Speaker 1: Zone Media, Welcome back to it could happen here and
Speaker 1: our Retail Thunderdome. I'm Kevin Foster, and today we're continuing
Speaker 1: our dive into organized retail crime. In the last episode,
Speaker 1: I went over the multi year propaganda campaign waged by
Speaker 1: the retail lobby to make organized retail crime into a
Speaker 1: national crisis, requiring stricter policing and penalties and investment from
Speaker 1: all levels of government. I recommend listening to that episode
Speaker 1: before this one. But in short, huge swaths of politicians
Speaker 1: bought right in spending hundreds of millions at the behest
Speaker 1: of retail giants despite a serious lack of evidence. I
Speaker 1: also touched on the advancements in surveillance at retail stores.
Speaker 1: Whether we see a rollout of AI powered robots in
Speaker 1: the coming years may not matter so much as many
Speaker 1: industry leaders are already implementing facial recognition technology and creating
Speaker 1: watch lists under the guise of loss prevention, and this
Speaker 1: surveillance dragnet is a key element in the rising concern
Speaker 1: around the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act or CORKA, which
Speaker 1: passed the House of Representatives in May with resounding bipartisan
Speaker 1: support in all likelihood CORCO will be signed into law
Speaker 1: in today's episode is about why that is very bad
Speaker 1: and how it's going to impact the American public, notably immigrants.
Speaker 1: Let's get right into it. The Combating Organized Retail Crime
Speaker 1: Act has remained in circulation for years, but to get
Speaker 1: it over the finish line, the retail lobby and supporters
Speaker 1: of the legislation ultimately found a new boogeyman, cargo theft.
Speaker 1: And this is how they've managed to turn a manufactured
Speaker 1: retail theft story into a national security problem that demands
Speaker 1: intervention by the Department of Homeland Security. In a nutshell,
Speaker 1: the cargo theft narrative has striking similarities to organized retail crime.
Speaker 1: The American Transportation Research Institute says there's between one point
Speaker 1: eight billion and six point five billion dollars in yearly
Speaker 1: losses because of cargo theft, but this includes indirect costs,
Speaker 1: a measure of costs across the entire supply chain in
Speaker 1: terms of the actual value of goods. Cargo net, a
Speaker 1: nationally coordinated database, placed total cargo theft losses at seven
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five million across the US and Canada
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five. Despite total physical losses being under
Speaker 1: a billion dollars, there have been more attempts to dramatically
Speaker 1: inflate the numbers. Phil Brink, the quote head of fraud
Speaker 1: Media and Education unquote at freight Waves, a trucking logistics
Speaker 1: and news company, estimated the total losses could actually be
Speaker 1: closer to sixty billion dollars because of under reporting of theft.
Speaker 1: No clear evidence is provided to back up this assertion
Speaker 1: other than unnamed experts. If this sounds familiar, it's almost
Speaker 1: the exact same story as the National Retail Federation's fraudulent
Speaker 1: organized retail crime numbers, where they inflated their stats by
Speaker 1: an order of magnet tude, mostly based on vibes. And
Speaker 1: while cargo theft did spike in twenty twenty three, a
Speaker 1: funny little side note is that AI integration into logistics
Speaker 1: might be a big part of the problem. Reporting in
Speaker 1: the news outlet the Lever indicates that instead of modern
Speaker 1: day highway robberies, cargo theft is beginning to look more
Speaker 1: like people simply impersonating trucking companies than fooling faulty new
Speaker 1: AI logistics systems, and once they're cleared by the AI,
Speaker 1: they can essentially just pick up the cargo and roll off.
