Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Oh, it could happen here
Speaker 1: and earlier this week, not the week you're hearing this,
Speaker 1: but the week we recorded it. It did it being
Speaker 1: the end of Roe v. Wade via Supreme Court fiat,
Speaker 1: and also the coming end of a hundred years of
Speaker 1: social progress and less people get real organized and aggressive,
Speaker 1: real fucking quick. I'm Robert Evans? Who else? Who else?
Speaker 1: Do I got on with me? Today? Is there a?
Speaker 1: Is there a? Is there a Christopher Wong on the line? Yes,
Speaker 1: there there is one. There are many others, but but
Speaker 1: I am me, yeah, the others do not count. Um?
Speaker 1: Is there a Garrison Davis on the line? The only
Speaker 1: one that I know of? That's right, that's right. We
Speaker 1: exterminated the others in a in a brutal set of
Speaker 1: purges Allah, Stalin Um, and then of course Sharene, Lonnie
Speaker 1: and a Sharne. I'm here too. Would you like to
Speaker 1: introduce Sophie of I mean, the one and only Sophie. Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's us. And now today I am intensely excited
Speaker 1: to introduce our guest, Um, who is a cool person
Speaker 1: doing cool stuff to steal another one of our podcasters,
Speaker 1: Cat Green of the Abortion Access Front Kat, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you for coming on. I know this
Speaker 1: has been a hell week for you. Oh yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me on. I really appreciate it. Now, Um,
Speaker 1: you and I have a friend in common, and you
Speaker 1: guys were actually at a national conference for abortion access
Speaker 1: when the news dropped a little early. Do you want
Speaker 1: to talk to us a little bit about what happened there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, now that the conference is over, I can
Speaker 1: say that we were in one of the worst cities
Speaker 1: in the world to be in when all of this happened, Orlando, Florida,
Speaker 1: which is basically made of paper sets. Right. Honestly, you
Speaker 1: could have stopped that sentence. At one of the worst
Speaker 1: cities to be in. Yeah, we had actually been out
Speaker 1: to dinner at the oldest restaurant in Florida earlier that night,
Speaker 1: and it was a lovely evening, um, even though like
Speaker 1: some angry driver tried to kill our mutual friend over
Speaker 1: a parking space Florida, over that part, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean Florida. Yeah, you know. Also, the day had started
Speaker 1: with their already being a bomb threat at a clinic
Speaker 1: in Knoxville, so I was trying to help people find
Speaker 1: information about that earlier in the day, and then um,
Speaker 1: we went out to dinner thinking that we got to
Speaker 1: relax x and then came back to the news as
Speaker 1: it was breaking and into the lobby of our hotel
Speaker 1: where um, the remaining providers and advocates that were there were, um,
Speaker 1: just trying to make do Yeah. So cat At first
Speaker 1: of all, I guess we should talk about what the
Speaker 1: Abortion Access Front does and your job there, because this
Speaker 1: is something I don't think a lot of people think
Speaker 1: about it. One of the things that's become clear to
Speaker 1: me from some of the reaction of some folks this
Speaker 1: week on the more liberal side of things, is there
Speaker 1: is a general unawareness of how violent and intense the
Speaker 1: threats against abortion access providers have been for like forty years. Yeah, well.
Speaker 1: So Abortion Access Front was founded by Liz Winstead, my
Speaker 1: partner who was the co creator of The Daily Show,
Speaker 1: and started as a progressive advocacy and messaging hub. And
Speaker 1: so we were making funny videos about abortion and then
Speaker 1: Trump got elected. Were like, Wow, our job's got way
Speaker 1: more serious all of a sudden, And so we had
Speaker 1: like volunteers in the week after election, and so we
Speaker 1: started becoming matchmakers for volunteers to UM different clinics around
Speaker 1: the country, and we were doing comedy tours where we
Speaker 1: were trying to build community around the clinics um in
Speaker 1: different states. And so we would do a comedy show,
Speaker 1: have a have a provider on at the end to
Speaker 1: talk about what was at stake locally, and then get
Speaker 1: people to sign up to help because people didn't have
Speaker 1: access to contractors in many of the places we were going,
Speaker 1: you know, like we would go out and do landscaping
Speaker 1: work when we were on tour because we were just
Speaker 1: trying to help out wherever we could. And in the
Speaker 1: course of that, the nice folks at the National Abortion
Speaker 1: Federation reached out to us and we're like, we're a
Speaker 1: little concerned about you putting providers on stage. Maybe we
Speaker 1: should talk about your security plan. So they they were
Speaker 1: out with us the first two years, and UM, and
Speaker 1: we're giving me information about people we needed to watch
Speaker 1: out for. So I got way more involved in creating
Speaker 1: these security plans around our shows and our tours, and
Speaker 1: UM started doing a lot of my own research on
Speaker 1: anti abortion extremists because as we started talking to more
Speaker 1: people that clinic escorts in front of the clinics, we
Speaker 1: were getting information about not just leadership, but the people
Speaker 1: on the ground where they were the most afraid of.
Speaker 1: So then I was like, I wish I could just
Speaker 1: put all this into something where I could look something
Speaker 1: up via ZIP code and be able to tell who
Speaker 1: I need to watch out for in a particular area
Speaker 1: that didn't really exist, so UM, there was just a
Speaker 1: whisper network of escorts. And then the leadership research that
Speaker 1: NAP was doing, and so I started consoliding all my
Speaker 1: research into a database for all of us to be
Speaker 1: able to use and track incidents and organizations and bad
Speaker 1: actors all over the country. I mean, that's that's extremely important,
Speaker 1: but also extremely cool. UM. It is that you brought
Speaker 1: up right at the start of your what you were
Speaker 1: saying that there was a shooting at the Knoxville clinic.
Speaker 1: There was a scare at the at the Knoxville Clinic
Speaker 1: UM on Monday, and there was a there was an
Speaker 1: arson at the Plan Parenthood in Knoxville this past New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve. UM, and that same clinic, that same Plan
Speaker 1: Parenthood that was burned down on New Year's Eve actually
Speaker 1: had its front door shot out about a year earlier.
Speaker 1: And uh, because this this is one of the more
Speaker 1: frustrating cases. If you look this up, you can see
Speaker 1: that like the fire department has said it was an arson. UM,
Speaker 1: the a t F is investigating, the FBI is investigating.
Speaker 1: They both get given the kind of boilerplate statements they've
Speaker 1: given those instances, you don't see a lot from the
Speaker 1: local police. I'm curious if you have anything to say
Speaker 1: about like the degree to which the local police have
Speaker 1: been you full in responding to this. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: work with the local police at all. Um. I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a TV person that got into uh doing extremists research.
Speaker 1: I'm an editor and that I sort information right, So
Speaker 1: like that made sense to me, but law enforcement doesn't
Speaker 1: really take me too seriously. Um. But the people on
Speaker 1: the ground have a lot of thoughts about who it
Speaker 1: could be. Right, there are known people in the Knoxville
Speaker 1: area who have caused all sorts of problems. There was
Speaker 1: another arson at a different community center there too, UM,
Speaker 1: and several white supremacists were arrested after protesting a Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter UH event maybe two years ago. And so
Speaker 1: there's here's the thing. There's information about the Knoxville fire
Speaker 1: that went out on telegram with an order of nine
Speaker 1: angles Nazi claiming credit for it. And how hard can
Speaker 1: it be to find a pagan Naxi in Knoxville? You
Speaker 1: go to a goth club and be like, who's hit
Speaker 1: you in the face here? You know? So, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like there are hindrances to the investigation. UM, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the a lot of the activists on
Speaker 1: the ground have good leads that are not being followed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess that's probably the most direct thing that can
Speaker 1: be said about it. What so to the extent that like,
Speaker 1: there's seemingly not a lot in a lot of these
Speaker 1: states that is going to be done preemptively by law enforcement. UM.
Speaker 1: When it comes to like actually tracing out the threats. Uh,
Speaker 1: how much do you feel like you have a chance
Speaker 1: to actually stop them from carrying out an action, and
Speaker 1: how much of it do you feel is just like
Speaker 1: we need to be documenting this for for when it happens.
Speaker 1: You know, we're already getting early warning about events. Um,
Speaker 1: we're already because we tracked the people who there are
Speaker 1: a number of groups that create the same kind of
Speaker 1: actions that are either invasions or blockades at various clinics,
Speaker 1: and people who have been organizing around this for decades,
Speaker 1: right so in tracking them and starting to put the
Speaker 1: pieces together, we're already getting early warning about where they're
Speaker 1: headed about who needs to be alerted. You know, there
Speaker 1: have been at this point three incidents just like I'm
Speaker 1: working with a group of volunteers. These are all people
Speaker 1: who either escort at clinics or part of a part
Speaker 1: of advocacy orgs that you know, are not getting paid
Speaker 1: to do intel, but they they're invested in the cause,
Speaker 1: and so they just follow this stuff on the regular
Speaker 1: and we're all in touch with each other, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden it's like, oh, you know, this person
Speaker 1: who's been a part of twelve other blockades in the
Speaker 1: last three years, has been seeing going on a tour
Speaker 1: and said, the next three stops, he's going to let's
Speaker 1: tell all the clinics in the neighborhood what's happening, and
Speaker 1: they can be a little bit better prepared. And that's
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, honestly, because the abortion movement is
Speaker 1: not super supported by law enforcement largely, um, it seemed
Speaker 1: like a necessary thing for everybody to start keeping their
Speaker 1: own records for their own safety. And that's really how
Speaker 1: all this came together. Now, it's interesting to me that
Speaker 1: you you brought up one of kind of the leads
Speaker 1: suspects I guess you might say for the attack on
Speaker 1: the Knoxville clinic was an O nine A dude, I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what kind of the threats you're seeing. Obviously there's
Speaker 1: decades of attacks on abortion access providers, including a lot
Speaker 1: of fatal attacks, assassinations, acid attacks, numerous bombings and attempted bombings.
Speaker 1: How has the character of who is making the threats
Speaker 1: and who you see as threats started to change over
Speaker 1: the recent years. I mean, the only and a thing
Speaker 1: is a big yeah. That's that's weird. You know, we've
Speaker 1: been following the same Christian nationalists for years and largely
Speaker 1: they have the same playbook, they make a few changes
Speaker 1: to it. A lot of them are older. You know,
Speaker 1: it's lock in blocks or invasions. There's a few Catholics
Speaker 1: who get really aggressive and like shove their way into stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's not. Um, it hasn't been big surprises until recently,
Speaker 1: and and a lot of the time in the past,
Speaker 1: even when there was extreme violence happening amongst these people,
Speaker 1: it was still sort of tied back to Christian identity stuff.
Speaker 1: And now we're really starting to see it branching out.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I blame I blame a few things. One,
Speaker 1: just the Internet in general, but also the pandemic kind
Speaker 1: of galvanized extremists across a lot of spheres, and um,
Speaker 1: you started seeing a lot of Christian identity people that
Speaker 1: weren't neces sarily militia people starting to mangle with militia people.
Speaker 1: And then you know, militia people starting to mingle with
Speaker 1: white suprise like over white supremacists, and um, so now
Speaker 1: there's this cross breeding that's happening where like I mean,
Speaker 1: the Gropers are a great example of just like this
Speaker 1: weird amaulgam of things that didn't exist in the same
Speaker 1: sphere before and now they're their own movement. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how much I hate that. Like other
Speaker 1: people who who aren't weirdos who spend all of their
Speaker 1: time on Nazi telegram know what gropers are now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's extremely frustrating. It's the worst thing in the world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the weird things about doing this type of
Speaker 1: research for years is seeing like on YouTube like thumbnails
Speaker 1: by like Stephen Colbert talking about like wacky like nonsense
Speaker 1: that I've known about for years and him talking about
Speaker 1: it like like it's this big new thing. They're always like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, the the little tiny corner of the Internet
Speaker 1: I was just watching and staring at now is like
Speaker 1: it's something that isn't like a regular lives political lexicon,
Speaker 1: and that's like horrible. Yeah, brogan posting about the Kali
Speaker 1: you guy, you know, Yeah that was That was a
Speaker 1: hard drinking night for me. That was a hard drinking
Speaker 1: night for me. And it's so hard to explain to
Speaker 1: people why it's so bad. You're like, it's just so
Speaker 1: once back in the twenties, there was this lady named
Speaker 1: Savitri Devy. Now, yeah, it's it's it's really troubling because um,
Speaker 1: it's making its way into traditional Christian identity stuff, you know, um,
Speaker 1: evangelical stuff, quiverful stuff is now starting to cross over
Speaker 1: way more aggressively with militias stuff, and and with like
Speaker 1: over white supremacist you know now see stuff. It's such
Speaker 1: a problem because and this is something in Berto Echo,
Speaker 1: you know, noted a long time ago, but like fascism
Speaker 1: is deeply syncretic, right, and we're that's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about right now, is its ability. It's like a Catamari.
Speaker 1: I refer back to that game a lot because it
Speaker 1: does just keep picking things up, and um, we don't
Speaker 1: really do that as much on like everyone from like
Speaker 1: the center left to like weirdo anarchists and and and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Like everyone's got their own little box, right, and there's
Speaker 1: some interplay, but for the most part, people on the
Speaker 1: left really like making boxes and people on the right.
Speaker 1: It's just one big ball pit where everybody's smearing their
Speaker 1: diseases and snot around And it's not great now. And
Speaker 1: I mean, we need to figure out some sort of
Speaker 1: solidarity because like even with the abortion protests that are
Speaker 1: happening this week, we're already seeing people co opting things
Speaker 1: and turning it in really destructive directions. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the entire cult of Boba back and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm actually worried about that as at this
Speaker 1: point it feels like a legit astroturp. It doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like they're fighting with the actual abortion providers and saying that,
Speaker 1: you know that, like abortion funds are a problem. It's
Speaker 1: like those are the people actually walking to walk and
Speaker 1: doing anything about this. What are you doing besides showing
Speaker 1: up in bloody pants and picking fights with cops, Like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's this. You know. One of the more uplifting stories
Speaker 1: that's come out recently is that in France, um, the
Speaker 1: left is doing a popular front again in order to
Speaker 1: kind of rest control of the government from mcrown. Will
Speaker 1: see how it works, right, This is just something that's
Speaker 1: kind of been announced, and but this is something like that.
Speaker 1: This has happened a few times in the past in
Speaker 1: different formulations, and I do kind of it would be
Speaker 1: nice to see a broad popular front in favor of
Speaker 1: abortion access on a very blunt level, but that would
Speaker 1: involve people not just getting on board with trying to
Speaker 1: wrest control from the right back electorally, but people supporting
Speaker 1: a legalism, a lot of people are going to have
Speaker 1: to do things that are not legal in order to
Speaker 1: maintain access to reproductive health care. You know, there's the
Speaker 1: other side of it is like hardline anarchists will have
Speaker 1: to realize that working with libs is occasionally useful um
Speaker 1: and using them as body shields sometimes can can let
Speaker 1: you do more illegalist type practice. So there's there's both
Speaker 1: in terms of like people who are really dogmatic on
Speaker 1: the left being like, okay, there's types. There's certain times
Speaker 1: where this type of this this intersectionalism can be really useful,
Speaker 1: and then people who are less radical having to be
Speaker 1: okay with more radical tactics happening. I mean, my biggest
Speaker 1: fear right now is the mass criminalization event that's about
Speaker 1: to happen. Right you know, no matter what, people's pregnancies
Speaker 1: are going to be criminalized in various forms. If you
Speaker 1: have a miscarriage, it's going to be criminalized. You're going
Speaker 1: to have to be more cautious about how you use
Speaker 1: your phone and what you say in the emergency room,
Speaker 1: and you know, what you say to people in your
Speaker 1: own family. And I don't think that most people on
Speaker 1: our side are prepared to have that level of caution
Speaker 1: or divorce themselves from technology and the way that kind
Speaker 1: of needs to happen for people to stay safe. I'm
Speaker 1: also worried that like, as a movement, um, we're not
Speaker 1: really identifying the fact that it's all about bodily autonomy,
Speaker 1: and so that means everybody trying to access trance health
Speaker 1: care is as much or more so at risk. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, and we have so much to learn from
Speaker 1: the sex work industry about all of this, right, Like,
Speaker 1: so much of what is happening now was built on
Speaker 1: like the permissiveness of what people accepted under FOSTA and SESTA. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and um, you know that's how all of us got
Speaker 1: de prioritized and stupid algorithms in the first place. And
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden weren't allowed to put
Speaker 1: ads out for like legitimate healthcare services. And keeping ourselves
Speaker 1: in boxes is really doing everybody a disservice. Everybody that's
Speaker 1: been criminalized, everybody who just trying to exist is at
Speaker 1: risk right now. Is in this together? Yeah, it's um.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that famous quote from who was a
Speaker 1: minister of some sort during you know, the Weimar years
Speaker 1: about first they came for you know, YadA YadA, YadA, um,
Speaker 1: And it is like it's always true with fascists, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that people ever spot it while it's happening, right,
Speaker 1: because there's there's very few groups that mainstream America has
Speaker 1: less inherent sympathy for than sex workers. And the reality
Speaker 1: is that they were testing a lot of this out
Speaker 1: on those people because they are marginalized. And I guess
Speaker 1: one of the things I hope we'll see and that
Speaker 1: might have some positive developments is that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of sex workers out there with a lot of
Speaker 1: opset tips that they can give other people. Now, um,
Speaker 1: it would be dope if you know there were folks
Speaker 1: like setting up clinics and stuff in that, because I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of information that does need to
Speaker 1: get shared with folks who are not used to thinking
Speaker 1: about any of the stuff they're doing is illegal. I've
Speaker 1: been seeing stuff on you know, Facebook, among kind of
Speaker 1: friends of mine who are more middle of the road
Speaker 1: and family members who are pretty much centrist politically, where
Speaker 1: they're talking about like, Hey, if you need to go
Speaker 1: on a camping trip in another state, I'll take you
Speaker 1: one year camping trip, and it's like I get it,
Speaker 1: Like it's great to express solidarity, but will you feel
Speaker 1: that way when it's actually a felony and people are
Speaker 1: getting twenty years sentences for doing it, right, Like, because
Speaker 1: that's where we're headed, you know. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: people need to get more serious about moving their data
Speaker 1: out of the country altogether, you know, like thinking about
Speaker 1: what can be subpoena. Yeah. The folks at Hacking and
Speaker 1: Hustling are doing really amazing work to spread sort of
Speaker 1: uh sex work and sex work adjacent upset knowledge to
Speaker 1: other communities too, Like they're amazing. Um, that's great. I
Speaker 1: was not aware of what they were doing. Um, would
Speaker 1: you mind giving like a little brief overview of what
Speaker 1: that is? Try to reach out to them, But I've
Speaker 1: only been in a couple of sessions with them, but
Speaker 1: they're they're generally just sharing information about like tightening up
Speaker 1: your digital footprint and also being conscious about how having
Speaker 1: multiple like if you have to have a clandistine identity online,
Speaker 1: how you can keep that from leaking over into any
Speaker 1: of your other digital identities. Right. It's it's and I
Speaker 1: mean it's a really important distinction because even if you
Speaker 1: have something like a SOCC account on something like Facebook.
Speaker 1: Based on how you set it up and what other
Speaker 1: accounts that's connected to and who your friend. In that process,
Speaker 1: it can very easily find its way back to you
Speaker 1: and the people connected to you. So how do streams separate? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean whenever somebody angers this podcast, we have Garrison
Speaker 1: tracked them down. It's very easy. Yeah, that is that
Speaker 1: is that is true. I have a whole whole folder
Speaker 1: of people dropping their kids off at school. That's right,
Speaker 1: So you know, keep your eye out, Hello Fresh, don't
Speaker 1: screw with us again. Or that one reviewer that said
Speaker 1: that there was the woman on the podcast who was annoying.
Speaker 1: I know who you are. I was able to I
Speaker 1: was able to track back via your Apple account. Just one.
Speaker 1: Just somebody tried to request access to one of my
Speaker 1: folders that's connected to We had a tenure sixth document
Speaker 1: where we had identified a bunch of people, and so
Speaker 1: I just linked it to you know, Google Drive things
Speaker 1: so that press people could get to stuff. Somebody just
Speaker 1: out of nowhere trying to access one of them the
Speaker 1: other day and requested permission. I'm just like, all I
Speaker 1: had to do is look up your name in the
Speaker 1: word abortion, like, come on and try a little harder. Um,
Speaker 1: So cat, I'm wondering number one for people who are
Speaker 1: like pissed and feeling helpless, there are things that folks
Speaker 1: can do to help, assuming you live in a state
Speaker 1: that there's anything at all around, because like a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are hundreds of files away from any
Speaker 1: kind of clinic. But if you're not, I know there
Speaker 1: are ways people going to help. Do you have any
Speaker 1: kind of pieces of advice for folks interested in being
Speaker 1: of use? There are so many things, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: right now, I think the biggest thing that the movement
Speaker 1: needs more than anything is abortion funds and practical support
Speaker 1: funds really need financial help because they are paying to
Speaker 1: move people around as night as needed to get them care, right,
Speaker 1: So the money thing is always the obvious. But um,
Speaker 1: We're actually having an event on July sev that is
Speaker 1: sort of an orientation day for new people coming to
Speaker 1: the movement who want to volunteer and don't know where.
