Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know. This is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Hey there, listeners, this is
Speaker 1: producer DJ Daniel. The following episode was recorded before the
Speaker 1: horrible events in Monterey Park. The team will release an
Speaker 1: episode addressing the situation once more details have emerged. Thank
Speaker 1: you and enjoy. It''s Aluter New Years. Yeah, Happy New Years.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's the New Year's Special. It's me Mia,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got cherin with me. Yeah, how how
Speaker 1: are you doing? I guess, I guess it's I guess
Speaker 1: it's not the New Year yet while we're recording it,
Speaker 1: but it will be by the time you hear this.
Speaker 1: That counts. That counts. Um. I'm good. I'm I got
Speaker 1: a cat recently and I call funny. And then I
Speaker 1: learned later that this year is the Year of the Rabbit.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel really happy about that for this year. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: So I'm good. I'm good. That's a that's that's having
Speaker 1: new Cat is an amazing way to start any year. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I agree, this was very exciting that. Do you know
Speaker 1: what else is very exciting? Transitions? They paid me to
Speaker 1: do this for some reason. Alright, this this this year,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about Chinese restaurant syndrome and the
Speaker 1: whole sort of anti MSG craze. Yes, so that was
Speaker 1: that's always been so big. I don't know. I grew
Speaker 1: up in like a I don't know, a diverse area
Speaker 1: in San Diego, but we would always go to fun
Speaker 1: like regularly, and the no MSG was like all over
Speaker 1: the menu and everything. It's like this thing that I mean,
Speaker 1: every restaurant I went to basically was just like come
Speaker 1: to us, there's no must. So I'm really curious how
Speaker 1: it started because growing up I was like, okay, MS trees, Dad,
Speaker 1: I guess you know what I mean too, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like it wasn't It wasn't really, it wasn't
Speaker 1: as intense where I was growing up, but that was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was it was a very white suburb.
Speaker 1: But and people people were still freaked out about MSG.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't but like the the the Asian restaurants
Speaker 1: didn't like talk about it ever, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: it was still it was still very sort of like
Speaker 1: like I remember I would go like eat dinner with
Speaker 1: like white families and they'd be talking about MSG, and
Speaker 1: I was like what for a good amount of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: having now talked about MSG for a bit, we should
Speaker 1: we should ask like what what is MSG? And the
Speaker 1: answer okay, So MSG stands from mono sodium glutamate, which
Speaker 1: is it's just a salt. Basically, it's salt with like
Speaker 1: glutamate and it has a bunch of your mommy and
Speaker 1: it I'm gonna read this thing from Kenji from Serious
Speaker 1: Eats because every every every single article started that starts
Speaker 1: about this has like this exact paragraph in it. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna read it instead of trying to rewrite
Speaker 1: this paragraph that I wanted to. MSG is a sodium
Speaker 1: salt of glutamic acid and a amino acid. It was
Speaker 1: first isolated in nineteen o eight by Japanese biochemist Kakua Ikeda,
Speaker 1: who was trying to discover what exactly gave Dashi the
Speaker 1: Japanese flavor broth with comba, Japanese giant sea kelp its
Speaker 1: strong savory character. Turns out that comba is packed with
Speaker 1: glutamic acid. It was Akita who coined the term mummmi,
Speaker 1: which roughly translates a savory to describe to glutamic acid
Speaker 1: and other seminal similar amino acids. Until that point, scientists
Speaker 1: had only discovered the other four flavors sensed by the
Speaker 1: tongue and the soft palate, salty, sweet, sour, and bitter.
Speaker 1: By nine, pure crystallite MSG extracted from the abundant kelp
Speaker 1: in the sea around Japan, was being sold under the
Speaker 1: brand name a gi No Moto roughly Element of Flavor.
Speaker 1: The company exists to this day. Now keep that in mind,
Speaker 1: that's going to be important to the last part of
Speaker 1: the story. But you know, in the meantime, you know,
Speaker 1: around around around nineteen oweight, once this is discovered, that
Speaker 1: it turns into this sort of enormous industry. Um here's
Speaker 1: from a pretty good Men's Health article about it. By
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, number of American companies were producing MSG
Speaker 1: domestically for the consumer, the most famous being accents. Okay,
Speaker 1: there there's like it's spelled acts. It's it's accent, but
Speaker 1: it's spelled a c apostrophe C E N T. That's
Speaker 1: not yeah, no, that's me, yeah said, which was its
Speaker 1: it's advertising is a bleak place. That's that's a different episode,
Speaker 1: I think partially, yes, also partially this episode, but yeah.
Speaker 1: The most famous one being accent, which was advertised as
Speaker 1: pure mono sodium glutimate. That quote makes food flavors sing.
Speaker 1: Various food magazines and community cookbooks featured the additive as
Speaker 1: an ingredient and the likes of fried chicken wings and
Speaker 1: barbecue sauce recipes. By nineteen sixty nine, fifty eight million
Speaker 1: pounds of MSG were being produced in the US per year,
Speaker 1: says Food a Story and Ian Moseby PhD. For an
Speaker 1: entire generation, the ingredient was presented in a dizzying array
Speaker 1: of food products breakfast cereals, TV dinners, frozen vegetables, baby food,
Speaker 1: and soup produced by beloved brands such as Campbells and Swanson,
Speaker 1: which today offer foods products free of MSG additives. And okay,
Speaker 1: if you think about this, for a second. It's actually
Speaker 1: really weird that msg s thought it as a Chinese thing,
Speaker 1: because like, okay, MSG all told has only been around
Speaker 1: for like a hundred years, right, It's heavily used in
Speaker 1: the US for like thirty or forty years. Like it's
Speaker 1: not in it's not really in China for that much longer.
Speaker 1: For it is in the US, and it's used in
Speaker 1: just like a bunch of American food. How didk that start?
Speaker 1: Do we know how that association started? And continued? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll get it. Most it mostly has to do
Speaker 1: with like it has to do with restaurants, and it
Speaker 1: specifically has to do with the part that we're getting
Speaker 1: to about this letter, which is weird. And I will
Speaker 1: say like that there are a lot of Chinese families
Speaker 1: at like just use MSG for like they're cooking. My
Speaker 1: my house never did it because we're lazy and most
Speaker 1: of our cooking involves like as few ingredients and prep
Speaker 1: as possible, so we just like it's also really in uh,
Speaker 1: Vietnamese food. I feel like uses it a lot too.
Speaker 1: That's like that was my first association with it, So
Speaker 1: I just associate because I'm I was, I don't know
Speaker 1: fourteen I just said, Okay, this is Vietnamese, but that's
Speaker 1: really interesting to just know, like, well, it's a Japanese too,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I mean it's Asian. It's yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but like it is just it is just
Speaker 1: it's just interesting. Like the like people in the U
Speaker 1: s were just like, I don't know, it's like it's
Speaker 1: it was in everything. People in the US were also
Speaker 1: just using it to cook food. This is also a
Speaker 1: thing that like people in China use a lot too,
Speaker 1: So it's not that like Chinese people don't do. It's
Speaker 1: just like everybody, Like the moment everyone got it, they
Speaker 1: were like, oh my god, this makes our food taste better.
Speaker 1: Choose more of it. Of course, I'm I'm assuming. Once
Speaker 1: it got demonized, it was like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: Chinese thing, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: will be patient. Yeah so this is this is in
Speaker 1: fact the next thing. So nobody really cared about it
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty eight rolled around. Well so for those
Speaker 1: sixty years, MSG was like, yeah, I just use it. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting where I'm going to read apart from this
Speaker 1: journal article, and I've forgotten to put in what journal
Speaker 1: is from because I'm a hack and a fraud. I
Speaker 1: think it's a general natural health sure about that's right
Speaker 1: to me? Yeah, sure, it's it's from It's from some journal.
Speaker 1: Some doctors wrote it. Quote. In the spring of nine,
Speaker 1: Dr Robert Homeman wrote to the New England Journal of
Speaker 1: Medicine asking the assistance of the journal's readership and invite
Speaker 1: identifying the source of phenomenon that Dr Goa labeled the
Speaker 1: Chinese Restaurant Syndrome CRS, numbness of his back and neck, palpitations,
Speaker 1: and general weakness after he consumed meals in Chinese rest runs.
Speaker 1: Dr Gua hypothesize that the source of his syndrome might
Speaker 1: be a reaction to the soy sauce, the cooking wine,
Speaker 1: the high sodium content of the food, or to the
Speaker 1: flavor enhancing mono sodium glutamate MSG. Within two months, the
Speaker 1: journal received a flurry of letters from readers who had
Speaker 1: noticed a similar phenomenon after eating restaurant prepared Chinese food.
Speaker 1: So this is the start of this whole thing. And
Speaker 1: there's one thing I need to point out right away
Speaker 1: that is in almost every single article about this that
Speaker 1: is wrong, which is that this this this this article
Speaker 1: says that he's talking about Chinese food, which is true,
Speaker 1: but very specifically and this and this is this is
Speaker 1: going to be very important in about ten minutes. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's gonna be important soon, which is
Speaker 1: he specifically has a thing about how this is about
Speaker 1: northern Chinese food mhm. And you know, this is something
Speaker 1: that is something that everyone everyone sort of misses. The
Speaker 1: other thing interesting about this is that, you know, he
Speaker 1: he says it could be MSG, but you know, he's
Speaker 1: treating MSG exactly like all of the rest of the
Speaker 1: other stuff that's in this that's in the food. Right,
Speaker 1: he lists soy sauce, he lists cooking wine. Maybe he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe there's too much salt, right, Like, he's not really
Speaker 1: doing an MSG thing, But everyone who reads this immediately
Speaker 1: focuses on the MSG. Okay. So before I started researching this,
Speaker 1: I had heard that this whole letter was actually fake.
Speaker 1: It was actually a prank. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is a thing that's like it's kind of like okay.
Speaker 1: So the story behind this was that it was supposed
Speaker 1: to have been a prank by a white guy named
Speaker 1: Dr Steele, who made it up as a joke and
Speaker 1: this is the sort of like a folk like. Okay,
Speaker 1: so this story is not true. The story I am
Speaker 1: about to say is not true. It turns out this
Speaker 1: letter is actually real. But there was there was basically
Speaker 1: a story that went around that it was this guy
Speaker 1: named Dr Steele who had made it up as a
Speaker 1: way to get published in a journal for like a bet,
Speaker 1: because like Dr Steel like claimed responsibility for it, and
Speaker 1: that got out to researchers. But it turns yeah, and
Speaker 1: so for a bit everyone was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: this whole thing was started by a prank. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that's also not true. So this American life
Speaker 1: figured out that Dr Robert Homa is a real guy. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dr Steele had pretended that he said that he made
Speaker 1: it up the name. It's not true. There's a real guy.
Speaker 1: They talked to his family and his colleagues and all
Speaker 1: of them were like, oh, noguad like wrote this thing.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, there's a lot of racism here too, because
Speaker 1: Dr Steele had claimed that Homan, which is okay, So
Speaker 1: this is where things get weird. Um I'm saying cool
Speaker 1: because that's how you actually pronounce it. Um. It's spelled
Speaker 1: h O M A N k w okay wha. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so this this is this is some Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is a wad Giles bullshit, the previous attempt to sort
Speaker 1: of romanize Chinese. Just think of Way Giles and it
Speaker 1: is the band of my existence. It's dogshit. Hi, this
Speaker 1: is me and post. I made a mistake here. K
Speaker 1: w okay is actually the standard Cantonese spelling of good.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that. I am a dipshit who does not
Speaker 1: speak Cantonese. Yeah, enjoy the rest of the show. They
Speaker 1: heard someone say go and we're like, this is k
Speaker 1: w It's like no, no, it's not. Please, So that's bad.
Speaker 1: It's literally the worst. Like if you if you ever
Speaker 1: you know, so sometimes if you if you're if you're
Speaker 1: looking at anything, you'lle something that's just spelled really weirdly,
Speaker 1: like or for example, like the way that schenkai check
Speaker 1: is spelled is actually like like it's actually a Way
Speaker 1: Giles thing like that. There's there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: likes that are like that. Yeah, yeah you can find um.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's I mean, that explains a lot,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's what and part part of everything that's
Speaker 1: happening to you here is that like so, and then
Speaker 1: this is also gonna be important later. KOs is a
Speaker 1: is a Cantonese last name. Um, but it's it's it
Speaker 1: gets really really confusing really quickly if you don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on, because if if, if you're reading, if
Speaker 1: you're reading a word that's in Chinese in the US,
Speaker 1: it could either be in Mandarin or in Cantonese, and
Speaker 1: it also could be either written with the terrible way
Speaker 1: ales one or it could be in opinion, which is
Speaker 1: like the one that's actually sort of usable. Um, but
Speaker 1: Dr Steele because again the way it's written is h
Speaker 1: O m A and k w o kay and Dr
Speaker 1: Steele claims that he wrote it to be like human
Speaker 1: croc of shit like how man kruk Yeah, excuse me,
Speaker 1: people like people believe yeah, well he's dead, so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's so yeah, like this is this is so
Speaker 1: racist and it's like you know, but this like people
Speaker 1: people believe this for a while because m yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but okay, so eventually people figure out that
Speaker 1: it's not true. And I'm going to read something from
Speaker 1: from this American life piece where they talk about how
Speaker 1: they figured out that it was actually like that was
Speaker 1: like actually a real guy. And when you read the
Speaker 1: original letter, there are details that seem more likely to
Speaker 1: come from her father was a close father than from Howard.
Speaker 1: How Howard Steel is the doctor, like when he said
Speaker 1: he moved to the US, which the real doctor Good did,
Speaker 1: and how he's very specific the syndrome happens with northern
Speaker 1: Chinese food in the sixties. How many white guys in
Speaker 1: Philadelphia could have made that distinction? Also, home Man Kool
Speaker 1: is an actual Cantonese name. What are the odds that
Speaker 1: dr Steel through together random sounding Chinese syllables to arrive
Speaker 1: at that? So, Okay, I read that. I had a revelation.
Speaker 1: I I cracked this case. Why the funk open? I
Speaker 1: figured it out. I figured out what was going on
Speaker 1: with this letter. Okay, I'm so excited for this. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hypen this up for like hours. I'm so exciting.
Speaker 1: So I'm bts of this. We have like a group
Speaker 1: chat essentially, and I didn't. I wasn't sure if I
Speaker 1: can make this recording. But then Mia dropped that that
Speaker 1: bomb being like I have this big break breakthrough, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I gotta be there. I just gotta
Speaker 1: be there. And so I kicked James out because James
Speaker 1: couldn't make me time. I couldn't make it. So here
Speaker 1: I have I have. I have not told Sharine what
Speaker 1: the breakthrough this time? Here? Okay? So is Cantonese, right,
Speaker 1: and she specifies in this letter that this is about
Speaker 1: northern Chinese food. My thesis right here, right now is
Speaker 1: that this whole letter it's actually about, It's actually about
Speaker 1: Cantonese anti Northerland sentiments. This is the whole last thing
Speaker 1: in China. Canton or like the region that was called Canton.
Speaker 1: The west is like where Cantonese people are. This is like,
Speaker 1: this is the very south of China. Right, there is
Speaker 1: a whole last thing in China. Let like people from
Speaker 1: the North people from the South hate each other. Um,
Speaker 1: it's actually very weird. So my my family is like
Speaker 1: half from the north, half from the South. And like
Speaker 1: when my mom was growing up, she like she would
Speaker 1: like get made fun of for how she like rolled
Speaker 1: dumplings because people were like, oh, you rolled dumplings like
Speaker 1: a Southerner And she's like, what, it is a whole
Speaker 1: fucking thing it's like people hate each other. How else
Speaker 1: how would you know those intricracies, you know what I
Speaker 1: mean unless you were from there, like had history there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I mean I was just this is the thing
Speaker 1: is that that that's persisted in the U s too.