Speaker 1: So between retail crime and cargo theft, we're essentially operating
Speaker 1: under two manufactured crises. And yet here's the language. Any
Speaker 1: Combating Organized Retail Crime Act quote. Organized theft groups impact
Speaker 1: the national security of the United States through financing trans
Speaker 1: national criminal activity and providing profit and proceeds supporting larger
Speaker 1: criminal goals of the criminal organizations unquote. In other words,
Speaker 1: retail crime is now a national security threat and it
Speaker 1: demands the influence of Homeland Security and ICE. Specifically, CORCA
Speaker 1: calls for the establishment of a coordination center to combat
Speaker 1: organize retail and supply chain crime. The DHS Secretary will
Speaker 1: establish the center and it will be run by an
Speaker 1: individual chosen by the Director of ICE. Fantastic in essence,
Speaker 1: this coordination center will be the hub for federal law
Speaker 1: enforcement activity and connections between the national and local level
Speaker 1: and the public and private sector. Obviously, ICE deepening its
Speaker 1: involvement in our day to day lives is something to
Speaker 1: be concerned about. But here's where it gets really crazy.
Speaker 1: The bill states, quote in general, subject to the approval
Speaker 1: of the director of the Center, information that would otherwise
Speaker 1: be subject to the limitation on the disclosure of confidential
Speaker 1: information set forth in Section nineteen oh five of Title
Speaker 1: eighteen United States Code, may be shared if such disclosure
Speaker 1: is operationally necessary unquote, putting the legallyese aside. What this
Speaker 1: means in practice is that ICE can access confidential and
Speaker 1: proprietary data from retailers, and because operationally necessary is an
Speaker 1: extremely broad, undefined term, ICE is essentially given full discretion
Speaker 1: over what data they can collect. If anyone questions them,
Speaker 1: they'll likely just say, we need to play it safe
Speaker 1: because organized retail crime is a matter of national security
Speaker 1: that could finance drug and weapons trafficking, harming Americans. So
Speaker 1: that retail surveillance dragnet I mentioned in Part one, the
Speaker 1: AI facial recognition, the robots, the customer profiles they say
Speaker 1: can be leveraged to boost customer loyalty, ICE could potentially
Speaker 1: leverage that data in its immigration crackdown. Imagine a world
Speaker 1: where ICE knows who is going to witch stores and when.
Speaker 1: No need for scanning license plates on the streets anymore.
Speaker 1: Now they can just look up your customer profile and
Speaker 1: head over to Walmart when you're doing your biweekly grocery run.
Speaker 1: Given what we've seen in the past year and a half.
Speaker 1: ICE will likely try to leverage this heavily. They already
Speaker 1: have facial recognition technology like the mobile Fortify app, which,
Speaker 1: according to Vanderbilt University's School of Law, is connected to
Speaker 1: a database of over two hundred million images. The ACLU
Speaker 1: of Wisconsin states that you may already be in this database,
Speaker 1: as it's connected to other databases containing federal biometric systems,
Speaker 1: passport and visa records, and state driver's license photos. A
Speaker 1: depressing little side note, some of this may have been preventable.
Speaker 1: For example, in Oregon, the state police are being sued
Speaker 1: for sharing data with ICE, even though they and our
Speaker 1: governor were warned by congress members to close certain loopholes
Speaker 1: that gave ICE access to DMB records. Now, obviously, grocery
Speaker 1: stores present a significant vulnerability to maintaining our privacy due
Speaker 1: to basic human needs. Nothing is clearly stopping ICE from
Speaker 1: running face scans out of retail stores and creating a
Speaker 1: new front for their anti immigrant crackdown, and there's already
Speaker 1: a blueprint for this. The ACLU published an article in
Speaker 1: January this year about Wegmans using facial recognition and sharing
Speaker 1: data on quote persons of interest with law enforcement on
Speaker 1: a quote case by case basis. It's unclear how or
Speaker 1: if retail stores will challenge ICE's access in any way.
Speaker 1: As of now, many have been fully on board with
Speaker 1: the organized retail theft hype train. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: on May eleventh this year, a coalition of forty civil
Speaker 1: rights organizations, including the Immigrant Defender's Law Center in the
Speaker 1: National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, sent a letter to
Speaker 1: Congress urging the House not to pass CORKA, highlighting how
Speaker 1: it would massively expand DHS's role in authority in domestic
Speaker 1: law enforcement, and the issues don't end there. They also
Speaker 1: pointed out how CORCA gives DHS influence over local and
Speaker 1: state law enforcement through the ability to expand certain grant requirements.
