Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's got to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Dickodapton here a podcast, and we are recording
Speaker 3: for the first time. All of the audio worked perfectly.
Speaker 3: It was great. Yeah, the society that has put multiple
Speaker 3: human beings on the moon did successfully produce functioning audio software.
Speaker 3: It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: With me to celebrate this is Carl Eugene Stroud. He's
Speaker 3: a language teacher and anarchist Builtin's and read angles, who's
Speaker 3: a bus driver and an anarchist, member of the Center
Speaker 3: for Specific Studies. Yeah, both of you. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you for having us for this wonderful celebration
Speaker 5: of audio recording technology.
Speaker 3: It's all great, it's all wonderful. Speaking of things that
Speaker 3: are wonderful, this is this is this is why they
Speaker 3: pay me the am I legally allowed to say that
Speaker 3: it's a below market rate. That's why they paid me
Speaker 3: the slightly below market rate bucks. Yeah, So, speaking of wonderful,
Speaker 3: we are here to talk about a I guess putting
Speaker 3: things back together project, which is Miltant Kindergarten. And I
Speaker 3: guess I guess we should start with talking about what
Speaker 3: Billetant Kindergarten is and what it isn't in terms of, like,
Speaker 3: it's not we're teaching we're teaching small children how to
Speaker 3: take apart buildings.
Speaker 4: Yes, so Milton Kindergarten is a multi month study of
Speaker 4: a text, and in that way, you know, we call
Speaker 4: it a seminar, but it's not that much different than
Speaker 4: reading group or study circle or any of those kinds
Speaker 4: of things. Essentially, what we're doing is we're using one
Speaker 4: text to revisit and have conversations with different people that
Speaker 4: are at various you know, points in a path of radicalization.
Speaker 4: We're you know, distinctly trying to spread the word about
Speaker 4: the importance and necessity of militancy in our movements, but
Speaker 4: also teach people about a specifismo, which is an anarchist
Speaker 4: current that comes out of Latin America. But it's also
Speaker 4: like you know, in in the socialist movement, anarchists can
Speaker 4: often be characterized by stereotypes that come from Marxists, and
Speaker 4: that in the libertarian and anarchist movement, any kind of
Speaker 4: mass anarchism, any kind of class struggle anarchism can also
Speaker 4: be characterized by you know, individualists and insurrectionists. And so
Speaker 4: we mean to you know, not convert people to a
Speaker 4: certain current of anarchism. We see this as a kind
Speaker 4: of grouping of tendency. So all the participants come from
Speaker 4: different ideologies. This is just a reading group, so you've
Speaker 4: got to apply this stuff, you know, outside of this.
Speaker 4: This isn't some kind of be all and dull solution.
Speaker 4: We're not, you know, educationalists thinking that this is going
Speaker 4: to be the first step in some like process that
Speaker 4: we're just already on. But at the same time, we
Speaker 4: think that educational space needs to be defended. That's why
Speaker 4: this is the third militant kindergarten. So, yeah, maybe i'll
Speaker 4: let read talk about some of the ones and how
Speaker 4: we've gotten here and yeah, kindergarten up to now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure, I think that's a good explanation. The group
Speaker 5: basically started off in the wonderful, amazing, complicated year twenty
Speaker 5: twenty in the wake of the uprising over the summer.
Speaker 5: Both of us live in a relatively small down with
Speaker 5: maybe an outsized hundreds above its weight. In terms of
Speaker 5: like activism and anarchism, there's probably more anarchist tendencies here
Speaker 5: than there are anarchists, And something that we saw in
Speaker 5: the wake of the height of the uprising was one
Speaker 5: a huge amount of burnout that people weren't really addressing.
Speaker 5: The solution to burnout that we saw being proposed was
Speaker 5: just do it again, more harder, And we also saw
Speaker 5: the burnout as kind of coming from a lack of
Speaker 5: strategy and organization on the ground, people sort of repeating
Speaker 5: tactics because that's what you do, and that's what we
Speaker 5: were doing, so we're just going to try to keep
Speaker 5: doing it. And both of us were unable to participate
Speaker 5: in the more aggressive street actions that were going on
Speaker 5: at the time, so we decided we individually needed to
Speaker 5: study and get better at our understanding of strategy an
Speaker 5: organization and try to rethink like some of the problems
Speaker 5: that had occurred and how to move on from there,
Speaker 5: and also to provide a space for people who were
Speaker 5: more active in different places, the chance to meet together
Speaker 5: and reflect in a non non urgent space where you
Speaker 5: could just like pause and learn and discuss the topic.
Speaker 5: So we were, yeah, we hit upon We were both
Speaker 5: kind of simultaneously interested in the spess of seasonal current
Speaker 5: from Latin America, so we both just kind of decided, yeah,
Speaker 5: we want to read some of these texts, and we
Speaker 5: quickly came upon social anarchism an organization. We thought, like, wow,
Speaker 5: this is a really comprehensive introduction not only to this
Speaker 5: tendency but also to anarchism and social anarchism broadly. Like
Speaker 5: it really covers just the basics, principles and theory up
Speaker 5: to history and organizational theory, strategy, tactics, ideology in a
Speaker 5: much higher, more sophisticated and like i guess, like modernized
Speaker 5: way than many other previous documents we'd read. It's like,
Speaker 5: if you took the platform, you know, the Maximvist platform.
Speaker 3: We should explain what that is because people are not
Speaker 3: going to yeah, okay, going back.
Speaker 5: So it's it's the organizational platform of the Anarchist Federation
Speaker 5: of Riodaian Hero which is basically their foundational document, and
Speaker 5: it's a very comprehensive look at the kind of theory
Speaker 5: and strategy and work that goes behind goes on behind
Speaker 5: founding an organization like that. It's similar to the anarchist
Speaker 5: platform written by the X, the Magnavist in exile in Paris,
Speaker 5: the Ukrainian anarchists in exile after the revolution in Russia.
Speaker 5: They wrote this platform saying anarchists should maybe be somewhat
Speaker 5: organized and unified in their tactics and their strategies, and
Speaker 5: received a whole bunch of pushback from it, but founded
Speaker 5: The sort of the platform is current of anarchism. But really,
Speaker 5: when you go back to the platform, there's not a
Speaker 5: ton there. It's more of a document for organizing a
Speaker 5: like a military force in a already ongoing revolution, Whereas
Speaker 5: what we found in Social Anarchism and Organization is a
Speaker 5: much more road kind of introduction to social anarchist organization
Speaker 5: that is more widely applicable to a variety of situations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, Okay, so we've covered a spacifistmo
Speaker 3: on here with Andrew once. I think we've talked about
Speaker 3: it a little bit in some other episodes. But yeah,
Speaker 3: do we want to get into what what about a
Speaker 3: specifiespo is sort of different from older kinds of like well,
Speaker 3: just like other anarchist tendencies and other sort of kinds
Speaker 3: of platformism, and talk a little bit about how it
Speaker 3: sort of came about because it's one of the tendencies
Speaker 3: I guess that some people adopted in the US, but
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't think it's as famous as a
Speaker 3: lot of other tendencies here.
Speaker 4: Yes, so you know, a lot of the motivation behind
Speaker 4: organizing the Center for US Specifiesmo studies. This came after
Speaker 4: us studying this text a few times. We decided to
Speaker 4: formalize this into militant Kindergarten, and a lot of that
Speaker 4: came from the need to articulate what is a specifismo
Speaker 4: in English. Because a lot of the resources, a lot
Speaker 4: of the ideas and writings come from Latin America, and
Speaker 4: so they're written in Spanish. A lot of the theory
Speaker 4: has been developed in Spanish. Espacifismo originally comes from the
Speaker 4: Anarchist Federation of Uruguay. In the nineteen sixties. They began
Speaker 4: to articulate a kind of organizational strategy that imagined what
Speaker 4: the way we've described it is kind of two rails
Speaker 4: for a train, and this train is bringing this revolutionary rupture.
Speaker 4: So these two rails are the social level, which includes
Speaker 4: all kinds of class struggle. This is class struggle against domination, exploitation,
Speaker 4: and a press.
Speaker 3: And that the other rail is.
Speaker 4: The political organization. And so this is the anarchist principles
Speaker 4: and ideologies that, yeah, I think we share probably pretty
Speaker 4: broadly with most all anarchist currents, at least you know,
Speaker 4: coming out of the socialist movement. But when it comes
Speaker 4: to the way to balance these and to keep them
Speaker 4: both working towards the same ends, we see a need
Speaker 4: to keep them theoretically distinct. And so a lot of
Speaker 4: what we've done at the Center forres Becifismo Studies is
Speaker 4: try to articulate these ideas in English so that we
Speaker 4: can start to develop what that means here and not
Speaker 4: just sort of translate or take a translation and sort
Speaker 4: of try to input an idea into our own context. So,
Speaker 4: like you said, like I think at some of the
Speaker 4: we could we could take for example, the Black Rose
Speaker 4: Rosa Negra anarchist federation in the US that's the largest
Speaker 4: organization of a specificst anarchists in North America. They are
Speaker 4: distinctly influenced by this current. They have sister organizations in
Speaker 4: Latin America and but but they're they're just one kind
Speaker 4: of organization that's that's kind of known on a national level.
Speaker 4: And as far as planting its, you know, ideas in
Speaker 4: North America, we're definitely still doing that work. So a
Speaker 4: lot of what we've done is also developed second secondary resources.
Speaker 4: This includes like audio versions of this text, but also
Speaker 4: like things we've produced through our study and through these
Speaker 4: discussions that come out of kindergarten. So last year, for example,
Speaker 4: we made a a minizine. There was like a kind
Speaker 4: of working group that worked on a minizine to define
Speaker 4: some basic terms and make something really really really basic
Speaker 4: in introductory to a specifismo. We also I've written a
Speaker 4: few pamphlets, one of which is how do you say
Speaker 4: a specifismo in English? And so that is yeah, exactly
Speaker 4: trying to address this this idea. And you know, some
Speaker 4: people they hear a specifismo and they're like, oh, that's
Speaker 4: you know, exotic and cool and like new, and that's
Speaker 4: a reason to be attracted to it. But then you know,
Speaker 4: other people might hear that, and they have kind of
Speaker 4: other reactions where they sort of try to put it
Speaker 4: into a really specific box. I mean, what our understanding
Speaker 4: is is that it's important to be able to acknowledge
Speaker 4: what current you're kind of plugging into where your ideas
Speaker 4: are coming from. It takes a lot of pressure off
Speaker 4: of us to not feel like we're inventing everything and
Speaker 4: we're supposed to be coming up with like the most perfect,
Speaker 4: cool ideas. But it's also a humbling experience of like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we know about this because other people have done this
Speaker 4: militancy before us to make these things available for us
Speaker 4: to have preserved these ideas. That's the political level of
Speaker 4: the two rails, right, So that's that is preserving this
Speaker 4: so that it is possible to say I have this
Speaker 4: opinion about a specifismo and it relates to my context
Speaker 4: in this way or likewise that it doesn't you know,
Speaker 4: if we don't have anyone doing that militancy to preserve
Speaker 4: those ideas, then it's actually not even up to people
Speaker 4: to be able to pick them up and use them
Speaker 4: the way that they see fit.
Speaker 3: One of the sort of barriers is, I think kind
Speaker 3: of what you're alluding to of like a specifismo as
Speaker 3: a tendency in the US is that it wasn't like,
Speaker 3: it wasn't really it wasn't developed in the American context,
Speaker 3: and that has different sort of you know that that
Speaker 3: that that has sort of like a range of different effects.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that I think is very
Speaker 3: interesting about it that I think is definitely a product
Speaker 3: of the context that it was developed in, is the
Speaker 3: strategy of social insertion. Yeah, and I was wondering if
Speaker 3: you could talk a bit about social insertion and how
Speaker 3: you see that working in the US and how sort
Speaker 3: of like, how do we think about this sort of
Speaker 3: in the wake of twenty twenty and the kind of
Speaker 3: restructuring of what is what is sort of happening is
Speaker 3: out of social movements in the US.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think the twenty twenty lesson is very important
Speaker 5: for thinking about social insertions for anyone who doesn't know.
Speaker 5: It's just the practice of anarchists who are organized in
Speaker 5: the same organization being present in social movements within them,
Speaker 5: supporting them, trying to help them achieve their own goals
Speaker 5: rather than take them over, or something like you would
Speaker 5: see in maybe a entryism from trapeists or something but yeah,
Speaker 5: I think one of the major problems that we ran
Speaker 5: into when we started reading this stuff is like social
Speaker 5: insertion requires there to even be social movements.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was an issue in the US for a
Speaker 3: long time because we didn't really have social movements in
Speaker 3: the way that like Latin America does right, or.
Speaker 5: When we do, they're like extremely spontaneous or kind of chaotic,
Speaker 5: or they're also there, they could be extremely co opted
Speaker 5: or managed by a political party Democrats, some socialist groups, Republicans, whoever.
Speaker 5: And so that's kind of one of our major sort
Speaker 5: of projects of theoretical translation into North Americas. You can't
Speaker 5: just plug this into North American and say, Okay, we're
Speaker 5: going to go join ex social movements to achieve these
Speaker 5: goals and obtain this amount of influence there and some
Speaker 5: we really have to start. I think what is useful
Speaker 5: about that problem is that it forces us to start
Speaker 5: really trying to theorize what actually is happening here, what
Speaker 5: social movement actually is there, And that leads us to
Speaker 5: start thinking about things more literally, like movement, what does
Speaker 5: it mean to be moving? What is the role of
Speaker 5: anarchists in movement? So we can think of the idea
Speaker 5: that we've developed is the idea of anarchists who are
Speaker 5: organized as anarchists, the role of them in movement is
Speaker 5: to actually literally be moving between different kinds of spaces,
Speaker 5: different movements, and starting through their movement to generate a
Speaker 5: kind of flow of people and of ideas and energy
Speaker 5: and momentum, acting as a small motor within a big,
Speaker 5: a big system, if you will, not driving it, but
Speaker 5: getting things going. And so I think that's kind of
Speaker 5: more the level that we're here in the US is
Speaker 5: we still need to just theorize what is out there
Speaker 5: and how can we help it, how can we plug
Speaker 5: into it, How can we start getting things moving in
Speaker 5: a direction that is actually going to meet the needs
Speaker 5: of these movements, For these movements that aren't yet articulated. Well,
Speaker 5: you know, you see this with like the rise of
Speaker 5: tenant unions and tenant organizing still in a very like
Speaker 5: nascent stage, but people are seeing that need and they're
Speaker 5: starting to get that moving from a variety of socialist tendencies.
Speaker 5: And I think, yeah, the idea is important in this
Speaker 5: context because we have to we have to be finding
Speaker 5: these spaces, we have to be moving to them, and
Speaker 5: we have to be returning to our own spaces to
Speaker 5: be able to actually understand what we're encountering out there
Speaker 5: and figure out how to such a course or move
Speaker 5: to something else or adapt to a new situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like maybe similar to read said, they're this idea
Speaker 4: that the politics need to be moving, that anarchism needs
Speaker 4: to be a movement, and that in that way, like
Speaker 4: we can't allow our ideas to be stuck in certain
Speaker 4: you know, just stations or organizations or spaces that are
Speaker 4: friendly or that we're really familiar with. We need to
Speaker 4: be able to engage those ideas in the relevant spaces
Speaker 4: where we do live. That looks really different in different
Speaker 4: parts across the US and North America. So the idea
Speaker 4: that you know, we would be able to just simply
Speaker 4: take one thing and apply it across the board would
Speaker 4: also like, uh, yeah, be really limited here. And so
Speaker 4: I think a lot of what we're we're well, a
Speaker 4: lot of what we've seen in terms of the utility
Speaker 4: of a specifismo as a as an influential current in
Speaker 4: the politics in leftist politics in North America. Is this
Speaker 4: theoretical aspect and how we can see both like we
Speaker 4: learn more about social movements more about the necessity of
Speaker 4: them being popular, more about popular power, and at the
Speaker 4: same time as in doing that, that shows us more
Speaker 4: about what is political unity, what is uh you know,
Speaker 4: unity of strategy, what is unity of theory, what is
Speaker 4: a unity of commitment? And that those things we want
Speaker 4: to as we keep learning about them individually. That goes
Speaker 4: back to this trained idea of their being too rails
Speaker 4: is we need them to be on independent cycles. You know,
Speaker 4: we know that social movements don't last forever, that mobilizations
Speaker 4: and you know, insurrections will fade away, that there are
Speaker 4: ebbs and flows of the engagement, and that when we're
Speaker 4: talking about a massive popular level, we should expect that
Speaker 4: even more right, plenty of people will only even if
Speaker 4: they're engaging militantly, only be engaging militantly with social movements,
Speaker 4: not with political ideas, not with political organization. And so
Speaker 4: the idea that something needs to endure someone even needs
Speaker 4: to be able to tell the story from the last
Speaker 4: time that things got spicy, so that we understand even
Speaker 4: what happened without even necessarily having the the critique or
Speaker 4: the analysis, even just simply the retelling is something that
Speaker 4: is grossly missing from our struggles in North America, and
Speaker 4: so that's where we see like there being a complete
Speaker 4: absence of of political organizing, and especially when we think
Speaker 4: about being on an entirely different cycle. So that kind
Speaker 4: of goes back to kindergarten being an annual thing. And
Speaker 4: you know, where we live, like in the winter, there's
Speaker 4: not a lot you can do, and so it kind
Speaker 4: of made sense to develop a seasonal pattern of this,
Speaker 4: right where like exactly as things are dying down, it's
Speaker 4: kind of like, well, the people who do still have capacity,
Speaker 4: the people who are still attempting to be active, how
Speaker 4: can we keep that little bit of movement moving and going.