Speaker 1: You you still you still run into this stuff like
Speaker 1: they're they're they're like there are definitely like Candidie restaurants
Speaker 1: were like you probably shouldn't speak Mandarin. They're like there's
Speaker 1: there's like this is this is still a thing. It's
Speaker 1: not really talked about very much because it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of an internal Chinese thing. But you know,
Speaker 1: the one place you actually really gotta see this, You
Speaker 1: gotta see this from the Hong during the Hong Kong
Speaker 1: protests in both sides, because like okay, so there there
Speaker 1: there's a strain of this sort of like like there's
Speaker 1: a strain of Chinese nationalism that's very sort of like
Speaker 1: it was doing this like really very sort of like
Speaker 1: anti Southern racism from you know, you get this from
Speaker 1: a lot of the Chinese nationalists the CCP side. There's
Speaker 1: another faction of like the Hong Kong protesters who's like
Speaker 1: thing was like we're not actually Chinese because we're not
Speaker 1: like the Northerners who are a communist and like evil,
Speaker 1: which which is really funny because like you know, like okay,
Speaker 1: the if you if you run through the actual history
Speaker 1: of communism in China, it's like, okay, like like one
Speaker 1: one one of the one of the largest communists like
Speaker 1: strikes that ever happened was in Hong Kong. Like sure, fine,
Speaker 1: but you know, but obviously, like I'm simplifying all of
Speaker 1: this enormously because it's very complicated. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: regional ship that's going on here. Yeah, but so your
Speaker 1: your thesis is that the person that started all of
Speaker 1: this was like maybe like from the south or like
Speaker 1: just like yeah, I mean that is that is definite,
Speaker 1: Like that is that is like the like that is
Speaker 1: the most Cantonese asked name I've ever heard, like that
Speaker 1: that that guy, that guy, that guy is definitely from
Speaker 1: southern China. And yeah, my my thesis is specifically it's
Speaker 1: this Cantonese guy going a funk. Those nerds litters, I
Speaker 1: hate their I hate their asses, I hate their food.
Speaker 1: Their food at eating it makes me sick. But because
Speaker 1: because it's the US that the subtlety of this gets
Speaker 1: lost and everyone just runs with it is like Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurant syndrome. Even though this is the this is this
Speaker 1: is my theories, this is this is like this is
Speaker 1: like kind of semi obscured like Chinese like internal grudge vat.
Speaker 1: Like like knowing the origin point makes a lot more
Speaker 1: sense now to be honest, like why would this be
Speaker 1: some random like why would he specify a region like
Speaker 1: a very specific region that that's just I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know that that that that that's my theory. I
Speaker 1: could be wrong about this, but all it fits with
Speaker 1: all of the details, so it checks out. It checks out,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, So okay, alright, so so this this
Speaker 1: letter happens and there's like a flurry of letters rather
Speaker 1: people talking about this, and okay, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about why this got picked up the way it does. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be yeah, this is this is I'm going
Speaker 1: to read from every single article in this also goes
Speaker 1: exactly the same way. So I'm gonna read from Men's
Speaker 1: Health version, so you get this section of it. Before
Speaker 1: I talked about why it's I think like not sufficient
Speaker 1: to capture what was Happening mostly describes the late fifties
Speaker 1: at a time of heightened anti Chinese sentiment. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, domestic and international politics had shifted towards a
Speaker 1: fairly clear anti communist agenda. In fact, he says, during
Speaker 1: this time, anti Chinese sentiments were so widespread and accepted
Speaker 1: that most Americans didn't consider their apprehension to be racial bias. Now,
Speaker 1: this is true as far as it goes. But we
Speaker 1: need to go to ADS and Wenna come back from ADS.
Speaker 1: I will tell em what else was going on turn
Speaker 1: that week? All right, and we're back. We're back. We're
Speaker 1: talking about how this like letter to like a journal
Speaker 1: in New England suddenly became an entire like national American thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the way this happened is that this got picked
Speaker 1: up by the news. Now there's a huge New York
Speaker 1: Times article about this, and that article is published on
Speaker 1: May nineteenth, nineteen. Now, Sharine, do you know what else
Speaker 1: was going on in May? I've heard a lot of
Speaker 1: ship went down in the sixties. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: this is right, This is like smack dab in the
Speaker 1: middle of May sixty eight in France. This is this
Speaker 1: is like one week after the Night of the Barricades UM.
Speaker 1: Three days before this was published, the situationists who are
Speaker 1: like these this like ultra left student organization who who
Speaker 1: who at this point are occupying the Sorbonne like they
Speaker 1: have fully taken control of their campus. They have run
Speaker 1: the cops out, they have run the administration out. UM.
Speaker 1: Three days before this is published, the students had the sorband,
Speaker 1: reacting to a factory occupation they heard about, send out
Speaker 1: this famous communicate calling for the occupation of all factories
Speaker 1: in France. And like it fucking happens, Like the workers
Speaker 1: in France take control of like a huge portion of
Speaker 1: Francis factories, like the Reinault factories are under control of
Speaker 1: the workers UM like by by by this time, like
Speaker 1: this is happening, right the police have like the police
Speaker 1: are fighting them, but they're losing. UM. Two days before
Speaker 1: this article is published, UH, the Sorban sends this to
Speaker 1: the Chinese consulate quote, shaking your boots, bureaucrats, the international
Speaker 1: power of the workers councils will soon wipe you out.
Speaker 1: Humanity won't be happy until the last bureacrat is hung
Speaker 1: with the guts of the last capitalists long live, the
Speaker 1: factory occupations long lived, the Great Chinese Proletarian Revolution evcted
Speaker 1: twenties seven, betrayed by the Stalinist bureaucrats. It goes on
Speaker 1: and on like this. This is what they're sending to
Speaker 1: the Maoists, right like that, that is that is how
Speaker 1: far left these people are. Like they they're telling the
Speaker 1: Maoist shaking your boot spirit craft, the international power of work,
Speaker 1: those councils will soon wipe you out, like it is
Speaker 1: wild in sense. Yeah, I mean the fact that this
Speaker 1: is happening all during all of that, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: that's no, yeah, no one, it's it's really important. I
Speaker 1: have never read an article that actually puts this together,
Speaker 1: and it was like, it's not just that going on, right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you like the situation in France,
Speaker 1: they are a week and a half out from de Gaul,
Speaker 1: who was the president, literally fleeing the country because he's
Speaker 1: so convinced that they're about to lose the country to communism.
Speaker 1: Like well, and I should say when I say communism,
Speaker 1: by the way, part of that message to the to
Speaker 1: the Maoist is down with the state. Revolutionary Marxisms like
Speaker 1: that that that these are these people are like these
Speaker 1: people have are Marxists who have gone like so far
Speaker 1: left they've essentially become anarchists. It's it's wild and mean,
Speaker 1: you know. And also what's happened, like the prog Spring
Speaker 1: is happening during the middle of this um. This is
Speaker 1: also like this is a month after the Holy Week
Speaker 1: uprising in the US, which is so after MLK was killed.
Speaker 1: There were these like probably the most intense riots the
Speaker 1: US has ever seen, like even like even more so
Speaker 1: than like the ones we saw in the Holy Week riot.
Speaker 1: Like they were like like there there were there were
Speaker 1: like like thousands of paratroopers We're being deployed to like
Speaker 1: kill rioters. Yeah, like nuts, Yeah, like that was that
Speaker 1: was probably the closest, like some of the closest the
Speaker 1: US has ever had to just like actually having revolution
Speaker 1: in the government, losing control of the entire country and
Speaker 1: like and while this article is coming out, like there
Speaker 1: are still even in May, the Holy Week up risings
Speaker 1: in April, but like even I like even in May,
Speaker 1: there are still people on the streets fighting the cops.
Speaker 1: Like while while this article is being written, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you look at the there's something about perse on
Speaker 1: that entire year. I mean it's wild like six sixty
Speaker 1: like that that that year is just the year like
Speaker 1: the entire world went. I mean there's like like like
Speaker 1: they they I can't remember if they act successfully over
Speaker 1: through the government. They like almost over to the government
Speaker 1: of Pakistan. Like a whole bunch of students get shot
Speaker 1: in Mexico because they were trying to bring down the government.
Speaker 1: Like it's everywhere. There was all this stuff going on. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, also the ever thing that is happening
Speaker 1: is we're two years into the Culture Revolution and it's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because but by sixty eight we're kind
Speaker 1: of into the backlash phase of the culture Revolution, where
Speaker 1: most of what's happening is that the sort of various
Speaker 1: rebel factions that formed the nine seven and nine sixty
Speaker 1: six are just getting like slaughtered by the sort of
Speaker 1: like state factions. And it's more it's it's it's a
Speaker 1: culture revolution. It's really complicated, but like bye bye. By
Speaker 1: this point, the sort of like revolution part of it
Speaker 1: has like kind of calmed down and it's more the
Speaker 1: state in its sort of new form taking control. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you're living through this, right, it looks
Speaker 1: like the culture revolutions happens in in in sixty six,
Speaker 1: and then you get six and then suddenly there was
Speaker 1: a cultural revolution happening literally everywhere. And this is the
Speaker 1: context of the MSG scared like kicks off in right.
Speaker 1: It starts in like right in the middle of arguably
Speaker 1: the two most radical months of the entire twentieth century. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and this is this is the kind of ship
Speaker 1: that starts like just an absolute mania in the American
Speaker 1: mind that is powerful enough that like sixty years later,
Speaker 1: it's still around. I mean, it feels like the it
Speaker 1: happening as such like a manic time, like people were
Speaker 1: probably already like kind of feeling that energy. Right, it
Speaker 1: was like like everything it was directed everywhere, even at
Speaker 1: this article. Yeah. And I genuinely think if if this
Speaker 1: had happened two months later, two months earlier, I don't
Speaker 1: think I don't think there would have been like a
Speaker 1: big scare about it. Like it might have been a
Speaker 1: thing I stuck around for a bit. But I think
Speaker 1: the fact that the end of the the New York Times
Speaker 1: article happen came out exactly like in the middle of
Speaker 1: May sixty eight, and that like the original one comes
Speaker 1: out like right before the like the original article that
Speaker 1: gets set to the thing comes out like a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks before the Holy Week up Rising. I think
Speaker 1: it was the fact that it was exactly in this
Speaker 1: moment where everyone on Earth is if you're living through this,
Speaker 1: like this is the capital our revolution like has come
Speaker 1: and you know, and that that shattered everyone's brains. Like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I want like do people remember what
Speaker 1: it was like like when like when like the height
Speaker 1: of twenty was happening, Like just how sort of wild
Speaker 1: like there was just psychologically I'm telling you there was
Speaker 1: like an energy. Yeah, yeah, that's collective strange. I mean,
Speaker 1: like obviously it's different than it was at sixty eight,
Speaker 1: but I really do agree with you, like if it
Speaker 1: happened in January, yeah, and you know, I so. The
Speaker 1: the other thing that's interesting about about this whole sort
Speaker 1: of like Chinese restaurant syndrome is that you could actually
Speaker 1: track it spread like across other countries by sort of
Speaker 1: like moments of like heak anti Chinese like sentiment. It
Speaker 1: also anti Japanese sentiment to a lesser extent, because that
Speaker 1: that that sort of replaces the anti Chinese stuff by
Speaker 1: time and nineties, but well not replaces. But it's like
Speaker 1: it's like the dominant mode of like we have a
Speaker 1: person we needs to be afraid of an East Asia. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's interesting, okay, So if if if, if you,
Speaker 1: if you look up um like he was looking for you,
Speaker 1: like medical stuff about Chinese restaurant syndimeme. One of the
Speaker 1: things you will find is a case report of the
Speaker 1: Indian Journal of Critical Medical Care from two thousands seventeen
Speaker 1: claiming that they were treating a patient who got Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurant syndrome and like couldn't speak because the thing in
Speaker 1: the back of his throat had like inflamed, and you know,
Speaker 1: and then they had this whole thing about like this
Speaker 1: this is like this is like a serious disorder, and
Speaker 1: they beifically cited that letter to the editor from sixty
Speaker 1: eight the power of that thing. And you know, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so if you look what what was going on in
Speaker 1: in India in two thousand seventeen, and it turns out
Speaker 1: the thing that's going on is like a giant rise
Speaker 1: in anti Chinese sentiment, culminating in the twenty seventeen Indian
Speaker 1: Chinese Border incidents. Where do you remember when all those
Speaker 1: guys are like beating each other to death in the
Speaker 1: mountains with sticks. Yeah, I do remember that. I's so
Speaker 1: sad and many times in my life, and especially post pandemic,
Speaker 1: my brain is broken. But I do vaguely remember that
Speaker 1: I had kind of forgotten about it. And then and
Speaker 1: then I just look at this article and sol seen.
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, hold on, hold on, wasn't that
Speaker 1: wasn't didn't didn't that happen in twenty seventeen? And it's
Speaker 1: funny because like, yeah, right, CenTra rise again, suddenly Chinese
Speaker 1: restaurant center reappears. It's it's really, it's really incredible. It's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, it's an incredible set of brain worms. Um.
Speaker 1: I just I mean, this is definitely not on topic,
Speaker 1: I guess, but even just seeing like COVID being blamed
Speaker 1: on China, like there's almost like like a way for
Speaker 1: ignorant people just to point the finger at China, which
Speaker 1: is really fucking shitty. It's so shitty. It's yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's just sort of like like one
Speaker 1: of the things you sort of need to have a
Speaker 1: national project, is that in order for you to be.
Speaker 1: In order for you to be like a nation, you
Speaker 1: have to have you have to have another you have
Speaker 1: to have people who aren't part of the nation, and
Speaker 1: the US is prett effectively they have they you know,
Speaker 1: they can have the sort of rotating cast of people
Speaker 1: who like aren't like from the nation. Right, if you
Speaker 1: want to stay in, there are people that need to
Speaker 1: stay out. Yeah, So sometimes it's with Mexico. Sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: you get it with sort of like like internal subversion
Speaker 1: from like black people are like indienous people. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, they have this rotating cast. China is always
Speaker 1: one of the ones that come back to because it's
Speaker 1: just big and there's a lot of them, and you know,
Speaker 1: people are easily feared by it. Like I think it's
Speaker 1: like it's unknown and maybe people don't understand it very well,
Speaker 1: that don't look into it themselves and wanted to be educated.