Speaker 1: So we're going to cover things like, I you become
Speaker 1: a clinic escort, what it means to volunteer on like
Speaker 1: an abortion fund or practical support hotline, um, how you
Speaker 1: can get involved in lobbying groups, how you can get
Speaker 1: involved in direct action groups and sort of pre vetting
Speaker 1: people and then getting them out to the organizations that
Speaker 1: actually have capacity to take on volunteers right now, because
Speaker 1: a lot of what's happening, like we already saw it
Speaker 1: in Texas where people really wanted to volunteer to help
Speaker 1: in Texas after SPA came down, but they were doing
Speaker 1: things like calling the Abortion Fund hotline to try and
Speaker 1: get to people and it's like, no, you can't clog
Speaker 1: up the hotline. That doesn't help anybody. So we're trying
Speaker 1: to take some of the lift off of the organs
Speaker 1: that are already overtaxed that their people, give them some
Speaker 1: background information, give them a better idea of what the
Speaker 1: landscape is in the movement, and then make the connections
Speaker 1: to organizations that have the capacity to take them on.
Speaker 1: So it's called Operations Save Abortion UM and we're gonna
Speaker 1: do a live dream and house parties all over the country.
Speaker 1: Awesome people are either watching the streams we're doing or
Speaker 1: having their own local people to talk about how people
Speaker 1: can get active locally in more direct ways. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's stuff like being an escort, which is is something
Speaker 1: I've been learning a little bit more about recently. UM.
Speaker 1: I guess one of the things I'm interested in is like,
Speaker 1: uh from a perspective of actually like keeping folks safe. Um,
Speaker 1: is that something that you feel has like a lot
Speaker 1: of value or is that something that yeah, Um, and
Speaker 1: is that like people would want to like look at.
Speaker 1: Are there kind of resources for for getting involved with that?
Speaker 1: There are? Clinic escorting is a little tricky right now
Speaker 1: because there's a whole lot of clinics that don't know
Speaker 1: if they're going to be open in eight weeks. So
Speaker 1: right now, well that's all shaking out. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you already have an established relationship with your local clinic,
Speaker 1: definitely check in with them. UM. Clinics in states that
Speaker 1: are going to see a surge, um, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York,
Speaker 1: I mean really anywhere that's still going to have abortion
Speaker 1: after the twenty states fall, the entire West coast, uh,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, right, Uh, Minnesota, they are all going to
Speaker 1: need escorts. UM. Which clinic escorting is walking a person
Speaker 1: from their car to the clinic door past protesters. Um.
Speaker 1: It's generally I would say clinics are non engagement clinics.
Speaker 1: So doing this means that you're there for the patient.
Speaker 1: You're not there to get in a protesters sphace. Some
Speaker 1: clinics have enough of a protest presence, like UM Clinics
Speaker 1: in Charlotte Clinics in Jackson, Mississippi, where they have they
Speaker 1: split it up and they have people that are there
Speaker 1: for the patients and people that are there to distract
Speaker 1: protesters and sort of pull them away from the door,
Speaker 1: you know, just get them a little bit removed so
Speaker 1: that they can get patients past them. This is a
Speaker 1: little bit less pleasant to a question, but you know,
Speaker 1: I've done for a different cause a lot of the
Speaker 1: same research where you're like spending time in these dark
Speaker 1: corners of the Internet making notes of people and threats
Speaker 1: being made, and um, I remember the horrible feeling of
Speaker 1: like having a specific kind of thing that hadn't quite
Speaker 1: happened before that I was sure was going to happen,
Speaker 1: and then the fucking thing happens. Um, are there particular
Speaker 1: things you are worried about in especially like once this
Speaker 1: comes through like that, that are kind of on your horizon,
Speaker 1: Like is there stuff that that people need to be
Speaker 1: kind of preparing for in terms of like an escalation
Speaker 1: in direct action against clinics. Absolutely, I mean we're already
Speaker 1: seeing increased threats against clinics UM. This this bomb threat
Speaker 1: the other day was a test balloon, right, But there
Speaker 1: are organizations like POW who are actively aggressively invading clinics
Speaker 1: on the regular and doing things like stealing product of
Speaker 1: conception Fetle remains right and parading them out to the
Speaker 1: public and naming doctors UM in an effort to get
Speaker 1: them hurt. Right, it's it's stochastic terrorism. They're not they
Speaker 1: are not going to be the ones to pull the trigger.
Speaker 1: They are just putting it out there so that somebody
Speaker 1: else does the dirty work for them. And so many
Speaker 1: people are guilty of that. Right. The church at Plant
Speaker 1: Parenthood is another good example. And they've had you know,
Speaker 1: they've had a long presence and spoken um. They moved
Speaker 1: to Knoxville, Tennessee, they've set up church plants in Birmingham,
Speaker 1: and they've they've been throughout um Oregon and and in
Speaker 1: Oregon they were hiring the Crow Boys as their security,
Speaker 1: which eventually, unsurprisingly turned into a big fight when counter
Speaker 1: protesters showed up, the police showed up, tear guessed everybody,
Speaker 1: it's like, how is what? How is this church to?
Speaker 1: You know, like, what is anybody trying to get out
Speaker 1: of this? And and so there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: who have been putting it out there for a long
Speaker 1: time that there's all this other ring language of calling
Speaker 1: people demons because it makes them easier to kill. There's
Speaker 1: going to be clinic violence. I mean, there's going to
Speaker 1: be more clinic violence. I should say. All of this
Speaker 1: is violent. It's violent to have people out there screaming
Speaker 1: at you and calling you a horror with a giant
Speaker 1: sign of fetus, you know parts and then but I
Speaker 1: mean they're really waiting for somebody to like more buildings
Speaker 1: on fire or shoot somebody, and it's going to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well does anyone else have anything to get into here?
Speaker 1: On that happy note that happy think. It's just it's
Speaker 1: not going to be like actual Nazi extremists that do
Speaker 1: a lot of these attacks either, I think, especially with
Speaker 1: it of being especially if if like if rov Wood
Speaker 1: does get fully taken away, that will justify pretty violent
Speaker 1: action in the minds of like most regular Christians. Even
Speaker 1: when I grew up in like a pretty evangelical uh,
Speaker 1: type of community. Those types of attacks against planned parenthood
Speaker 1: were almost that like there was the there was the
Speaker 1: overall feeling that they were like celebrated, and people who
Speaker 1: would do it would be lauded it as like biblical heroes,
Speaker 1: um for for like for like just our sending a
Speaker 1: building like that. That was very much the sense that
Speaker 1: I got when I was a kid, Like I I
Speaker 1: remember thinking thinking those thoughts, like, oh, that's what like
Speaker 1: a good people do. Like that's like people who are
Speaker 1: brave will go and burn down an abortion clinic. They
Speaker 1: were openly celebrated. You know, the Army of God would
Speaker 1: have the White Rose banquet to raise money by auctioning
Speaker 1: off the personal effects of people who had bombed clinics
Speaker 1: and shot doctors. And you see a lot of that
Speaker 1: mirrored now in things like the Saints Calendar, right, and
Speaker 1: and so you see you see neo Nazis and other
Speaker 1: white supremacists promoting the Saints Calendar and then directing people
Speaker 1: to the Army of God website. And then you see
Speaker 1: Christian nationalists finding accelerationist handbooks and having that knowledge now, right,
Speaker 1: and so they can have the knowledge and loosely collaborate
Speaker 1: without ever having to say, oh, I'm a part of
Speaker 1: you know Front or the Prowboys or whatever. Like, they
Speaker 1: won't see themselves as extremists. They'll see themselves as like
Speaker 1: regular Christians. They'll see them as regular Conservatives. And what
Speaker 1: they're doing is like is like sanctioned by God and
Speaker 1: it's like good, righteous, holy work. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: that is definitely something to keep your eye on because
Speaker 1: it's not all going to be like skull mask wearing
Speaker 1: people doing bomb threats. It's going to be like regular,
Speaker 1: like regular conservative Christians who are who are like been
Speaker 1: on this words tracked the past the past few decades.
Speaker 1: Most of the people that we track are are not
Speaker 1: part openly part of extremist group well not openly part
Speaker 1: of like known militant extremists, right, but um, a lot
Speaker 1: of them are hold office. You know, there is Derek
Speaker 1: Evans was in West Virginia. You've got um John Jacob
Speaker 1: in Indiana, like the whole Oklahoma contingent, like Abolish Human
Speaker 1: Abortion has really just become a lobbying group that's trying
Speaker 1: to get people in office wherever they can. There's I mean,
Speaker 1: they've gotten really strategic about getting people into smaller um
Speaker 1: legislative roles so that they have more power to push
Speaker 1: things and and so that they look more respectable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's that leads kind of to another point, which
Speaker 1: is that when you get right down to it, once
Speaker 1: the ruling comes through finally, as it looks like it will,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of violence that's going to be done
Speaker 1: to abortion providers and too people seeking abortions into people
Speaker 1: supporting them, is going to be done by police. Like
Speaker 1: that's the that's the eventual end game here. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing I'm the most afraid of, right
Speaker 1: because it's so much easier to turn somebody in than
Speaker 1: it is to actually attack a person physically or a
Speaker 1: building even, And so that's what it's going to be.
Speaker 1: It's going to be people calling in their neighbors, calling
Speaker 1: in something from the hospital, turning in their grandkids. You know, well,
Speaker 1: is there anything right now that's making you optimistic? Cat,
Speaker 1: Not to put you on the spot, No, No, it's okay.
Speaker 1: I thought about that a lot. I mean, honestly, the
Speaker 1: people working in this are so dedicated to helping people
Speaker 1: that that always gives me hope. And I genuinely feel
Speaker 1: like there's enough of us that have plans. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: even if even if not everybody's on board with the
Speaker 1: same stuff, there are enough people really doing the hard
Speaker 1: work and being pragmatic about what's happening and not just
Speaker 1: cowing under the pressure of it that are energized by
Speaker 1: helping people that I think there will always be people helping.
Speaker 1: They might not always be visible, but they're there and
Speaker 1: it's just going to be harder to find them. So yeah, Um, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. UM. Do you have anything else
Speaker 1: you'd like to plug before we kind of roll out here?
Speaker 1: Any place people could donations are volunteer if they're into that. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can always donate to Abortion Access Front
Speaker 1: where a front dot org and um, there's a volunteer
Speaker 1: form there. But also if you want to participate in
Speaker 1: our event on July sevent you can go to Operations
Speaker 1: Save Abortion dot com. Uh, and there's a registration form
Speaker 1: there to get involved in the event. Awesome. UM, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Kat Green. You are amazing and
Speaker 1: what you do is incredibly important. Um. And to everybody else, UM,
Speaker 1: go find some way to help or you know, at
Speaker 1: least uh, it's easy to pee in a water balloon
Speaker 1: and sorry. Okay, well, let's that it happened here work, Yes, nice,
Speaker 1: nice introducing you got it? Yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: it could happen here at the podcast where it has happened.
Speaker 1: Your host Christopher Wong with me. We have like seve
Speaker 1: and teen thousand people. We've got Garrison, yep, got We've
Speaker 1: got We've got Sophie, I've got Robert allegedly, We've got
Speaker 1: we've got Sharine, the first time friend of the pod,
Speaker 1: Sharene Hello, teammate. And we have returning I think, yes, yeah, returning.
Speaker 1: Well I'm trying, I'm trying to think, but yeah, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: and creator of our website that I love. I'm so glad.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you like it. Love. Yeah, And we
Speaker 1: we are gathered here today to talk about something that sucks,
Speaker 1: which is, uh, the elite draft of Samuel Alito's decision
Speaker 1: to overturn Rope Wade. It's now we're all mostly angry
Speaker 1: that somebody dared to leak a draft and upset the
Speaker 1: sanctity of the Supreme Courts deliberation in process. Right right,
Speaker 1: That's definitely the thing that's been keeping me awake at night. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A bunch of elderly ghouls who refused to give up
Speaker 1: their grip on power can't deliberate in privacy. What does
Speaker 1: this world come to? M Yes, it's been me all along.
Speaker 1: How can I trust the Supreme Corps if not? Everything
Speaker 1: happens in secret all of the time, always my in.
Speaker 1: On a serious note, I would like to start this
Speaker 1: by stating my primary attitude towards the Supreme Court is
Speaker 1: that more stairways should be greased. Um anyway, that's my contrabation.
Speaker 1: We have been big proponents of horse loop for years, years, years,
Speaker 1: and this stands continues. I think horse loop could solve
Speaker 1: a lot of problems, could so many. So I do
Speaker 1: think it is especially cross that like there's the whole
Speaker 1: side of media people who are making the story out
Speaker 1: that oh no, look at this leak. That is the
Speaker 1: worst thing to happen in human history. I can't believe
Speaker 1: this got leaked, and that is like a pretty dominant
Speaker 1: narrative going on for like over half the country, even
Speaker 1: like even on like CNN. That was like the first thing.
Speaker 1: It's pretty funny too because like the original road decision
Speaker 1: also got leaked. I had the text, but like the
Speaker 1: way it was the ruined verdict was gonna go also
Speaker 1: got leaked. It's like, okay, it's like this is actually
Speaker 1: consistent about this. It's clearly, like I I get why
Speaker 1: the Republicans who are doing it right, because it's a
Speaker 1: way number one that they can pretend to be victims.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people comparing it to like the
Speaker 1: January sixth and ship. Um, yeah, sorry, it's the comparison
Speaker 1: to be made. There is not that the leak happened, no,
Speaker 1: and like should it's like it leaked, Yeah, okay, how
Speaker 1: about the fact that the information instide leak is dangerous
Speaker 1: and it's going to cause a bunch of people today. Also,
Speaker 1: there should be more leaks of government things all the time.
Speaker 1: That's actually yeah, yeah, yeah. The government should not be
Speaker 1: allowed to keep secrets Like I'm sorry, we don't. They're
Speaker 1: really they're called civil servants and they're doing everything in secret,
Speaker 1: like we're supposed to know. I mean, in the perfect world,
Speaker 1: they're spying on us. We have no privacy. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: Like it's only fair. It's also like you, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess maybe we'll eventually find out who did it,
Speaker 1: but like it's also we don't have to assume that
Speaker 1: it was a progressive that did it. For example, Like
Speaker 1: I think the conservatives have even more of a motive
Speaker 1: to release it because they're like mobilizing. There are people
Speaker 1: to agree and be like, yes, do we do we
Speaker 1: want to do the weird Screme Court inside baseball ship?
Speaker 1: Like okay, so the weird inside baseball ship is So
Speaker 1: this is a draft decision, right, this decision Like hasn't
Speaker 1: that this is this is not the law of the
Speaker 1: land yet. And the thing with draft decisions that they change,
Speaker 1: and the thing that's happening here is there's this weird split.
Speaker 1: There's there's like a three to to split on like
Speaker 1: what actually, yeah, that that makes up seven? Right, I'm
Speaker 1: like what actually? Because like the five conservative justices like
Speaker 1: don't like row, but there's a mean, particularly with like Roberts,
Speaker 1: there's a there's kind of a split on like how
Speaker 1: far they want to take it. And so part of
Speaker 1: what could be going on here is like so this
Speaker 1: the version of decision that got leaked is like this
Speaker 1: is basically the most extreme thing they could possibly do.
Speaker 1: I Arranging impacts on how we view personal rights. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's they can talk about it later
Speaker 1: and like this is you know, this is the thing.
Speaker 1: Like like the nerd like Supreme Court watchers like didn't
Speaker 1: think that like this would be the thing, right, They
Speaker 1: didn't think they would just straight up overturned Row. They
Speaker 1: thought they would ship at it a little bit first,
Speaker 1: like go after Casey. But like no, no, no, that
Speaker 1: they're just they're just straight up going after Row. And
Speaker 1: part of what could be the strategy here is like
Speaker 1: a lot of Okay, so the liberals on the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court like have been effectless and powerless for an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of time, and a lot of what they spend
Speaker 1: their time doing is trying to like get one or
Speaker 1: two sentences changed to be slightly less bad. And this
Speaker 1: could be an attempt to get the other conservative justice
Speaker 1: is to like force them to rally around. Aldo's like
Speaker 1: unbelievably hard and there were there were thing that that's
Speaker 1: worth noting about this is that like Aldo, Aldo is
Speaker 1: like I don't know, I mean cavn Cavanaugh. Okay. So
Speaker 1: for for a very long time, Aldo was like broadly
Speaker 1: considered by the legal community to be the worst legal
Speaker 1: mind in the Supreme Court. Like he's a clown. He's
Speaker 1: like he's he's legal reasoning is is really bad. Like
Speaker 1: even even by this, like you know, and this this
Speaker 1: has changed with and become a Barrett and cav It
Speaker 1: all to it to some extent, but like this is
Speaker 1: not this is not a guy. This is not like
Speaker 1: a subtle like a subtle legal mind. This is like
Speaker 1: this is like a bull in a china shop who
Speaker 1: you throw out when you need to just like hit
Speaker 1: something with a hammer, right, and so you know, like yeah,
Speaker 1: part part of what the strategy seems to be is
Speaker 1: to try to try to coerce the other justices who
Speaker 1: are like like like Roberts, who was like slightly less
Speaker 1: fanatical than Aldo, is to try to get them to
Speaker 1: rally around this like incredibly maximalist, hardlined not only going
Speaker 1: after Row, but going after like a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other stuff that we will get to in a second. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that that's that's the that's the sort of Supreme
Speaker 1: Court insight baseball ship. That is possibly part of what's
Speaker 1: going on with the league. But yeah, I mean, to
Speaker 1: be honest, I think that's whatever is going on in
Speaker 1: the league. The primary topics of interest to most people
Speaker 1: are going to be number one, the degree to which
Speaker 1: the rights trying to use this to distract from what
Speaker 1: they're actually doing. Uh. And more to the point, the
Speaker 1: concerted the fact like this is what we're actually dealing
Speaker 1: with here is like the culmination of forty is years
Speaker 1: of pretty relentless um. I mixed it pretty relentless electoralism
Speaker 1: um married to a very effective direct action terrorism campaign
Speaker 1: that has netted the right a tremendous uh win here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like and I feel like this it's a crisis,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't been treated as a crisis. And like
Speaker 1: when fucking Democrats campaign, this is like such an urgent matter,
Speaker 1: and as soon as they're elected, it's suddenly like not
Speaker 1: as urgent. Like look at fucking Biden. He ran on
Speaker 1: literally caught like codifying it. He ran with that promise
Speaker 1: and obviously that didn't happen. Um. And then there's also,
Speaker 1: like to Robert's point from earlier, these justices are just
Speaker 1: like ancient and don't give up their power. And I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no use in pointing fingers, even though I like
Speaker 1: to do it. So like RBG, for example, like if
Speaker 1: she had just retired at her fucking time, maybe there
Speaker 1: would be like one more justice that could fucking help
Speaker 1: us out. But there's a lot. I mean, she's got
Speaker 1: her share of the blame. There's also the fact that
Speaker 1: we've had I think six justices appointed by Republicans in
Speaker 1: the last thirty years, and only one of those Republicans
Speaker 1: actually won the popular vote, um, which was the goal.
Speaker 1: This is not just One of the most important things
Speaker 1: to understand about the anti abortion movement is that it's
Speaker 1: not center like it didn't start and it's not centered
Speaker 1: around abortion. It is centered around reversing all social progress
Speaker 1: of the last century. And the inciting incident was the
Speaker 1: integration of schools. Right. This all started over Brown versus
Speaker 1: the Board of Education. Abortion was just the thing they
Speaker 1: realized it was easier to rally people around than segregation. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're dealing with right now. So that
Speaker 1: the fundamentally this has always been an democratic movement. This
Speaker 1: has always been about codifying into law and locking into
Speaker 1: place for essentially forever, a minority rule in which Christian
Speaker 1: extremists would get to govern the much larger chunk of
Speaker 1: the country that does not believe in those sort of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that's also worth mentioning anytime someone talks
Speaker 1: about this, because the media does, like the media just
Speaker 1: runs pr for the anti abortion movement, which is that
Speaker 1: this is unbelievably unpopular, like staggering lee unpopular. Nobody wants this.
