Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be nothing new here for you. But you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Garrison started talking about crimes,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hold off on president crime at all. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: James said the word crimes, and James is the one
Speaker 1: that brought up doing crimes. I would never talk about
Speaker 1: doing crimes. Oh, welcome to don't it happened here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we never talk about anything illegal. Um with us
Speaker 1: today is myself, Garrison, James Stout, and Mia Wong. It's right,
Speaker 1: we are talking about crimes today. Actually, but we're not
Speaker 1: doing any crimes, Crisley, because we never would. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: for for for example, well, actually I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's technically illegal to to talk about jury
Speaker 1: nullification on air. I don't I know. I don't think
Speaker 1: they can stop you from saying the words. I think
Speaker 1: they can. I think I think you You don't have
Speaker 1: the rights to do it, but you have the ability.
Speaker 1: I think is a way a lawyer explained it to me.
Speaker 1: But they also said I'm not your lawyer before that.
Speaker 1: So take that with a great assault. Yeah. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: probably say you shouldn't be describing how to do jury
Speaker 1: notification or googling it. If that's in your future, stay
Speaker 1: tuned for our upcoming episode, how to yeah your Jury. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how to Nullify your jury. That will be our final episode. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now we're not talking about jury today. We are
Speaker 1: talking about crime. The people doing the crime in this episode,
Speaker 1: shockingly are the cops. So I want to start on
Speaker 1: October twenty eight, twenty sixteen. Some of you can probably
Speaker 1: cast your mind back then, the last week of the
Speaker 1: pre Trump era. Yeah yeah, So inside the Captain's office
Speaker 1: at the sheriff station of Rancho, San Diego, one of
Speaker 1: the most expensive ZIP codes in the country, Captain Marco
Speaker 1: Garmo was making a deal. Garmo, along with Giovanni Tilotta,
Speaker 1: who's a licensed San Diego gun dealer, sold a glockhandgun
Speaker 1: an a R fifteen Star rifle and a Smith and
Speaker 1: Western handgun to local defense attorney. Because Baje inside Garmo's office,
Speaker 1: Garmo coordinated backdated paperwork to avoid the ten day waiting
Speaker 1: period required by California law for handgun purchases and supplied
Speaker 1: Bajaj with misappropriated San Diego Sheriff's Department issued ammunition. Oh fun, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so's he's really thriving in his side hustle here, Marco Garmo.
Speaker 1: I've used the word misappropriated because that's what the DOJ used.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the more vernacular term would be stolen. Here.
Speaker 1: I think I think he's so what do you say issued?
Speaker 1: Is this MO that like like was supposed to be
Speaker 1: given to a coup or is the stuff they had
Speaker 1: an impound? Uh No, I think it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: given to a cop. I think hell yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he's good. I think he's gone into the armory and
Speaker 1: just grabbed a few box set of AMMO and stole them.
Speaker 1: Cops have just turned into the Afghan Army. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, the Ana they've got the what's that
Speaker 1: guy who had the like help? He had their like
Speaker 1: night vision on backwards or something that was that was
Speaker 1: a Taliban guy. Yeah, interestingly, what they have in the
Speaker 1: compound me, it's another story that maybe we should do
Speaker 1: another day. I also prate that, like the weapons that
Speaker 1: are impounded, Jesus Christ, they have some shit like they
Speaker 1: have like a full auto shotgun, like a bunch of
Speaker 1: NFA items and they keep them all for like lab
Speaker 1: testing in theory, like so they can so they can
Speaker 1: be like, oh, this person was shot, what does that
Speaker 1: wound look like? Well, let's get our armory out from
Speaker 1: the fucking end shoots and ballistics gel and see if
Speaker 1: that helps us. And it's like that scene from two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight The Dark Night where Christian Bale is
Speaker 1: Batman fires a ridiculously loud gun in a sealed bugger,
Speaker 1: absolutely destroying both his and Alfred's hearing for the entire
Speaker 1: rest of the movie. That's why they make so many
Speaker 1: bad choices. Fascinating. Yeah, I didn't know that was a
Speaker 1: character called Alfred and Batman. Yeah, they really welshed him
Speaker 1: on the names, because like, Batman is a cool name,
Speaker 1: the joker cool name. Do you don't know who Alfred? No,
Speaker 1: the one British character in Badman. He is your culture.
Speaker 1: When people think of British people, they think of Alfred J. Pennyworths,
Speaker 1: not a costume Garrison. Well, so I have a bad
Speaker 1: bad news yea. They disgusted that this is the point
Speaker 1: of reference, not one of our many wonderful modern British
Speaker 1: role models. Alfred's great. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, yeah, no, okay.
Speaker 1: He is a working class zero, he was a he
Speaker 1: was a wait our butlers are working class right, oh god,
Speaker 1: discourse off very quickly. I would say petty bourgeoi. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of complicated because you're like working directly for
Speaker 1: a billionaire and you're living in the billionaire's house and
Speaker 1: you're living a very upper class life, but you still
Speaker 1: are working. It's kind of what is your relationship to
Speaker 1: the meta production? Though? Oh that this? Wow? Well, but
Speaker 1: it's all service, Like I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 1: we have to do a divide here between because I
Speaker 1: think I think the gender division of labor between made
Speaker 1: and butler is very important. I love Howard debating how
Speaker 1: if Alfred is based. Yeah, yeah, so you can find
Speaker 1: Garrison on Twitter. I right, Okay, so we made to
Speaker 1: paragraph too everywhere. In February twenty nineteen, federal agents executed
Speaker 1: a search horrn at the Rancho San Diego chaff station.
Speaker 1: Later that year, they arrested Captain Marco Garmo. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, Garmo pleaded guilty to trafficking over one hundred
Speaker 1: guns which were deemed unsafe for civilians. His sentence, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say civilians because cops are also civilians, right, but
Speaker 1: non cops. His sentencing, the judge said Garmo was almost
Speaker 1: becoming a mob boss of sorts. What you want to
Speaker 1: strive for as a cherish captain. Garmo admitted to engaging
Speaker 1: in straw purchases, which is buying guns with the intent
Speaker 1: of transferring them to someone else. He also acknowledged tipping
Speaker 1: off an illegal marijuana dispensary that was about to be
Speaker 1: searched in order based Nothing this guy did is inherently wrong.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that he only did it to certain people,
Speaker 1: and so that was his cousin who earned a marijuana's fensury.
Speaker 1: He was also engaged in illegal consulting with other dispensaries,
Speaker 1: which I don't bulliant. Yeah, I'm getting his consulting emerged
Speaker 1: to being like, Hey, the cops are on their way tomorrow,
Speaker 1: maybe stop being a dispensary by the time they arrive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems like a that that that that that that
Speaker 1: that seems like a very classic the cop to take
Speaker 1: a cut kind of Yeah, I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: A lot of the things in this DJ thing are like,
Speaker 1: really fantastically phrased. So Garmo and his Code A friend
Speaker 1: and wail Will Anton also helped paying clients skip the
Speaker 1: waiting list for a difficult to tain concealed carry permit.
Speaker 1: As part of this scheme, Anton took a legal cash
Speaker 1: payment to accounty clerk who ensured favorable treatment for his clients.
Speaker 1: Garmo might have flown a little too close to the
Speaker 1: sun with this one, but it's not actually that unusual
Speaker 1: for gun laws to have carve outs for rich people,
Speaker 1: and often those carve outs don't involve cops stealing AMMO.
Speaker 1: But it's pretty easy if you're wealthy enough to work
Speaker 1: your way around firearms legislation, which is kind of what
Speaker 1: I want to get into today. So while Garmo did
Speaker 1: go to jail for gun trafficking and multiple other crime,
Speaker 1: he was doing the sale of so called off rous
Speaker 1: to firearms by law infolvement officers. In California, it's relatively
Speaker 1: common and there's not much that's been done to prevent
Speaker 1: it since Gamo was arrested. So to understand this, I
Speaker 1: think you have to understand California is incredibly complicated firearms laws,
Speaker 1: which probably requires like an undergraduate degree. But to give
Speaker 1: a brief summary, California introduced its gun roster in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, and like many of our laws, it
Speaker 1: has its roots in entrenching systemic inequalities. In this case,
Speaker 1: legislators were trying to ban something called a Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Special and people know what people know what that is. No,
Speaker 1: it's it's a small, concealable, affordable hanggun. It's like there
Speaker 1: were there were this, there was this, these guns that
Speaker 1: came out in like the eighties and nineties that were
Speaker 1: like super small, very cheap, very simple, very concealable and ship.
Speaker 1: Well that's the thing, right, So this is really fascinating.
Speaker 1: So in practice, right, these were at least culturally associated
Speaker 1: with like black communities, right that that's you see them
Speaker 1: in sometimes like certainly like there was a stigmatic reference
Speaker 1: to like a disease guns that is causing violence, and
Speaker 1: we're not going to fucking look at inequality at all, right,
Speaker 1: We're just going to ban the guns. Are they shit?
Speaker 1: As an interesting question, because California introduces legislation which said
Speaker 1: that handguns had to be dropped safe, so that means
Speaker 1: you can drop them and they can't go off. That
Speaker 1: is generally a desirable feature. And a handgun able to
Speaker 1: fire six hundred rounds without more than six malfunctions and
Speaker 1: have a manual safety device. And later on they added
Speaker 1: another thing that would make the gun only fire when
Speaker 1: it had a magazine inserted. And they put all these
Speaker 1: rules in place, and has said manufacturers had to submit
Speaker 1: guns for testing. All the guns they were going after
Speaker 1: pass the testing, So I guess they're not as shit
Speaker 1: as one the one had suspected, which is kind of
Speaker 1: like that that is the intent and they are laboring
Speaker 1: under that misapprehension. But it seems like these guns, which
Speaker 1: are very cheap, actually pass a testing just fine. So
Speaker 1: if you look at the California roster, so once those
Speaker 1: guns have passed that testing, right, they go on a roster,
Speaker 1: and that roster like it's done by skew so like
Speaker 1: by the individual code that's given to the gun, and
Speaker 1: you could look up the California roster. It it's online
Speaker 1: still and like there are hundreds of cheap small hand
Speaker 1: guns that are on it. So they've failed in that regard.
Speaker 1: But they created this kind of bizarre system where most
Speaker 1: manufacturers had to make a California compliant model if they
Speaker 1: wanted to sell in California, right, because it had to
Speaker 1: have a magazine disconnect, which means that the gun won't
Speaker 1: fire without the magazine in, which is not a usual
Speaker 1: thing for semi automatic handguns to have. Like if you
Speaker 1: are outside of California and you have like a normal
Speaker 1: like a glock for instance, it doesn't have that, but
Speaker 1: you would need one that did in California. So that
Speaker 1: means that these guns are going to have a much
Speaker 1: much smaller economy of scale, right, They're going to be
Speaker 1: more expensive. Manufacturers also have to pay for the testing
Speaker 1: and submit three models, So what de facto means is
Speaker 1: that fewer guns are available in California. It doesn't really
Speaker 1: become a big issue until twenty thirteen when the DOJ
Speaker 1: in California add a micro stamping requirement. But they added
Speaker 1: it earlier actually, but in twenty thirteen they certified it
Speaker 1: was possible for missing. But so is the roster the
Speaker 1: list of guns are allowed to buy, yes, okay, And
Speaker 1: if it doesn't appear on the roster, we're going to
Speaker 1: get into that. You can actually buy it, but you
Speaker 1: can't buy it new from a store, so you can
Speaker 1: buy it used. And there are two ways that these
Speaker 1: used handguns can enter the state, right. One of them
Speaker 1: is if you move to the state. So let's say
Speaker 1: Garrison moves to LA right, and they bring with horrifying yeah,
Speaker 1: just enjoy just just like a Vulcan mini gun. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: They bring with them an M one Abrams tank. It's
Speaker 1: a balloon shooting gun. Yeah. Every one of the West
Speaker 1: Coast has to have one now, and so it's actually
Speaker 1: different from rifles, SEDDI. But they bring with them pistols,
Speaker 1: and those pistols are not on the California roster. They
Speaker 1: can keep them and they can sell them right to
Speaker 1: a California resident. The other way that these guns can
Speaker 1: enter and be sold is cops are exempt from the roster, right,
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And when I say cops,
Speaker 1: I am speaking in the broadest possible terms because a
Speaker 1: variety of peace officers are exempt, to include employees of
Speaker 1: the California State Horse Racing Board. Sometimes park rangers can
Speaker 1: do this, right. I think it depends what you are
Speaker 1: within the park ranger, within the park, and it seems
Speaker 1: to be there is actually a list, right that's in
Speaker 1: the legislation, but it seems to be largely like at
Speaker 1: the discretion of the gun shop. Like in practice they
Speaker 1: could get in trouble. But like I've heard of like
Speaker 1: firefighters and EMTs being able to purchase off roster guns,
Speaker 1: which is fucking not in the legislation, Like it is
Speaker 1: also kind of funny, but like U, in theory, it
Speaker 1: would depend on what unit you're in, or they could
Speaker 1: contact your like park ranger office and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: this this girl is trying to buy a gun, like
Speaker 1: she used us at work, because the idea is that
Speaker 1: they would they would have the most up to date
Speaker 1: weapons to carry at work, right, or that they could
Speaker 1: buy themselves even though they get issued guns. So like
Speaker 1: if you need a gun as a cop, you get
Speaker 1: issued a gun, right. So what it means in practice
Speaker 1: is that there's a thriving market and offer us to
Speaker 1: firearms but there's also massive price premium. Right, they often
Speaker 1: sell off for two or three times there MSRP, even
Speaker 1: though they're used. And I did a little digging into this,
Speaker 1: and I looked at one particular item, which was a
Speaker 1: P three sixty five, a sig P three sixty five,
Speaker 1: which is a fairly like a popular pistol. Right. But
Speaker 1: after twenty thirteen, California doesn't didn't allow any new guns
Speaker 1: to be added to the roster unless they micro stamp
Speaker 1: their bullets. Micro Stamping is a little feature where the
Speaker 1: firing pin of the gun stamps the casing, not the bullet,
Speaker 1: with a little, kind little tiny stamp which is unique
Speaker 1: to the gun, right, or it stamps it with the
Speaker 1: serial number of the gun. So in theory, this would
Speaker 1: allow you to pick up the casings at a murder
Speaker 1: scene and be like, huh, well they were fired from
Speaker 1: this gun and this gun is read to this person.
Speaker 1: Therefore we got someone to talk to you, right, pick
Speaker 1: up the casings. Yeah right, yeah, absolutely, no ways around this. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean emmittively immediately that the one thing I've learned
Speaker 1: over the years is that people are really lazy when
Speaker 1: they're doing crimes, and so true, So true to be
Speaker 1: slightly less lazy and get caughts and you're really that
Speaker 1: is that is Yeah, that is my biggest my biggest
Speaker 1: advice to the illegalists literally think five minutes before ye
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah. Also, don't tweet your crimes. Yeah, every
Speaker 1: green statements. Yeah yeah, it's one of our mottoes here.
Speaker 1: You could also just use a revolver, I guess and
Speaker 1: it would inject the casings. But um, the because there
Speaker 1: are no guns in twenty thirteen, right, the DOJ says
Speaker 1: you are not allowed to add a gun to the
Speaker 1: roster unless it micro stamps, and we we've de signed
Speaker 1: that micro stamping as possible. No firearms manufacturer will make
Speaker 1: a gun that micro stamps because other states will require
Speaker 1: all guns to micro stamp once set technology is available.
Speaker 1: So they just don't built it, so they just don't
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, it is, And it's very funny. It's
Speaker 1: like the car companies just being like, fucking, you know
Speaker 1: what if we put airbags in that bad boy, They're
Speaker 1: going to make us put airbags in all the cars.
Speaker 1: You know. This is the thing that I've run into
Speaker 1: a lot. I think it's really interesting, which is like, okay,
Speaker 1: the specific combination of regulatory state and corporations being required
Speaker 1: to do a thing gives you a bunch of really
Speaker 1: really weird like outcomes that are like not what you
Speaker 1: would expect when you're writing the legislation, which makes them ineffective,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I like the most famous one is
Speaker 1: like the Clean Air Act actually worse into air quality
Speaker 1: for a huge amount of time because they put in
Speaker 1: this exception for like existing coal facilities under the assumption
Speaker 1: that people would just like you know, build new coal
Speaker 1: facilities and thus be like and thus like have better
Speaker 1: to like create that cleaner technology, and no one, no
Speaker 1: one ever did. They just left these old coal facilities
Speaker 1: running or the other one, Like everyone always talks about
Speaker 1: those like those fucking like why why the giant SUVs
Speaker 1: keep getting bigger? And the reason for that is actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of is sort of fascist psychosis,
Speaker 1: but like the actual reason for that is Obama era
Speaker 1: pollution controls on cars, right, had to have these fuel
Speaker 1: emission standards. But the larger your car is, like the
Speaker 1: worst fuel emission standards are, so they keep so okay
Speaker 1: in order to get around the fuel emission things, they
Speaker 1: keep making cars make it bigger amazing. Yeah, and this
Speaker 1: ship just like I don't know this is this is
Speaker 1: I think a pretty good argument against like against a
Speaker 1: sort of regulatory state being able to contain like capitalism
Speaker 1: doing horriborifying shit. Is like every single time someone tries
Speaker 1: to make it air pollution thing, it just makes it worse. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just create perverse incentives to do something which is
Speaker 1: like just stupid and polluting as opposed to Yeah, or
Speaker 1: they just don't comply. It was with the microsynything. You're
Speaker 1: just like no, like, yeah, simply romote. The specific interaction
Speaker 1: of like people who elevate themselves who make it to
Speaker 1: the California legislature on one hand, and gun companies on
Speaker 1: the other hand, just leads to this complete intransigence where
Speaker 1: like anytime a Laura is written, it is like someone
Speaker 1: has found an end run or a loophole before it
Speaker 1: comes into practice. Do you know what won't illegally smuggle
Speaker 1: illegally smuggle guns into California install them for two to
Speaker 1: three times a retail price? Mare? Is it? All the
Speaker 1: firms that are doing child trafficking? And that's right, the
Speaker 1: Washington State Highway Patrol we're back and we're talking about
Speaker 1: cops selling guns for a lot of money in southern California.
Speaker 1: So big Marco Garma wasn't the only cop who shares
Speaker 1: a life of crime. As it turns out, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: shockingly enough, this practice is pretty common. So a Guardina
Speaker 1: police officer in twenty twenty one was also convicted of
Speaker 1: making forty one illegal offer us to sales in a year,
Speaker 1: and at least six LA officers have been found to
Speaker 1: be engaged in legal firearms transfers, according to twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one LA Times investigation, So that that's eight in a
Speaker 1: single year if you're keeping track. And it's pretty common
Speaker 1: to see people like posting about this, like like if
Speaker 1: you go on to like the California Guns forum, where
Speaker 1: people will be like where they sell guns right where
Speaker 1: they don't. You don't actually sell the guns on the internet,
Speaker 1: so that's illegal. But people will post it and then
Speaker 1: say meet me at this gun dealer and we'll do
Speaker 1: the background check. And you'll see people being like, oh,
Speaker 1: like m l O, I have a friend to LEO
Speaker 1: and like happen to be selling this gun new in package.
Speaker 1: I bought it to carry it on patrol, but I
Speaker 1: decided I didn't like it, you know, like that's the
Speaker 1: theoretical connad here, right, Oh god, Okay. The thing this
Speaker 1: reminds me of specifically is a very very weird use
Speaker 1: case of like people will magice the gathering tournaments where
Speaker 1: you're not legally allowed to both draw and split the
Speaker 1: prize money. So you have to say this incredibly complicated
Speaker 1: series of sentences where you're like, I want to draw,
Speaker 1: and then new conversation, can we split the prize money?
Speaker 1: It's like I have to I have to like say
Speaker 1: this exact series of words in order to make it's
Speaker 1: clear that I'm not doing exactly what I'm doing and
Speaker 1: breaking the law. Yeah, this is how the law works, right,
Speaker 1: Like it always ends up being some kind of like
Speaker 1: totalistic magic incantation that you can say, and then the
Speaker 1: thing that they trying to fucking stop obviously no longer
Speaker 1: applies to union can do what you want. Like it's
Speaker 1: incredibly assinine. So in mid twenty twenty one, I tried
Speaker 1: to I wanted to get a sense, right and when
Speaker 1: I was doing this of how many of these offer
Speaker 1: uster guns there are in California, to get a sense
Speaker 1: of like exactly how much of a fass. The attempt
Speaker 1: to create this roster has been so I've been going
Speaker 1: after this for a while. But in the middle of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, there was an Assembly bill pass called
Speaker 1: Assembly Bill two six nine nine, if you're interested, and
Speaker 1: the bill required the Department of Justice to send a
Speaker 1: letter to owners off off roster weapons, which California officially
Speaker 1: calls unsafe handguns, to remind the people who own the
Speaker 1: mother laws surrounding them and to whom they could transfer them. Right.
