 --> 1:43:09.280 and obviously one person can't do it, but you have 1:43:09.320 --> 1:43:10.800 to have groups of people that do it. I mean, 1:43:10.840 --> 1:43:13.479 I'm I'm one guy who works with an organization of 1:43:13.479 --> 1:43:15.400 people and we work on a number of policy things 1:43:15.400 --> 1:43:17.400 in the state. And again I don't necessarily do this 1:43:17.439 --> 1:43:21.439 all the time, but I also know that there's a 1:43:21.520 --> 1:43:24.640 number of amazing people, especially in o Tarot County, UM 1:43:24.680 --> 1:43:27.360 which is a very conservative county. But there's a number 1:43:27.360 --> 1:43:29.559 of amazing people who do really hard work and they 1:43:29.560 --> 1:43:31.920 show up at County commission meetings and they get thrown out, 1:43:32.280 --> 1:43:34.200 and they go to school board meetings and they get 1:43:34.200 --> 1:43:36.320 thrown out, but they go and they document it, and 1:43:36.320 --> 1:43:39.479 they tweet and they TikTok and and it's it's you know, 1:43:39.560 --> 1:43:42.280 it's that work that puts the word out from these 1:43:42.320 --> 1:43:44.439 little tiny places. You know, the last time I was 1:43:44.439 --> 1:43:46.519 on the show, Robert, we were talking about the school 1:43:46.520 --> 1:43:48.840 board stuff here in Los Cruces and the right wing 1:43:48.920 --> 1:43:52.120 chuds that had showed up to that, and you know, 1:43:52.120 --> 1:43:55.320 it's the same thing, right, It's like you don't I mean, 1:43:55.360 --> 1:43:57.720 you can't do it alone, but it doesn't take that 1:43:57.760 --> 1:44:00.639 many people to show up, and as know, and once 1:44:00.680 --> 1:44:02.840 you once you show them that you're not afraid and 1:44:02.880 --> 1:44:05.280 that there's more of us than there are of them, 1:44:05.320 --> 1:44:08.479 they tend to slink away. And I think that there's 1:44:09.000 --> 1:44:11.120 I think that there's value in that, and there's you know, 1:44:11.439 --> 1:44:13.639 it's not the answer that you're talking about, but there's 1:44:13.840 --> 1:44:17.280 there's a modicum of hope they're worth remembering. Yeah, I 1:44:17.280 --> 1:44:19.120 think that's a really good point. That's all. Those are 1:44:19.120 --> 1:44:22.920 all really good points. Um well, Lucas, I think that 1:44:23.040 --> 1:44:25.439 more or less covers what we came to talk about today. 1:44:25.560 --> 1:44:27.680 Did you have anything else you wanted you wanted to 1:44:27.720 --> 1:44:29.519 say to the audience before we kind of roll out 1:44:29.520 --> 1:44:31.559 of here, Anything you wanted to plug place you want 1:44:31.560 --> 1:44:34.280 to well? Yeah, I mean yeah, I'd just like to 1:44:34.320 --> 1:44:39.400 say that, you know, IM the number one donor to 1:44:39.439 --> 1:44:44.040 this guy's campaign is a corporation called Halopeno Corporation. It's 1:44:44.040 --> 1:44:48.280 owned by a billionaire named Harvey Yates. He's part of 1:44:48.320 --> 1:44:51.519 the family that discovered oil in the state of New Mexico. 1:44:51.600 --> 1:44:54.320 New Mexico is the second largest producer of oil in 1:44:54.360 --> 1:44:59.000 the United States. Harvey Yates donated to every Republican candidate 1:44:59.080 --> 1:45:03.000 this cycle. And I think that what I want to, 1:45:03.120 --> 1:45:06.760 like just just say out loud, because again, my my 1:45:06.920 --> 1:45:11.280 job is normally I talk about energy issues, is that 1:45:12.280 --> 1:45:15.280 on the one hand, you know, we have questions about 1:45:15.280 --> 1:45:18.240 where some of these young men who have you know, 1:45:18.320 --> 1:45:21.320 cashier jobs and security guard jobs, where they came up 1:45:21.320 --> 1:45:23.679 with four thousand dollars to donate to a political candidate 1:45:23.760 --> 1:45:27.160 over the course of a few months. It's not unsurprising 1:45:27.320 --> 1:45:30.840 that an oil corporation donated five thousand dollars, right, But 1:45:30.880 --> 1:45:35.719 but what's worth remembering is is that, you know, these 1:45:37.080 --> 1:45:40.360 these mega corporations of it of all stripes, but especially 1:45:40.400 --> 1:45:45.720 oil and gas um are the backbone of the political 1:45:45.800 --> 1:45:48.800 movement that we are talking about. You know, even if 1:45:48.800 --> 1:45:51.120 we're sort of beating around the bush right, there's there's 1:45:51.160 --> 1:45:55.280 one side here that is dominated very heavily by this 1:45:55.400 --> 1:46:00.479 far right extremism, and they and they and the their 1:46:00.520 --> 1:46:03.280 funders treat them all the same, right, Like, oil and 1:46:03.320 --> 1:46:05.880 gas companies don't care if you're a quote unquote moderate 1:46:05.920 --> 1:46:09.719 Republican or a hardcore right wing maga guy or a 1:46:09.760 --> 1:46:13.280 literal Nazi. They just want somebody who's gonna like get 1:46:13.320 --> 1:46:18.120 in there and you know, give them tax subsidies. Um. 1:46:18.240 --> 1:46:22.120 And you know, and I just the fight over energy 1:46:22.200 --> 1:46:28.120 issues in this country is often framed around climate change, 1:46:28.800 --> 1:46:30.840 as it should be, because I mean, obviously the climate 1:46:30.840 --> 1:46:33.800 crisis is something we can't ignore, but it's so much 1:46:33.880 --> 1:46:36.439 worse than that, and you know, we could do a 1:46:36.439 --> 1:46:39.120 whole other thing about that someday, but I just it's 1:46:39.160 --> 1:46:42.320 just so important. I can't let it go. Um. You know, 1:46:42.479 --> 1:46:45.080 looking looking at at this at this what I'm gonna 1:46:45.080 --> 1:46:48.800 call it domestic terrorists donation sheet, you know, and seeing 1:46:48.800 --> 1:46:50.800 that the number one, you know, his number one donor 1:46:50.880 --> 1:46:53.680 was this oil and gas guy. Like, it's just not 1:46:53.760 --> 1:46:57.600 a coincidence. It really isn't, and it's it's worth remembering. 1:46:57.800 --> 1:46:59.679 So that's that's the last thing I want to plug, 1:46:59.800 --> 1:47:02.400 or last thing I want to say in terms of plugs. 1:47:02.439 --> 1:47:05.719 You can find me on Twitter I'm just Lucas E. Herndon, 1:47:06.360 --> 1:47:09.479 and if you are interested in New Mexico politics things, 1:47:09.520 --> 1:47:12.439 you can follow us now at Progress. Now I am awesome. 