Speaker 1: But forever reason, people fear it so easily, and it's
Speaker 1: so bizarre. It's so bizarre. Yeah, it sucks. Oh yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna do an ad break and then we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about more of this stuff because it keeps
Speaker 1: going and we're back, all right. So obviously we're dealing
Speaker 1: with sort of anti Chinese sentiment and anti Japanese sentiments
Speaker 1: as you know, jes sentiment escalating as the safety surting
Speaker 1: into like the eighties and nineties. But there's more going
Speaker 1: on here. Um. Part of the reason, you know, back
Speaker 1: like this in theory could have been about like soy sauce, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things that they could have picked
Speaker 1: out of that to be the thing about, but they
Speaker 1: picked M. S. G. And part of the reason they
Speaker 1: picked MSGS that this is the period when people start
Speaker 1: like figuring out that food additives exist mm hmmm, and
Speaker 1: people don't get really sort of touchy about it. And
Speaker 1: actually Ralph Nader uh famous. Yeah, so he's around in
Speaker 1: the sixties, Um, because he's old as ship. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's you know, okay, so I I give
Speaker 1: I give him credit for for like he has probably
Speaker 1: saved as many lives as like any other American, single
Speaker 1: American you can name, by being the guy who like
Speaker 1: lobbied to have seatbelts in cars being mandatory. I think
Speaker 1: that was not before because the US is a like
Speaker 1: truly deranged country. Yeah, he wasn't half bad most of
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, but but come on, he's also one
Speaker 1: of the guys who's like the big pusher for getting
Speaker 1: the US government to study MSG and a lot of
Speaker 1: other food editives and like nine, so you know, and
Speaker 1: like there's a bunch of other food aims that they're
Speaker 1: studying the health effects of and and on the one hand, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably is good to study the effects of like
Speaker 1: food editives because like I don't know, companies do stuff
Speaker 1: that sucks all the time, and so it is good
Speaker 1: to study within your food. On the other hand, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's gonna sound really ignorant, so I apologize. What where
Speaker 1: again you already said this? Where was that foul? Where
Speaker 1: was MSG found? Is it created in a lab? Like
Speaker 1: what's the Yeah, but by this point it's basically created
Speaker 1: a lab. The first time someone was able to distill
Speaker 1: it was they did this whole distillation process of seaweed seed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but but by this point, it's no worries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, like by bye bye bye, I mean even
Speaker 1: by like the early actually twenties, I think it's it's
Speaker 1: mostly being produced artificially, which is probably but it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it makes it taste better. But like, like you
Speaker 1: know it is something that like you like you can't
Speaker 1: find it like in in dashi, Like you can find
Speaker 1: it in like soup broths and stuff like from the
Speaker 1: way from seaweed. So it's it's not like I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I've known about MSG for most of my
Speaker 1: life and I never like, for whatever reason, growing up,
Speaker 1: we always associated with sodium like salt salty. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it is right, like it is a kind
Speaker 1: of salt. Yeah, but like I don't know, like people
Speaker 1: people have this whole thing like oh, it's artificial. It's
Speaker 1: like like yeah, we may kid artificially, but like it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's not a thing that you can
Speaker 1: get out of plants. It's just that we don't do
Speaker 1: it that way because it's easier. Yeah, the source of
Speaker 1: it is the artificial. But also like you're gonna be
Speaker 1: a stickler on this one thing when you eat, like
Speaker 1: I don't know, so many other drink so many other things,
Speaker 1: Like there was cocaine and coke. Yeah, it's I think
Speaker 1: every every every every every American like in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine is like by by their body volume, drinking two
Speaker 1: pounds of lead a year. So like it's like like
Speaker 1: this is the thing you're gonna stick up. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: and and you know, and this is this is this
Speaker 1: is this is sort of the problem with with what
Speaker 1: Ralph Nader is doing with this sort of like pushing
Speaker 1: the government investigation of it is that like you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't know how racist nine nine Ralph Nader was.
Speaker 1: My My guess is that I don't think that his
Speaker 1: big thing was we need to study this because it's
Speaker 1: the dirty Chinese like salt or whatever. I I think
Speaker 1: I think mostly just wanted to you wanted the thing
Speaker 1: to study food editives. I could be wrong about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't I've looked into this exactly
Speaker 1: zero percent. But like you know, the problem is that
Speaker 1: like once this sort of racial panic is going, like
Speaker 1: you can't put you can't put the sort of cork
Speaker 1: back in the bottle, right and you know, Okay, so
Speaker 1: there have been a bunch of studies about this um
Speaker 1: and like but but you know, okay, so the problem
Speaker 1: with what's happening is that because of the way ms
Speaker 1: she has been sort of racialized, like the studies don't matter,
Speaker 1: like it's it just does not matter what anyone actually
Speaker 1: sort of writes about it until you get an actual
Speaker 1: cultural change because the study science is irrelevant. Um, they
Speaker 1: have the study to justify a bunch of things, and
Speaker 1: that's the only study they care about. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's like the like vector, that's like the like
Speaker 1: the fake factory of vaccines cause autism ship Like no,
Speaker 1: it's they just believe this. They have one paper that's
Speaker 1: literally a joke. Exactly does it? Yeah, that's like but
Speaker 1: this event, but like yeah, there's a million others like that.
Speaker 1: By the way, that study, I want to point this out.
Speaker 1: The methodology of that study was they asked parents who
Speaker 1: thought their kids had developed autism because of the vaccine
Speaker 1: if they thought their kids had developed autism because of
Speaker 1: the vaccine, and then the parents said yes, And that's
Speaker 1: the study. That's the study. Yeah, that's a lot of study.
Speaker 1: It's a joke, like it's it's literally a Twitter pool.
Speaker 1: They like got published and they're attracted because al right,
Speaker 1: like this this is the scientific basis of all this bullshit,
Speaker 1: and that's what qualifies is a fucking study. Then you
Speaker 1: could you could, I don't know, you can. You can
Speaker 1: publish fucking anything if you put your mind to it.
Speaker 1: This is this. This, This is what I'm telling all
Speaker 1: of you, like follow your dreams, try to get something published.
Speaker 1: They published this bullshit, so like you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do a study. Yeah, well the other thing,
Speaker 1: the other thing specifically, like there's a real problem here
Speaker 1: with like this is everything with medical studies, because like
Speaker 1: you can have a medical study that you get published
Speaker 1: with a sample size of one because it's you found
Speaker 1: a thing and a guy and you're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna publis this, but you like medical studies, like you
Speaker 1: could just like you could publish any bullshit and like
Speaker 1: it sucks. But okay, so all right, like lots of
Speaker 1: so after this, there are lots of studies by lots
Speaker 1: of people, and like mostly what they find is they
Speaker 1: can't find any Okay. So there's some like initial studies
Speaker 1: that like find some alarming stuff in mice. But the
Speaker 1: problem with these studies that what they're doing is okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out if you take a mouse and you
Speaker 1: just like fill a syringe with MSG and inject them
Speaker 1: with it, it's bad for them. But like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you would you injected a mouse with pure salt and
Speaker 1: bad things happen, Like yes, if you took a human
Speaker 1: being and you injected fucking a third of a cup
Speaker 1: of MSG directly into their veins, it would probably be
Speaker 1: bad for them, like okay, you know, right, um, And
Speaker 1: that they found out. The conclusion from that was basically like, okay,
Speaker 1: if someone ate like a third of a cup of
Speaker 1: MSG raw having not eaten for like forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: it would probably do things that are not great for you.
Speaker 1: Can't you say that. I've had a bunch of other
Speaker 1: like like like I don't know if if if you
Speaker 1: didn't eat for twenty four hours and eight a third
Speaker 1: or a couple of salts, like that's probably that's not
Speaker 1: good for you. Like I don't do that, so like
Speaker 1: you know, okay, very very specific circumstances have to light
Speaker 1: it up for you to have reaction. So there's a
Speaker 1: study from two thousands where they also this is also
Speaker 1: another empty stomach study, by the way, because they've okay,
Speaker 1: no one has ever been able to replicate like any
Speaker 1: of these results with a person eating food that has
Speaker 1: MSG in it. They've every been able to do it.
Speaker 1: They've been able to get some results. If you have
Speaker 1: people eat like basically pure MSG and have not eaten
Speaker 1: any food like around it. Yeah, it's like you're, OK,
Speaker 1: that's useless because the the molecule at that point it
Speaker 1: probably interacts with other things and that's you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like if it's just I'm not the act
Speaker 1: will I don't know. Yeah, I'm a very good at chemistry,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna what the chemistry nerds arguing I did
Speaker 1: fail a p chem so great, Yeah, I I look
Speaker 1: how I only had to take chemistry in so I
Speaker 1: just didn't take a p KEM because like I suck,
Speaker 1: Like I took a CHM like my first my freshman year.
Speaker 1: Now it's like, let's not do this again. I can't
Speaker 1: do this. Just the thing. I wanted to be a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist for a really long time. But failing AP chemistry
Speaker 1: and just experiencing chemistry, I was like, I can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sucks. It's the worst, but okay. So the reason
Speaker 1: I was talking about the vaccines cause as like autism
Speaker 1: ship is that there was another thing with MSG where
Speaker 1: people were claiming it was causing asthma and it no,
Speaker 1: they had they had another looking incredibly elaborate pseudoscience bullshit
Speaker 1: about like the MSG like getting absorbed, like getting absorbed
Speaker 1: improperly through like like fetal membranes. That's like completely nonsense,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't. Yeah, people people like what what White
Speaker 1: people love to say that the diseases they've gotten from
Speaker 1: fucking the fact that like they're they're the air in
Speaker 1: their house is n c O two by volume and
Speaker 1: like and and could because because they've decided to run
Speaker 1: an entire country by just putting fucking trucking yards everywhere,
Speaker 1: like okay, a finger to point out right, it can't
Speaker 1: be Yeah, you know you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I should. I should make this clear. By the way,
Speaker 1: when when I when I when I when when when
Speaker 1: I say when I say that like autisms, I'm not sorry.
Speaker 1: When when I say that asthma specifically is when I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the bad air specifically talking about asthma, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about autism with that that that that is
Speaker 1: not what causes autism or whatever, like and it's cool
Speaker 1: and also funk autism speaks, yes, yeah, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to put that on the record. That's what I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not saying that trucks cause autism. They
Speaker 1: don't like yeah, yeah, so okay, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like incredibly weird, racial, very dumb, anti scientific panic
Speaker 1: about it. It's possible that there existed so ofvisually it
Speaker 1: was about like like anyone who eats this will have
Speaker 1: these sentiments, right, And then over time the argument got
Speaker 1: sort of fizz down to there might be a group
Speaker 1: of people who in the population, like a small group
Speaker 1: people who are like specifically sensitive to it, and that's
Speaker 1: probably plausible, Like there's some experimental evidence that shows that
Speaker 1: there could be a group of people for whom they're
Speaker 1: more sensitive to it than a regular person and I
Speaker 1: don't know, people of allergies like whatever, like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it's not like like yeah, it's it's not a
Speaker 1: thing to sort of like like yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like if you're a person who gets allergy reactions to ship,
Speaker 1: like yeah, that's allergies, right, but like it's it's not
Speaker 1: the sort of like I don't know if the panic
Speaker 1: about it is utterly unjustified. There may be if there
Speaker 1: may be a group of people who it has some
Speaker 1: effect on because there are a lerger to it or whatever.
Speaker 1: But yeah, imagine imagine demonizing peanuts because there's a group
Speaker 1: of people that can't eat peanuts, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like that's that's that's why, like, why would you ever
Speaker 1: do that. To be fair, I I am okay with
Speaker 1: demonizing peanuts specifically, specifically if it gets people to stop
Speaker 1: fucking were shipping that bastard Jimmy Carter, who was a
Speaker 1: neoliberal ghoul, and his reputation has been fucking just like, like,
Speaker 1: his reputation has been saved entirely by the fact that
Speaker 1: every single person who came after him was an utterly
Speaker 1: deranged war criminal and his war crime was like suppressing
Speaker 1: well he was a peanut farmer. Oh sorry, sorry, this
Speaker 1: is this is this is this is the this is
Speaker 1: this is the the deep Jimmy Carter lore. Okay, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: but you know, all right, So going going back, I
Speaker 1: think so this was the kind of thing that like,
Speaker 1: you know, people avoiding msg is just kind of had
Speaker 1: just kind of been like like a part of daily life,
Speaker 1: Like it was just like a thing that existed in
Speaker 1: the world, but it wasn't like at a certain point
Speaker 1: it became the kind of thing that people would talk
Speaker 1: about like in conversation, and like they did you know,
Speaker 1: you could just get people to do ant MSG rans,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really a sort of like mainstream political
Speaker 1: issue in the way that it had been like in
Speaker 1: that st nine where the well, the only thing that
Speaker 1: happened is in the nineties the FDA did to study
Speaker 1: about it. The f d A was like, it's fine,
Speaker 1: don't don't don't eat three d grams of it at
Speaker 1: one time, Like, but as long as long as you're
Speaker 1: not sitting there like eating MSG raw out of the
Speaker 1: fucking Like do you think about like hyd syrup? Why? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like by by volume, hypric dose, chord and syrup
Speaker 1: was killed way more people than although also now now
Speaker 1: there's like a whole thing about like MSG causing obesity,
Speaker 1: which I I don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 1: I think their studies are fucking whack, but you know
Speaker 1: it's it's it might cause obesity like every other food
Speaker 1: that the US has made in the last twenty years. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and what what what one one day we will do
Speaker 1: a episode about like the politics of anti fatnists because
Speaker 1: it's fucked but today we're we're doing this episode and okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, every once in a while, the way
Speaker 1: the way of this stuff work. Every once in a
Speaker 1: while there would be a sort of like like a
Speaker 1: mainstream like Asian American figure who would talk about it.
Speaker 1: For example, there's there's there's a Korean chef named David
Speaker 1: Chang who talks about it um and he he did
Speaker 1: some like he gave speeches about it and the start
Speaker 1: demonization of it, but it didn't really get back to
Speaker 1: mainshame discourse until when are Good Friends a Ginomoto. The
Speaker 1: people who made the stuff in the first place hired
Speaker 1: a bunch of Asian American like celebrities to do a
Speaker 1: pro MSG campaign. So they hired Eddie Huongg who's like
Speaker 1: a writer and chef who's like probably most famous for
Speaker 1: being the guy who wrote Fresh off the Boat, And
Speaker 1: so that they have this whole sort of campaign and
Speaker 1: this like takes off right like he he this is
Speaker 1: this is one of those things that was like completely
Speaker 1: forgotten that happened in that no one now remembers, because
Speaker 1: this happens like before COVID, like before we had the
Speaker 1: lockdowns and before I'll be honest, it escapes my memory.
Speaker 1: I I have no member this happening either. But apparently
Speaker 1: it did. I don't know. I was I think this
Speaker 1: is still well the I think this is well the
Speaker 1: election was still going on, so yeah, the best time
Speaker 1: to do that year everything happens. But okay, so you know,
Speaker 1: this campaign like takes off like like ny Hwang's on
Speaker 1: on NBC and to be like the talk show circuit
Speaker 1: with Jenny Am advocating for like so that their whole
Speaker 1: thing is that they wanted to remove Chinese restaurants sent
Speaker 1: from the dictionary and they had this whole like hashtag
Speaker 1: redefinance CRS is like the Redefining Chinese Restaurant syndrome and
Speaker 1: this is like a whole thing, and you know, and
Speaker 1: there's there's there's something okay, but this was one of
Speaker 1: the things that sort of drew me to the story
Speaker 1: because if you look at the press for this, right,
Speaker 1: it's like activists pressure maryon Webster and like that's kind
Speaker 1: of true, Like it's superficially it is kind of what happened,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, I'm glad the dictionary change the entry
Speaker 1: to say like this is like outdated and kind of bullshit,
Speaker 1: but like, okay, think about what actually happened here, right,
Speaker 1: A company that makes a product hired a bunch of
Speaker 1: a bunch of sort of Asian American like big celebrity
Speaker 1: people to do a marketing campaign for them in the
Speaker 1: name of anti racism, which like, yes, I I am
Speaker 1: glad we are addressing the racism in our own MSG.