Speaker 1: This is like, this is this is less like you
Speaker 1: can pick it like this is less popular than invading
Speaker 1: fantasy countries that don't exist. Like if if if you
Speaker 1: like this, this is this is significantly less popular, then uh,
Speaker 1: then the burning police stations down. We have the pulling
Speaker 1: data on that. It's like less popular than the lightning
Speaker 1: police stations on fire, Like it is unbelievably staggering lye
Speaker 1: unpopular people. No one wants this except for a a
Speaker 1: very very very well organized, very politically connected, very wealthy,
Speaker 1: and very powerful clique of Christian fascists. Yeah, well, the
Speaker 1: laws never reflect what the most of the population wants though, right,
Speaker 1: like exactly like the popular vote for example, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. So it's like I think there was a
Speaker 1: poll I was reading about this yesterday in June of
Speaker 1: last year. Percent of people thought abortions should be legal
Speaker 1: for for for any reason, like there's no doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be like any kind of thing. So it's like
Speaker 1: it's and there's so many polls that also just like
Speaker 1: prove that most people don't want this hard and fast rule.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the both parties i think utilize it to
Speaker 1: rally together people to vote, but obviously for different causes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like the first reaction from from from Democrats was, hey,
Speaker 1: donate to our campaign. It's like, oh my god, honey,
Speaker 1: read the room. You have all the power and quotes
Speaker 1: right now and you've done nothing. It's like vote blue.
Speaker 1: Dare dare saying that, and you get attacked by other
Speaker 1: Democrats by being like a radical leftist ruining movement because
Speaker 1: like it's not their faults. And I'm like, you, you've
Speaker 1: had power multiple times in my thirty years of life
Speaker 1: where you could have done it easily. Yeah, like like
Speaker 1: and this is this is one of the things that like, okay,
Speaker 1: like this stuff doesn't work on me because I remember
Speaker 1: when Obama had a two thirds majority in the sty Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had a filibusterproof majority in the Senate, had the House,
Speaker 1: and not only did he not do this, Obama by
Speaker 1: by two ten, Obama is codifying anti is codifying anti
Speaker 1: abortion stuff of codifying the High Amendment. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like no, like, and this is the this is the
Speaker 1: thing with the Democrats rates like, this is the best
Speaker 1: thing that's happened to the Democrats since Trump left office.
Speaker 1: Like the Democratic Party they love this. This is the best.
Speaker 1: This is the best thing they could possibly happen to them,
Speaker 1: because now what they can do is they can run on,
Speaker 1: we're going to bring abortion back every single election cycle,
Speaker 1: and they never do it right because everything because they
Speaker 1: they'll they'll never like the stuff that they run on,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, they'll, they'll they'll like they will even even
Speaker 1: if they got another somehow by like magic, if they
Speaker 1: somehow got their six vote majority, they find a way
Speaker 1: to not do it because this, this is this is
Speaker 1: a permanent fundraising thing for them, and they're they're desperately
Speaker 1: in need of money all the time always. So if
Speaker 1: you take that away, like during my brief stint in
Speaker 1: the California Democratic Party, fundraising was always a big deal.
Speaker 1: And they didn't want to divest from fossil fueling cops
Speaker 1: because then where would the money come from. You can't
Speaker 1: take campaigning on row away from them because then like
Speaker 1: they don't fucking know how to activate grassroots organizers. It
Speaker 1: scares the ship out of them, so they will be
Speaker 1: fucked if they lose this, which is why nothing has happened.
Speaker 1: Speaking speaking of money, do you know who else wants
Speaker 1: your money? That's that's right. The products and services that
Speaker 1: support this podcast, that's right. Uh. You know certain may
Speaker 1: make you infertile. So that's not doing this today. We
Speaker 1: are back, um. I think it's so we'll be We'll
Speaker 1: be talking about Supreme Court abortion stuff for a lot
Speaker 1: in the coming months. Um. We'll be talking about very
Speaker 1: different facets of it. Um. Different like mutual aid, like
Speaker 1: in ways of going about kind of filling in the
Speaker 1: gaps which are going to become larger, um, and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of other stuff relating to like right wing
Speaker 1: terrorism against abortion clinics and all that kind of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: The other interesting aspect about this that I want to
Speaker 1: kind of briefly talk about is that with the specific
Speaker 1: phrasing of the le talcument is it it threatens a
Speaker 1: whole like sect of personal rights, not just abortion rights, um,
Speaker 1: and could have far raging impacts, uh, in terms of
Speaker 1: like privacy rights, in terms of possibly even backtracking on
Speaker 1: stuff like gay marriage, and a whole bunch of other things.
Speaker 1: It's like it's obviously the abortion angle itself is pretty
Speaker 1: massive and it affects you know, half half the population
Speaker 1: should uh, But there's a whole lot of other stuff
Speaker 1: that isn't that that indicates this, like this trajectory towards
Speaker 1: this type of like right wing fundamentalist of Christian like
Speaker 1: Christian fascist effort to hack away at all the things
Speaker 1: that they deem degenerate or things that they deem is undesirable. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, the goal is to make America Christian nations
Speaker 1: so Jesus can come back and rule it. And you
Speaker 1: can't do that if you know, people are gay, or
Speaker 1: people are allowed to be on birth control, or people
Speaker 1: are allowed to marry outside of their race, or go
Speaker 1: to school with people who don't look like that, Like
Speaker 1: I did read Jesus to say all of those things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely in the Bible somewhere, if you if
Speaker 1: you do like that poetry style where you blot out
Speaker 1: some of the words to make other words, which is mary. Yes,
Speaker 1: the thing we gotta get into that, I think is
Speaker 1: the primary question people have right is like beyond sort
Speaker 1: of the doom scrolling of of all of this and
Speaker 1: all of the fear about like what's going to happen
Speaker 1: to oh berge Vell and Lawrence v. Kansas and all
Speaker 1: this stuff. What are they going to go for next?
Speaker 1: Is like what actually will work to oppose this ship? Right? Um,
Speaker 1: we at the moment, I have not seen and I
Speaker 1: don't believe there's any objective signs that Democratic Party is
Speaker 1: going to be particularly useful in stymying any of this bullshit. Um,
Speaker 1: Cinema and Mansion have already come out against removing the filibuster.
Speaker 1: Mansion has come out against voting at all in order
Speaker 1: to codify abortion access into into law in any kind
Speaker 1: of federal way. Um. And yeah, I get the sense
Speaker 1: that for most of them it's a big fundraising opportunity.
Speaker 1: Now we do have. That's not to say it's all
Speaker 1: bad news, because it is kind of there's a possibility
Speaker 1: that this will have a significant impact on the mid terms. Um.
Speaker 1: We got one kind signed that where the race in
Speaker 1: Michigan that just ended, the special district or the special
Speaker 1: election where um, for the first time in quite a while,
Speaker 1: a district that Trump carried by like sixteen points went
Speaker 1: to a Democrat. Uh. Now, the Republican that they were
Speaker 1: running against was the guy who said that women should
Speaker 1: lie back and enjoy it if they were getting raped. Uh,
Speaker 1: So this is one of those like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how much we should see that as particularly emblematic of
Speaker 1: how things are going to more broadly go, but this
Speaker 1: does have there's an activation potential, right because outside of
Speaker 1: the fact that the Democratic Party, you know, and as
Speaker 1: a whole is feckless and primarily method of fundraising for
Speaker 1: rich people. Um, actual Democratic voters are rightfully horrified about
Speaker 1: what's going on, and this has there's a potential here
Speaker 1: to activate a lot of people and get them organized
Speaker 1: in a productive way. So I think that has to
Speaker 1: be on our minds. And so there's a mix of
Speaker 1: I don't want to discount electoralism, but I think that
Speaker 1: in the immediate term one of the things that people
Speaker 1: are going to have to do is provide actual material
Speaker 1: ways for folks to get access to the healthcare that's
Speaker 1: going to be increasingly denied to them. Now. Um, we
Speaker 1: get a couple of episodes earlier in the year with
Speaker 1: Michael Lawfer of the voor Thieves Vinegar collective He's just
Speaker 1: gone viral, and a Vice article about the hacked abortion
Speaker 1: pills that that they've been guiding people in how to
Speaker 1: make UM. I think stuff like that is really useful.
Speaker 1: When I started posting about this online, someone pointed out
Speaker 1: that UM pro abortion activists in Germany recently flew drones
Speaker 1: across the border to Poland to drop off MIFA prostall
Speaker 1: like abortion pills which were picked up by people in Poland. UM,
Speaker 1: and there's there's some there's going to be increasing kind
Speaker 1: of organizing around that stuff, like the Jain Collective. UM
Speaker 1: people are already organizing and from like national organizations to
Speaker 1: increase access and states where it's going to remain legal
Speaker 1: for people out of state. So I think that's going
Speaker 1: to be hugely importan UM. Does anyone else have sort
Speaker 1: of ideas on kind of what what things people can
Speaker 1: do when are going to be doing to push back
Speaker 1: against this, because I do think it's got to be twofold.
Speaker 1: It's got to be both, you know, pushing back in
Speaker 1: sort of a legal sense and also pushing back by
Speaker 1: direct action in order to ensure that people still have
Speaker 1: access to this stuff. I don't know, I don't have
Speaker 1: faith in electoral electoral anything. Uh So I really think
Speaker 1: like if there's if it's possible to find your own
Speaker 1: community and like just almost like with I don't know,
Speaker 1: just mobilizing your actual peers versus like trying to trust
Speaker 1: anyone with power to get anything done. Because maybe I'm
Speaker 1: a pestimist. Maybe I'm just a pessimist. But what you
Speaker 1: said earlier about the person she was running against, what
Speaker 1: I heard is that that person was still running and
Speaker 1: people like he was still the number two, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think on the other side there, their side
Speaker 1: is also going to rally against stuff like didn't Oklahoma
Speaker 1: just passed like the most restricted and ever and just
Speaker 1: yesterday at time of recording. Yeah, so in this law,
Speaker 1: women can be punished up to ten years in prison
Speaker 1: for gonna get abortion and like in pair, like just
Speaker 1: for some perspective, rapists in Oklahoma get five years. So
Speaker 1: it's like stuff like that is happening in all these states,
Speaker 1: and because these states people with with less resources maybe
Speaker 1: don't have their ability to travel so far, I think
Speaker 1: really mobilizing communities a little bit more uh maybe just
Speaker 1: more effective in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, we have
Speaker 1: to mobilize communities, but you also can't. It can't just
Speaker 1: end at we're going to try to like provide these
Speaker 1: people with an option to get out of the state
Speaker 1: or get access where they are, like clandestinely. If it's
Speaker 1: limited to that, they're going to push to make all
Speaker 1: this more illegal federally, and they're just going to keep
Speaker 1: throwing people in prison and using the police as the
Speaker 1: enforcement arm of this stuff. There does have to be
Speaker 1: there has to be a broader counter you know, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking back to like, and I'm not talking about like
Speaker 1: picking a dude to vote for. I'm talking about like
Speaker 1: in Mexico, right when they were talking about UM making
Speaker 1: abortion illegal, activists attempted to light the Capitol building on
Speaker 1: fire UM and like that that that kind of like
Speaker 1: there has to be there has to be a broader
Speaker 1: two thirds of the country thinks this is bullshit. There
Speaker 1: has to be a way of getting those people organized
Speaker 1: in a way beyond dealing with the acute problems caused
Speaker 1: by this. Like yeah, and I don't entirely know what
Speaker 1: that looks like, but no, that makes sense that you're
Speaker 1: right and makes sense. Well, and I think I think
Speaker 1: that there have been signs that it's started, Like so,
Speaker 1: I mean, there there's obviously, like there were protests like
Speaker 1: they've been protests, like literally since the thing came out.
Speaker 1: They were especially Yeah. Also, I mean I think I
Speaker 1: think part of like this sort of like yeah, what
Speaker 1: did you see when you can see this sort of
Speaker 1: like I don't know, you can see the way that
Speaker 1: people haven't I guess fully internalized the fact that the
Speaker 1: stage is just trying to do this to them, and
Speaker 1: that like you know, if you look at the barricades
Speaker 1: that were put up, right, like you could just push
Speaker 1: those over, like and then there you have you had
Speaker 1: a bunch of people who are extremely angry and they
Speaker 1: sort of just sat there and did nothing right and
Speaker 1: like this is this is the kind of thing that like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at what happened in l A.
Speaker 1: There there is a lot of protest in l A.
Speaker 1: And like the department, like Homeland Security was on the
Speaker 1: street beating people, and I think if if if there's
Speaker 1: like okay, So, one thing it's important to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is that this still again this this the ruling,
Speaker 1: the draft of the ruling is not the actual ruling.
Speaker 1: Right there is still time right now in between when
Speaker 1: this in between this leak and when this is actually decided,
Speaker 1: there is still time to literally force the court to
Speaker 1: not do this, so start greasing those stairwells people. Yes, well,
Speaker 1: I think here's a few notes. Um. So one, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's going to be used to encourage action
Speaker 1: on all sides. Uh, there's what it's gonna This is
Speaker 1: going to be seen as a victory for the right,
Speaker 1: and they're going to use this momentum to mobilize further, uh,
Speaker 1: to to put more further antibortion stuff into law, and
Speaker 1: to encourage people to take vigilante justice out on healthcare providers. Um.
Speaker 1: The second thing is direct action for of trying to
Speaker 1: alter the ruling before it happens. Like there is a
Speaker 1: chance to do mass mobilization. Uh, there's a chance if
Speaker 1: we frames if things are framed correctly, you can bring
Speaker 1: a lot of liberals out and convince them and suggest
Speaker 1: to them that they can that they could do things
Speaker 1: that they ordinarily maybe wouldn't do. Uh. There's that is
Speaker 1: that is an entirely uh, entirely possible scenario. Just in
Speaker 1: my in my episodes about the Atlanta Forest from a
Speaker 1: few days ago, I discussed the shack method of protest. Now,
Speaker 1: this this isn't this isn't this doesn't carry over one
Speaker 1: to one because that is pretty focused on doing economic targeting.
Speaker 1: But the whole idea of targeting people outside of like
Speaker 1: the political space is a key to that. Like people
Speaker 1: people don't just do work in the Supreme Court. They
Speaker 1: have actual everyday lives, and if you can uh surround
Speaker 1: them in their everyday lives, that type of personal pressure
Speaker 1: is way more affecting than just yelling at a government
Speaker 1: buildings sometimes, um because if we can dissolve this like
Speaker 1: safe political like space that people think that they think
Speaker 1: they operated in, right, they assume that, oh, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a court justice, I'm a judge. Everything that I
Speaker 1: do happens in the courtroom. Right, I'm safe, I'm contained.
Speaker 1: Everything is just in the contents of the courtroom. I
Speaker 1: don't get to experience consequences for my actions outside the courtroom,
Speaker 1: which isn't true because obviously the people, all of us,
Speaker 1: do experience those consequences in the real world all the time,
Speaker 1: just the people in power don't have to. So instead,
Speaker 1: if we can put pressure on people when they're going
Speaker 1: about their every day lives in their hanging banners in
Speaker 1: their backyard, doing other things. Horse but again, very useful. Um,
Speaker 1: that is a that is a way to do types
Speaker 1: of protests that we have not seen as much, but
Speaker 1: I think is now is probably the time to start
Speaker 1: doing that, right. I mean we we saw we saw
Speaker 1: stuff after the murder of George Floyd with people surrounding
Speaker 1: the house of Derek Chauvin, which police were very angry
Speaker 1: about that. There is an indication that hey, this the
Speaker 1: state doesn't like it when this happens. Um, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not specifically more legal to stand in the street
Speaker 1: of a residential neighborhood. So no, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of protests so far has focused on court buildings,
Speaker 1: many of which are federal, and those provide a lot
Speaker 1: of benefits to shall we say, the defender, including the
Speaker 1: fact that they're already well set up for surveillance. They're
Speaker 1: generally fortified. Uh, they have a pretty short logistic tail
Speaker 1: to where the state is keeping its weaponry and its
Speaker 1: troops as opposed to just kind of fucking with people
Speaker 1: in their lives, which is a lot harder for those
Speaker 1: kind of militarized responses that lead to large groups of
Speaker 1: your friends getting arrested or beat up by Feds. I
Speaker 1: think also like, yeah, the tendency to go after like
Speaker 1: legal buildings is missing the point of where the actual
Speaker 1: power is. Like this is the thing which January sixth
Speaker 1: too is like yeah, even if like yeah, they took
Speaker 1: over the capital and nothing happens. And the reason that
Speaker 1: like nothing could happen is because it's just a building, right,
Speaker 1: like the the the the actual political system existed dependently
Speaker 1: of it, and you have to hit the things that
Speaker 1: the system actually cares about, and so like that supports
Speaker 1: that's roads, that's border crossings, that's things like I why
Speaker 1: am I now suddenly vacation homes? Yeah, but like like
Speaker 1: but also I mean like okay, like you know, if
Speaker 1: if if if there was actually like a way to
Speaker 1: stop this, one of the few things that could actually
Speaker 1: do it would be a large would be something like
Speaker 1: a large skale teacher strike or a thing I've talked
Speaker 1: about before that is happening this summer is for example,
Speaker 1: all the the long Showman contract in uh Oakland is
Speaker 1: coming up, right, and like those are the kinds of
Speaker 1: things like if you can actually start shutting down large
Speaker 1: sections of the U. S economy, the Supreme Court of
Speaker 1: Political Actors, they will have to respond to this, and
Speaker 1: you can essentially, like like you can you can blackmail
Speaker 1: them into into into doing the thing that they should
Speaker 1: be doing. You can apply targeted pressure economically and personally.
Speaker 1: And that's the type of protest that I think it
Speaker 1: would be interesting to see where that leads us. They
Speaker 1: need to not they like the consequence for both the
Speaker 1: political actors who are carrying this out and the people
Speaker 1: who support them needs to be that they don't get
Speaker 1: to live a normal life um that they are, that
Speaker 1: they suffer consequences for hurting people. And that means a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but among other things, that means that
Speaker 1: certain people shouldn't be going to the fucking grocery store
Speaker 1: without feeling the hatred, you know, And I think, I
Speaker 1: think be able to order delivery and feel secure that
Speaker 1: what they're gonna eat isn't going to hurt them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think also like one of the things that
Speaker 1: I remembering from that was actually really effective initially from
Speaker 1: the beginning of TRUP administration was the airport protests. And
Speaker 1: that's a place that like you wouldn't think you'd be
Speaker 1: able to really occupy because again, the amount of security
Speaker 1: there was enormous, but like if you have a lot
Speaker 1: of libs, you can. I remember, like I was, I
Speaker 1: was like standing in an airport terminal and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of riot cops attacking. Like everyone is like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get attacked, but like there was just enough
Speaker 1: like everyone just sat down and there was enough libs
Speaker 1: with like their kids that the cops didn't attack. And
Speaker 1: that's that. That's a kind of thing that like potentially
Speaker 1: could be replicated and also could be useful given the
Speaker 1: fact that like sometimes cops have like an aversion to
Speaker 1: a like stuff that looks really really bad on TV.
Speaker 1: Not not always, but like, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: the thing that can happen. Is the thing that has
Speaker 1: happened inner like pretty recently. Yeah we can do again.
Speaker 1: I don't really trust footage of police brutality to change
Speaker 1: things anymore. UM. I feel like we reached the peak
Speaker 1: of that, and at this point I think moving on
Speaker 1: to targeted pressure towards individuals that whole positions of power
Speaker 1: and targeted pressure to the economy. Um. But speaking of
Speaker 1: speaking of targeted pressure the economy, a large protest at
Speaker 1: an airport that the police break up with tear gas
Speaker 1: does damage to the economy that the police are the
Speaker 1: ones causing um and like it's it's uh, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things. As we've stated, courthouse or whatever is
Speaker 1: just a building. People can not go into work and
Speaker 1: do all of the fund up ship that they're doing
Speaker 1: on zoom um. An airport is not just a building,
Speaker 1: you know, And so a protest at an airport has
Speaker 1: some teeth that a protest at a courthouse doesn't. Necessarily,
Speaker 1: I do have one, like quick other thing it that
Speaker 1: I want to throw out as sort of a means
Speaker 1: of uh resistance or action. Is something that I was
Speaker 1: trained to do growing up. Part of the forest birth
Speaker 1: movement is co opting the language that the left uses,
Speaker 1: and I think something that we should do and something
Speaker 1: that we can all be doing right now is co
Speaker 1: opting the language back. So when force birth advocates say
Speaker 1: their pro life, come back with how can you be
Speaker 1: pro life if you want someone to die by having
Speaker 1: a pregnancy, and like just sort of taking words and
Speaker 1: rhetoric that has traditionally been used to oppress us two
Speaker 1: reframe it and be like, no, actually, you're the one
Speaker 1: who's telling on yourself here, and you're the one who
Speaker 1: is forcing people literally to die in multiple ways. You
Speaker 1: cannot be pro life if support people who already exist
Speaker 1: dying and just sort of thinking about that a little bit.