Speaker 4: The idea of the metaphor of a small engine a
Speaker 4: small motor is often used in aspecifismo, and that's what
Speaker 4: the political level is trying to be. Is a small
Speaker 4: motor just assisting in something larger that's happening, but it
Speaker 4: needs to be connected to something larger that's happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think a key part of this for
Speaker 5: us that we've found is that in our context there
Speaker 5: exists sort of these two levels to some extent, there
Speaker 5: are political organizations and there are social movements, but what
Speaker 5: is often missing, like we were struggling with this, trying
Speaker 5: to find the way into one or the other. And
Speaker 5: what we discovered is that like this kind of educational
Speaker 5: tendency of really open, really educational, really discussion based learning
Speaker 5: kind of starts to generate that movement between the two.
Speaker 5: Like by having this space open to beginners and experts,
Speaker 5: so to speak, you're able to actually get more movements
Speaker 5: opened between the two. So it opens up political organizations
Speaker 5: people who have not participated in that before don't have
Speaker 5: a way into it. And it opens up social movements
Speaker 5: to people who maybe politicized but are not organized in
Speaker 5: some sort of social and it starts to mix everything
Speaker 5: together in this learning space where we can build trust
Speaker 5: as a learning community and assisting each other in connecting
Speaker 5: these kind of two necessary levels of organization.
Speaker 3: I've been thinking a lot about how you were talking
Speaker 3: about how we don't have any kind of organizational continuity
Speaker 3: between movements and the kind of disorganization and the loss
Speaker 3: of just memory that happens with that, And I think
Speaker 3: it's one of these weird things because you can find
Speaker 3: people who've been in like all of these movements, but
Speaker 3: if you're relying on just you know, okay, well you
Speaker 3: can you can get the story of what really happened
Speaker 3: in occupy Oakland if you know exactly like the right
Speaker 3: for people and you can't like you can't say their
Speaker 3: names because like you know, and I mean this has
Speaker 3: always sort of been a problem with parts of social
Speaker 3: movements because I mean there's somef a necessssarily has to
Speaker 3: be cleandestine, like you know, and there's reasons for operacial security,
Speaker 3: but also just means the stuff gets lost. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think having having a like having a thing that
Speaker 3: goes as a way to transmit got thing that goes. Wow,
Speaker 3: incredibly technical language, you know, but having having an organization
Speaker 3: that can act as a bridge between these sort of
Speaker 3: moments and also is able to sort of you know,
Speaker 3: allow people's spaces for discussions, for reflection, for learning. That's
Speaker 3: also sort of a bridge between like a like I
Speaker 3: don't know, I guess like capital p political organization and
Speaker 3: the social stuff. Is it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 3: really interesting idea, and yeah, I don't know, I think
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think I think this is like
Speaker 3: this is a very cool project, and yeah, I'm looking
Speaker 3: forward to seeing what else comes out of it as
Speaker 3: the new session sort of approaches.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think what you're just saying about, like, how
Speaker 5: do you learn about what happened to occupy oak And
Speaker 5: without having to go through like three layers of signal
Speaker 5: chats or something to find the right person to learn
Speaker 5: from anonymously being as preface with allegedly this happened. Is
Speaker 5: a real problem that we've thought about. Like, I think
Speaker 5: a big thing for us that we've found is a
Speaker 5: role that we can play, is that there is a
Speaker 5: need out there for there to be some sort of
Speaker 5: we call it mask off anarchism, like there needs to
Speaker 5: be a public facing, approachable space where you can actually
Speaker 5: just learn about stuff. And yeah, there is definitely a
Speaker 5: need for operational security culture or for clandestine things, but
Speaker 5: that those things don't need to be everything for those
Speaker 5: who even exist. You need levels that are more open
Speaker 5: to people. Otherwise those things just become increased we lost,
Speaker 5: they go down the memory hole, as they say, or
Speaker 5: the Latin American groups like to talk about anarchism becoming
Speaker 5: ghetto wise further and further, like separated from mainstream society,
Speaker 5: and there's no ways in unless you, like, you know,
Speaker 5: a guy. So that was something that was a problem
Speaker 5: we were encountering and something that like from our particular circumstances,
Speaker 5: we felt like we could provide and maybe start and
Speaker 5: modeling for people as a group.
Speaker 4: I think also, like you mentioned there like this idea
Speaker 4: of memory and what what black Rose has referred to
Speaker 4: in their program as muscle memory. Like for our organizations,
Speaker 4: this idea that like, I mean, organizing seems so mysterious
Speaker 4: to us because we don't have this like kind of active,
Speaker 4: like uh, living memory of how to do that. It's
Speaker 4: not just a thing we do by second nature or
Speaker 4: like without without really needing a lot of work. And
Speaker 4: so I think in that sense, like we could also
Speaker 4: think of there being two kinds of struggles going on,
Speaker 4: where Like on the social level, the struggle is the
Speaker 4: class struggle and the antagonists are the dominant people in society.
Speaker 4: It is the ruling class, it is the status quo,
Speaker 4: it is the capitalist system. But on the political level,
Speaker 4: there's also struggle because it's not about everybody, you know,
Speaker 4: just being one uniform block. It is about that struggle though,
Speaker 4: not being trying to topple each other but instead trying
Speaker 4: to develop and create unity. It's not find unity, it's
Speaker 4: not look for the people you have the most consensus with,
Speaker 4: because that in itself is even really limiting that we
Speaker 4: need to be able to form new agreement. We need
Speaker 4: to be able to find and struggle for that unity
Speaker 4: with people who aren't trying to just aim for a
Speaker 4: divisive end. That there needs to be an antagonist on
Speaker 4: the social level, but on the political level, the goal
Speaker 4: is unity. It's not it's not struggle for the sake
Speaker 4: of taking down the opponent. And so in that sense,
Speaker 4: like something else that we do in Militant Kindergarten and
Speaker 4: in the Center for Us BECIFIESMO studies is not just
Speaker 4: try to do a reading, but try to produce a reading.
Speaker 4: Try to leave behind some kind of trace of our reading.
Speaker 4: That that's an important aspect of this. So all of
Speaker 4: our sessions we take thorough notes, and those notes are
Speaker 4: available to all the participants. People can go back through
Speaker 4: it later to look at what was said if they
Speaker 4: missed a session, or if they'd like to follow along
Speaker 4: with those as they as the conversation goes to help
Speaker 4: add you know, other aspects of support. Then what we
Speaker 4: do is we have a whole other team that goes
Speaker 4: through those notes afterward and produces a kind of internal
Speaker 4: journalistic writeup of what happened in that meeting, and so
Speaker 4: we will also be releasing those this year as part
Speaker 4: of our kind of monthly publishing that we'll be.
Speaker 3: Doing so for people who are interested in this. When
Speaker 3: is it happening and how do you get involved?
Speaker 5: It starts on January thirteenth and it runs till April
Speaker 5: twentieth of next year, twenty twenty four, And we're going
Speaker 5: to be holding the session on Saturday two to four
Speaker 5: pm in Pacific time US, which is not the greatest
Speaker 5: time for everybody, but it's where most of us are based,
Speaker 5: kind of on the edge of time here on the
Speaker 5: West coast. And the best way to get involved is
Speaker 5: to just send us an email. We have the email
Speaker 5: specifies most studies at gmail dot com, and that's the
Speaker 5: way to sort of start the enrolling process needs to
Speaker 5: take the one step send us an email, and we'll
Speaker 5: get you signed up and all the materials and zoom
Speaker 5: link and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and well, we'll put the email in the description
Speaker 3: youah probably links to the website too, I think. On
Speaker 3: that note, unless you have anything else that you want
Speaker 3: to say or plug no, I think that's it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, good breath. I would like to see people there.
Speaker 5: It's going to be an interesting year. I can guarantee that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're yeah, like the literal year.
Speaker 5: Twenty twenty four. Who knows what's going to happen, And
Speaker 5: even kindergarten is going to be pretty interesting. We've had
Speaker 5: a lot more people contacting us than last year, so
Speaker 5: it's going to be a pretty big and diverse group.
Speaker 5: So it'll be interesting to see kind of what everybody's
Speaker 5: able to produce out of that gathering and learning space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, maybe another thing just to say real quick,
Speaker 4: is just that even if somebody doesn't feel they could
Speaker 4: make that time, it's still worth reaching out to us.
Speaker 4: We you know, will be developing other seminars and things
Speaker 4: in the future. And if you don't think that you'd
Speaker 4: be able to make to all the sessions, like, don't
Speaker 4: worry about that either. That's part of why we do
Speaker 4: this every year is that we expect that, you know,
Speaker 4: working people without a lot of time will need more
Speaker 4: than one year to you know, get all this information.
Speaker 4: So we expect people to need to kind of be
Speaker 4: cobbling together a few sessions here and there for several times,
Speaker 4: and yeah, you're definitely welcome to do that and shouldn't
Speaker 4: feel as if it's like a kind of start and
Speaker 4: then you're stuck and afraid to start.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, it's a sort of an endurance study group.
Speaker 5: So yeah, we don't want anyone burning themselves out. Just
Speaker 5: do what you can start together and together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be a great program,
Speaker 3: and yeah, excited to see what comes out of it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, if you want, if if you want to
Speaker 3: get your theoretical stuff in before fighting season presumably starts
Speaker 3: again around the election. Uh, yeah, now is the time.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be really chaotic and for the next like
Speaker 3: long time. So this is this is your opportunity. Now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'll need some good ideas to arm ourselves with. Yeah,
Speaker 5: this one it's gonna be rough.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: And yeah, on that note, this has been naked up
Speaker 3: in here. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 3: at fulls on media, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, go go, go,
Speaker 3: go into the world and learn and then use that
Speaker 3: to make the world less gone off. It's it's another
Speaker 3: Chicago episode. It's it could happen here, the podcast where
Speaker 3: things fall apart. I'm your host, Nea Wong. This is
Speaker 3: this is another episode about Chicago police departments who occupy
Speaker 3: a city groaning under its tyranny, and with you to
Speaker 3: talk about some absolutely bad shit Chicago police stuff and
Speaker 3: also how Randon Johnson our mayor is also shit? Is
Speaker 3: Raven the Chicago journalist from Jingspress.
Speaker 6: Hi is our mayor?
Speaker 1: Ever?
Speaker 6: Not shit?
Speaker 3: You know, No, it's all shit. It's never not bad.
Speaker 1: It's never not bad.
Speaker 6: And it's always like, you know, the progressive darling who
Speaker 6: ran on promises and then slowly breaks them and you know,
Speaker 6: breaks everyone's hearts over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will I will say Johnson wasted absolutely no
Speaker 3: time on the heartbreaking part, like he really he really
Speaker 3: just wanted to rush that shit out. So there's a
Speaker 3: lot of there's a lot of Brandon Johnson stuff that
Speaker 3: we could talk about and we will want eventually, we're
Speaker 3: gonna do the episode on the bigrant camp in the
Speaker 3: fucking the migrant camp and the toxic waste dump, but
Speaker 3: that that's gonna happen next year. Right now, we want
Speaker 3: to talk about a different utterly insane Chicago thing. Well
Speaker 3: it is actually a thing in other cities too. I
Speaker 3: wanted to talk about shot Spotter, So I guess to
Speaker 3: start with, can you explain what shot spotter is for
Speaker 3: people who don't have it in their city or don't know.
Speaker 6: Well, it's in i want to say, like one hundred
Speaker 6: and thirty different cities across the country, so a lot
Speaker 6: of people probably do have it. But it's a gunshot
Speaker 6: detection system. So basically just you know, through a bunch
Speaker 6: of fancy tech stuff we won't get into, and I'm
Speaker 6: not even going to pretend to understand that side of it.
Speaker 6: It's there are these audio sensors that are installed all
Speaker 6: around the city, right and in predominantly black and brown neighborhoods.
Speaker 6: You know, they're specifically in Chicago. There's actually a lawsuit
Speaker 6: currently up and coming filed by the MacArthur Justice Center
Speaker 6: over the fact that they are primarily installed in black
Speaker 6: and brown neighborhoods and not on like the North Side.
Speaker 6: And yeah, it's just a bunch of fancy little stuff
Speaker 6: that detects noises that are supposed to be gunshots, right,
Speaker 6: so any loud popping or bringing sound, you know, could
Speaker 6: could potentially set them off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and unfortunately, as anyone who's ever been in a
Speaker 3: city and had a car backfire nose. People are just
Speaker 3: indescribably dogshit at telling what is a gunshot and what
Speaker 3: is not a gunshot exactly exactly.
Speaker 6: And I mean there's so much evidence too, like there
Speaker 6: been I mean are here in Chicago, Like our Office
Speaker 6: of the Inspector General wrote like a whole report about
Speaker 6: all of shots bars failures. But there's a bunch of
Speaker 6: other research out there across the country about how inaccurate
Speaker 6: this is. And you know, it's generating tens of thousands
Speaker 6: of also like unjustified CPD deployments, like because when the
Speaker 6: alert goes off, the cops get deployed, and you know,
Speaker 6: it doesn't tell you anything about even if there was
Speaker 6: a gunshot, like who fired a gun? You know, all
Speaker 6: it's telling you is in this area. You know this
Speaker 6: was determined. So you can imagine like all of these
Speaker 6: you know, police encounters happening in response to these alerts,
Speaker 6: like all the shit that could go wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's CPD, right, Like the Chicago Police Department's
Speaker 3: motto was shoot first, don't ask questions later. So right,
Speaker 3: this is a this is an absolutely terrible idea. It's
Speaker 3: just sending all of these cops on random wild goose chases.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, well, and it's what happened, was I mean,
Speaker 6: most people probably remember Adam Toledo shooting. Those cops, you know,
Speaker 6: were initially assigned to patrol that area because it was
Speaker 6: designated as a violence box, you know, and ShotSpotter brought
Speaker 6: them to the alley like where this thirteen year old
Speaker 6: kid was, you know, shot and killed by police because
Speaker 6: another and older man was with him and fired a
Speaker 6: gun and then handed him the weapon. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And that's another that's another one of the problems with
Speaker 3: the technology, which is that even if it does detect
Speaker 3: a gunshot, the thing that detecting a gunshot does and
Speaker 3: send it to the police is send a bunch of
Speaker 3: like absolutely unhinged murderers to a place and like make
Speaker 3: to incredibly paranoid and then you know, have them in
Speaker 3: like deal with the situation mode. And what Chicago cops
Speaker 3: do when they're in deal with the situation mode is
Speaker 3: they take out a gun, they shoot a thirteen year
Speaker 3: old and kill them.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, and the you know, the officer that shaw
Speaker 6: him too, had had this one like rarely talked about
Speaker 6: in the media. I think I don't know. It just
Speaker 6: wasn't something that came up much when that was all happening.
Speaker 6: But like that officer had a weird incident that was
Speaker 6: recorded on bodycam like a little bit before he shot
Speaker 6: and killed out in Toledo. I don't remember if it
Speaker 6: was like months before, I don't know the timeline, but
Speaker 6: it was fairly close to that where he like pulled
Speaker 6: someone over at a traffic stop and was just acting
Speaker 6: really jumpy and strange. H And it was kind of
Speaker 6: investigated as like, you know, an undostified traffic stop and
Speaker 6: and nothing happened with that. But it's just an example
Speaker 6: of like how there were potentially warning signs because this
Speaker 6: guy was also like a war veteran, you know, and
Speaker 6: jumpy to begin with. And so yeah, you're sending these
Speaker 6: guys into these areas who are already ready to go
Speaker 6: off at a trigger, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, and there's like there's no actual
Speaker 3: good outcome of this, because like I guess, arguably the
Speaker 3: best possible outcome is the cops show up, there's nobody there,
Speaker 3: enters out to have been a false alarm, but that
Speaker 3: means we're paying the cops an unbelievable amount of money
Speaker 3: to do nothing, and that's the best outcome, right.
Speaker 6: And the way the alerts work also too, is like
Speaker 6: unless the police file a complaint that an alert was false,
Speaker 6: like a false alarm, it's automatically flagged in the system
Speaker 6: as like a positive. Because there's all this algorithmic stuff
Speaker 6: that happens, like with the shotswarter detection, where like, yeah,
Speaker 6: the system detects it, but then also it goes to
Speaker 6: like their I don't know, their whole systems like researchers
Speaker 6: or whatever kind of put it all together and like
Speaker 6: package a report about what happened. And so unless a
Speaker 6: police complain and are like, oh, you know, this one
Speaker 6: was false, or this was a this one was wrong,
Speaker 6: this was a firework, this is a car back firing,
Speaker 6: and of course like CPD is not doing.
Speaker 3: That, yeah, because and I mean, I mean, this is
Speaker 3: one of the problems with the system just inherently, if
Speaker 3: even if you think that on some level this technology
Speaker 3: could work, is that both the company's shots spotter and
Speaker 3: the police have an enormous inherent incentive to make like,
Speaker 3: at very least pretend that every single one of these
Speaker 3: detections is real. Because if you're a police officer, right,
Speaker 3: and you can point it. Oh, hey, look at how
Speaker 3: many shots are being fired around the city all the time.