Speaker 1: However common I feel like it's a really sort of
Speaker 1: like it's a it's a really literal example of the
Speaker 1: kind of like vopidity and listlessness of like Asian American
Speaker 1: identity and culture and politics like pre COVID, like this
Speaker 1: is this is this is this hands something like early January, right,
Speaker 1: so COVID is still sort of like some disease in China,
Speaker 1: Like we haven't hit full of racism yet. And again
Speaker 1: like this is not like an activist campaign, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, like activists get on board with it, I guess,
Speaker 1: but like activism is doing an ad campaign for a
Speaker 1: company that makes salt right. Yeah, it's not exactly grassroots
Speaker 1: or yea, and and you know, okay, and it works
Speaker 1: right like this this is a thing that like the
Speaker 1: Asian American community like picks up right, I mean sort of.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I I don't remember it, but I
Speaker 1: when I look looking looking back on the articles and
Speaker 1: hashtags and stuff. It's like, wow, they got lots of tweets.
Speaker 1: But you know, I I think I think the reason
Speaker 1: that this worked is is because of the sort of
Speaker 1: self conception of like Asian American nous. Is this like
Speaker 1: backstory of like like immigrants stepping off the boat and
Speaker 1: they start a restaurant and then your kids get an
Speaker 1: education to the answer of the professional class and like
Speaker 1: there isn't I don't know, like this is in fact,
Speaker 1: this is literally like part of the reason I'm doing
Speaker 1: is also like this is literally what happened to my family.
Speaker 1: Like they like they showed up from Taiwan, they worked
Speaker 1: in a restaurant, then they opened a restaurant, and then
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like every successive generation, well okay,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say every every successive generation got more
Speaker 1: like professionally, but like I have a bunch of talktors something.
Speaker 1: But but then they also produced me, who's a podcaster.
Speaker 1: So I'm defying Asian American stereotypes bite being more dipship
Speaker 1: than my parents. But you know, like this has become
Speaker 1: like this single sort of cultural narrative of like what
Speaker 1: it is to be in Asian American, right, Like, you
Speaker 1: see this in every single story that Asian American media
Speaker 1: like has produced in the last like ten years, it
Speaker 1: has one plot. Right, There's a family in the US.
Speaker 1: They're trying to fit in. They almost always have some
Speaker 1: kind of small business, and then something appears that challenges
Speaker 1: their ability to like assimilate into American society. This is
Speaker 1: and then you know they deal with it and that's
Speaker 1: the end. Right, This is a plot of crazy rich
Speaker 1: Asians a pot of everything ever all at once. The
Speaker 1: plot of Fresh Out the Boat is the pout of
Speaker 1: the fucking c W Kung Fu show. It is the plot.
Speaker 1: Like literally everything that like we produce has one plot,
Speaker 1: and it's this. And the reason why is it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's the reason why this is the only sort of
Speaker 1: like piece of media that that the sort of Asian
Speaker 1: American culture class have been able to produce. Is the
Speaker 1: reason why all the fucking activism and ad campaigns are
Speaker 1: just like, fucking we got hired by a company and
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about where racism racism is bad about
Speaker 1: this company can sell more product. Like, the reason is
Speaker 1: this is because this is an incredibly marketable self conception
Speaker 1: of Asian American nous like that the conception of it
Speaker 1: as being restaurant owners is there because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a form of culture that can be sold to white people, right. It's, hey,
Speaker 1: look we're different, we eat wacky food, but you can
Speaker 1: eat it too, And ultimately we're all in this for
Speaker 1: capitalism in the patriarchal family, like just like you are.
Speaker 1: Don't worry, It's gonna be fine. And you know that
Speaker 1: that really depresses me because this this is a moment
Speaker 1: that demands something else. And I think that's why kind
Speaker 1: of like I think that's why the sort of mainstream
Speaker 1: like Asian American reaction to like, you know, like that
Speaker 1: there was there was another there was another Asian woman
Speaker 1: like who got stabbed to death like two weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and there was like fucking no coverage of it, Like
Speaker 1: nobody gave a ship. It's just gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where like this happens, like six people report on it
Speaker 1: and then everyone just sort of moves onto their life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think the reason why this sort of like
Speaker 1: stop Asian hate ship has gotten to a you know,
Speaker 1: like it's gotten it gets gone through the sign cycle
Speaker 1: where everyone like had the signs up and then they
Speaker 1: took them down, and so you know, like and I
Speaker 1: think the reason why it was it turned into this
Speaker 1: sort of like like did the organizing turning this like
Speaker 1: incredibly vapid like put a sign in your store like
Speaker 1: two to hashtag stuff like is because of this is
Speaker 1: is because what like what what it means to be
Speaker 1: sort of Asian American has been hollowed out and hauled
Speaker 1: out and hold out and sold and sold and sold
Speaker 1: for just decades and decades and decades, and now, you know,
Speaker 1: like in a time when it's actually sort of like
Speaker 1: you know, when it when it's really in danger and
Speaker 1: it's called to action, it hasn't been able to do
Speaker 1: much right. And well, yeah, pointing out the film and
Speaker 1: TV thing is really important because I mean, so many
Speaker 1: marginalized communities have this experience. But I think China, like
Speaker 1: Asian culture in particular, I think it really people if
Speaker 1: they're ignorant and they just see what's depicted on media,
Speaker 1: they don't see them as three dimensional beings, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, what they have is like a very
Speaker 1: hollow version of a human and so I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it kind of upsets me because I feel like
Speaker 1: media is the first thing people learn things from, whether
Speaker 1: it's film or TV or whatever. But yeah, well and
Speaker 1: also I think it's I think it's part of the
Speaker 1: reason why, like the way that those those depictions sort
Speaker 1: of obscure class where you know, because these things, right,
Speaker 1: like a lot of these families are poor, but they're
Speaker 1: still business owner, right and that that's like like if
Speaker 1: you're a poor American as well, it's because you're a
Speaker 1: business and you're like a sort of struggling like American entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: And this obscure is the fact that there there is
Speaker 1: a massive Asian American just underclass people who are like
Speaker 1: delivery drivers or work in warehouses or you know, I
Speaker 1: mean like they're they're there. Who could there are groups
Speaker 1: of people who like come to the US from China,
Speaker 1: who you know, like live in like basically completely isolated
Speaker 1: communities in part of Chinatown where they're only speaking Chinese
Speaker 1: and they just sucking. Like there are people who have
Speaker 1: to do a bunch of like warehouse ship and then
Speaker 1: they leave and that's it, right, like, and these these
Speaker 1: people this ship never you like, you never actually get
Speaker 1: any kind of sort of class analysis because the way
Speaker 1: that media thinks about Asian Americans is like there's there's
Speaker 1: one of they're either one or three things. They're a
Speaker 1: business owner, they're like a rich professionals like a doctor
Speaker 1: or something, or they're like the fucking people on Blink
Speaker 1: where they're just like super rich assholes. And that that
Speaker 1: allows I think, like a specific kind of anti Asian
Speaker 1: politics to work that like Asian people are seen this
Speaker 1: sort of like perpetual like for an elite, and it's
Speaker 1: like no, I don't know, like it's it's just not
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not true and and it and
Speaker 1: it means that when you get like Asian American political movements,
Speaker 1: like the sort of stuff antiation hating, right, like you
Speaker 1: have like the guy who founded door Dash, right is
Speaker 1: like is a nation is like a Chinese American guy, right,
Speaker 1: He's like he used to he's a tech billionaire. He
Speaker 1: used to be like an emany Like you know, you
Speaker 1: would have the stop Asian hate advance, Like this fucking
Speaker 1: guy is on their light, is up on the stage
Speaker 1: talking about anti agent hate and it's like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: guy has like brutally and horribly exploited like literally millions
Speaker 1: of Asian Americans. But you know, there's there's there's there's
Speaker 1: no there's never gonna be reckoning with that because success
Speaker 1: and he's he's capitalist, like he's achieved the capitalist dream
Speaker 1: or whatever. The ship and and I I mean because
Speaker 1: because because Asian American contentia has been flattened in this way,
Speaker 1: like those people are just completely invisible and it it
Speaker 1: sucks and I hate it and yeah, yeah, I it's
Speaker 1: just I don't know, there's nothing good. I can like
Speaker 1: anything I can say to make anything better. But I
Speaker 1: think it's just I don't know. Maybe we can do
Speaker 1: an episode one day about like film and TV and stuff,
Speaker 1: because I think it really starts there unfortunately, like like
Speaker 1: it's it's silly, but people that don't know a Chinese
Speaker 1: person will see a Chinese person on their TV and
Speaker 1: be like, that's the only Chinese person I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life. And I'm gonna make assumptions about the
Speaker 1: whole race now. But one day I'm gonna do an
Speaker 1: We're gonna do an episode that's entirely me shipping on
Speaker 1: Jackie Chan. People are gonna get really mad at me.
Speaker 1: But funk that guy, that's a hot take. He started
Speaker 1: his career as a fucking scamp. That was literally his
Speaker 1: first thing was he was a scap. And he's yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the fucking homophote piece of shit. Fuck him. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: done your reparable damage for this episode. Let's do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right? That that will that will be something we
Speaker 1: are We are now to the part of the episode
Speaker 1: where we are teasing you with subsequent episode. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't know, And it's a little bit
Speaker 1: upsetting how these are really important movements are just like
Speaker 1: they the plateau and they become like this vapid thing
Speaker 1: like you're saying, Like, I think that gives people such
Speaker 1: an easy out of like quote unquote being an ally
Speaker 1: or supporting because they think they're doing something by like
Speaker 1: holding up a sign or something without really internalizing or
Speaker 1: spreading the awareness that is necessary. And uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I I guess the thing I want to end on
Speaker 1: also is me being piste off at a bunch of
Speaker 1: Asian American kids in the saets. So one of the
Speaker 1: stories you will hear a lot if you're studying Asian
Speaker 1: American politics, like is the story that, like the term
Speaker 1: Asian American was invented by these like activists who actually
Speaker 1: were like doing a bunch of stuff eight um, these
Speaker 1: like student active like this radical student activists, and that's true.
Speaker 1: But the thing you have to understand about those people
Speaker 1: is that all of those people were like like all
Speaker 1: those people were basically like, we're third world ists. And
Speaker 1: part of the reason this whole politics collapses, well a
Speaker 1: part of the reason part of what happened was like
Speaker 1: part of the demands of these students in these sort
Speaker 1: of like radical student groups like but you know, the
Speaker 1: their form to sort of like support the sort of
Speaker 1: like black radical student groups into like advocate for themselves.
Speaker 1: But like one of their big demands was they wanted
Speaker 1: cultural studies departments in in American universities, and they got them.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, so what what what what are
Speaker 1: those cultural studies like departments? They basically just became these
Speaker 1: giant traps through radicals where instead of like overthrowing the government,
Speaker 1: you like come do this cushy job in academia, and
Speaker 1: like all of all of the sort of like old
Speaker 1: radicals like from that area either like got regular jobs
Speaker 1: or became like African academics, right, And the other thing
Speaker 1: that happened with this politics that was the reason why
Speaker 1: it was completely unsustainable was that and this this is
Speaker 1: this has been a sort of a problem with the
Speaker 1: Asian America entity. Right is that okay, like what the
Speaker 1: fund is an Asian American right, it's like anyone from
Speaker 1: like I don't know, likes anyone from like the like
Speaker 1: the edge of the Pacific to like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like how how how far? How far? Like I what's
Speaker 1: it called? Like how far? How far west? Does that go?
Speaker 1: The other direction? Like who knows? It's like yeah, like
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like billions and billions and billions
Speaker 1: of people with completely your related cultures and languages and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And the reason they were able to
Speaker 1: do this right was because they were mirroring their movement
Speaker 1: off of like the Third World right. But the problem
Speaker 1: that they ran into, and this is the problem with
Speaker 1: all the Third World movements was that, Okay, So the
Speaker 1: Third World movement like as a thing was it was
Speaker 1: based on a bunch of different nationalist movements, right, Like
Speaker 1: it was based on that there's going to be this
Speaker 1: like alliance between like the sort of like the rising
Speaker 1: socialis powers in Africa and the rising socialist powers and
Speaker 1: I in East Asia, and they were gonna sort of
Speaker 1: like ally with like the rising sort of like I know,
Speaker 1: like the rising sort of like minorities getting power in
Speaker 1: the US. But okay, if you look at those nationalisms, right,
Speaker 1: you have Chinese nationalism, Cambodian nationalism, and Vietnamese nationalism all
Speaker 1: colliding with each other. And you know, if it turns
Speaker 1: out like what okay? So what what what happens if
Speaker 1: your movement is based on sort of like the unity
Speaker 1: of a bunch of nationals movements and they go to
Speaker 1: war with each other? And you know what happened was
Speaker 1: when when when China when Vietnam and Vadas Cambodia in
Speaker 1: and and Vietnam and Vedas Cambodia and then China invades
Speaker 1: Vietnam in nineteen seventy nine. Right, the entire politics is
Speaker 1: fucked because what what what are you supposed to do?
Speaker 1: Like what's who's who side you're supposed to take? Here? Right?
Speaker 1: Like you can you can do the you know, like
Speaker 1: if if you're gonna be like a Marxist, like a
Speaker 1: Marxis Leninist, like the probably the correct line to support Vietnam, right,
Speaker 1: But that's a mess because you know how many people
Speaker 1: in Maoists, right, and if you but but you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a Maoist and you're fucking people just invaded Vietnam,
Speaker 1: like you know, what are you supposed to do? Right?
Speaker 1: And there was there were earlier attentions with this too,
Speaker 1: where like like China, with China was backing like a
Speaker 1: really shitty fashion in Angola who ended up ended up
Speaker 1: being backed by the US and like South Africa, and
Speaker 1: that caused a whole bunch of tensions between the sort
Speaker 1: of Chinese Maoists and a bunch of the sort of
Speaker 1: black radical groups because they were like, why the funk
Speaker 1: are you guys backing these people in Angola? But you know,
Speaker 1: and and and this, this whole thing became a problem
Speaker 1: because all of these nationalisms are competing nationalisms right there.
Speaker 1: There was never going to be one unified third world.
Speaker 1: It was always it was always going to end with
Speaker 1: a bunch of nationalists fucking fighting each other. And when
Speaker 1: that happens, the Asian like the Asian American movement such
Speaker 1: as it was just fucking died, and you know, like
Speaker 1: as a radical movement, it was just over. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I think I think the lesson that I
Speaker 1: would take out of this is just that like, do
Speaker 1: not build. Do not build your movement based off of
Speaker 1: someone else's nationalism, because those people are going to do
Speaker 1: things because they're nationalists that are just fucked right. They're
Speaker 1: gonna win. They're gonna invade Vietnam like camp, like the
Speaker 1: Cambodians are gonna invade Vietnam, and then Vietnam is gonna
Speaker 1: like you know, like are arguably justifiably because they've been
Speaker 1: getting attacked because they're fighting Khmer Rouge. But like you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're these people are all going to go to
Speaker 1: war with each other, right like you're or you know, you're,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be stuck in the situation where like you're, you're,
Speaker 1: you're you're being forced to two sides between like the
Speaker 1: DIRG and the and like the Marxist government Somalia because
Speaker 1: they've they've randomly gone to war with each other. So
Speaker 1: don't do this. This has been my rants that I wanted,
Speaker 1: all I wanted to do about this because yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you did. I'm glad that I was here
Speaker 1: for it too, because I don't know, it's good to
Speaker 1: know this stuff and I get to learn by listening
Speaker 1: to you still me Um, yeah, I I appreciate all
Speaker 1: the research that you did. Thanks. Yeah, and yeah, so
Speaker 1: I guess this has been It can happen here? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the episode. You can find us happened here pod
Speaker 1: um on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at h three Um
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, I'm a sure hero six six six on
Speaker 1: Twitter and then on Instagram. Just take out the six
Speaker 1: six sixes, but maybe I should add them because OK
Speaker 1: here anyway, thanks by this is it could happen here.