Speaker 1: In effect, this coalition sees a pathway for DHS to
Speaker 1: push jurisdictions toward more intrusive data collection and surveillance vi
Speaker 1: actually if that jurisdiction is receiving federal grants. Additionally, the
Speaker 1: coalition noted how the Sunset provision for the CORCA Coordination
Speaker 1: Center quote includes no requirement to dismantle data sharing systems,
Speaker 1: delete collected information, or reverse any entrenched surveillance practices unquote.
Speaker 1: So these practices could very well be here to stay
Speaker 1: without some sort of intervention down the line. Good luck
Speaker 1: to us trying to get that. I think, as James
Speaker 1: put it in a conversation we had, it's like trying
Speaker 1: to convince a bunch of the HOA moms that we
Speaker 1: need to be softer on retail crime. It just doesn't
Speaker 1: really seem like it's going to happen. And unfortunately, this
Speaker 1: coalition letter largely fell on deaf ears, with only fifty
Speaker 1: nine Democrats and one Republican voting against Corka in the House.
Speaker 1: I've spoken with many people about this, and there's often
Speaker 1: this question of like do they know? And I'd argue
Speaker 1: it's their job to know, And this pill is pretty
Speaker 1: cut and dried power expansion for Ice, it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to tell how they wouldn't have seen this coming,
Speaker 1: especially with progressive groups warning them about it. And by
Speaker 1: now this coalition has grown to over one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty organizations urging the Senate not to pass Corka in
Speaker 1: spite of this. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator
Speaker 1: Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin have teamed up
Speaker 1: to add CORKA as an amendment to the National Defense
Speaker 1: Authorization Act for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. This would
Speaker 1: essentially just mean entrenching this into our defense policy. And
Speaker 1: if that happens, which seems somewhat likely, I suspect it's
Speaker 1: curtains and CORKA is going through. I highly doubt that
Speaker 1: the Democrats are going to hold the line on the
Speaker 1: NDAA for something they clearly either don't care about or
Speaker 1: don't seem to understand. But what they might care about
Speaker 1: are the products and services that support this podcast. And
Speaker 1: We're back, and I'm imagining this is starting to sound
Speaker 1: pretty frightening, and it is to cool the temperature a bit.
Speaker 1: It's important to consider ICE's capacity for enforcement. They've had
Speaker 1: ways of accessing various surveillance tools for quite some time now.
Speaker 1: To some extent, they likely could have done some of
Speaker 1: this stuff with flock cameras or other automated license plate readers.
Speaker 1: But I think the threat in retail comes more from
Speaker 1: the pre existing infrastructure and the fact that this bill
Speaker 1: seems to give ICE sweeping access to confidential and proprietary information. Still,
Speaker 1: there are strategies for resisting this, I won't lie. Many
Speaker 1: of them are time intensive and require consistent community effort,
Speaker 1: but that's the world we're in. For example, in Hillsboro, Oregon,
Speaker 1: just west of Portland, local mutual aid groups began delivering
Speaker 1: groceries to immigrant families who are afraid to go outside
Speaker 1: in the middle of Operation Black Rows, which was the
Speaker 1: massive ice surge last fall in winter. In Los Angeles
Speaker 1: last summer, similar groups set up community defense corners outside
Speaker 1: home depot parking lots in an attempt to protect day
Speaker 1: laborers from ice raids. These usually manifested as just pop
Speaker 1: up tents with community members water and snacks. Certainly didn't
Speaker 1: stop everything, but I know one group in Pasadena that
Speaker 1: was allegedly the last home depot in LA to be raided,
Speaker 1: and they had a consistent community effort for months. In
Speaker 1: terms of shopping, avoiding loyalty programs may end up being necessary,