Speaker 3: You know you need to give us more funding. This
Speaker 3: is incredibly useful for them if your ShotSpotter. You don't
Speaker 3: want everyone to know that your system detects like a
Speaker 3: bird dropping an acorn out of a tree next to
Speaker 3: your sensor or whatever. Like, you don't actually want people
Speaker 3: to know that your your system brings up false positives
Speaker 3: all the time, and it's actually basically completely useless, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so the incentive structure is just bad. It's just
Speaker 3: it's only going to produce bad results.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Well, and it's kind of like somebody, I don't
Speaker 6: I forget where I read this, but somebody likened it
Speaker 6: to if you had an informant working for you and
Speaker 6: they were wrong nine times out of ten, would you
Speaker 6: still use them?
Speaker 3: Well, CPD would like to be.
Speaker 6: To be fair, but like if you were a journalist
Speaker 6: and you had a source that lied nine times out
Speaker 6: of ten, you know, or was wrong nine times out
Speaker 6: of ten, would would you call them back? Would you
Speaker 6: trust that source?
Speaker 1: You know? Well?
Speaker 3: And the other thing too is this isn't even it's
Speaker 3: not even just like this is an informant, right because
Speaker 3: you know, shot spot is wrong and annoymous percentage of
Speaker 3: the time. But the thing is you don't have to
Speaker 3: pay informants eight million dollars a year, which is what
Speaker 3: we're paying for this dog shit shots fire system.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I mean the company itself all so like
Speaker 6: they're so embedded with what's going on, like with police departments.
Speaker 6: You know, they're Shotswater is leveraging their own money to
Speaker 6: try to like win police contracts that include shots fotter.
Speaker 6: You know, they advise different police departments on how to
Speaker 6: respond to requests about ShotSpotter. So it's like it's not
Speaker 6: just like this this I don't know, this mutual tool
Speaker 6: that's just like out there that they're just using. It's
Speaker 6: like Shotswater has this vested interest in, uh, strengthening the
Speaker 6: police and vice versa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then it gets into one of these very
Speaker 3: very I mean it's a very common thing for the cops, right,
Speaker 3: but one of these unbelievably messed up spirals where like, yeah,
Speaker 3: like everyone everyone involved has you know, the cops want
Speaker 3: want more power. These guys want more money, and the
Speaker 3: more money you give them, the more money they have
Speaker 3: to then turn around again and put back into the
Speaker 3: political system so you can you buy more power, which
Speaker 3: they can again turn into more money every single time
Speaker 3: another contract.
Speaker 6: Comes up right right on, which they just they just did.
Speaker 6: Brandon Johnson just gave them more money in their contract.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we should talk about this because Okay, so
Speaker 3: Brandon Johnson ran a weird campaign in respect to the police,
Speaker 3: in the sense that he didn't really run a he
Speaker 3: didn't run an anti police campaign. I guess like his
Speaker 3: campaign was pretty pro police, but it also originally had
Speaker 3: things like taking cops out of schools, and very specifically
Speaker 3: he ran on canceling the ShotSpotter contract, which is a
Speaker 3: thing that everyone in like people in Chicago who aren't
Speaker 3: who don't live in like cop neighborhoods. Basically like it's
Speaker 3: pretty popular to cancel this contract because it's it's millions
Speaker 3: of dollars a year going to nonsense that just throws
Speaker 3: cops everywhere. And then he got into office and his
Speaker 3: budget still has the ShotSpotter shit in it. So huh,
Speaker 3: electoralism win.
Speaker 7: Yay.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it wasn't explicit. It was an explicit
Speaker 6: campaign promise, Like, it wasn't just like Oh, we were
Speaker 6: hoping that he would do this because he's like our
Speaker 6: big movement guy. It was like he explicitly made it
Speaker 6: part of his platform was ending the contract for shot Spotter,
Speaker 6: and now he is not, and there's there's some time
Speaker 6: left before the budget hearing. I think it's like, I
Speaker 6: don't know, like fifty five days. I might be off
Speaker 6: by a few days there, but there's only around, you know,
Speaker 6: two months left, and since he's been elected. So like
Speaker 6: the other thing, I mean, this is like the shady
Speaker 6: part too, is like since he's been elected, he's been
Speaker 6: asked whether he'll extend the contract and he's just like
Speaker 6: refused to answer.
Speaker 3: Which is a really great politician stuff, like you know,
Speaker 3: you you know that your politicians being completely normal and nothing,
Speaker 3: everything is above board when they just straight up refuse
Speaker 3: to answer questions, only good things ever result from that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And it's been there's been like a lot of
Speaker 6: similar sort of just like I don't know, lack of
Speaker 6: transparency kind of incidents with him over the last however
Speaker 6: longest been since he's been elected, God has been a
Speaker 6: long year. It's kind of like there's this pattern now.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I mean there were people who kind of Look,
Speaker 6: he was never like the abolitionist like I'm going to
Speaker 6: abolish the police, mayor, and like I get that. I
Speaker 6: think a lot of people get that. But there's a
Speaker 6: pretty big departure kind of between how he's approaching policing
Speaker 6: and what Yeah, a lot of movement people or leftists
Speaker 6: or abolitionists want you know, every encounter with a cop
Speaker 6: is a potential for violence, right, And he's coming at
Speaker 6: it more from the side of like, well, we just
Speaker 6: need to rebuild trust in the police, and the community
Speaker 6: just needs to you know, like we're just going to
Speaker 6: rebuild trust and we're going to get these bad cops out.
Speaker 6: We're going to have only good cops left and then everything.
Speaker 6: I don't know what the logic there is personally, but
Speaker 6: the you know, the logic is that we'll just have
Speaker 6: good police encounters then. And it's just like this refusal
Speaker 6: to acknowledge that like policing itself is a problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are on year fifty of the mayor says
Speaker 3: we need to restore trust in the police, We'll get
Speaker 3: rid of the bad cops and everything. Like year fifty,
Speaker 3: we are on what number of torture scandals? Are we
Speaker 3: on since people first started saying this, like, I, it's
Speaker 3: just right.
Speaker 6: We shouldn't be laughing at torture. But it's like, yeah,
Speaker 6: it's like every I don't know, every month there is
Speaker 6: a new Chicago police scandal. I literally cannot keep track.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and okay, so we're going to talk about one
Speaker 3: of those scandals. But first, uh, we're gonna talk about ads.
Speaker 3: I was gonna do like a you know what else
Speaker 3: is a scandal, but I don't know. It's really late
Speaker 3: being up for an outrageous number of hours and we
Speaker 3: are back. So okay, speaking of Chicago police scandals, there's
Speaker 3: a lot. I mean, the CPD is always having scandals
Speaker 3: because Chicago cops are just evil. But yeah, do you
Speaker 3: want to talk about the specific shot spotter one that
Speaker 3: we're having right now?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I mean, well, there there are other Chicago police shot
Speaker 6: spotter scandals, but no, the most this most recent story
Speaker 6: you know that just came out.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 6: There's a political journalism site, slash blog. They're also our
Speaker 6: homiees we don't want to work with them, called people
Speaker 6: Stabric and they wrote, you know, an analysis of some
Speaker 6: videos that they obtained of what is like essentially a
Speaker 6: CPD gang. I mean everybody's heard of, like the LATD
Speaker 6: gangs were not everybody, but I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 6: listeners have followed the story out of out of la
Speaker 6: with like the Sheriff's deputies gangs just roaming around and
Speaker 6: committing horrible acts against people, and you know, in these
Speaker 6: sort of like cruise of bad cops and and this
Speaker 6: is definitely not the first instance of something like that
Speaker 6: happening in Chicago, but you know, there were just there
Speaker 6: was a lot of video evidence against these guys. One
Speaker 6: of them has been indicted. I don't know if the
Speaker 6: other three have, but yeah, they were just driving around
Speaker 6: basically terrorizing this community. You know, a lot of just
Speaker 6: unlawful stops, stopping people on the street, shaking them down
Speaker 6: for cash, drugs, and a lot of guns. And they
Speaker 6: were filing false reports about found guns, so like they
Speaker 6: would stop somebody take a gun and then log it
Speaker 6: as like a gun that was found And you know,
Speaker 6: in one instance, they said that they were a mile
Speaker 6: away from where a shot spotter alert had gone off
Speaker 6: and claimed that they looked around and just happened to
Speaker 6: find a gun on the ground. They had taken the
Speaker 6: gun from a woman.
Speaker 1: You know it.
Speaker 6: They didn't find it on the ground, but they were
Speaker 6: able to use the fact that there was a shot
Speaker 6: spotter alert that went off in that area as like
Speaker 6: a way to cover their tracks.
Speaker 3: Basically, Yeah, and this is something so we talked about
Speaker 3: on the show, like, oh god, was that like two
Speaker 3: years ago? It was a year ago. A while back
Speaker 3: we talked about on this show. The Chicago's used to
Speaker 3: have this police nic called Special Operations Sectionion SOS, which
Speaker 3: was disbanded after it was revealed they were doing literally
Speaker 3: the same thing, which is they would go up to
Speaker 3: people to rob them. And one of Chicago has one
Speaker 3: of these scandals about once. It like once a decade
Speaker 3: there's like a big one of these, and we're kind
Speaker 3: of due for one. We haven't had a really big
Speaker 3: one of these. Specifically, there's an entire section of the
Speaker 3: CPD that's just a burglar or a drug ring. So
Speaker 3: I suspect we're gonna find out more about this stuff
Speaker 3: because it's it's about time that another one of these
Speaker 3: turns up. But yeah, I mean, they were just like
Speaker 3: just rolling up on people, just going give me your
Speaker 3: gun and then driving away and saying don't tell anyone,
Speaker 3: which is really.
Speaker 1: Really yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm like also for seemingly no reason, like some
Speaker 6: instances like there. I mean, we look, we can't know
Speaker 6: all of their motivations for everything, and a lot more
Speaker 6: is going to come out, I'm sure, like in the
Speaker 6: court proceedings. But it's like, were they trying to had
Speaker 6: the gun retrieval statistics and or were they trying to
Speaker 6: do something else? You know, they were like a tactical team,
Speaker 6: So I presume, I mean, I think it's the case
Speaker 6: that like there are certain gun retrieval statistics that CPD
Speaker 6: wants to mate, but you know, the other stuff like
Speaker 6: obviously taking cash from people, you know, like like there's
Speaker 6: other things they were doing, you know, and and they've
Speaker 6: always been look there, I'm not going to allege anything
Speaker 6: that isn't proven in the specific instance, but I will
Speaker 6: say that there have always been rumors about Chicago police
Speaker 6: officers specifically taking things like guns to like sell back,
Speaker 6: you know, to gangs basically, and same with drugs. Right,
Speaker 6: you know, these guys were we're logging some of them
Speaker 6: at least, but what if there were ones that they
Speaker 6: weren't logging, Like we don't know. I mean, this is
Speaker 6: just what we know happened and what was caught. And
Speaker 6: I mean they were dumb enough to like have some
Speaker 6: of this caught on their body camps. It's like they
Speaker 6: were turning their cameras off for like some parts of
Speaker 6: these stuffs, but like not others, or like the camera
Speaker 6: would be on and there's like you know, cash and
Speaker 6: drugs and then like oh, the camera goes off, and
Speaker 6: it's like, well, any logical person can deduce what may
Speaker 6: have happened here, like why turning your camera off? Right?
Speaker 6: And so yeah, they've always been rumors about kind of
Speaker 6: like what these crews driving around are like ultimately doing
Speaker 6: with this kind of stuff, and I think it just
Speaker 6: it varies depending on them. But I would also add,
Speaker 6: you know, the what you mentioned the special operations section.
Speaker 6: You know, we only recently learned there's like a Sun
Speaker 6: Times investigation into all the Chicago cops who were on
Speaker 6: the Hoast Keepers membership role. Oh and a number of
Speaker 6: those guys were in soos actually, so that's a fun
Speaker 6: little fact.
Speaker 3: Also, yeah, that's another one of the another episode in
Speaker 3: the endless parade of Juhago Police Department scandals is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: a bunch of these are in far right militias, which
Speaker 3: is this is this really interesting? So we did an
Speaker 3: episode pretty recently that I was talking about David Graber.
Speaker 3: One of one of the one of the points that
Speaker 3: he makes in this essay on Batman and the problem
Speaker 3: of constituent power, which is a wild thing to be
Speaker 3: citing in a police thing, but you know, one of
Speaker 3: the points that he makes is one of the one
Speaker 3: of the sort of key like fascist convergences. Is this
Speaker 3: cooperation between the police, the far right and organized crime
Speaker 3: and the CPD. Is this incredible nexus of it, right,
Speaker 3: I mean you it's literally the same person is all
Speaker 3: three of these things at the same time. It is
Speaker 3: a cup who is in a fart right militia who
Speaker 3: is also like literally just doing organized crime at the
Speaker 3: same time. It's really Yeah, you used to have to
Speaker 3: sort of like make metaphors, and you no longer have
Speaker 3: to do that. The metaphor just is real. You're just
Speaker 3: physically describing the event. It's really something.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, when you really think about it, I
Speaker 6: think policing in and of itself is just like a
Speaker 6: cult like anything else. And it makes sense that like
Speaker 6: the same people who would gravitate towards like militia groups
Speaker 6: and like white supremacist groups, any any like I don't know,
Speaker 6: group where people kind of have those like hardline beliefs
Speaker 6: about the world. And then it's also just like a
Speaker 6: lot of these guys are like especially the ones on
Speaker 6: like taskal teams, they're all like fucking like traumatized war vetter,
Speaker 6: you know, they all have kind of these long backstories
Speaker 6: of like military service and just like to get onto
Speaker 6: like special ops or like the tactle reading, you know,
Speaker 6: et cetera, they kind of look for people with military experience,
Speaker 6: not always, but like frequently. And so there's also that
Speaker 6: intersection there two of like militarism and abroad and then
Speaker 6: like policing at home.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, and that's a really common thread. I mean,
Speaker 3: just like across the entire world. This is a thing
Speaker 3: where like the police office, like the police groups that
Speaker 3: are the most likely to go completely rogue and either
Speaker 3: just start murdering people randomly or turn into organized crime things,
Speaker 3: like are these special operations units there. There was like
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, they were these huge protests and like
Speaker 3: anti police protests in Nigeria that were specifically about trying
Speaker 3: to get one of these special operations like police special
Speaker 3: operation things, I like abolished because special operations guys just
Speaker 3: kept shooting everyone and this, you know, like every single
Speaker 3: like this happens just everywhere in the world that these
Speaker 3: it is like, you know, I mean, obviously normal cops
Speaker 3: also do crime. And we talked also another episode about
Speaker 3: some kind of normal cops. You did a cartel and
Speaker 3: like the the twenty tens, but the special operations groups
Speaker 3: go off the rails at a rate that is staggering,
Speaker 3: which you would think, you would think someone in government
Speaker 3: would look at this, like even if you're a pro
Speaker 3: police person, you would look at this and go, wait,
Speaker 3: maybe it's a bad idea to have specifically formed these
Speaker 3: units that every single time turned into a cartel. But no, no,
Speaker 3: they ever do this because the point of cops is
Speaker 3: not to not form cartels.
Speaker 6: Well, I think also too, there's like a very uh,
Speaker 6: I don't know, I guess neoliberal sort of line of
Speaker 6: thinking about like policing and how like we really really
Speaker 6: need like the tactical, high skill kind of units. Right
Speaker 6: Like there's always like we're giving the cop, we're always
Speaker 6: tearing the cops more more, and that's for training. Training
Speaker 6: is a big justification for why we're always giving you
Speaker 6: them more money. But so there's like you know, skills
Speaker 6: and sort of technology, and like I think as we're
Speaker 6: dealing with i don't know, like mass shootings and like
Speaker 6: all this really horrible stuff just like going on around
Speaker 6: us at all times too. Now, it's like it's a
Speaker 6: really I think easy way to justify policing to people
Speaker 6: is like honor the guise of these like tactical units
Speaker 6: or units with like a lot of firepower to deal
Speaker 6: with like really really bad guys. Quote right, Like you know,
Speaker 6: maybe those people might be like, oh, we've like fewer
Speaker 6: cops thetrolling our neighborhoods. You know, we're kind of we
Speaker 6: get like, you know, black lives matter or whatever, but
Speaker 6: they're like, but we really need to, you know, have
Speaker 6: the big guns ready for when something bad comes to
Speaker 6: our neighborhood. And so I think that's also like a
Speaker 6: sticking point for a lot of people on the on
Speaker 6: the way to like actually thinking about it. Polishing the
Speaker 6: police too is like what would we do without these
Speaker 6: units the guys with like all these skills and all
Speaker 6: these crazy weapons to like help us if if if
Speaker 6: a bad guy comes and of course the guys, like
Speaker 6: the bad guys are those guys like Guy Well.
Speaker 3: And there's the more cynical side of it too, which
Speaker 3: is like, you know, if you're if you're the mayor
Speaker 3: of Chicago, it's like, well, someone has to shoot the
Speaker 3: black panthers, right, Like you need to have guys whose
Speaker 3: job it is to like when when you know, when
Speaker 3: like revolutionary movements started up, you need like someone has
Speaker 3: to start shooting those guys. So yeah, so I want
Speaker 3: to go back to talk a bit more about the
Speaker 3: like shot spatter and the budget stuff that's been happening,
Speaker 3: because so the current the current budget has what is it,
Speaker 3: I think it like doubles the the any raises that
Speaker 3: that cops were getting. Is that the right number?
Speaker 6: I don't know if it doubled, but I read that
Speaker 6: it was actually wait, yeah, so it's it's five percent,
Speaker 6: up from like two point five. Yeah, it's double. It's
Speaker 6: also the largest package of raises for any city employee
Speaker 6: union in modern history. I mean, I'm directly quoting a
Speaker 6: Better Government analysis, but but but yeah, no, like literally
Speaker 6: it is. It is an enormous It is an enormous race.