Speaker 1: I first became aware of this letter because someone dectarted
Speaker 1: to post it online and that kind of gave me
Speaker 1: an opening where because I can't pira the names of
Speaker 1: the people who owned the guns right or even where
Speaker 1: they live, because obviously protect information and it probably should
Speaker 1: be and I don't think that inforation is even actually
Speaker 1: stored by the state. But I can pira the letters
Speaker 1: say sent out. So pira is a public records at request, right,
Speaker 1: it's what people might know as of foyer. And so
Speaker 1: I did that, and it took me more than a
Speaker 1: year and it cost me more than a hundred bucks,
Speaker 1: But eventually I managed to get the DOJ to to
Speaker 1: send me the information which showed that at least at
Speaker 1: the time I got it, which is the middle of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, four thousand and five hundred and ten
Speaker 1: firearms have been obtained by the subsection of the law
Speaker 1: that allows exemptions for police officers. There are some other
Speaker 1: exemptions for like antique collectible firearms as well, so it's
Speaker 1: not clear that all of those were cops. They also
Speaker 1: noted that it had sent two hundred and thirteen thousand,
Speaker 1: eight hundred and four notices to the owners of off
Speaker 1: roster weapons, which, yeah, it suggests that if we think
Speaker 1: of that, the roster became a serious issue in twenty thirteen, right,
Speaker 1: so that suggested about ten thousand, ten thousand weapons a
Speaker 1: year since the roster began in two thousand and one
Speaker 1: have entered the state that are off ruster, which kind
Speaker 1: of kind of makes the point that it's it's a
Speaker 1: rather fasticle attempt at gun control, right, But it still
Speaker 1: is that the roster, which I don't think like, you're fine, right,
Speaker 1: you can you can buy a very effective gun in California,
Speaker 1: as we have seen, they're very effective of killing people.
Speaker 1: But it does kind of make it a joke that
Speaker 1: if you have enough money or a friend who's a cop,
Speaker 1: then this doesn't apply to you. Right, then you're over
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand of these guns which are supposed to
Speaker 1: be like banned in circulation, as long as you're wealthy
Speaker 1: enough to buy them. I tried also to pra a
Speaker 1: if any of these guns have been involved in crime
Speaker 1: or murder, and they would tell me that. And what
Speaker 1: it's always worth pointing out that like the cops themselves
Speaker 1: are issued guns which are illegal for civilians to purchase,
Speaker 1: right or it's not possible for them to purchase them.
Speaker 1: New I should say that offer us to guns are
Speaker 1: issued to the cops, right, So, by definition, some of
Speaker 1: these guns have been used in the accidental shooting of bystanders,
Speaker 1: shooting of officers by themselves, and shooting of officers by
Speaker 1: other officers that have occurred in California since the Rousta began.
Speaker 1: So the sort of by definition of us to guns
Speaker 1: to kill some people. So this isn't actually the only
Speaker 1: way that being wealthy can get you around gun laws.
Speaker 1: And I want to go a little further east for
Speaker 1: my next example. Then I want to go, in fact
Speaker 1: to a little town called Lake Arthur in New Mexico.
Speaker 1: Then if you are you guys familiar with this part
Speaker 1: of the world. Not well, not that I lived in
Speaker 1: New Mexico very very briefly when I was a small child,
Speaker 1: but not there. So so I've been using Google street View.
Speaker 1: That's my my dive. It appears to be the back
Speaker 1: arshile of nowhere, and in let Garthur, they have one
Speaker 1: cop who it turns out was a volunteer and was
Speaker 1: being paid a dollar a year. Aha. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is this is where the problem starts. This guy is
Speaker 1: called William Norwood. And I'll issue a spoiler here that
Speaker 1: William Norwood is no longer a cop in orders the
Speaker 1: department exist. And that's because Norwood was running a scam
Speaker 1: that took advantage of something called LIOSA. LIOSA is a
Speaker 1: Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act and what the Law Enforcement
Speaker 1: Officers Safety Act does is allow cops from any state
Speaker 1: in the Union to conceal carry a gun in every
Speaker 1: state in the Union. So this was a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you might be abotuely what this is going.
Speaker 1: This was a big deal before the Supreme Court Brewined decision. Right.
Speaker 1: The Brewer decision was the one that significantly reduced the
Speaker 1: impediments in between you and getting a concealed carry weapons permit.
Speaker 1: I didn't totally remove them, and it did make it
Speaker 1: any less expensive, and California needs to be going about
Speaker 1: trying to make it even more expensive, which is bullshit,
Speaker 1: Like everyone should have the same right, regardless of how
Speaker 1: wealthy they are. But if you were covered by LEOSA, right,
Speaker 1: if you're a law enforcement officer, you could conceal Carrie anywhere.
Speaker 1: So this is very desirable for certain people. One of
Speaker 1: those people is Robert Mercer. Do you guys remember Robert Mercer? No?
Speaker 1: I do not, Okay, So Murcer is a big time
Speaker 1: Donald Trump appreciated. Oh yeah, he's that like super rich guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bright Bart guy, the Cambridge Analytica guy. Yeah. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: So this guy is rolling in it, and he he was.
Speaker 1: He actually hosted like a a like success party soon
Speaker 1: after twenty sixteen election. This this guy is definitely pivotal
Speaker 1: to the whole Trump scene, right, like like his bank
Speaker 1: rolling a bright Bart, Cambrinallytica. He As it turns out,
Speaker 1: it's also a cop in this little New Mexico town,
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird, right, especially when you consider
Speaker 1: that one hundred and fifty other people are also cops
Speaker 1: in this me. Yeah, that's that's one cop for every
Speaker 1: two point nine residents. Jesus. Yeah. And turns out they're
Speaker 1: probably not doing much copying, but they are doing at
Speaker 1: least a certain amount of volunteering. It's actually unclear how much.
Speaker 1: So the Lake Arthur Treasurer with Bloomberg did some prays
Speaker 1: around this, and it turns out that Mercer was what's
Speaker 1: called an honorary member of the police department, but there
Speaker 1: are no records to indicate they actually did any policing.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless he took advantage of LEOSA, right, and that's
Speaker 1: carried in all fifty states, so these jurisdictions, there are
Speaker 1: several of them. Another famous and who's taken advantage of
Speaker 1: this is a friend of the podcast, Stephen Seagal. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Stephen Seagar, who apparently has been a volunteer cop for
Speaker 1: a very long time and like actually was doing some
Speaker 1: copping according to a reality TV show he made called
Speaker 1: Steven Seagal Lawman. You know the thing about that show,
Speaker 1: right is it's like, are you gonna come out and
Speaker 1: defend the show? Are you pro the show? Really? Here,
Speaker 1: here's why they on this show, right, Like, obviously Seagal's
Speaker 1: doing stuff that's really messed up, but it's also unclear
Speaker 1: how much ye what he was doing is than the
Speaker 1: average cop. Liket Like, probably what he's doing is worst
Speaker 1: than the average cop, But I don't think it's like
Speaker 1: like I don't I don't think it's as bad as
Speaker 1: like like a Chicago Special Operations unit. It's like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe this came out in defense of Steven Seagal. Specifically,
Speaker 1: he has work to do to reach like the true
Speaker 1: upper echelon of like I don't know, shitty cops, Like
Speaker 1: this is a man who gave his time freely to
Speaker 1: volunteer for Joe Apio. This level of apologism coming from
Speaker 1: you right now is simply shocking. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to deal with this, this cigol apology, sigologismogism. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is that is what I was working my way towards,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't finish it. Yeah, thank you for delivering
Speaker 1: the kuda grass. Yeah, me are coming out with the
Speaker 1: some cops to Bastard to take scab. Okay, So what
Speaker 1: what is Carrison's Carrisons deceased? They've've died Okay, So these
Speaker 1: badge factories, like the ones in Lake Arthur and Geermany
Speaker 1: trade influenced cash your connections for a badge and the
Speaker 1: right to carry a gun nation why Mercer and his
Speaker 1: son in lawd. George Wells have supported the town generously
Speaker 1: and so the most kind of the best investigated example
Speaker 1: of this right because Bloomberg went after him and Bloomberger publication,
Speaker 1: not Bloomberg the dude. He went down there personally Bloomberg
Speaker 1: he formed an alliance with apparently at one point this
Speaker 1: with this police department did to a raid on a methhouse.
Speaker 1: And I would love to see like Bloomberg forming alliance
Speaker 1: with the methilers of Lake Arth to fucking take on Murcer.
Speaker 1: So if Bloomberg can take on nine to eleven single handedly,
Speaker 1: surely he can bust up whatever whatever operations going down
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. One hundred and fifty Stephen Seagals, would
Speaker 1: you rather fight one Bloomberg size Stephen Seagal? And yet
Speaker 1: don't don't do not bother messaging me. I know he
Speaker 1: wasn't the mayor during nine to eleven. That was the joke.
Speaker 1: Don't bother messaging me, I already know than no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I wrote, Okay Garrison's Twitter again, I write a case.
Speaker 1: He also famously dropped Staten Island Phil Bloomberg. You guys
Speaker 1: don't know about State nine. Staten Island Phil is a groundhog.
Speaker 1: This This will be in a Bastards episode as well,
Speaker 1: So it's a second mentor of Staaten isl and Phil
Speaker 1: for some people. Staten Island Phil is a groundhog similar
Speaker 1: to Puck's attorney Phil. Yeah, but he lives in Staten
Speaker 1: Island and that's fortunately. Yeah, we would we say that
Speaker 1: a second second. Pretty pretty disgusting take from me anti
Speaker 1: Staten Island this way, this is why MEA gets canceled episode. Yeah,
Speaker 1: going back the time and getting rid of the Yankees
Speaker 1: hings of the state. Sure yeah yeah. Unfortunately, build a
Speaker 1: Blasio dropped the groundhog on its head and it died. Yeah,
Speaker 1: build really build a Blazio the groundhog. It's reduced popularity.
Speaker 1: Everyone who's been the mayor of New York is a
Speaker 1: piece of shape, unhinged. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like fucking the current mayor just what lked TV to
Speaker 1: Tay and talked about how he has this magic smudge
Speaker 1: that yes, so that he could absorb despair and ring
Speaker 1: the despair. What the I'm so sick? The only thing
Speaker 1: isolated New York was does the whole like there shouldn't
Speaker 1: be any separation of church and say that is so
Speaker 1: much funnier. He's doing a sham wow for sad. Oh
Speaker 1: what a place, what a town? All right. So, if
Speaker 1: you're wondering how much it costs for Mercer and his
Speaker 1: son in law to carry downs everywhere, they paid at
Speaker 1: least ninety three thousand to set up this thing called
Speaker 1: the South East New Mexico Police Reserve Foundation, which you
Speaker 1: know is doing the valuable work of supporting reserve cops
Speaker 1: in Southeast New Mexico because they are the thin blue
Speaker 1: line between us and people not being able to buy
Speaker 1: concealed carry permits in all fifty states. I guess under
Speaker 1: its bylaws of its half the foundation's net jews were
Speaker 1: required to be paid to police departments whose reservists were
Speaker 1: members of the foundation the time of its founding. All
Speaker 1: of the members were Like Arthur reservists, So just a
Speaker 1: good public public benefit. Probably just money going around in circles.
Speaker 1: He also paid for Lake Arthur officers to get SWAT
Speaker 1: training in Vegas again, there is only one full time
Speaker 1: cop and he's a volunteer. So some of the lads
Speaker 1: went to Vegas, I guess, and this was a donation
Speaker 1: that was probably tax deductible. The way that this came
Speaker 1: out is when a quote unquote firearms expert from North
Speaker 1: Carolina got drunk and shot his b they're in law
Speaker 1: in the leg and why were you carrying bro like
Speaker 1: you're a cop? And yeah, from their things began to unwind.
Speaker 1: A lot of the other clients for this place are
Speaker 1: people like bodyguards, and they were a client's cops, volunteer officers,
Speaker 1: I should say. They're people who do close protection for
Speaker 1: wealthy folks, right, and carry guns as part of that work.
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing it's their employers who are making these
Speaker 1: significant donations to like Arthur that probably allowed these people
Speaker 1: to reserve officers, which allowed them to carry in all
Speaker 1: fifty states, which in turn allowed them to protect these
Speaker 1: wealthy people. Right. So it's another and like it's important
Speaker 1: to understand that like New York, for instance, declined before
Speaker 1: this was before the bruined decision, I can still carry
Speaker 1: permit applicant from like an FBI informant who had taken
Speaker 1: down a biker gang. They were like, no, you don't
Speaker 1: need to carry a gun. Like it was almost impossible
Speaker 1: for people, even if they were like helping the cops,
Speaker 1: to get concealed carry permits in some parts of the
Speaker 1: United States and in California was very hard. Lots of
Speaker 1: places before Bruin, Like, I think, what's it, Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 1: had a concealed carry permit of Finstein, this is the
Speaker 1: whole thing, Okay, so this was this was Finestein that
Speaker 1: One of the other scamps for this is you can
Speaker 1: get deputized as a federal marshal. There's like a bunch
Speaker 1: like I like Finestein's rumored who have done there's like
Speaker 1: a bunch of like every like a bunch of sort
Speaker 1: of like California like Congress people have done this that
Speaker 1: like they get they get deputizes marshals and so they
Speaker 1: can do this shit. Yeah, incredible stuff. Yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: I guess what I want to come back to is
Speaker 1: like all of these laws, right, all of these gun
Speaker 1: control laws and are circumventable if you have enough money. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you want a nice brand new gun that
Speaker 1: doesn't mic Ris damp, it doesn't have the it doesn't
Speaker 1: have the magazine disconnect. And like modern the modern Harry
Speaker 1: guns especially, you're a lot nicer than they were in
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen. Right, They're smaller, they have a higher capacity.
Speaker 1: You can put a little red dot site on them
Speaker 1: if you want to. And if you want one of
Speaker 1: those things, you can have it in California as long
Speaker 1: as you're rich and if you're If you're not, then
Speaker 1: you can't. The same applies with this fifty state carry
Speaker 1: right if you want to carry a gun all around
Speaker 1: the country, and even now with Bruin, states are not
Speaker 1: required to recognize each other's concealed carry permits. Right, So
Speaker 1: I have a concealed Harry permit in California. It's not
Speaker 1: recognized by any other states because California doesn't recognize any
Speaker 1: other states carry permits. So I can apply for one Arizona.
Speaker 1: That costs me more money. But if you want to
Speaker 1: carry in all fifty states, you can just make this
Speaker 1: donation to the corps. Right, And you can almost all
Speaker 1: of these things, right. These are the only examples Mere
Speaker 1: cited the federal marshal thing. Another one is the NFA right,
Speaker 1: the National Firearms Act YEAH Act, which like, essentially, it's
Speaker 1: not illegal to have a suppress there. It's not illegal
Speaker 1: to have a short barreled rifle. It's not illegal to
Speaker 1: have a machine gun. Actually, you just have to spend
Speaker 1: a shit ton of money to get one, which a
Speaker 1: mercer has a collection of machine guns. I guess, so
Speaker 1: all of these things. Yeah, it's great, it's fine. It's
Speaker 1: it's great that we live in a country with with
Speaker 1: two tiers of rights for people. Those are those those
Speaker 1: machine guns are totally going to be used for normal,
Speaker 1: completely normal things in twenty years. Yeah. Yeah, a totally
Speaker 1: normal guy who were using for normal stuff and just
Speaker 1: I'm sure like to make holes in paper with his friends.
Speaker 1: And it's not problematic at all that to be as
Speaker 1: rich as this guy is, you have to be a
Speaker 1: problematic dude. And it maybe those are the people who
Speaker 1: shouldn't be having guns, yeah, but instead it's it's it's
Speaker 1: going to be poor people who can't be having guns.
Speaker 1: And I think, regardless of what you think, and it's
Speaker 1: perfectly reasonable to think that there should be fewer guns
Speaker 1: in this country. It's it's perfectly reasonable to leave that.
Speaker 1: And I think, like it's perfectly reasonable to think what
Speaker 1: the fuck should we do about the fact that kids
Speaker 1: get shot in schools. That's not an unreasonable starts at all.
Speaker 1: But if the way around it is saying, well, only
Speaker 1: rich people get to shoot people, then that that's not
Speaker 1: really a solution. It's just kind of the appearance of one.
Speaker 1: And I don't think any of us suddenly, if we
Speaker 1: were on the left, should should really support that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where we are in California, which is great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's about all we've got on this. If people
Speaker 1: are interested in seeing more about either the Mercer case
Speaker 1: or the public records I have, we'll put them all
Speaker 1: up on our sources page. You can find our sources
Speaker 1: page on there could Happen Here website, and we put
Speaker 1: all our sorts out there for all our episodes. So yeah,
Speaker 1: go check that out. Anything else to finish off with, guys?
Speaker 1: The cops having guns, bad cops being cops, bad cops? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh well, what about Stephen Cigar I made. This is
Speaker 1: a dramatic change of form from your earlier start. I only,
Speaker 1: I only ever argued that he was slightly more violent
Speaker 1: than a normal cup. That was the extent of my argument.
Speaker 1: He is only slightly more violent than a regular cup.
Speaker 1: She is flip flopping on the some some cops issue. Again,
Speaker 1: you can send me your opinions on the police. She's
Speaker 1: on Twitter at I write Okay, hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: it could happen here once again? Who sit by myself
Speaker 1: Andrew as we talk about whatever. So we have two
Speaker 1: special guests, Sprout and Sherry Anne from the Black Flow Collective,
Speaker 1: and they has talked to us about the dicought me
Speaker 1: between Uban and rural plats organizing. I mean, as we
Speaker 1: can all recognize, in this day and age, being plicitly
Speaker 1: active is incredibly important. There are a lot of vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: that we are all facing on the intersection of systems,
Speaker 1: and we are looking for weez to get out, but
Speaker 1: it could be difficult to naviate, especially when you don't
Speaker 1: know exactly where to begin. That's part of the focus
Speaker 1: of my channel and it's also something that these folks
Speaker 1: are here to talk to us about. But before we
Speaker 1: delve too deeply into the meat to that discussion, let's
Speaker 1: begin with a quick introduction. You know, who is Black
Speaker 1: Flow Collective, How did you all begin and what are
Speaker 1: some of your goals as a group. Hey, this is
Speaker 1: Sprout and We got started organizing with the Black Flower
Speaker 1: Collective through previous organizing projects here in Aberdeen, Washington, such
Speaker 1: as the Chehala Server Mutual Aid network. That collective got
Speaker 1: started after the Black Lives a matter of rebellion in
Speaker 1: so called Seattle and was started by feeding the movement
Speaker 1: out there in Capitol Hill and Chaz and then brought
Speaker 1: that organizing effort back to the community to start a
Speaker 1: food and out bombs here in town. Through those meetings
Speaker 1: and relationships that we formed, we got to know the
Speaker 1: local homeless in town and started getting to know their
Speaker 1: needs as we tried to fill them with our mutual
Speaker 1: aid efforts. And out of those conversations over meals, we
Speaker 1: learned that one of the biggest needs was some sort
Speaker 1: of home base where people like us trying to support
Speaker 1: the community could come together and cook meals together and
Speaker 1: serve them in a collective area. Yeah, having a safe
Speaker 1: place to be able to just cook food and plan
Speaker 1: other types of organizations or collectives is imperative because we
Speaker 1: faced a lot of backlash from the reactionary politics around
Speaker 1: our town being in the kind of the heart of
Speaker 1: trump Land, and the type of people that show up
Speaker 1: in the big city protest to mow people down with
Speaker 1: their trucks and whatnot right and how has that affected
Speaker 1: your old reach efforts. What'd you see? Thankfully not too harshly,
Speaker 1: but we've definitely had some scary situations. There was one
Speaker 1: time at the homeless camp we were told about by
Speaker 1: the campers there where somebody had tried to like run
Speaker 1: down a tent that somebody was sleeping sleeping in. They
Speaker 1: may just like jump out at the like like you know,
Speaker 1: before they got hit, and they jumped out of the
Speaker 1: truck and was like waving of a like a police
Speaker 1: baton or some sort of like stick or something or
Speaker 1: something around threatening people. Somebody got like a bigger stick,
Speaker 1: which prompted them to get in their car and start
Speaker 1: waving a pull out a pistol and start waving that
Speaker 1: around before they ended up driving off. Yeah, sometimes when
Speaker 1: we get new volunteers, there can be a bit of
Speaker 1: hesitance from people to like you know, take food or
Speaker 1: supplies because there's a bit of a relationship that needs
Speaker 1: forming there of trust because of those actions of right
Speaker 1: wing actors in town. So it's kind of like, you know,
Speaker 1: what is why you're out, you're feeding, So there's a
Speaker 1: bit of hesitance there, but once they realize they're with
Speaker 1: our group, we've established enough of a reputation that you know,
Speaker 1: that name drop is usually enough to to re establish
Speaker 1: that trust, right, but it's good that you'll love somewhat
Speaker 1: established yourselves, you know, locally and builds up a reputation.
Speaker 1: Would you see that that has been one of your
Speaker 1: media goals as a group, to build that trust in
Speaker 1: the community and where you'll see that trust go in
Speaker 1: from where it is now. I've always seen that personally
Speaker 1: as our only asset. We don't have a lot of money. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we're not funded by anyone, so all we really have
Speaker 1: is our reputation in the in the community and in
Speaker 1: the wider community. Our reputation has led to some of
Speaker 1: that backlash that Sharia was talking about, but within the
Speaker 1: actual on housed community, you know, we have a reputation
Speaker 1: of doing whatever we can to help people and always
Speaker 1: showing up consistently and you know, always being willing to
Speaker 1: go the extra mile when someone needs something in crisis.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So having had some experience with
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, working in the various movements that were
Speaker 1: happening in twenty twenty. What would you see some of
Speaker 1: the media differences that you've noticed between organizing in media
Speaker 1: cities and in uban areas compared to rural posical organizing. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd say the majority of the issues we've noticed depend
Speaker 1: on the material conditions of the town that we're in.
Speaker 1: Being a small and rural area, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: property here, and so those material conditions lead to a
Speaker 1: lot of differences between urban and rural areas. I found
Speaker 1: before come into the area, I was involved with Occupy
Speaker 1: Oakland back in the day, so I had a bit
Speaker 1: more of a running with the larger city, larger cities
Speaker 1: way of doing things. And what would you share in Well,
Speaker 1: I've grown up here in this town my whole life
Speaker 1: and have a really left outside of it all too much.