Speaker 1: as this is one of the ways that we hand
Speaker 1: over a lot of our data to stores. But shopping
Speaker 1: locally or at stores that collect less data will probably
Speaker 1: be the best bet. So Corka clearly has a number
Speaker 1: of ways that it could be abused by ice, but
Speaker 1: to get the full extent of what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: I got in contact with Laura Conover, who is the
Speaker 1: district attorney in Pima County, Arizona, which contains Tucson and
Speaker 1: borders the Mexican state of Sonora. Contrary to Da Stephen
Speaker 1: featured in the first episode, Conover has actually been an
Speaker 1: outspoken opponent of Corka. In particular, she has tied CORKA
Speaker 1: to the Lake and Riley Act, saying cong is just
Speaker 1: compounding mistakes it already made. The Lake and Riley Act
Speaker 1: became law on January twenty ninth, twenty twenty five, passing
Speaker 1: Congress again with a substantial amount of bipartisan support greater
Speaker 1: than sixty percent in both chambers. It's a particularly abhorrent
Speaker 1: piece of legislation as a quote requires DHS to detain
Speaker 1: certain non US nationals who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting,
Speaker 1: assault of a law enforcement officer, or any crime that
Speaker 1: results in death or serious bodily injury to another person unquote.
Speaker 1: Notice how it says arrested, not charged, not convicted, but
Speaker 1: simply detained for one of the crimes listed, even if
Speaker 1: the individual didn't actually do anything wrong. The law also
Speaker 1: allows states to sue the federal government for alleged failures
Speaker 1: and immigration enforcement meeting. The federal government can effectively be
Speaker 1: held liable for a number of things, such as if
Speaker 1: an undocumented immigrant causes harm to s state residents, including
Speaker 1: financial harm greater than one hundred dollars. It's tough to
Speaker 1: say the extent to which this could be applied, but
Speaker 1: the through line between this and CORKA is pretty clear.
Speaker 1: Ice could monitor retail locations for thefts and shoplifting through CORCA,
Speaker 1: then they're essentially liable if they don't seek to detain
Speaker 1: someone who has stolen more than one hundred dollars worth
Speaker 1: of merchandise. Conover has specific examples of the ways in
Speaker 1: which the Lake and Riley Act is burdening local jurisdictions,
Speaker 1: destroying due process protections, and ultimately how CORKA will very
Speaker 1: likely make this worse. For example, it was Conover's job
Speaker 1: to prosecute the case of Jessica Corles Duarte, who entered
Speaker 1: the US when she was two years old with her mother,
Speaker 1: who had fled domestic abuse in Mexico and obtained legal
Speaker 1: status through the violence against Women Act, Corrales Duarte became
Speaker 1: a DOCTA recipient and she's now thirty two or thirty
Speaker 1: three based on the articles that I read, and she
Speaker 1: has two children. But in the past years she was
Speaker 1: arrested and charge ars with shoplifting and theft, and her
Speaker 1: DACA status has been terminated. She allegedly stole up to
Speaker 1: fifty seven hundred dollars in perfume from an Alta beauty
Speaker 1: location over three days, which put her over the felony
Speaker 1: theft threshold, though this number is disputed by her defense.
Speaker 1: She had no prior criminal record, and Conover said based
Speaker 1: on a taped confession, she likely would have qualified for
Speaker 1: a program where she could pay restitution and get back
Speaker 1: on her feet. Then ICE came in. They detained Corrales
Speaker 1: Duarte as she was leaving her home for her waitressing job.
Speaker 1: The ensuing months were a disaster. Ice held her at
Speaker 1: the Elloyd Detention Center, about an hour from Tucson, and
Speaker 1: blocked her from attending many of the court dates for
Speaker 1: her shoplifting case. According to an article in the Tucson Spotlight,
Speaker 1: here's da Conover on the situation.
Speaker 2: So, for example, in our case, the result was just
Speaker 2: defendants disappearing into federal cush today and before any normal process.