Speaker 6: And here's the thing. The cops were thrilled with this contract.
Speaker 6: Uh the hat of fop John Cavanzara, who is just
Speaker 6: like a racist, misogynistic, horrible, just like garbage dump of
Speaker 6: a person, you know, was thrilled with with this contract.
Speaker 6: Was thrilled with this being passed, you know. And that's
Speaker 6: like number one sign that your mayor sucks is when
Speaker 6: like the cops are thrilled about something he did like this.
Speaker 6: Uh so so yeah, I mean it's it's a huge
Speaker 6: amount of money. There's a bunch of other stuff in it,
Speaker 6: like you know, salary grade changes and like stipends for
Speaker 6: stuff and bonuses and uh there's some changes to like
Speaker 6: the bodyborn camera policy too, which are kind of concerning.
Speaker 6: But but ultimately it's like, yeah, Brendon Johnson is now
Speaker 6: the funds the police mayor. Like I don't know how
Speaker 6: you can say that he's not when you when you
Speaker 6: look at this, like this is just handing the cops
Speaker 6: more money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Chicago cops are already just unbelievably dog shit overpaid.
Speaker 3: Chicago teachers are unbelievably underpaid. Yeah, so you know, I
Speaker 3: mean we are we are once again paying a bunch
Speaker 3: of people to rob us it's really it's it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And and they they get a lot of time off too.
Speaker 6: I mean, look, they have they have a ton of benefits.
Speaker 6: There's a ton of you know, privileges and things that
Speaker 6: that the cops get. But it's kind of kind of
Speaker 6: like he he could have given them slightly less money,
Speaker 6: Like it was almost this contract almost feels like the
Speaker 6: way I've seen some people describe it is it almost
Speaker 6: feels like an act of like goodwill towards the cops.
Speaker 6: Like it almost like I was like, I'm giving you
Speaker 6: this thing that you really want in the in the
Speaker 6: hopes of like I don't know, I don't know what
Speaker 6: he's trying to get out of it. I mean, I
Speaker 6: don't know what what the motivation is. But it's like
Speaker 6: you could have done you could have done less, and
Speaker 6: you're going for like a lot, So what's what's the
Speaker 6: deal there? And you know the new superintendent too, is
Speaker 6: like hugely concerning. He picked a guy who's uh like
Speaker 6: an expert in surveilling communities ahead of like the DNC
Speaker 6: coming next summer, the former head of the counter Terrorism Bureau.
Speaker 6: You know, like it's just it's a lot of really
Speaker 6: disappointing moves, and I think a lot of people were
Speaker 6: really hoping to see I guess a more abolitionist kind
Speaker 6: of streak. But the ultimately he's like he ran as
Speaker 6: a liberal, like we knew this was coming, but there
Speaker 6: was like almost like taking advantage I guess of like
Speaker 6: movement groups to sort of get get the power behind
Speaker 6: him during the campaign. But look, our alternative was also
Speaker 6: like an evil, like lying, maniacal Paul Vallas. So it's
Speaker 6: just like a shit sandwich. It's like bad choices all around, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean not just is Chicago. I mean
Speaker 3: it's just Illinois. Electoral politics in general is a choice
Speaker 3: between the guy he gives the police more money and
Speaker 3: the other guy who gives the place more money. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not good exactly. Again, it really seems like we're
Speaker 3: going to get more shot spotter of the technology that
Speaker 3: is wrong over ninety percent of the time.
Speaker 8: So it's great, it's really well.
Speaker 6: It was a few months left. I mean hopefully, look,
Speaker 6: hopefully this is I don't know, there's arguments to be
Speaker 6: made for and against harm reduction, I guess, and whether
Speaker 6: it's like a worthwhile goal, but maybe there's still like
Speaker 6: a shot at like at least getting this part scratched out.
Speaker 6: I mean there is, like I said, like this big
Speaker 6: lawsuit and if nothing else, you know, perhaps he and
Speaker 6: his administration could be concerned about just like you know,
Speaker 6: the bad press around it if it's included and so
Speaker 6: many people are opposing it. But this is also an
Speaker 6: administration that like didn't care about the bad press that
Speaker 6: came with like saying, we're building a detention camp on
Speaker 6: polluted land.
Speaker 3: So yeah, well look look like this, this is this
Speaker 3: is the thing that that the fight over the police
Speaker 3: budget is distracting from, which is that we defined a
Speaker 3: second toxic waste dump to build the migrant concentration cap on.
Speaker 3: So you know, progressive, progressive values are getting happening either way.
Speaker 6: Look, I frequently said all mayors are bastards, which is
Speaker 6: true corny, but I think you just it's fine. Look,
Speaker 6: it's fine to vote, I guess if that is your sting,
Speaker 6: just don't convince yourself that once you leave the voting
Speaker 6: booths that like the struggle is over, because whatever happens,
Speaker 6: like this person, this authority figure in charge, is your enemy.
Speaker 6: Like it doesn't matter how.
Speaker 1: Nice he is.
Speaker 6: It doesn't matter how many jokes he cracks, like whatever,
Speaker 6: whatever you're trying to like resist or like liberate, Like
Speaker 6: this person is going to stand in your way just
Speaker 6: by virtue of being the mayor. Like it's into what
Speaker 6: that is. So I think it's just a matter of
Speaker 6: being like clear eyed about that rather than like convincing
Speaker 6: yourself that you can somehow like co run the city
Speaker 6: like with the government.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna take a
Speaker 3: shot at a city on the other side of the world.
Speaker 3: But fuck it, I'm still mad about this.
Speaker 8: Okay.
Speaker 3: So the the nominal best case scenario for this inside
Speaker 3: an electoral framework was when Barcelona and Camu, which is
Speaker 3: this sort of left wing platform in Barcelona made of
Speaker 3: a bunch of ex anarchists I like, managed to get
Speaker 3: managed to get a semisabled majority of the city council.
Speaker 3: Then the first time they got their mayor elected, the
Speaker 3: first thing that that fucking mayor did, like a weekend
Speaker 3: of office, was she knew where all the squats were
Speaker 3: in Barcelona, And the first thing she fucking did was
Speaker 3: she knew which immigrant squat didn't have enough community support
Speaker 3: behind them to stop them from getting evicted, and she
Speaker 3: had them evicted. So you know, this is what happens
Speaker 3: when you put activists in charge. They they do a
Speaker 3: more efficient job of uh being the kind of insurgency.
Speaker 3: So oh my god, yeah, this is this is this
Speaker 3: is what you're getting into.
Speaker 6: Oh my god. Well yeah, and I mean then it
Speaker 6: also becomes like its own smoke screen, you know, like
Speaker 6: just using the fact that like, oh, I was elected
Speaker 6: by activists, or like I was elected by movement people,
Speaker 6: so like you know, I'm on your side, and just
Speaker 6: using it as like a shield against like every move
Speaker 6: and being like, well, I know this looks bad, but
Speaker 6: like you guys know, like I'm I'm your guy, Like
Speaker 6: I'm one of you, like like just trust me, Like
Speaker 6: we're doing this for the for the right reasons. It
Speaker 6: might look bad, but because I'm your guy, you know,
Speaker 6: it's okay. I mean, it's the same thing with like
Speaker 6: like a uh Biden and the and the border wall.
Speaker 3: Now I think ironically our episode on that is going
Speaker 3: to be the episode that comes right before this, so
Speaker 3: oh wait, sorry, sorry, two episodes. Sorry, There'll be two
Speaker 3: episodes before. Yeah, oh, and the two episodes after well
Speaker 3: is also going to be borderwall shit, So yeah, border
Speaker 3: wall bad. Fuck Biden from border wall.
Speaker 6: But it's like it's Brighten's border wall. He's doing all
Speaker 6: this shit. And then you know it's just if it
Speaker 6: was Trump, we know what the response would be from
Speaker 6: supposed progressives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't don't let people like put a code of
Speaker 3: paint on a turd and hand it to you and
Speaker 3: be like, no, it's good. Actually we don't have to
Speaker 3: do this.
Speaker 6: Right, But I mean, also the border wall. Do you
Speaker 6: remember there was a brief flash of time in October
Speaker 6: when when Brandon Johnson and his team announced they were
Speaker 6: going to visit the border wall and then it only
Speaker 6: lasted like twenty four hours, seventy two hours. I don't
Speaker 6: know when, but at some point then they like very
Speaker 6: quickly reversed the decision when they realized like how bad
Speaker 6: that would look as we have like like at that time,
Speaker 6: there were thousands of people in police like thousands of
Speaker 6: migrants to it who had traveled here and staying on
Speaker 6: police station floors, and there was like they were gonna
Speaker 6: have this publicity stone want went to a while, and
Speaker 6: then they changed their minds about it, and we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: this is probably a bad idea. But it's become this
Speaker 6: this like Pilgrimage site. I mean, like I know, AOC
Speaker 6: went there. It's like liberal politicians like go there to
Speaker 6: be like, oh, this is so terrible and then they like,
Speaker 6: you know, just kind of let Biden make it worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this this has been that, this has turned
Speaker 3: into the liberal groups elected on big promises, make your
Speaker 3: life worse episode. Well, this has been naked happen here.
Speaker 3: You could find us in the places where can people
Speaker 3: find you, just you.
Speaker 6: Know, on the Hell site which I know you're back
Speaker 6: on now unfortunately unfortunately. Yeah, you know, we have drinks
Speaker 6: Press dot org pro site and then yeah, Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 6: all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so go check out the Drinks Press people. They
Speaker 3: do they do great work. And yeah, cops, bad.
Speaker 6: Cops, bad cops, always bad cops, keep being bad.
Speaker 8: Hi everyone, it's James, and today I've got a two
Speaker 8: part episode for you. Initially, I'd planned to have my
Speaker 8: friends Emmitt and Dave talk to me about the shelters
Speaker 8: that we've all been building in Aucumber because the weather's
Speaker 8: getting worse and worse. But we're able to connect with Amos,
Speaker 8: who is one of the migrants who has spent time
Speaker 8: in outdoor detention sadly, and then in indoor detentions you'll
Speaker 8: hear and I really wanted to sort of refocus this
Speaker 8: episode on sharing Amos's story because I think, as I've
Speaker 8: said countless times right that if we don't spent the
Speaker 8: migrants in our reporting about migration, then we're doing it wrong.
Speaker 8: And so you will hear introductions from Dave, and you
Speaker 8: will hear introductions from Emmett, and you'll heard a little
Speaker 8: bit from them next episode about how we're bullying they,
Speaker 8: but we'll bring you that episode another time, because I
Speaker 8: wanted this episode to be mostly about Amos's migration journey.
Speaker 8: Hello everybody, it's me James. I am hosting it could
Speaker 8: happen here today again and I'm joined by my friends
Speaker 8: Amos and Emmett and potentially later our friend David. We're
Speaker 8: going to talk today again about the situation in hit
Speaker 8: the Komba. Amos is one of the people who we've
Speaker 8: detained in the outdoor detention sites, and it's going to
Speaker 8: explain some of his experience. And then Emmett is someone
Speaker 8: who has been working with a group of people, including myself,
Speaker 8: to build shelters for migrants to build slightly more permanent,
Speaker 8: slightly more improved shelters. Unfortunately, border patrol has taken upon
Speaker 8: themselves to instruct migrants to destroy those shelters, and so
Speaker 8: we're going to talk about how we build them, what
Speaker 8: we learn when we're building them, and unfortunately the fact
Speaker 8: that they have been destroyed. So I'm going to ask
Speaker 8: my three guests to introduce themselves. David is here now,
Speaker 8: so we'll start with you, Amos, and then and then David,
Speaker 8: just tell us who you are and anything you think
Speaker 8: is relevant about yourself.
Speaker 1: So I guess thank you for the invite. I appreciate
Speaker 1: the opportunity to add whatever I can to this very
Speaker 1: very important subject. I happen to be. I call myself
Speaker 1: an accidental and legal immigrant, if you want to put
Speaker 1: it that way. Due to some family circumstances, I found
Speaker 1: myself following a the new migratory road, I mean roads
Speaker 1: that has taken me through I lost count ten or
Speaker 1: twelve countries starting from North Africa all the way to
Speaker 1: the border with the United States. So that's me, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I would I would love nothing
Speaker 1: more but to add to this conversation.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I am. My name is Emitt.
Speaker 9: I am a volunteer with Borlands these collectives.
Speaker 8: And then David, would you like to finish up by
Speaker 8: introducing yourself him.
Speaker 7: My name is David.
Speaker 10: I'm a volunteer with Borderlands Relief Collective as well as
Speaker 10: Detention Resistance. I do water drops and I've also been
Speaker 10: helping out as a volunteer in the Border Patrol Open
Speaker 10: Air Detention site doing uh work as a medic and
Speaker 10: helping out building.
Speaker 8: These great Yeah, thank you, thank you so much everyone.
Speaker 8: So I think everyone will be interested in hearing Amos's story.
Speaker 8: So as far as you're comfortable sharing, Amos, and there's
Speaker 8: no need to share anything that you're not comfortable with
Speaker 8: or don't want to share. Can you tell us about
Speaker 8: your journey from North Africa to the United States. And
Speaker 8: I think we've been particularly interested in, like how people
Speaker 8: are finding out about these obviously these big gaps in
Speaker 8: the war that that are in Cucumber, and how people
Speaker 8: are ending up there from all over the world.
Speaker 1: Now right, well, buckle up. It's a long journey, James.
Speaker 1: It's a long one.
Speaker 11: So for me personally, it started with.
Speaker 1: A sort of an accidental separation from my family, my
Speaker 1: wife and kids for reasons proportionate reasons have to go
Speaker 1: to go back to the United States, and I was not.
Speaker 1: I was the the visa to join them. They went
Speaker 1: for initially two mourn the loss of a brother in law,
Speaker 1: I mean a brother in law, and unfortunately I wasn't
Speaker 1: able to get there by obtaining a visa to do so.
Speaker 1: So I spent six seven months arguing with the embassy.
Speaker 1: Was not given any legal reasoning for whye and my
Speaker 1: visa was denied. I've lived in the United States for
Speaker 1: the sixteen years. I've had a Clington record with one
Speaker 1: arrest and release and it was part of a protest
Speaker 1: that really that happened in Los Angeles and were released
Speaker 1: right away. And basically I left in twenty fifteen. I'd
Speaker 1: got to think the clean hands, no issues and then
Speaker 1: going back to Tunisia where I was with my new
Speaker 1: family anyhow. So so basically I was denied visa I
Speaker 1: really wanted to do. I've never done anything illegal in
Speaker 1: my life. I wanted to do the legal route, following
Speaker 1: what's what's been always told that you know, follow their
Speaker 1: legal route, don't don't come ilegally. So so that was
Speaker 1: not even a question in my mind. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: the wife is American, the kids are American. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just it shouldn't be an issue. But I really
Speaker 1: was confronted with I mean, I can safely say bye
Speaker 1: by now it's a bias.
Speaker 12: It's it's got to be some racism just by by
Speaker 12: by deduction really, because when you run out of reasoning,
Speaker 12: you have to really start making these sad and you
Speaker 12: know said conclusions.
Speaker 11: So yeah, so basically no, again, that was that took.
Speaker 1: Me on a long and painful depression and anxiety and
Speaker 1: a cocktail of mental health issues that I'm still actually
Speaker 1: dealing with right now. And it took my kids, my
Speaker 1: two kids, my beautiful kids, through therapy and they're still
Speaker 1: going through therapy. My wife is going through therapy. I'm
Speaker 1: going through therapy, and it took it blew apart in
Speaker 1: this family. We're still trying to figure out why so
Speaker 1: much you know nothing but could define it but hate. Really,
Speaker 1: there is no other way of putting it. So and again,
Speaker 1: I just the discussion was with my friends in America
Speaker 1: has been very difficult because they have no understanding or
Speaker 1: concept of what, you know, the diplomatic core is doing.
Speaker 1: And what is the these embassies are doing because there
Speaker 1: is no there is no access to them by Americans.
Speaker 1: It's just usually foreigners who do. And that really creates
Speaker 1: like this black hole of tax money going to these embassies.
Speaker 1: And then what they're doing is just just with a
Speaker 1: stroke of a pen, yes, yes or no, no explanation.
Speaker 1: You can't sue, you can't appeal, you can't do. It's
Speaker 1: absolute power. And then you know, I'm I'm mentioning this
Speaker 1: that the embassy is because through my journey, through this
Speaker 1: long and painful journey, I've met time and time again
Speaker 1: other fellow immigrants who again tried to go through the
Speaker 1: League route were denied with no reason, with no like
Speaker 1: no written reason, no no valid reason. So again you
Speaker 1: know this this discussion on and off again, and you
Speaker 1: know among American citizens as to why people are showing
Speaker 1: up in the border, well, I mean, at least in part,
Speaker 1: what I see is no accountability whatsoever to the embassies.
Speaker 1: Like time and time again, you have these embassies denying
Speaker 1: people who are trying to do it the right way,
Speaker 1: trying to do it. They either have family or work
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they're denied time and time again. And
Speaker 1: then you have, you know, and the hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: going through process, and of course they try, they try,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they have no choice. So I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this is the only explanation, but it's a big
Speaker 1: part of it. I've spoken for people who are crossing
Speaker 1: and who are on the way from anywhere from Brazil
Speaker 1: to Colombia to Ecuador, to Panama, to Nicaragua, to Guatemala
Speaker 1: to Belize, in Mexico, all across. I've come across so
Speaker 1: many people and they, you know, at least I mean,
Speaker 1: my little humble mass I would say fifty to sixty
Speaker 1: percent have tried through embassies, but unfortunately you know that,
Speaker 1: you know, they just turned down. So this is an
Speaker 1: issue that is not talked about. This is an issue
Speaker 1: they really get away with Scott Free. I mean they
Speaker 1: really don't. There's zero can I mean, there are gods.