Speaker 1: This type of organizing is always uff that I heard about,
Speaker 1: more so through rumors than anything else. Soursus actually seeing
Speaker 1: people on the ground and doing things. Once we got
Speaker 1: our food not bombs chapters started during twenty twenty, it
Speaker 1: opened kind of just a new a new world for
Speaker 1: not just myself, a lot of people around here. Right. So,
Speaker 1: one major difference that we've noticed that is the dichotomy
Speaker 1: of electoral politics in the town. Most of the opposition
Speaker 1: that we've faced has not been from the city but
Speaker 1: from grassroots initiatives, and so some of those people over
Speaker 1: the course of the last two years have taken positions
Speaker 1: on city council, but the police that they control are
Speaker 1: still demonstrate an unwillingness to attack their own community in
Speaker 1: the way that far right politicians would want them to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so take like the police that show up and the
Speaker 1: like big city protests and whatnot. They'll bring in all
Speaker 1: police stations from all surrounding areas, people who aren't familiar
Speaker 1: with the community, who you know, it's just a job
Speaker 1: to them, which helps sever that they're connectioned that that area,
Speaker 1: while here it's the same people dealing with the same
Speaker 1: people every day. And in the minds of police, it
Speaker 1: does create create like a sense of community in their
Speaker 1: mind that makes them a little more reluctant to use
Speaker 1: the type of violent force that we see in in
Speaker 1: the bigger cities. And it's not to say that force
Speaker 1: isn't present and doesn't happen here, but it definitely doesn't
Speaker 1: happen on the frequency. If I could run back a
Speaker 1: second by way this is me. I'm also on this episode.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, if I could, if I could walk back
Speaker 1: a second, ask or something. When when when you say
Speaker 1: that most of the resistance to what you've been doing
Speaker 1: is from grassroots movements, is that like, like, are you
Speaker 1: talking about like sort of grassroots like right wing political movements.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about sort of NGOs opposing you or no? Like,
Speaker 1: we have a local grassroots right wing initiative in town
Speaker 1: that's been the main breadth of our our little groups
Speaker 1: opposition and they have, like I said, they have run
Speaker 1: and won a few city council seats since then. But
Speaker 1: it started as a grassroots you know, clean up the
Speaker 1: trash sort of campaign. Yeah. Yeah, you could still find
Speaker 1: their page on Facebook. It's a save our Aberdeen, Oh God,
Speaker 1: save our Aberdeen please soap and they got like little
Speaker 1: soap bubbles and whatnot, and they're here to clean up
Speaker 1: the city streets. Said, Oh boy, I don't think they're
Speaker 1: talking about the trash, not trash as we would define it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so sort of right, So this is a place where
Speaker 1: sort of like right wing like anti homeless stuff has
Speaker 1: been has been their sort of main way to build organization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a. It's a huge I mean, I don't really
Speaker 1: even know Sherry, And like, what other talking points do
Speaker 1: they have other than the homeless. Everything centers around the homeless,
Speaker 1: Even stuff that has to do with like businesses in
Speaker 1: town and local economic that gets blamed on the homeless.
Speaker 1: You know, everything gets blamed on the homeless. So it
Speaker 1: really all goes back to that. Yeah, they are the
Speaker 1: scapegoat for every problem that the city council faces, or
Speaker 1: not just the city council, but businesses. You run a
Speaker 1: shitty business, it's it's the homeless's fault. I don't have
Speaker 1: customers say it has nothing to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that I haven't sold anything in years and this is
Speaker 1: just a hobby shop for me because I got a
Speaker 1: fat inheritance. But yeah, I'm talking about you all that glitters.
Speaker 1: Oh we call the names no, so you speak. You
Speaker 1: spoke about how this um, this grassers right wing movement
Speaker 1: has picked up some steam and wanted some seats into
Speaker 1: city cone. Soum. But one thing I recognize about grassroots
Speaker 1: movements is that they tend to have to sort of
Speaker 1: balance their goals with the trust they need to build
Speaker 1: with the broader public, with the perception that the public
Speaker 1: has of them, and how are they trying to shape
Speaker 1: that perception. So how would you see that the public
Speaker 1: of Aberdeen views the right wing initiatives the Soup movement
Speaker 1: as your reference in And how do you think that
Speaker 1: the of tentative view Black fol collective. Well, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel scared to voice their opinions
Speaker 1: if they're on the left in town. But we do
Speaker 1: get a lot of support for the mutual aid that
Speaker 1: we do the the base of the other The right
Speaker 1: wing movement in town is pretty strong, and you know,
Speaker 1: I don't see them drawing in a whole lot of
Speaker 1: new people because of their extreme nature and their tendency
Speaker 1: towards conspiracies, but they do have quite a substantial base
Speaker 1: that whatever they say, they're gonna they're gonna agree with
Speaker 1: and they're gonna go along with. Take for example, like
Speaker 1: here about a year or two ago, um, I think
Speaker 1: it was November twenty twenty one or augustum, there was
Speaker 1: a big anti tran trans rally outside of a Star
Speaker 1: Wars shop here in town that yeah, they had to
Speaker 1: bring in a bunch of proud boys from you know,
Speaker 1: out of town and the like filled their numbers from outside,
Speaker 1: you know, with outside help and whatnot, while chanting about
Speaker 1: how Antifa was coming from Seattle to burn the shop
Speaker 1: down and kill the shop owner and all this and
Speaker 1: all the stuff that they had the guy during the
Speaker 1: whole protest. They gave them like a bulletproof vest that
Speaker 1: he's like walking around. Did they brought Matt Walsh the
Speaker 1: fucking town? It was a mess? Wow. Yeah. It's really
Speaker 1: a classic example of pot meat cattle with a lot
Speaker 1: of their metric. In my experience, I think the majority
Speaker 1: of the public though, does care about the issues that
Speaker 1: the homeless are facing and the fallout issues from that,
Speaker 1: but they kind of it's kind of this tug back
Speaker 1: and forth between us telling them what's really going on
Speaker 1: on the streets and the stories of people down at
Speaker 1: camp and this other more right wing tendency to just
Speaker 1: blame things on the homeless and take the simple route
Speaker 1: of saying if we just get rid of these homeless people,
Speaker 1: then our problems will be solved, and local efforts to
Speaker 1: gentrify the area with the influx of Terry, a right
Speaker 1: wing capitalist who's brought up like sixty properties in town recently,
Speaker 1: and as well as just the local media landscape in
Speaker 1: town has a right wing tinge to it. I mean
Speaker 1: where we're at, everything has a right wing tinge to it.
Speaker 1: But so it's hard because there's not a lot of voices.
Speaker 1: Even though there is a lot of sentiment of caring
Speaker 1: about the homeless, there's not a lot of voices that
Speaker 1: are actually telling the truth of what's going on on
Speaker 1: the streets. And so when you get all of the
Speaker 1: lies and bullshit coming from the police and city hall
Speaker 1: and just being reported verbatim by the papers in town,
Speaker 1: it leads to a lot of people forming conclusions based
Speaker 1: on faulty facts, and so they might think, oh, the
Speaker 1: homeless did this, the homeless did that, And we go
Speaker 1: into the comment sections every time and push back and say,
Speaker 1: you know, actually this is what happened. And it's actually
Speaker 1: a lot of times that we get people, you know,
Speaker 1: opening their eyes and saying, oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not always just the standard dig your
Speaker 1: heels and sort of thing that you see on social media.
Speaker 1: Because it is a sort of smaller town, right, everyone
Speaker 1: kind of knows everybody. Yeah, there's a bit more accountability
Speaker 1: in that sense. If you're going to spout off online
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's likely and the grocery line after stuff.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but it makes like for organizing a
Speaker 1: general um and nonimidity a lot different of a um
Speaker 1: of a tactic in how in how you use it,
Speaker 1: because like say in the big city, you're constantly surrounded
Speaker 1: by UM security cameras everywhere you go. You're constantly being monitored,
Speaker 1: watched or whatnot. But it's a lot easier just disappear
Speaker 1: in the crowd, just another face the you know the other.
Speaker 1: Like you can go out spray paint ditch got a
Speaker 1: big deal in place like here in Aberdeen for example,
Speaker 1: But like I could mask up and do everything, um,
Speaker 1: you know I can. But if I get known in
Speaker 1: any kind of sense of way by go out and
Speaker 1: you know, spray paint a wall, it's like, oh, there
Speaker 1: goes Sherry and you know, spray painted walls again. And
Speaker 1: once once you are docks are identified, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to undo that and just sort of renonymize yourself. So
Speaker 1: we've taken an anonymity and our security in that aspect
Speaker 1: very seriously from the get go. A couple of people
Speaker 1: in our organization who didn't have faced, you know, public
Speaker 1: harassment and stocking. So yeah, it is a big deal.
Speaker 1: So you've managed to maintain a level of anonymity despite
Speaker 1: elder jefflets in a small town. Yes, well, to a
Speaker 1: large degree. To a large degree. Okay, there's different people
Speaker 1: in our group. You know, it's not like our group
Speaker 1: has rules about it. So some people use their real names,
Speaker 1: some people don't. But those who are concerned about it
Speaker 1: have been able to although it's it's difficult, and you
Speaker 1: know once that, once that identification comes, you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty much games up. It also kind of has affected
Speaker 1: our recruitment in the sense that people on the outside
Speaker 1: looking in may see what we're doing as more dangerous
Speaker 1: than it actually is because of those security concerns, and
Speaker 1: they might be scared of retaliation and not want to
Speaker 1: participate because of that. So we have taken to kind
Speaker 1: of reducing the fire in our online social media's for
Speaker 1: some of that mutual aid stuff, so that we don't
Speaker 1: get as much of the backbash on those accounts. And
Speaker 1: we found that it's helpful to have ancillary groups that
Speaker 1: can go and do more autonomous stuff if we need
Speaker 1: stuff done that it or said that as a're gonna
Speaker 1: create more backlash, right, So have sort of different layers
Speaker 1: of the organization. I remember the after futurist abolitioncy America's
Speaker 1: one of the statements they had puts out they were
Speaker 1: they had used it to move like my courizy in
Speaker 1: the sense of having sort of different levels of network
Speaker 1: in place. You have like the above ground level of
Speaker 1: you know, more visible public face and action, whereas you
Speaker 1: have that sort of underground, fungal network of anonymous and
Speaker 1: probably more risky action taken place. Yeah, because we have
Speaker 1: to sort of maintain a certain level of good will
Speaker 1: in town for the mutual for certain sides of our organizing.
Speaker 1: Organizing like the police, for example, they're always down at
Speaker 1: camp and so having an amicable relationship with them is
Speaker 1: advantageous in certain scenarios. So, yeah, splitting apart roles, I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, one role being the public facing
Speaker 1: side of things and one role being the more private,
Speaker 1: autonomous group. And how would you see you're talking about
Speaker 1: you some semi am a couple of relationship with the police.
Speaker 1: How has that been sort of sort of set up?
Speaker 1: You know, what was the basis of that. Well, as
Speaker 1: we were mentioning the the the structure of policing is
Speaker 1: a little bit different, since the police in an area
Speaker 1: small like this is going to hire locally as opposed
Speaker 1: to in large metropolis areas you generally see police department
Speaker 1: in big cities hiring from the suburbs surrounding the area
Speaker 1: leads to sort of like a foreign occupation feel. That's
Speaker 1: definitely the feeling that I got when I was doing
Speaker 1: stuff in Oakland was that the Oakland Police Department was
Speaker 1: not made up of anyone who lived in Oakland. You know,
Speaker 1: they were coming from the surrounding suburbs that were much
Speaker 1: more affluent and removed from the problems of Oakland, and
Speaker 1: they were just there to occupy by force. And so
Speaker 1: we get more like the Andy Griffith feel out here,
Speaker 1: where it's like the cops are, you know, the good guys,
Speaker 1: who's trying, who's helping Grahama across the road, and you know,
Speaker 1: will you know, carry your groceries up the stairs for
Speaker 1: you and that kind of stuff. At least that's more
Speaker 1: at least that's more the public perception. Anyway. They also
Speaker 1: have a small tank and conduct all sorts of drug rates.
Speaker 1: Rights to me, like, yeah, we're helping you, you know,
Speaker 1: we're walking you down the road and carrying your groceries
Speaker 1: in your house for you within all the shoe But
Speaker 1: because of the small town aspects of it though, um
Speaker 1: being able to like play on their um wanting you know,
Speaker 1: for the ones who do want to help but are
Speaker 1: misguided because they're cops acab um. But for the ones
Speaker 1: who are trying to help, who aren't like specifically going
Speaker 1: out trying to fuck over homeless people besides their jobs,
Speaker 1: you know, once who occasionally like go out and buy
Speaker 1: stuff of their own money or whatever to like help
Speaker 1: so or whatever, they'll kind of like rely on us
Speaker 1: to deal with that side of the population so they
Speaker 1: don't have to waste their time dealing with the homeless,
Speaker 1: is how and which is allows us to deal with
Speaker 1: more of the problems in the homeless community in house
Speaker 1: versus having to get the police involved, right because you know,
Speaker 1: the police aren't really treated or capable of resolving the
Speaker 1: it's kind of issues. For example, like my father, for
Speaker 1: for example, UM, he was in and out of prison
Speaker 1: his whole life, and after I was born and he
Speaker 1: got out of prison that last time, Um, he had
Speaker 1: a moment where he's gonna get ready to have a relapse. Right.
Speaker 1: He went to his dealer's house. You know, he's there,
Speaker 1: he bought his eight ball. He's sitting there and you know,
Speaker 1: getting ready to do his thing and there's a knock
Speaker 1: at the door and they opened it up and it's
Speaker 1: police there. They got a warrant for the dealer. They're
Speaker 1: raiding the house. And this one cop you know, pulls
Speaker 1: my dad aside because he knows if the other cops season,
Speaker 1: he's gonna send him straight to prison. And he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, you know, what are you doing here? Man?
Speaker 1: And whatever possessed my dad to do it, he's like,
Speaker 1: I just want to go home. He put the eight
Speaker 1: ball in that dude's hand and cops kind of looked
Speaker 1: at him, was like, just just get the fuck out
Speaker 1: of here, just go because he knew if the other
Speaker 1: cop you know, saw him, he would have sent him
Speaker 1: to prison right then, and the like again a cab,
Speaker 1: the like, this is, you know, the best story you're
Speaker 1: ever going to hear, our best story if a cop
Speaker 1: is a cop not being a cop pretty much? Yeah, exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: every time. But you definitely get more of that here though.
Speaker 1: That their advantage to take over. Yeah, and we have
Speaker 1: a certain people in our group that can liaison better
Speaker 1: than others with the police, and so we've used that
Speaker 1: to our advantage as well. They've largely ignored, I want
Speaker 1: to say, the police, not the city. The city wants
Speaker 1: to stop us, it's like their undying wish apparently, But
Speaker 1: the police have largely ignored or shown tacit support for
Speaker 1: our efforts because they're members of the community and they,
Speaker 1: at least the older crop of officers, have been working
Speaker 1: these streets and seeing the same homeless individuals for in
Speaker 1: some cases longer than I've been allowed, So you know,
Speaker 1: there are relationships there, even it's even if it's one
Speaker 1: mediated by that position that being a police officer. Um,
Speaker 1: when you see someone struggling for that long, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard not to be empathetic as a human.
Speaker 1: And so we've been seeing a bit of a shift
Speaker 1: now that they are all those officers are starting to
Speaker 1: retire and we're getting a new crop of younger, more
Speaker 1: gung ho police because who would who would vaun who
Speaker 1: would sign up to be a police officer in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, you know, other than people who have something
Speaker 1: going on with it. So yeah, but for a while
Speaker 1: there it was this, you know, that sort of old
Speaker 1: crop of police officers who had build relationships in the
Speaker 1: community and had that public image of being the helpful
Speaker 1: peace officer, as it were, which makes it hard to
Speaker 1: push back when you're when you're a group that's trying
Speaker 1: to advance, you know, abolitionists thinking and anti cop sentiments.
Speaker 1: When they are beating people with batons, it's easy for
Speaker 1: your community to look at that and be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: these guys are clearly the enemy. But when they're just
Speaker 1: you know, helping grandma across the street, it's a lot
Speaker 1: harder to make those arguments. So that's been one aspect
Speaker 1: that has made things difficult for us, and another dichotomy
Speaker 1: in the just the list of these in the mere
Speaker 1: differences between the conditions around organizing in a small town
Speaker 1: rural area versus bigger in cities such as say Seattle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but despite all of their helpful nature there, they are
Speaker 1: enforcing local ordinances that criminalize then housed, despite the ruling
Speaker 1: out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Martin G. Boise
Speaker 1: that says it's unconstitutional to do so so, even with
Speaker 1: no alternative alternative shelter available. This year we have zero
Speaker 1: cold weather shelters in Aberdeen. They're still out there sweeping
Speaker 1: people and telling them, hey, you've got to move along.
Speaker 1: When the maps handed out by the city say specifically
Speaker 1: you can sleep here and you can camp here as
Speaker 1: long as you leave enough space for pedestrians to get by,
Speaker 1: you can set up on the sidebox, and yet they
Speaker 1: move them along every day. Yeah, as you're talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, the different Ey caught to me is that
Speaker 1: you feace between urban and rurale political organizing. I would
Speaker 1: imagine that population is certainly an issue about that you
Speaker 1: might have to feace as you know, an organization trying
Speaker 1: to make a change in a small space, have your phone.
Speaker 1: It challenging to build your base and you know, get
Speaker 1: connections and stuff going. Yeah, for certain like, as we said,
Speaker 1: there's already the issues with the US having a more
Speaker 1: reactionary based politics in a lot of our population, and
Speaker 1: that's scaring what allies that we do have here. So
Speaker 1: it's definitely resulted in us having to do the best
Speaker 1: we can to network outside as much as possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not a really wide base of radicals to pull from,
Speaker 1: so we have to work with a bit wider ranging
Speaker 1: group of folks out here, although it has always shocked
Speaker 1: me how many people are willing to get involved in
Speaker 1: radical organizing here in town. You know, I think the
Speaker 1: smaller group size has led to a need for more
Speaker 1: connection and more listening in our decision making processes, which
Speaker 1: has been nice. I think we've gotten really good at
Speaker 1: operating as a small technique group, which may be organizers
Speaker 1: in larger areas where groups are larger, I have to
Speaker 1: deal with a little bit differently. You know. There's also
Speaker 1: the difference in terms of where we socialize. In places
Speaker 1: like Aberdeen, there's nothing to do in terms of social gatherings.
Speaker 1: There's no center of socialization in town. The only thing
Speaker 1: that we did have was the mall, which has been
Speaker 1: closed for a couple of years now. So there's not
Speaker 1: a lot to do in terms of activities, and there's
Speaker 1: also just not a lot of space, like physical space
Speaker 1: in which to gather as a community. That's why we
Speaker 1: are currently serving our through not bomb meals under a
Speaker 1: bridge because the city has removed all covered areas in
Speaker 1: one of the most rainy areas in the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like when I go to like Seattle, for for example,
Speaker 1: I could walk into any business, any doorway, just about
Speaker 1: any street pole and see flyer after flyer after flyer
Speaker 1: for this event, this oncertaty, this group is doing this, this, this,
Speaker 1: these classes are taking place, etc. They straight up have
Speaker 1: a law against putting anything on the poles in town
Speaker 1: versus let alone. They're actually being any events happening worth
Speaker 1: using the poles in the first place, right right. So
Speaker 1: I would imagine that parts of your aims as a
Speaker 1: collective would be to find ways to bring the immunity
Speaker 1: together through those sorts of social events, in formal and
Speaker 1: formal for sure. And that's definitely a big part of
Speaker 1: our goal with the Black Flower Project is to create
Speaker 1: a sort of social center, a place for the community
Speaker 1: to come for various reasons and you know, experience whatever
Speaker 1: they might discover. So it sounds like you'll have a
Speaker 1: good lay of the land in terms of what is
Speaker 1: happening in the town and what sort of movements you
Speaker 1: want to be making. In the next part of this episode,
Speaker 1: you can join myself and Miya and Ryan and Sprout
Speaker 1: as we discuss the actions that Black Fowl Collective plans
Speaker 1: on taken in their community and what sort of material
Speaker 1: conditions they've continued to have to navigate in this space
Speaker 1: until then. I'm Andrew of the YouTube channel andrews Um.
Speaker 1: You can call me on Twitter at underscore sat Drew
Speaker 1: and support on Patreon dot com, slash Seeing Drew. And
Speaker 1: you could also check out Blackflower Collective and support their work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can find us at link tree, backslash, black Flower LLC,
Speaker 1: or Blackflower Collective dot no blogs dot org. You can
Speaker 1: also find our content at at link tree Backslash al
Speaker 1: thirteen twelve, where you can find our podcasts maltav Now
Speaker 1: and a bunch of our other projects by Saber Media.
Speaker 1: Thanks loot guys, Hello, and welcome to it could Happen here.