Speaker 2: So you've got a victim who's now totally out of
Speaker 2: luck for any kind of restoration, be that through probation
Speaker 2: or through restitution, which is important, you know. So victim's
Speaker 2: rights are violated. The defendant obviously gets no due process.
Speaker 2: You know, in our experience, they hardly had any contact
Speaker 2: with their attorney, and their attorney was just rendered totally
Speaker 2: ineffective in the local court. So it confounds the entire
Speaker 2: normal criminal justice process. It's like the opposite of collaboration.
Speaker 1: So not only are Kerles Duarte's rights violated on multiple levels,
Speaker 1: but it also actually hurts the property owner because they
Speaker 1: won't receive restitution if someone is deported. It's not clear
Speaker 1: whether Krales Duarte was involved in some sort of organized
Speaker 1: retail theft operation, but I want to stress again that
Speaker 1: the people in such a situation who actually do this dealing,
Speaker 1: commonly referred to as boosters, are often poor, homeless, or
Speaker 1: struggling in some way themselves. Many of you probably already
Speaker 1: know this, but undocumented people commit less crime overall than
Speaker 1: American citizens. An analysis by the National Institute of Justice
Speaker 1: using data from Texas between twenty twelve and twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: found that undocumented immigrants had offending rates less than half
Speaker 1: of that of US born citizens. This is in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that the US makes it much harder
Speaker 1: for undocumented people to obtain good paying jobs, which can
Speaker 1: drive people into poverty and therefore crime. And for all
Speaker 1: of this, conover informed me that Corles Duarte appears to
Speaker 1: be in process for deportation away from her children. There
Speaker 1: are just more effective and humane ways to deal with this,
Speaker 1: like the diversion programs mentioned, which don't need to involve
Speaker 1: the federal government, but instead we're just giving more power tise.
Speaker 2: With Lake and Riley and with Corka. You're talking about
Speaker 2: such a street level, local issue where we have local
Speaker 2: police and prosecutors whose entire purpose is to prosecute local crime,
Speaker 2: and to just give some random federal agency authority over
Speaker 2: that sweeping new authority of that just doesn't make any
Speaker 2: sense operationally, not to mention the particular agency is one
Speaker 2: in which there's bipartisan concern about how recklessly they're being managed.
Speaker 1: On the note of recklessness, with the expansion of ISIS
Speaker 1: surveillance network comes greater concern over warrantless enforcement, constitutional violations,
Speaker 1: and technological mistakes. The podcast Reveal reported a case of
Speaker 1: Ice scanning the face of a twenty three year old
Speaker 1: US citizen purely on suspicion, and according to Innovation Law Lab,
Speaker 1: the same seems to have happened to a woman in Oregon,
Speaker 1: where Ice used a Palaneer developed platform called Elite, which
Speaker 1: without a warrant essentially geofence is an area and creates
Speaker 1: targets with a quote in imigration nexus. In this case,
Speaker 1: the mobile Fortify app returned two different incorrect names and
Speaker 1: images for the same woman. Still, Ice has told lawmakers
Speaker 1: it's a definitive measure of immigration status that effectively supersedes
Speaker 1: other evidence of citizenship, such as a birth certificate. The
Speaker 1: National Institute of Standards and Technology is also reported that
Speaker 1: facial recognition tech is less accurate on women than men,
Speaker 1: black people, and other individuals with darker skin. This hull
Speaker 1: gets much worse when you're not in a controlled environment
Speaker 1: where you can get a well lit, straight on shot
Speaker 1: of someone's face with no obstruction. Certainly something that isn't
Speaker 1: going to happen under the floodlights of a grocery store. Entryway.