Speaker 1: I mean the ambassador have zero accountability now, I mean
Speaker 1: he he is absolutely he has all the power and
Speaker 1: no cannability. I mean, rarely you see ambassador being recalled
Speaker 1: by Congress. Rarely you see an ambassador being questioned, hey,
Speaker 1: why are these these are demands being the client, why
Speaker 1: what are you doing about it all that stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: So this is this is some of the stuff I
Speaker 1: want to add to the conversation because nobody has ever
Speaker 1: mentioned this.
Speaker 11: Nobody talks about this.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so, yeah, it's very important. I think your experiences
Speaker 8: is far from unique, as you've said, right, I have
Speaker 8: seen hundreds of people carrying visa rejection letters come across
Speaker 8: the southern border. They've shown them to me, right. They
Speaker 8: are people who have been victims of some of the
Speaker 8: worst things that can happen to human beings, and they've
Speaker 8: survived them. And we've still refused to give these people
Speaker 8: a safe place, so they've had to take their journey
Speaker 8: in a more dangerous way.
Speaker 11: I mean, I didn't see a single round person in
Speaker 11: the embassy.
Speaker 1: It's all right again, I'm I'm I hope you guys
Speaker 1: don't feel like I've been like two.
Speaker 11: I'm just being honest because I see.
Speaker 1: It, and I'm I'm up to date of what people
Speaker 1: are talking about and all the discussions, and I see it,
Speaker 1: like you know, almost have a level of a of
Speaker 1: a right wing supremacy style, like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just you feel it.
Speaker 11: You feel it.
Speaker 1: It's thetter you have to be a quote unquote brown
Speaker 1: person or a minority person to feel it. I don't
Speaker 1: expect others to understand it, but we feel it. And
Speaker 1: this is a discussion I've had in detention with a
Speaker 1: lot of the fellow detainees. There is that sense, there's
Speaker 1: a sense that you know, we're being looked down at,
Speaker 1: not on our merits, but on you know, a little
Speaker 1: bit of you know, assumptions because of where you're from.
Speaker 1: Assumptions like you go in and it's already baked. It's
Speaker 1: already baked. It's already And this is me. I've had
Speaker 1: a visa from the US for sixteen years. I mean,
Speaker 1: it should be a slam dunk. You know. So my
Speaker 1: two kids are American, my wife, my wife is American.
Speaker 1: We are and til today are all confused as to
Speaker 1: why the denials happened. I mean, I've called Congress members
Speaker 1: that David was with me today when I was at
Speaker 1: the Congress Membership Shift Adam Shift in Bourbon, California, and
Speaker 1: we you know, even they don't have an answer as
Speaker 1: to why the denial happened.
Speaker 11: And you know, I mean to close my personal issue, James.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I was told that perhaps you were
Speaker 1: illegally in the United States between twenty thirteen twenty fifteen
Speaker 1: and then, but they can't say for sure that was
Speaker 1: the reason. But in detention when they when they didn't
Speaker 1: all the research on me, none of that existed, none
Speaker 1: of that. There's none of that. They released me because
Speaker 1: they have nothing against me.
Speaker 8: Nothing.
Speaker 1: And this is and this is the uscis, this is
Speaker 1: the Immigration Service, not the embassy coming up with some
Speaker 1: of these you know, bogus ideas. You know, so again
Speaker 1: it's a mess, and I feel like, you know this, this,
Speaker 1: this sees need to be looked into more because the
Speaker 1: border patrol ends up feeling the blunt of all this.
Speaker 1: But where does it start? Where is the source?
Speaker 11: I s always the question of where is the source?
Speaker 1: Where the source is? Yes, there's economic issues, there is,
Speaker 1: there is there is uh physical abuse, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff. But then also there's tax dollars being spent
Speaker 1: in the billions and the billions and hundreds of billions
Speaker 1: on these diplomatic course. I mean to be fair, my
Speaker 1: journey was not was not as difficult as many many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many stories that I've heard heart worming, I mean, really
Speaker 1: heartbreaking stories. My journey really, you know, I'm I'm somewhat
Speaker 1: to have a somewhat of a sophisticated life in the
Speaker 1: sense that you know, I spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: again we wasted. Most of the time that we wasted
Speaker 1: was waiting on the embassy because they kept on dragging
Speaker 1: and dragging their feet, six seven months waiting while my
Speaker 1: kids are crying on the phone, and you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have the income to to be able to able
Speaker 1: to have them come back to to to to Nisia
Speaker 1: where I was. So anyhow so, yeah, it started by researching, researching,
Speaker 1: reading a lot of articles, researching as far as North Africa.
Speaker 1: The route that is being used right now by mostly
Speaker 1: by a lot of Mauritanians and West Africans. This goes
Speaker 1: through Turkey and then from Turkey they're going to Nicaragua.
Speaker 1: Because Nicaragua Managua the capital of Nicaragua, they have allowed
Speaker 1: for visa and arrival, and then from and then from
Speaker 1: Managua there is literally almost like travel companies doing packaging
Speaker 1: packages for upwards to six seven thousand dollars from there
Speaker 1: to and then six seven thousand dollars from Nicarago. But
Speaker 1: before Nicaragua there's at least three four.
Speaker 11: Thousand dollars, so I'm told by.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the four Mauritanians that were detained, I'm
Speaker 1: told about tenth thosand dollars, which comes down to their
Speaker 1: local currency, about forty five thousand of their local currency,
Speaker 1: which is a lot, I mean a lot. So they so,
Speaker 1: like I said, so they managed to get the flights
Speaker 1: to Nicaragua. Managua has been on arrival for thirty days
Speaker 1: for North Africans, and then from there you got literally
Speaker 1: their journey through I don't know, coyotes, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call them, facilitators whatever, well established with buses through
Speaker 1: El Salvador, through what Honduras, Honduras and Salvador, Guatemala, and
Speaker 1: then through Mexico. So that's the route that's been you know,
Speaker 1: upwards of six seven thousand Mauritanians and West Africans as
Speaker 1: far as the last articles that I've read, have taken
Speaker 1: their route. So I looked into it. I couldn't afford it,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, this is just you know,
Speaker 1: I was sending money to my kids and wife because
Speaker 1: she I had to be on welfare. She just arrived
Speaker 1: there and she had to keep the kids at school
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of struggle, so I had to
Speaker 1: kind of try to help with that. On the same time,
Speaker 1: I was waiting on the embassy and we you know,
Speaker 1: and the WAF was calling them to see if can
Speaker 1: we expedite, can we do this, can we do this?
Speaker 1: But they were literally rude and and you know, treated
Speaker 1: her like a second class citizen. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: We still can't figure that out anyhow. So another route
Speaker 1: right now, which is a difficult route, is through Brazil
Speaker 1: because Brazil has a I don't know if you guys know,
Speaker 1: and I think they do that for Americans too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Brazil has sort of I don't know the word,
Speaker 1: but the equivalent to them is if you impose a
Speaker 1: visa on Brazil. Brazilians were imposed vision news. They do
Speaker 1: that to Americans too, So so you know where I'm from,
Speaker 1: they don't have a visa to as far as for Brazils,
Speaker 1: so we don't. So a lot of Africans can go
Speaker 1: to Brazil and from Brazil take the route all the way.
Speaker 1: So David mentioned the Amazon Strait where they crossed the
Speaker 1: jungle from Colombia to Panama and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: That is I mean, I'm yes, the Darian, the famous
Speaker 1: Darian that is to me personally. Man, it gives me
Speaker 1: chills because the two or three guys that one of
Speaker 1: them did it on his own with Google Maps. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't know how the hell he did it. I
Speaker 1: have no clue how he did it. I am. I
Speaker 1: was listening and trying to understand them. Oh, it was
Speaker 1: just heartbreaking, you know, the suffering. So but yeah, through
Speaker 1: Brazil and then Colombia and and keep on going that way.
Speaker 1: That's another route for me.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Again, I booked flights. I didn't all through that trouble,
Speaker 1: to be fair, but I've had some issues with vis
Speaker 1: is because North Africas don't get a lot of visa
Speaker 1: access around the Latin America. We don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of embassies there, we don't have a lot of trade,
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of commerce between our countries.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of an unknown uh, an unknown commodity
Speaker 1: in the sense that you know, everything is is, you
Speaker 1: know is new. For me. I was able to get
Speaker 1: a visa to Colombia, and I'm very grateful for to
Speaker 1: choose Columbia because it's a it's affordable. It's been a
Speaker 1: good experience for myself to get out of UH me
Speaker 1: get closer and on the same time figure out the
Speaker 1: lay of the land and understand where I'm going. So
Speaker 1: those I'm grateful for that. And from there my goal
Speaker 1: was to get a visa to Mexico, and a lot
Speaker 1: of and most of my American friends get are still confused.
Speaker 1: That's why I would need a Mexican visa. That's a
Speaker 1: whole other discussion. And then the Mexican visa has become
Speaker 1: extremely difficult, almost as difficult as the American visa because
Speaker 1: of pressure from the United States to stop the flow.
Speaker 1: So UH again we end up making it very difficult
Speaker 1: for people who want to legitimately do this. So finding
Speaker 1: an appointment for a Mexican UH embassy, then you find
Speaker 1: out which embassy of Mexico has the available. Some of
Speaker 1: them don't have ever, some of them have them two
Speaker 1: years from now. Some of them have them, you know,
Speaker 1: UH for a particular visa but not the other. And
Speaker 1: you know, so for me, it was Colombia, and then
Speaker 1: UH I found an appointment in in for for Mexican
Speaker 1: visa and belize UH but unfortunately I ended up in
Speaker 1: you know, going from Colombia to Panama to UH, Nicaragua
Speaker 1: to Guatemala, and then Belize because Belize has not a
Speaker 1: lot of UH flights UH from Latin America. And then
Speaker 1: when I got to Guatemala, all the previous countries allowed
Speaker 1: me to transit without a problem, but Guatemala decided to
Speaker 1: put me in a detention for almost forty hours and
Speaker 1: then wanted to return me back to original country because
Speaker 1: they yeah, So I'm like, I'm my plane departs a
Speaker 1: few hours of going to Belize. Why are you doing
Speaker 1: this please? I'm not on need the visit to Guatemala.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to Guatemala. Nothing, no discussion. They threw
Speaker 1: me in there, cockroaches, you name it, the whole Enchilada.
Speaker 1: I mean, no food, no water, no nothing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just sad, very sad, very sad, very sad.
Speaker 1: That was a really very sad And then so I
Speaker 1: was sent back to Panama, then from Panama to Colombia,
Speaker 1: and then Colombia that was going to send me back
Speaker 1: to North Africa. So it was going to be a
Speaker 1: really mess. So I had to use some of my
Speaker 1: customer service skills that have run through the years to
Speaker 1: wiggle myself where I this minute was able to help
Speaker 1: some friends buy a ticket to like, you know, in
Speaker 1: the midnight hour. Really they were going to send me.
Speaker 1: So I bought a ticket to Ecuador, where I had
Speaker 1: a visa for ninety days. So I was able to
Speaker 1: get out of that mess, stay in Guador for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and then try to get to Belize again.
Speaker 1: And the next time I was successful in going to
Speaker 1: Belize through Panama and then Nicaragua, then straight to Belize,
Speaker 1: avoiding Guatemala, and then Believe. I was there for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, and then I was able to get
Speaker 1: a visa to Mexico, thank God. And there was a
Speaker 1: lot of Russians, there was a lot of Turks, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of no no, no Turks, no Russians,
Speaker 1: and a lot of East Europeans trying to get a
Speaker 1: visa there too for Mexico. And basically from there it
Speaker 1: was the journey of taking a bus from Belize to Cancun,
Speaker 1: can Coon to Monterey Monterrey to Cabo. I found a job,
Speaker 1: a volunteering job in Fortois, Condido. I'm a yoga practitioner,
Speaker 1: and I found a yoga to treat there to try
Speaker 1: to help me with my mental health and all that stuff.
Speaker 11: So yeah, so and they're doing a great job.
Speaker 1: It's in the middle of the wilderness. They're really present,
Speaker 1: you know, working on natural preservation and in beautiful job
Speaker 1: they're doing there. And then from there Gambos and Lucas.
Speaker 1: Gambos and Lucas. I volunteered at a hotel to kind
Speaker 1: of be able to eat and sleep, and then from
Speaker 1: there Tijuana and Tijuana. I met someone earlier in can Kun,
Speaker 1: a Colombian who was all the time I was in Mexico,
Speaker 1: I was trying to do the app, the CVB one app.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and how was your experience with that?
Speaker 1: Because absolutely absolutely horrible, absolutely horrible, absolutely horrible. I mean
Speaker 1: it's just basically useless. It's useless. And I met people
Speaker 1: who've been there for two months on the app and
Speaker 1: it didn't work.
Speaker 8: Explain to me what didn't work about it? Like, did
Speaker 8: it LOK you out? Did it?
Speaker 1: I wish I can send you screen I have screenshots
Speaker 1: that can send you to you can understand what so
Speaker 1: so it tells you, that tells you, that tells you
Speaker 1: you're so you sign up, you put your information, you
Speaker 1: passport and all that stuff. And then basically what you're
Speaker 1: doing is you're you're in the queue, and it's there's
Speaker 1: like a lottery system where they see how long you've
Speaker 1: been waiting, how old are you, where are you from.
Speaker 1: There's like a lottery system that randomly selects people. So
Speaker 1: but again, you know, out of a close to one
Speaker 1: hundred people in my detention cell, you know room, everybody's saying,
Speaker 1: we all tried, and none of them, you know, got
Speaker 1: an appointment. I mean everybody wants an appointment. I mean,
Speaker 1: who's in the reds, who's in the right in his
Speaker 1: right mind would choose to forego an appointment and go
Speaker 1: do throughout that trouble. So and if we can do
Speaker 1: a little bit of math, eventually, at some point I
Speaker 1: spoke to the supervisor of the Border Patrol detention center
Speaker 1: and he told me there's eighteen hundred people at any
Speaker 1: given point in that place. So out of eighteen hundred people,
Speaker 1: and if my cell there was about six cells or
Speaker 1: something or more than that much more, much more the
Speaker 1: six seals and then four blocks, I think, sonya, So
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I mean if about out of one hundred,
Speaker 1: then you have nobody was able to use the app.
Speaker 11: Then what's what's to tell tell out of the eighteen.
Speaker 1: Hundred maybe nine nine percent, I mean all of them really,
Speaker 1: because if they did have appointment, Yeah, if they had appointments,
Speaker 1: there would have been not in there, right, I mean
Speaker 1: that's that's the key.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So, I mean it's just a flawed system. I was
Speaker 1: telling my wife yesterday, that's like ellipstick on a pig,
Speaker 1: because you know, you're just trying to make it look
Speaker 1: because you're doing something, but it's really it's really like
Speaker 1: there's nothing being done about it. And anyhow, so I'm
Speaker 1: still dazed, unconfused. I mean, I'm trying to understand the situation.
Speaker 1: So I literally I was the last one to get in,
Speaker 1: and literally I'm sitting there and I'm standing there at
Speaker 1: the border itself, at the wall, and I'm like, what's
Speaker 1: going on? Where is the border patrol? Where is the
Speaker 1: port of entry? Where is this? I'm not confused.
Speaker 8: After finding himself unable to make an appointment through CBP one,
Speaker 8: he must have decided to make his way to Accumber
Speaker 8: like thousands of other migrants. And I think it's worth
Speaker 8: pointing out here that nothing that he has done up
Speaker 8: to this point is breaking any laws. Right, It's not
Speaker 8: illegal to drive around in Mexico. It's not illegal to
Speaker 8: approach the border from the south. All of this stuff
Speaker 8: is the legal way to move around. No, no crimes
Speaker 8: have been committed. And it is course legal to cross
Speaker 8: the border and present yourself for assylum immediately upon doing so,
Speaker 8: even to cross between ports of entry. It's the discretion
Speaker 8: of the administration or the prosecutors to charge for that crossing.
Speaker 8: But that is a legal means to claim asylum. And
Speaker 8: so we'll let they must pick up again here as
Speaker 8: he takes his first step into United States.
Speaker 1: The first thing I say is, I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: there's some Fox News stuff because they were there were
Speaker 1: so aggressive camera and a brand new jeep and they
Speaker 1: were like, hey cool Google shoot shoot, and then you know,
Speaker 1: ladies and dudes and everybody was running and they were
Speaker 1: running after them to shoot them with the I mean
Speaker 1: with the camera. I mean, I mean, that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: And you can tell there is malicious intent behind what
Speaker 1: they're doing. It was not like trying to be sort
Speaker 1: of neutral or anything. They were just you know, anyhow,
Speaker 1: So I'm looking for a border patrol. I'm trying to say, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm finding for asylum. Where are you?
Speaker 11: What's going on?
Speaker 1: Nothing, there's nobody. So I'm just walking around with the
Speaker 1: with the around the world. I call my wife, I
Speaker 1: call some friends. Thank god it's to that signal. And
Speaker 1: then uh, yeah, I mean, you know, the first book
Speaker 1: Border patrolman that I saw, he was pissed off. He said,
Speaker 1: a few, a few, a few, this, move out of
Speaker 1: my way. Fine cool. Uh. I told him whatever I said.