Speaker 1: If you don't necessarily have the energy to go stage
Speaker 1: protest at the airport, yep, that is a great line
Speaker 1: to end on end on um. Everybody go out, and again,
Speaker 1: you know, our sponsors are the Klein and Stupil Hip
Speaker 1: Surgery Center in Washington, d C. So please do keep
Speaker 1: greasing those stairways. Everybody welcome to It could happen here,
Speaker 1: the podcast that's happening here right now, in your ears,
Speaker 1: it could happen here. I'm Robert evans Um. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not with any of my normal UH co hosts today
Speaker 1: because as fuck them now, because I'm elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: world right now, hanging out with someone you might remember
Speaker 1: from a special episode we recently did on Molotov Cocktails,
Speaker 1: journalist James Stout. Hi. Everyone, Yeah, I'm here with Robert
Speaker 1: in a tiny hotel room and we've just worken up
Speaker 1: we had to do some podcasting. Yeah, we're not We're
Speaker 1: not here for any specific purpose. We just decided let's
Speaker 1: run a hotel room cast some pods, you know, hang out. Um, James,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about the border? Negatively? Broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: I think the border is a tool that we used
Speaker 1: to harm and kill the most marginalized people in the world.
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of borne out by stats as well.
Speaker 1: So not a big not a big border guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you and I recently spent a decent amount of
Speaker 1: time on the Texas Mexico chunk of the border, specifically
Speaker 1: near McAllen, Texas, hanging out at a butterfly sanctuary that
Speaker 1: people can learn some things about if they Google will
Speaker 1: be coming out that those episodes will be dropping in
Speaker 1: the not too distant future. Um. But you live on
Speaker 1: the San Diego side of the order, UM, which, if
Speaker 1: people don't know, San Diego, California is basically in Mexico. Um,
Speaker 1: you can you can hop over across for like lunch
Speaker 1: and stuff if you really want to and don't mind
Speaker 1: dealing with CBP. UM. And Yeah, so I you've done
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting around the border and about kind
Speaker 1: of the system of violence that it represents. UM. I
Speaker 1: wanted to chat a little bit like about that, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to chat about some of the organizations that
Speaker 1: you've run into that are doing good work out there
Speaker 1: because there's a lot that needs to be done. Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: I think, Um, I think it's really important to like
Speaker 1: conceptualize what's happening at the border in terms of like
Speaker 1: the border is a tool for state violence, right, state
Speaker 1: violence against marginalized people, and like what the good group
Speaker 1: groups helping people on the boarder represent is like ways
Speaker 1: of us helping each other which are outside the networks
Speaker 1: of us having power over each other. Right, So in
Speaker 1: the broader spectrum of like neutral aid of mutual support, like,
Speaker 1: I think they're really important to focus on rather than
Speaker 1: kind of so many people construct the border in their minds,
Speaker 1: Like you can if you go back on my Twitter,
Speaker 1: some guy just being like that is not the border.
Speaker 1: The border does not look like that. The border is
Speaker 1: barren and it's desert and it's full of people with
Speaker 1: guns and it's really not right. Like, so the border exists,
Speaker 1: is like this mental construct a place where we can
Speaker 1: do like political theater, especially on the right. So people
Speaker 1: who are actually down there on the ground and understand it,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's vital to support them. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the more striking moments to me when we were
Speaker 1: in McAllen was hanging out near this trunk of border
Speaker 1: fence that had been constructed on like by volunteers effectively. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's this, it's it's it's what you would expect,
Speaker 1: like the stereotype of the border. It's this huge military
Speaker 1: industrial looking thing. The wildlife has been cleared from around
Speaker 1: it so that you can have this towering steel edifice.
Speaker 1: But then a hundred yards away across the rio is
Speaker 1: the Mexican side of the border, and there's like a
Speaker 1: couple of goat farms and like a little restaurant with
Speaker 1: a little dock so people can like you know, take
Speaker 1: their little boats out and people are drinking and there's
Speaker 1: party music laying and like it's it's nice. It's pastoral
Speaker 1: and green. It was. It looked like a lovely place.
Speaker 1: It looked much nicer than hanging out by the giant
Speaker 1: steel tower. Yeah. I found that all along the border actually,
Speaker 1: like we are side of the border looks like something
Speaker 1: from a Blade Runner or something like. It's this giant
Speaker 1: dystopian steel construct with with people with guns, with watch towers,
Speaker 1: and it's horrific, right, Like it cuts through some of
Speaker 1: the most beautiful and important landscapes we have right through
Speaker 1: the high desert, through this very fragile places, and like
Speaker 1: it's important I think people understand as well what the
Speaker 1: border wall looks like, right because you've probably seen a
Speaker 1: photograph of giant ass wallum and that is part of it.
Speaker 1: But they got it the border wall ecosystem, and what
Speaker 1: that involves is the wall itself, sometimes a ditch, sometimes
Speaker 1: not a ditch, and then a road that's wide enough
Speaker 1: for two of the f one fifty raptors Border Patrol
Speaker 1: like to drive to pass each other, and then access
Speaker 1: road to that, and then generally there's also an access
Speaker 1: road cut that allows construct vehicles to get to build
Speaker 1: all of that. So it's not just some spikes in
Speaker 1: the desert. It's fucking destroying this beautiful part of both
Speaker 1: of Mexico and the United States. Right now, before we
Speaker 1: get into some of these organizations, I'm wondering, first off,
Speaker 1: when did you start reporting on the US Mexico border
Speaker 1: and is there any kind of specific events that that
Speaker 1: you can recall that really kind of ignited your your
Speaker 1: interest in this particular like part of the United States,
Speaker 1: in this particular part of like our ongoing social conflict. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: I've always been interested in borderlands, like academically and as
Speaker 1: part of my PhD UM. But I guess I've probably
Speaker 1: about eight or nine years i've been reporting on the border.
Speaker 1: The thing that really sort of took it from being
Speaker 1: like a the border is sometimes I think I write
Speaker 1: about I did a lot of outdoor writing about the
Speaker 1: border to right. It was very interesting in getting more
Speaker 1: people to go outside in Baha, California. It's amazing and
Speaker 1: you should do it. But what really sort of I
Speaker 1: guess made me be like Gulf funk, this is fucking horrible.
Speaker 1: U is quote unquote migrant caravan. Right. So I've been
Speaker 1: down just just enjoying a weekend in Fettle further south
Speaker 1: and but little further south of Tijuana and having a
Speaker 1: really good wine country there. So we've been checking out
Speaker 1: these wine places and just enjoying ourselves. And we come
Speaker 1: back and then these people are in um what's called
Speaker 1: the Benito Kuaida's Sports Complex. It's just a baseball field
Speaker 1: and it's raining and it's November, and it looks like
Speaker 1: a fucking Battle of the Somme in there. You know,
Speaker 1: it's mud. They're little children, And I've been in these
Speaker 1: situations before. I've I've seen situations with displaced people before,
Speaker 1: but there was something that just broke my heart about like,
Speaker 1: so obviously we're gonna go in, right, We're gonna see
Speaker 1: what's going on. We're going to see what we can
Speaker 1: do to help. And they're little kids. I remember there
Speaker 1: was this little girl and it's one still makes me
Speaker 1: really sad. But she would find me. There were thousands
Speaker 1: of people there. Every single time I came, she would
Speaker 1: find me. It found me the first day and she
Speaker 1: would like we talked for a little bit about what
Speaker 1: she was doing, and then she was standing like halfway
Speaker 1: up her little shins in mud and she didn't have
Speaker 1: any works like shower or be clean. You know. She
Speaker 1: was living in a sort of tarp shelter. And it
Speaker 1: just fucking broke my heart. So he said she used
Speaker 1: to plack my hair a lot so and carry her around,
Speaker 1: And that was just like this realization for me, like
Speaker 1: of how cruel this thing is. Shortly thereafter, of course,
Speaker 1: the police stood in the parking lot of the Tommy
Speaker 1: Hill Figure discount store in order to fire tear gas.
Speaker 1: It's some of the most marginalized and desperate people certainly
Speaker 1: in that part of the world, right, and just that
Speaker 1: it's it's a scene that like, yeah, that would if
Speaker 1: you put that in a movie, you would be like
Speaker 1: it was a little bit heavy handed, right, having them
Speaker 1: shoot from the tummy hill finger at the desperate migrants.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit heavy Yeah, yeah, it's it's just
Speaker 1: dis advanced fucking parody of where we are at a society.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the the DHS helicopter is taking off from
Speaker 1: the Tommy Hill Figure store to fire tear grass grenades
Speaker 1: at the children who just want a safe place to sleep.
Speaker 1: I had a moment like that in a protest where
Speaker 1: the Portland Police. We were in um uh North Portland, um,
Speaker 1: which is like in a neighborhood that was like one
Speaker 1: of the fairly few like black neighborhoods in Portland, and
Speaker 1: the cops, you know, when apeship and started firing impact
Speaker 1: munitions down Martin Luther King Boulevard. And I didn't catch
Speaker 1: myself at first, and I was like, the cops are
Speaker 1: now shooting down Martin Luther. Yeah, you've been in and
Speaker 1: around like you you live there obviously, so who are like,
Speaker 1: who are some of the folks that you've come across
Speaker 1: that are doing the most to actually help there, and
Speaker 1: what kind of help, like it is necessary because I
Speaker 1: feel like one of the one of the things I
Speaker 1: think is the primary shortcoming of it could happen. Here
Speaker 1: is a show so far? Is that the way Garrison
Speaker 1: and I phrase it is like a lot of our
Speaker 1: episodes are here's a problem them goodbye. Right, We're like,
Speaker 1: here's the thing that's bad. Off we go. So what
Speaker 1: I guess the two chief questions I think they need
Speaker 1: to be answered because I'm hoping pretty much everyone here
Speaker 1: is on board with the border is a nightmare. Uh,
Speaker 1: something's got to be done. What are the kind of
Speaker 1: things that can actually materially improve people's lives who are
Speaker 1: being affected by this border ecosystem? And then who are
Speaker 1: the motherfucker's who are actually out there trying to unfunck
Speaker 1: things that to the extent that unfucking is doable here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think like just to further like make people sad. First, like,
Speaker 1: if you look up de Colonial Atlas Southern Border, you
Speaker 1: can find this map of where migrants die when they're
Speaker 1: coming to the United States, right, and were often it's
Speaker 1: constructed in the news media, is like it's dangerous crossing Mexico.
Speaker 1: It is. It's it's dangerous coming across the Darien Gap,
Speaker 1: sure it is. But the vast bulk of people die
Speaker 1: within a few miles of our southern border, right. And
Speaker 1: that's because, especially now with the way we've constructed the
Speaker 1: border wall. Right before the action, Donald Trump in a
Speaker 1: debate made claims about how much border wall he'd built.
Speaker 1: Like everything else, he was full of shit. So they
Speaker 1: just tried to build as much as they could between
Speaker 1: them and the election. So they just skip the hard parts,
Speaker 1: skip them out in to skip the valleys, and that
Speaker 1: often forces people to cross in the most arduous terrain, right,
Speaker 1: So that that's increased the amount of people dying. So
Speaker 1: we can look broadly at like two categories of support, right,
Speaker 1: which are like, um, I guess like direct aid and
Speaker 1: then legal aid. So um, on the legal aid side,
Speaker 1: the guys who guys and girls and other people who
Speaker 1: who have been really really helpful to the other side
Speaker 1: right there there, Legal aid group. They were very very
Speaker 1: cool during the during the microt care event, like they
Speaker 1: and I realized that something about a loaded phrase, right,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to use a word that people will
Speaker 1: understand they were there constantly helping people with good course letters.
Speaker 1: They were there filing legal briefs on their behalf. As
Speaker 1: a result of that, many of them were illegally surveiled
Speaker 1: by the Department of Homeland Security. We had the phones taken,
Speaker 1: the communications trace, their movements traced, their network trace, etcetera.
Speaker 1: They are wonderful people, right like, they do amazing things
Speaker 1: with helping people get legal aid um. And then you've
Speaker 1: got the people who are helping people while they cross right,
Speaker 1: and there are a number of these mutual a groups.
Speaker 1: If you're in a certain region there at the border,
Speaker 1: there is probably someone near you. I'm no expert on
Speaker 1: all of them, but you can look at like no
Speaker 1: Massa Weds in Arizona Armadio's believe. I think they, I
Speaker 1: don't know. They operate also in Texas, but certainly in
Speaker 1: that California Arizona area. You can look at border angels.
Speaker 1: A border angels are probably the biggest, most public facing one,
Speaker 1: and they are fantastic right They're out there making sure
Speaker 1: that there are cashes of water for people who are crossing,
Speaker 1: making sure that when it's cold at night there are
Speaker 1: warm clothes, and when it's hot there are clothes suitable
Speaker 1: for that weather, right, maybe in a new backpack, canned food.
Speaker 1: They're like doing the active stuff that stops people or dying. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's invaluable, right, And it's also important in terms
Speaker 1: of showing that like they'll often right things I've seen
Speaker 1: like like you're welcome, right, welcome to this country or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's showing that most of us don't agree with this
Speaker 1: dehumanizing brutalization of migrants that state is doing on our behalf,
Speaker 1: and so showing that welcome it's very important. There are
Speaker 1: lots of indigenous groups. Um. I did ask if I
Speaker 1: could name them, but that they didn't get back to me,
Speaker 1: so I don't want to. But like there are groups
Speaker 1: within the toronaud M nation and their groups within the
Speaker 1: Kumi nation. I'm sure there are groups within other tribes
Speaker 1: whom the border crossed, right, who lived in this area
Speaker 1: long before it was a border, who are also out
Speaker 1: there helping people. There are also individuals helping people out
Speaker 1: on their property. Right. If you if you can't find
Speaker 1: how to donate to one of those groups, you can
Speaker 1: reach out to me. That's fine. But yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the work they're doing is invaluable both in terms of
Speaker 1: like showing people that they are welcome and in terms
Speaker 1: of saving lives. Right, more and more people die at
Speaker 1: the border every year, especially Lee with things like Title
Speaker 1: forty two, which we can get into with MPP sure.
Speaker 1: So Title forty two, it's a public it's part of
Speaker 1: a public health law. It's very antiquated. I think it
Speaker 1: was last used in the nineteen thirties. The idea behind
Speaker 1: it was to stop people with tuberculosis coming into the
Speaker 1: United States and if they have and um um, if
Speaker 1: they have an infectious to transmissible disease I think it's called,
Speaker 1: then they can be immediately sent back without processing. Right.
Speaker 1: This was part of a whole suite of things that
Speaker 1: they used to do to laborers coming north. Right. They
Speaker 1: would also spray them with all kinds of insecticides, which
Speaker 1: obviously is not good for the health. So Title fully two,
Speaker 1: the idea being, you know, you get if you present
Speaker 1: to me at the border and I'm a border patrol
Speaker 1: guy and you're like coughing up a lung and obviously tuberculous, cuberculous,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you have to tubercule, yeah, tuberculastic, then
Speaker 1: I will send you back and just be like, no,
Speaker 1: Robert off until you're healthy. You're going to infect everyone
Speaker 1: else here, especially if I detain you. Now, what it's
Speaker 1: being used to do with COVID nineteen is to not
Speaker 1: process migrants right, to do what's called catch and release,
Speaker 1: just bump them south and let them go. What that
Speaker 1: means is that these so normally you could cross surrender
Speaker 1: to a CBP AG and that's another miss miss understanding. Right,
Speaker 1: a lot of people will want to surrender right there
Speaker 1: that they they have no intention of not being processed.
Speaker 1: For certain countries is something called a TPS, which I'll
Speaker 1: explain in the second, which which there will be no
Speaker 1: reason for them not to be processed. So these people
Speaker 1: will cross, and now they could just get dumped on
Speaker 1: the other side, right, it doesn't matter if they are
Speaker 1: a person who is pregnant, doesn't matter, if the elderly,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter, if there medically compromised. A week, they can't
Speaker 1: just get dumped. What this has meant is that people
Speaker 1: who are helping them cross, right, people who maybe charge
Speaker 1: your fee for helping them cross, are offering like crossings
Speaker 1: without limits. You we'll just try again, try again, and
Speaker 1: it means, like I said before, because of the combination
Speaker 1: this and then this, this hostile infrastructure that we're building, right,
Speaker 1: this border wall system, that people will try crossing in
Speaker 1: more and more remote places. Right. That is when people
Speaker 1: die crossing, is when they cry and cross in in
Speaker 1: places that are hotter, that are more arduous. Right, it
Speaker 1: requires days of walking sometimes and like, and I've been
Speaker 1: in that terrain. I spend a lot of my time
Speaker 1: out there, and like for a long time it's been
Speaker 1: more or less my job to be outside out there,
Speaker 1: and it is hard. So if I imagine crossing with
Speaker 1: everything I need to start my new life and carrying
Speaker 1: my child, it's very difficult for me. And I'm more
Speaker 1: accustomed to it than most, so it's it's very difficult
Speaker 1: and forcing people to just kind of bounce back. Because
Speaker 1: when we drop someone in Mexico, right, if they are Guatemalan, Honduran,
Speaker 1: they don't have any network there, Right, it doesn't exactly help. Like, uh,
Speaker 1: like sometimes we like this construct that like the border
Speaker 1: fuels crime, right, Like crime is like they talk about
Speaker 1: like like sometimes cartels is far too broadly used. Nearly
Speaker 1: always it's far too broadly used. But this idea that
Speaker 1: the board of funds like drug running an organization such
Speaker 1: as that, Well, you don't help by dumping someone where
Speaker 1: they have no other means of making a living, right,
Speaker 1: where they're going to be very poor and now they
Speaker 1: don't have any mate and I have anyone to go
Speaker 1: to to ask for help, write like, I don't blame
Speaker 1: people for trying to find a way to do something
Speaker 1: so understandably, like if I don't think I think it's
Speaker 1: largely a lie that that any significant number of people
Speaker 1: sort of running drugs across the border are migrants or um.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's that's largely a racist lie.
Speaker 1: But leaving people dislocated there is a recipe for poverty,
Speaker 1: and I can't things like crime do happen more. I
Speaker 1: guess when people are poor and don't have any other options,
Speaker 1: that makes sense if we go back to TPS really quickly,
Speaker 1: because I think that's important to temporary protected status. Right,
Speaker 1: You'll see people on Twitter talking about TPS. Whether bids
Speaker 1: only means is that they can't deport you back to
Speaker 1: a country. So it took Biden an obscenely long time
Speaker 1: to grant a TPS for the people from Ukraine. Right,
Speaker 1: Five something people went into the deportation system between the
Speaker 1: time in like November December, when Biden's administration started being
Speaker 1: like there is going to be war in Ukraine and
Speaker 1: Russians are going to invade Ukraine, they were still actively
Speaker 1: in the process of sending people back to Ukraine at
Speaker 1: that time, and it wasn't until about a week into
Speaker 1: the shooting war that they said, Okay, Temporary protected DATUS,
Speaker 1: we won't send you back. It exists for other countries,
Speaker 1: exists for Haiti, it exists for me and mar Burma. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it exists for Syria or I
Speaker 1: think it does, but these countries where basically like, we
Speaker 1: won't send you back there. And TPS is very important,
Speaker 1: right because it stops people being deported to places where
Speaker 1: they will die. And it's important to understand that, like
Speaker 1: you could have everything right into am, you're a sign
Speaker 1: an application, and still be sent back. It's a cruel
Speaker 1: and very impersonal system. So a TPS is important and
Speaker 1: if you're into sort of advocating for laws, then it's
Speaker 1: an important thing to advocate for. I think yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: in terms of more, I think that's important because we
Speaker 1: we kind of the electoral side of things is not
Speaker 1: does not tend to be our focus here, but it's
Speaker 1: also not useless. Like the border is one of the
Speaker 1: areas most clearly where you can see both how advocating
Speaker 1: in that realm can immediately improve people's lives and also
Speaker 1: how both sides of the political spectrum use the border
Speaker 1: as a weapon to hurt. Yeah, exactly. The board is
Speaker 1: definitely a stage for both sides political theater. Like look
Speaker 1: at Joe Biden, right, he's coming in, he's signing this declaration.
Speaker 1: On the first day, Remember the day he was inaugurated,
Speaker 1: I went out to the border wall just sat there
Speaker 1: by myself and like wept because it's just this horrible,
Speaker 1: ugly thing that's such a scar on the place that
Speaker 1: I love. And uh, he's done fun all right, and
Speaker 1: he's deporting more people than Trump and he's building his
Speaker 1: own by and barrier, which is the same thing with
Speaker 1: that an anti client plate. But yeah, like, even if
Speaker 1: you don't agree with the existence of laws and lawmakers, right,
Speaker 1: this this concept that I like a lot, called normative anarchism.