1:47:13.080 --> 1:47:15.760 Uh well you cannot find me there, but you can 1:47:15.760 --> 1:47:20.120 find me elsewhere. Um, you'll figure it out. Thank you, Lucas. 1:47:20.160 --> 1:47:23.800 This has been really I mean, good is a weird word, 1:47:23.840 --> 1:47:28.920 but I appreciate it. That's what happened last time too. Yeah. Well, 1:47:29.080 --> 1:47:30.960 I'm sure we'll have you back on in the near future, 1:47:31.000 --> 1:47:34.360 and we will be back tomorrow with some more ship 1:47:34.640 --> 1:47:39.280 that is hopefully, uh fun fun stuff, maybe fun stuff. 1:47:39.600 --> 1:47:41.639 I always get the episodes where it's not it could 1:47:41.640 --> 1:47:45.080 happen here, it's it did happen here, A thing has occurred. 1:47:47.280 --> 1:48:06.200 All thanks Robert, thank you. Welcome to Dick it Happened 1:48:06.240 --> 1:48:12.240 Here podcast about things being absolutely atrocious. I'm your host, 1:48:12.320 --> 1:48:14.960 Meo Ball, and today we're going to do something a 1:48:14.960 --> 1:48:19.240 little different. Instead of our normal sort of escapades through 1:48:19.560 --> 1:48:22.519 the torment and the sort of crumbles of the modern world, 1:48:23.439 --> 1:48:25.519 We're going to take a step back into history to 1:48:25.680 --> 1:48:29.960 trace through the history and class psychology of a kind 1:48:30.000 --> 1:48:33.160 of guy who is a recurring character in the history 1:48:33.160 --> 1:48:37.360 of North America and who are responsible, to a greater 1:48:37.439 --> 1:48:40.160 extent than you think, for some of the worst atrocities 1:48:40.240 --> 1:48:44.760 this world has ever seen. Now, I hesitate to use 1:48:44.800 --> 1:48:49.280 the word class as a way to actually describe these people, 1:48:49.439 --> 1:48:52.800 because the people were going to be talking about are 1:48:52.960 --> 1:48:57.519 from completely different economies, completely different class structures, completely different 1:48:57.520 --> 1:49:02.639 systems of production. So we're sticking with the loose term 1:49:02.760 --> 1:49:07.160 kind of guy. And this kind of guy is a 1:49:07.280 --> 1:49:09.759 kind of guy that I have termed the debtor slaver. 1:49:10.880 --> 1:49:15.559 Now this, at first glance, this this is a confusing term. 1:49:15.640 --> 1:49:18.360 My word processor, at the very least, gets very very 1:49:18.400 --> 1:49:20.479 angry with me every time I try to write it 1:49:20.520 --> 1:49:22.960 and insist that no, no, no, I must in fact 1:49:23.040 --> 1:49:27.759 mean debtor slave. But no, I do not mean debtor slave. 1:49:28.880 --> 1:49:31.880 What I'm actually referring to as a kind of guy 1:49:31.960 --> 1:49:35.200 who is both hopelessly in debt and also in command 1:49:35.240 --> 1:49:40.880 of enormous economic abilitary resources, most often slaves. To get 1:49:40.880 --> 1:49:42.640 a sense of what I'm talking about here, we're going 1:49:42.680 --> 1:49:47.120 to start with the archetypical debtor slaver. Her Nan Cortes. 1:49:49.400 --> 1:49:52.839 Her name Cortes is, by all reputable accounts, an enormous 1:49:52.880 --> 1:49:57.040 piece of ship, a broke noble born in Spain in 1:49:57.120 --> 1:50:01.439 five Cortes managed to parlay an inn initially successful career 1:50:01.520 --> 1:50:05.080 as a sort of adventurer into a slave plantation in 1:50:05.160 --> 1:50:08.000 Cuba after he helped after he helped conquer the island 1:50:08.080 --> 1:50:12.679 in fifteen eleven. From there, through a combination of I shoot, 1:50:12.720 --> 1:50:14.839 you know this is this is actually what the historical 1:50:14.880 --> 1:50:19.320 records say about him, wearing too many gold chains and 1:50:19.520 --> 1:50:24.240 spending too much money on his wife, his finances imploded 1:50:24.240 --> 1:50:27.400 and he fell into debt. This led him to embark 1:50:27.520 --> 1:50:32.719 on his infamous conquest of Mexican attempt to pay office creditors. Here, 1:50:32.720 --> 1:50:34.840 I'm going to turn to the work of the anthropologist 1:50:34.880 --> 1:50:40.880 David Graber. Rest in Peace, Smissy Buddy. Graver describes the 1:50:40.960 --> 1:50:46.080 absolute horror of entire population sold into slavery, slaves with 1:50:46.200 --> 1:50:49.000 faces covered in brands indicating who they've been bought and 1:50:49.120 --> 1:50:54.520 sold by, Entire populations worked to death and minds empires 1:50:54.600 --> 1:50:57.040 drained of wealth by men whose lust for gold and 1:50:57.080 --> 1:51:01.320 silver seemed to know no end. And he somehow, both 1:51:01.400 --> 1:51:03.640 Cortes and his men seemed to have come out of 1:51:03.680 --> 1:51:08.000 the other end of one of the most important conquests 1:51:08.000 --> 1:51:13.479 in human history. Completely broke. Now it's easier to explain 1:51:13.720 --> 1:51:16.720 how Cortes as men came out of this broke. They 1:51:16.720 --> 1:51:20.000 came out of his broke because Cortes and his officers 1:51:20.320 --> 1:51:23.800 were extorting and robbing them mercilessly at literally every step 1:51:23.800 --> 1:51:27.720 of the campaign, by charging them utterly exorbitant prices for 1:51:27.760 --> 1:51:31.640 everything from bandages to like having to buy their own weapons, 1:51:32.160 --> 1:51:34.280 which were being sold by guests who Cortes and his 1:51:34.439 --> 1:51:36.960 officers who had to sort of cabal going on with 1:51:37.000 --> 1:51:41.800 everyone who could sell things. And once the conquest was done, 1:51:41.840 --> 1:51:44.640 Cortes as officers simply seized most of the share of 1:51:44.680 --> 1:51:47.080 the loot from their men as payment for all of 1:51:47.080 --> 1:51:50.200 the stuff that they needed. And I mentioned this not 1:51:50.280 --> 1:51:54.280 to inspire sympathy for the conquistadors like these are. These 1:51:54.280 --> 1:51:56.400 are some of the worst human beings who have ever lived, 1:51:56.479 --> 1:51:59.960 and managing to somehow lose money on one of the 1:52:00.040 --> 1:52:02.479 most brutal sackings of a city in human history is 1:52:02.560 --> 1:52:10.080 like the least of the punishment they deserve. But