Speaker 1: If I didn't like, I said, I'm sorry. And then
Speaker 1: I moved on and nobody's interested in even to talk.
Speaker 1: So and then I moved closer, closer to the crowd,
Speaker 1: and uh, I don't know if that's when I saw David,
Speaker 1: but it was almost almost almost yeah, And even when
Speaker 1: I saw David initially, but then I kept going to
Speaker 1: do to have an idea of the whole camp, camp
Speaker 1: and the whole like understand what the dynamics. I saw
Speaker 1: some National guardsmen, I saw some DHS police, and I
Speaker 1: saw some Border patrolmen. It's like a whole mix of people.
Speaker 1: And I think I think there was uh Park rangers.
Speaker 1: If I'm not, I'm not second Yeah, yeah, so ber
Speaker 1: lam Rangers. Yeah. So so it's a huge mix of people.
Speaker 1: And right away my my survivor instincts kind of you know,
Speaker 1: I I saw David and I saw tools, and my
Speaker 1: eyes opened up because you know, I worked and I
Speaker 1: built my farm from scratch in North Africa, and I
Speaker 1: have my tools are everything to me. So anyhow so,
Speaker 1: I'm glad I did see that that that familiar site,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate that. But you but you, David and Caissar,
Speaker 1: you guys were terrific. And yeah, I mean nobody spoke English.
Speaker 1: Nobody spoke English, nobody, and everybody's being treated like.
Speaker 11: I mean, I told one border performent, I have house,
Speaker 11: I have sheep.
Speaker 1: I treat them better the way you treat these guys.
Speaker 1: I really do. I truly do. And they were didn't
Speaker 1: like that kind of talk. But anyhow so, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I got really cold, I mean very quickly, and
Speaker 1: right away David and Scissor, thank god, had had some
Speaker 1: tools and we started, you know, working on getting some
Speaker 1: tents up and running. And uh, I mean they did
Speaker 1: most of the work really, I was just there helping,
Speaker 1: so uh and it was it was it was, dude,
Speaker 1: My heart was really pain giving me a lot of
Speaker 1: pain because in my mind I had my my my
Speaker 1: boy and my girl on my mind and I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to get to to them.
Speaker 11: But I seen these kids. Man, that was that was horrific.
Speaker 1: Man. That was not right. That was not right in
Speaker 1: that cold, it was just not right. And uh, I'm
Speaker 1: telling you still in my mind right now.
Speaker 11: I mean, I'm not gonna let you.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's just it's embedded, you know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it affects all of us. Like I would say,
Speaker 8: last night, I was a little baby there and I
Speaker 8: couldn't sleep coming home, you know, like I.
Speaker 1: Mean, you know, jeez, dude, like you know, the thing
Speaker 1: is this? You know? Okay, Again, I told David, uh,
Speaker 1: it's not a question of left or right. The question
Speaker 1: is so I get it. I spoke to Bush, a
Speaker 1: border patrol, and again I couldn't sleep at night. I
Speaker 1: basically kept on going. After David and Caesar left, I
Speaker 1: tried to sleep. I couldn't sleep. I called my kids.
Speaker 1: They sleep at eight forty eight thirty, so I spoke
Speaker 1: to them and then they were asleep. And then I
Speaker 1: got up and I.
Speaker 11: Kept walking around. Some people had a lot of woods.
Speaker 1: Some people didn't have enough wood, so and some people
Speaker 1: didn't want me to take some of their wood. I
Speaker 1: had to go pick up some wood and try to look,
Speaker 1: you know, make sure everybody's fire is up and running.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, when everybody had the fire and
Speaker 1: everybody kind of somewhat settled in, I figured, hey, let
Speaker 1: me if I'm up, let me talk to the border patrol.
Speaker 1: I spoke to the first one. He was kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, didn't want to talk, but still said a
Speaker 1: few things. But then another one originally from San Diego.
Speaker 1: Cool guy, really cool guy. He gave me the picture.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, listen, I mean, you know, we're here
Speaker 1: to work and the stress is a lot where we
Speaker 1: try and do the best we can. It's not our fault,
Speaker 1: and it's not you know what I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, And he told me, listen, you can go
Speaker 1: back to Tijuana, or you can go in the United
Speaker 1: States or do whatever you want. But if I pick
Speaker 1: you up outside of this area, you go straight to deportation,
Speaker 1: that's the bottom line. But if you stay here, you
Speaker 1: get to be picked up and processed and you'll have
Speaker 1: a chance to fight for your asylum. So again, excellent information.
Speaker 1: With the exception of even they don't know the process
Speaker 1: because you don't get to fight for asylum and detention
Speaker 1: and detention they release you on your recognizance and then
Speaker 1: later on you fight for asylum.
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1: And that's a misconception because everybody is saying. Everybody that
Speaker 1: I spoke to initially said yeah, you can fight for
Speaker 1: an asylum right in here, but it's not true. So
Speaker 1: but anyhow, so and then I spoke to a couple
Speaker 1: of National guardsmen, a couple of kids that in the
Speaker 1: early twenties from New York, from New York, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, just just a couple of kids.
Speaker 1: We started talking about hunting, We started talking about you know,
Speaker 1: fishing and stuff like that, and they were, you know,
Speaker 1: what do you expect. You know, they're doing their job
Speaker 1: and they're human beings doing what humans beings do. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I can absolutely sympathize and understand, you know,
Speaker 1: these guys' jobs. My only beef is like, do you
Speaker 1: have to be the I mean, yes, you're pissed. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of work. Yes it's frustrating, Yes it
Speaker 1: feels like your country is invaded. Blah bah blah, we
Speaker 1: get all that, but is you being mean, rude or
Speaker 1: downright evil? Is that going to change anything? It's not.
Speaker 11: These guys went through flicking the Amazon. I mean, at
Speaker 11: some point I swum with a crocodile.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know the crocodiles around. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: it's so weird that they're educated and they're informed, yet
Speaker 1: they still have that attitude. It's just like, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, it doesn't it.
Speaker 8: Doesn't, Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't help. And like like
Speaker 8: it doesn't matter what you think about policy, Like if
Speaker 8: there's a baby crying because it has no.
Speaker 1: They get cold. They became cold hearted, and it sucks
Speaker 1: because again I spoke to this guy from San Diego,
Speaker 1: which I really appreciate his you know sort of you know,
Speaker 1: he's he was very forward with me, and I appreciate
Speaker 1: that because it probably doesn't get to talk to anybody
Speaker 1: because nobody speaks English. So and then the idea is,
Speaker 1: you know, they're frustrated. They're with the system. They're frustrated
Speaker 1: with the with the capacity, with with the with the
Speaker 1: with the positions they're put in. Okay, I absolutely sympathize.
Speaker 1: You cannot go wrong with that. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: it's you have every right to to to to to
Speaker 1: be that way. Again, my beef is, why do you
Speaker 1: like good morning? A few, good afternoon, a few, good night,
Speaker 1: a few like like what it becomes so sad. It's
Speaker 1: just like, you know, loses it's importance. Even the war
Speaker 1: is no longer important, you know what I mean. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just too much, so much.
Speaker 8: It's very dehumanizings and it gets human.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, And I mean eventually I got inspired by
Speaker 1: David and Caesar, and I think they did a freaking
Speaker 1: amazing job. I mean, I just it was a shock
Speaker 1: in my system to see the contrast between I think
Speaker 1: it's the biggest necessary contrast in that specific place. You
Speaker 1: need to see the two sides of the American spirit.
Speaker 1: Right there. You have volunteers saying a few to the system,
Speaker 1: and you have borders men saying a few to the system,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: just a huge contrast, and that's what really gives hope
Speaker 1: for anything going forward. So I appreciate it. I don't
Speaker 1: think David and Caesar really understand how important what they're doing.
Speaker 1: It's extremely important it's very valuable. So to me personally,
Speaker 1: it's just the shaka, all the initial shock. I just
Speaker 1: went away really quickly because I saw tools and I
Speaker 1: saw David, and I knew what's going on because I
Speaker 1: volunteered in shelters in LA. In Los Angeles, I volunteered
Speaker 1: at the mission down at uh you know, downtown LA.
Speaker 1: You know on schied Row. If you hear of skid Row,
Speaker 1: I've volunteered there. And I mean, I know very well
Speaker 1: what homelessness looks like. So I've done Christmas service, I've
Speaker 1: done food service. Automatically, when I saw David, I just
Speaker 1: completely kicked in and I it was a natural thing
Speaker 1: for me to jump aboard and help. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: again I couldn't sleep. Early in the morning, like four
Speaker 1: or five, I started seeing some border patrolment coming in
Speaker 1: and right away the huffing and pufflin starts. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean, the traveling and all that business. Okay,
Speaker 1: and Uh initially I mean, I again I hate to
Speaker 1: use the word I, but I helped organize the crowd
Speaker 1: a little bit because the were fighting because they were
Speaker 1: the PP was VP was picking up UH people that
Speaker 1: have been there that they're just arrived, they're leaving the
Speaker 1: people that were there longer.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 1: For the ones that were that I stayed with, were
Speaker 1: there for four days, they didn't get picked up, and
Speaker 1: so that's a logistical issue, and people were just not
Speaker 1: being organized. So we did the line demarcation line. Those
Speaker 1: who were here for three days, they need to be
Speaker 1: here two days. One day. We did that, and then
Speaker 1: the first border patrolment that showed up on a g
Speaker 1: sorry yelling at me, you're doing our job. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry,
Speaker 1: I backed up. I backed up. I minded my business.
Speaker 1: And then another border patrolment tells me, hey, listen, listen, listen,
Speaker 1: I needed to do forty seven on the side.
Speaker 11: Forty seven on the side.
Speaker 1: I need to Yeah. I'm like, what's going on here? Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean again, I dropped my ego. I don't care
Speaker 1: as long as these guys get a chance to get through,
Speaker 1: because there was a lot of frustration where they're picking
Speaker 1: up people random and they're picking up leaving people that
Speaker 1: are been there for a long time. You had families
Speaker 1: that did not want to be separated, you had families
Speaker 1: that have been there longer, and you had you know,
Speaker 1: so it's just a huge miss missmash of situations and
Speaker 1: you know so, uh yeah, I mean eventually, on on
Speaker 1: on on the next day, early in the morning, we
Speaker 1: did some organizing and it seemed to me that we
Speaker 1: were much more fluid and and and the border patrolman
Speaker 1: filled up the bus and it happened to be one
Speaker 1: of them, one of the people that were picked up. Yeah, anyhow, so.
Speaker 8: But what a story? What did journey?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: It's insane. I'm still processing, man.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 8: I mean that's a traumatic experience. And yeah, it's just
Speaker 8: I guess one story. And like you said, there are thousands.
Speaker 11: Of them, thousands, thousands, all.
Speaker 8: Right, that's we were going to cut it off today
Speaker 8: and we will pick up again tomorrow to hear more
Speaker 8: about any of his journey, how he's found himself in
Speaker 8: the United States, where he's going, and where he is now.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much. I wanted to ask. So one
Speaker 8: of the people on the corner is Emmett. Emmett had
Speaker 8: helped build some other shelters. You may not know. And
Speaker 8: most there are three camps. Maybe David shaddis with you,
Speaker 8: similar to the one that you were in. There are
Speaker 8: three in different locations. Some of them are even colder
Speaker 8: than the one that you've stayed in, and volunteers including
Speaker 8: myself included Emmett, had built shelters. Emmett, perhaps you could
Speaker 8: describe like how you sort of decided to do that
Speaker 8: and came up with the shelter design that you came
Speaker 8: up with.
Speaker 9: Yeah, definitely, And I just just want to say I'm
Speaker 9: processing also a most is also hearing your story and appreciating,
Speaker 9: like for all of us coming to build shelters, it's
Speaker 9: it's it's realizing there's all these stories that we're are
Speaker 9: not knowing, and you know, all of us are these
Speaker 9: lives that are so independent individual and showing up and
Speaker 9: meeting folks who've been through whatever they have been and
Speaker 9: it like does it does stuff to us all?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 9: And I think I'm hearing you right now. I'm just
Speaker 9: really processing kind of what you're saying. And I hope
Speaker 9: many people hear how you're framing all this. Guys really
Speaker 9: appreciate how you're framing the story and how you're sharing
Speaker 9: both your perspective but also what it means to just
Speaker 9: be confused to think.
Speaker 1: So for for me.
Speaker 9: Like I've I guess I felt so even after many
Speaker 9: years of working.
Speaker 1: In this space.
Speaker 9: Just so confused by how or by how CVP is
Speaker 9: treating people in the in the oasis in this desert
Speaker 9: right now. But uh, basically it's winter time now in
Speaker 9: in in California, and for the last several months people
Speaker 9: have been kept overnight in in the desert on in
Speaker 9: the borderlands, which has been brutal, and it has been
Speaker 9: terrible and and and any humane have.
Speaker 1: First cup to keep people of the desert.
Speaker 9: But as it became winter, it became deadly and the
Speaker 9: risk of extreme hypothermia events for for hundreds of people
Speaker 9: became so severe that a lot of a lot of
Speaker 9: our you know, day in, day out, uh work to
Speaker 9: make sure people had food and if there were babies
Speaker 9: that they were taking care of as needed, or if
Speaker 9: if folks had specific health issues that we could show
Speaker 9: it for them. But but the thought of just doing
Speaker 9: that and hope, you know, bringing as many blankets as
Speaker 9: we could. Uh, We're bringing up blankets and tents and
Speaker 9: tarps things keep people off the ground, you know, basically
Speaker 9: looking in our basements and asking all of our friends, like, hey,
Speaker 9: we're looking behind every gas station for for for boxes
Speaker 9: of cardboard or whatever it is. But that just didn't
Speaker 9: seem enough.
Speaker 1: It didn't.
Speaker 9: It seemed like we were actually doing a harm to
Speaker 9: be to be the ones who had seen this and
Speaker 9: something we deal with israelizing. There's so many folks who
Speaker 9: just don't know what's going on. So for us to
Speaker 9: be a community seeing this and not not taking to
Speaker 9: the next the next level and its still I feel
Speaker 9: this way, but it felt like we were not doing
Speaker 9: or we were actual doing a harm by not by
Speaker 9: not kind of addressing the winter as it was happening.
Speaker 9: So the idea of building shelters was was to try
Speaker 9: to basically do do something more than just bringing out
Speaker 9: supplies and letting people you know, vent for themselves, but
Speaker 9: creating something that might actually create more of a long
Speaker 9: term safety. And then again, I mean this is this
Speaker 9: is these are detention sites. We are we are working
Speaker 9: as volunteers inside of a basically informal detention site that
Speaker 9: CBP is operating. So it's a very confusing for us
Speaker 9: to know, you know, we're here trying to be with
Speaker 9: people directly, trying to see what people are wanting and
Speaker 9: needing and what is their their needs, but we're also
Speaker 9: kind of navigating around this very erratic system that is
Speaker 9: sometimes denying us entry to these sites, sometimes trying to
Speaker 9: have us do things for them, and other times kind
Speaker 9: of allowing us to be there and you know, you know,
Speaker 9: bringing food because it serves them, serves VP for us
Speaker 9: to keep people alive. But that's a really confusing process.
Speaker 9: So anyways, there was a lot of talk going on
Speaker 9: about making shelters that people have been assembling palts, and
Speaker 9: one day I was just talking with some of the
Speaker 9: other organizers and we're thinking, well, 't's do this. I'll
Speaker 9: come back tomorrow and we will start. And so with
Speaker 9: with some volunteers from the Dollar Lunch Club from UC
Speaker 9: San Diego, we set out and to the campsite we
Speaker 9: call Tower one seven seven and started building this. And
Speaker 9: immediately kind of as you're saying, also, Amos, we had
Speaker 9: about a team of ten people from Columbia and Kyrghistan
Speaker 9: helping us build this.
Speaker 3: This shelter.
Speaker 9: From palettes, cardboard, plastic, sheeting, tarts, and James and myself
Speaker 9: and some other folks had been talking the night before
Speaker 9: what are the different shelters and using all of our
Speaker 9: outdoor experience, worlderness experience and kind of putting it all
Speaker 9: together and having kind of a roundtable discussion like well,
Speaker 9: I've seen this work before, I've I've done this before.
Speaker 9: I mean, this might work, might be, this might be
Speaker 9: a nice way of using these palettes, trying to find
Speaker 9: something that'll be stable to uh, you know withstand wind conditions,
Speaker 9: it being kind of you know, resource smart, making sure
Speaker 9: we're not over using whatever would we have, and some
Speaker 9: sort of super intricate design and also something that we
Speaker 9: could we could assemble quite quickly and would be versatile,
Speaker 9: so something we could do in different different settings. And
Speaker 9: also building something and building a design that wouldn't wouldn't
Speaker 9: be super hard for people to use. So yeah, so
Speaker 9: it just felt like we were kind of just like
Speaker 9: kind of putting putting our herds together. And that's what
Speaker 9: we came up with was basically this super shelter that
Speaker 9: was has basically a backbone of six palettes and maybe
Speaker 9: I don't know, James, it's possible to like some some
Speaker 9: photos or what whatnot, but putting together basically great, right, Yeah,
Speaker 9: some sort of ur like structure that can be kind
Speaker 9: of designed or can be changed as it wouldn't be
Speaker 9: and especially something that anybody who's using it gets to
Speaker 9: actually have mimic their own their own home, their own setup,
Speaker 9: So it's not something that we're kind of dictating how
Speaker 9: it needs to be used. But yeah, we've got to
Speaker 9: had a really positive experience and a lot of expertise
Speaker 9: from folks from from Kyrgyzstan to kind of lead the way.