Speaker 1: I think it's Wolf, the guy who wrote it. But
Speaker 1: like we can move towards the state doing less cruelty
Speaker 1: and being a little more free, and that is a
Speaker 1: move in the right direction, even if it's not the
Speaker 1: end goal. And I think the border is a place
Speaker 1: where you can really make a difference like that, right,
Speaker 1: Like some small changes in how things are done would
Speaker 1: reduce the cruelty to people who have done nothing wrong massively.
Speaker 1: So I think it is an area where even those
Speaker 1: of us who might not be generally inclined to like
Speaker 1: electoral staff like you can I think I don't know
Speaker 1: if you can make a distance because like so many
Speaker 1: people in Milwaukee are watching Fox News and a fucking
Speaker 1: completely convinced that the border is just I don't know,
Speaker 1: people with guns trying to smuggle children or whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an area where small changes in policy make a
Speaker 1: huge Title forty two right, not even a law, it's
Speaker 1: an executive or it's not even executive, or it's an
Speaker 1: interpret tation. Uh the war, right, most of that ship
Speaker 1: wasn't built by Congress. It was built by executive orders.
Speaker 1: So like that stuff, I think is a place where
Speaker 1: you can you can affect positive change for people now unfortunate.
Speaker 1: We've got to drive fucking wall. And I don't think
Speaker 1: it's coming down anytime soon. But it doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: shouldn't actively try to make things kind of for people
Speaker 1: coming here now. On the direct action side of things,
Speaker 1: which I think more of our audience tends to support.
Speaker 1: One of the most obvious things is just like setting
Speaker 1: out as you said, like drops of water, food equipment. Now,
Speaker 1: that's kind of depending on where you are, can be
Speaker 1: shall always say complex from a legal standpoint. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to that a little bit, Yes, certainly. So. Like
Speaker 1: the obvious cases are one in Arizona, right, which eventually
Speaker 1: ended up the person was vindicated, but vindicated to around
Speaker 1: word but not didn't go to prison exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what he was doing was right from the start. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be complex, I think, especially if you're in
Speaker 1: some of these states which are like doing culture war,
Speaker 1: right like Arizona in Texas. Yeah, the cruelty is kind
Speaker 1: of the point. So if you are doing something to
Speaker 1: alleviate that cruelty, making an example if you was very
Speaker 1: much in the interest of those cultural war politicians and
Speaker 1: judges and other people, which is why it's important to
Speaker 1: do it with a mutual aid group, right, Like these
Speaker 1: groups are not just like randos, They are extremely organized.
Speaker 1: I would also just caution that, like going out into
Speaker 1: the desert on your own is extremely fucking dangerous. The
Speaker 1: desert can kill you with heat and day. It can
Speaker 1: kill you with the cold nights, sometimes on the same
Speaker 1: day and night. Right, this is a hard place. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying you shouldn't go out there. You should. It's
Speaker 1: it's an amazing place, but you should be careful. You
Speaker 1: should go with the group. So if you're living somewhere
Speaker 1: along the border, there is a group of people who
Speaker 1: are doing this, they will understand what is legal and correct. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, if you are not a citizen, if you're
Speaker 1: a Green card holder, you should probably not go down
Speaker 1: to the border with jugs of water. You should maybe
Speaker 1: do some fundraising, you should you should maybe do something else.
Speaker 1: And that's fine, right, You're still part of a system
Speaker 1: which is helping people. But yes, there have been some prosecutions.
Speaker 1: I think in California there haven't been any to my
Speaker 1: knowledge for a while. Um. There is also some interesting
Speaker 1: tech developments. One a few a long time ago, now
Speaker 1: called the trans Border Migrant Tool, which was mapping out
Speaker 1: like what at the time, we didn't have the border
Speaker 1: wall them, right, but like water cashier's locations of CDP checkpoints,
Speaker 1: and then I guess it was using Google Maps to
Speaker 1: make roots, which it was created by a faculty member
Speaker 1: who at time was at the University of California, who
Speaker 1: faced pretty terrible career repercussions for doing it. But there
Speaker 1: are things like that that people can do too, right,
Speaker 1: which you can do from your bedroom if that's your preference,
Speaker 1: if that's how you prefer to help. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: would caution about just going out there. Always looked for groups, right,
Speaker 1: there are people for whom this is their entire life
Speaker 1: of activism. You can also I'm sure, I hope I'm
Speaker 1: not putting a bunch of like work on their plate.
Speaker 1: But talked lad see what they suggest. Right Altro Lado
Speaker 1: the other side, that's this legal a group you can
Speaker 1: just call them. I'm sure that they they think They've
Speaker 1: been very helpful to me when I've been when I've
Speaker 1: needed help for people I'm working with. Talk to them
Speaker 1: about what is what is legal and sensible and what's not.
Speaker 1: Whether it's better to give your money or give your
Speaker 1: time or what you can do. Give them the resources
Speaker 1: available to you, I guess. And you can also just
Speaker 1: show kindness to refugees in your community too. That they're
Speaker 1: probably there, whether or not they're visible is a different question,
Speaker 1: but that's you know, there are places where you can
Speaker 1: help people. Another one I should mention, actually just for
Speaker 1: folks who are inclined to help in a different way
Speaker 1: I guess is people just feeding people. Like I really
Speaker 1: don't think you can ever blame someone for feeding hungry persons,
Speaker 1: So food not bombs. Food not bombs are always cool,
Speaker 1: right if if you want to do kindness without state
Speaker 1: food not bombs, there is one in your area. Look,
Speaker 1: come up, um and World Central Kitchen, which is Jose
Speaker 1: Andres the chef. Yeahs in Ukraine and his guys just
Speaker 1: got Sheldon Ukraine. That's right. Yeah, yeah, a number of
Speaker 1: them got shelved in Khaki. But I think those people
Speaker 1: like I do understand that he has some labor issues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although I think he's he recently like came out and
Speaker 1: said that he had been wrong on that. I'd have
Speaker 1: to double check, but yeah, that's impressive. Like I've said
Speaker 1: this before, this dude pivoted his whole life after seeing
Speaker 1: what happened in Haiti to feeding people who are hungry
Speaker 1: all over the world. So I do believe he's capable
Speaker 1: of change, and hopefully he can change and treat his
Speaker 1: workers with decency in respect as well. But anywhere I
Speaker 1: am right where there is a humanitarian crisis inside the US,
Speaker 1: outside the US, those people are there first, They're there
Speaker 1: before the Red Cross and if they don't seem to
Speaker 1: get tied up in the bureaucratic ship that most large
Speaker 1: global NGOs do. Like I've been in refugee camps where
Speaker 1: MSF and Red Cross outside not doing anything. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you anywhere I have been where there are large groups
Speaker 1: of refugees, refugee camps, people dealing with violence. The the
Speaker 1: most commonly cursed groups are often in g os, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are you know, people in white Land was people
Speaker 1: in fancy hotel lobbies, you know, Like that makes me
Speaker 1: very angry and very sad. But I don't see that
Speaker 1: with w c K, like I have consistently seen them
Speaker 1: in there's pretty dire situations, you know, like times that
Speaker 1: give me bad sleeps, you know, and that they're always
Speaker 1: there helping people. So then there are also church groups
Speaker 1: in lots of communities. Like I'm not a religious person,
Speaker 1: but like I really can't fault any of these church
Speaker 1: groups that I've seen coming down from San Diego to
Speaker 1: Tijuana to feed and help people, But I would probably
Speaker 1: stay clear of those giant NGOs with your giving. I've
Speaker 1: just seen them be considered bureaucratic and less effective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the rules. This is harder when
Speaker 1: it's a conflict far from home and you know, you
Speaker 1: see some news that makes you want to help, but
Speaker 1: you don't have any connections. But if you can never
Speaker 1: talk to people on the ground there, it's always best
Speaker 1: to ask them, like, who's actually doing anything, um, because
Speaker 1: sometimes it is MSF you know, sometimes uh it is
Speaker 1: one of these larger organizations, but oftentimes they'll tell you, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the group when I was in Mosle
Speaker 1: that got the most consistent praise from people who are
Speaker 1: like living there was the Free Barmer Rangers, right, Like
Speaker 1: there were all these massive international organizations, but when it
Speaker 1: came right down to it, the people who were like
Speaker 1: running under gunfire to pull wounded civilians out where you
Speaker 1: know those folks. Yeah, yeah, those those guys do some
Speaker 1: do some very brave stuff. Definitely, And yeah, it is
Speaker 1: normally you can find people on Facebook, like I've never
Speaker 1: been in a sort of situation with a lot of
Speaker 1: displaced people. What people were not actively on Facebook and
Speaker 1: you can find people there they just just like you
Speaker 1: just want to have a chat. And again, it's nice
Speaker 1: to have a chat. That's such an important point too,
Speaker 1: because I think that number one, people are often and
Speaker 1: it's easier, right, Like everyone has limited time, but you
Speaker 1: kind of leave it to whatever media you trust to
Speaker 1: connect you to people in these desperate circumstances, and like
Speaker 1: people tend to want to connect who are dealing with
Speaker 1: something like that, who are fleeing violence, who are and
Speaker 1: they also are connected, like they're not separate from the
Speaker 1: rest of the world just because they've had to leave
Speaker 1: their home behind and they're they're generally not excluded from
Speaker 1: the information networks that we all existed. Yeah, yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: And sometimes the portrayed is like we talk about them,
Speaker 1: not to them far too often the media, and that
Speaker 1: makes me mad, right, Like I see that all the time.
Speaker 1: I see that happening when I'm doing reporting, right, I'll
Speaker 1: see people hanging out on the peripheries in these camps.
Speaker 1: I understand some people are worried about COVID or whatever,
Speaker 1: but some of those people, right, like, uh, to be
Speaker 1: safe and be sensible, and yeah, that these people want
Speaker 1: to talk. I remember one thing that always sticks out, Well,
Speaker 1: they want the same things that we want, remembered. So
Speaker 1: in migrant caravan, they were moved from they need to
Speaker 1: Quid a sports complex to this old nightclub a bit
Speaker 1: further south, further away from the border. Right. It was
Speaker 1: a very weird scene. It was this big nightclub with
Speaker 1: like the mirrors and the dancing poles and the disco balls,
Speaker 1: but it had been like moth balls for like ten years.
Speaker 1: It was all dusty. They had a special room for
Speaker 1: people who were pregnant, people can people who had had children,
Speaker 1: and and the young children themselves, right, they were sort
Speaker 1: of just to keep them safe. And we were going
Speaker 1: there and it was weird because they were still like
Speaker 1: mirrors on the floor. But then I remember these kids,
Speaker 1: you talk to them, right, you know what do you want?
Speaker 1: And like, first of all, one kid asked me for
Speaker 1: a Teddy Bear and it just broke my heart, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know why, it just level me. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then they wanted to like you know that they had
Speaker 1: enjoyed the same Disney films that kids here had, right,
Speaker 1: so my buddy managed to acquire a projector. We went
Speaker 1: into the ceiling, rigged up this projector and just set
Speaker 1: up like Beverly Hills Chihuahua playing on one water this nightclub.
Speaker 1: And these kids are like, it's Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Like
Speaker 1: let's go like the you know, they were just kids
Speaker 1: watching a film, like like like they can be anywhere else,
Speaker 1: and it's really easy to see them ast like different
Speaker 1: or week or you know. The way they're portraying the
Speaker 1: media is like people without agency and they're not like
Speaker 1: they've taken huge amounts of agency to try and improve
Speaker 1: their lives. And it's also so much focus is on
Speaker 1: these things that aren't you know, medicine, food that are necessary,
Speaker 1: but like having a normal moment where you're like a
Speaker 1: kid watching a cartoon or playing with a toy, it's
Speaker 1: also necessary. Yeah, Like, these children will be scarred by
Speaker 1: their experiences, right by whatever is causing to flee, by
Speaker 1: the flight itself, and by the process of coming to
Speaker 1: the into the country, but yeah, we should do everything
Speaker 1: we can to protect them from those traumatic experiences and
Speaker 1: just play Like I cannot count the amount of times
Speaker 1: I have been like ship housed in a game of
Speaker 1: football by six year olds trying to come to the
Speaker 1: United States, right like, so things like that, Remember someone
Speaker 1: donated a couple of football goals, I too, come down
Speaker 1: and set them up. And then yeah, just having those
Speaker 1: moments of normalcy, those moments of fun like little little
Speaker 1: plastic ukuleles and stuff like. We're very important because it
Speaker 1: let kids be kids. And then that's you know, they
Speaker 1: have every right to do that. Well, James, I think
Speaker 1: that's going to make a suda for us. You want
Speaker 1: to throw your plug doubles in before we roll out? Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: I want to plug, like like I said before, doing
Speaker 1: things to help people outside of networks that let people
Speaker 1: have power over people. To do that first, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: you can put my name James Stout into Twitter and
Speaker 1: find me. I have a Patreon by the same thing
Speaker 1: right about the border a lot. You can see it
Speaker 1: in um if I just plug one popular p O
Speaker 1: p U l A about migrant caravan so you can
Speaker 1: read my writing there. Feel free to message me if
Speaker 1: you want to find any of these groups and you can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all right, Well that's going to do it for us.
Speaker 1: Go do something good. Yeah, the podcast has started. Start
Speaker 1: this is this is it could happen here, this is
Speaker 1: it could happen here. That's right, and you're Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: We also have Shrine, Lanny Nis, and Christopher Wong with us. Christopher, Hi, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm sort of running this show today, even
Speaker 1: to Robert has You're right done? The intro question mark? Um,
Speaker 1: always with a question mark. That's how the pros do it?
Speaker 1: Can you can tell professionals? Yeah? But speak Speaking of professionals,
Speaker 1: we have we have Karina Dominga's with us, who is
Speaker 1: in fact actually a professional and has spent eight years
Speaker 1: working in reproductive health issues of Karina. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: show and thank you for joining us. Thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me. It's lovely to have you Onina.
Speaker 1: What's the what's going on? How are thanks? I think
Speaker 1: things are okay. I think I can say that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem true. Yeah, but they're okay. Um, yeah, okay. I
Speaker 1: pulled them out of crash truck once and as I
Speaker 1: was trying to like staunch the bleeding from a cut
Speaker 1: in his hand, I asked how he was and he said, okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing it's that kind of Okay, you nailed it. Yeah, Karina,
Speaker 1: do you wanna tell us a little bit about your
Speaker 1: background and the work that you do? And you know
Speaker 1: why why why? We We just really wanted to have
Speaker 1: you on the show. Yeah, I would love too. So again,
Speaker 1: my name is Karina Dominguez. I am from Chicago born
Speaker 1: and raised. UM. I've worked in Reproductive Health forum about
Speaker 1: eight years, but really what I consider about fifteen years
Speaker 1: or so. UM. I have experience and working in the
Speaker 1: community and different capacities. UM. I love reproductive health. I'd
Speaker 1: consider myself a reproductive health nerd UM. And it all
Speaker 1: started when I was a teenager growing up in Chicago,
Speaker 1: where just in the city life, you see a lot
Speaker 1: of things that don't really sit well with you. UM.
Speaker 1: I knew a lot of young girls who were getting
Speaker 1: pregnant at young ages, experiencing trauma and specifically sexual trauma UM,
Speaker 1: and not knowing who to go to or where to go.
Speaker 1: So these were mostly young girls of color who I
Speaker 1: cared for a lot. And I immediately knew that I
Speaker 1: wanted to do more activism and that I needed to
Speaker 1: do more activism. And the way my activism looks is
Speaker 1: through my education. So today. I have a master's in
Speaker 1: Public Health UM and I also have a bachelor's in
Speaker 1: public health, and with that education, I've been able to
Speaker 1: provide sexual and reproductive health counseling. I practiced as a
Speaker 1: full spectrum do LA where I have provided abortion care
Speaker 1: for people and also UM provided birthing care for people
Speaker 1: as well. I led a pregnant parenting program at a
Speaker 1: nonprofit for youth experiencing homelessness, and right now I currently
Speaker 1: manage a sexual and Reproductive health grant where we provide
Speaker 1: resources to treatment centers in the l A area to
Speaker 1: integrate sexual and reproductive health for patients in substance use
Speaker 1: disorder treatment. Cool, so we are slacking. That was an
Speaker 1: impressive Yeah, I think the thank you that made us
Speaker 1: want to chat with you. We were having a conversation
Speaker 1: show when the news first dropped that the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: was yeating Roe v. Wade into the sun UM. There
Speaker 1: were a couple of different news agencies that did like
Speaker 1: intern you know, while talking about what options we're going
Speaker 1: to remain for people, that would bring up crisis pregnancy centers,
Speaker 1: which are UM shady as hell as I'm sure we're
Speaker 1: about to talk about. But yeah, so that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of why we brought you and what we brought you
Speaker 1: on initially to talk about. I wonder do you want
Speaker 1: to kind of introduce folks to what those are, because
Speaker 1: the gist of it is, if you like Google, how
Speaker 1: do I like find out if I'm pregnant or like
Speaker 1: you know, I'm pregnant and I need help, There's a
Speaker 1: good chance old Google will take you to one of
Speaker 1: these places, and they are, shall we say, not what
Speaker 1: they seem to be? Yes, I think we can exactly
Speaker 1: say that, um. And I am just going to say
Speaker 1: in the most direct way I possibly could. A crisis
Speaker 1: pregnancy center is essentially a fake medical facility that prays
Speaker 1: on vulnerable people, specifically people who can become pregnant. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we can use the term fake medical clinic,
Speaker 1: um I for the purpose just of using the most
Speaker 1: common term crisis pregnancy center, I'm going to stick to
Speaker 1: using that term. UM. But yes, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of concerns about this, and I'm sure our friend Google
Speaker 1: will pop them up for us really quick. UM. So,
Speaker 1: crisis pregnancy centers usually have names like women's pregnancy center
Speaker 1: or women's health center, something health center. Um and it's
Speaker 1: a very misleading advertisement. So they are anti abortion facilities
Speaker 1: that manipulate people into having a full term pregnancy. So
Speaker 1: these places are usually religious oriented, They have a religious
Speaker 1: agenda and it's not patient lad. So some of these
Speaker 1: larger religious based organizations that fund these what we think
Speaker 1: are smaller tiny clinics are agencies or organizations like care Net,
Speaker 1: Heartbeat International, National Institute of Family and Life, Birthright International,
Speaker 1: and RAMA International. So a lot of times you might
Speaker 1: think you're going to the small, little tiny clinic or
Speaker 1: maybe it's even like a community medical mobile unit, and
Speaker 1: it turns out there backed by big money and bigger agencies.
Speaker 1: So they typically will implant themselves in communities of color,
Speaker 1: um near college campuses, and low income neighborhoods. So what
Speaker 1: is that saying. That's saying that this is a woman's issue,
Speaker 1: this is a trans issue, this is an l g
Speaker 1: B t q I A issue, this is a bipoc issue,
Speaker 1: Black Indigenous people of color, and it's simply just an
Speaker 1: issue for everyone. Yeah, And it's so one of the
Speaker 1: things that's kind of messy about these places is that
Speaker 1: if you look at like investigations into how they work,
Speaker 1: you'll run into a number of stories of women who
Speaker 1: are like, Hey, I actually like always intended to go
Speaker 1: through with my pregnancy. I just needed to like know
Speaker 1: that number one, know that I was pregnant. I needed
Speaker 1: to test or something. And these people advertised they would
Speaker 1: provide that for free, or the advertise that they were
Speaker 1: providing stuff like diapers, you know, basic kind of supplies,
Speaker 1: formula for free, um. And some of them do, most
Speaker 1: of them due to some extent, but nearly all of
Speaker 1: them have some sort of like and this is outside
Speaker 1: of kind of the abortion aspect, access of it, have
Speaker 1: some sort of funked up hoops you have to jump
Speaker 1: through in order to actually get access to any of
Speaker 1: that stuff. Absolutely, yeah, I'm really glad that you brought up,
Speaker 1: like the diaper point. I think that is a really
Speaker 1: essential thing, because they don't not give out stuff, right,
Speaker 1: but it's it's messier than they want to portray it as. Yeah, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and and it's a form of manipulation, right, And I
Speaker 1: think too, it's a form of manipulation too to deem
Speaker 1: yourself a full functioning medical facility where they actually don't
Speaker 1: provide those comprehensive services and sometimes you know, they might
Speaker 1: even say the outside like HIV testing, s I v M,
Speaker 1: STI testing, HIV testing, um, and they're simply not evidence
Speaker 1: based practices. So what I mean by an evidence evidence
Speaker 1: based practice is something like condom use. We know very
Speaker 1: well at this day and age that condoms are essential
Speaker 1: to prevent s t I S and HIV transmission. So
Speaker 1: a lot of these clinics they might even say like,
Speaker 1: condoms don't decrease your chances of s t I S.