Speaker 1: So again, I can't really say to what extent ICE
Speaker 1: will actually integrate all of these technologies or what capacity
Speaker 1: they'll have for enforcement, but it seems like the worst
Speaker 1: case scenario could be a warrantless surveillance frenzy where they
Speaker 1: couldn't care less if they're detaining the right people. The
Speaker 1: right people as in the individuals that they're actually targeting,
Speaker 1: and I don't actually believe there is a right person
Speaker 1: to be detained. It's all bullshit. But as Corka also
Speaker 1: calls for local and federal collaboration, cops could very easily
Speaker 1: worsen this problem, and ICE can leverage the Lake and
Speaker 1: Riley Act to ramp up deportations. It's not good. But anyways,
Speaker 1: here's some ads and we're back to round out this
Speaker 1: two parter. I'd like to connect some of the dots
Speaker 1: from the first episode to Corka. To do so, I've
Speaker 1: chatted with James about a concept known as moral turpitude.
Speaker 1: Moral turpitude is a vaguely defined concept and there's lots
Speaker 1: of nebulous legal language surrounding it, but in essence, it's
Speaker 1: a crime that is considered morally offensive, and it's important
Speaker 1: to immigration law. Notably included in this definition is larceny
Speaker 1: or theft, and a conviction for one of these crimes
Speaker 1: can render an immigrant either inadmissible or deportable. Here's some
Speaker 1: of the conversation that James and I had.
Speaker 3: An admissibility could be important for someone who was inside
Speaker 3: the United States. Let's say they call it e we
Speaker 3: entered without inspection. That means coming into the United States,
Speaker 3: not through a port of entry.
Speaker 1: Right. Let's say they.
Speaker 3: Went over the wall, under the wall, around the wall,
Speaker 3: through the river, through the desert, through the mountains, right,
Speaker 3: the many ways that people could enter with that inspection.
Speaker 3: They could then be found inadmissible long after entering the
Speaker 3: United States because they hadn't been admitted, right, they just
Speaker 3: came in. Just imagine, like you want to go to Disneyland.
Speaker 3: It's prohibitively expensive, so you climb over the fence. You
Speaker 3: were not admitted to Disneyland. Yeah, right, So if Disneyland
Speaker 3: found you, they would kick you out. The issue here,
Speaker 3: Let's say if someone has been in the United States
Speaker 3: for a number of years but they are undocumented, if
Speaker 3: they are found guilty of a crime including moral turpitude,
Speaker 3: or convicted of a crime involved moral turpitude, and the
Speaker 3: offense carries a maximum sentence of one year or more,
Speaker 3: and the person committed the offense within five years after
Speaker 3: the date of admission, they are then deportable. Now if
Speaker 3: the eweed, if it ended with that inspection, there about
Speaker 3: other reasons it could be deportable, right, Yeah, but I
Speaker 3: did say somebody has a visa. The same is true
Speaker 3: with inadmissibility.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So, we recently had a Supreme Court ruling about admissibility
Speaker 3: with regard to permanent residents, which kind of brings them
Speaker 3: closer in line to visa holders. But admissibility doesn't just
Speaker 3: mean them giving you the visa. It could also, for example,
Speaker 3: impact you if you went somewhere else and returned to
Speaker 3: the United States. Right, So, a crime evolving moral turpitude
Speaker 3: could then render you in admissible, so you could be
Speaker 3: detained or not admitted to the United States when you
Speaker 3: came back. It's also important to get to note that
Speaker 3: some diversion programs. State diversion programs don't count as a
Speaker 3: conviction in terms of federal immigration law if a guilty
Speaker 3: plea is not entered. So if somebody who could previously
Speaker 3: have got into a diversion program ends up not in
Speaker 3: a diversion program. In addition to Corker, right, we have
Speaker 3: all these state sentencing enhancements. Yeah, we see in California, right,
Speaker 3: if that person ends up with a conviction instead of
Speaker 3: being putting a diversion program without entering a plea, that
Speaker 3: is a night and day different in immigration terms. Right,
Speaker 3: it's black and white. One is a conviction for what
Speaker 3: it's probably a crime evolving moral turpitude, because larceny is
Speaker 3: a crime evolving moral turpitude, and I think that's what
Speaker 3: this generally falls under RN. Again, not a lawyer, but
Speaker 3: if that is the case, one of these sentencing enhancements
Speaker 3: at a state level results in somebody now having, for
Speaker 3: federal immigration terms, a convict of a crime forming worlds turbitude.