Speaker 1: Joining me again for this second part of two parts,
Speaker 1: shari An and sprout from the Black Flower Collective in Aberdeen, Washington,
Speaker 1: as they've joined us to discuss the dichotomy between urban
Speaker 1: and rural political organizing. Last week spoke. They gave us
Speaker 1: some background on exactly how the Black Flower Collective began
Speaker 1: and what sort of motivating factors they have been in
Speaker 1: their developments as an organization, as well as some of
Speaker 1: the dichotomies that they've experience between urban and rural political organizing.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to take a moment to explore some
Speaker 1: of the materials, some of the other material conditions that
Speaker 1: they have feast in their city or rather in this
Speaker 1: small hotel. Sure an, As we were talking about in
Speaker 1: the last episode, there's a huge difference between the modes
Speaker 1: of socialization um in big cities and then versus small
Speaker 1: towns like our own, you know, Pere, we socialize more
Speaker 1: like in our houses. You meet friends at at the
Speaker 1: homes of other friends houses, where in the bigger cities
Speaker 1: it's more so that you know, you went to a club,
Speaker 1: you went to an event, concert, class, what I have
Speaker 1: you um, And these are definitely things that have like
Speaker 1: evolved and developed based on the you know, just different
Speaker 1: material conditions. Like you know, there's not as many classes
Speaker 1: around here and you know, events and stuff like that
Speaker 1: because a people just don't have the money to go
Speaker 1: to them and be there. Nobody has the money that
Speaker 1: really put them on or you know, any of that's
Speaker 1: a startup capital. There's not enough money coming through the town.
Speaker 1: That's why the far right are always trying to push
Speaker 1: this homeless narrative, because they're trying to make like turn
Speaker 1: this town into like a tourist town or something which
Speaker 1: makes no goddamn sense to me. There's nothing in this
Speaker 1: town to come here for us, But like, the only
Speaker 1: reason you're coming to this town is because you're driving
Speaker 1: through here to go to the ocean. That's it. Like
Speaker 1: the highway dumps out here and then it's old highways
Speaker 1: back to the rest of the ocean. Sounds pretty isolated.
Speaker 1: It can be pretty isolating out here, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: disconnect us from the overall struggle. Throughout our organizing, we've
Speaker 1: discovered that there's a lot of things that we can
Speaker 1: do for urban comrades through our mutual aid. For example,
Speaker 1: rural people can do anything that is virtual, such as
Speaker 1: graphic design or web support. We can also offer up
Speaker 1: rural spaces for rest and recuperation for front light activists
Speaker 1: in urban areas. While we might not be present in
Speaker 1: the heat of battle, we can make our isolation of strength,
Speaker 1: as often people abused directly by the system require peace
Speaker 1: and solitude to recover from such trauma. We can also
Speaker 1: use our local networks to identify enemies and report this
Speaker 1: to the wider radical community out here. There is a
Speaker 1: huge number of out here and in the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 1: in general, there's a huge number of white supremacists and
Speaker 1: neo Nazi militias and organizations, and so they generally organize
Speaker 1: in small towns like Aberdeen. You see a lot of
Speaker 1: that here, and so people living in those towns bear
Speaker 1: the responsibility, we think of reporting on the activities of
Speaker 1: those groups to the wider community, because a lot of
Speaker 1: times what you see is, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the police coming in from the suburbs. The extremist
Speaker 1: often come in from the outlying rural areas, either in
Speaker 1: protest scenarios or you know, usually in protest scenarios. We
Speaker 1: saw a couple instances in which our local right wing
Speaker 1: neo Nazi group went out to Chaz and was filming
Speaker 1: videos out there and collecting information for their organizing back here.
Speaker 1: So we can also be doing the same throughout the
Speaker 1: interim and collecting information on those groups for our comrades
Speaker 1: and urban areas, right right, That sounds like some really
Speaker 1: viable and pout and weeze to to build that sense
Speaker 1: of Uban rural solidarity. Yeah, yeah, because there's definitely a
Speaker 1: lot of people out here that need UM some notes
Speaker 1: taken on them. UM for example, during the height of
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty protests, Um, there is a small solidarity
Speaker 1: protest um that was essentially just five women that you know,
Speaker 1: holding a couple signs, and which resulted in a line
Speaker 1: of reactionaries and their assault rifles. The you know, the
Speaker 1: harass I get threatening this very small group of women
Speaker 1: of you know, if it says saying how Antifa was
Speaker 1: coming to the town and they were going to burn
Speaker 1: the town down and all this stuff. Um, you got
Speaker 1: people like in uh in Walla, Walla, for example, you
Speaker 1: have Henry Contrera who utilizes what connections and whatnot that
Speaker 1: he has out there to like call other white supremacists
Speaker 1: around the nation and would essentially be like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: move here, We'll get you a job, we'll get you
Speaker 1: a house, we'll get you all set up. Just come
Speaker 1: here and organiz as with us. And we kind of
Speaker 1: have our own version of that here in Aberdeen with
Speaker 1: Cash McCollum, a leader of the Pacific Northwest wolf Pack,
Speaker 1: our local neo Nazi group and people like that. I
Speaker 1: think it's only just them, that's a whole group that
Speaker 1: there are a whole social setting that follows them and
Speaker 1: us being in rural communities are going to have the
Speaker 1: best opportunity to keep tabs on that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: and warn the wider community. Right, Yeah, that's that's absolutely vital.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of my questions i'd prepared incoming
Speaker 1: to meet with your I was going to ask, actually,
Speaker 1: you know, how can we avoid this sort of idea
Speaker 1: that a lot of people have in their heads, A
Speaker 1: radicals have in their heads? Did sort of the distant
Speaker 1: commune trap? You know, this idea that you know, radicals
Speaker 1: they move out to the country, they set up the
Speaker 1: happy the commune. It either follows up pot into a
Speaker 1: cult or just like pulls away from the broader struggle.
Speaker 1: But it seems like in some ways you'll have been
Speaker 1: able to utilize that distance as a sort of a strength.
Speaker 1: And you've spoken quite a bit about how the real
Speaker 1: communities different ways they've been able to help Uban communities
Speaker 1: in the broader struggle. But now I guess I want
Speaker 1: to tune the tune the tables a bit and ask
Speaker 1: what sort of we as Uban radicals can support the
Speaker 1: struggles within rural communities. Well, one way that we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of solidarity from urban comrades has been in
Speaker 1: the topic of harm reduction. It's really hard to access
Speaker 1: services out here where we're at. There's really only one
Speaker 1: player in town, and they are highly bureaucratic, and the
Speaker 1: line to get any sort of social service from them
Speaker 1: is a mile long. Also, fun notes that Cash McCollum,
Speaker 1: person I talked about earlier, is on the board for
Speaker 1: that social service as well as long as as well
Speaker 1: as other people who are part of the Soap group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we've seen a large show solidarity from urban comrades
Speaker 1: sending us harm reduction supplies such as Narcan, which has
Speaker 1: literally saved dozens of lives since we started that program.
Speaker 1: Healthcare in general is a tough issue for rural areas.
Speaker 1: Transportation distances, lack of providers, lack of services, all of
Speaker 1: those things compound to make it really difficult to get
Speaker 1: appropriate healthcare. And so anytime anyone has any actual injury
Speaker 1: in town there, they just send them to Seattle and
Speaker 1: right our hospitals out here are really terrible, and so training,
Speaker 1: I think would be a really vital need that we
Speaker 1: could benefit from a lot out here if we could
Speaker 1: get the medical collectives and the harm reduction collectives that
Speaker 1: exist in these more urban areas to conduct rural training workshops.
Speaker 1: I think that that would be a huge benefit to
Speaker 1: not only just Aberdeen, any rural area that that was
Speaker 1: to take place in, because that would allow those communities
Speaker 1: to start employing harm reduction and general first aid in
Speaker 1: their communities and prevent transportation out to these more metro areas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the more we could do skill shares, the more we
Speaker 1: could do workshops, the more we could do radical classes
Speaker 1: or anything under the idea of kind of unschooling that
Speaker 1: we could do for rural communities is imperative because the
Speaker 1: outside of high school, unless you're going to college for
Speaker 1: something specific, there's just not much for learning out here.
Speaker 1: What about the next general what about that site of
Speaker 1: struggle in education? Well, I believe sprout could probably delve
Speaker 1: into this a bit more, but it definitely would say
Speaker 1: that our ideas for you know, educations in the next
Speaker 1: generation as much as everything kind of goes under this
Speaker 1: I forget the name of it, but it's this idea
Speaker 1: of the like seven years generation in our planning and
Speaker 1: the like, what what would this look like for the
Speaker 1: next seven generations? Right? Seven generations? Sustainability all seven generations
Speaker 1: stewardship is another twom used, I think education is central
Speaker 1: to a community. It's really the same sort of you know,
Speaker 1: you're going to get the same answer with all of
Speaker 1: these healthcare, addiction, poverty, they're all interrelated out here. And
Speaker 1: because education is so crucial, we have focused the Black
Speaker 1: Our Collectives initiatives on a lot of educational programs. So
Speaker 1: we're trying to get this space set up so that
Speaker 1: we can start having some revolutionary course works that we
Speaker 1: can offer there. We would really like to develop it
Speaker 1: into a real campus for learning, both for youth programs
Speaker 1: and for like continuing education GD and college level kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. We think that the unschooling method is pretty
Speaker 1: cool where people can kind of just pace their own
Speaker 1: learning and decide what it is they want to learn.
Speaker 1: So that's the method that we would go with, and
Speaker 1: we think that that allows for a lot more diversity
Speaker 1: in the styles of learning that are employed, and through
Speaker 1: that you can kind of learn, you can kind of
Speaker 1: learn new ways of learning, I guess, which helps add
Speaker 1: resilience to any community. And I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of those skills offered at a place like that, Like
Speaker 1: like Sherry I was saying, skill shares, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of that could come from We'll need to come
Speaker 1: from urban communities because we don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: that out here of our right, so hopefully right get
Speaker 1: our When we get our space set up, we can
Speaker 1: host all manner of gatherings and start bridging that divide
Speaker 1: between the rural and the urban. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: I've been looting more about your space, did a bit
Speaker 1: of research on it um, you know, prior to the episode,
Speaker 1: and we stood food started token very inspiring stuff, very
Speaker 1: much in the being of something that I plan on
Speaker 1: doing locally here and turn on to be ago. Let's
Speaker 1: pretend that this is uh, lets pretend this is a
Speaker 1: revolutionary vosion of shock tac. All right, Like, let's just
Speaker 1: pretend this is an anarchist shock tac. Give me your
Speaker 1: elevate a pitch for this space, Like, what is the
Speaker 1: plan there? Our plan is twofold. The property would be
Speaker 1: divided into two separate sections. The public facing section would
Speaker 1: be dedicated to the social center we've been speaking of,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the property would be what we're
Speaker 1: calling an eco village where residents would live. The social
Speaker 1: center will be where we centralize community resources, and the
Speaker 1: self governed eco village would have immediate access to those
Speaker 1: shared resources. The plan is to run the Social Center
Speaker 1: as a bit of a small business incubator for various
Speaker 1: community initiatives that we've been talking about, and as well
Speaker 1: for the residents of the Eco village to start their
Speaker 1: own small person of businesses, because in our discussions with
Speaker 1: people on the streets, you know, everyone has an idea
Speaker 1: of how to make money, and it's just always some
Speaker 1: small barrier like paperwork or permits that gets in the
Speaker 1: way of them starting to have their own income and
Speaker 1: that sense of independence. So we want to be able
Speaker 1: to help with that. It would also obviously be a
Speaker 1: central hub for preparing and serving food, which has been
Speaker 1: the basis of all of our organizing so far is
Speaker 1: the coming together and sharing of meals. We want to
Speaker 1: have an Internet cafeteria and a community kitchen there. We
Speaker 1: would also host hold space for the Mutual Aid Network
Speaker 1: to store supplies and conduct its work both on and offsite.
Speaker 1: We want to have enough space to have a meeting
Speaker 1: hall for potential unions and start pushing on the unionization
Speaker 1: locally with the IWW. All of these spaces would be
Speaker 1: rentable to the public, so the union hall, for example,
Speaker 1: would be a great venue for an event that someone
Speaker 1: wanted to throw, or perhaps the wedding even and so
Speaker 1: that be one source of revenue for the Social center,
Speaker 1: as well as the bookkeeping, the back end bookkeeping services
Speaker 1: that we're going to have as part of the business incubator,
Speaker 1: and the permaculture design services that we're going to have
Speaker 1: as part of the eco village. The release sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of the different ideas that I've had conversion
Speaker 1: on my channel for some time now. You know, this
Speaker 1: idea of a sort of a library economy, in this
Speaker 1: idea of the eco villages, the sort of public culture
Speaker 1: spieces and moods and centers of clunity, outreach and education.
Speaker 1: I'd be lying if I didn't say say that that
Speaker 1: we're a huge fan of your channel. Actually appreciate that,
Speaker 1: appreciate that, and I'm honestly in tune. This project is
Speaker 1: something that really inspires me as well. Yeah, I'd like
Speaker 1: to say that none of this is from us. We've
Speaker 1: taken so much inspire from other projects to cobble together
Speaker 1: this plan that, Yeah, it's been a real joy to
Speaker 1: just go through all of everyone else's different content and
Speaker 1: kind of see like, oh, this could fit with that,
Speaker 1: and this could fit with that, and come up with
Speaker 1: a plan that we really think could start to solve
Speaker 1: some of these issues that we're seeing in town. Right.
Speaker 1: I think that's the real one of the few beauties
Speaker 1: of the Internet these days, you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: it's still able to connect people and ideas from all
Speaker 1: over the police. Yeah, for sure. I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: as you mentioned these sort of equal villages and that
Speaker 1: that whole idea having spaces for housing and benefitting the
Speaker 1: people in that community, developing that sort of sense of interdependence.
Speaker 1: I wanted to you know, you can't really talk about
Speaker 1: urban and road rule and urban without bringing up the
Speaker 1: fact that Urbanizasha, you know, seems to ever crawl into
Speaker 1: the rural space. You know, like there's always this sense
Speaker 1: of the encroachment of the city on the surrounding rural regions.
Speaker 1: What do you what is your teak on that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does seem to be a one way street. I
Speaker 1: think the model that we're trying to push is one
Speaker 1: of the growth where you would see sort of a
Speaker 1: reversal of that trend of gentrification or urbanization and you
Speaker 1: would see more of like a ruralizing of urban spaces
Speaker 1: to start having more green spaces, more growing of their
Speaker 1: own food, and more production of agricultural products right there
Speaker 1: in the urban centers, right, you know, which is kind
Speaker 1: of what we want to do with the eco village
Speaker 1: is provide a bit of a model for how community organizing,
Speaker 1: of how a community could organize itself around the ecological
Speaker 1: principles prefigurative politics and action exactly. Another note that I
Speaker 1: guess I want to bring up before we start to
Speaker 1: come to the clues is, you know, again we've been
Speaker 1: speaking a lot about the urban and the rule, but
Speaker 1: one element, except in a you know, sort of a
Speaker 1: passing sense of our discussion of the police, one element
Speaker 1: that's kind of been lost in that and that I
Speaker 1: know people might be asking about, is what about the suburbs?
Speaker 1: You know, like, do you see a space for organizing there?
Speaker 1: Way does that fit into that urban rule? That caught
Speaker 1: to me what sort of focus is do you think
Speaker 1: suburban organized says might want to tackle? Well, I think
Speaker 1: suburban comrades are probably gonna have a bit of both worlds,
Speaker 1: as it were, because they're not in the downtown core
Speaker 1: of a city where most protests or sites of struggle happen,
Speaker 1: but they're also not out in the boonies in a
Speaker 1: rural environment, so you know, they might have police that
Speaker 1: are a bit more preoccupied with the actual community and
Speaker 1: actually from the community, and so they might need to
Speaker 1: take some lessons from the rural center or from the
Speaker 1: rural areas in that regard and try to diversify their
Speaker 1: group into multiple different roles, multiple different channels, so that
Speaker 1: they are having continuous backlash against a group that's just
Speaker 1: trying to feed the homeless. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, they have a lot of resources that rural
Speaker 1: people don't have access to, and so they could be
Speaker 1: coming into rural areas and providing those same sort of
Speaker 1: trainings and workshops that urban comrades could. And they could
Speaker 1: also be going into urban centers and learning and providing
Speaker 1: workshops and skill shares. In those scenarios, I think they're
Speaker 1: kind of a maybe play a bit of a buffer
Speaker 1: zone between the two. So what does the future look
Speaker 1: like the Black Folk Collective? You know what projects you're
Speaker 1: planning on tacklin in the end now, a couple of
Speaker 1: months from now, a few years down the line, and
Speaker 1: how can folk support Well, right now, we are definitely
Speaker 1: focused on securing funding. The housing market is horrible. Property
Speaker 1: prices are going up, and when there is a good
Speaker 1: deal on something, it's gone usually within a day, within hours.
Speaker 1: So we are definitely full focused on fundraising right now.
Speaker 1: We need to have the money on hand to be
Speaker 1: able to jump on a piece of property when it
Speaker 1: comes up, because we need a good deal and we
Speaker 1: need a good amount of land to make sure that
Speaker 1: we have the room to grow and build various projects
Speaker 1: in the future. Yeah, So the projects that we're focusing
Speaker 1: on right now immediately is the Perma Culture Design Services,
Speaker 1: and so if anyone wants to have us design their
Speaker 1: farm or garden or house or balcony, they can go
Speaker 1: to Blackflower Perma Culture dot no, blogs dot org and
Speaker 1: get started through that process there. Hopefully, once we get land,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, in the next five years, the
Speaker 1: Perma Culture Design Services can grow into a permaculture design
Speaker 1: course that we could actually start offering people to come
Speaker 1: and do like a two week intensive study on the
Speaker 1: building techniques that we're using on site in the eco
Speaker 1: village and on how to apply those back at home.
Speaker 1: Another project that we're currently working on is the bookkeeping
Speaker 1: This is sort of the bedrock of the business admin
Speaker 1: side of things that we're going to be folding into
Speaker 1: the business incubator once we get that going, and we
Speaker 1: are looking into a couple of different grants for that.
Speaker 1: But as Sherry and said, you know, right now we're
Speaker 1: focused on fundraising, so we are. We do have a
Speaker 1: couple of different platforms that we're collecting donations from and
Speaker 1: we are starting to plan a few benefit shows here
Speaker 1: locally in Aberdeen. So if anyone is in a band
Speaker 1: and wants to roll through and play a show for us,
Speaker 1: you know that would be much appreciated and then they
Speaker 1: can just get a hold of us through our website.
Speaker 1: So our role in black Flower is trying to spread
Speaker 1: awareness help with this fundraising. Gave them kind of free
Speaker 1: advertisement in order to help their growth. Mean Sprout and
Speaker 1: our podcast moltop Now are from the Sabo Media Collective,
Speaker 1: which once things are going with good with black Flower,
Speaker 1: we're hoping to be housed by them to help grow
Speaker 1: our media efforts. But if another good way to help
Speaker 1: in supporting black Flower is to go to our website
Speaker 1: at Sabo Sabot Media dot Noblogs dot org and share
Speaker 1: our podcast Maltov. Now check us out on social media,
Speaker 1: on whatever social media you are on. From Collectiva masted
Speaker 1: onto Facebook at Aberdeen Local thirteen twelve. We have articles
Speaker 1: that we write on the Harbor Rat Report and a
Speaker 1: whole host of other content for people to check out
Speaker 1: and share with donation links that all go to Black
Speaker 1: Flowers efforts. That's fantastic and I would encourage folks to
Speaker 1: check out what they're doing and all these different platforms
Speaker 1: and well, that's been it for it could happen here.
Speaker 1: It's been great to have you both from Black Flower Collective.
Speaker 1: I've been your host for today. Andrew of the YouTube
Speaker 1: channel Andrewism, which you can follow YouTube dot com slash Andrewism,
Speaker 1: on Twitter at underscore Saint Drew and on Peter dot
Speaker 1: com slash Saint True. All power to all the people
Speaker 1: that's have your Thanks for having us, thanks for being on.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys, great recording with you. My that's my
Speaker 1: getting absolutely screwed over by the Medical Establishment Voice. People
Speaker 1: thought it was another Sheet podcasts. They were briefly extremely excited. Nope,
Speaker 1: the Sheep, the Sheep podcast. Will I make no promises
Speaker 1: about the Sheep podcast. What we're going to tell them
Speaker 1: about the Lost Sheep episode. No, yeah, okay, well T
Speaker 1: will just leave that one. Yeah, this is this, this
Speaker 1: is it could happen here the podcast where you would
Speaker 1: think that the medical issue is a trans thing and
Speaker 1: it's absolutely not. And it's amazing and I love it.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's it's a podcast for I complain about
Speaker 1: medical issues and talk about other stuff with me as James. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a person who complains about medical issues and sometimes
Speaker 1: goes to Mexico to buy drugs yeay, legal drugs, medical
Speaker 1: drugs while we're while we're being recorded. This The thing
Speaker 1: that is making me think of is I was in
Speaker 1: Oh god, I don't remember where Mexico I was. Um,
Speaker 1: I was no very old, but so we took up,
Speaker 1: we took a ferry and it was I got like
Speaker 1: so c sick. It was like the most ceasic we've
Speaker 1: ever been. So we had to like go back and
Speaker 1: um we so I this My Spanish is not great
Speaker 1: at this time. My Spanish was much worse than it
Speaker 1: is now. Um, and we have to we go to
Speaker 1: this drug store and we're trying to find something that's
Speaker 1: like an antic sickness drug and we buy this drug
Speaker 1: called vomits in and we're looking same. When we're looking
Speaker 1: through the the thing, we find the part where it's
Speaker 1: say side effects, and I remember and I look at
Speaker 1: this and I and I read it and it says
Speaker 1: lucas and I'm like, oh no, it's like, oh god,
Speaker 1: it wound up. Actually it was completely fine. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did not vomit over the rails again, hydrate on
Speaker 1: the ferry ride back. I have a good I have
Speaker 1: a good inadvertent medicine hallucinogen story, and then we can
Speaker 1: we can actually do the podcast. And I was when
Speaker 1: I was a bit younger. I was climbing a mountain
Speaker 1: in Morocco and became extremely altitude sick, like my fucking
Speaker 1: nose was just like unleashing my blood. Like it was
Speaker 1: a real momentum. Yeah, I look great, and so I
Speaker 1: tried to get some medicine. We went somewhere and like
Speaker 1: you know, I speak French, but most of people spoke
Speaker 1: Berber and it wasn't a language that I speak at all. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I received some medicine which I took in the form
Speaker 1: of I think like a powder that I'm mixed with honey,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, this is unique and different. Whatever,
Speaker 1: fuck me, did I have some incredible dreams. I just
Speaker 1: kept taking it. I zone, well, it was definitely opium
Speaker 1: was the thing I was taking. Was like, I bought
Speaker 1: it down and was like, I this stuff just really
Speaker 1: helped out my altitude sickness. One of the adults I
Speaker 1: was with was like, ah, yeah, don't do drugs. Kids
Speaker 1: speaking of not doing drugs. Okay, So what we are
Speaker 1: here today talk about democracy, the opm of the masses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this this script was originally written in a period
Speaker 1: where High had spent an enormous amount of time being
Speaker 1: forced to watch documentaries about what democracy was. And my
Speaker 1: conclusion from all of this is that the history of
Speaker 1: democracy begins with a mistranslation. Okay, so okay, what does
Speaker 1: that mean? The answer is that, Okay, the whatever someone
Speaker 1: starts talking about democracy, the first thing they do is
Speaker 1: they go, like, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start by translating the word democracy. Now, the most common
Speaker 1: translation that you'll see this like like everywhere, from like
Speaker 1: Astra Taylor's like documentary what is Democracy? To just like
Speaker 1: the thing that's on Wikipedia holds that democracy is derived
Speaker 1: from two Greek words. Right, you have demos meaning the people,
Speaker 1: and cradouse meaning rule. So you put these two together,
Speaker 1: you get demos cradous, you get democracy. My Greek, my
Speaker 1: camp announce greatly. Well, it's fine whatever, it is ancient Greek. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know that this means rule by the people.