Speaker 1: They don't really matter. They're not really doing anything. And
Speaker 1: that is a really big piece of information that we
Speaker 1: need to know as the average person, because that means
Speaker 1: we have a lot of young people going to these
Speaker 1: clinics and having even their foundational sexual health education at
Speaker 1: these facilities. So this is a really really important thing
Speaker 1: to take note of. UM And I would say that
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people even in my life,
Speaker 1: that have gone to crisis pregnancy centers by accident. Um
Speaker 1: are you know, being told that they can do STI testing,
Speaker 1: HIV testing, and even birth control and then as soon
Speaker 1: as you go there, you realize that's not what's happening.
Speaker 1: Usually it's going to be a lot of pregnancy related
Speaker 1: services like ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, which we know if
Speaker 1: you're an actual clinic that's those aren't the only things
Speaker 1: that someone would need for essential health care. But I
Speaker 1: would say even more like going into the manipulation and um,
Speaker 1: the gas lighting that they do within these facilities, which
Speaker 1: in my eyes is medical violence. UM. They provide even
Speaker 1: mandatory ultrasounds, make someone sit there to look at the ultrasound.
Speaker 1: They make fearful videos of misleading information about what abortions are,
Speaker 1: and sometimes even have someone who's not a medical provider
Speaker 1: showing what an abortion is in their eyes, and the
Speaker 1: video maybe of a baby that's whose limbs are being
Speaker 1: ripped apart um. Even giving information like abortions can lead
Speaker 1: to breast cancer or if you have abortion, you'll never
Speaker 1: be able to have a child, and this is your
Speaker 1: one and only opportunity um. And sometimes even going further,
Speaker 1: you know they are sneaky and what they do, because
Speaker 1: they might even have programs that will say parent program
Speaker 1: UM or youth sexual health program and even with that
Speaker 1: they're giving religious based agendas um. And they are telling
Speaker 1: people misinformation about sexual health and even so might even
Speaker 1: talk about very heterosexual sex marriage. All of the above
Speaker 1: so there is a very specific agenda that is going
Speaker 1: on here. Um. And we know too that a lot
Speaker 1: of these agencies can be really sneaky with what they're
Speaker 1: doing because they may even deny that they are a
Speaker 1: crisis pregnancy center, and even further, if you go onto
Speaker 1: their website, they might not even have any language that
Speaker 1: they're religious based or that they are um, not providing
Speaker 1: comprehensive services. So there are a lot of diff written
Speaker 1: tactics that are you know, within the manipulate manipulative strategies
Speaker 1: that they use. Yeah. One of the things I've heard
Speaker 1: a lot about is like basically like not not literally
Speaker 1: physically forcing but like terrorizing people into signing like fake
Speaker 1: legal documents saying they won't get an abortion, which like
Speaker 1: really like every description I've heard about that, it is
Speaker 1: just like this is just terrorism. That's absolutely um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I find that to be really interesting. I have
Speaker 1: never heard of that happening. But just because I haven't
Speaker 1: specifically heard about, does it not mean it's not happening. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know, there, they're not all
Speaker 1: made the same, um, they all functioned differently. And I
Speaker 1: think that's also what is really confusing about them because
Speaker 1: they're not consistently all doing the same thing. There are
Speaker 1: still other facility is that they might do STI testing,
Speaker 1: they might do HIV testing, and so to hear that
Speaker 1: is not shocking to me. Um. And the manipulative tactics
Speaker 1: that they are using for people and yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: hip book goes out the door. You know, any legal
Speaker 1: backing goes out the door with these facilities because they
Speaker 1: are not based on providing patient led services in the
Speaker 1: first place. Maybe this is an ignorant, ignorant train of thought,
Speaker 1: but if they're providing all of these like free ish
Speaker 1: services or like whatever to these people that are desperate,
Speaker 1: and um, it sounds like a lot of them are
Speaker 1: like privately funded by these organizations, and the shadows like
Speaker 1: what how do they benefit? Like where like what is
Speaker 1: there other than like imposing religion and other people? But
Speaker 1: like like financially and like I'm confused, where how they're
Speaker 1: still able to function? Yes, they function very well and
Speaker 1: without a problem. Um. And as I mentioned, there's you know,
Speaker 1: five larger organizations that are funding a lot of these CPCs,
Speaker 1: but they are also um this is to be noted
Speaker 1: there on the CDC website, they are on the CDC
Speaker 1: directory as places that provide essential services. So I think
Speaker 1: that also goes to speak to the confusion around CPCs.
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna go out in the limb and
Speaker 1: say I'm going to give the CDC benefit of the
Speaker 1: doubt although they do not deserve that, and say that, um,
Speaker 1: they themselves may not recognize what what these agencies are doing.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's where the awareness around the
Speaker 1: actual function of the ccs and how they even exist
Speaker 1: in the first place needs to be shut down. And
Speaker 1: awareness needs to be brought about these places. And and
Speaker 1: we know that third of them are funded by their states,
Speaker 1: so they are getting direct government money to be able
Speaker 1: to function and then on top of that also functioning
Speaker 1: with the backing of their larger organizations. Wow, are they
Speaker 1: getting federal funding too? Like I have some vague memories
Speaker 1: of like Bush administration programs that we're funding just right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm not mistaken, Trump pushed a bunch
Speaker 1: of federal funds towards these facilities. Yes, yeah, I wonder,
Speaker 1: Sorry ahead, I don't go ahead. I was just I
Speaker 1: was wondering, like I wonder if there's a um like
Speaker 1: one or two things you need to qualify as like
Speaker 1: a what's what how did you put it on the website?
Speaker 1: CBC uh um, like they offer like services, like maybe
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, this place has an ultrasound. These are
Speaker 1: like this is why this is on you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Like, I wonder if they just like pick
Speaker 1: and choose the bare minimum of things to like qualify
Speaker 1: to be UM considered among like people that offer like
Speaker 1: full fledged care. But I don't know what it's all
Speaker 1: scam Yeah, And I mean I think that also is
Speaker 1: just a really UM. I like that you bring that
Speaker 1: up because I think that would be a really ignorant
Speaker 1: perspective from the CDC to think that a place that
Speaker 1: gives a pregnancy test or an ultrasound right away is
Speaker 1: not necessarily your average healthcare setting. UM. When someone is
Speaker 1: going into an appointment, typically you know they're not getting
Speaker 1: an ultrasound right away. Typically you're average person who might
Speaker 1: think they're pregnant and is going into a medical facility,
Speaker 1: is going to do a pregnancy test. Sure, but they're
Speaker 1: not just gonna immediately the first twenty minutes you're there
Speaker 1: do an ultrasound. UM. And especially knowing our health care
Speaker 1: system and the United states. You know that might require
Speaker 1: referrals and another facility to get that done, and you
Speaker 1: know that depends on what your insurances and what you
Speaker 1: can pay for and etcetera, etcetera. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a really big red flag to just have a facility
Speaker 1: that has pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. That to me is,
Speaker 1: you know, if I see on a website that those
Speaker 1: are the only two services that healthcare clinic is claiming
Speaker 1: to provide, I'm running away and I'm not going there
Speaker 1: because that's very odd. Well, it's it's very manipulative, because
Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things. One of the ways
Speaker 1: in which you can tell is something healthcare related shady
Speaker 1: as fuck is does it take advantage of the fact
Speaker 1: that very basic things that you need are extremely expensive um,
Speaker 1: and like ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, this can all be like
Speaker 1: STD tests, you know, can all be really really pricey um.
Speaker 1: And it's just so like it's fucked up that this
Speaker 1: is kind of how they're funning religious dollars towards taking
Speaker 1: advantage of the fact that a lot of people, like
Speaker 1: legitimately some people who use these facilities. I don't know
Speaker 1: what else to tell them, because it's like, well, we
Speaker 1: don't provide people with a lot of options in this
Speaker 1: country everywhere, you know, for for some of these services. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And I do want to go into some of the
Speaker 1: people doing the work and I want to really highlight
Speaker 1: what they're doing. UM. So I want to give the
Speaker 1: utmost credit to two people, UM who I do not
Speaker 1: know personally but would definitely love to UM Dr Andreas
Speaker 1: Warton Rubber and Dr Danielle Lambert. They're both associate professors
Speaker 1: at the School of Public Health at University of Georgia,
Speaker 1: and they're both co founders of the CPC Maps, which
Speaker 1: originated in two thousand and eighteen. So yes, there's a
Speaker 1: brilliant map where you can search these CPCs that are
Speaker 1: close to you. UM. And in my eye is this
Speaker 1: map is truly a piece of gold because I myself
Speaker 1: have found ones that are in my area UM and
Speaker 1: was very beneficial when I was working with clients myself
Speaker 1: directly and would refer people to different services. So this
Speaker 1: is a really great tool for healthcare professionals and social
Speaker 1: service workers, et cetera to refer to UM. And I
Speaker 1: can't even explain how grateful I am to know that
Speaker 1: there's ongoing research about the distraught impact of these clinics
Speaker 1: and the distraught impact they have on our health care
Speaker 1: system and the ability to find an abortion provider. UM.
Speaker 1: So again I hope that every service provider can find
Speaker 1: these this map, UM and use this map and really
Speaker 1: spread awareness around this. So. UM. What I want to
Speaker 1: highlight and what these two doctors have found is that
Speaker 1: just to give some more context, every single state has
Speaker 1: multiple SPCs, multiple not just one to multiple there are
Speaker 1: CPCs and throughout the United States, and that is obviously
Speaker 1: a much larger number than the health departments in the
Speaker 1: United States. And you know, as I mentioned, we know
Speaker 1: the CBC directory utilizes CPCs on their website and again
Speaker 1: thirteen states are funded or are funding CPCs UM. So
Speaker 1: their advertisements are going far and wide. Um. And to
Speaker 1: even go further, in the state of California, the California
Speaker 1: Women's Law Center says that there are twenty more CPCs
Speaker 1: then there are abortion clinics. So I think in this time, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should be scared. That is really that's a really
Speaker 1: concerning statistic, and especially looking at how we are going
Speaker 1: to be and already are a haven state, we are
Speaker 1: going to be a haven state for all the states
Speaker 1: around US and for people throughout the United States. So
Speaker 1: what is that saying when we are a haven state,
Speaker 1: yet we are still competing with our local anti abortion
Speaker 1: strategies ourselves, we are still putting up a fight as
Speaker 1: a haven state, and I think that is so concerning. UM.
Speaker 1: And even further, just to give some more statistics, we
Speaker 1: know that of the clinics that CPCs that did not
Speaker 1: offer SCI testing also will not refer out. We know
Speaker 1: that only eight offer HIV testing and that did not
Speaker 1: offer HIV testing also did not refer out. So just
Speaker 1: to summarize those numbers for you, what that data is
Speaker 1: telling me is that these clinics are not accounting for
Speaker 1: the health of the pregnant person, nor are the accounting
Speaker 1: for the health of the fetus if that pregnancy goes
Speaker 1: full term. And yeah, I mean I have even you know,
Speaker 1: more stats as you know your reproductive health nerd um
Speaker 1: of one of my favorite research institutes called the gut
Speaker 1: Mocker Institute, and they are phenomenal and have really great
Speaker 1: data UM. And if you haven't checked out their website,
Speaker 1: you definitely should. UM. But since we're on the bandwagon
Speaker 1: of talking about religious based affiliations, we know that seventeen
Speaker 1: percent of abortion patients are oh sorry, um okay um.
Speaker 1: Seventeen percent of abortion patients identified themselves as mainline Protestant,
Speaker 1: as evangelical Protestant, and percent is Catholic. Thirty eight percent
Speaker 1: have no religious affiliation, and the remaining eight percent reported
Speaker 1: a different religious affiliation. So let's summarize that religiously affiliated
Speaker 1: people are still seeking abortions too. Would you look at
Speaker 1: that ignorance is so bliss. We know that abortions are
Speaker 1: affecting people who are living in poverty and who are
Speaker 1: low income. So we know se of people that are
Speaker 1: seeking abortions are either living in poverty or our low
Speaker 1: income UM. And fortunately, you know, throughout the past, we
Speaker 1: know that Medicaid has been a really big funder of
Speaker 1: abortion care UM, and especially we can say that in
Speaker 1: California too, UM, that about of abortion patients are using Medicaid,
Speaker 1: and that's throughout fifteen different states. So I imagine in
Speaker 1: this time, right now too, that number is probably going
Speaker 1: to decrease. UM. So again, talking about a haven state
Speaker 1: that has these resources, we are probably going to be
Speaker 1: mixing up how that looks UM. And knowing that fifty
Speaker 1: three percent of abortion patients pay out of pocket for
Speaker 1: their procedures is already a very concerning statistics. And so
Speaker 1: we are seeing how in our time right now, we
Speaker 1: have to be looking at different resources for people. We
Speaker 1: have to put on our activist hats, we have to
Speaker 1: be supporting our community, and we have to be supporting
Speaker 1: abortion funds because already fifty three percent of abortions are
Speaker 1: paid out of pocket. Um. And just to to summarize one,
Speaker 1: more point eight percent of people who are using abortion
Speaker 1: services are going to be using those within the first
Speaker 1: twelve weeks. So um, we are needing to see a
Speaker 1: lot of activism around abortion pill distribution and abortion pill
Speaker 1: education and what that looks like. No, the to like
Speaker 1: piggyback off of what Robert was mentioning earlier about how
Speaker 1: it just feels like they're taking advantage of the fact that,
Speaker 1: like things cost so much money. And I feel like,
Speaker 1: if you this work is so important because I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of people know what they're getting into.
Speaker 1: If they're like, because we don't have a great education
Speaker 1: system in general, let alone about like reproductive health or
Speaker 1: like what happens when you get pregnant. So if you're
Speaker 1: a young person or mean any age and you are
Speaker 1: desperate or you're feeling shame, you don't have support from
Speaker 1: your community or something, and you see an institution that's
Speaker 1: like free ultrasound or like whatever, it's like they're praying
Speaker 1: on this desperation. And I think one of the only
Speaker 1: things you can do to combat that is like try
Speaker 1: to educate people as much as possible that like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, people are as um they don't have the
Speaker 1: good will and good faith that they present to be
Speaker 1: to have and I guess it just like ultimately you
Speaker 1: have to be distrusting of people. And maybe that's sad,
Speaker 1: but it's the truth. Yeah, definitely, And I will say
Speaker 1: I feel like I saw that as a service provider.
Speaker 1: Um So, as I mentioned, I worked in homeless services,
Speaker 1: specifically with youth homeless services, and you see that so much.
Speaker 1: You see how there is you know, medical oppression for
Speaker 1: people of color. There is medical manipulation and violence for
Speaker 1: so many people in vulnerable situations. And as someone that
Speaker 1: has accompanied many people to abortions and births, I have
Speaker 1: observed that myself and I have seen how so more
Speaker 1: people than not are going to experience some type of
Speaker 1: medical manipulation, and especially if you are living in poverty,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a person of color, especially if you're
Speaker 1: lgbt q i A. This this issue does not just stop,
Speaker 1: you know, with CPCs. If we take out all the CPCs,
Speaker 1: we also have to address so much of the institutional
Speaker 1: institutionalized racism and all the things that exist around reproductive
Speaker 1: health UM, you know, starting at how to get contraceptives too,
Speaker 1: when can you have children and how can you be
Speaker 1: a parent, and that never ends throughout the cycle, you know,
Speaker 1: and that parents even after they have babies, even if
Speaker 1: they are a person of color, even if they are
Speaker 1: l g B t q A, you know, they are
Speaker 1: still told how, when, where they're going to parent UM.
Speaker 1: And there's so much control over that rhetoric for people.
Speaker 1: So you know, I mean that even goes back to
Speaker 1: me thinking about the sterilization trials that happened against USC
Speaker 1: and the seventies and how women were forcibly sterilized, and
Speaker 1: you know that has nothing to do with CPCs. But
Speaker 1: instead we're seeing that institutions are finding this control and
Speaker 1: having these agendas, and it is not serving our society.
Speaker 1: It is not serving our health and instead it is
Speaker 1: creating more trauma in our communities and it's it's crisis.
Speaker 1: Pregnancy centers are just one of many layers of medical
Speaker 1: oppression that we are witnessing in today's world. As a
Speaker 1: person who was working in homeless services, I was program
Speaker 1: planning for a lot of the resources that we were
Speaker 1: able to provide access to for my clients. So all
Speaker 1: of my clients at that time when I was running
Speaker 1: the Pregnant Parenting program at a nonprofit, they were either
Speaker 1: pregnant and or parenting while also experiencing their housing insecurities UM,
Speaker 1: so I strived to find what the proper resources were
Speaker 1: for them to support them in every trauma informed way
Speaker 1: I possibly could, and that were youth friendly. So there
Speaker 1: was a local agency that was very very close to
Speaker 1: where I worked UM and their services always kind of
Speaker 1: felt like limited to me. So I met with them
Speaker 1: specifically to enquire because they were always trying to find
Speaker 1: some type of partnership with us and would knock on
Speaker 1: our door or call me. So I finally was able
Speaker 1: to get of them some of my time UM and
Speaker 1: so their services always felt limited and non comprehensive, and
Speaker 1: I think that is the biggest kind of like takeaway UM.
Speaker 1: They always gave me really weird reasoning why they didn't
Speaker 1: provide birth control or STI testing, and based on their answer,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, I just did not allow the partnership
Speaker 1: to thrive. So when I did more research, I actually
Speaker 1: confirmed from another service provider that there from another agency
Speaker 1: that they were indeed a CPC before I could spread
Speaker 1: the word. They also already had several partnerships with other
Speaker 1: homeless service providers, so they wiggled their way in UM.
Speaker 1: And these other homeless service providers were also working with
Speaker 1: young vulnerable clients. So one day I was actually invited
Speaker 1: by another agency to come to this presentation where I
Speaker 1: didn't realize happened to be the CPC. UM. The CPC
Speaker 1: was presenting at this organization and it was one of
Speaker 1: their outreach workers explaining what their services were. So I
Speaker 1: took it upon myself to make sure that I sat
Speaker 1: in that meeting and I asked questions in the room
Speaker 1: with the other service providers. I think they're about thirty
Speaker 1: other service providers that were present, and I asked out loud,
Speaker 1: why doesn't your clinic provide birth control? And the woman
Speaker 1: from the CPC who was the outreach worker said, we
Speaker 1: can't give paps mirrors, so we're unable to provide birth control.
Speaker 1: If you know anything side note if you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I already see the questioning, which I'm glad I received
Speaker 1: that reaction, because that is the exact reaction audience, those
Speaker 1: of us with yours, all of our heads tilted, squinting.
Speaker 1: U exactly explain how that math doesn't work? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Side note for all the listeners, if you know anything
Speaker 1: about health care, you know that a PAPS is not
Speaker 1: associated with being able to be prescribed birth control. So
Speaker 1: as someone that has background in healthcare, has a master's
Speaker 1: in public health, worked as a due lah. I continue
Speaker 1: to push back during the presentation, and it was very
Speaker 1: very clear that I was onto something. Um. So this
Speaker 1: woman again, she would always try to come around, give
Speaker 1: me pamphlets, try to have us partner and say she
Speaker 1: really want to work with us in our youth. Um.
Speaker 1: She stopped after that presentation. I can tell you that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so I keep going. I reach out to
Speaker 1: a the person who organized that presentation for the CPC
Speaker 1: outreach person to attend and speak at. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I need to get to the bottom of this, and
Speaker 1: I need to spread this word UM and tell people, Hey,
Speaker 1: you're getting people from CPCs to come and speak to
Speaker 1: you to advertise your services is UM. So I see
Speaker 1: a seed a lot of the other service providers, and
Speaker 1: I expressed my genuine concerns the lack of evidence based
Speaker 1: comprehensive care they provided. But unfortunately, the person who I
Speaker 1: emailed said, clients need to make sure those decisions are
Speaker 1: their own, so they can decide if they want to
Speaker 1: go or if they don't want to go. We can't
Speaker 1: force them to say yes or no to go to
Speaker 1: a health care facility. So I responded by asking, but
Speaker 1: what if you thought you were seeing a doctor for
Speaker 1: your health care needs and then it turns out the
Speaker 1: health care provider is providing misinformation and might not even
Speaker 1: be a healthcare provider. UM. I never got a response
Speaker 1: from them, but I still continue to make sure that
Speaker 1: I was reaching out to everyone at that meeting and
Speaker 1: just raising awareness behind it UM. And then I wanted
Speaker 1: to take it to UM. I wanted to take it
Speaker 1: a notch up, so I called both of this. Both
Speaker 1: of the locations of the CPC. One is located in Westwood,
Speaker 1: side note next to u c l A. The other
Speaker 1: one was in South l A side note, community of color.