Speaker 3: They are now inadmissible and in a single conviction, as
Speaker 3: I said before, can make a non citizen deportable if
Speaker 3: it has a possible sentence for a year or more,
Speaker 3: which these sentencing enhancements make a lot more likely. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and good luck I guess trying to find some way
Speaker 3: of getting that conviction overturned or like you know, now
Speaker 3: you're fighting against all this lobbying that retailers are doing right,
Speaker 3: and all this propaganda that has been put out there
Speaker 3: that it's going to make it harder and harder for
Speaker 3: people to avoid those convictions in the first place and
Speaker 3: then to get them overturned.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't want to get like to doom and
Speaker 1: gloom about it, but like, do you worry that there's
Speaker 1: just a combination of factors here that could massively worsen
Speaker 1: things with at the level? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like every time we make a new law, we're
Speaker 3: giving a new powers to the state, right, and every
Speaker 3: single law is backed up by violence, the matter of
Speaker 3: it's a parking ticket or murder. Right, the state can
Speaker 3: lock you up, beat you up, or shoot you up.
Speaker 3: That is the basis on which all laws rest.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you don't pay a parking ticket that you
Speaker 3: don't go to court. Eventually someone's going to turn it,
Speaker 3: but your Dora is going to be a person with
Speaker 3: a gun, right Like that, that is the structure on
Speaker 3: which the state exists to use like the crass Foraburian
Speaker 3: definition of the state. I guess this is a big one.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: We are handing a bunch of tools here to an
Speaker 3: entity which is tearing families apart, which is ripping children
Speaker 3: from parents, which is taking grandmothers away from their grandchildren.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean what do you Maybe this isn't
Speaker 1: for the episode, but like what do you think people
Speaker 1: should do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, the answer to this is the same as
Speaker 3: an answer to everything.
Speaker 1: It's stronger.
Speaker 3: Community is Like, people steal things because they need to
Speaker 3: meet their material needs. Sure, some people also enjoy stealing stuff, right,
Speaker 3: that's the thing that exists, But the vast majority of
Speaker 3: theft is happening because people are not meeting their material needs.
Speaker 3: We need to work out a way to meet each
Speaker 3: other's material needs. And like I was in Minneapolis in January, right,
Speaker 3: very hard for me to be hungry in Minneapolis in January.
Speaker 3: Like I'm a vegan, I'm annoying to feed, right, but
Speaker 3: people would constantly bring me fucking food and hot tea.
Speaker 3: And like that's not the be all end all, but
Speaker 3: gets us a long way there. Like if your neighbors
Speaker 3: aren't hungry, and I guess to know if your neighbors
Speaker 3: are hungry, you have to know who your neighbors are. Right, So,
Speaker 3: like start by knocking on someone's door, you know, start
Speaker 3: by hey, your truck's not working. Let's work it out.
Speaker 4: I better.
Speaker 3: I can find a YouTube video we can watch, and
Speaker 3: if you have a bunch of sockets, let's see how
Speaker 3: we can fix it. So I know the ending of
Speaker 3: this is sort of bleak, but I just want to
Speaker 3: be honest with you about the possibilities. If I uses
Speaker 3: to take KRKA as far as they can, as Da
Speaker 3: Conover told me, you give them an inch and they
Speaker 3: take a mile, then this will get very bad. Surveillance
Speaker 3: capitalism isn't going to aline at immigrants, but that doesn't
Speaker 3: really matter either way. Clearly the Democratic Party, given their
Speaker 3: votes support, is not going to stop this. As James said,
Speaker 3: It's going to come down to community. So go find
Speaker 3: your co op grocery store. Get to know your neighbors'
Speaker 3: faces before Ice gets to know your face at the
Speaker 3: grocery store.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
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