Speaker 1: My name is Jake Hanrahan. I'm a journalist and documentary filmmaker.
Speaker 1: Today you're gonna hear me reporting from an undisclosed location
Speaker 1: in Europe where I met with anti Putin Russian partisans.
Speaker 1: So right now, heading into the forest somewhere on the
Speaker 1: edge of Europe. There's snow absolutely everywhere. It's pitch black
Speaker 1: and it's very very cold. I'm heading into the forest
Speaker 1: to meet with anti government Russian partisans. They've been launching
Speaker 1: attacks inside Russia against Kremlin infrastructure. They've been blowing up
Speaker 1: railway tracks and attacking military recruitment centers because they want
Speaker 1: to disrupt the continued Russian invasion of Ukraine. These partners
Speaker 1: and attacks have been taking place all across Russia, but
Speaker 1: obviously over there there's a complete media blackout on this situation.
Speaker 1: So this group have come over um and agreed to
Speaker 1: meet with me to tell me what's actually happening and
Speaker 1: to let people know that it's not everybody there that
Speaker 1: supports this, and some people are even taking up arms,
Speaker 1: taking massive risks to try and stop proputing is up to.
Speaker 1: When Russia invaded Ukraine on February, the Ukrainian people bravely
Speaker 1: mobilized to fight back against Putin's attack on their country.
Speaker 1: Russia's so called Three Days Special Operation has turned into
Speaker 1: a grueling, year long battle whether Ukrainian resistance has been
Speaker 1: highly effective. Despite this chaos, it seems that many people
Speaker 1: in Russia have come out in favor of this brutal war.
Speaker 1: Even now, with over forty people killed and over fourteen
Speaker 1: million displaced, there's still large scales support for Putin's attacks
Speaker 1: on Ukraine. This much is fact. The idea that every
Speaker 1: Russian is in favor of the war is not. Russia
Speaker 1: is a huge place, with a population of over one
Speaker 1: d and forty million. Many people there do not support
Speaker 1: Putin or his war. Some have even taken the risk
Speaker 1: to fight back. As I mentioned, there's a quiet but
Speaker 1: highly effective network of anti Poutin partisans that are fighting
Speaker 1: from within. They're doing this by blowing up military railways,
Speaker 1: sabotaging Kremlin cell towers, and burning down war recruitment centers,
Speaker 1: all this in an effort to help Ukrainians from Afar.
Speaker 1: If caught by the Russian security writy forces, they faced
Speaker 1: torture and life in prison. Despite the risks, in the
Speaker 1: last twelve months, there have been more than eighty confirmed
Speaker 1: attacks against the government inside at Russia. The attacks have
Speaker 1: taken place all across the country as well, from Moscow
Speaker 1: in the west to Vladivostok in the far east. There
Speaker 1: are dozens of different partisans cells and lone wolves. As
Speaker 1: is with real life, the partisans have varying different political
Speaker 1: ideologies from far left to far right. For the moment, though,
Speaker 1: they all share information with each other, recognizing their common
Speaker 1: enemy in Putin. One of the most organized groups is
Speaker 1: made up of militant anarchists. They're known as the Anaco
Speaker 1: Communist Combat Organization, more commonly referred to by their Russian
Speaker 1: abbreviation BOAK. It's two fighters from Boak who had arranged
Speaker 1: to meet in a Russia bordering forest of eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: We've spoken weeks before via encrypted email. They told me
Speaker 1: which country to fly to and then send me coordinates
Speaker 1: of where to meet them within a specific window of time.
Speaker 1: A driver as far as I could, abandon the car
Speaker 1: and took off into the forest. Eventually, a red torchlight
Speaker 1: emerged through the trees, cutting the silhouette of two figures.
Speaker 1: As the two approached, it was clear it was the
Speaker 1: Boak fighters. They were both dressed head to toe in black,
Speaker 1: and we're both wearing balaclavas. We confirmed things, shook hands
Speaker 1: and set off to find a spot for the interview.
Speaker 1: They let me through an underground tunnel to an area
Speaker 1: they felt comfortable with. Just to protect the identity of
Speaker 1: the rushing partisans, we've scrambled their voice. That voice you
Speaker 1: just heard that, Oh yeah, she's a female, and the
Speaker 1: other fire said the voice you'll hear that's Jura, he's
Speaker 1: a male. Can you explain the actions, like what are
Speaker 1: the main things you've been doing to disrupt Putin's invasion?
Speaker 1: The assembled railways, which leads to their after really else
Speaker 1: in the most court region do it the fronto to
Speaker 1: give to the Krainian people more time to prepare for
Speaker 1: the The railing trains in Russia is something the Partisans
Speaker 1: specialize in. They've managed to knock several Kremlin cargo trains
Speaker 1: off their tracks, trains that were destined to the level
Speaker 1: weapons to Russian soldiers as they continued to invade Ukraine.
Speaker 1: We'll probably never know how helpful this was for Ukrainians,
Speaker 1: but every second counts when battling for frontline positions in war.
Speaker 1: For example, if Russian soldiers were left waiting for a
Speaker 1: resupply which was delayed because of partisan attacks, they might
Speaker 1: then be overrun by Ukrainians. This would definitely be an
Speaker 1: effective blow for the Partisans. I asked the Borack fights
Speaker 1: is why they felt the need to form such an organization.
Speaker 1: We see that we need to create a partisan organization
Speaker 1: because in the Russia the state depression is very hard.
Speaker 1: So you came to use some uh legal methods to
Speaker 1: do some step by step changes. Even if you do
Speaker 1: some so called legal actions, anyway, you'll go to the jail.
Speaker 1: We are attacking the state to make it weaker, to
Speaker 1: show people that we can do it. We as people
Speaker 1: people of Russia, people of all the old We have
Speaker 1: this power in our hands. And yeah, and them the
Speaker 1: stay they are small and we are there's a lot
Speaker 1: of us. And the second direction, which we are developed
Speaker 1: since is a coordination of such kinds of attacks. Attacks
Speaker 1: all over the Russia. Recently we published I think maybe
Speaker 1: even more than an attacks from many different regions. We
Speaker 1: have small partisan cells to find out how to make attacks,
Speaker 1: help them with supplies, helps such as small person groups.
Speaker 1: It's increasing, it's increasing here and they make more and
Speaker 1: more serious attacks. For example, not a long time ago
Speaker 1: they bombed some kind of military road near the graying
Speaker 1: In border. So hope is not in that one small
Speaker 1: group can do, but that we have a lot of
Speaker 1: small groups and altogethers that we can change things. So
Speaker 1: you guys been around before the uk MOS started, or
Speaker 1: at least since the invasion started this year, but that's
Speaker 1: when you've got a lot more known. I think online
Speaker 1: we've seen that you guys are actually doing attacks inside
Speaker 1: Russia and in Belarus. Very dangerous thing to do. Um,
Speaker 1: what is it that you know spurred you guys on
Speaker 1: why you're doing this way? You're taking such a risk
Speaker 1: to basically attack who in in his own country, because
Speaker 1: it's not his country, it's our country. We can't do nothing.
Speaker 1: We can do legal things. And this patternan tax can
Speaker 1: make military imagine of Russian state. We got the supply lines,
Speaker 1: we attack the military equipment centers, so the army became
Speaker 1: so we can end as it was very often in
Speaker 1: the Russia and many others states study on the state
Speaker 1: lows war. That is, the window of possibilities opens for
Speaker 1: the people of this country. What was Boach a pragmatic
Speaker 1: focused currently on the pressing issue of Putin's or on Ukraine.
Speaker 1: They're also looking to carve out a space for themselves
Speaker 1: in what they believe will be a wild post Putin Russia.
Speaker 1: When Putin dies, there will be a vacuum where many
Speaker 1: other groups feel the same Boach in their minds, setting
Speaker 1: down foundations already. For now though, they concentrate on assisting
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians and in terms of like solidarity with Ukraine,
Speaker 1: are you doing this outh the Ukrainians as well or
Speaker 1: just for yourselves, like are you in contact with Ukrainians
Speaker 1: or is this just like a movement you guys are
Speaker 1: doing yourself. Of course, we have contacts, we can of
Speaker 1: course uh see what exactly contact? Yes, but yes we
Speaker 1: have contact moves uh different not only on his organization,
Speaker 1: in all ex country as well, we try to provide
Speaker 1: information for those other groups which don't yet know how
Speaker 1: to do things and don't yet have funds enough for
Speaker 1: supplies because even gasoline costs money and they don't have money.
Speaker 1: And as well, near the start of war, our group
Speaker 1: organized a few attacks like on a mobile cell towers
Speaker 1: Ukraine border, as we've seen from the telegram channels, the
Speaker 1: kind of underground, there's definitely a lot of attacks. As
Speaker 1: you've said, as you've been doing, how big is your
Speaker 1: organization because it's hard to tell how how prevalent are
Speaker 1: these attacks inside Russia? So that is well two or
Speaker 1: three dozens finished groups. Um, everyone has a different number
Speaker 1: of members. And what about geography as you know of
Speaker 1: the dance X from the calliand west over us to
Speaker 1: the what your stalk which is yeah, specifically being anarchist
Speaker 1: but being partisans is extremely extremely dangerous inside Russia. You're
Speaker 1: taking a massive risk doing this kind of stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: some people are going to leave this and go like
Speaker 1: why why would you take that risk? If we won't
Speaker 1: take those risks now we won't have future at all.
Speaker 1: And you're not worried, you're not scared of getting caught.
Speaker 1: But it's much more scarier to leave, know that you
Speaker 1: had chanced to change something and you didn't. Our people
Speaker 1: killing people of Ukraine and making a golds and wars,
Speaker 1: so every day it was interest for nuclear war and
Speaker 1: so on, because if you do it now, maybe we
Speaker 1: will not have the future at all. Not only in Rush,
Speaker 1: all over the world. People on the internet, they will
Speaker 1: see what you guys are doing and they say, are
Speaker 1: you guys are CIA opertures and stuff like this, particularly
Speaker 1: like Westerners that actually support putting. Now you know what
Speaker 1: it's like living there under putting? Um, you know what,
Speaker 1: how would you right? Stuff? Would you say to always
Speaker 1: kind of actus eyes? I think if we would be
Speaker 1: saying hey, we would act more effectively. But we acted
Speaker 1: with those forces, with those resources which we have, we're
Speaker 1: trying to increase them. But when said that, it's time,
Speaker 1: it's process from zero partisan attacked to the full parts
Speaker 1: of the ward. So if we were see we had
Speaker 1: a lot, well, we would have a lot of more resources.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we like we have homemade boombs or anything
Speaker 1: we can get our hands on or even speaking about
Speaker 1: sources which we used. When we uh the sample trailways,
Speaker 1: we used simple instruments which we could be bought in.
Speaker 1: We are showing people that they can just go to
Speaker 1: the and buy those tools and do that themselves. It's
Speaker 1: not just you know, us doing some stuff with some
Speaker 1: specific materials you can only get in the darknet. Now,
Speaker 1: let's be honest. It's likely the c i A are
Speaker 1: up to something in Russia considering their past history, but
Speaker 1: personally I believe back when they say they're nothing to
Speaker 1: do with that. I think it would be pretty unlikely
Speaker 1: that the CIA would help an Anaco communist group when
Speaker 1: there are ultra nationalist groups doing similar things. How do
Speaker 1: you get the information? Like how do you know which
Speaker 1: railway to blow up? We used to wiki mar provides
Speaker 1: description for each object on the map and every everyone
Speaker 1: can contribute to eat. So he just opened it and
Speaker 1: you find, okay, minite objects here. It's doing something like
Speaker 1: that that, it's it's photos and people who did they
Speaker 1: didn't do it for us just because formation you just
Speaker 1: can take it im do it. So they use wiki
Speaker 1: mapia to help their attacks. This I found quite funny.
Speaker 1: It's like the modern version of guerrillas gathering intel from
Speaker 1: locals about the enemy, only the locals in this case
Speaker 1: don't even know they're doing it. Scouting is also a
Speaker 1: big part of their sabotage preparations. But but of course,
Speaker 1: so we need to a lot of scouting. Yeah, scouting
Speaker 1: like you you check out the PO. I know the
Speaker 1: anarchists specifically in Russia have been tortured quite a lot.
Speaker 1: If they're captured for anything, Um, what do you think
Speaker 1: would happen to you? Guys? If you got caught? For sure,
Speaker 1: we're going to as well, if you will be if
Speaker 1: you will live enough because we not link to Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't give any information on our comrades, and when
Speaker 1: you're tortured, it's hard to say when we would or
Speaker 1: would not your break. So it's got to prevent this
Speaker 1: by dying fighting. Does that mean your firearms? If you
Speaker 1: want to do a revolution, you can do to the
Speaker 1: forums like why why are you doing this? Why are
Speaker 1: you giving us? Why do you want this this information
Speaker 1: to get out there? Do you think that it's important
Speaker 1: that people see us not as some internet warriors. We
Speaker 1: want people to hear our voices, to hear what we
Speaker 1: can we have to say people to think that we
Speaker 1: are some shay the organization, but we want them to
Speaker 1: see that we are real people just like them, and
Speaker 1: just like us. They can do things that we do.
Speaker 1: A lot of it is online, but there's there's definitely
Speaker 1: a perception that all Russians agree with the invasion, the
Speaker 1: destruction of Ukraine, what Putin wants to do. Obviously, people
Speaker 1: like you very clearly, you know, a small but effective
Speaker 1: resistance against Putin policies. What do you think about that?
Speaker 1: How would you respond to that? Is? Is it in
Speaker 1: the country and more people against the then it would
Speaker 1: seem or what? There are a lot more people against
Speaker 1: it than it seems, because propaganda shows only people who
Speaker 1: agree with Putta and many many people don't agree, and
Speaker 1: many people just just silent because they're afraid to lose
Speaker 1: their jobs. If you will beat a dog every day
Speaker 1: and then some day it will think that you I
Speaker 1: live like that, it's normally, you know. So as we
Speaker 1: see a lot of people in Russia are also victims
Speaker 1: of the Putin's regime at the moment, they just don't
Speaker 1: think that if they stick up they will change anything.
Speaker 1: I think our main message is that people shouldn't just
Speaker 1: sit and wait that someone else is gonna do anything
Speaker 1: for them. They should take their lives in their own hands.
Speaker 1: As we often repeat, if not to be, don't who?
Speaker 1: If not now that when, thank you very much, life
Speaker 1: and everything. It's very good. Much without. The two partisans
Speaker 1: from Boak vanished into the forest. As Russia's war on
Speaker 1: Ukraine approaches at twelve month, Russian partisans like the ones
Speaker 1: I spoke to continuing to disrupt Putne's war effort from within.
Speaker 1: Organizations like Boak are fighting and uphill battle, but still
Speaker 1: their attacks have definitely been effective. As we said, several
Speaker 1: military trains have been derailed and word of the partisan
Speaker 1: underground is spreading. Whilst there's next to no Russian state
Speaker 1: media coverage on this, the Russian government is clearly aware
Speaker 1: of it. Security around Russian train tracks has been tightened,
Speaker 1: and the Russian court has find the telegram app for
Speaker 1: allowing partisan networks to share information. There not to mention
Speaker 1: the uptick in unexplained fires breaking out across the country.