Speaker 1: So okay. This translation has several advantages right Foremost among them,
Speaker 1: it is simple enough to be taught to a school
Speaker 1: to school children, and catchy enough. That's a non zero
Speaker 1: chance that, like the most pedantic of them will remember
Speaker 1: it after the day after the test, which presumably is
Speaker 1: the explanation for why this is. This is the translation
Speaker 1: of democracy. It opens every single fucking thing people write
Speaker 1: about democracy. Unfortunately appreciately for beleaguered grade school teachers and
Speaker 1: and sort of those are of the broader populace as
Speaker 1: a whole. This translation is so blatantly wrong that I
Speaker 1: have been forced to start a thing about democracy and
Speaker 1: also about rioting yelling about ancient Greek. So great, okay,
Speaker 1: so what what? What? What? What is the actual issue here?
Speaker 1: The actual problem is the mistranslation of Credos in particular
Speaker 1: is incredibly important both conceptual and ideologically, and the actual
Speaker 1: sort of proper translation, and the implications of this are
Speaker 1: worth examining in some detail. So the other problem just
Speaker 1: David Greybirds to way have mentioned a lot on this
Speaker 1: show wrote in his regrettably very poorly read essay There
Speaker 1: Never Was a West, He describes Kratos thus quote in
Speaker 1: this This, in turn, might help explain the term democracy itself,
Speaker 1: which appears to have been coined as something of a
Speaker 1: slur by its elitist opponents. It literally means the force
Speaker 1: or even violence of the people Kratos, not arcos, the
Speaker 1: ancient Greek word for ruler, also the root of anarchism
Speaker 1: or without arcos. So, yeah, so what he's saying there
Speaker 1: wasn't Cretos a dude? Like he's dude, day I found
Speaker 1: dissolved him an immortal dude. Yeah he's Also he's the
Speaker 1: main character of the God of war Games. Okay, that
Speaker 1: is the thing I did not know, And hilariously that
Speaker 1: that is like him him being the main character of
Speaker 1: the God of war Games. That is actually a better
Speaker 1: way to understand what Credos is than the rule by
Speaker 1: thing that everyone usually translates. This app because like, like
Speaker 1: ancient Greek has a perfectly good word for like rule
Speaker 1: by right, it's arcos. It's the word of anarchisms, like
Speaker 1: an an archos, it's but it's the word. It's like
Speaker 1: the normal thing where you have a Greek derived word
Speaker 1: where you want to say rule by is that is arcos? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: But is not that right? Yeah, like all Gk is
Speaker 1: like that. But like democracy is specifically credos. And this
Speaker 1: is because what democracy literally means is rule by the
Speaker 1: violence of the people. Heat. Yeah, well and this, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so like this, this, this, this, like this sounds like
Speaker 1: I am essentially per clutching about translations, but the context
Speaker 1: you is actually important, right, as as Grammar points out,
Speaker 1: the sort of you know, Athens, which the example or society,
Speaker 1: society against which the original antidemocratic philosopher is rail By
Speaker 1: the way, this is like Plato hates democracy. Most of
Speaker 1: the people who you read from sort of classical Greek
Speaker 1: like yeah, philosophy despised democracy, even so they live in
Speaker 1: them a huge you know, not not not not to
Speaker 1: like whitewash Athenian society. But like these people are like
Speaker 1: sparta apologists, And it's like, yes, we haven't already. It's
Speaker 1: funny that people have definitely I don't know if they've
Speaker 1: actually recovered Plato or red Plato or they just get
Speaker 1: mad when Donald Trump doesn't win elections. But like this whole,
Speaker 1: like this whole like benevolent philosopher king ship has definitely
Speaker 1: definitely made a comeback in recent years. And it's troubling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I think part of this this is
Speaker 1: this is another complaint that I've had about sort of
Speaker 1: like the way that like the sort of like great
Speaker 1: authors thing is taught in in universities, is they deliberately
Speaker 1: like there is like an in in what in what
Speaker 1: specific reading as they assigned there was like an incredible
Speaker 1: intellectual effort that goes into making sure you never see
Speaker 1: the absolutely drained shit that these people believe. Like Plato.
Speaker 1: Plato literally worships angular momentum. Yeah, like that is his
Speaker 1: god is angular momentum um. Like he he's he hates democracy,
Speaker 1: he loves like spurred in like oligarchy. Basically like all
Speaker 1: of this stuff is like that's like something like you
Speaker 1: don't read you know, as you get assigned Plato. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a huge like um as someone who's taught like
Speaker 1: a ton of universities. That's that's this huge fucking impediment
Speaker 1: to you assigning that stuff. Like I've specifically tried to
Speaker 1: assign different stuff in these like writing courses, which which
Speaker 1: ended up being like great white dudes of history. Right, Like, um,
Speaker 1: like if you kind of signed different things, but like
Speaker 1: the cost of of assigning those and that that cost
Speaker 1: isn't born by you or the university, right, it's born
Speaker 1: by your students. It's massive. Like even if for while
Speaker 1: there like we would just like a lot of texts,
Speaker 1: you know, if you take the time as a professor
Speaker 1: to label out of text, you can take it to
Speaker 1: a print shop, get them to photocopy it, and it
Speaker 1: almost evers be you need to find someone who's willing
Speaker 1: to kind of play fast and news with copyright. But
Speaker 1: still it will end up costing your students so much
Speaker 1: more than the texts which are in the book that
Speaker 1: you can fucking autogenerate the quizzes because the book also
Speaker 1: has a website, and you still get paid, like you're
Speaker 1: doing a job when you're not so yeah yeah and
Speaker 1: bad yeah, and and this stuff has had you know,
Speaker 1: like this has had sort of profound ideological influences, has had,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's has sort of profound has profound
Speaker 1: influences on like the I mean just sort of the
Speaker 1: way that like ancient Greece and Rome or like conceptualized
Speaker 1: and and and I think this also really has you know,
Speaker 1: it hasn't It makes it very hard to see what
Speaker 1: was sort of actually going on in a place like Athens.
Speaker 1: And you know, a great graper sort of points this
Speaker 1: out right, like this is a sort of like exemplar
Speaker 1: I like, you know, sort of it's as a sort
Speaker 1: of an examplar, like it is literally like the place
Speaker 1: for which like, like most descriptions of sort of democracy
Speaker 1: are are are sort of originally about and Athens. You know,
Speaker 1: we are trained to think of Athens as like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's like well Athens, this is like the first democracy
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is like actually this is actually like
Speaker 1: a very normal sort of society and it's not this
Speaker 1: is a this is an extremely weird society. And what
Speaker 1: what grammar sort of points out about this, right is
Speaker 1: you know the thing that that is you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: so like there have been lots of societies over sort
Speaker 1: of the course of human like the you know, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of years in the sort of like course
Speaker 1: of human history, right that I've had collaborative decision making systems.
Speaker 1: What is very, very weird and almost unique about Athens
Speaker 1: is it has two things put together. It has a
Speaker 1: decision making apparatus where people have equal say, and it
Speaker 1: also has a violent enforcement mechanism to impose the will
Speaker 1: of the people on other people and as you know,
Speaker 1: as we'll get to you in a second, also impose
Speaker 1: the will of those people on other people. Most society, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that that turns out to be a very
Speaker 1: important part of sort of the evening empire, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Exactly like who the people are? Yeah, this is people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get to that in a second too. But
Speaker 1: so so most societies, grape or argues either have one
Speaker 1: or the other of you know, having a having like
Speaker 1: a decision making apparential people of equals say, and a
Speaker 1: violent enforcement mechanism. Right, you have a lot of societies
Speaker 1: with collective decision making apparatus is that involve the entire community.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, these these processes invariably sort of
Speaker 1: like develop some kind of consensus process as a sort
Speaker 1: of expedient to keep the community from just tearing itself
Speaker 1: apart through costs of conflict, right, because like, okay, like
Speaker 1: if if you can't actually without the threat of force, right,
Speaker 1: you can't actually have society where you constantly have really
Speaker 1: really controversial decisions being made by like fifty one forty
Speaker 1: nine splits where both sides absolutely hate each other and
Speaker 1: one side as imposed over the other. Right, And in
Speaker 1: order to sort of like keep your like, you know,
Speaker 1: your like city or your state together, right, you have
Speaker 1: to actually create political solutions that you know, people people
Speaker 1: not not that they necessarily like fully agree with, but
Speaker 1: that they're willing to live with. And then you know,
Speaker 1: this generates sort of like various so increasingly elaborate, sometimes
Speaker 1: not very elivable, but you know, various sort of forms
Speaker 1: of consensus processes. On the other hand, you have societies
Speaker 1: with extremely violent enforcement mechanisms. But these societies are almost
Speaker 1: always incredibly hierarchical, and they're ruled either by sort of
Speaker 1: monarchs or oligarchs who just simply do not care about
Speaker 1: the notion that like people should rule themselves, or that
Speaker 1: you know, other like other people who are not like
Speaker 1: the king or the body of oligarchs should have like
Speaker 1: anything even remotely to do with me decisions. And that
Speaker 1: that's what makes Athens really weird, right is Athens has
Speaker 1: both of these things. It has a sort of it
Speaker 1: has like a violent it has a way of like
Speaker 1: imposing decisions on people through violence. And also it has
Speaker 1: this principle that like people should be able to make
Speaker 1: decisions for themselves collectively by you know, like through through
Speaker 1: through a sort of process that doesn't involve them all
Speaker 1: being ruled by just like some guy. And you know
Speaker 1: what makes Athens and the other and the other sort
Speaker 1: of Greek democracies, because there there are other democracies in
Speaker 1: Greece over the sort of period that this goes on.
Speaker 1: What makes them unique is that, like the people quote
Speaker 1: unquote is composed largely of soldiers, as Gravery puts it.
Speaker 1: In other words, if a man is armed, then one
Speaker 1: pretty much has to take his opinion into account. One
Speaker 1: can see how this works, and it's starkists and Xenophon's analysis.
Speaker 1: I've been I have now been told by several dictionary
Speaker 1: sites that this is in fact how you pronounce it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Anabassis sounds terrible to me, But a
Speaker 1: degree such as the will of and I Don't Know Dictionaries,
Speaker 1: which tells the story of a Greek army of mercenaries
Speaker 1: who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle
Speaker 1: of Persia. They elect new officers and then hold a
Speaker 1: collective vote to decide what to do next. In a
Speaker 1: case like this, even if the vote was actually sixty forty,
Speaker 1: everyone could see the balance of forces in what would
Speaker 1: happen if things actually came to blow. Every vote was
Speaker 1: in a real sense a conquest. So what we're dealing
Speaker 1: with here right in this is this is sort of
Speaker 1: what democracy is. It's very rawest form. Is you are
Speaker 1: dealing with a group of very heavily armed men who
Speaker 1: need to find a way to convince slightly more than
Speaker 1: half of the group to agree to help them impose
Speaker 1: their rule on everyone else. Do you know what I
Speaker 1: will get you? Do you do? You know who will
Speaker 1: fail to pay your mercenary contract, leaving you stranded in
Speaker 1: the middle of a Persian civil war which you have
Speaker 1: backed the wrong side, Vladimir Putin. Yeah, don't take mercenary
Speaker 1: contracts on Vladimir Putin. And we're back. So, you know,
Speaker 1: as I was sort of saying, well, what we're dealing
Speaker 1: with here. Right, we have a group of a very
Speaker 1: heavily armed men, and they need they need to find
Speaker 1: a way to make you know, they need to find
Speaker 1: a way to make like half of like slightly more
Speaker 1: than half of the group agree with them to impose
Speaker 1: their sort of rule on everyone else. So it's slightly
Speaker 1: more technical terms, right, Athenian, you know, Athenian democracy or
Speaker 1: democracy in the Athenian sense is composed of two code
Speaker 1: determining elements fused together. There is a decision making apparatus
Speaker 1: and an enforcement mechanism that you are code determining because
Speaker 1: the structure of the enforcement mechanism, which is fifty one
Speaker 1: blokes with sticks beating forty nine blokes with sticks over
Speaker 1: the head, also determines the structure of the decision making apparatus,
Speaker 1: which no longer needs to concern itself with the opinion
Speaker 1: of everyone in the group, as they would in a
Speaker 1: society without the ability to sort of employee violence to
Speaker 1: enforce decisions, as long as they have enough people to
Speaker 1: sort of militarily defeat a minority of the group. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, you could you could see how the structure,
Speaker 1: how how the enforcement mechanism is is the thing that
Speaker 1: is structuring what the decision making process has to look like. Right,
Speaker 1: It's the thing that sort of sets its limits. And
Speaker 1: this is something that it turns out, is very very
Speaker 1: sort of important in what a democracy is. The enforcement mechanism, too,
Speaker 1: is also determined by by the sort of decision making apparatus.
Speaker 1: Because the people here are armed soldiers. So the fifty
Speaker 1: one percent that becomes the sort of like basis of
Speaker 1: of of the of democratic majority rule. You know, it
Speaker 1: literally composes the enforcement mechanism itself. And this sort of
Speaker 1: double code determination is the origin of majority rule democracy. Right,
Speaker 1: The institution that you know, in various forms, and we
Speaker 1: will get into this, like this has gotten increasingly less
Speaker 1: and less quote unquote democratic over time, but this, this
Speaker 1: specific form is the thing that has come to sort
Speaker 1: of define what democracy is. If we look at what
Speaker 1: democracy is as a political project, though, right, what we
Speaker 1: see is that the essence of democracy itself is to
Speaker 1: transform the majority from a simple count of military strength
Speaker 1: into into a signal of morality. Right, The citizens of democracies,
Speaker 1: and even even a lot of people who are either
Speaker 1: not citizens of a democracy and live in it, or
Speaker 1: who don't live in a democracy simply believe that is
Speaker 1: the moral right for a majority of people to be
Speaker 1: able to impose the will in a minority. This is
Speaker 1: this is just this you know this this this is
Speaker 1: what This is what forms a kind of democratic common sense. Right.
Speaker 1: It is the thing that everyone believes that is sort
Speaker 1: of the basis of everything about how it democracy functions. Right,
Speaker 1: And you know, democracy is almost never framed this way
Speaker 1: explicitly except by you know, every once in a while
Speaker 1: you'll get someone who makes his argument who is like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, they're a billion they're or they're like,
Speaker 1: you know what's his name? I yeah, high E will
Speaker 1: like like if you press him, or like Milton Freeman
Speaker 1: to also well, like if you pressed him, will make
Speaker 1: this argument, right, which is like no one actually wants
Speaker 1: to live in a democracy because you know, like if
Speaker 1: you you know, if if we actually live in a democracy,
Speaker 1: everyone will just like increase our tax rate or like
Speaker 1: virginalized groups will like these are critiques made of the
Speaker 1: United States as well. And yeah, the earliest inception, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I know what's his name? I think it
Speaker 1: was I think was John Adams. So some of the
Speaker 1: early founders like very explicitly this is their argument against
Speaker 1: like maybe maybe various was the anti democratic arguments against
Speaker 1: giving anyone who didn't have property in the vote, which was, like,
Speaker 1: I think the exact line was, if you give people
Speaker 1: the vote, the first thing they will do is erase
Speaker 1: the debts and redistribute the land. Yeah, which was a
Speaker 1: whole asked rebellion about this, right, Yeah, yeah, I wish
Speaker 1: would have been based good program usually kind of kind
Speaker 1: of messed up in the US where you have to
Speaker 1: ask where that land comes from. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like, well, this is an argument you really only
Speaker 1: ever hear from people who have like the only minority
Speaker 1: that makes this argument are people who have a ship
Speaker 1: ton of property who are like, oh god, and you know,
Speaker 1: and their their thing here is, well, okay, we need
Speaker 1: to make the system blessed democratic so that people can't
Speaker 1: take our property away, yeah, or give property rights. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, the reason for sort of
Speaker 1: pointing out that this is what democracy is in theory
Speaker 1: is really sort of cynical and like reactionary. But the
Speaker 1: thing that the reason this argument works a quote unquote
Speaker 1: works with sort of like you know, with with sort
Speaker 1: of libertarians, is that this equation of sort of numerical
Speaker 1: superiority with the more right to exercise power is like
Speaker 1: the key underlying assumption of democracy. It is the idea
Speaker 1: without which democracy simply sees it the function. Right. But
Speaker 1: but this is something that you know, people don't talk
Speaker 1: about democracy like this, right, The sort of trick of
Speaker 1: the democratic system is to make is to push the
Speaker 1: enforcement mechanism into the background. Right when when when you
Speaker 1: talk about democracy with like regular people, the thing that
Speaker 1: they walk and they normally they think about voting, right,
Speaker 1: but you know, and any any kind of thing that
Speaker 1: is like a collective like decision making process, right, a
Speaker 1: regular person is going to call democracy. And you know,
Speaker 1: there if that's kind of true. But but you know,
Speaker 1: but if if if you want to sort of get
Speaker 1: like technical about it, it's not. And there's an there's
Speaker 1: an incredibly large ideological apparatus that specifically built up around
Speaker 1: making sure that people don't look at the way that
Speaker 1: the that the enforcement mechanism is as much, if not
Speaker 1: more so a sort of key element of what of
Speaker 1: what democracy is than the part where you know, where
Speaker 1: everyone comes together and make it makes a decision that
Speaker 1: everyone talks about all the time. I was watching an
Speaker 1: interview with Gray but the other day the such things
Speaker 1: I do in my free time, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about like democratic confederalism in Northeast Aria, right, and he
Speaker 1: talked about it like democracy without the state, which I
Speaker 1: think is interesting, Like it's him using that vernacular definition.
Speaker 1: So okay, so I'm I'm taking a lot of the
Speaker 1: arguments from self, Graaber wrote, but he he backs away
Speaker 1: from the implications of his own argument, right yeah, and
Speaker 1: goes back to albeit like caveating there were and I
Speaker 1: guess it's worth noting that there are a ton of
Speaker 1: like hugely divergent like we're not like prisoners of etymology, right,
Speaker 1: like like yeah them meaning like I think it's Rosa
Speaker 1: Luxemburg who said government is uh politics in the people's
Speaker 1: interest or something. It's kind of bullshit tanky interpretation of
Speaker 1: like most people would see it as there are these
Speaker 1: broad definitions, you know, and I think this is something
Speaker 1: that like like Asher Taylor's documentary, right, like you know,
Speaker 1: part about that's good, Right, It's like there's I forget
Speaker 1: who says that there's this like kind of famous political
Speaker 1: line that's like I if if if if if there
Speaker 1: if there is a thing that everyone agrees is good.