Speaker 1: Both of my calls led me to the person on
Speaker 1: the phone telling me that they don't know where to
Speaker 1: send me for an abortion and that they didn't know
Speaker 1: what what planned parenthood was, what they did, or where
Speaker 1: they relocated when I specifically asked. So they were obviously
Speaker 1: circumventing the ability to even talk about abortions and what
Speaker 1: it was um and that was all the concern that
Speaker 1: I genuinely needed. So in my present day, I'm still
Speaker 1: concerned with these clinics, this specific clinic that is local
Speaker 1: to me. I recently found out that in my present
Speaker 1: day work, there are currently three treatment centers that are
Speaker 1: using this crisis pregnancy center as a resource. So hopefully
Speaker 1: that means more to come because I will be working
Speaker 1: on this and in this scenario, what I am doing
Speaker 1: as an activist and as a person who cares for
Speaker 1: my community is I will be educating these treatment centers
Speaker 1: about what crisis pregnancy centers are and how they can
Speaker 1: avoid them and what comprehensive services actually look like. Have
Speaker 1: there been more sort of widespread like organizations who are
Speaker 1: working too like a let people know what they are
Speaker 1: and then be also trying to get them like not
Speaker 1: to be funded. Absolutely, there are and we need to
Speaker 1: shout them out. UM. There are. There is an abortion
Speaker 1: fund UM in California called Access. They are wonderful UM.
Speaker 1: They provide abortion advocacy and awareness and education and they
Speaker 1: also provide direct services UM and fund different They have
Speaker 1: fund abortions in different capacities, so they might be funding
Speaker 1: the abortion services, the lodging, the transportation, and even a doula.
Speaker 1: And they partner with a lot of other agencies that
Speaker 1: are doing the work. The agency is called Reproductive Transparency
Speaker 1: Now and they are a ship cargo based nonprofit. They
Speaker 1: provide a lot of information, data, awareness research UM to
Speaker 1: raise awareness around what CPCs are and why we should
Speaker 1: be avoiding them. And I think I can say that
Speaker 1: I have the same goal as them in my personal life,
Speaker 1: but to ensure that they do not exist and are
Speaker 1: all shut down. UM. So they are wonderful. I would
Speaker 1: highly suggest looking into Reproductive Transparency Now and also Active
Speaker 1: Sorry Access Reproductive Justice UM who are doing a lot
Speaker 1: of really great work. And then I also do want
Speaker 1: to squeeze in other resources for people as well. Yeah, UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, as I mentioned first and foremost, I
Speaker 1: think the number one thing we need to know is
Speaker 1: that crisis pregnancy center should not exist in any capacity. UM.
Speaker 1: But if you are a person who's providing resource, is
Speaker 1: who is working with clients, who works in healthcare treatment centers,
Speaker 1: wouldever it be, please utilize Crisis Pregnancy Center map dot com. Again,
Speaker 1: this is the the website that was created by two
Speaker 1: associate professors at University of Georgia, and I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that this spreads far and wide, UM, because
Speaker 1: it will be the matter of providing referrals and circumventing
Speaker 1: CPCs UM. And I want to acknowledge that a lot
Speaker 1: of my data from this, from the information that I've
Speaker 1: been speaking on, is from the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map
Speaker 1: dot com UM, and from Reproductive Transparency as well. UM.
Speaker 1: So first and foremost that map is a necessity. UM.
Speaker 1: Another resource that I would like to share to be
Speaker 1: able to find your state's abortion fund is abortion Funds
Speaker 1: dot org and you can search state by state, so
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in California, so that's going to be access. Again,
Speaker 1: an organization that is an abortion fund, but they do
Speaker 1: more than than fund abortions. UM. I also really encourage
Speaker 1: people to find their local evidence based du lahs midwives
Speaker 1: women's health practitioners near them. And I know that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fear existing right now due to the
Speaker 1: inappropriate politicians that are making disgusting decisions, but know that
Speaker 1: abortion pills can be access and there are people that
Speaker 1: can help guide you through. UM. So I would say
Speaker 1: making sure that we are accessing the resources on a
Speaker 1: website called plan c pill dot com. It's a great
Speaker 1: resource where you can find where to purchase abortion pills
Speaker 1: and where to seek medical and legal support as well.
Speaker 1: So if you have a question about how to take
Speaker 1: medical abortion pills, or you need to understand the legality
Speaker 1: of your state and the area near you, you can
Speaker 1: you can look on this website UM as a resource. UM.
Speaker 1: I just also want to emphasize like what community care
Speaker 1: looks like right now. UM. If you're a person who
Speaker 1: can get pregnant, this is truly a time to seek
Speaker 1: preventative care. And I know that that's a loaded can
Speaker 1: of worms for a lot of people. So I just
Speaker 1: I really want to plug this in. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn about pregnancy prevention, you can take a
Speaker 1: look at bedsider dot org to assess your needs. I
Speaker 1: would highly recommend pairing that with talking to a provider
Speaker 1: who understands your lifestyle and can support you with finding
Speaker 1: one that works best for you, because every single contraceptive
Speaker 1: is going to look a little different. If you're a
Speaker 1: person who does not like birth control, I want you
Speaker 1: to know to please still seek preventative methods UM, whether
Speaker 1: that's a barrier method or whether that's more so of
Speaker 1: a holistic good like fertility awareness method. I encourage you
Speaker 1: to still speak to someone you can trust to ensure
Speaker 1: you're using that method correctly. And again there are duelas
Speaker 1: and midwives that can help guide you in the right
Speaker 1: direction for holistic practices UM. And to continue on to
Speaker 1: my community UH, my community kind of recognition. I hope
Speaker 1: that this is also time where if it's feasible for
Speaker 1: you too, if you can't yourself, find UM friends and
Speaker 1: family that you trust and people around you UM to
Speaker 1: either receive yourself or to get it from other people.
Speaker 1: Have pregnancy tests around you, and make sure that if
Speaker 1: you feel like you might be pregnant UM, whether you
Speaker 1: are using an actual method or if you're not using
Speaker 1: a method, currently, make sure you very least have pregnancy
Speaker 1: tests around you, UM, so that you know you can
Speaker 1: detect early on if you are pregnant. UM. Normalize buying
Speaker 1: your friends pregnancy tests for their birthdays. I have. We
Speaker 1: just have to normalize that as a community, and normalize
Speaker 1: buying abortion pills in case someone you know might need
Speaker 1: them in the future, or it might be someone that
Speaker 1: you don't know who could use them. UM. And to
Speaker 1: have that accessible if that is feasible for you financially. Um.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I think just to summarize, like, this
Speaker 1: is truly a time for community support and when the
Speaker 1: government doesn't support us, we we need to figure out
Speaker 1: unfortunately how and um, if you got the ability, go
Speaker 1: get uh, go get go get snipped. Uh. You know
Speaker 1: there's there's options out there. UM options. Yeah. I provide vasectomies.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you can just find me in
Speaker 1: my house. UM, I'm not good at it yet, but people,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna not I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: figure it out. That room is for well. I got
Speaker 1: one of those. I got one of those sharp penning wheels,
Speaker 1: and my butter knives are pretty fucking they got a
Speaker 1: good edge. They got edge these days. It's genuinely incredibly disappointment.
Speaker 1: Disappointed you're not using the machete for this. This is
Speaker 1: this feels like a portrayal. Well, there's other reproductive healthcare
Speaker 1: I used the machete for, but that that that does
Speaker 1: have to do with crisis pregnancy centers action. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: have a bunch of referrals for you then, I know,
Speaker 1: or to send them. That that kind of leans into
Speaker 1: another topic I'm covering today. Unfortunately. Um well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming on and for talking to us.
Speaker 1: This has been very enlightening. Um I wish uh it
Speaker 1: wasn't such a bleak subject. But people need to know
Speaker 1: the fox going on. People needed to know this a
Speaker 1: lot earlier. But you know, I mean broadly speaking, the
Speaker 1: thing I keep coming back to in this whole fight
Speaker 1: is the frustration of like the rest of us, like
Speaker 1: life is hard enough. There's so much going on. People
Speaker 1: are like busy trying to trying to get by, trying
Speaker 1: to do their lives, trying to like find pieces of
Speaker 1: happiness in the world. And there's this fucking group of
Speaker 1: the worst people in the country that have just made
Speaker 1: this made fucking access to reproductive healthcare up for everyone
Speaker 1: the focus of their entire life for thirty years, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately now we have to like do that make the
Speaker 1: opposite the focus of our lives because we kind of
Speaker 1: just not all of us obviously, like you've been in
Speaker 1: this fight for a while, but most of us kind
Speaker 1: of we're not paying as much attention as needed to
Speaker 1: be paid. Um, like most people in the I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to throw blame on folks, but like, clearly the
Speaker 1: majority of people in the country who support access to
Speaker 1: reproductive healthcare weren't paying enough attention, you know, Like that's
Speaker 1: the that's the only way to frame it totally. And
Speaker 1: it's almost as if we are picking up the mess
Speaker 1: that others are are creating. Um yeah. And you know,
Speaker 1: after experiencing COVID as a society, everyone's a public health
Speaker 1: professional now and a doctor. Um, so it's it's clearly, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sending referrals to you. Um yeah. And people have
Speaker 1: a lot of things to say. And with that being said,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that that these are conversations being had.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that friends around me now who I have
Speaker 1: never known to talk about reproductive health are going there
Speaker 1: and talking about it and also opening the door up
Speaker 1: for you know, people like me to talk about evidence
Speaker 1: based practices and what the reality is and and who's
Speaker 1: doing the work, and um, everything that that focuses around
Speaker 1: reproductive health. So I I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate
Speaker 1: that there are podcasts discussing this information. It's necessary and
Speaker 1: these issues are not going anywhere, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: going a little backwards. So I really appreciate your time
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah, thank you for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: And um, all right, everybody, that's the fucking episode, So
Speaker 1: do something else. Oh all right, well go started. I
Speaker 1: like it. These intros are getting shorter free every time.
Speaker 1: You know, we've bended onto one syllable, so there's not
Speaker 1: much we can go fee there. You know what, an
Speaker 1: honest and honest man only needs one syllable, sometimes less,
Speaker 1: sometimes half a syllable. We'll eventually get this down to
Speaker 1: just grunts. That's really what I'm moving towards is an
Speaker 1: entirely shouldn't we be moving towards? Like telepathy? Yeah, telepathy?
Speaker 1: We don't even record a podcast where we just like
Speaker 1: put up trans with the information constantaneously, just a blank
Speaker 1: audio file that says, now think about farming. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say that that sounds very um, that sounds very
Speaker 1: sci fi. And that's my way of doing a slick
Speaker 1: segue here, because today we will be talking and I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to talk about this Um. She's one of
Speaker 1: my favorite authors. Um. You know, I really enjoyed discussing
Speaker 1: the idea is present in Huxley's work, but this one
Speaker 1: has a special place in my heart. Today we'll be
Speaker 1: taking a look at Octavia Butler's parable of the sewer
Speaker 1: and parable of the talents, and the idea is present within. Yes,
Speaker 1: back at you again with another podcast banger. But first
Speaker 1: of all, UM, Hi, I'm Andrew Um sometimes known as
Speaker 1: St Andrew. I'm kind of trying to rebrand as something else,
Speaker 1: still figuring that out, um, and you can find me
Speaker 1: on YouTube at st Andrewism. But this episode is not
Speaker 1: about me and my branding. This episode has about Octavia Butler,
Speaker 1: born and growing up in segregationary America. She became an
Speaker 1: award winning sci fi wathor um with a lot of
Speaker 1: influences and a lot of themes and ideas being covered
Speaker 1: in her work. Considering the very white male dominated scene
Speaker 1: that is sci fi. The fact that she was able
Speaker 1: to not only break into it, but also presents some
Speaker 1: things that I haven't been explored before, with angles that
Speaker 1: haven't really been explored before. UM really has touched a
Speaker 1: lot of people. She was somewhat after a futurist, but
Speaker 1: she was also very much UM. A lot of her
Speaker 1: stories really did UM. A lot of people have a
Speaker 1: lot of different backgrounds and and and histories, and she
Speaker 1: always managed to work aspects of herself into her main characters. UM.
Speaker 1: She was a big critic of hierarchies, which really draws
Speaker 1: me to her and UM. She also relatively has at
Speaker 1: times struggled with writer's block and depression. She wrote over
Speaker 1: two dozen essays, speeches, short stories, and novels and her
Speaker 1: time on this earth, but unfortunately she had a stroke
Speaker 1: and died in two thousand six. One of the or
Speaker 1: other two of the books that have had the most
Speaker 1: of whos that have had the most impact on me,
Speaker 1: And of course I haven't read her entire bibliography yet,
Speaker 1: but I hope to get to it. UM is part
Speaker 1: of the sewer right and you know, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people have heard about it A gained a
Speaker 1: lot more relevance. Um after you know, as kind of patashi,
Speaker 1: we continue to accelerate as you know, we drew closer
Speaker 1: to the year that the book is setting, and regard
Speaker 1: to the second book, as we had you know, Trump
Speaker 1: come into office. Um. And I'll get into why that's
Speaker 1: relevant in a bit. In the first book, just to
Speaker 1: give a brief synopsis, global climate change and economic crisis
Speaker 1: has let a whole set of social crisis and chaos
Speaker 1: in the early twenties. Um. The book is set in California,
Speaker 1: and they are struggling with pervasive water shortages and masses
Speaker 1: of poor people will do basically anything to live to
Speaker 1: see another day. Everybody is struggling. So basically today in
Speaker 1: this setting, fifteen year old Lauren Lamina lives inside a
Speaker 1: gated community with her preacher father, family and neighbors, sheltered
Speaker 1: somewhat from the surrounding chios. However, when we get gates
Speaker 1: the community, now we think of you know, like really
Speaker 1: rich people, but in this case, gated community is just
Speaker 1: like a regular community that had to put up a
Speaker 1: bunch of walls to prevent like pyramede acts from like real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a suburb that used to be like
Speaker 1: a well off suburb, but as things got worse, it
Speaker 1: just turned into people hiding behind their walls because they
Speaker 1: were scared of poor folks, right Like it's there's an
Speaker 1: element of it that almost reads like a slasher movie
Speaker 1: in the opening of the book, which is one of
Speaker 1: the things that's really compelling about it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they really Um. She really gets you invested in the setting,
Speaker 1: in the character early on. And part of what really
Speaker 1: gets you invested in Lauren as a protagonist is the
Speaker 1: fact that she suffers from a unique vulnerability or strength
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it, um oftentimes vulnerability,
Speaker 1: and that is hyper empathy syndrome, which is basically that
Speaker 1: she's able to feel others emotions, others pains. So when
Speaker 1: others are very very sad, she feels very very sad.
Speaker 1: When others are in pain, she feels that same excruciating
Speaker 1: pain um and so on and so forth, And so
Speaker 1: she has to find sort of navigate this chaosk Wood
Speaker 1: while dealing with this um, with this um disorder that
Speaker 1: she's struggling with. At the same time, though, she's also
Speaker 1: navigating faith and the ideal of faith and philosophy because
Speaker 1: her father is like a preacher, and he's the preacher
Speaker 1: of their little gated community, and so she has grown
Speaker 1: up in the church, but she also has found issues
Speaker 1: in um, the religion that she grew up in places
Speaker 1: where she thinks it is sort of lead people a street.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of also what is drawn me to
Speaker 1: Lauren as a character, because I too, you know, have
Speaker 1: had to negotiate and navigate that whole religious realm. And
Speaker 1: so that's basically the setting she's in this community. Um,
Speaker 1: it's chaos on the outside. She's navigating her higher empathy syndrome,
Speaker 1: and she's also dealing with the ideas of religion and
Speaker 1: change and so and so forth. So as she's there,
Speaker 1: UM sort of thinking internally, she's keeping this juno and
Speaker 1: she's developing this new system of thought which he calls
Speaker 1: earth Seed, and we're gonna get into eoth Seed. But
Speaker 1: it basically shapes uh the decisions that she makes and
Speaker 1: the outcome of both books and as well as how
Speaker 1: they progress throughout. The second book places her in I'm
Speaker 1: really trying not to spoil, which is difficult to do
Speaker 1: because the second book, Lea is directly after the first book,
Speaker 1: and so and so forth. But I'll try to speak
Speaker 1: in broad brushes because I really think people should go
Speaker 1: and read it as blind as possible, um Lauren. Of course,
Speaker 1: eventually we will get into spoilers, by the way, so
Speaker 1: I'll try to let folks know when we get into that.
Speaker 1: But in the second book, UM Lauren is working on
Speaker 1: a community UM founded on her faith earth Seed, and
Speaker 1: they begin to face persecution. I'll see, after the election
Speaker 1: of this ultra conservative president who vows to quote make
Speaker 1: America great again, being you know, a young black woman
Speaker 1: in a minority religious faction in the United States of America. UM,
Speaker 1: her colony becomes a target of President Jarrett's reign of terror. UM.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, Laurence future daughter is navigating
Speaker 1: the discovery of the mother that she didn't knew, that
Speaker 1: she didn't know through the journals that her mother kept
Speaker 1: through the years. And I think I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of themes that you know, Butler
Speaker 1: covers in these texts, UM, and in fact, I've seen
Speaker 1: them described as but Lerian, which I would agree with,
Speaker 1: because she covers them in other books of Who's as
Speaker 1: well in different ways. UM. She talks about poverty and
Speaker 1: slavery and freedom, just what perseverance. She navigates the this
Speaker 1: idea of community and what community means. What how community
Speaker 1: is both a balance of inclusion and exclusion at the
Speaker 1: same time, and also the whole cycle of creation, destruction,
Speaker 1: and rebirth that really defines human history right now, well,
Speaker 1: in that books, in the setting of that book, Um,
Speaker 1: slavery has made a comeback more than it already has.
Speaker 1: You know, you have these extreme forms of death slavery
Speaker 1: and marital slavery and probably even plantation slavery. UM. I
Speaker 1: believe plantation slavery is mentioned in the second book, UM.
Speaker 1: And of course the slavery is inflicted upon the poor,
Speaker 1: particular a lot of company town style slavery right where
Speaker 1: people are like bonded, bound to a specific location because
Speaker 1: of their employer who protects them in this increasingly dangerous,
Speaker 1: banded filled world exactly. And in this world, you know,
Speaker 1: race remains a factor. Even though these books are written
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties, I believe parabolos over ise
Speaker 1: and right again, like He's got or Butler has a
Speaker 1: character using the same phrase Trump would when the President say,
Speaker 1: on um, what is it twenty four years before the
Speaker 1: start of his campaign. Um hard to overstate the degree
Speaker 1: to which she was ahead of the curve on a
Speaker 1: lot of things, because I mean, to be fair, she
Speaker 1: knew America. Oh yeah, you know, she grew up in segregation.
Speaker 1: You're America. She had to deal with her mother was
Speaker 1: a domestic liberal, and so she had to go in
Speaker 1: with her mother in these rich white families places through
Speaker 1: the back door. Um. And you know, obviously that would
Speaker 1: have shaped how she saw herself and herself in relation
Speaker 1: to the wider world through to America as an idea.
Speaker 1: And so I think that as she's writing of this
Speaker 1: you know, sort of horrific future, she's drawing a lot
Speaker 1: from the horrific past, or rather America's horrific past, of
Speaker 1: which her history is apart. So Lauren, who is in
Speaker 1: some ways Octavia but herself inside Um, spends a lot
Speaker 1: of time in the book, in both books, allying with
Speaker 1: people who are also minorities, who come from mixed backgrounds,
Speaker 1: people who tend to be overlooked by the dominant Christian
Speaker 1: religious right white UM order. Because I believe she finds
Speaker 1: some sense of safety and strength in people who have
Speaker 1: been so line. Slavery also ends up affecting Lawrence community
Speaker 1: too um in many ways that I don't want to spoil.
Speaker 1: But despite it all, the theme of perseverance is really
Speaker 1: what carries the story alone. Lauren ultimately is the archetype
Speaker 1: of the persevera. You know, she preaches a sermon and
Speaker 1: the importance of perseverance. She tries to get others to
Speaker 1: see the importance of hard work, and she sticks to
Speaker 1: her coals no matter what happens, and a lot happens
Speaker 1: that would quite honestly discourage a lot of people, to
Speaker 1: put it lightly, and yet she perseveres. And so let's
Speaker 1: tie that in as well to American history. Particularly in
Speaker 1: the first book, she ends up having to make a
Speaker 1: journey north um to northern California, and throughout that journey,
Speaker 1: you know, she meets with other people and interacts with
Speaker 1: the people, She makes allies and avoids enemies, and you
Speaker 1: can honestly draw some parallels to the underground real road.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's not an exact one to one, but
Speaker 1: in the sense of having to work with people along
Speaker 1: the way to progress out of a terrible situation, a
Speaker 1: hellish situation for the Hoop, not the guarantee, but the
Speaker 1: hope of some form of salvation when you get to
Speaker 1: the end of the journey. She doesn't do it alone.