Speaker 1: Even though Prune's government acts like they can't see them,
Speaker 1: they know the partisans there. If you want to watch
Speaker 1: the extended documentary version of this reporting. Go to YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash popular Front and look for the documentary
Speaker 1: Rushes Anti poutin Underground. Music in this episode of It
Speaker 1: Could Happen Here was by Sam Black seas music at
Speaker 1: Sam black pf dot com. Reporting production editing was by me.
Speaker 1: You can follow me at Jake Underscore Hanrahan h A
Speaker 1: N I A H A N. Please do check out
Speaker 1: my platform, independent grassroots conflict Reporting www dot Popular Front
Speaker 1: dot CEO. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a
Speaker 1: podcast that is today about it happening here or or
Speaker 1: more particularly in Atlanta. So so it's here if you
Speaker 1: happen to live in Atlanta, Georgia. Otherwise it is it
Speaker 1: is still happening there. Um. And I don't actually know
Speaker 1: much about this because, like the rest of you, I
Speaker 1: have been watching from the sidelines since a forest defender
Speaker 1: was killed by the Georgia State Police. But someone who
Speaker 1: has been in Atlanta for most of the last week
Speaker 1: is Garrison Davis. Garrison, Hi, Hi, it's been a long week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it. You uh had just gotten back
Speaker 1: from c e S when all this happened, and booked
Speaker 1: booked the next flight and flew out and we're on
Speaker 1: the ground during uh, some of the immediate protests that
Speaker 1: followed news about the death. Do you do you want
Speaker 1: to just kind of take it from here. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna be putting together kind of a more in
Speaker 1: depth thing similar to my similar to my on the
Speaker 1: Ground to Defend the Atlanta Forest episodes from last May.
Speaker 1: That is that's that's gonna come out. But you know,
Speaker 1: it'll take a little bit because I'm doing a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews, doing a lot of on the ground stuff here. Um,
Speaker 1: but this is important enough that I feel like it's
Speaker 1: it's worth that it was it was worth mentioning something
Speaker 1: a bit sooner, which is why we're recording here today
Speaker 1: just to kind of give a one oh one on
Speaker 1: what's been going on ever since Wednesday. So Wednesday, January
Speaker 1: there was a raid on the Wallawnee Forest or the
Speaker 1: South River Forest in Atlanta, where people have been currently
Speaker 1: staying in encampments for the past like a year and
Speaker 1: a half in opposition of this upcoming proposed police training
Speaker 1: facility to be built on this same land. So Wednesday
Speaker 1: morning there was this raid. Um, there's a few things
Speaker 1: different about this raid. One it seemed to be in
Speaker 1: some ways kind of led by the Georgia State Patrol. UM.
Speaker 1: This is uh, you know, a state, a state run
Speaker 1: police that has not been in this force before. UM.
Speaker 1: Other raids have been coordinated between the Decap County Police
Speaker 1: in Atlanta Police. So the swat team was was unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with the forest. They had not been in there before.
Speaker 1: There was there was other police on on site. This
Speaker 1: was an inter agency thing. There was it does seem
Speaker 1: like there was Atlanta police here as well. But this
Speaker 1: started at around eight am and then at around nine
Speaker 1: am we got word that uh, a forest defender was
Speaker 1: shot and killed by it seems like in an estate
Speaker 1: patrol officer that they are not releasing the name of,
Speaker 1: nor are they releasing the name of one other officer
Speaker 1: who was injured. UM and George georgiea State patrol claims
Speaker 1: that they were shot during this raid as well. Police
Speaker 1: by Day Yes, police police claim that they were shot
Speaker 1: by the person that the George State Patrol killed. There's
Speaker 1: very little information about this. UM. Nobody cameras no, they
Speaker 1: have said that there's no nobody cam which does seem
Speaker 1: consistent because George st. Patrol are not are not required
Speaker 1: to our body cam, so that obviously hit a lot
Speaker 1: of people pretty hard. Because this is um, to our knowledge,
Speaker 1: the first like you know, environmental ist protester to be
Speaker 1: killed by police. It's the first fatality that we've had
Speaker 1: in the in this in this movement here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: And for the record, it is still deeply unclear what happened.
Speaker 1: It's certainly not impossible that this person fired first on
Speaker 1: the police officer, but it's it's also incredibly important to
Speaker 1: note that there is no evidence of this that's been presented.
Speaker 1: The only evidence that the police have presented is a
Speaker 1: photo of a of a pistol on the ground. UM.
Speaker 1: And then they've made the very weasily worded claim that
Speaker 1: UM ballistics testing has shown that the bullet that struck
Speaker 1: the officer was consistent with the gun that they're saying
Speaker 1: with the the individual they killed had all that means
Speaker 1: I said it was nine millimeter. That was the same caliber, right,
Speaker 1: a caliber for which there are tens of millions of
Speaker 1: guns in this country. UM. Most ballistic science is in
Speaker 1: terms of like identifying bullets to guns is actually nonsense.
Speaker 1: There have been massive lawsuits about this. The FBI, UM
Speaker 1: has has this is a bigger topic than than we
Speaker 1: can get into today. But it's very shady, and all
Speaker 1: that they actually said is the cop was shot with
Speaker 1: a nine millimeter and hey, look we found a nine millimeter.
Speaker 1: Not interestingly enough, we have confirmed that this gun was fired. Um.
Speaker 1: So very anyway, so no one knows what's happened. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's shady. I mean, so I've I got I
Speaker 1: got here like less than twenty four hours later. A
Speaker 1: lot of people on the ground have been kind of
Speaker 1: sharing their memories of the person that was killed. So
Speaker 1: the person was named their Their forest name was Tortuguita,
Speaker 1: which means little turtle. Their name that has been released
Speaker 1: is uh Manuel Um, I'm just gonna I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: them tortuga or tort um. Sure, there's been people of
Speaker 1: you know, spent a lot of the past few days
Speaker 1: talking about tort remembering tort um, the types of things
Speaker 1: that that they advocated for the types of things that
Speaker 1: they would talk about. So we'll well, we'll get into
Speaker 1: some of the more kind of specifics of that of
Speaker 1: that of that later. Um. But a number of other
Speaker 1: journalists have talked about their conversations with with toward, including
Speaker 1: Um the fact that they evinced a pretty principled um
Speaker 1: and and extensive commitment to non violence, UM, at least
Speaker 1: in interviews. This is something they had been quoted on
Speaker 1: by an other journalists a number of times. And this
Speaker 1: is something I've heard a lot of people bring up.
Speaker 1: Is that is that tort was was a believer in
Speaker 1: in non violence and would and would talk about and
Speaker 1: advocate that. The other the other kind of angle to this,
Speaker 1: and I'm not taking a position one way or another here,
Speaker 1: but this is something that I think it's important to
Speaker 1: mention is that I also don't want to remove the
Speaker 1: agency of a person if they did decide to do
Speaker 1: if I, if I did, if they did decide to
Speaker 1: do this. Because the other thing I've heard a lot
Speaker 1: about Towards is that they always made thoughtful decisions, in
Speaker 1: meaning that they put thought into everything they did. Um.
Speaker 1: They were they acted strategically. They did not they did
Speaker 1: not put people in unnecessary danger. They would not do
Speaker 1: something if they thought it would endanger other people. They
Speaker 1: always acted with thought and that that that could include
Speaker 1: if you feel like your life is under immediate threat, um,
Speaker 1: what what actually happened Wednesday morning? We will probably never know,
Speaker 1: we will never know the exact series of events. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's and in some ways like that's we can
Speaker 1: we should respect towards either way, um, because they made
Speaker 1: it a decision that they thought that was right in
Speaker 1: the moment where they were just flat out murdered by police. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's that's kind of the gist of of what
Speaker 1: happened Wednesday morning. Throughout the rest of the day, their
Speaker 1: police continued their raid on the forest. The last the
Speaker 1: last tree sitter was eventually taken down like twenty hours
Speaker 1: later after the raids. That someone was stuck up in
Speaker 1: a tree for over twenty hours, no food or water, Um,
Speaker 1: police agitating them the entire time, and many all of
Speaker 1: all the other people arrested, I think it total around
Speaker 1: seven got charged with the domestic terrorism among other charges.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty significant. Um. That is people. That's that
Speaker 1: and we will circle back to this to this point
Speaker 1: a little bit later. So that is that is what
Speaker 1: happened on Wednesday. Uh, you know, the first few hours
Speaker 1: after the shooting, people were unsure of of who actually
Speaker 1: got killed. It was it was hard, it was hard
Speaker 1: to say. Um. Other force defenders who were in the
Speaker 1: area did report from that what they heard there was
Speaker 1: a pretty a pretty quick single firing of of guns,
Speaker 1: multiple guns going off in a pretty quick succession. There
Speaker 1: was no like one shot and then seconds later bunch
Speaker 1: of other shots. It was all kind of one event.
Speaker 1: This is reports from people on the ground. This is
Speaker 1: what this is what they've said. UM, A lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people speculate that this could have been
Speaker 1: friendly fire. If if this, if this, if this, if
Speaker 1: this other patrol officer was was, um, you know, got shot.
Speaker 1: They went to the hospital. So it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: police officer had got a bullet inside of them. Um.
Speaker 1: But obviously there's a number of ways in which that
Speaker 1: could have occurred. And I don't find it. I certainly,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's conspiratory at all, too conspiratorial at
Speaker 1: all to say they have not presented evidence. It is
Speaker 1: certainly possible that a bunch of cops wandering through the forest,
Speaker 1: somebody would have a negligent discharge, you know, somebody would
Speaker 1: just pant. You know, there's enough we and again, as
Speaker 1: you've stated, we just we probably will never know precisely
Speaker 1: what happened. Um, And that's that's that's the feeling on
Speaker 1: the ground, a lot of people coming to terms with
Speaker 1: the fact that we will never know. A lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking that it's you know, very likely chance
Speaker 1: it was friendly fire. Other people, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: trying to emphasize the fact that, you know, we will
Speaker 1: never know if we cannot say one way, they or another.
Speaker 1: But it's also important not to minimize someone's autonomy, especially
Speaker 1: since they're no longer around to advocate for themselves or
Speaker 1: their actions. Yeah, let's go, let's have a let's have
Speaker 1: an ad break, and then we'll kind of continue on
Speaker 1: to what happened in the in the days after we're
Speaker 1: back Garrison. Please continue to take it away. So the
Speaker 1: late the day of the shooting, there was a vigil
Speaker 1: before we found out who it was. There was a
Speaker 1: vigil set up at Little Five Points in Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: then the next two days there was there was a vigil.
Speaker 1: Space is created at entrenchmentt Creek Park or Woolani People's Park. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is an area of the forest that's too that's
Speaker 1: on like the eastern side, and this is the section
Speaker 1: that is currently being sought as a place to expand
Speaker 1: black Hole Movie studios. So this is this is separate
Speaker 1: from the actual cops City element of this, but it's
Speaker 1: still part of the Defend the Atlanta Forest side of
Speaker 1: this because this is all the same forest. They're just
Speaker 1: kind of split um down the middle by this by
Speaker 1: this power line cut. So this section of the park
Speaker 1: is on a section of land that's contestedly owned by
Speaker 1: Ryan Millsap, the guy who runs Black Hall Studios. I
Speaker 1: first arrived at at the Willani People's Park on Friday
Speaker 1: for the for like the more public facing vigil, and
Speaker 1: I just just kind of I want to talk a
Speaker 1: bit about the park because this is such a I
Speaker 1: think it's such a solid encapsulation of what's changed since
Speaker 1: last time I've been in Atlanta. So last time I
Speaker 1: was in Atlanta, there was the Muscogee Creek. People were
Speaker 1: traveling from my belief, Oklahoma to Atlanta what what is
Speaker 1: now Atlanta what what used to be Muskogee land um,
Speaker 1: and they were they were like giving talks and presentations
Speaker 1: about the forest inside the section of forests that that
Speaker 1: the Defend the Atlanta Fort stuff is about. And I
Speaker 1: went to one of those events at in Trenchpant Creek Park.
Speaker 1: It was green trees all around, there was a nice gazebo.
Speaker 1: There was a there was a piano inside the gazebo,
Speaker 1: people handing out food, a little kitchen was set up,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty picturesque. It was. It was pretty. It was
Speaker 1: pretty great. So then when I pulled up to this
Speaker 1: same spot a few days ago, it was like apocalyptic.
Speaker 1: The gazebo has been completely torn down and is laying
Speaker 1: in shambles in the front of the parking lot like
Speaker 1: for everyone to see. The destroyed rooms, all of the
Speaker 1: all of like the uh, the the concrete sidewalks and
Speaker 1: stuff have all been torn up and it's just scattered everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's now it's just it's just a massive mud pit.
Speaker 1: It's it's such a different place. Um. And you know
Speaker 1: when you when you get there for a vigil, the
Speaker 1: moods not cheery obviously. Um. There was people you know,
Speaker 1: sharing stories of Tort, singing songs and you know, building
Speaker 1: this like a almost like a virgual shrine. Um. So
Speaker 1: that was like the first the first big thing Friday night. Um.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people talked about their memories of
Speaker 1: Tort and you know the different things they contributed to,
Speaker 1: not just to defend the a lint of force stuff,
Speaker 1: but stuff across the entire South. They did mutual aid
Speaker 1: work UM and stuff to secure housing for people in Florida.
Speaker 1: They helped defend drag shows in U Tennessee. They they did,
Speaker 1: they did stuff all all across the South. And you know,
Speaker 1: they had they had allies and accomplices from across the South,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about how great toward was to work
Speaker 1: with the types of solidarity that tort would show too
Speaker 1: too many many different people. So that was Friday, and
Speaker 1: everyone was kind of you could kind of feel the
Speaker 1: almost calm before the storm. In some ways, people didn't
Speaker 1: people didn't really know what was going to happen in
Speaker 1: the coming days, but there was there was a sense
Speaker 1: of like eerie quietness. And then Saturday happens. Saturday, there
Speaker 1: is this protest planned meeting in Underground Atlanta, which is
Speaker 1: a spot in downtown Atlanta kind of on the south side.
Speaker 1: I got there for this protest there. Initially there was
Speaker 1: people from this like socialist organization called PSL. They they
Speaker 1: tried to lead them march one way. Um the crowd
Speaker 1: rejected their authority and was like, no, we're not going
Speaker 1: to go to the federal district. We're not going to
Speaker 1: go to the CNN Center, which are places notorious for
Speaker 1: getting cattled at UM, and they and people autonomously redirected
Speaker 1: the crowd um North towards the and and North is
Speaker 1: also just so happens to be the direction of the
Speaker 1: Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters, the pseudo union lobbying group that
Speaker 1: is that is behind the big push for for Cops
Speaker 1: City UM. But before this march started, there was similarly,
Speaker 1: you know, people giving speeches about tort people, not not speeches,
Speaker 1: like people just sharing memories of torts. So people so
Speaker 1: that tork can like live on UM in some way,
Speaker 1: so people can you know, know about them now that
Speaker 1: they're no longer around. You know, people from a local
Speaker 1: medic collective talking about you know, towards towards involvement in
Speaker 1: that and how much toward cared about, you know, helping
Speaker 1: other people. So this this this march starts up. UM.