Speaker 1: No one will agree on what it is, right, like
Speaker 1: you know, and this is something that like, you know,
Speaker 1: like I think I think it's it speaks to the
Speaker 1: power I think it's specifically to the power of the
Speaker 1: sort of like like the idea that more people being
Speaker 1: like agreeing with something like gives gives legitimate gives legitimacy
Speaker 1: to that thing, which is that like every like like
Speaker 1: even societies that are like not even like really remotely democratic, right,
Speaker 1: We'll pretend that there's still democracies, right, like the Baptists
Speaker 1: have elections every sort of like psych right, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like like you know, this is this is the thing
Speaker 1: I think isn't very well understood, but like like this
Speaker 1: this was also a thing like for example, China has
Speaker 1: this Like Okay, sorry I I I as as as
Speaker 1: I'm preparing to explain this, I'm realizing that the China
Speaker 1: wa like the like Chinese government experts are going to
Speaker 1: get mad at me because I'm I think I think
Speaker 1: I'm about to confuse the United the United Front with
Speaker 1: the United Front Works Department. But so chin China, like
Speaker 1: technically speaking, is there are like other parties technically that
Speaker 1: are kind of remnants from like you know, for exact example,
Speaker 1: like the left faction of the KMT, which is like
Speaker 1: the Chinese Nationalist Party. Right, there's there's like technically a
Speaker 1: faction of them that's part of this thing called like
Speaker 1: the United Fronts. There's like technically other parties and they
Speaker 1: have like this like consultative role. It's it's it's an
Speaker 1: incredibly convoluted in the elaborate system, but you know, like
Speaker 1: that whole thing and you you you can find you know,
Speaker 1: like the Chinese system is like not it's not democratic
Speaker 1: in the sense of like you can like vote for
Speaker 1: someone or like like okay, like it's not democratic in
Speaker 1: the sense of you can make a vote that will
Speaker 1: make a thing happen, right, you know. And to be fair,
Speaker 1: the US is also not democratic in the sense of
Speaker 1: you can cast a vote and make a thing happen. Right,
Speaker 1: But this is sort of like you know, okay, like
Speaker 1: it is it is a in a society that is
Speaker 1: less democratic than the US, which is sort of astounding
Speaker 1: considering the US like doesn't even have one person one vote. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get into like republics a bit in a second,
Speaker 1: but like you know, like Chinese like quote unquote, democracy
Speaker 1: is like not it has very little to do with
Speaker 1: like the principle of like the mote like fifty one
Speaker 1: percent of the population votes for a thing and it happens. Right.
Speaker 1: But but you know, like if if if you if
Speaker 1: you look, if you look at the sort of rhetoric
Speaker 1: that you that you see from or in the internal
Speaker 1: justification of like like you know, you sort of like
Speaker 1: read chinesecratic documents, so you read sort of like that
Speaker 1: their pr stuff, Like they constantly talk about like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make a more democratic society because like that legitimacy,
Speaker 1: like the idea of democracy is really incredibly powerful and enduring,
Speaker 1: and it's something that like even like you know, like
Speaker 1: I mean, like I don't know, like the Saudis don't
Speaker 1: pretend to be a democracy really, but like most of
Speaker 1: the other like golf monarchies have like election ee things right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's an idea that is that is
Speaker 1: enduring and powerful enough that even people who don't agree
Speaker 1: with it are forced to sort of like do this
Speaker 1: pageantry of it. And I think that's really interesting and
Speaker 1: I think it explains a lot of the kind of
Speaker 1: I mean, especially around to occupy. But I think it
Speaker 1: explains a lot of the kind of political movements that
Speaker 1: we've been seeing over the last about fifteen years, which
Speaker 1: is I think this is also an explanation for why
Speaker 1: why we see so many riots as as a former
Speaker 1: sorts as a form of politics, and why you get
Speaker 1: these demands that are sort of like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you you like in the two thousand eleven revolutions, and
Speaker 1: so you sort of also see this now. You get
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of very abstract calls for democracy
Speaker 1: while also doing things that like are quote unquote not
Speaker 1: legitimate in a democratic society, like like rioting is not
Speaker 1: supposed to be sort of like a legitimate political action
Speaker 1: in a society because you know, like this is whole
Speaker 1: like the AA, because there's a system under which violence
Speaker 1: is supposed to be administered, administered right, like you have
Speaker 1: a state. The state is the thing that's supposed to
Speaker 1: do violence. If anyone else does it outside of that,
Speaker 1: they're like, you know, they're an illegitimate extremist. But okay,
Speaker 1: if if we go back to a sort of base
Speaker 1: definition of what democracy is, right, democracy is a collective
Speaker 1: decision making apparatus anti enforcement mechanism. It's like, well, what
Speaker 1: is a riot? Right? A riot is both of those
Speaker 1: things happening at the same time. There are a bunch
Speaker 1: of people collectively making a decision and then imposing that
Speaker 1: decision immediately. Yeah, it's ap Thompson who called the Leadites
Speaker 1: collective bargaining by riot. Quite possibly, Yeah, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: often like reference now and other stuff like like people
Speaker 1: talk about like you know, like your you're here that
Speaker 1: used all the time. I think they're the origin of
Speaker 1: it is um what is it? Eric Hobsborn could be
Speaker 1: Hobbsborn anyway. Yeah, Famously the Laddites were called collective bargaining
Speaker 1: by riot. Yeah. I think, well, I think there is
Speaker 1: something sort of interesting there about collective bargaining by sort
Speaker 1: of physical force. You know, it's like the decision making
Speaker 1: apparatus is happening outside of the sort of normal bounds
Speaker 1: in which decision making apparatus is supposed to happen. And
Speaker 1: I think I think there's there's a sort of this
Speaker 1: isn't there's another I forget exactly which graver thing this
Speaker 1: is from, but that you know, there's graver this might
Speaker 1: actually this might actually be from Essive about Batman, which
Speaker 1: is pretty funny. Um, what's he said? What's his take
Speaker 1: on Alfred's class status? I don't think he unfortunately, I
Speaker 1: think that's I think that's the one thing he doesn't mention.
Speaker 1: Pretty I'm pretty sure there's no Alfred discourse in it.
Speaker 1: There's lots of other discourse. He calls how is it
Speaker 1: banging it? No, he calls joker. He calls one of
Speaker 1: the Batman villains as Zurza Nite, which I think is
Speaker 1: very funny. Um. Yeah, but you know, okay, he has
Speaker 1: this argument about sort of like okay, how do you
Speaker 1: you know? So? So the the other part of democracy
Speaker 1: is it's is it's the part about the people right,
Speaker 1: And this is always a thing that's that's very much
Speaker 1: in contention, like how do you determine what the people
Speaker 1: quote unquote are? And you know the structure of Athenians
Speaker 1: to society is very much determined by who isn't isn't
Speaker 1: included in the people right, Like you know, women can't vote.
Speaker 1: If you're a slave, you also can't vote. There are
Speaker 1: lots of people who are directly under Athenian rule who
Speaker 1: can't vote, And are you know, not part of the
Speaker 1: people and therefore sort of like and and this this
Speaker 1: is in some sense the origin of like the trajectory
Speaker 1: democracy goes on, right, which is that the trajectory it
Speaker 1: goes through his republicanism because you know, like the founders
Speaker 1: of the US, right, if you look at this of
Speaker 1: that style of fifty fifty plus one style majority democracy, right,
Speaker 1: those guys you know, as we talked about, like they
Speaker 1: didn't want a democracy because they thought into democracy people
Speaker 1: would vote against their sort of like aristocratic interests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, like like yeah, it's like, well, all
Speaker 1: these people own slaves, all these people owned a bunch
Speaker 1: of land, all these people like I don't know, or
Speaker 1: like bankers and shit, and they're like, okay, so it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a bad idea if we let people like
Speaker 1: decide what to do with our stuff. So instead, you know,
Speaker 1: they go to this republican in structure. And the republican
Speaker 1: structure is I think very interesting because it takes the
Speaker 1: fifty plus one structure, right, but you know, it abstracts
Speaker 1: it to the point where like the like you like,
Speaker 1: your vote for the most part basically simply does not matter.
Speaker 1: Like every once in a while, like a local election,
Speaker 1: it can do something. But you know, like what what's
Speaker 1: actually happening, right is is you're like you are selecting
Speaker 1: who is going to rule you. And you know, the
Speaker 1: other part of this is that the enforcement mechanism becomes
Speaker 1: autonomous from the people itself, because you know, unlike unlike
Speaker 1: an Athenian thing, where like everyone's either like on a
Speaker 1: ship because they're like are you know, they're part of
Speaker 1: the navy, or they like you know, they can go
Speaker 1: strap on their fucking shield and like plates and grab
Speaker 1: their big ass spear, right and you know, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is this is the state, right, the state is
Speaker 1: like fucking Jerry and his friend like Patrickliss or whatever
Speaker 1: the fuck, you know, like form forming a shield wall
Speaker 1: with the like the shields they have at home. You know.
Speaker 1: But but you know, and then that's the thing like
Speaker 1: in in in in sort of like warrior democracies of
Speaker 1: that style, like they're there are short third like the
Speaker 1: Cassatra Republic. I think that's same of it. Um they're
Speaker 1: they're these sort of like they're like you know, they're
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're there. There are republics like this
Speaker 1: or quote unquote republic like this that that that exists
Speaker 1: in in various places in the world where you have
Speaker 1: these sort of like military classes that you know, like
Speaker 1: D fifty plus one, but those people, right, the unfortunate
Speaker 1: mechan mechanism is very is very very direct. In a republic,
Speaker 1: the unfortunate mechanism becomes autonomous, and also the decision making
Speaker 1: apparatus becomes both both of them become autonomous from like
Speaker 1: the people quote unquote who are supposed to be making
Speaker 1: the decisions, and suddenly you have the situation where you know, okay,
Speaker 1: if you live in the US, right, it is very
Speaker 1: very clear that there are lots of things that everyone
Speaker 1: supports that simply like are not is not like like's
Speaker 1: not happening right, Like you know, I mean you can
Speaker 1: look at sort of like universal healthcare, like I mean,
Speaker 1: for exact another example that we could take that's I
Speaker 1: think for poignant right now is like there was a
Speaker 1: pretty recent study on like what percentage of the population
Speaker 1: in the US supports trans people getting like frands affirming healthcare,
Speaker 1: and it was like seventy percent. And then you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, But you know, you look at a
Speaker 1: state by state basis, right, and it's like what we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about this more sort of later, but you know,
Speaker 1: basis like, well that's not fucking happening, right, people are
Speaker 1: just making it illegal. And it's very easy to look
Speaker 1: at this and go like, well, okay, so the principle
Speaker 1: of fifty plus one is being violated, right, Like, this
Speaker 1: is not a democracy. Something else has happens. One sort
Speaker 1: of solution to this is to go back to you know,
Speaker 1: is to very literally go back and ask the question
Speaker 1: who is the people? And and this is this is
Speaker 1: you know a lot of ways what occupy is doing, right,
Speaker 1: Like occupies to answer this is like we are the
Speaker 1: ninety nine percent, right, It's okay, So like there there
Speaker 1: there is a thing that is claiming to be the
Speaker 1: like the demos in in democracy, which is you know, Congress, right,
Speaker 1: but like, okay, Congress trivially is not the people, right
Speaker 1: and at the best a section of them, it is
Speaker 1: definitionally not in any any yeah right, you know, And okay,
Speaker 1: so you have you have lots of versions of this,
Speaker 1: like the American one tends to be a lot of
Speaker 1: people sitting in square, you know, but like like like
Speaker 1: can can actually convening a a something that's kind of
Speaker 1: like a democracy. But even but you know that's the
Speaker 1: everything was like is occupy democracy, right, Like they don't
Speaker 1: have violence as like a political tool. Really, I mean
Speaker 1: this isn't to say that like there wasn't some weird
Speaker 1: shady shit that happens, but like, you know, like they
Speaker 1: don't have the ability to sort of like coerce people
Speaker 1: into accepting like a fifty one percent decision that people
Speaker 1: like genuine they can't lifts, right, So they don't they
Speaker 1: don't really like they in some sense, in challenging democracy,
Speaker 1: they create something that isn't really a democracy, right, They
Speaker 1: create a sort of like elaborate consensus process. And this
Speaker 1: is you know, like if if the Kratos part is
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a way of being I
Speaker 1: think for like ten minutes about a way to phrase this,
Speaker 1: but like if the if the strength and power is
Speaker 1: like is the people, and it's even distributed among the
Speaker 1: people as opposed to it's the state, and like if
Speaker 1: some of this theoretical abstraction of the will of the
Speaker 1: majority of the people, then that that leads to a
Speaker 1: consensus almost by definition, right like like if yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I think the sort of breaking
Speaker 1: principle here is if you think that it is legitimate
Speaker 1: to use for a group of people to use violence
Speaker 1: to enforce something, and at that point everyone is still armed,
Speaker 1: then then you you you get a fifty plus one structure, right, right.
Speaker 1: But if if you don't think it's legitimate to use
Speaker 1: violence to coerce people into sort of like doing whatever
Speaker 1: the thing is you want to enforce, then by definition
Speaker 1: you get some kind of consensus process. But you know,
Speaker 1: we we have a system that every everyone like thinks
Speaker 1: that what's happening, like you know, in some sense, like
Speaker 1: the ideological principle is that like you know, everyone thinks
Speaker 1: that what's happening is is you have a fifty plus
Speaker 1: one system. And that's where like the legitimacy of the
Speaker 1: system comes from, because like you know, we voted for
Speaker 1: these people, but also it's so clearly not and also
Speaker 1: like the police are so clearly just this sort of
Speaker 1: like roaming like bandit force that is like not even
Speaker 1: like remotely like it like they technically drawlogy missy from
Speaker 1: the people. But like you know, okay, like what what
Speaker 1: what what? What what happens if you try to convene
Speaker 1: an assembly of the people in the US. The answer
Speaker 1: is they beat the shit out of you with sticks
Speaker 1: and then tear gas you and then like start shooting you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, I mean this is this is sort
Speaker 1: of what you know, like like this, this is what
Speaker 1: occupy prove, right, which is like if if you challenge
Speaker 1: the sort of the claim of the government to represent
Speaker 1: the people, right, because like, who, who the fuck are
Speaker 1: these assholes to like to be like a hey, la, no,
Speaker 1: like we we we are the people. We are sort
Speaker 1: of like the legitimate manifestation of people. If you want
Speaker 1: to do anything, like you have to go through us. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like okay, so like how how how did they
Speaker 1: get that? How did they get that authority? Right? And
Speaker 1: the answer is they did it. They did it by
Speaker 1: staging an armed revolution and that that that's what their religion,
Speaker 1: That's what their actual legitimacy derives from, right, is they
Speaker 1: they want they want the armed revolution, yeah, and violently
Speaker 1: dispossessed people of that before they did that, like pig
Speaker 1: backing off colonialism to do an armed revolution. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so like okay, but like you know, their their legitimacy
Speaker 1: is incredibly tenuous, right, Like this gives you this question
Speaker 1: of how do you determine like what you know, how
Speaker 1: does a democracy determine what the people are? And one
Speaker 1: one way that you can make a sort of counterclaim
Speaker 1: again against a democracy is by a like physically assembling
Speaker 1: a ship ton of people in a place and going
Speaker 1: like we are like physically we are the people and
Speaker 1: we are going to make decisions. You know that that
Speaker 1: can that can look like occupy with like a seven
Speaker 1: hour meeting about whether where we want to put plants right,
Speaker 1: or it can look then this is you know, you
Speaker 1: get this a bit and occupy but like or it
Speaker 1: can look like you know, here are one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: people like they are going to fight there once you
Speaker 1: just like throw shit at the police until the police
Speaker 1: run away. And you know that that is that that
Speaker 1: that is a that is a thing that like we
Speaker 1: have seen in this country. This this will be like
Speaker 1: another episode, but this this this was a thing that
Speaker 1: happens in Mexico on two thousand and six in Wahaka,
Speaker 1: where people basically ran out the police by literally hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people like wa waking up to a
Speaker 1: bunch of police, like a bunch of police just beating
Speaker 1: the ship out of like a bunch of striking teachers
Speaker 1: and then like picking up a brick and throwing it.
Speaker 1: You see it a little bit, not really but like
Speaker 1: in like pon deemos in Spain if you're familiar with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they kind of their attempt to have people determined
Speaker 1: their policy platform, not lastly a successful one, but like yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean interesting, Obama did that too already. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: was the thing Obama had this job. Like one of
Speaker 1: Obama's initial pitches was like he was gonna have there's
Speaker 1: gonna be this like online thing where people could vote
Speaker 1: and like decide in policy things. And he immediately managed it.
Speaker 1: And but damost also immediately like this this is this
Speaker 1: is one of the things that like this is this
Speaker 1: is like one of the ways you try to like
Speaker 1: capture this kind of like yeah, because what what what
Speaker 1: what you're what you're really see like when when riot
Speaker 1: police are like fighting like a bunch of people in
Speaker 1: the street, right, Like what what you're watching is is
Speaker 1: two kinds of democracy fighting with each other. Right You're
Speaker 1: you're you're you're watching a sort of like like you're
Speaker 1: you're you're watching the crowd, which is and you know,
Speaker 1: a very very immediate like for like you know, literal
Speaker 1: form of democracy, right where you know, the crowd makes
Speaker 1: a decision and people do things fighting the police, who
Speaker 1: are like a very you know, the like the police
Speaker 1: are technically like a part of a democratic system, right,
Speaker 1: but the police are just purely the sort of like
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're you know, they they they are
Speaker 1: the violence by which the people rule. And you you
Speaker 1: are watching, but you're watching these two things sort of
Speaker 1: like clash with each other. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: I I think I think one of the sort of
Speaker 1: like products of of of the way that republicanism like
Speaker 1: specifically developed or like a publicanism in the sense of
Speaker 1: like this is a republic not a democracy like yeah
Speaker 1: small like yeah small r but also in the sense
Speaker 1: of like, okay, so instead of you voting on things
Speaker 1: directly like you know, you vote for some asshole who
Speaker 1: yeah the police funding yeah whatever, right, like that that
Speaker 1: sort of like unmooring of of of the means of
Speaker 1: violence from the people, which was you know, which was
Speaker 1: is the essence of democracy good or bad? Right? And
Speaker 1: and and I would also say, like you know that
Speaker 1: can go like that that sort of like having having
Speaker 1: violence and democracy, like you know, violence and decision making
Speaker 1: being paired together, Like that's not always a good thing.
Speaker 1: That can go really really badly, right, Like you know,
Speaker 1: because like like for example, like a race riot, right,
Speaker 1: like like a clan march right is technical, like is
Speaker 1: technically an expression of democracy, right it is you know,
Speaker 1: it is a group of people convening themselves as the
Speaker 1: people and then doing an action. And you know, and
Speaker 1: like I this has been something I've been sort of
Speaker 1: been forced to think about a lot with the anti
Speaker 1: trans laws, which is that like trans people are, like
Speaker 1: you know, the most optimistic estimate you could like have
Speaker 1: is like maybe two and a half percent of the
Speaker 1: population if you assume based a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: are trans and don't know that they're trans, right, Like
Speaker 1: you know, And and if if you were two and
Speaker 1: a half percent of the population in a in a
Speaker 1: fifty plus one system, it is very easy for fifty
Speaker 1: one p there is no physical way that you can
Speaker 1: have like if fifty plus one percent of the population
Speaker 1: decides to kill you, while there's nothing you can do, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's no there's no amount of like voting that
Speaker 1: you can do that would make you not die because
Speaker 1: that that's the sort of like the terinad of the
Speaker 1: majority or whatever like or like that. Yeah, yeah, have
Speaker 1: you familiar with like the argument against utilitarianism that like
Speaker 1: the greatest good for the greatest number, or the greatest
Speaker 1: happiness for the greatest number, if you're looking to serve
Speaker 1: the greatest happiness the greatest number. If like ten people
Speaker 1: get two units of happiness from beating one person to
Speaker 1: death with sticks, yeah, yeah, Like she can't experience as
Speaker 1: much sadness as the experienced happiness, like democratic impulse in action. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, like this is the thing that is
Speaker 1: again what we're talking about, like is normally brought up
Speaker 1: by like incredibly corrupt, corrupt and sort of vital the
Speaker 1: leads who want to protect their status. But like it
Speaker 1: is also you know, and like this is part of
Speaker 1: the reason why, for example, the US just fucking puts
Speaker 1: like immigrants to camps, right because they can't fucking vote, right, Like,
Speaker 1: they're they're not part of like quote unquote the people, right,
Speaker 1: Like there are large sections of the populations who are
Speaker 1: just you know, like booted from this entire process. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: this is an argument that William C. Anderson and Zoe
Speaker 1: sa Moods you make in the book as blackness resistance,
Speaker 1: which is that like yeah, like black people like fucking
Speaker 1: are not part of the ship, right, Like they're not
Speaker 1: like a constituentive like part of the people TM right yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know this they they they call this, they
Speaker 1: call this the anarchism of blackness um, which is this
Speaker 1: sort of like it's it's a position of being like
Speaker 1: removed as like a legitimate sort of like subject in
Speaker 1: the state. Who can you know, exercise you're like democratic
Speaker 1: rights or whatever the fuck it is, like yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: like lots of people have never had this, and you
Speaker 1: know this, even even even in this sort of like
Speaker 1: you know, relatively egalitari like you know, like there there
Speaker 1: have been like parts of the US, like especially the
Speaker 1: early US. Right. You have your like sort of like
Speaker 1: New England town council Ryan, It's like, well, what is
Speaker 1: what is your New England Town Council vote to do.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, the votes to send out the fucking
Speaker 1: militia to kill indigenous people, right, Like, you know, even
Speaker 1: you can even even even when the US has functioned
Speaker 1: as something that is closer to like a like democracy TM,
Speaker 1: where like the means of violence and the means of
Speaker 1: sort of decision making are actually placed in direct directly
Speaker 1: in people's hands, right, Like that doesn't always go well,
Speaker 1: but yeah, you know, but like you know, we we
Speaker 1: we we we have now developed a like we we
Speaker 1: we we developed a system that has like the worst
Speaker 1: of every single parts of every single aspect of this.
Speaker 1: Right we're like, okay, so we we we have fifty
Speaker 1: plus one as the sort of like legitimating factor, but
Speaker 1: also fifty beside of the population plus one does not
Speaker 1: actually vote for a thing. It is possible for like
Speaker 1: more than half of the popular It's possible for a
Speaker 1: majority of the population to vote for a businessio candidate
Speaker 1: you get a different one, right, like, yeah, it's possible.