on 1:52:10.120 --> 1:52:13.240 the other hand, their debt and the debt of Cortez 1:52:13.360 --> 1:52:18.000 himself goes a long way to explain what happened next. 1:52:18.840 --> 1:52:22.439 Here's Graper. These were the men who ended up in 1:52:22.479 --> 1:52:27.240 control of the provinces and who established local administration, taxes 1:52:27.280 --> 1:52:31.080 and labor regimes, which makes it a little easier to 1:52:31.200 --> 1:52:34.920 understand the descriptions of Indians with their faces covered by names, 1:52:34.960 --> 1:52:38.960 like so many counterindorsed checks, with the mind surrounded by 1:52:39.000 --> 1:52:43.680 miles of rotting corpses. We are not dealing with psychology 1:52:43.760 --> 1:52:48.120 of cold, calculating greed, but a more complicated mix of 1:52:48.240 --> 1:52:52.760 shame and righteous indignation and of the frantic urgency of 1:52:52.880 --> 1:52:57.519 debts that would only compound and accumulate. These were almost 1:52:57.560 --> 1:53:02.639 certainly interest bearing loans, in the outrage at the idea that, 1:53:02.920 --> 1:53:05.840 after all they had gone through, they should be held 1:53:05.840 --> 1:53:09.960 to owe anything to begin with. Now, this is the 1:53:10.000 --> 1:53:13.519 sort of trademark psychology of the debtor slaver. It's an 1:53:13.520 --> 1:53:20.040 incredibly toxic mix of shame, indignation, outrage, and desperation that 1:53:20.080 --> 1:53:24.800 breathes an incredible kind of violence and is determined in 1:53:24.880 --> 1:53:28.400 large part by the conditions of modern compound debt itself. 1:53:29.160 --> 1:53:34.200 Here's Graver again. Money always has the potential to become 1:53:34.240 --> 1:53:38.120 a moral imperative one too itself allow it to expand, 1:53:38.360 --> 1:53:41.080 and it can quickly become a morality so imperative that 1:53:41.200 --> 1:53:45.840 all others seem frivolous in comparison. For the debtor, the 1:53:45.960 --> 1:53:50.160 world is reduced to a collection of potential dangers, potential tools, 1:53:50.240 --> 1:53:55.720 and potential merchandise. Even human relationships become a matter of 1:53:55.760 --> 1:54:00.960 cost benefit calculation. Clearly, this is the way the conquistadors 1:54:01.040 --> 1:54:06.120 viewed the worlds that they set out to conquer. Now 1:54:06.160 --> 1:54:09.000 it doesn't take long until not only human relations but 1:54:09.160 --> 1:54:14.400 human beings themselves become a matter of cost benefit calculation, 1:54:14.720 --> 1:54:19.519 a set of merchandise that value could be extracted from. 1:54:19.600 --> 1:54:28.479 And here emerges the debtor slaver. Now, very clearly, all 1:54:28.560 --> 1:54:32.320 debtors do not behave like this. In fact, almost all 1:54:32.400 --> 1:54:36.480 debtors across all places, in all times do not behave 1:54:36.560 --> 1:54:38.480 this way, or the world would be a place that 1:54:38.520 --> 1:54:41.160 makes even how we live in now look like a paradise. 1:54:43.080 --> 1:54:46.080 There's another factor at work here that distinguishes the debtor 1:54:46.160 --> 1:54:51.280 from the debtor slaver, and that's power. The debder slaver 1:54:51.440 --> 1:54:57.280 already wields, or has wielded, enormous power over other people, 1:54:58.080 --> 1:55:02.680 either through direct violence or, as we'll see later, through 1:55:02.680 --> 1:55:06.240 the command of economic power. This is one of the 1:55:06.280 --> 1:55:10.720 products of the righteous indignation Grapery described earlier. These are 1:55:10.760 --> 1:55:13.360 people who are used to wielding power, who are suddenly 1:55:13.400 --> 1:55:16.720 now beholden in a real and immediate way to someone else, 1:55:19.040 --> 1:55:21.920 and so they set about solving the problem the way 1:55:22.000 --> 1:55:27.960 they've solved everything else in their life, throwing violence at it. Now, 1:55:28.720 --> 1:55:32.040 if you've been paying attention closely, you might realize that 1:55:32.080 --> 1:55:35.640 I've actually been describing two different sort of ranks of 1:55:35.720 --> 1:55:39.680 debtor slaves who sort of fuse into one mass, and 1:55:39.760 --> 1:55:46.520 Quarte has his conquisadors. On the lower end, the people 1:55:46.560 --> 1:55:49.800 who kind of loosely be called adventurers, essentially a kind 1:55:49.800 --> 1:55:54.200 of mercenary out for a big score, be that slaves, 1:55:54.320 --> 1:55:58.760 be that land, be that stolen loot that could vault 1:55:58.760 --> 1:56:01.600 them out of debton into the aristocracy. This is the 1:56:01.600 --> 1:56:05.800 sort of built general military base of the conquisator army itself. 1:56:06.760 --> 1:56:10.320 On the higher end, of people like Cortez, who having 1:56:10.360 --> 1:56:12.960 already technically who you know who are who are already 1:56:12.960 --> 1:56:16.920 technically plantation owners, but their own ineptitude, have still managed 1:56:16.960 --> 1:56:21.040 to become heavily indebted. Combined, they form a group responsible 1:56:21.120 --> 1:56:23.320 for three centuries of the greatest evil the world has 1:56:23.360 --> 1:56:27.040 ever seen. Now, these two groups, in a broad sense, 1:56:27.160 --> 1:56:34.600 need each other. The adventurers may have weapons, they may 1:56:34.640 --> 1:56:37.720 have some training, but at the end of the day, 1:56:37.760 --> 1:56:41.560 they have very little in terms of liquid capital at 1:56:41.600 --> 1:56:44.040 Liquid capital is something that you need in order to 1:56:44.080 --> 1:56:47.360 run a military campaign, because in order to keep all 1:56:47.400 --> 1:56:50.320 of these people, all of these sort of adventurers, all 1:56:50.320 --> 1:56:52.120 of these sort of debt or slavers, all of these 1:56:52.120 --> 1:56:56.120 sort of would be conquistadors in the field, you have 1:56:56.280 --> 1:56:59.800 to produce, you know, things like food, things like boots, 1:57:00.200 --> 1:57:04.280 things like medical supplies. And this is where the plantation 1:57:04.320 --> 1:57:07.640 owners come in, because those are people who, even though 1:57:07.640 --> 1:57:10.440 they're enormously in debt, and even though very often they're 1:57:10.480 --> 1:57:13.760 either fleeing their debtors