Speaker 1: It was funny there was a few blocks away from
Speaker 1: this march location. They're just so happened to be like
Speaker 1: a single police car in the street but like parked
Speaker 1: on the wrong side of the road, and this police
Speaker 1: car sees this march coming and it's like kind of
Speaker 1: freaking out. He doesn't know what to do. It drives
Speaker 1: in reverse for like like two blocks, trying to find
Speaker 1: a spot to turn around, as the marches like increasingly
Speaker 1: getting closer. Like you could just you cause you could
Speaker 1: just feel you could feel the anxiety of the cot
Speaker 1: inside this car. He they do not want to get
Speaker 1: surrounded by a crowd. Um. Eventually they're able to back
Speaker 1: up enough to turn around and they get out. They
Speaker 1: are they are zooming away. If you do not want
Speaker 1: to be anywhere near this. And short shortly after people
Speaker 1: arrive at the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters, windows spontaneously shatter um.
Speaker 1: As as is expected, a few bank windows also get
Speaker 1: um get get broken. What Wells Fargo being one of them, Yes,
Speaker 1: r I P bank windows, Wells Fargo being another one.
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo is a major contributor to the Atlantic Police Foundation.
Speaker 1: So this happens. Two cop cars that are just you know,
Speaker 1: blocks away, UM, that are sitting completely empty, get there,
Speaker 1: get their windows smashed. You know, there's there's there's fireworks
Speaker 1: going off around the crowd. Um. There's there's this one
Speaker 1: clip that I that I saw from some some some
Speaker 1: group that was live streaming UM that there was. There
Speaker 1: was a few a few officers like stationed beside the
Speaker 1: Atlantic Police Foundation and as soon as they as soon
Speaker 1: as they heard fireworks, they again similarly just like ran
Speaker 1: away as fast as they could. They were not equipped
Speaker 1: to deal with UM, to deal with a fireworks for
Speaker 1: them were the main thing they seem to be scared of.
Speaker 1: So two to two cop carsgether when they're smashed. UM,
Speaker 1: fireworks going around. March continues, goes for about a few
Speaker 1: more blocks and uh then Corker's notice police police are
Speaker 1: starting to come. Police are approaching the approaching the crowd.
Speaker 1: Head on, please start rushing towards the crowd. UM one
Speaker 1: they they tackle, tackle a few people holding a banner. UM,
Speaker 1: I think they they people. People scatter. The most of
Speaker 1: the crowd gets away. Most of the crowd splits up
Speaker 1: into into two groups. The largest chunk is able to
Speaker 1: move away from police presence. There's you know, people chanting,
Speaker 1: be water, you know, all of all the stuff. So
Speaker 1: most most people do successfully get away. The smaller, smaller
Speaker 1: section of people split off another direction. Cops follow. They
Speaker 1: are able to tackle and arrest a few a few
Speaker 1: more people in this in this group. In the end,
Speaker 1: it looks like there was six people arrested. Um, most
Speaker 1: moost people got away. After all these arrests are happening,
Speaker 1: people start noticing something that in the background a few
Speaker 1: a few blocks previous to where people were marching. Uh,
Speaker 1: it looks there looks to be a glowing police car. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we we we look back, and sure enough in
Speaker 1: an Atlanta police car is up in flames, um, completely
Speaker 1: completely completely glowing, huge, huge flames. So so as that happens,
Speaker 1: more and more cops show up. This is where like
Speaker 1: the cops now are like taking over downtown. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: cops with with the Air fifteen or a er style
Speaker 1: rifles are are going around staring, starting to do patrols.
Speaker 1: So this is like the night. The night is over
Speaker 1: at this point. Now it's time for like people to
Speaker 1: scatter and leave, which is what people did. The The
Speaker 1: aftermath of this is super fascinating and unfortunate, if not unexpected. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, there's been very little statements about the police
Speaker 1: killing of an of of tortequita of you know, an
Speaker 1: environmental activist UM force defender, but very very very little
Speaker 1: statements addressing this this matter at all. A huge flood
Speaker 1: of statements. However, exte seeming to be extremely concerned that
Speaker 1: like a few windows were broken and that a cop
Speaker 1: car got torched. This this is and you know this,
Speaker 1: this is this is less than a week after Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King day. Um, this is you know this is.
Speaker 1: The big quote was that the police chief a few
Speaker 1: hours later declared that breaking windows and starting fires is terrorism,
Speaker 1: which is a wild thing for a police chief to say.
Speaker 1: As the mayor stands behind nodding in agreement, it's one
Speaker 1: of the most fascist things that we've that has that
Speaker 1: has occurred in the United States. You cannot understate like
Speaker 1: the severity of yeah, like this, the severity of this,
Speaker 1: of this change in the types of framing by the
Speaker 1: state to describe civil disobedience, to describe property destruction, to
Speaker 1: describe vandalism as a form of of of domestic terrorism
Speaker 1: is is appalling. Um. I mean, if if this, if
Speaker 1: this holds up, then in states where this is done,
Speaker 1: there is effectively no longer any right to protest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean, and we'll get into some some of
Speaker 1: the details of this in a bit, even in this
Speaker 1: in this episode, Um, and I think the the other
Speaker 1: side of this is that this is something that I've
Speaker 1: heard people talk about here on the ground, is that
Speaker 1: if if breaking windows is terrorism, right, if if if
Speaker 1: if the destruction of inanimate objects is terrorism, what what
Speaker 1: exactly is destroying an entire forest like this is? This
Speaker 1: is like the juxtaposition that people are dealing with on
Speaker 1: the ground right now. So the end, the result of
Speaker 1: this is that we got six people who not six
Speaker 1: people who were to be clear arrested completely at random.
Speaker 1: This this was very clear. Police were tackling anyone they
Speaker 1: could get their hands on. They were not doing targeted arrests.
Speaker 1: They were not going after specific individuals who they suspected
Speaker 1: of of like actually doing crimes. Um they were. They
Speaker 1: were tackling random people, as is kind of usual for
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. But they have gotten a series
Speaker 1: of ridiculous charges um riot, arson, interviewing, interfering with government property,
Speaker 1: and also domestic terrorism and domestics. So this is domestic terrorism,
Speaker 1: not even for people that are like in the forest,
Speaker 1: just people protesting out on the street. Ums were broken,
Speaker 1: when windows broken, there's no evidence of this. The bail
Speaker 1: hearings were today as of being recorded. This is this
Speaker 1: is Monday, but bail hearings were today the judge. The
Speaker 1: judge for the hearings specifically said that these hearings are
Speaker 1: not to litigate the facts of the issue. What actually
Speaker 1: happened doesn't matter. There's there's obviously no evidence to support
Speaker 1: that any of these people arrested did any crimes. There's
Speaker 1: there's no evidence that that shows that the specific people
Speaker 1: arrested did anything beyond marching in the street. And that
Speaker 1: does not matter. That that that simply does does not matter.
Speaker 1: The brutality is the point in this case. To two
Speaker 1: people have had their bail set at three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five thousand dollars each, So that's over seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for just two people's bail. The other four
Speaker 1: people arrested were deemed to be from out of state
Speaker 1: by the judge and then thus a flight risk, including
Speaker 1: people that are just like less than ninety minutes away
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. And again this this is like where people
Speaker 1: are born, there's this, there's this there's this sense that
Speaker 1: like people no longer have freedom to choose where they live,
Speaker 1: that people like no longer have any freedom of movement,
Speaker 1: that they no longer have the autonomy to go to
Speaker 1: two different places. You know, this is this is like
Speaker 1: in line with the outside agitator angle that's been being
Speaker 1: pushed by governments and media ever since, especially since this
Speaker 1: is in line with that sort of stuff. But because
Speaker 1: these people were deemed non local or a flight risk,
Speaker 1: these people are not getting any bond at all. These
Speaker 1: people are going to be held in jail. Definitely, it
Speaker 1: could this, This could literally be years. The legal system
Speaker 1: is so slow and like being held in prison in
Speaker 1: jail for for years with no evidence presented that you
Speaker 1: did literally anything wrong. Um. I've talked with a lot
Speaker 1: of people, people from Solidarity Fund, which will I'll mention
Speaker 1: here at the end, and and you know, just just
Speaker 1: people around like what they're you know with people are
Speaker 1: getting arrested with no evidence and getting you know, indefinite
Speaker 1: time in prison, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: to be released, like the the the obvious abuse of
Speaker 1: power by the state, UM the year audacity and uh,
Speaker 1: you know the extreme danger that if these, if these
Speaker 1: are able to to to stick and hold is incredibly
Speaker 1: frightening for any any kind of future, um, any future
Speaker 1: civil rights movement at all. Like this, it might say
Speaker 1: that it's the strategic use of terror in order to
Speaker 1: achieve a political One might say that, and I mean
Speaker 1: it's we're in Atlantic, the streets they're marching on, there's
Speaker 1: banners of Martin Luther King hanging above us like it's
Speaker 1: it's incredibly frustrating. The Solidarity Fund, which we interviewed on
Speaker 1: the show literally days before that, well with the episode
Speaker 1: released days before the killing of Tortuguita. UM. But the
Speaker 1: Alliance Solidarity Fund is providing both legal support and UM
Speaker 1: and and and bail for people arrested for political actions.
Speaker 1: The previous amount needed to bail out people was over
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars, which is a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and now just just for two people, it's seven thousand
Speaker 1: more dollars. So the Atlanta Solidarity Fund desperately needs funds
Speaker 1: to continue supporting people and to continue resisting state repression. UM.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about this more once I have my Deep
Speaker 1: Died episodes out on this topic. But it's it's crucial
Speaker 1: that that if if if anyone cares about people's right
Speaker 1: to protest, to people's people's you know, ability to resist
Speaker 1: state violence. UM, then it's it's absolutely crucial that that
Speaker 1: people support the solidarity on right now. Ah. Just just
Speaker 1: today I went to another another kind of vigil UM
Speaker 1: at Emery College here in Atlanta. More more people were
Speaker 1: sharing stories of tort Um. One person was reading out
Speaker 1: a letter that they sent to sent to their UM
Speaker 1: comrades in Italy who are setting up a vigil as well.
Speaker 1: There's been a good amount of international support, as I've
Speaker 1: seen vigils from Germany, UM from Italy. There's been there's
Speaker 1: been events, demos, rallies, UM direct actions and vigils all
Speaker 1: across the United States UM about to defend the land
Speaker 1: of forest and about the killing of Tortoquita people. People
Speaker 1: here absolutely do appreciate the solidarity. And the other thing
Speaker 1: people are saying is that, I mean, all of these
Speaker 1: tactics are meant to scare people away from the idea
Speaker 1: of protesting and people are still needed on the ground here.
Speaker 1: This fight is not This fight is not over, UM,
Speaker 1: this is this is not this is not the end.
Speaker 1: You know, Tactics may have to change, tactics may have
Speaker 1: to shift, people may have to approach things from from
Speaker 1: UM you know, different angles. But it's not over, and
Speaker 1: there's there's people have said that there's still a need
Speaker 1: for you know, for support, rules, for people on the ground,
Speaker 1: for people to be in Atlanta, because it's not done.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's a lot of sentiment on
Speaker 1: the left that what's happening in the Atlanta Forest defense
Speaker 1: is probably the most important radical action going on in
Speaker 1: the country right now. And I think there's a few
Speaker 1: reasons for that. Um not just the fact that the
Speaker 1: forest that is going to be torn down for cops
Speaker 1: city is a crucial part of the city of Atlanta's
Speaker 1: tree cover, and that all of this ties into both
Speaker 1: the impossibility of actually combating climate change under the present
Speaker 1: system and the complicity of the police in in making
Speaker 1: it impossible to combat that um or even to mitigate
Speaker 1: it in many cases. But but I think what you've
Speaker 1: gotten to is probably the most direct the most directly
Speaker 1: frightening thing about what's going on in Atlanta, and the
Speaker 1: thing that's most relevant to the future of any kind
Speaker 1: of resistance in this country, which is, um, the the
Speaker 1: gloves are are coming off right the the this is
Speaker 1: this is not going to be the last time that
Speaker 1: state security forces use the fact that terrorism has a
Speaker 1: special place in American law and that crimes that are
Speaker 1: deemed to be terrorism, Um, open up the ability of
Speaker 1: the government to act in ways that they normally are
Speaker 1: not supposed to be able to act. Um, Like that
Speaker 1: is going to be It's not going to be just
Speaker 1: forest defenders that gets used on. It's going to be
Speaker 1: anyone who ever carries out any kind of act of
Speaker 1: protest that has a chance of setting the balance of power,
Speaker 1: um in this country. Like, that's that's where this is headed.
Speaker 1: And UM, it's a bummer. Do you want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the role of the media in this,
Speaker 1: because that is something that is I'm certain going to
Speaker 1: be of We just had a thing today where some
Speaker 1: weirdo lefties on the true and on subreddit decided and
Speaker 1: someone on Twitter decided to accuse me of getting a
Speaker 1: bunch of people in Atlanta arrested for terrorism because I
Speaker 1: interviewed them on camera. I've I've never interviewed anyone in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: I said, I simply have never worked there. Um. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where the rumors started, but it's it's reigniting
Speaker 1: this kind of debate about it seems it seems like
Speaker 1: tanky stuff. It's it's it's it's nonsense, But it has reignited,
Speaker 1: and I saw this on the it could happen here subreddit,
Speaker 1: people talking about like, um, obviously, you know this is nonsense,
Speaker 1: but it is a you know, looking at these terrorism charges,
Speaker 1: it's a simple fact that activists should never talk to press.
Speaker 1: And um, obviously a lot of these arrests had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with anyone talking to the media. Like folks
Speaker 1: were present at a riot and the cops were tackling folks.
Speaker 1: That's that's nobody but the cops's fault. But there's a
Speaker 1: there's a there's a conversation to be had about what
Speaker 1: is the what is the smart balance in terms of
Speaker 1: getting pr and getting press coverage and getting word of
Speaker 1: mouth about a radical movement and the fact that doing
Speaker 1: that will inevitably ramp up pressure. Like that is that
Speaker 1: is a reality that when when radical activists get attention
Speaker 1: from the media, the state cracks down. Now does that
Speaker 1: mean that the media is responsible for the movement getting
Speaker 1: cracked down or does it simply mean that the cops
Speaker 1: judge whether or not something's a threat by the amount
Speaker 1: of press that it's getting. You know, the the this
Speaker 1: is this is an ongoing like thing. People they're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about in a lot of ways. It's
Speaker 1: a continuation of conversations people were having in But I'm
Speaker 1: interested in because when you went over there, we had
Speaker 1: a little a few hours of debate after it became
Speaker 1: clear that the cops had killed a forest defender over like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the right thing to do? Should should Garrison head
Speaker 1: over to Atlanta? Um? Should we have some boots on
Speaker 1: the ground for this, because you've been covering it for
Speaker 1: so long and one of the things you pointed out
Speaker 1: is that there was a call for media coverage from
Speaker 1: people who were on the ground in Atlanta. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is something I will get born into when I go
Speaker 1: in depth with this for an upcoming episode, probably probably
Speaker 1: probably a two parter um. That's this is a conversation
Speaker 1: that people are constantly having in Atlanta. This is a
Speaker 1: conversation I've been having with people NonStop ever since coming here,
Speaker 1: ever since before coming here. I you know, this is
Speaker 1: something I don't want to just parachute into someone else's city.
Speaker 1: I had conversations with multiple people before before coming over.