Speaker 1: Like we've seen this, like so many fucking elections have
Speaker 1: had this now like two in my lifetime, like like
Speaker 1: and and also also we have we we we have
Speaker 1: the other part of it, which is that we also
Speaker 1: have like the the we have the other democratic principle
Speaker 1: of like you should be able to worse a political
Speaker 1: opinion by violence. Yeah, we got that in space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know again, guess guess gets like guess guess
Speaker 1: who fucking guests to make that decision. It's not fifty
Speaker 1: plus one of you, Like, it's a bunch of assholes
Speaker 1: and suits and like six cops. Yeah, I think a
Speaker 1: good way to view the US. It's like a bunch
Speaker 1: of landowners made a system where land votes and people don't. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and then and then you know, and then and then
Speaker 1: they went about making sure that like even if the
Speaker 1: land does vote for a thing, if it's not for yourself,
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen or seventy Yeah, there's seventy five weird
Speaker 1: dudes in between your vote and anything actually happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is how you get like this kind of constitutional
Speaker 1: magic the trumpets are always trying to do because like
Speaker 1: it's not actually like that far from reality right there,
Speaker 1: there are like seventeen magic incantations I have to get
Speaker 1: said after you put your ballot in the box, and
Speaker 1: then an old white dude's in charge again. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you know, I think, like, you know, the US system
Speaker 1: is like it's stunningly bad, like it's it's one of
Speaker 1: it's like a it's a really dogshit like tooroughly written
Speaker 1: democratic system like it is it is designed not to
Speaker 1: function like that that that was actually the point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like a there's a king, a thing that like
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have, like the fur the president is supposed
Speaker 1: to it's supposed to be a king, right, Like I
Speaker 1: think like if if, if, if you go back and
Speaker 1: read like what the balance of powers was supposed to
Speaker 1: be was like there they're doing the Roman thing of
Speaker 1: like you need like you need to combine to king
Speaker 1: in oligarchy and a democracy. And it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so we have like a fucking king who could just
Speaker 1: like kill people. It's great, it's great, it's great, but
Speaker 1: you know, you know, okay, So the I think, I
Speaker 1: think the the the broad total argument that that I
Speaker 1: want to make here is that what we have been
Speaker 1: seeing over the last about fifteen years, right with the
Speaker 1: certain movement of the squares, with the series of uprisings
Speaker 1: that we saw I mean, you know in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: the US, but also like all over the world from
Speaker 1: about twenty eighteen to I mean, some of they're still
Speaker 1: some only them are still going like now right, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's it's been a reaction to sort
Speaker 1: of this, right, it's it's it's been a reaction to
Speaker 1: democracy as a legitimating principle not matching like democray, like
Speaker 1: you know, even even even what the principle is supposed
Speaker 1: to be, and then people going out into the streets
Speaker 1: and doing democracy, and the sort of clash between like
Speaker 1: democracy and theory and democracy and action mostly has resulted
Speaker 1: in democracy in action winning because it's it turns out
Speaker 1: the thing about Republicans is that they're really really really
Speaker 1: good at creating like military apparatuses that are very hard
Speaker 1: to defeat by just purely fighting them. Yeah, sadly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But however, Comma, sometimes they lose, and you know, and
Speaker 1: as as as as the as the old Ira thing goes,
Speaker 1: they have to get lucky every time. We only have
Speaker 1: to get lucky one, so you know, keep collectively bargaining
Speaker 1: by riot. Yeah, what the fuck else are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: You know, like vote like yeah, yea yeah, yeah, like
Speaker 1: your life depends on it. Kids, You can vote if
Speaker 1: you want to write like they're there are instances in
Speaker 1: which it might meaningfully reduce the cruelty of the state
Speaker 1: a little bit in some places sometimes, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna it's not gonna like take away the central
Speaker 1: fucking connade of the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, so I
Speaker 1: do do do do do due democracy by rioting. That
Speaker 1: is our official legal position. This is legally I'm legally
Speaker 1: non actionable, but also legally actionable at the same time.
Speaker 1: This is called dialectrics. And yeah, this, this is what
Speaker 1: they could happen here. Find us in the places. I
Speaker 1: don't find us in the places. David Graber, I do that.
Speaker 1: Read The Never Was a West. It's great. Nobody reads it.
Speaker 1: It's it's really good. People have been asking for grade
Speaker 1: book because we keep talking about him. So you have
Speaker 1: read I never read The Never Was a West. Read
Speaker 1: Towards an Anarchist anthropology bullshit jobs. It's good to start.
Speaker 1: If you read, if you, if you, if you, if you,
Speaker 1: if you want to be the real grave head and
Speaker 1: read something that fucking no one has read, go read
Speaker 1: towards an anthropological Theory of value. I read into one
Speaker 1: of my cudages It's super Market the other day and
Speaker 1: we were talking about that good book. No one has
Speaker 1: ever read it. Uh yeah, reads more gray, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it could happen here. If that's the podcast that you're
Speaker 1: listening to, it's a news podcast. About ship falling apart.
Speaker 1: That's the only intro you're going to yet, because Garrison
Speaker 1: is right now in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, reporting
Speaker 1: on the continuing Stop Cop City protests. Garrison's done a
Speaker 1: number of scripted episodes covering these in detail over the
Speaker 1: last year and change. They're in the thick of it
Speaker 1: right now, so I'm just going to bring them and
Speaker 1: a friend on to talk about what has been happening
Speaker 1: this week. Yes, that's your que this week. This week
Speaker 1: is a special week because this is the fifth week
Speaker 1: of action that has happened here in Atlanta as a
Speaker 1: part of these Top Cop City and if in the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Force movement. This episode is going to be like
Speaker 1: a midweek update because this this week of action is
Speaker 1: still very much ongoing. There's still many many days that
Speaker 1: that thinks can't happened, but a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: has already happened in these in these first few days anyway.
Speaker 1: So we're going to kind of do a quick a
Speaker 1: quick little update and then a more comprehensive piece will
Speaker 1: be later down the line, but with me here to
Speaker 1: help to talk about what's what's what's gone down so far?
Speaker 1: Is someone from the Atlantic Community Press Collective Clark, Hello,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on,
Speaker 1: So for being on. Yeah, we've we've been kind of
Speaker 1: we we've been. We've been kind of teamed up the
Speaker 1: past few days here as as many many, many things
Speaker 1: both silly and serious, have have taken place across Atlanta
Speaker 1: of safety US. Yeah, that it's always nice to have
Speaker 1: friends when you're watching jack booted thugs go fucking ape
Speaker 1: shit with all of their new toys. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that is part of the Week of Action idea,
Speaker 1: is getting as many people here as possible and hopefully
Speaker 1: some of that makes makes some people uh more safe. Um,
Speaker 1: that's something that we'll probably talk more more in detail
Speaker 1: later when we have kind of hindsight. H But I
Speaker 1: guess today let's let's just start on what's kind of
Speaker 1: happened so far chronologically, I guess starting on Saturday. We
Speaker 1: I met you Saturday for a rally at Gresham Park.
Speaker 1: I think it's where we first met up this week. Yes,
Speaker 1: we met at the rally at Gresham Park, which had
Speaker 1: about I would say an hour's worth of speeches before
Speaker 1: they kicked off a march down the bike path from
Speaker 1: Gresham Park to what the activists called Welanni People's Park,
Speaker 1: which is the side of the protest beforehand. So the
Speaker 1: forest around it had been unoccupied since the raid in
Speaker 1: January that saw the killing of Torture Guita. So this
Speaker 1: was the first sort of permanent return to the forest.
Speaker 1: So we took a I don't know forty minute march
Speaker 1: down the path and then landed in Weelani People's Park
Speaker 1: that had one more little round of chants with a
Speaker 1: promise to defend the forest, and then they broke off
Speaker 1: and everything was a It was a nice, really relaxing day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a pretty positive start to the
Speaker 1: week of action. People essentially retook Kulani People's Park and
Speaker 1: started to go into the forest once again. Camp got
Speaker 1: set up in the forest. Um. Lots of people from
Speaker 1: both in town and folks from out of town started
Speaker 1: started to camp in the woods again. Um. And then
Speaker 1: in the hours after this small march, people started to
Speaker 1: prepare for the music festival, which was planned like a
Speaker 1: like a few hundred feet away from a Bulhani People's Park,
Speaker 1: I guess inside inside like a more like open field area,
Speaker 1: and music festival went off without a hitch. The first
Speaker 1: day it was pretty pretty rad. Yeah. I think there
Speaker 1: was about five hundred people for five hundred people that
Speaker 1: first night of the music festival. Yeah, and the vibes
Speaker 1: were great. Everyone was having a fun time. I think
Speaker 1: it went on until about one am, and I don't
Speaker 1: think the first day could have gone better. I think
Speaker 1: I went on till about four am. Okay, well I
Speaker 1: went to bed at one am. I did not go
Speaker 1: to bed at one am. I was at the music
Speaker 1: festival quite quite a bit longer. I'm quite a bit older,
Speaker 1: and I think that was the reason I had to
Speaker 1: leave so yearson doesn't understand things like needing sleep yet
Speaker 1: for another year or two before they hit that sweet
Speaker 1: sweet wall. So so true. Then then I'll have to
Speaker 1: find another teenager to go to journalism every like four
Speaker 1: or five years. You justn't find a new one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just keep re upping like Leo DiCaprio. Perfect. So
Speaker 1: So the first the first day was was pretty good.
Speaker 1: There was no no substantial police response that I saw.
Speaker 1: Police kind of left people alone in the forest. The
Speaker 1: march from Gresham Park was fine, um, and people got
Speaker 1: to spend a night in the woods again, which you
Speaker 1: know had had not had that many people in the
Speaker 1: woods in like months. Um, I mean this is this
Speaker 1: is it should be said, like camping in a music festival,
Speaker 1: but it's like relatively high risk because people have gotten
Speaker 1: significant charges just for camping in the woods in the past. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the very recent past part part some some of
Speaker 1: the warrants that that have been issued that justify the
Speaker 1: charges like domestic terrorism have included things such as sleeping
Speaker 1: in a hammock with someone else in the forest, and
Speaker 1: that's the reason why they're getting charged as a domestic terrorist. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is a music festival, people are camping. It's kind
Speaker 1: of chill, but also there's absolutely this kind of this
Speaker 1: just like this like a ever present kind of fear
Speaker 1: that despite what is being done being pretty pretty kind
Speaker 1: of like normal and not not not not in of
Speaker 1: itself militant radical, still the consequences from the state are
Speaker 1: kind of always always looming, which kind of leads us
Speaker 1: to Sunday, Yeah, which picks up exactly where we left on. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I got there around noon on Sunday, I think,
Speaker 1: and the first thing we see is a bouncy castle, large,
Speaker 1: large bouncy castle in front of the music festival. It
Speaker 1: has a big stop Coop City banner, um, massive multi
Speaker 1: colored bouncy castle. People are having a pretty pretty good time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As soon as they finished setting up the bouncy castle,
Speaker 1: it was it was filled and everyone. I think there
Speaker 1: were about seventy five one hundred people just set up
Speaker 1: on blankets around the stage. Initially, I think in the
Speaker 1: next few hours that definitely grew to be there being
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundred, hundreds of people returning to the music
Speaker 1: festival for the second day. Um, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the march on Saturday was anywhere between like I saw
Speaker 1: estimates of anywhere between five hundred two thousand people. Music
Speaker 1: festival seems to be like over five hundred people. And
Speaker 1: then on the second day at the music festival, it
Speaker 1: slowly grew in size to again being hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: of people and it's Yeah's it started off just kind
Speaker 1: of continuing on with the music, continuing on with the people,
Speaker 1: people having having nice times in the woods. I walked
Speaker 1: around the campsites, got had conversations with people talking about
Speaker 1: all sorts of anarchy related things, and then they're slowly
Speaker 1: throughout the day. I think that this was posted on
Speaker 1: social media as well. There was a plan for a
Speaker 1: rally at five pm to meet on part of part
Speaker 1: of the field that the music festival was also happening on.
Speaker 1: By the time that happened, people people met up. The
Speaker 1: group that that kind of converged was in a mix
Speaker 1: of black block camo blocks, so like people like covered
Speaker 1: head to toe and various various camo print And they
Speaker 1: set off from from the RC Field where the music
Speaker 1: festival was at. So they left they what they went
Speaker 1: down Bouldercrest Road to the section of the woods called
Speaker 1: the power Line Cut. So to understand what is going
Speaker 1: on here, you kind of have to understand some of
Speaker 1: the geography of the Wilani Forest. So we have like
Speaker 1: the the Wilani People's Park parking lot and that immediate
Speaker 1: kind of kind of camp site. This is this is
Speaker 1: like the the easternmost part, and then there's the RC
Speaker 1: Field which is just like right right next to that
Speaker 1: to the west, and then even west of that is
Speaker 1: Entrenchment Creek, and Entrenchment Creek kind of divides up this
Speaker 1: this uh, this dissection of the forest and then everything
Speaker 1: everything west of Entrenchment Creek is generally referred to as
Speaker 1: like the as the old Atlanta prison Farm area and
Speaker 1: the power line cut is is pretty close to to
Speaker 1: to the creek and to that that is kind of
Speaker 1: where this this prison farm section is, and this is
Speaker 1: this is an area of the woods that cops have
Speaker 1: been more rigorous about policing, more rigorous about surveilling, more
Speaker 1: rigorous about having kind of constant surveillance and people on
Speaker 1: the ground. It's it's estimated that they're spending over forty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a day running security on this part on
Speaker 1: on this part of the woods. So yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: see people for that amount of money, they could hire
Speaker 1: like more people than are on the police force if
Speaker 1: they just used fiber. That's really that's really the tactic
Speaker 1: they ought to be embracing. And I think if they
Speaker 1: had used fiber, they might have had enough people to
Speaker 1: counter the protesters, but to catch the baby overbloated police salaries,
Speaker 1: they only had like twenty people. Yeah, they did not
Speaker 1: have any. So this group set down Bouldercrest, They they
Speaker 1: marched up the power line cut. They laid out like
Speaker 1: tire tire barricades in the street um and then upon
Speaker 1: them marching marching on the power line cut. Uh after
Speaker 1: after they arrived near the near near the police surveillance
Speaker 1: set up that we that we that we just mentioned
Speaker 1: some of some of the equipment somehow burst into flames. Um.
Speaker 1: People have blamed like shoddy construction. People have said that,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes equipment just does that. Uh but yes,
Speaker 1: no so people people set set a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: police infrastructure on fire, set some construction equipment on fire
Speaker 1: that's being used to destroy sections of the forest where
Speaker 1: they wanted to build a cop city. Um. Police were
Speaker 1: repelled with stuff like rocks and fireworks. The cops that
Speaker 1: were stationed there very quickly retreated. I think, Uh, lots
Speaker 1: lots of stuff was set on fire. There was the
Speaker 1: surveillance tower was set on fire. A bulldozer was set
Speaker 1: on fire. Well, I mean it's it's winter. People need
Speaker 1: fires to camp come from I understand. Have a UTV
Speaker 1: was some kind of like like a like big like
Speaker 1: big like trailer like storage unit thing was set on fire. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the cops were very worried about that. They didn't
Speaker 1: know if there was flammable material inside that you you
Speaker 1: wouldn't store flammable materials and an easily accessible area. Oh,
Speaker 1: we shut down an entire interstate because we did that
Speaker 1: a few years ago. So we would in Atlanta, Atlanta,
Speaker 1: would all of Atlanta collectively, um so so so this happened.
Speaker 1: A thermal chopper from a thermal police helicopter was was
Speaker 1: watching all of this. Um. Honestly, the footage is pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: It is it is worth it is worth discussing how
Speaker 1: this type of how how this type of surveillance works. Um.
Speaker 1: Almost the same thermal cameras that are on the Bay
Speaker 1: ractire drones that Turkey makes. By the way, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty. It's pretty boomerang. Yeah, oh absolutely no,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's pretty. It's pretty frightening with their
Speaker 1: ability to track into into track individual people. UM. I
Speaker 1: also think it's worth because there's video of the cops
Speaker 1: being pelted with stuff, including fireworks. I think it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that, like, while it is unpleasant to be pelted
Speaker 1: with the kind of stuff the cops were pelted with,
Speaker 1: you and I have both been pelted with numerous fireworks
Speaker 1: of similar size and it is not a serious threat
Speaker 1: to life and limb. No, no, there, we survived, but
Speaker 1: it's modestly unpleasant, but the cops that were there were
Speaker 1: not very happy about it. They put out calls for
Speaker 1: officer in need of support and for all available units
Speaker 1: in the greater Atlanta area to converge on the forest.
Speaker 1: People who were who who marched to this to the
Speaker 1: section of the power line cut started to disperse throughout
Speaker 1: the woods, and I was backed by the road watching
Speaker 1: this from hundreds and hundreds of feet away because I
Speaker 1: did not need to go up there. That would not
Speaker 1: have been helpful in any way. But as this was happening,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of police cars zoomed by, so I
Speaker 1: started fall those cars. I went back to the music festival.
Speaker 1: Um I met up with with some with some other
Speaker 1: other media people that I was that I was communicating with,
Speaker 1: and then I got a text message saying that a
Speaker 1: cop showed up in the parking lot of the Wallani
Speaker 1: People's Park with an air fifteen. I start making my
Speaker 1: way over, and then as as I'm running across the
Speaker 1: music festival, I see a whole bunch of police at
Speaker 1: the parking lot for the music festival itself at the
Speaker 1: at the RC Field, So I don't I don't make
Speaker 1: my way over to the Wallannie People's park parking lot
Speaker 1: where there's the air fifteen, because instead I see way
Speaker 1: way more police closer closer to where I am, so
Speaker 1: I staged there. Minutes later police start running into into
Speaker 1: the music festival. They start tackling seemingly anyone who's like
Speaker 1: by themselves and that they could like get their hands on.
Speaker 1: It didn't it didn't seem incredibly targeted. Um, it's this
Speaker 1: is something that will kind of ill Pope. I'll probably
Speaker 1: like discuss in more detail once we have slightly more hindsight.
Speaker 1: But a lot of the arrests did not seem specifically targeted.
Speaker 1: In the bail hearings from just yesterday as a time
Speaker 1: of recording, they said they were going after people who
Speaker 1: had mud on their clothing and like it it rains
Speaker 1: a day before the music festival. Incredible detective work. Only
Speaker 1: only a true terrorist would have mud. I think a
Speaker 1: month and a half ago Ryan Millsap tore up the
Speaker 1: parking lot, so it rained the day before, and anyone
Speaker 1: who would walk through that parking lot or the trail
Speaker 1: system had to walk through mud. You're walking through what also?
Speaker 1: People are just sitting on the dirt at the music
Speaker 1: festival like, so yes, I mean this might also include
Speaker 1: like useful advice for people in the future, because if
Speaker 1: the movie Predator was telling me the truth and it's
Speaker 1: never lied to me yet, coding yourself entirely in mud
Speaker 1: makes thermal vision no longer function uh huh uh huh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so please please start to tack with people. It was
Speaker 1: definitely they were going after people who were like by
Speaker 1: themselves and yeah, people with mud. The police alleged in
Speaker 1: their in their warrants that were read out at the
Speaker 1: bail hearing that they were going after people who had
Speaker 1: metal shields, and they said that almost everyone they arrested
Speaker 1: was arrested carrying a metal shield. Now here's a few
Speaker 1: funny notes about that. There was not a single metal
Speaker 1: shield present at all. There were a few small plastic shields,
Speaker 1: not a single metal one. And in and looking through
Speaker 1: all of the footage of arrests, the footage that I
Speaker 1: have that's been sent to NLG, footage to other people
Speaker 1: have had no one was arrested carrying a shield, let
Speaker 1: alone a metal one. So a whole bunch of the
Speaker 1: reasoning for these arrests is incredibly suspect. Police so rated
Speaker 1: once tackled, arrested, like five people carried them out. They
Speaker 1: rated again, and this is where they started launching tear
Speaker 1: gas into the forest. I got gassed decently bad. It
Speaker 1: was not It was not very fun. The first time
Speaker 1: I've gotten tear gased in years, old, old old memories.
Speaker 1: Um and during this time kiss from a dear friend.
Speaker 1: So that was exactly what I was thinking, and I
Speaker 1: did not. I brought gas masks to Atlanta, but I
Speaker 1: didn't bring them on the Sunday because because usually you
Speaker 1: don't bring gas masks to a music festival. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: the thing about gas, the thing about tear gas and
Speaker 1: gas masks is that, like when you're used to getting
Speaker 1: tear gassed, it's really easy to have them handy and
Speaker 1: get them on. When like you're not used to being
Speaker 1: tear gas, you're probably not going to bring it with you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So people got people. Some people in the forest got
Speaker 1: gassed pretty bad. I mean. The whole point was to
Speaker 1: sew confusion, make it so that people could not hide
Speaker 1: out in the woods. It was it. It's to make
Speaker 1: people scatter, runaway so that they can be tackled and arrested.
Speaker 1: M One person that was a National Lawyer's Guild, a
Speaker 1: legal observer was arrested. Um, they're also at the Southern
Speaker 1: Poverty Law Center. This whole boy, this person was the
Speaker 1: only person arrested that I'm aware of that was released
Speaker 1: on bail. Everybody else, everyone else is being held indefinitely.