Speaker 9: So we brought tools and other folks who were you
Speaker 9: going to use it? Basically creditd them created shelter themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 9: so that that was that was that, that was our
Speaker 9: first experience and yeah, and.
Speaker 8: Most his point was really a good one and it's
Speaker 8: one I'd considered too, like it it's quite Yeah, I
Speaker 8: don't want to compare the difficulties we encounter as volunteers
Speaker 8: to the difficulties so almost has just encountered, has just
Speaker 8: kind of shared with us in his journey because they're
Speaker 8: not the same, but like, it can be quite different.
Speaker 8: I speak quite a few languages, but still with large
Speaker 8: groups of people who you can't speak to, and do
Speaker 8: you want to connect? You want to be like what's
Speaker 8: happening to you is it's it's disgusting and disgraceful and
Speaker 8: it's not me. I'm not I don't want it to happen,
Speaker 8: and it shouldn't be. And I want to be in
Speaker 8: community with you as much as I can. And so
Speaker 8: when we don't have that language, the way that we
Speaker 8: can connect. One of the ways that we can connect
Speaker 8: is to grab a hammer or its screwdriver or something
Speaker 8: and stop building.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. You're so right. You're
Speaker 1: so right, James, you are so on pointed. No, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just seeing that that real B drill
Speaker 1: was like heaven to me. I mean, I swear not
Speaker 1: to give you know, any brands or whatever. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying it's not It's not my favorite brand for sure,
Speaker 1: But but but you really, really, I mean truly like
Speaker 1: you guys say, I mean, it's just such an universal
Speaker 1: sort of language. Like as men and as women and
Speaker 1: as people, we want to build, we want to protect,
Speaker 1: we want we want to I mean, I'm taking this
Speaker 1: journey to come to my kids and show them support
Speaker 1: and safety and protect. And it's happening, you know right now,
Speaker 1: I'm talking. I was talking to them earlier, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're excited to see their dad soon and you know,
Speaker 1: just that that feeling of warmth, and I mean, this
Speaker 1: is what we do. This is what we do. And
Speaker 1: then if you want to narrow it down and break
Speaker 1: it down to the basics, it's just what it is.
Speaker 1: It's the human level, it's the human condition. I mean really,
Speaker 1: so these guys are going to go through this pain
Speaker 1: for what I mean, clearly they're going through you know, worse,
Speaker 1: worser things. And then that's the whole point, that's what
Speaker 1: they're trying to do. So and then, uh, before I forget,
Speaker 1: and then I don't hope, I hope my phone doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, die on me. Let me just give you
Speaker 1: the detention. If you guys haven't, let me give you Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: before I you know, so basically on I think it
Speaker 1: was Monday.
Speaker 13: We we uh get rounded up to what is can
Speaker 13: easily be compared to the cattle I wrench cattle kind
Speaker 13: of process where you know, here, take off your.
Speaker 1: Your your belts and everything that's familiar, but you know
Speaker 1: it's a little extra. The bus driver is cussing a
Speaker 1: t you like it's nobody's business, and and and you know,
Speaker 1: gratuitous humiliation.
Speaker 11: And you know, maybe you have one of them is nice.
Speaker 1: But the rest are just you know, absolutely want to
Speaker 1: just carry you down as much as they can. And anyhow,
Speaker 1: so we're lined up, we're onto this bus that's behind
Speaker 1: the camp.
Speaker 11: Closer to Highway eighty I believe Highway eighty.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, and uh uh and basically we're lined up,
Speaker 1: we're tagged, we're uh, basically stripped of everything that could
Speaker 1: be quote unquote dangerous. We're left with only one shirt
Speaker 1: in the middle of that cold morning. And uh doesn't
Speaker 1: man and man doesn't matter, man woman. Everybody is treated
Speaker 1: as saying I appreciate their their equality on that issue.
Speaker 1: Uh So, and then we are on a bus journey
Speaker 1: that's about an hour and a half, maybe two hours
Speaker 1: anymore to the Uh. I'm trying to remember this very
Speaker 1: well because it's just, you know, it's important. I guess
Speaker 1: San Diego, Uh, the San Diego Sorting Facility, san Diego
Speaker 1: District Sorting Facility a k A. M c U, that's
Speaker 1: what we call it. And basically, uh, you know, your
Speaker 1: your stuff is sorted and anything that needs to be
Speaker 1: thrown with a thrown away and you're given you become
Speaker 1: a let me be clear, you become a subject. You're
Speaker 1: a subject. Now you're not an alien. You're a subject. James,
Speaker 1: make sure you understand this. You're a subject, sir. Let's
Speaker 1: be clear about the naming structure. You are a subject,
Speaker 1: all right. So I'm given a subject number and yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't believe in this day and age,
Speaker 1: I got used to the whole alien thing, you know,
Speaker 1: alien number, but now it's a subject number. So anyhow,
Speaker 1: so we're done. We're going through that. And then you
Speaker 1: you know, you just look at people and the daisiness
Speaker 1: and the confusion and confusion elders, women, babies. It's just
Speaker 1: heart taking. And again you had a couple of military
Speaker 1: order performance all and acting like they're in the Marine Corps.
Speaker 1: They're just shouting up the right and they're like, you know,
Speaker 1: treating people that they were disposable. So that's right there.
Speaker 1: Uh anyhow so that's the they call it the intake.
Speaker 1: So you're you're doing the intake and you're lined up
Speaker 1: and you're being stripped, not striptured, searched. You're searched, and
Speaker 1: then your your backpack is taking away. You open it
Speaker 1: up in front of them as if you were at
Speaker 1: the airport, and then they throw away stuff.
Speaker 11: That's that, even though they're not what's crazy is there?
Speaker 1: The backpack is gonna be h zipped and they're gonna
Speaker 1: be tagged and put away. So I'm not sure why
Speaker 1: thrown away food from the backpack is going to add
Speaker 1: anything or anyth Some things don't make sense, but I
Speaker 1: guess that's what it is. So then you're you're you're
Speaker 1: done with the intake, your sit down inside the central
Speaker 1: area and you're waiting to be processed.
Speaker 11: Processing means fingerprints, picture.
Speaker 1: And then you're right down they take a copy of
Speaker 1: your passport and in there you write down the address
Speaker 1: in which you will be quote unquote released later on.
Speaker 1: So that's that, and then basically a couple of hours later,
Speaker 1: you're assigned a detention cell. It's not it's a big place,
Speaker 1: and it's not a cell like a small cell. It's
Speaker 1: probably I don't know, twenty by. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: bad with that business. But any of the point is
Speaker 1: we're there, we're taking to this place. I don't know, James,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you think of this. So so
Speaker 1: they don't put handcuffs on us, but they tell you
Speaker 1: to put your hands behind your back as you're walking.
Speaker 8: Yeah, very strange.
Speaker 1: I don't understand. What's the point of that. Like they
Speaker 1: insist on putting your hands as if they were handcuffed
Speaker 1: behind your back as you walk. It as as you're walking.
Speaker 1: That is a big rule. And if you don't do it,
Speaker 1: they get pissed at you. And I'm not gonna at you.
Speaker 1: I'm always testing the water. And I pissed them off
Speaker 1: a number of times. I did put my hands forward
Speaker 1: because I'm like, what what are you trying to get to?
Speaker 1: You know? Anyhow, so you get into your cell. Mine
Speaker 1: was two A right, two A yeah. Pod. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's called they called pods.
Speaker 3: Pods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Because you know we're we're into share
Speaker 1: what is it, work share spaces basically pods.
Speaker 11: Said, yeah, we work here, we go, we work.
Speaker 1: So we were there. You're giving gym mats gym matts,
Speaker 1: and then you know, when we all put our gym
Speaker 1: mats on the floor, imagine there is zero space in between,
Speaker 1: Like the whole pod is covered with gym mats. Now
Speaker 1: you have to walk on gym mats basically anywhere you go.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's that's the fact. And then you're
Speaker 1: giving these what do you call them? There's the not thermos,
Speaker 1: the alloy foil blankets whatever.
Speaker 8: We have blankets, yeah, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those guys and they do kind of work. But
Speaker 1: for me, they're too small. I mean, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: a tall guy. I mean, I don't know. So either
Speaker 1: your foots are sticking out or your head is sticking
Speaker 1: out or whatever. And I'm not the only one. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of people like that. So and then AC
Speaker 1: is blasting full speed twenty four to seven light, full
Speaker 1: bright light twenty four seven and yeah, and then a
Speaker 1: lot of you know again, they teach this in school
Speaker 1: in psychology. Want to want so light twenty four to seven,
Speaker 1: AC freezing. I see, we're only allowed the shirt one shirt,
Speaker 1: one shirt. And then I'm talking about probably they have
Speaker 1: it on fifty five sixty sixty sixty no more than
Speaker 1: sixty degrees for sure, all right. And then you have
Speaker 1: people cold and getting sick. And then they cleaned three
Speaker 1: times a day to their credits where we all have
Speaker 1: to get out so the cleaning crew could come in.
Speaker 1: But here's the key. They clean at eight in the morning,
Speaker 1: at the at five in the afternoon, and at midnight.
Speaker 8: You can't sleep.
Speaker 14: Come on, dude, really seriously, and God forbid you ask
Speaker 14: God forbid you ask, because that's just not allowed, you know.
Speaker 14: So midnight, exactly, midnight sharp, get out people, everybody sleep,
Speaker 14: everybody sleep, get up, get up, get up, get out,
Speaker 14: and there's no again. It's it's it's you know, we
Speaker 14: know these tactics, we read about these.
Speaker 1: This is like, you know, torture in a way.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: I bet you somewhere in the Geneva Convention there's something
Speaker 1: about this. I mean, I'm sure, yeah, So so, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to create too much drama the first day, James.
Speaker 1: The second day I started testing the water. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm being nice to everybody. Nobody speaks English,
Speaker 1: so I have to kind of speak up for people.
Speaker 1: You know, some people need to go medicine, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, medicine or whatever. I speak for that whatever.
Speaker 1: And then some people are just don't understand when their
Speaker 1: name is called for it because it's misspelled. So I'll
Speaker 1: help for that, you know. In general, like you know,
Speaker 1: I literally would walk around and ask for extra blankets
Speaker 1: and things like that. It's all of being doing. I
Speaker 1: hope the video will come out and we're doing a
Speaker 1: few Freedom of Information Act requests. Hopefully we can get that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll share that with you. I mean it takes.
Speaker 1: I mean they're gonna fight at tooth and nay, they're
Speaker 1: gonna fight at tooth and nail. Oh yeah, exactly, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you exactly. Sonyhow so uh yeah. After the second
Speaker 1: day again they give you for I mean food, I
Speaker 1: guess food. Yeah, they give you food. The second day,
Speaker 1: I started asking the question, Okay, when am I going
Speaker 1: to get my phone call? The first person said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll cast on to your request. By the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I've asked like three.
Speaker 11: Four times to three four different people.
Speaker 1: So the pods area is manned supervised by DSS police
Speaker 1: and then the processing in the central area is done
Speaker 1: by VP, and VP and Customs and DSS hate each other.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just clear. They told me that to
Speaker 1: my face. They don't get along all right, Right, So
Speaker 1: when you were talking to DSS policicals, they're the one
Speaker 1: kind of the prison guards. They just don't then talk
Speaker 1: to VP. They don't convey the information that you're as
Speaker 1: a prisoner there. So that's been difficult. So you would
Speaker 1: want to ask to go to the or something, so
Speaker 1: on the way you can try to pass on then
Speaker 1: sony know, so I kind of located the situation. And
Speaker 1: then on the second day, I asked three times I
Speaker 1: need my phone call. They came out and told me,
Speaker 1: you're crazy. We don't do phone calls. Stop asking. So
Speaker 1: you're telling me I'm a us soil. I you know,
Speaker 1: I don't get to see the outdoor twenty four to seven,
Speaker 1: and you don't let me make a call to my
Speaker 1: lawyer or family. And that's when I just lost my
Speaker 1: my ship. So that by the end of the second day,
Speaker 1: I entered into a hunger strike. Wow, my body shut yeah,
Speaker 1: my body shut down completely. My body shut down completely.
Speaker 1: People were that that known me to be constantly active.
Speaker 1: I do I do yoga. I do I did yoga.
Speaker 1: Did you know? People will started following me doing activities
Speaker 1: and trying to be sharp, you know, stay sharp. They
Speaker 1: saw me shut down completely. I didn't I didn't eat
Speaker 1: or drink anything. I mean completely, I shut down everything,
Speaker 1: all systems of board. That's it. So right away my
Speaker 1: eyes are closed. The next day they start freaking out.
Speaker 1: They bringing the wheelchair, but before they you know, just
Speaker 1: to let you know, before they put me on the
Speaker 1: wheelchair with the baton. They're just hammering me to make
Speaker 1: sure I'm this is real their hammer. I still have bruises.
Speaker 1: I still have like a red dot on my chest,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 11: So so yeah, I mean, you know the kindness of
Speaker 11: their heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, they're very hateful because of where they are
Speaker 1: and what's going on. So yeah, so uh yeah, So
Speaker 1: I'm taking to the nurse. The nurse tells me what's
Speaker 1: going on. I thought, look, my body has shut down.
Speaker 1: My wife and kids don't know where I'm at. They
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm life or death or dead, and
Speaker 1: I just can't eat or drink or anything. Listen, sir,
Speaker 1: it's okay if you don't want to eat, but you
Speaker 1: have to drink well at least water, or we're gonna
Speaker 1: put the iv We can give you IV or medical
Speaker 1: or anti depressants or anti anxiety medicine. Listen, lady, I've
Speaker 1: never had the time depressant or medication. I rarely take medication.
Speaker 1: I would not have medication. That is not an option.
Speaker 1: I don't want the ivy. I don't want you to
Speaker 1: touch my body. Period. I am this is me fully
Speaker 1: where what the consequences are and unless I get a
Speaker 1: hold of my Laura, or call my family and tell
Speaker 1: them that I'm alive or where I'm at. This is
Speaker 1: gonna go. Last time I did this, I did it
Speaker 1: for four or five days, no problem. So they started
Speaker 1: freaking out. James there really they called the big guns.
Speaker 1: I think he was a lieutenant or whatever the ranking is.
Speaker 1: He came in, listen, what's going on? What are you doing? Man?
Speaker 1: They can't be doing this in my house again, my house.
Speaker 1: The guy owns the place, all right. So I'm like, listen, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm done. If you don't give me my call, expect
Speaker 1: me to do this for the I'll go to the end.
Speaker 1: I've done this against corrupt governments and when I was
Speaker 1: arrested in Tunisia or whatever.
Speaker 11: I can do this all day long, man, all day long.
Speaker 1: So he's like, you can't do this. This is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I have eighteen hundred people here. You're going to start
Speaker 1: a problem. I don't want problems here. So he takes
Speaker 1: me straight up to the central area, put me in
Speaker 1: front of phone, give me the phone number. I give
Speaker 1: him the phone number. He does my wife bam, bam, shazam.
Speaker 1: I call her. They were still asleep at seven in
Speaker 1: the morning. They have school at eight thirty, so I
Speaker 1: live her a voicemail. I later found out that she
Speaker 1: did get the voicemail, thank god, and then she felt
Speaker 1: really good when she heard my voice and she knew
Speaker 1: you yeah, yeah, So I don't know, tell you man,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a no man's land and it's
Speaker 1: just dude. When I got to talk to the supervisor,
Speaker 1: when I escalated because they took my DNA, like what
Speaker 1: I told him, Look, what's going on? Why are you
Speaker 1: taking people's DNA? Like, what's going on? I told him,
Speaker 1: what are you accusing us for? What is the accusation exactly?
Speaker 1: He said, you're not accused of anything, and what am
Speaker 1: I guilty of? You're not guilty of anything? So why
Speaker 1: are you taking my DNA? And then when he's just
Speaker 1: because this is the guy, the main guy. This is
Speaker 1: the guy that I saw coming in an intake and
Speaker 1: then laid on an outcake. He's got like twenty screens
Speaker 1: in front of him, he's manning the border. He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the main guy. Like I say, it's him.
Speaker 1: So I told him, do you have your DNA your
Speaker 1: own DNA taking? He said yes, I did okay. I
Speaker 1: told him if your DNA was taken and you can
Speaker 1: take mine, that's fine. So they're taking people's DNA to
Speaker 1: put it in the database. And if you don't sign,
Speaker 1: they don't let you. They don't let you out. So
Speaker 1: you can stay there indefinitely until you do your DNA.
Speaker 1: How is this okay? Yeah?
Speaker 11: And you're not givet you of anything, James.
Speaker 1: You're not gilty of anything. That's the key. So you're
Speaker 1: not guilty of anything. I mean, I understand if you're
Speaker 1: arrested for a misdemeanor or a pelony, and you know,
Speaker 1: you know in states they take the DNA, I get it.
Speaker 1: But if you're there's no isation, there's no guilty, and
Speaker 1: yet you're taking my DNA for what for what? So so,
Speaker 1: so it was really rough. It was really rough.
Speaker 11: And then and they were very very nasty.