or their all of their debts 1:57:13.800 --> 1:57:16.080 about to be called in, these are people who still 1:57:16.120 --> 1:57:20.840 technically have lines of credit open and they and you 1:57:20.880 --> 1:57:24.280 know also there are also people who sometimes have allies 1:57:24.800 --> 1:57:28.320 in more sort of solvent people in the same class, 1:57:28.400 --> 1:57:31.920 so they're able to sort of funnel liquid capital into 1:57:31.960 --> 1:57:35.360 these sort of ventures. And this is a process that 1:57:35.440 --> 1:57:41.640 we are going to see again after these ads and 1:57:41.880 --> 1:57:45.720 we're back moving forward in time a few hundred years 1:57:45.720 --> 1:57:49.080 and north a few thousand miles, we come into another 1:57:49.120 --> 1:57:52.960 scene of debt, subjugation, and violence, the plantations of the 1:57:53.000 --> 1:57:59.120 American South. Now this is not the primitive, unhallowed fifteen hundreds, 1:57:59.160 --> 1:58:01.560 where slaves would be marked like tally sticks as they 1:58:01.560 --> 1:58:04.640 were passed back and forth between sword and pike wielding 1:58:04.680 --> 1:58:08.040 Spanish barbarians as they slaughtered their way through one of 1:58:08.080 --> 1:58:11.760 the greatest cities the world had ever known. This is 1:58:11.800 --> 1:58:14.880 the benighted eight hundreds. This is the age of steam 1:58:14.920 --> 1:58:18.120 power and railroads, the age of electricity, the advent of 1:58:18.160 --> 1:58:23.040 the global telecommunications network. What would come of this new 1:58:23.120 --> 1:58:26.560 era of progress. One of the greatest of all world 1:58:26.600 --> 1:58:31.120 historical crimes the conversion of human beings into increasingly complex 1:58:31.160 --> 1:58:36.280 financial instruments. Plantation owners, contrary to their depiction in media, 1:58:36.480 --> 1:58:39.760 which they've gotten almost those those people have gotten almost 1:58:39.760 --> 1:58:43.560 as good pr as cops, which is fairly incredible considering 1:58:43.920 --> 1:58:48.320 they haven't really existed as the sort of slave owning 1:58:48.320 --> 1:58:52.320 classes that used to be in you know what, hundred 1:58:52.480 --> 1:58:58.480 hundred years, I don't know. Discuss among yourselves when you 1:58:58.520 --> 1:59:01.280 think share cropping has so to decrease to an amount 1:59:01.320 --> 1:59:03.800 where these people like are no no longer around as 1:59:03.840 --> 1:59:07.600 a class. But you know, okay, just despite the sort 1:59:07.600 --> 1:59:11.240 of pr but these like Southern gentlemen get these people 1:59:11.360 --> 1:59:16.919 are constantly in debt, and they're you know, constantly attempting 1:59:16.960 --> 1:59:18.960 to solve the problem of them being in debt with 1:59:19.120 --> 1:59:21.880 the only thing they know how to do, which is slavery. 1:59:22.560 --> 1:59:24.520 And when I say they're trying to solve this problem 1:59:24.560 --> 1:59:26.720 through slavery, um, we're We're going to get to the 1:59:26.760 --> 1:59:28.839 more complicated ways to try to solve this with slavery. 1:59:29.080 --> 1:59:31.040 One of the big ways they try to solve this 1:59:31.080 --> 1:59:36.560 with slavery is just whipping people harder. It's brutal and horrible, 1:59:37.440 --> 1:59:42.520 and yeah, you know this, this this is a system 1:59:42.600 --> 1:59:45.640 that is who's the the efficiency of which is just 1:59:45.720 --> 1:59:50.960 built on profound human violence. So let's let's let's just 1:59:51.120 --> 1:59:53.280 establish that right off the bat. This is the worst 1:59:53.320 --> 1:59:59.040 kind of slavery anyone's really ever done. Yeah, now, you know, 1:59:59.440 --> 2:00:02.720 another actor for these people essentially turning into debtor slavers 2:00:02.920 --> 2:00:06.320 is the fact that these people are constantly putting themselves 2:00:06.320 --> 2:00:10.640 in self inflicted debt in order to do speculation. And 2:00:11.640 --> 2:00:15.040 this is the part where they start doing ship that 2:00:15.240 --> 2:00:18.720 is difficult for me to even try to explain will 2:00:18.760 --> 2:00:23.680 adequately capturing the horror of the process. The Southern planters 2:00:23.680 --> 2:00:27.720 began to create an entire separate financial network based entirely 2:00:27.760 --> 2:00:30.640 off of the quote unquote value of their slaves and 2:00:30.880 --> 2:00:37.760 their land. From the historian Edward B. Baptiste. Yet enslavers 2:00:37.800 --> 2:00:41.760 had already by the end of the eighteen twenties created 2:00:41.800 --> 2:00:47.040 a highly innovative alternative to existing financial structure. The Consolidated 2:00:47.040 --> 2:00:52.280 Association of Louisiana Planters, despite his name that c APL 2:00:52.520 --> 2:00:55.920 was still a bank, created more leverage for enslaveris at 2:00:56.000 --> 2:01:00.520 less cost and on longer terms. It did so by 2:01:00.560 --> 2:01:06.240 securitizing slaves, hedging even more effectively against the individual investors 2:01:06.320 --> 2:01:10.240 loss so long as the financial system itself did not fail. 2:01:11.000 --> 2:01:15.560 Here is how it worked. Potential borrowers mortgage slaves and 2:01:15.640 --> 2:01:20.000 cultivated land to the c APL, which entitled them to 2:01:20.080 --> 2:01:22.840 borrow up to half of the assessed value of their 2:01:22.880 --> 2:01:28.120 property from the CIAPL and bank notes to convince others 2:01:28.160 --> 2:01:31.720 to accept the banknotes thus distributed at face value. The 2:01:31.800 --> 2:01:36.360 ci ap L convinced the Louisiana legislature to back two 2:01:36.360 --> 2:01:40.840 point five million dollars in bank bonds do win ten 2:01:40.920 --> 2:01:45.080 to fifteen years bearing five percent interest. With the faith 2:01:45.160 --> 2:01:48.720 and credit of the people of the state, the Great 2:01:48.760 --> 2:01:52.680 British Merchant Bank bearing brothers agreed to advance the ci 2:01:52.760 --> 2:01:56.720 APL the equivalent of two point five million dollars in 2:01:56.880 --> 2:02:00.680 Sterling bills. By the way, that is a on fathomable 2:02:00.680 --> 2:02:04.000 amount of money. Now that's not five million dollars status, 2:02:04.480 --> 