Speaker 1: That actually includes there was a second legal observer who
Speaker 1: was not wearing the hat. So during the bail hearings
Speaker 1: yesterday there Laura said that they were a legal observer,
Speaker 1: but because they weren't wearing the hat and because they
Speaker 1: were not local, they were not given bail. It was
Speaker 1: reported there was like around like thirty five arrests the
Speaker 1: night of yes Initially, APD released a press release that
Speaker 1: said there were thirty five detainees, which at the time
Speaker 1: they released it was a very interesting term because we
Speaker 1: thought thirty five people had just been arrested and were
Speaker 1: on their way to jail. Yeah, but just about forty
Speaker 1: five minutes after that, twelve of those thirty five were released.
Speaker 1: So this was very curious. There is a lot of
Speaker 1: theories going on for what has happened. I'm I'm just
Speaker 1: going to relay what I heard when I was listening
Speaker 1: to the bail hearings yesterday. So a defense lawyer for
Speaker 1: some of the people arrested said yesterday during the bail
Speaker 1: hearing that, to his understanding, the twelve people that were
Speaker 1: detained but not arrested were people from Atlanta, and the
Speaker 1: twenty three people who got arrested and charged or were
Speaker 1: not from Atlanta. And part of so what police could
Speaker 1: be doing here is basically, if you're from Atlanta, will
Speaker 1: we will id you, but we're not going to actually
Speaker 1: arrest and charge you, but we will arrest and charge
Speaker 1: you if you're from out of state, so they can
Speaker 1: continue this outside agitator narrative, so they can say every
Speaker 1: single person arrested after this protest was from out of state.
Speaker 1: The cops in the media have done a lot of
Speaker 1: weird collusion regarding the events of Sunday night. They've conflated
Speaker 1: the location of the arrests a lot. Police want to
Speaker 1: make this seem like they arrested people at a crime scene,
Speaker 1: that like they arrested people as they were like torching
Speaker 1: construction equipment, which just is. It's true. They arrested people
Speaker 1: almost seemingly at random at a music festival that was
Speaker 1: like hundreds and hundreds of feet away like it was.
Speaker 1: It is. It is not an it is not an
Speaker 1: easy walk from from the power line cut to the
Speaker 1: music festival, because not only do you have to go
Speaker 1: through some like pretty pretty harsh brush some woods, um
Speaker 1: and like jump over a pretty large creek of the alternatively,
Speaker 1: you have to like walk down a road, which nobody did.
Speaker 1: So the police have done a police and and and
Speaker 1: like local media like large like large corporate local media
Speaker 1: have have tried to make it seem like that this
Speaker 1: that this music festival thing is just like a red herring,
Speaker 1: that it's it's not it's not important. But a lot
Speaker 1: of the people that that were that were that were
Speaker 1: arrested seem seemed to be people that were just enjoying
Speaker 1: this music festival. So twenty three of them um have
Speaker 1: been charged with domestic terrorism. Most of those people are
Speaker 1: being held indefinitely for now. There the the bail hearing
Speaker 1: is going to get appealed to the to the Superior Court,
Speaker 1: where we'll see if that changes anything. The judge said
Speaker 1: that they were not presented with any evidence that these
Speaker 1: people did anything wrong, but they still decided to not
Speaker 1: give them bail. Um that the judge the reasoning for
Speaker 1: that was that the judge thought that people who did
Speaker 1: not have any local ties to the community could be
Speaker 1: a flight risk, and some people who did have local
Speaker 1: ties to the community, they said, still were a threat
Speaker 1: to the community somehow, despite many of them not having
Speaker 1: any prior convictions, not not having any prior arrests. It's
Speaker 1: it seemed it seemed pretty suspect during during during the
Speaker 1: during the bail hearing, but that was that was most
Speaker 1: of Sunday night. UM Eventually police kind of surrounded and
Speaker 1: kettled the group of people that that was still still
Speaker 1: at the music festival hours after these arrests happened. They
Speaker 1: gave like a five minute dispersal warning, and then they
Speaker 1: gave a ten minute dispersal warning. Eventually, cops let most
Speaker 1: of the people who like gathered who were gathered right
Speaker 1: in front of the stage leave. That was probably like
Speaker 1: fifty people at that point because people throughout the night,
Speaker 1: we're trying to leave um as as police were, you know,
Speaker 1: like rating the forest. Some people were able to some
Speaker 1: people were just like let go and like we're able
Speaker 1: to leave. Others were detained almost arbitrarily. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to say so that that was the first
Speaker 1: two days of the Week of Action, and it felt
Speaker 1: like a week. What happened the next day? So yeah,
Speaker 1: the non violent direct actions and then the Monday the events.
Speaker 1: Oh no Monday, yeah, because that was only that was
Speaker 1: only the second Monday. Is the city council meeting that
Speaker 1: we were in for eight hours? Yes? Yes, So Monday
Speaker 1: there was there was an interfaith coalition of clergy that
Speaker 1: uh that held a press conference outside of city hall.
Speaker 1: UM basically like endorsing the Stop Cops City movement or
Speaker 1: like Clark how how would you describe what happened? So
Speaker 1: there were a couple of elements to the clergym we'll
Speaker 1: just call it in action. The first thing was they
Speaker 1: presented a letter with over two hundred other clergy members
Speaker 1: who had signed that denouncing cop City, calling for an
Speaker 1: independent investigation into the killing of Tortuguita, and calling for
Speaker 1: an independent investigation into the use of domestic terrorism charges
Speaker 1: to chill free speech. And then during that press conference,
Speaker 1: uh Miko Shabon called for land back and called for
Speaker 1: landback of in the Wilannie Forest to the Muskogee people
Speaker 1: who stored in um coordination with the Legacy black residents
Speaker 1: of the area. Yeah, so they were both like talking
Speaker 1: about the need to stop cop city, but also providing
Speaker 1: a plan on how this land could be used. This
Speaker 1: land that is that is leased by the city. It
Speaker 1: is on decap County. After this press conference, some of
Speaker 1: these people from the coalition gave public comment during the
Speaker 1: city council. That was most of the events on Monday
Speaker 1: that I can recall. Oh, there was the there was
Speaker 1: the poem in the forest that night and that was
Speaker 1: that was very enjoyable. That was kind of the first
Speaker 1: time people like tried to go back into the forest
Speaker 1: since since the Sunday night raid. Um. And I think
Speaker 1: that started to slowly boost morale again. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think we should talk about also after the raid, there
Speaker 1: are a few, um, really unique things that happened. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who didn't have housing and
Speaker 1: they were housed by local activists. Um. There was the
Speaker 1: bus network was set up to transport people from the
Speaker 1: site where everyone was getting arrested to somewhere safe. They
Speaker 1: moved breakfast offsite to a different location. So there was
Speaker 1: a lot of work done in continuing the Week of
Speaker 1: action and providing some sort of infrastructure for all of
Speaker 1: these people who had come into town and didn't have
Speaker 1: anywhere else to go. Yeah. Once again, the resiliency on
Speaker 1: display was impressive, and people's ability to adapt to the
Speaker 1: ever evolving situation was was tested and people adapted pretty well. Tuesday,
Speaker 1: there was there was starting to be like typical non
Speaker 1: violent direct actions happening throughout to downtown. A whole bunch
Speaker 1: of banner drops happened around highways and interstates around Atlanta.
Speaker 1: People were detained for yes, US three people were briefly
Speaker 1: detained at the site of of of a banner drop,
Speaker 1: but throughout throughout the day there was people handing out
Speaker 1: letters to people, to folks like the CEO of Norfolk
Speaker 1: Southern Norfolk Southern Alan Shaw, and then similar similar type
Speaker 1: of like non violent direct action were happening. A small
Speaker 1: a small march was led from Woodruff Park to At
Speaker 1: and T and Georgia pacific Um. There was like maybe
Speaker 1: maybe fifty I think fifty is an accurate number. Fifty
Speaker 1: people gathered to march. Well, there were fifty marchers gathered
Speaker 1: and then like one hundred and twenty police officers in
Speaker 1: the in the in the surrounding area, massive, massive police
Speaker 1: presence police caused a huge, a huge disruption to downtown.
Speaker 1: Um that's something we've seen kind of ever since the
Speaker 1: Sunday raid. The police have been incredibly heavy handed in
Speaker 1: their response to every single thing, whether that be people
Speaker 1: handing out flyers or whether that be you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people at people at at at a music festival. Um,
Speaker 1: whole a whole bunch of police were mobilized to stay
Speaker 1: night near the forest, like a hundred again, like one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty cops at least three or four different agencies, bearcats, helicopters.
Speaker 1: I think there's it's it's unclear what they were doing. Um,
Speaker 1: this is something that we might we might speculate further
Speaker 1: on once we have hindsight. When I when I put
Speaker 1: together my my kind of my kind of a more
Speaker 1: more intense deep dive. And then uh, then today the
Speaker 1: thing that me and Clark just got back from. How
Speaker 1: do you want to explain today's today's events? So today
Speaker 1: was a lot of leaflet handing out and marching. It
Speaker 1: was a smaller group than the march yesterday. I would
Speaker 1: say there was like twenty twenty five people. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: it started off being like only only but like a dozen. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's slowly grew to like maybe like
Speaker 1: two or three dozen. But yeah, small, small, small group
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah, small group of people. And when they
Speaker 1: met at noon, they met and they broke into three
Speaker 1: different groups. Yeah. And so the group that we followed
Speaker 1: was just, uh, they walked a little northward and started
Speaker 1: passing out flyers at the Petrie Center Marta station. They
Speaker 1: would to all three entrances, and each group warranted its
Speaker 1: own police surveillance unit, massive police surveillance units. It was
Speaker 1: following everybody around. There was there was a SWAT vehicle
Speaker 1: parked right right outside where these people were handing out flyers. Um,
Speaker 1: it was. There was there was like fifty to one
Speaker 1: hundred cops flanking people on like from from like, from
Speaker 1: like different sides. Eventually all the all of the smaller
Speaker 1: groups that kind of branched off converged again and police
Speaker 1: then gave a dispersal warning to people who were on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, on a sidewalk outside of a hard rock
Speaker 1: cafe who were handing out flyers. Okay, well they mean
Speaker 1: they were in that case, they may have been protecting
Speaker 1: people because you want to you want to get folks
Speaker 1: as far away from the hard Rock Cafe as possible garrison.
Speaker 1: And that's a real dangerous I was, I was campaigning
Speaker 1: for all of the press gathered to meet afterwards. That's
Speaker 1: a hard rock cafe between the hard that one so scarce.
Speaker 1: And I watched you at the Rainforest Cafe. You barely
Speaker 1: made it through that dessert. That was different. That was different.
Speaker 1: I did. I did get food poisoning from that Rainforest Cafe.
Speaker 1: I will, I will continue to claim. And I woke
Speaker 1: up with a headache for an under an inexplicable reason,
Speaker 1: not because you were carrying around a bottle of bourbon
Speaker 1: throat bourbon and or a milkshake or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: so cops gave a dispersal warning to people who were
Speaker 1: not not in fact blocking a sidewalk. We're simply handing
Speaker 1: out flyers. People were still walking everywhere. Um, so they
Speaker 1: basically moved to a different section of the of the
Speaker 1: sidewalk and cops kind of left him alone. Um. Near by,
Speaker 1: a group of indigenous activists from the Indian Collective. I
Speaker 1: believe it's what it's it's actually a Muscoge Nation, the
Speaker 1: Muscogee Nation. Uh went went to a meeting that the
Speaker 1: Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, was having nearby. H Clark,
Speaker 1: I think you know slightly more about what happened here
Speaker 1: than I do. Yes, So several of the indigenous activists entered.
Speaker 1: So where he was having this meeting is a mall
Speaker 1: in true Atlanta fashion. Um. So they entered the mall
Speaker 1: and they they found where he was in the building,
Speaker 1: and uh so, Miko Colonel Chabon delivered a letter essentially
Speaker 1: evicting the city of Atlanta from the Wielannie Forest. Uh
Speaker 1: So they got in without the police noticing. Um and
Speaker 1: then the moment they got out, a large squad of
Speaker 1: police mobilized. They were they were not happy how close
Speaker 1: people got to the mayor. So at this point we
Speaker 1: don't know what the full reaction of that's going to be.
Speaker 1: We do know that the mayor ran away from accepting
Speaker 1: the letter and then one of I believe they handed
Speaker 1: it to one. There are a few few more beautiful
Speaker 1: sites than a mayor running away. Now more mayors need
Speaker 1: to spend time fleeing from their peoples. So I think
Speaker 1: this this episode comes out. I think like like late
Speaker 1: Thursday night, Friday morning, UM, Thursday afternoon there. So, like
Speaker 1: we are, we are recording this Wednesday, there's plans for Thursday,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be there's gonna be a large march at
Speaker 1: six pm. I believe, there's gonna be a youth rally
Speaker 1: at Saturday, and then on Sunday morning, um Manuel torn
Speaker 1: Tortoquita's family is holding a memorial for tort in the
Speaker 1: Wilani forest. Um where I've been told that they're going
Speaker 1: to spread towards ashes inside the woods and that is
Speaker 1: kind of the last thing that's going to happen. Um
Speaker 1: And so those are the things that have not not
Speaker 1: not yet took place. Um So, but we've we've explained
Speaker 1: in pretty in pretty spruciating detail some of some of
Speaker 1: what's happened so far. So yeah, that that's kind of
Speaker 1: the current current state of on the ground at the
Speaker 1: week of action. UM I guess, Robert, do you have
Speaker 1: any questions for Clerk as someone who's kind of been
Speaker 1: on the ground in Atlanta for years covering top pop city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm curious what over the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: like you've you've had some direct clashes with the police
Speaker 1: that have ended in a variety of ways, broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you're you're kind of leaning towards
Speaker 1: this doesn't work? And is there anything you're kind of
Speaker 1: leaning towards? This seems to work really well. So there
Speaker 1: is something to be said for the more aggressive actions,
Speaker 1: and I think they serve their purpose. And there's definitely
Speaker 1: something to be said for the forest occupation UM it
Speaker 1: continued the movement until there was a ground swell of support.
Speaker 1: So at this point, I think the actions have sort
Speaker 1: of switched gear into more non violent direct actions as
Speaker 1: we're seeing this week, and I think that those actions
Speaker 1: will will continue. I'm sure the anarchistic contingent will continue
Speaker 1: to do some other more aggressive, shall we say, direct actions? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and all of these work. We have a
Speaker 1: large swath of different avenues of engagement that the movement
Speaker 1: is has developed, and each of them has their place,
Speaker 1: and if they're used in the proper place, they're used
Speaker 1: to great effect. I think one kind of change that
Speaker 1: has happened we've seen we've seen a bit of a
Speaker 1: decrease in the types of like nighttime sabotage, like the
Speaker 1: sort of like attack and disappear tactics that was was
Speaker 1: really popular in the the early days of the occupation
Speaker 1: of like of of like the force occupation of people
Speaker 1: living and living and camping out in the woods. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know the because like the last two much
Speaker 1: more like militant actions were done during the daytime, during
Speaker 1: like large rallies. There was there was the protest on
Speaker 1: Saturday after Tortuguita was killed where a cop car was torched.
Speaker 1: Then there was this, then there was this protest on
Speaker 1: on Sunday night UM that people that people marched, people
Speaker 1: marched to the to the power line cut and then
Speaker 1: the police started doing repression at the music festival. UM.
Speaker 1: But like those things were happening like during like before
Speaker 1: the sun was setting. UM. So I think that that
Speaker 1: that's one interesting change. I feel like some people are
Speaker 1: definitely thinking about this, especially because there's been twenty three
Speaker 1: people arrested during this week of action and they're being
Speaker 1: held in jail uh and we have no idea when
Speaker 1: they're going, when they're going to be able to have
Speaker 1: the option of getting out. So I think this is
Speaker 1: something this is something that people are thinking about in
Speaker 1: terms of how they are how they are doing direct action,
Speaker 1: and how how their involvement in direct action will affect
Speaker 1: people who did not participate, like with people at the
Speaker 1: people at the music festival, who who were not who
Speaker 1: were not present at the power line cut direct action,
Speaker 1: and how some of those people are undoubtedly now facing
Speaker 1: like punishment from from the state. UM. So I feel
Speaker 1: like that there is definitely going to be some discussion
Speaker 1: about that. I've i've i've i've seen discussion about this
Speaker 1: sort in the city. Um. But I mean the Week
Speaker 1: of Action is still is still ongoing. It is it
Speaker 1: is only Wednesday. It feels like it's been a month, um,
Speaker 1: but it's only been like three or four days. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's people. People are in this for
Speaker 1: the long haul. Um. We're we're starting to see more
Speaker 1: solidarity from from groups that are less militant, like with
Speaker 1: the interfaith relition right, like you're not. I don't think
Speaker 1: any of like the priests, the priests or the clergy
Speaker 1: were there throwing molotov cocktails um at the at the
Speaker 1: surveillance tower. Yet the very next day they're standing out
Speaker 1: outside of city Hall and demanding the same things that
Speaker 1: the people throwing maltovs are are demanding. It should be
Speaker 1: noted that they didn't denounce no that is it is
Speaker 1: solidarity across the movement. Absolutely. They talked about how them
Speaker 1: as clergy you know, and uh, the in the history
Speaker 1: of Abrahamic religions, how many how many people associated and
Speaker 1: are the figureheads of such religions have been killed by
Speaker 1: the state, and how often often these religions have been
Speaker 1: in opposition to the state during during their formative years. Um,
Speaker 1: and they don't know. I just I just can't think
Speaker 1: of any prominent uh Christian figures or Jewish figures who
Speaker 1: were who were murdered by the state. That's just not
Speaker 1: nothing's coming up, right none. Yeah, no, I grew up
Speaker 1: and I can't really remember anyone. So um, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is that is. That is the week of action so far.
Speaker 1: There will there will certainly be be be a more
Speaker 1: a more detailed deep dive with like analysis and like,
Speaker 1: you know, a narrative through line in the coming weeks
Speaker 1: as we're actually able to like look back on what
Speaker 1: has happened. Um interviews with more people who are who
Speaker 1: are like actually involved, interviews with like organizers, protesters, force defenders, um,
Speaker 1: but people. Despite the ignassive amount of repression that we've
Speaker 1: seen on Sunday, the increasingly like heavy handed response. Police
Speaker 1: have had to both direct action that includes property destruction
Speaker 1: and non violent direct action. Uh. Despite all that, people
Speaker 1: are still continuing to be in the woods. They are
Speaker 1: not letting it scare them away. The woods are still
Speaker 1: a place that the people are able to like exist in. Uh,
Speaker 1: They're still able to live, live together in the woods,
Speaker 1: stay in the woods. The cops don't like being in
Speaker 1: the woods. No, there's a real fear that's you're trying
Speaker 1: to tear them down. Yes, the cops are. The cops
Speaker 1: are still very much scared of the woods. Um. And
Speaker 1: and uh people have have have not have not let
Speaker 1: the violence shown by police scare them away from from
Speaker 1: wanting to stay in the forest. So that is that
Speaker 1: is something that continued every day. There's been like guided
Speaker 1: tours throughout the forest showing off the different different types
Speaker 1: of plants, the different sections of the woods, different different
Speaker 1: old campsites that people have slept at. Um. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's been. It's been pretty nice to see with the
Speaker 1: with just the incredible level of resilience. Well I know
Speaker 1: that that I am, and I'm sure many people are
Speaker 1: kind of watching this from a distance, and uh, very
Speaker 1: very happy to see that folks are continuing to adapt
Speaker 1: and endure UH and and take punches. It's unfortunate that
Speaker 1: the punches keep coming, but the ability of the community
Speaker 1: to take those hits and continue iterating and adapting UM,
Speaker 1: remains tremendously impressive. UM. I think kind of the note
Speaker 1: that makes most sense to end on as to say
Speaker 1: that this is still a winnable fight. Absolutely, And that
Speaker 1: is a sentiment that literally everyone on the ground shares.
Speaker 1: Like we are at a point where like people keep
Speaker 1: saying like at this point they have to win, like
Speaker 1: like there there is no other option than winning, UM,
Speaker 1: And people have the ability to win this. This is
Speaker 1: a winnable fight, UM. And that is that is something
Speaker 1: that people continue continue to talk about, and that that
Speaker 1: is why people are fighting so hard. That's why people
Speaker 1: are are risking getting these ridiculous charges because they know
Speaker 1: that this fight is both worth it and they know
Speaker 1: this fight is winnable. Like these are these the actions
Speaker 1: and the risks that people are The actions and the
Speaker 1: risks that people are taking are not for nothing, Like
Speaker 1: they know that it is impactful and there is a
Speaker 1: very good chance that this this will lead to victory
Speaker 1: and will lead to the forest being preserved, to being
Speaker 1: protected and being able to continue continue to grow. It
Speaker 1: does have a feeling of inevitability that they will win,
Speaker 1: that we're we will win. I don't know which appropriate
Speaker 1: way to say that is as a journalist, but the
Speaker 1: feeling is that that Cops City will not be built
Speaker 1: and that is something that shared, I think by all
Speaker 1: of the activists in this city. And I guess the
Speaker 1: last thing I'll say is, uh, Atlanta Solidarity Fund. You
Speaker 1: if you if you've been listening to any of our coverage,
Speaker 1: you should already know what it is. You can find
Speaker 1: the Solidarity Fund at atl solidarity dot org. You can
Speaker 1: donate there to help the forest defenders and you know,
Speaker 1: anyone who who was arrested in relation to this with
Speaker 1: legal expenses, lawyers, that sort of thing. Um yeah, well, um,
Speaker 1: that's gonna do it for this episode. Uh. And we'll
Speaker 1: have more from you, Garrison, and more from Atlanta soon
Speaker 1: until next time, everybody, Uh, keep an eye on shit. Hey,
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat Death of the Universe. It could
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