Speaker 1: I mean, one lady, miss Diaz, I will never forget her,
Speaker 1: Officer DEAs. I mean, she was cussing left and right,
Speaker 1: left and right, left and right. And then I lost it, man,
Speaker 1: when I when when she had me for I think
Speaker 1: they had me do sign papers again, all right? So
Speaker 1: I was simply asking why am I saying signing the
Speaker 1: same papers again, do you want to leave? What do
Speaker 1: you want to leave? Do you want to leave? What
Speaker 1: you want to leave? And then on the same time, James,
Speaker 1: as she talks to me, she pauses. She looks at
Speaker 1: her colleagues and she's smiling to them, and she's talking
Speaker 1: to them so nice. I simply told her, why are
Speaker 1: you talking nicely to your friends and you're so mean
Speaker 1: to us that? Why why are you doing this? Like?
Speaker 11: What is what is the problem?
Speaker 1: Did I did I?
Speaker 11: Did I call your names? Did I say something bad?
Speaker 1: No? But you know my friend. Yeah, But even if
Speaker 1: I'm not your friend, why are you clussing at me?
Speaker 11: Why are you saying these bad things that shut her down?
Speaker 1: That totally shut her down? James, I mean it was
Speaker 1: a completely different person after that because it was in
Speaker 1: front of her boss. It was in front of her boss.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm telling you, man, they're just this is
Speaker 1: what happens when you have zero accountability zero. I mean, anybody,
Speaker 1: this is basic fruit in understanding of psychology one O
Speaker 1: one that if you give someone ultimate power, they're going
Speaker 1: to take advantage. And you know, I don't know what
Speaker 1: to tell you, man. I feel bad for the people
Speaker 1: in that attention because you know, I'm not saying they're
Speaker 1: being tortured, but it's just a you know, the little
Speaker 1: drops of water on your head, Yeah, you know, the
Speaker 1: little you know, after a while you can turns up.
Speaker 1: So there's one guy from Russia that was there for
Speaker 1: three weeks, wow, three weeks. There's one guy from Brazil
Speaker 1: that was there for a week. Come on, man, I
Speaker 1: mean seriously, like that's too much.
Speaker 8: Yes, much, So that's crazy.
Speaker 1: You know, that was horrific. And then when I was leaving,
Speaker 1: uh I found out that they put the wrong address
Speaker 1: on my release form. And you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the US immigration bureaucracy, James,
Speaker 1: it is horrific. It is horrific. All it takes is
Speaker 1: the one the wrong digit in the address. They send
Speaker 1: the paperwork to the wrong address. Oh, we did it,
Speaker 1: we sent it. We don't care. We don't care, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And then you're basically waiting all
Speaker 1: your life. And then that's pretty much what happened to
Speaker 1: me before when I was in the United States. And
Speaker 1: then you know, they don't care always to take it
Speaker 1: up with the with the US postal postal service. Are
Speaker 1: you serious, Like you know you're going to put someone
Speaker 1: in jail and because he sent them the wrong address.
Speaker 1: Anyhow so, anyhow so I came back from the bus.
Speaker 1: The bus is loaded, we're leaving. I came back to the.
Speaker 11: Look you got you know, you got the wrong address here?
Speaker 1: Like you know, what's going on? Do you want to leave?
Speaker 1: What do you want to stay? Do you want to leave?
Speaker 1: That's all that's all they talked about. It's like a
Speaker 1: favor she's doing. It's not like a law thing. It's
Speaker 1: not the produe process. No, no, I'd be more than
Speaker 1: happy to stick you in there because you complain about it.
Speaker 1: A mistake that we made on your on your form.
Speaker 8: It's just yeah, the whole thing. It's just just don't
Speaker 8: need to make it as cruel and as hard and lit.
Speaker 8: People of people have died in the outdoor attention in
Speaker 8: another site, not the place where you were in San Diego,
Speaker 8: right like, And it's a tragedy and it it doesn't
Speaker 8: have to happen, and it doesn't have to be disandignified.
Speaker 8: And yeah, I didn't. I think maybe people will have
Speaker 8: disagreements about the immigration, the different immigration laws, and they
Speaker 8: might feel differently to the way I do what you do,
Speaker 8: David do. But I don't think anyone in their right
Speaker 8: mind would really justify the way you've been treated. And
Speaker 8: you can multiply that by thousands, right, and you're fortunate
Speaker 8: enough to be in relatively good health and not too
Speaker 8: young or not too old or to sick for this
Speaker 8: to be a deadly trip or right. And still it's
Speaker 8: obviously had a massive effect on you. And I can
Speaker 8: understand why, I mean, I'm.
Speaker 1: Having a little bit of nightmares against with you, because
Speaker 1: what bugs me the most is those kids. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then on top of it, it's overwhelming because I was
Speaker 1: thrust in a position where sadly, I mean, I had
Speaker 1: to pick up for a lot of people. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, yes, it's my family tragedy, I mean is
Speaker 1: an issue. But I mean, you know, I don't want
Speaker 1: to talk too much about what I did in Tunisia,
Speaker 1: but I was standing up against corruption and against bribery
Speaker 1: and things like that, and that costed me a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. And it cost me, I mean, being in
Speaker 1: a blacklist in a government that's ever going negatively.
Speaker 11: You know, I'm jailing activists and jailing for speech.
Speaker 1: It said that that Tunisia, the home of the art
Speaker 1: of spring now is turning into another dictator ships sadly.
Speaker 1: So you know, I didn't want to use that as
Speaker 1: a reason, but I mean it is what ruined my
Speaker 1: personal life because I was constantlyating, you know, harassed and
Speaker 1: and pushed and shopped by Tunesian you know, ay holes.
Speaker 1: Uh And then here I am to find myself and
Speaker 1: you know, like with a Dijah who kind of feeling
Speaker 1: well with these gratuities themselves for nothing, so that that
Speaker 1: kind of triggered me a lot, big time, James, and
Speaker 1: uh uh. And then I felt like, you know, what
Speaker 1: is life worth? I mean, I know I'm coming from
Speaker 1: my kids there, the love of my life, and and
Speaker 1: then my wife as well, but you know, I want
Speaker 1: them to remember their dad as someone who sticks up
Speaker 1: for fathers and you know, the you know, James, the
Speaker 1: the most difficult part were was David mentioned the Persian
Speaker 1: guys running guys. You know, I got annoyed a little bit, James,
Speaker 1: because they were really lining up behind me and holding
Speaker 1: my hand, begging me to help them get out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and because I'm.
Speaker 15: The only one that spoke the language, and it felt
Speaker 15: like you know, they didn't have any recourse and the
Speaker 15: detention center, I'm not gonna let you, James, that was
Speaker 15: very difficult.
Speaker 1: It was very difficult. That was very I felt like
Speaker 1: when I was leaving, I was leaving friends, brothers, brothers behind,
Speaker 1: and that stuck with me. Dude, Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: few people specifically that really really really really was stuck
Speaker 1: on me.
Speaker 16: And uh, this is uh what is this world war?
Speaker 16: What are we doing all this war? There's a genuine
Speaker 16: decent human beings. This country needs as many workers and
Speaker 16: as many new citizens as possible. Instead of just shoving
Speaker 16: these people with hatred, just align them, just give them
Speaker 16: a chance, just rehab, just kind of make sure they
Speaker 16: know the languages, they do all this and be good.
Speaker 16: They all want to work, they all want to be good.
Speaker 16: Nobody that I met there is into drugs or anything.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just it sucks because it's not it's
Speaker 1: not shooting you yourself on the foot.
Speaker 11: It doesn't make sense. And I really felt really sad,
Speaker 11: and on a on a lighter.
Speaker 1: Note, getting into eventually released and getting on the bus
Speaker 1: and going to the central uh the central Elementary, I
Speaker 1: believe in school, and I just got out of the
Speaker 1: bus and I can hear the voices everybody's calling, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, it's getting dark and I can't see I
Speaker 1: can't see the people. But I found like at least
Speaker 1: twenty or eighteen people that I that were with me
Speaker 1: there and they were like they were crying and they
Speaker 1: were like thank you, thank you, thank you, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know it was it was. It was really hard warming.
Speaker 1: It really was really hard warman. And I appreciate that
Speaker 1: the that they recognized what we did. We tried to
Speaker 1: do a bunch of more Italians, Colombians, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, you name it. It was just a Turkish, uh An,
Speaker 1: older gentleman, Iranian, the Iranians, the same Iranians that that
Speaker 1: that that I helped get onto the bus from from
Speaker 1: Willow the same guys. Eventually all I found them central
Speaker 1: and it was really nice to see them and for
Speaker 1: them to just literally jump on me almost and tell
Speaker 1: me thank you in so many languages.
Speaker 11: I appreciate that. So I just hope all this, this,
Speaker 11: this this kind of get somewhere where they understand that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be this way. It really doesn't
Speaker 1: and we're not asking I'm not asking.
Speaker 11: Either get more people or do this.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying there is little tweaks that are not
Speaker 1: meant to increase the integration or or make it impossible
Speaker 1: or anything. It's just little tweaks to, you.
Speaker 11: Know, to get this system a little better.
Speaker 1: That's all. That's all I'm saying personally.
Speaker 8: Yeah, make it a little kinder. And I think like
Speaker 8: it's always that way, right, Like it's people helping each other,
Speaker 8: even when the government doesn't help them, and.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8: We just got use. I was there yesterday that that
Speaker 8: all the shelters at one of the sites were torn down,
Speaker 8: so like it's we'll have to go back and build
Speaker 8: them again. But yeah, yeah, people will because I think
Speaker 8: we all, at least or of us here, I think
Speaker 8: people should be treated with dignity and that they deserve
Speaker 8: a little better than their being given currently. And have
Speaker 8: you been able to reunite with your your children yet
Speaker 8: or is that so in your future?
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's uh, technically on Thursday, suppose you're not
Speaker 1: with them. I am getting there on steps. I'm financially
Speaker 1: not viable right now. I'm relying on some friends to
Speaker 1: who got me up to Los Angeles right now, and
Speaker 1: then we're collecting money for guests and uh, my wife
Speaker 1: Lauren will be coming down on Thursday with the kids
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna go to her mom's in Lancaster
Speaker 1: for a Christmas party that she does, and then from
Speaker 1: there we'll make it back up to Pisonal and Insal.
Speaker 1: My wife was sheltering in but the house is overcrowded
Speaker 1: and there's no way I can stay there, so I'll
Speaker 1: be That's something that I'm trying to figure out and
Speaker 1: where to stay. And I don't have friends up there
Speaker 1: and don't have anything. Uh, so that's it's a problem
Speaker 1: that I'm having to deal with. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I was given April twelve as a court date and
Speaker 1: nice and I have to deal with a lawyer and
Speaker 1: the contact the lawyers, and they're expensive. The Progonal lawyers
Speaker 1: that we called h they don't take they're not taking
Speaker 1: new cases.
Speaker 6: So it's.
Speaker 1: I knew it was going to be difficult, but when
Speaker 1: you're in it and it's uh, you think that will
Speaker 1: be kind of a little better. But it's definitely not
Speaker 1: looking good. But you know, it'll be close to my
Speaker 1: kids somehow, and that's what matters to me. But it's
Speaker 1: just a struggle. I was a Congressmanship of Plase. I mean,
Speaker 1: what kind of resources you have for immigrants. I just
Speaker 1: need a little bit of a you know, start, so
Speaker 1: I can get back on my feet. And I kept
Speaker 1: them in touch since I was in Africa through the trip.
Speaker 1: They're the only congress office that at least interacted with us,
Speaker 1: me and my wife. But you know, she looked at
Speaker 1: me from from behind the glass door and she said
Speaker 1: good luck. She sent me the county Immigrant Affairs office, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, linked and she told me good luck, and
Speaker 1: then uh and said bye bye. And that's all that
Speaker 1: she did. So it's uh, it's tiring and not giving up,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's just it's very difficult change.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, it's yeah, it shouldn't be this hard. It's complicated,
Speaker 8: or this taxing, especially in your family here already.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to be I don't. I mean, my
Speaker 1: wife is on welfare and they keep cutting her welfare
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller, just you know, two kids. I just
Speaker 1: need a chance to get up the back on my
Speaker 1: feet and be a good father to work, and I
Speaker 1: can't work right now. I'm not allowed to work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have to find money, money for the lawyer.
Speaker 1: I have to find money for me and my kids.
Speaker 11: It's really quite a humbling experience.
Speaker 1: And I know I don't want to rely on anybody,
Speaker 1: but I mean, it's just it's just it's hard. It's hard.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, it is. And like I don't know how
Speaker 8: people are expected to pay for the legal representation and
Speaker 8: they're also expected not to work. It's just it's a
Speaker 8: system that seems to design to be as cruel and
Speaker 8: complicated as possible.
Speaker 1: Yet you know, the jobs are available. The jobs are available, James.
Speaker 1: I mean I contacted about four or five places. My
Speaker 1: previous work experience in LA and California was logistics and
Speaker 1: parental and stuff like that. I told my previous bosses.
Speaker 1: They all told me to come over, you know, get
Speaker 1: your steps up figured out, and come over. We'll find
Speaker 1: a job. So we have plenty of vacancies, basically, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, so, uh, but you know here, you are here,
Speaker 1: you are there. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Man, it's it's I've heard so many of these stories,
Speaker 8: but and then stop upsetting me. And I'm glad in
Speaker 8: a way because you know they're bad and they shouldn't.
Speaker 8: They should be upsetting to everyone who is and I'm
Speaker 8: sure everyone who is this will want to do whatever
Speaker 8: they can to make this little easier. Are there like
Speaker 8: any orcs or nonprofits that have been helping you since
Speaker 8: you've got in the US that you think people should Oh?
Speaker 1: Man, nothing, nothing.
Speaker 11: I mean it's been you know, those who call.
Speaker 1: Very centric as far as Asian Americans or this or
Speaker 1: that is very specific.
Speaker 8: But yeah, migrants of everyone, it's I'm telling you no joke.
Speaker 1: And if you're a father trying to make it to
Speaker 1: your kids and trying to you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: do right by your kids doesn't mean anything, nothing, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 8: So that's terrible.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the first Christmas for This is the
Speaker 1: first Christmas for the kids outside of their where they
Speaker 1: grew up. I really wanted to make it as family
Speaker 1: friendly and happy as possible, but I don't even have
Speaker 1: the capacity to give them gifts or anything or or
Speaker 1: even I don't know. This is gonna be hard, Yeah man,
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, man, sorry, that's I know, that's okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just I'm just a drop in an
Speaker 1: ocean of of of despair when it comes to immigrants,
Speaker 1: and I'm getting messages from some of them in New York,
Speaker 1: some of them in UH, North Carolina, some of them
Speaker 1: in UH and in Illinois, UH, a couple in California.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're they're still desperate for for health and
Speaker 1: especially with language and all that. So you know, I'm grinding,
Speaker 1: and I mean they're doing the best I can. But
Speaker 1: you know it's a reality check. It's a reality check joke.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, it's it's it's really. I mean, it's sickening
Speaker 8: how quickly you can be and cut out and nothing
Speaker 8: when the state doesn't care about you. But I want
Speaker 8: to thank you so much for giving us your story
Speaker 8: and your time and being so open with us, because
Speaker 8: I think that's the only way that this stuff changes,
Speaker 8: is that people here Like number numbers are great and
Speaker 8: and your story is one of tens of thousands, but
Speaker 8: I think sometimes we need to hear individual stories to
Speaker 8: understand the human impact of this true, true, true, and
Speaker 8: like we'll stay in You have my friend number. Anything
Speaker 8: you need, anything we can do for you.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean I can't. I can't wait to come
Speaker 11: down to the border.
Speaker 1: I'm not giving up on the border, dude, I'm not
Speaker 1: I want to bring at some point my kids to
Speaker 1: see the price, and then I want to contribute. I
Speaker 1: want to find a way to give back. I want to.
Speaker 1: I know I can't do it right now, but I
Speaker 1: send my mom in my mind, and I know I'm
Speaker 1: not going to give up on that, on that on
Speaker 1: that dream of coming back there and continue to help
Speaker 1: with the volunteers.
Speaker 8: That's very kind of Yeah, well when you come down
Speaker 8: that me know, bring some ray tools and we can
Speaker 8: we can build some sounds.
Speaker 1: Good sounds, good fun.
Speaker 9: I mean, so I'm just like I'm just for processing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, me too, for processing this.
Speaker 9: And like hearing Amos say all this is like fuck,
Speaker 9: Like that's that's the conversation, right just with what he's
Speaker 9: saying in his accountability is human nature, like something in
Speaker 9: the way that he was saying that, I was just
Speaker 9: like taking a piles on everything that I want to
Speaker 9: just share because I really like it hit to the
Speaker 9: core of that. Like my own frustration with our response
Speaker 9: is it's not getting to the point that like what
Speaker 9: he was what he was saying any other words right
Speaker 9: now to say that my mind is now totally much.
Speaker 8: Well ended there. I do want to give both of
Speaker 8: you a chance to plug any and all organizations so
Speaker 8: you think can help. And because the people will get
Speaker 8: to listen to this, we'll break up to two parks.
Speaker 8: People will want to alleviate the suffering, and there are people,
Speaker 8: including yourselves and myself, trying to do that. So if
Speaker 8: there's an organization that you'd like to plug, fundraiser you'd
Speaker 8: like to plug, please do well.
Speaker 7: Just the way the conversation ended, the thing that I
Speaker 7: was thinking is you know, just a you know, anybody
Speaker 7: listening to the to what Amos has said, just one
Speaker 7: one very small but perhaps meaningful thing would be to
Speaker 7: do something to enable him to buy some presents for
Speaker 7: his kids. I think that would be pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 3: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 3: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,