2:02:06.040 that is it. That is an amount of money that 2:02:06.080 --> 2:02:09.360 will make your ears bleed the equivalent of two point 2:02:09.400 --> 2:02:12.760 five million and sterling bills, and market the bonds on 2:02:12.840 --> 2:02:18.880 European securities markets. The bonds effectively converted in Slaver's biggest investment, 2:02:19.680 --> 2:02:25.000 human beings or quote unquote hands from Maryland and Virginia 2:02:25.040 --> 2:02:29.760 and North Carolina and Kentucky into multiple streams of income, 2:02:30.280 --> 2:02:35.240 all under their control. Since all borrowers were officially stakeholders 2:02:35.240 --> 2:02:39.040 in the bank, the sale of the bonds created a 2:02:39.120 --> 2:02:42.200 high quality credit pool to be lent back to the 2:02:42.240 --> 2:02:46.720 planters at a significantly lower rate, sorry at a rate 2:02:46.760 --> 2:02:49.960 significantly lower than the rate of return they could expect 2:02:49.960 --> 2:02:53.920 that money to produce. The pool could be used for 2:02:53.960 --> 2:02:58.520 all sorts of income generating purposes, buying more slaves to 2:02:58.680 --> 2:03:02.520 produce more cotton and sugar and hence more income, or 2:03:02.640 --> 2:03:07.480 lending to other enslavers. Ver borrowers could pure amid their 2:03:07.560 --> 2:03:11.400 leverage even higher by borrowing on the same collateral from 2:03:11.520 --> 2:03:17.560 multiple lenders, while also getting unsecured short term commercial loans 2:03:17.600 --> 2:03:21.360 from the c APL by purchasing new slaves with the 2:03:21.400 --> 2:03:25.800 money they borrowed and borrowing on them too. They had 2:03:25.840 --> 2:03:31.120 mortgaged their slaves, sometimes multiple times, and sometimes they even 2:03:31.160 --> 2:03:35.800 mortgage fictitious slaves. But in contrast to what Walsh had promised, 2:03:35.880 --> 2:03:41.360 Nulty in this type of mortgage gave the enslaver tremendous 2:03:41.440 --> 2:03:46.120 margins control and flexibility. It was hard to imagine that 2:03:46.160 --> 2:03:50.560 such borrows would be foreclosed even if they fell behind 2:03:50.560 --> 2:03:55.200 on their payments. After all, the borrowers owned the bank. 2:03:56.520 --> 2:03:59.800 Using the c A p L model, slave owners were 2:03:59.800 --> 2:04:03.160 now were able to monetize their slaves by securitizing them 2:04:03.200 --> 2:04:10.720 and then leveraging them multiple times on the international financial markets. Now, okay, 2:04:10.840 --> 2:04:15.160 having having just spent a decent amount of time running 2:04:15.160 --> 2:04:17.160 through the sort of finance of this, I need to 2:04:17.200 --> 2:04:20.960 reiterate these are human beings who are being enslaved and 2:04:21.040 --> 2:04:26.400 tortured constantly, the ownership of whom is being mortgaged to 2:04:26.480 --> 2:04:29.800 a bank and then sold and traded as assets on 2:04:29.840 --> 2:04:33.920 the financial markets. What what they have done here is 2:04:34.480 --> 2:04:39.720 like two thousand eight style financial collapse, like set of 2:04:39.760 --> 2:04:45.440 collateralized loan obligations, except the loans are backed by fucking 2:04:45.520 --> 2:04:49.480 human beings they've forced into slavery. It is a level 2:04:49.560 --> 2:04:54.880 of evil that is almost incomprehensible because the very financial 2:04:54.960 --> 2:04:58.920 language that is necessary to explain what they're doing, by 2:04:59.000 --> 2:05:02.640 necessity can feels the horror of what's actually being done 2:05:03.520 --> 2:05:07.080 and was actually being done here is hundreds of thousands 2:05:07.080 --> 2:05:10.960 of people are being sold into slavery and forced to 2:05:11.000 --> 2:05:14.280 clear land and work on land that has just been 2:05:14.320 --> 2:05:18.440 stolen literally like you know sometimes in some cases like 2:05:18.600 --> 2:05:21.480 the day before, by indigenous people who have just been 2:05:21.520 --> 2:05:24.640 sent on the trail of tears. And this is this 2:05:24.720 --> 2:05:28.360 is being done to fuel these new financial instruments. Now, 2:05:28.840 --> 2:05:33.160 in a somewhat ironic twist, the product of this entire thing, 2:05:33.200 --> 2:05:35.839 the product of all of this land clearing, the product 2:05:35.880 --> 2:05:39.400 of Andrew Jackson's war on the Second Bank of the US, 2:05:40.160 --> 2:05:42.720 the product of all of this sort of speculation is 2:05:44.160 --> 2:05:47.640 the plantations wind up producing too much cotton, too much 2:05:47.640 --> 2:05:54.000 slave cotton, and this quickly becomes an absolute fiasco. Debt 2:05:54.040 --> 2:05:58.880 suddenly outpaced the entire value of the slave crop, and 2:05:58.960 --> 2:06:01.880 you know, the entire financial system begins to implode. So 2:06:02.000 --> 2:06:04.520 it starts, it starts in sort of the UK and 2:06:04.560 --> 2:06:06.920 the European markets that had taken a bunch of these 2:06:07.040 --> 2:06:11.760 these sort of slave bonds. But eventually the financial collapse 2:06:11.800 --> 2:06:14.000 spreads and you know, as we heard in the article, 2:06:14.160 --> 2:06:16.360 right the way these banks are set off, the way 2:06:16.400 --> 2:06:20.120 these again, like these these banks that are just all 2:06:20.160 --> 2:06:23.280 of the bank is just slaves. And I guess I 2:06:23.480 --> 2:06:25.920 guess I should also take an aside here to mention that, 2:06:26.600 --> 2:06:29.440 like the normal banks are also doing stuff like this. 2:06:29.960 --> 2:06:33.360 It's just that the South not being content to just 2:06:33.440 --> 2:06:37.080 have normal banks taking you know, doing mortgages like they're 2:06:37.120 --> 2:06:41.120 taking out mortgages on houses with slaves is collateral. Uh, 2:06:41.200 --> 2:06:43.640 They've they've credit sided to create like their in their 2:06:43.680 --> 2:06:47.960 own entire financial network that's just slaves and nothing else. Well, 2:06:48.080 --> 2:06:52.600 land too, but yeah, slaves in the land. This entire 2:06:52.640 --> 2:06:57.960 thing sort of just collapses in on itself, and this 2:06:58.080 --> 2:07:02.240 leads to it to an even larger mass of dead 2:07:02.280 --> 2:07:06.320 or slavery plantation doners. And