Speaker 1: She does it with others Um, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: what keeps her hope alive. But it's not just externals.
Speaker 1: She has a lot of intrinsic motivation to persevere, which
Speaker 1: is driven by her philosophy. I mean, I think one
Speaker 1: of the things, because there's there's a lot of meaning
Speaker 1: and why she picks the parable of the sower in
Speaker 1: the parable of the talents for and it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: obvious and necessary xt of the books. It's she's not
Speaker 1: like hiding it under layers or anything. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that in particular the second book deals with Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, in the first book to do a degree
Speaker 1: is kind of the the pointlessness of responding to dystopian
Speaker 1: change in society by just like hunkering down in a
Speaker 1: bunker and trying to hide from it and protect your family.
Speaker 1: Like one of the reoccurring themes is the degree to
Speaker 1: which that doesn't work. And one of the things that's
Speaker 1: really interesting about this is a dystopian novel. Um. This
Speaker 1: is a novel that is both of these novels are
Speaker 1: kind of imagining the collapse of a lot of aspects
Speaker 1: of American society, but it is not. At no point
Speaker 1: does the United States really collapse in these books, and
Speaker 1: and even like as much as authoritarianism is present, at
Speaker 1: no point is the government completely taken over and completely
Speaker 1: under the control of like a unified fascist regime or anything.
Speaker 1: Elections are still happen in company. Elections exist, but you
Speaker 1: said have to pay them to you know, to you
Speaker 1: and and the the like Christian death squad type things
Speaker 1: that are roaming around are distinctly non state actors. They
Speaker 1: have backing to as an extent from the state. They're
Speaker 1: not really opposed by it. But it's it's it's again.
Speaker 1: It's this thing that we we are actually dealing with
Speaker 1: where collapse doesn't look like okay, everything's fallen apart, and
Speaker 1: now it's whoever's got the strongest group of buddies, who
Speaker 1: can who can you know, do their best in the
Speaker 1: waste land. It's like no, no, no. It is about
Speaker 1: groups of people trying to navigate in an increasingly dysfunctional state.
Speaker 1: And the only way to actually survive that is um
Speaker 1: survivals complicated, and it's never as simple as just like
Speaker 1: picking a good farm to hide on. You know that
Speaker 1: that's that's not going to work out for exactly. I
Speaker 1: just want to point out as well, that's as just
Speaker 1: functional as things. People are still going to work, not
Speaker 1: just the people who you know in company talents or
Speaker 1: in debt bondage, but even Lawrence fathers. You know, he
Speaker 1: takes his bike every day and rides out into the
Speaker 1: chaos to go and work for a weege to come
Speaker 1: back and to try to support his family. And of
Speaker 1: course in this kid community we see that they attempts
Speaker 1: to stay gated. You know, it's also in a futile
Speaker 1: like the rich have their high security communities and be
Speaker 1: able to escape in helicopters when anything happens, but they
Speaker 1: have no security even in this illusion of security, and
Speaker 1: that hundering down strategy they were taken wasn't working. In
Speaker 1: the first half of the book really shows why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um, it's it's a It's a book about collapse
Speaker 1: by somebody who's uh who, who grew up in a
Speaker 1: situation where her her childhood had a lot of elements
Speaker 1: of the collapse that many particularly like many folks are
Speaker 1: concerned about now, Like that's what she grew up in
Speaker 1: was there's no there's no protection. Violence can come from
Speaker 1: all sides and it's random, um, and you have no
Speaker 1: there are no guarantees in this like world that you've
Speaker 1: come into. Which is this thing that like people are
Speaker 1: freaking out about now as we encounter kind of aspects
Speaker 1: of the world order that we had grown up with
Speaker 1: that we feel like are falling apart. And I think
Speaker 1: the thing that's so compelling about Butler is her books
Speaker 1: kind of are coming from the perspective of someone for
Speaker 1: whom that order and that world were never real. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's why her contributions to sci fi is so valuable,
Speaker 1: you know, because all of these sci fi writes us
Speaker 1: it's just like regular privileged white Kays and you know,
Speaker 1: and and they just come with that experience. And it
Speaker 1: isn't often um repeated critique of sci fi. Um you
Speaker 1: see didn't tweets themself sometimes, where like a lot of
Speaker 1: it is just like because they are like alien really
Speaker 1: did sci Fi? It's like, whoa, what if the things
Speaker 1: that white people did other people happen to white people?
Speaker 1: You know, Like this whole idea that these alien invasion.
Speaker 1: UM fears and alienvasion stories are just like what if
Speaker 1: clualism but too white people to rich countries, you know,
Speaker 1: mm hm. Another part of the reason that the attempt
Speaker 1: to hunker down and stuff and basically exclude others from
Speaker 1: their community failed is because, and Lauren rights this in
Speaker 1: her diary, exclusion breeds resentment among the excluded. So even
Speaker 1: though Lawrence neighborhood, while you know, gated and wall and stuff,
Speaker 1: was not particularly rich, just the mare fact that they
Speaker 1: had those walls up basically signaled to the outside world
Speaker 1: that they had something to hid, some sort of resources
Speaker 1: they wanted to safeguard, you know, the only thing they
Speaker 1: had to safeguard with themselves. Because a lot of the
Speaker 1: members the community were you know, unemployed and extremely poor,
Speaker 1: that alone sort of symbolized, uh, sort of sort of
Speaker 1: a beacon UM drawing people to eventually UM attack. And
Speaker 1: that's a slight spoiler, but yeah, and you know, despite
Speaker 1: the problems that exclusion and are causing UM, Lauren as
Speaker 1: she realizes that her community could not handle that approach.
Speaker 1: Even then as she's progressing your author and stuff, and
Speaker 1: she's to beating with herself, you know, who to bring
Speaker 1: into her fold exclusion and inclusion. They play a role.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, she has to find form bonds and
Speaker 1: you know, stay safe. But at the same time, the
Speaker 1: bonds that she forms could put her in danjil if
Speaker 1: she's betrayed, or if the people that she invests in
Speaker 1: end up being harmed in some way, because the harm
Speaker 1: that they experience will ultimately affect her as well. So,
Speaker 1: as Lauren is making her way up north, she is
Speaker 1: continuing to wrestle with this idea of inclusion and exclusion
Speaker 1: because as she's progressing north in hopes of you know,
Speaker 1: building a community of some kind, creating, joining, forming community
Speaker 1: or some kind, she's also forming and establishing her religion.
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned before, it played a major role in
Speaker 1: the community she came from, and in fact, novel points
Speaker 1: so that one of the reasons people are attracted you know,
Speaker 1: religion to Christianity in this chaotic time and in general,
Speaker 1: really it's because it provides hope and hope in the
Speaker 1: form of an afterlife, and hope is what people really
Speaker 1: really need in these hellish twenties that they are dealing with.
Speaker 1: The Lauren comes to realize that the hope and hope
Speaker 1: and the afterlife ultimately isn't enough for the people that
Speaker 1: have invested so much into it. Um, one of the
Speaker 1: people in the community, UM ends up despite being a
Speaker 1: staunch believer that UM trigger warning by the way for suicide. UM,
Speaker 1: despite being a strong believer that you know, suicide is
Speaker 1: a sin and I was sending straight to hell. She
Speaker 1: is so lost hope and could no longer trust in
Speaker 1: her has been doing with so much pain that she
Speaker 1: ends up taking her own life. And she takes her
Speaker 1: own life, And as Lauren remarks, she takes her own
Speaker 1: life knowing Um, or at least believing the pain hereafter,
Speaker 1: and yet she finds it more of a reprieve than
Speaker 1: the pain she was experiencing here now. And so as
Speaker 1: Lauren is witnessing these things happening around her, Um is
Speaker 1: dealing with you know, loss and her baptism and her
Speaker 1: father's commitment to the church. She is continuing to develop
Speaker 1: the idea of earth Seed, and she begins to contrast
Speaker 1: earth Seed from christian with Christianity UM, and particularly in
Speaker 1: the sense of how the two religions address hope and change.
Speaker 1: In Christianity, you know, they have the hope UM of
Speaker 1: the afterlife against this brutal life, life now a life,
Speaker 1: whereas earth Seed simply presents the central principle, God is changed.
Speaker 1: That's the first principle of earth Seed. Second is that
Speaker 1: shape God. So first you have to recognize and accept
Speaker 1: that change is inevitable, often destructive, but you could also
Speaker 1: recognize your other poet to shape it um. And so
Speaker 1: from that comes the third principle, which is to to
Speaker 1: um pursue the destiny, the destiny being the establishment of
Speaker 1: humanity and other worlds. And to be quite honest, I
Speaker 1: am as this is one aspect of the philosophy would
Speaker 1: see that I think I diverge from Um Laura and
Speaker 1: of course has a lot of focus on the heavens
Speaker 1: as in the cosmic heavens and scattering seed, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, humanity across you know, all these different planets,
Speaker 1: establishing ourselves in different worlds. But I feel as though
Speaker 1: the destiny is in a way once the destruction. I
Speaker 1: think it's it's a misplaced um, a misplaced who I guess.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's that's kind of one of the points
Speaker 1: of the book, right, because there's especially in the second book,
Speaker 1: there's a lot from the perspective of her daughter. That
Speaker 1: kind of shows how as as much her philosophy is
Speaker 1: a really understandable and in some ways admirable adaptation to
Speaker 1: the completely fucked up time she would is born into.
Speaker 1: It's also in the same way that a lot of
Speaker 1: other people's philosophies become, you know, and that her parents
Speaker 1: and stuff are earlier. In the first book, it's a
Speaker 1: way for her to kind of justify not paying attention
Speaker 1: to the people in her life and not not taking
Speaker 1: proper care of them because she's got this thing that's
Speaker 1: bigger than them. She works, and you really by the
Speaker 1: by the end of the second book, you really have
Speaker 1: to sort of contend with the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: you sort after grapple with how things with her daughter
Speaker 1: would handle India. I guess I'll leave it at that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's part of it. I mean, she's so dedicated to
Speaker 1: this cause, so this new religion of whose um and
Speaker 1: you know she's recruiting people into it. You know, she's
Speaker 1: selling people least this whoop. You know that following its
Speaker 1: believe in a destiny. Eventually, you know, space is going
Speaker 1: to become the real life heaven. We could actually get
Speaker 1: out there. Can you start for ourselves for ourselves, and
Speaker 1: that's part of it as well. Part of the idea
Speaker 1: of the Destiny is, you know, a fresh start for humanity,
Speaker 1: a sort of a maturation of humanity, this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, once humanity establishes itself in other woods, that
Speaker 1: it would have grown up as a species. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's one of the things that I really respect
Speaker 1: about these books that I think a lesser writer wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been able to pull off, is that the degree,
Speaker 1: without beating you in the head with it, you see
Speaker 1: her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies of
Speaker 1: her parents generation and by the systems that people had
Speaker 1: gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who grows
Speaker 1: up in a world where all the adults are stuck
Speaker 1: um and since like a system that has become a
Speaker 1: death cult, and she has to figure out a way
Speaker 1: out of it. What she comes to believe in so
Speaker 1: much that in her own way, she becomes stuck in
Speaker 1: that new thing, and it renders her unable to see
Speaker 1: certain things that are important. And the book never portrays
Speaker 1: her as completely right or completely wrong, because that's just
Speaker 1: not how civilization works. Things just change over time, and
Speaker 1: you know, the the ideology that her parents and the
Speaker 1: adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the
Speaker 1: book is an ideology that worked to a degree at
Speaker 1: some point in the past. Um, which is just it
Speaker 1: it's it's It does a really good job of showing
Speaker 1: a number of things, which is kind of what it's
Speaker 1: like to be a kid realizing that the adults have
Speaker 1: fucked you, what it's like to become radicalized, um, and
Speaker 1: realize that the world doesn't have to be the way
Speaker 1: that it is, and what it's like to let that
Speaker 1: radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things,
Speaker 1: Like there's so much going on in the evolution of
Speaker 1: what the characters believe in this book that is is
Speaker 1: just masterful from a storytelling standpoint. Yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 1: second book really does a good job showing her sort
Speaker 1: of blindness as well when it comes to things going on,
Speaker 1: because what ends up happening one of the worst incidents
Speaker 1: in that second book is something that's of course not
Speaker 1: a victim blame, but it is something they could have
Speaker 1: prepared for a bit more, a lot more. Actually, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's They're good books. There are books that you
Speaker 1: will if you're like me, you will start reading them
Speaker 1: and you will get really into the first book, and
Speaker 1: then you'll take a ten minute break to like check
Speaker 1: the news, and something will send you into a panic spiral,
Speaker 1: and you'll read the new two books getting increasingly depressed.
Speaker 1: It's good next book because the third book never released. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she never quite got to make it. Yeah, And I'll
Speaker 1: get into that as well in a bit in how
Speaker 1: it ties into the destiny right, but just a real
Speaker 1: three You know, who is principle? God has changed. God
Speaker 1: is not a person. It doesn't love or hate or
Speaker 1: watch over us or no us. It just is second
Speaker 1: principle shape God. God is maalable. God is power, infinite, irresistible, inexorable, indifferent,
Speaker 1: and yet God is pliable. Tricks to teacher chiosk Clay
Speaker 1: and truly emphasizes the change is neither good nor bad,
Speaker 1: but it is potential. And we could and we have
Speaker 1: a choice to either be a victim of change, the
Speaker 1: victim of God, or we can become a partner of God,
Speaker 1: or we can become a shape of God, or we
Speaker 1: could just stay as God's plaything as changes prey. It's unavoidable,
Speaker 1: but our actions can shape its direction. And speed, and
Speaker 1: the end change prevails. And there's a comfort in that
Speaker 1: because once we can understand that you can return that efforts,
Speaker 1: the inevitability of change can be what thrust us forward.
Speaker 1: And I think, um, I think people who are invested
Speaker 1: in in activism, in organizing and just revolutionary work, I
Speaker 1: think their aspects of the see that I think would
Speaker 1: be very motivating, very impactful, very energizing because despite you know,
Speaker 1: how circumstances play out, Um, there's a recognition that we
Speaker 1: are never entirely disempowered, you know. And so like just
Speaker 1: the last point I want to get into about the destiny,
Speaker 1: I think that's what it would make me if I
Speaker 1: were to be in this world. I think that's where
Speaker 1: I would diverge from the earthtied orthodoxy, because I mean,
Speaker 1: Lauren talks about how, you know, history is just this
Speaker 1: repetitive thing. We have all these wars and kill a
Speaker 1: bunch of people and impoverish others and spread disease and hunger,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing is just because that's how it's
Speaker 1: always been, just being. We have to accept that we
Speaker 1: can choose to do more, make something more of ourselves,
Speaker 1: and to who making something more of ourselves is establishing
Speaker 1: ourselves another planet. So if she is earteed Orthodoxy, I
Speaker 1: suppose I'm an earth Seed Protestant. I think you see
Speaker 1: Martin Luther nailing your thesis to I don't know the
Speaker 1: door of her house in Seattle exactly. I would be
Speaker 1: a reform of the of the destiny in the sense
Speaker 1: that I see the destiny could be creating a heaven
Speaker 1: here on Earth, like rather than pursuing it cosmic heaven.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's even something that Lauren, at least
Speaker 1: I don't recall Lauran ever grappling with the possibility, because
Speaker 1: she really is fixated on this cosmic um idea. I
Speaker 1: do think she grabbed the possibility that humanity can mature
Speaker 1: quote quote here on Earth. You know. Um. She doesn't
Speaker 1: really draw munch attention or has ent much time thinking
Speaker 1: about things like ecosystem restoration or you know, changing the
Speaker 1: pushing back against the government or the economic system that
Speaker 1: is impoverishing and inflicting violence upon people. She's just really
Speaker 1: fixated on the destiny. And so that's when I get
Speaker 1: into the Food Book and things I learned about the
Speaker 1: Third Book when I was researching for this episode. But
Speaker 1: actually planned on exploring the fulfillment the destiny in the
Speaker 1: third book, um Parable of the trick Still. In fact,
Speaker 1: she intended to have a seven part series, so the
Speaker 1: third book would have been near the middle, as the
Speaker 1: story would have focused on another woman named Imara, who
Speaker 1: is living on he called me in the future, on
Speaker 1: a planet called Boom, far away from Earth. Cold. It
Speaker 1: is not the heaven that was hoped for, but gray,
Speaker 1: dank and utterly miserable. Everybody is homesick. Um homesick, not
Speaker 1: just in like, oh, I haven't been home in a
Speaker 1: while kind of thing, homesick in the sense of, like
Speaker 1: you know when someone is like an amputee and they
Speaker 1: have this sort of phantom limb sensation. Yeah, this homesickness
Speaker 1: is like a phantom limb pain, a neurological debilitation. It's
Speaker 1: like trying to graft humanity answer new planet, and it's
Speaker 1: it's it's like if humanity were a branch and this
Speaker 1: new plant was a tree, and like both the tree
Speaker 1: and the branch are kind of rejecting each other. Um.
Speaker 1: And so she never really got very far into writing
Speaker 1: Parable of the Tricksters. In fact, she had a lot
Speaker 1: of different um ways of approaching it a lot of
Speaker 1: different manuscripts that she got, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: pages into and then discarded. You know, so in some
Speaker 1: versions the call instead of having like creeping blindness. In others,
Speaker 1: they get this telepathy um. In other versions, she has
Speaker 1: to solve a murder. Another version, she becomes a ghost.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she's an earth an earth Seed skeptics. Sometimes she's
Speaker 1: a true believer. Sometimes she's a hyper rampath. Sometimes she's
Speaker 1: cured of it um. Sometimes the planet itself is filled
Speaker 1: with giant dinosaurs, other times small animals, other times intel
Speaker 1: gent aliens um. And there's also this idea, this I
Speaker 1: would say, very Twilight Zone esque idea that the aliens
Speaker 1: that they do encounter tokens of their escalating collective madness.
Speaker 1: And so the whole idea of power of the tricks
Speaker 1: to and would have been the subsequent books was you know,
Speaker 1: the continuation of the concept of choice choosing to either
Speaker 1: you know, live together, we're together, struggle together, or you know,
Speaker 1: fight and scheme and lose their minds, break down, die
Speaker 1: and murder alone. In a speech to the u N
Speaker 1: in two thousand one, that would be like five years
Speaker 1: before she passed away. I think she did, like I
Speaker 1: said two thousand and six, she speaks about how before
Speaker 1: she even like started working on the first Parable novel,
Speaker 1: she wanted to write a novel about a utopian civilization
Speaker 1: where everybody had a kind of hyper empathy. But then
Speaker 1: actually figured it would be a utopian society because everyone
Speaker 1: would be inclined to, you know, behave in a more
Speaker 1: pro social way, because any anti social activity they would have,
Speaker 1: you know, inflict upon others would be inflixed upon themselves immediately.
Speaker 1: But then she realized it wouldn't work because sharing pain,
Speaker 1: the threat of shared pain, doesn't necessarily make people behave
Speaker 1: better towards another. She points to be the popular pain
Speaker 1: full supports of you know, like boxing and American football,
Speaker 1: you know. And so she recognizes that this idea of
Speaker 1: everyone being a hypergram path bec cause a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: I mean, if everyone feels each other's pain, who wants
Speaker 1: to be a dentist? You know, who wants to be
Speaker 1: a newse um. And so she discards that idea and
Speaker 1: she basically created Lauren, who was a lone hyper and
Speaker 1: path in the would that is empathy deficient ultimately, I think,
Speaker 1: But I guess the heart of you know a lot
Speaker 1: of the issues that we're dealing with, um, she grapp us,
Speaker 1: a lot of questions that should still be explored, the
Speaker 1: idea of inclusion and exclusion, that balance when you know,
Speaker 1: developing community, concept of perseverance, UM, concept of hope, the
Speaker 1: creation and destruction and re birth of really life, and
Speaker 1: just what makes life life? I guess I'll wrap things
Speaker 1: up with the code. Does tolerance have a chance only
Speaker 1: if we wanted to tolerance, Like any aspect of peace,
Speaker 1: it's forever a week in progress, never completed. And if
Speaker 1: we are as an intelligent as we'd like to think,
Speaker 1: we are never abandoned. That's it. What has change? Chep
Speaker 1: Guarded Peace? Well, I think that's about as good a
Speaker 1: line as any to end on. Go read Octavia Butler.
Speaker 1: If you haven't check her out, go to the library.
Speaker 1: Her ships all over the library. Libraries are filthy with
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler books. You'll find it or steal it off
Speaker 1: the internet. She's not gonna mind. Hey, We'll be back
Speaker 1: Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
Speaker 1: heat death of the universe. It could happen years. A
Speaker 1: production of Cool Zone Media For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
Speaker 1: find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.