this is where we turned 2:07:06.480 --> 2:07:11.880 from plantation slavery to some good old fashioned conquistadoring. What 2:07:12.080 --> 2:07:15.200 of the sort of myths of slavery with the way 2:07:15.200 --> 2:07:18.720 that you know, slavery has been sort of understood in 2:07:19.360 --> 2:07:22.960 the West, particularly in sort of Europe, well, particularly in 2:07:22.960 --> 2:07:25.520 the U S and the UK, which have these sort 2:07:25.560 --> 2:07:33.080 of like complexes about, you know, like this sort of 2:07:33.120 --> 2:07:39.440 inevitability of ebolitionism and the sort of benevolent empire against 2:07:39.720 --> 2:07:43.120 abolition or whatever. You know, there's there's this sort of 2:07:43.160 --> 2:07:45.280 like that you get these economic organis to that that 2:07:45.360 --> 2:07:48.480 the people people will argue that you know, slavery was 2:07:48.560 --> 2:07:52.680 like going to collapse anyways, like people just let it go, 2:07:52.920 --> 2:07:56.480 it would have fell on apart, and that that is 2:07:56.520 --> 2:07:58.960 just sort of nonsense. And one of the things that 2:07:59.000 --> 2:08:01.640 this could one of the things that this conceals is 2:08:01.680 --> 2:08:07.760 that slave power was constantly expansionary. It's never sort of 2:08:07.760 --> 2:08:11.000 like slavery was never a system that was sort of 2:08:11.040 --> 2:08:15.040 just contained in one place, right. It was always pushing, 2:08:15.080 --> 2:08:17.720 it was always attempting to you know, seize new land. 2:08:18.280 --> 2:08:20.440 It was always attempting to seize new slaves. Was it 2:08:20.520 --> 2:08:23.560 was a system that could only really survive if it 2:08:23.640 --> 2:08:26.600 was constantly able to seize new territory and seize new 2:08:26.600 --> 2:08:31.200 slaves in order to work it. And so there's a 2:08:31.200 --> 2:08:34.800 lot of sort of products of this, right One of 2:08:34.840 --> 2:08:37.760 the sort of earlier ones, you get these settlers pushing west, 2:08:37.880 --> 2:08:40.480 attempting to turn sort of new states and the slave states. 2:08:41.280 --> 2:08:43.920 And these are you know, these are often, like the 2:08:43.960 --> 2:08:46.920 settlers here, often the sort of men like ephemistically described 2:08:46.960 --> 2:08:49.280 as adventurers with like you know, these are people who 2:08:49.480 --> 2:08:53.400 portize right like, they are people desperately attempting to stay 2:08:53.440 --> 2:08:55.880 one step ahead of their creditors by invoking the time 2:08:55.920 --> 2:08:59.400 honored American tradition of slaughtering indigenous people for their land, 2:09:00.080 --> 2:09:02.360 which you know, could then be turned over to speculators, 2:09:02.360 --> 2:09:04.720 you could be turned over to the short of wealthier backers. 2:09:06.280 --> 2:09:09.040 And these men and in this period, these are almost 2:09:09.080 --> 2:09:13.360 always men. I thought that's going to change pretty soon. 2:09:14.640 --> 2:09:16.960 But these men are so violent and so disruptive that 2:09:17.000 --> 2:09:19.360 at various points in the late seventeen hundreds and early 2:09:19.400 --> 2:09:23.560 eight the US like attempts to stop them from settling 2:09:23.600 --> 2:09:27.640 any further less, they sort of disturb American foreign policy efforts. Um. 2:09:27.680 --> 2:09:30.880 And these efforts fail, and the product of this is 2:09:30.880 --> 2:09:34.360 that manifest destinies. You know, trail of corpses pushes even 2:09:34.400 --> 2:09:39.160 further and further west. Now by the by the eighteen fifties, 2:09:39.240 --> 2:09:41.720 there there's a new sort of conquistador who's setting out 2:09:41.760 --> 2:09:43.920 to you know, conquering the name of the cross and 2:09:43.960 --> 2:09:48.120 paying off their creditors. And they're called filibusters. Now this 2:09:48.200 --> 2:09:51.680 is actually where these people are where the term filibuster 2:09:51.800 --> 2:09:55.120 as a sort of like like thing that you do 2:09:55.280 --> 2:09:57.480 in the sentence and not let people do stuff like that. This, 2:09:57.480 --> 2:10:00.440 this is where that comes from. It's these people. Um, 2:10:00.480 --> 2:10:05.760 these are okay, So you know, the official descriptions of 2:10:05.800 --> 2:10:10.400 them will say things like private armies. I there are 2:10:10.480 --> 2:10:14.560 more these kind of like ragged bands of like slavery 2:10:14.640 --> 2:10:18.800 mongering gennis ideas who are backed by you know, largely 2:10:18.800 --> 2:10:22.040 by southern plantation owners, sometimes by southern states, occasionally by 2:10:22.080 --> 2:10:25.240 just northern banks. Because the place they're trying to go 2:10:25.400 --> 2:10:27.640 somewhere the banks. The northern banks want to sort of 2:10:27.640 --> 2:10:30.760 seize control of. And you know, these people set out 2:10:30.800 --> 2:10:34.040 to conquer new slave states by you know, straight up 2:10:34.040 --> 2:10:38.080 season control of places like Cuba or Mexico. They do 2:10:38.080 --> 2:10:41.360 a bunch of this stuff in Texas doesn't really work, 2:10:41.440 --> 2:10:45.920 but you know, they mean part of the complicated thing 2:10:45.920 --> 2:10:49.960 I'm talking about the filibusters is that like, in some sense, 2:10:50.360 --> 2:10:54.160 the most successful like attempt to do something like this 2:10:54.440 --> 2:10:57.840 was actually Texas, but those people weren't really feel about 2:10:57.840 --> 2:11:01.480 like the people who actually successful le sees control of Texas, 2:11:01.560 --> 2:11:05.280 like Sam Adam and his sort of crew of merry 2:11:05.360 --> 2:11:09.320 miscreant slave owners. Those guys aren't technically filibusters, but you know, 2:11:09.360 --> 2:11:13.040 they they do sort of succeed in bringing in Texas 2:11:13.360 --> 2:11:17.480 as a slave state. But yeah, you know, I mean 2:11:17.520 --> 2:11:20.240 these people are they keep they keep launching invasions of 2:11:20.320 --> 2:11:23.600 fucking Cuba, They keep launching us invasions everywhere. There's a 2:11:23.600 --> 2:11:27.400 really great movie called Walker that's a sort of fictionalized 2:11:27.400 --> 2:11:30.280 account of probably the most famous filibuster, a guy named 2:11:30.320 --> 2:11:33.600 William Walker, and well, okay, so it starts with his 2:11:33.640 --> 2:11:38.080 attempt to like conquered Mexico, which doesn't go well, but 2:11:38.160 --> 2:11:40.680 then it sets out for his attempt to conquered Nicaragua, 2:11:40.720 --> 2:11:43.960 which like kind of works like he actually takes Nicaragua 2:11:44.080 --> 2:11:47.760 for a little bit. You know, but this this this 2:11:47.760 --> 2:11:49.760 movie version of it's also like it's an anti war 2:11:49.840 --> 2:11:53.839 film about the US backing the contrast, and it rules. 2:11:53.880 --> 2:11:56.360 I'm talking about it because nobody's ever watched this thing. 2:11:56.920 --> 2:12:00.280 And the studio when when they they actually figure about 2:12:00.320 --> 2:12:03.080 what Walker was and that it was, you know, like 2:12:03.080 --> 2:12:07.680 an an anti war film about the contrast, they literally 2:12:07.760 --> 2:12:11.880 killed the entire movie and the director Alex Cox, here's 2:12:11.880 --> 2:12:13.840 the guy you should repo man like he literally never 2:12:13.840 --> 2:12:18.240 worked in Hollywood again after this. So yeah, go watch Walker. 2:12:18.400 --> 2:12:21.000 Understand it's a little it's a bit fictionalized. It's mostly 2:12:21.040 --> 2:12:23.800 an anti war film about the contrast. But you know, 2:12:24.160 --> 2:12:25.839 part of what you trying to trace out and personally 2:12:25.840 --> 2:12:28.680 that is very important about this is that you know, 2:12:28.800 --> 2:12:33.480 the there's this there's these sort of lineages of American colonialism, 2:12:33.560 --> 2:12:36.960 and part of these linear edges is that you know, 2:12:37.080 --> 2:12:40.560 like the that literally does not matter like what century 2:12:40.560 --> 2:12:42.240 you're in, the US is trying to see his control 2:12:42.280 --> 2:12:45.800 of Nicaragua. Now, okay, so but back back to the 2:12:45.800 --> 2:12:49.720 solo philibusters mainline. Unlike the conquistadors who were kind of 2:12:49.720 --> 2:12:53.160 like I don't know, they had a combination of being 2:12:53.160 --> 2:12:59.000 really really lucky and also like GENU widely having some 2:12:59.040 --> 2:13:02.360 pretty good leadership even though you know, good leadership but 2:13:02.560 --> 2:13:08.440 for evil I those guys were really sucessful. The Philipbuzzers 2:13:09.200 --> 2:13:13.480 they mostly failed because again this is these these are 2:13:13.480 --> 2:13:17.200 mostly sort of just like bands of like marauders. They 2:13:17.200 --> 2:13:21.040 don't they barely have supply lines, like I don't know. 2:13:21.160 --> 2:13:25.800 Sometimes they have real weapons, but they're not especially competent. 2:13:26.160 --> 2:13:30.440 But what what what they did do is they kill 2:13:30.480 --> 2:13:33.120 a lot of people. And this this is one of 2:13:33.120 --> 2:13:38.080 those things that's sort of like I don't know, it 2:13:38.160 --> 2:13:41.120 gets sort of romanticized or gets sort of like brushed over. 2:13:41.360 --> 2:13:44.840 Is that like, yeah, I know, these these people like 2:13:46.280 --> 2:13:50.200 they're they're like these groups are basically like rolling lynch mobs, 2:13:51.160 --> 2:13:54.280 and so you know, there they'll they'll be doing something 2:13:54.360 --> 2:13:56.800 that run into a town. They'll just they'll just kill everyone. 2:13:56.880 --> 2:14:00.360 They will enslave people, they were rape people, they do 2:14:00.600 --> 2:14:05.640 ship that is just they're absolutely imborrant and that's that's 2:14:05.680 --> 2:14:08.600 the sort of legacy of this stuff. And you know 2:14:08.680 --> 2:14:11.120 they probably would have kept doing it, and you know, 2:14:11.160 --> 2:14:13.440 except they were stopped right one of One of the 2:14:13.480 --> 2:14:17.440 sort of like legacies of these people is eventually the 2:14:17.480 --> 2:14:22.480 sort of slave powers like wind up and Bleeding Kansas, 2:14:22.520 --> 2:14:24.360 which is the sort of semi civil war between the 2:14:24.400 --> 2:14:27.560 pro slavery anti slavery forces in Kansas that leads to 2:14:27.560 --> 2:14:31.040 the regular civil war. But you know, I mean, I 2:14:31.280 --> 2:14:33.440 think I think it's sort of important to understand about 2:14:35.360 --> 2:14:38.280 this entire thing is that these people just kept accumulating 2:14:38.280 --> 2:14:40.640 power and kept accumulating power and kept a commulating power 2:14:40.800 --> 2:14:44.200 or someone stopped them. And that was also true of 2:14:44.280 --> 2:14:46.400 the conquisadors, right, Like I mean, you know, and like 2:14:46.520 --> 2:14:49.640 arguably arguably the sort of sentence those people are still 2:14:49.680 --> 2:14:54.200 in power, but like you know, the Spanish were not 2:14:54.360 --> 2:14:57.640 run out of the places that they had conquered until 2:14:57.640 --> 2:15:02.160 people sort of fought them. Now, the last thing I 2:15:02.200 --> 2:15:06.040 want to do is we're also not free of this 2:15:06.200 --> 2:15:10.680 kind of guy. Um. It kind of manifests in different 2:15:10.680 --> 2:15:14.680 ways in sort of more recent times. I think probably 2:15:14.760 --> 2:15:18.200 the the closest we have to the sort of like 2:15:18.240 --> 2:15:21.920 corporate cortes thing are the people behind the sort of 2:15:22.320 --> 2:15:24.680 it gets it gets rereaded as emergency and acquisitions, but 2:15:24.720 --> 2:15:31.320 the people behind the like leverage, buy out um like 2:15:31.960 --> 2:15:35.760 corporate radar stuff on Wall Street in the eighties, who 2:15:36.280 --> 2:15:38.000 you know. And then the reason, the reason they sort 2:15:38.000 --> 2:15:40.360 of they behave and they think in a lot of 2:15:40.400 --> 2:15:42.160 the very in a lot of the same ways as 2:15:42.240 --> 2:15:44.240 as these sort of as a sort of debtor or slavers, 2:15:45.160 --> 2:15:49.800 is that they're their financial techniques leave them in basically 2:15:49.840 --> 2:15:54.360 the same situation as um as as as your cortes, 2:15:54.480 --> 2:15:56.640 which is that the way that these people take over 2:15:56.680 --> 2:15:59.080 a company and these these are basically financed people. These 2:15:59.120 --> 2:16:01.880 are investors who have figured out a way to seize 2:16:01.920 --> 2:16:03.760 control of companies. And the way they figured out to 2:16:03.760 --> 2:16:08.160 do it is they they essentially they still bonds to 2:16:08.160 --> 2:16:11.880 other investors. So the short version of it is that, yeah, 2:16:11.920 --> 2:16:15.320 they they go into an enormous amount of debt personally 2:16:15.560 --> 2:16:17.440 right in order to you know, have enough money to 2:16:17.560 --> 2:16:20.600 just buy up the stock prices of the company. And 2:16:20.640 --> 2:16:23.480 you know, they say, okay, we're gonna buy say say 2:16:23.480 --> 2:16:25.440 say your stock price thirty five dollars. They're like, okay, 2:16:25.440 --> 2:16:28.640 we're gonna buy the stock at forty and unless the 2:16:28.640 --> 2:16:31.840 company can you know, like somehow raise or stock price 2:16:31.880 --> 2:16:34.640 above that in order to fend them off, you know, 2:16:34.760 --> 2:16:36.920 this one person who's taking on an enormous amount of 2:16:36.959 --> 2:16:39.480 debt now suddenly just owns the company, and he could 2:16:39.480 --> 2:16:41.080 transfer the debt onto the company, and then he has 2:16:41.120 --> 2:16:43.320 to start, you know, just stripping assets from it, right. 2:16:44.000 --> 2:16:45.720 He has to find ways to make money. He has 2:16:45.760 --> 2:16:49.119 to find ways to sort of raise the stock price 2:16:49.120 --> 2:16:51.400 of this thing, you know, and this is usually done 2:16:51.440 --> 2:16:55.520 by like stripping people's pensions, by firing people, by just 2:16:55.640 --> 2:17:00.280 destroying entire like entire sort of like people's lively, this 2:17:00.360 --> 2:17:02.960 is done by just dismantling companies wholesale like toys. R 2:17:03.040 --> 2:17:05.600 Us is the last company that sort of famously had 2:17:05.640 --> 2:17:07.480 this happened to them. They just get completely dismembered. And 2:17:07.480 --> 2:17:12.880 they get completely dismembered because the people who buy these companies, right, 2:17:13.680 --> 2:17:16.560 and you know this eventually shot transiento firms instead, etcetera, etcetera. 2:17:16.600 --> 2:17:22.360 But those people are also unbelievably in debt, right, and 2:17:22.920 --> 2:17:24.760 you know, it's that that they've imposed on themselves. It 2:17:24.840 --> 2:17:27.840 isn't that you know, the sort of psychological effects of 2:17:27.879 --> 2:17:33.120 it are very similar. And you know, I think I 2:17:33.160 --> 2:17:39.279 think the thing about sort of like the late century 2:17:39.320 --> 2:17:43.800 is that the violence gets outsourced. So you know, these 2:17:43.840 --> 2:17:47.440 people still have slaves, but the slaves are like you 2:17:47.480 --> 2:17:50.280 know that the slaves are owned by a contractor who's 2:17:50.320 --> 2:17:55.680 our contractor of a contractor like somewhere way down the line. 2:17:58.000 --> 2:18:01.920 But you know, the the sort of strategic stuff and 2:18:02.000 --> 2:18:05.240 the way that these people behave is very similar. And 2:18:05.480 --> 2:18:07.360 I think it's worth knowing that there's there's two there's 2:18:07.360 --> 2:18:08.959 people who there's coop of people who come out of 2:18:08.959 --> 2:18:12.360 this era who are very important now. One is that 2:18:12.400 --> 2:18:13.640 one of the people who comes out of this sort 2:18:13.640 --> 2:18:16.200 of eighties and nineties era who was also constantly in 2:18:16.240 --> 2:18:18.760 debt and it's also just sort of like a murderous, 2:18:19.000 --> 2:18:23.760 like incredibly vengeful person who who's also sort of dealing 2:18:24.000 --> 2:18:28.840 with these same kinds of like you know, who's tapping 2:18:28.879 --> 2:18:30.600 into the sort of emotions of the sort of like 2:18:30.680 --> 2:18:36.320 indignation and outrage and desperation, like is Donald Trump and 2:18:36.440 --> 2:18:38.560 you know in Toronald Trump, I think is a sort 2:18:38.560 --> 2:18:40.040 of tragedy version of it. And then you get to 2:18:40.080 --> 2:18:44.440 see it We've been getting to see it with with 2:18:44.480 --> 2:18:46.520 Elon Musk as the sort of fest version of it 2:18:46.560 --> 2:18:48.920 where he's you know, increasingly desperate that try to like 2:18:49.000 --> 2:18:51.879 dig himself out of the hole that he got by 2:18:51.920 --> 2:18:54.879 buying by having to leverage himself so much to buy Twitter. 2:18:56.280 --> 2:18:58.920 But yeah, we are we we remain haunted by the 2:18:58.959 --> 2:19:03.039 specter of this kind of guy. And they've done they've 2:19:03.040 --> 2:19:05.280 done enormous harm to the world. They're probably going to 2:19:05.360 --> 2:19:10.440 keep doing enormous harm in the world. And yeah, but 2:19:10.440 --> 2:19:15.800 but again, I I think it is worth thinking about 2:19:15.959 --> 2:19:19.480 them psychologically and worth understanding that it's not that, you know, 2:19:19.560 --> 2:19:22.680 like at the core of sort of like the capitalist 2:19:22.680 --> 2:19:26.120 death machine, are not necessarily these like incredibly cold, rational, 2:19:26.200 --> 2:19:28.680 calculating people. It's a bunch of people who are frantic, 2:19:28.720 --> 2:19:31.880 who are desperate, who are very very angry, and that 2:19:31.920 --> 2:19:33.800 doesn't make them sort of you know, it doesn't make 2:19:33.840 --> 2:19:39.119 them more sympathetic. It just makes them more violence. Hey, 2:19:39.200 --> 2:19:42.320 we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from 2:19:42.320 --> 2:19:44.879 now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could 2:19:44.920 --> 2:19:47.240 Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For 2:19:47.400 --> 2:19:50.120 more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool 2:19:50.160 --> 2:19:52.160 zone media dot com, or check us out on the 2:19:52.160 --> 2:19:54.880 I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen 2:19:54.920 --> 2:19:57.680 to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could happen here, 2:19:57.760 --> 2:20:01.200 updated monthly at cool Zone Media, dot Calm, slash sources. 2:20:01.400 --> 2:20:02.240 Thanks for listening.