Speaker 1: There's a few aspects to this. The amount of people
Speaker 1: doing stuff, and you know how many people are in
Speaker 1: the forest, not a not a giant number of people.
Speaker 1: There's not hundreds of people living in the woods. There's
Speaker 1: there's not there's there's not there's not tons of people. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: An intentional media strategy has been a part of this
Speaker 1: movement since the beginning. UM, even among the insurrectionary anarchists
Speaker 1: who are here. Uh, this is this has been something
Speaker 1: that people have been you know, working on as as
Speaker 1: a part of a decentralized movement, having conversations about. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of There's been coverage in the
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone that people here seem to be pretty happy with. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very and the Guardian also published. People have
Speaker 1: been people have been pretty happy article. People have been
Speaker 1: very pretty happy with coverage from the Guardian. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a people have been pretty happy with some stuff from
Speaker 1: a J plus. Um. People have been um, decent lee
Speaker 1: happy with the work that I've done on this. But
Speaker 1: based on many conversation dozens and dozens of conversations I
Speaker 1: have I've had with people here. UM, Ultimately, I don't
Speaker 1: for what for what cops are doing in the forest.
Speaker 1: I don't think there seems to be a clear correlation
Speaker 1: between media coverage happening of stuff of of you know,
Speaker 1: the movement and cops response to the forest. There doesn't,
Speaker 1: there does, there's no linked timeline there. Cops are doing
Speaker 1: stuff in the forest because they want the forest clearance
Speaker 1: that they can build their police training, their police training facility.
Speaker 1: From what I've talked with people, the amount of pressure
Speaker 1: that has been caused by media covering the forest has
Speaker 1: not only elongated the construction process, elongated the the amount
Speaker 1: that stuff that they're that they're able to do. It's
Speaker 1: it is, it has it has made it harder because
Speaker 1: this is this this is not a very popular proposal.
Speaker 1: Even even before the encampments started, it was estimated that,
Speaker 1: like people in Atlanta were not for this, we're not
Speaker 1: for the construction of this facility. So I think people
Speaker 1: people make a lot of intentional media choices. That's not
Speaker 1: to say that there isn't also um intentionally harmful actors
Speaker 1: who are trying to frame this as Atlanta burning down
Speaker 1: Atlanta and disorder Antifa taking over sections of Atlanta. That
Speaker 1: is absolutely another part of it. But there's a very
Speaker 1: people here have a very clear distinction between between um
Speaker 1: bad actors between people who are you know, providing accurate, fair,
Speaker 1: coverage of what's going on. UM, and then you know
Speaker 1: people who are just out to profit, which is you know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of like local TV channels. UM, there's there.
Speaker 1: I think stuff that happened on the protests on Saturdays
Speaker 1: is a good example. There's this far right account that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to name, um at least not yet.
Speaker 1: I might. I might talk about it in the future.
Speaker 1: UM who you know, tries to collect information on on protesters.
Speaker 1: They had there, They have someone on the on two films.
Speaker 1: They also a really good aggregate of like random people's
Speaker 1: instagram and TikTok's or snapchats of you know, filming filming
Speaker 1: people from unfortunate angles. UM. The local local TV like Fox,
Speaker 1: like the like the local Fox news station, you know,
Speaker 1: tries to get as much sensational footage of crimes as possible.
Speaker 1: And you know, people people, to the best their ability,
Speaker 1: well you know, try to try to block them off
Speaker 1: with like umbrellas if they see that happening, but you know,
Speaker 1: you can it's it's me. There's definitely a clear tension
Speaker 1: that people in the movement do not want the media
Speaker 1: narratives around this to solely be decided by the state
Speaker 1: and be decided against people who are in clear opposition
Speaker 1: to them. That is, that is absolutely something that people
Speaker 1: are putting and putting attention in. Uh. They just that's
Speaker 1: because that that creates a lot of really really harmful scenarios.
Speaker 1: Because there's the state itself is already a pretty powerful
Speaker 1: propaganda machine. Already a lot of local news just agitates
Speaker 1: state talking points. Right, this is the idea of the
Speaker 1: fourth Estate. There is does seem to be a pretty
Speaker 1: a distinction between stuff like the fourth Estate and stuff
Speaker 1: like the derivative idea of the fifth Estate of being
Speaker 1: more of like the people's voice for for for for these,
Speaker 1: for these sorts of movements. Also in that vein there's
Speaker 1: stuff like the Atlanta People's Press, which is like decentralized
Speaker 1: media collective UM run by a lot of like rad
Speaker 1: people who who who helped to coordinate media coverage, who
Speaker 1: helped to coordinate UM stuff with I mean they have
Speaker 1: they have worked with people, They've worked with us on
Speaker 1: our on the on the history of the old Atlanta
Speaker 1: prison farm. So I would say there's a lot of
Speaker 1: thought put into media strategy UM and not like in
Speaker 1: like a Libby like optics way, but like actual effective
Speaker 1: media strategy that will improve material conditions and will help
Speaker 1: push the goals of the movement forward, the goal being
Speaker 1: that the construction of cop City does does not continue.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of thought going into that and
Speaker 1: they and that is viewed as another like that that
Speaker 1: is another wing of of the effort. Right, There's there's
Speaker 1: stuff like the encampments, there's stuff like sabotage, there's stuff
Speaker 1: like protests. There's stuff like you know, like a a
Speaker 1: very above board stuff you know that like very u
Speaker 1: you know, like a of above grand organizations will do
Speaker 1: like you know, writing campaigns, calling campaigns and media strategy
Speaker 1: is another angle of this because to completely give up
Speaker 1: the public perception of what's going on to the state
Speaker 1: is seen as a bad thing. So, but this is
Speaker 1: this is absolutely a contentious topic. I think people in
Speaker 1: Atlanta have a lot of nuanced conversations about this, and
Speaker 1: media stuff is handled with a lot more intention here
Speaker 1: than it has been in the Pacific Northwest. Um, that
Speaker 1: is my that is my subject of opinion. But based
Speaker 1: on based on it's a smaller community, so I think
Speaker 1: maybe it's easier. It does seem like there's more solidarity
Speaker 1: within the community and a shared vision. I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that's true. There is the community is forced to reinforce itself.
Speaker 1: It is small enough that it cannot treat people as disposable. Um.
Speaker 1: It needs to maintain the people that it has. And
Speaker 1: so people work through problems, people work through conflicts and
Speaker 1: ways to actually resolve it and keep going to build
Speaker 1: everyone up and make them stronger. There's a shared community
Speaker 1: space which I've I've been to a few times, um,
Speaker 1: and I think even just something like that is so
Speaker 1: is so useful in being able to actually keep something
Speaker 1: that resembles a community. You see a lot of anarchists,
Speaker 1: um talk about how like community isn't a real thing.
Speaker 1: There isn't actually community, um, you know. Or and in
Speaker 1: a lot of places, I would say that's that's true.
Speaker 1: A lot of places are just click driven, um you know, uh,
Speaker 1: drama it it honestly gets towards or like interesting conflict
Speaker 1: if if you don't want to use sword drama um.
Speaker 1: Whereas circular firing squad type ship. Yeah. Whereas here there
Speaker 1: is such a feeling of actual community like that that
Speaker 1: actually is a thing here because people are forced to
Speaker 1: foster it. We're in the South we're surrounded where you
Speaker 1: know you're you're surrounded by a lot of people who
Speaker 1: want to hurt you. Um, Atlanta is the most surveilled city.
Speaker 1: There's so many different police forces. There's a police force
Speaker 1: for Fulton County, the police force for De Cab County,
Speaker 1: it's a police force for Atlanta. There's the Georgia State Patrol.
Speaker 1: There's the Georgia Buer of Investigation. There's the Georgia Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security. There's so many people, so many agencies
Speaker 1: are involved in this. There's so much, so much outwards
Speaker 1: um threats to people that you really are forced to
Speaker 1: keep people, uh, keep people close and and trust the
Speaker 1: people around you because the consequences are quite dire. UM.
Speaker 1: So people take things very seriously and they put a
Speaker 1: lot of thought into into a lot of into a
Speaker 1: lot of things. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean that
Speaker 1: that also jells with my own experience in the South. Right,
Speaker 1: it's it's easier to find communities of people who are
Speaker 1: um doing anything kind of radical because there's that that
Speaker 1: bunker mentality. Right, you're under siege, you're surrounded on all sides,
Speaker 1: and um, you know that that's very different when you
Speaker 1: go to a place where there's kind of more like
Speaker 1: what what would be in other places, deviancy is more
Speaker 1: than norm um. And yeah, I guess that that is
Speaker 1: probably has a lot to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: this forest defense has so far been so successful in
Speaker 1: delaying the construction of this facility which it which it
Speaker 1: has construction construction deadlines continue to have been passed and
Speaker 1: been passed and been passed. It has the very least
Speaker 1: showed that stuff like this can be resisted and significantly delayed.
Speaker 1: And at this point they're projecting construction won't be complete
Speaker 1: for about four more years. And again these deadlines keep
Speaker 1: getting pushed back and back, and that is really what
Speaker 1: the movement is trying to do, keep these deadlines getting
Speaker 1: pushed back and back until they just give up on
Speaker 1: the project or try to put it somewhere else. And
Speaker 1: if they try to put somewhere and if they try
Speaker 1: to put it somewhere else, then the forest was defended.
Speaker 1: But then there's still the top cop city aspect of
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, it can go somewhere else, but we
Speaker 1: we don't want it there at all. And then at
Speaker 1: that point the movement would change, you know, very significantly.
Speaker 1: But in terms of the defend the Atlanta Forest aspect
Speaker 1: of this. Right, the whole goal is to make to
Speaker 1: make this as unenticing as possible. UM. And there's a
Speaker 1: multitude of strategies involved in that UM, including stuff like propaganda,
Speaker 1: madget prop media strategy, sabotage, direct action calling campaigns, stuff
Speaker 1: about pressuring the construction agencies, all all those sort of things.
Speaker 1: That's so much more because what you're talking about is
Speaker 1: is what we call, in sort of calm flick studies,
Speaker 1: a strategy of friction, right, UM, and and so much
Speaker 1: there's so always so much focus on kind of these
Speaker 1: like we had in Portland, and these like grand moments
Speaker 1: that are are very visually spectacular of resistance, but what
Speaker 1: actually what actually wins Because the state has the ability
Speaker 1: to take a lot of hits, it is a it
Speaker 1: is a durable force. And if you're going up against
Speaker 1: a durable force, the only way to win victories is
Speaker 1: to be durable yourself and to wear away at them.
Speaker 1: It's it's friction, UM. And I think that's like, that's
Speaker 1: still the winning play is to keep up pressure. It's
Speaker 1: just the kinds of pressure, especially now that they've cleared
Speaker 1: out the tree sitters and stuff. And now that we've
Speaker 1: seen what they're going to do to people who are
Speaker 1: arrested at demonstrations, the kinds of friction that completely be
Speaker 1: applied have to change otherwise the movement's going to get
Speaker 1: worn down before the state does. In this fight. Something
Speaker 1: that Tortuguita has said is that the state is very
Speaker 1: good at doing violence. We we cannot we we cannot
Speaker 1: beat the state at violence. The states, the state will
Speaker 1: probably win that game. That's that's that's the entire point
Speaker 1: of the state that like, the state has a monopoly
Speaker 1: on violence. That is the entire point. They will win that. Um.
Speaker 1: But there but there are other ways where we can
Speaker 1: see successes, and we have seen successes before. UM. So
Speaker 1: it's not over. It will probably grow and change. UM
Speaker 1: what actually happens will remain to be seen. But I
Speaker 1: am um just I'm prepping to go through a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of my audio files and uh and and and
Speaker 1: piece and piece together kind of a pretty pretty distinct
Speaker 1: deep dive. That is, it is a true a true
Speaker 1: successor to the to the original on the ground at
Speaker 1: the Defend the Atlanta Force episodes that I did last
Speaker 1: May so well, I look forward to that. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I know everyone else's as well. Um, thank you for
Speaker 1: going over there and uh and being in the thick
Speaker 1: of it, and um, yeah, we'll we'll continue to cover
Speaker 1: this story as best we can. But whatever comes in
Speaker 1: the future, all right, I think that's an episode. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Dick It happened here, a podcast about things falling
Speaker 1: apart and how to put them back together again. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, me along and today I am returning to
Speaker 1: my roots and the ceed criminal anarchist hacker underground, which
Speaker 1: has gotten much less ceed and somehow even more gay
Speaker 1: since I was last there and with with me to
Speaker 1: talk about this is Maya Arson Crime You who is
Speaker 1: most recently famous is the person who owned an airline
Speaker 1: so hard they got a copy of the fucking no
Speaker 1: flight list, which is yeah, just just first any things. Yeah, so, Maya,
Speaker 1: how how are how are you? How are you doing?
Speaker 1: Being deluged with when Trilli an interview requests and um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it's not my first time experiencing like a
Speaker 1: big news cycle, but this is certainly the biggest one yet.
Speaker 1: It's I'm surprised that this is bigger than the one
Speaker 1: life Happy for with other stories. Yeah, but I feel
Speaker 1: like becoming a transfermime. At the same time, I have
Speaker 1: like a national security new cycle going on probably helped
Speaker 1: a bit. I'm I'm I'm very happy for weed Cat,
Speaker 1: like that that that that cat did, like that every
Speaker 1: every single other thing that has happened to weed Cat
Speaker 1: is like done that thing dirty. But I'm happy for Yeah,
Speaker 1: we kind is now just like a hacking icon and
Speaker 1: I'm so here for it. Did he see like like
Speaker 1: like just like like fifteen minutes before we got uncalled
Speaker 1: there's now a like Bengle meme from the SCP Foundation
Speaker 1: on Oh my god, they commissioned an artist to make
Speaker 1: a like it has just turned into a thing now
Speaker 1: like that that's the way. It's so good. It's not
Speaker 1: even it's not even like the whole hacking story anymore.
Speaker 1: It's just the fact that I tingled into a meme
Speaker 1: like how how Yeah, and especially that Bengal turned into
Speaker 1: a meme because that started as a like discord in
Speaker 1: joke like that that's all it was. And now it's
Speaker 1: the name of this cat. But okay, so we should
Speaker 1: explain for it for people, for people who don't know
Speaker 1: what this cat is. This is the Pokemon spriggary sprig.
Speaker 1: How do you? I don't know how to properly pronounce it.
Speaker 1: It's it's Italian. I'm under no obligation to pronounce an
Speaker 1: Italian sounding thing correctly. It's fine. Yeah, it's the wheat cat.
Speaker 1: Like wheat cat and Bengle are now the only two
Speaker 1: acceptable names for this that the Yeah, but in in
Speaker 1: in in the blog where you went through and talked
Speaker 1: about how you got the no filist by owning this thing,
Speaker 1: you posted a picture of of of this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: did actually like take that picture while I was like
Speaker 1: hacking this stuff and like talking in some like small
Speaker 1: friends discord about it, and I just posted that together
Speaker 1: with like the phrase this aviation should get serious. That's
Speaker 1: why that's also in the blog. I expected that to
Speaker 1: become the meme that blows up that this aviation ship
Speaker 1: gets serious, because that's just so stupid. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: guess Bengle it is. And that's funny because yeah, it
Speaker 1: was just an in choke nonsense word and now the
Speaker 1: entire world knows about it and it's like a transferm thing.
Speaker 1: It rules, it rules. Yeah, So okay, I guess we
Speaker 1: should talk about what actually you did, so I I
Speaker 1: am not a very technical person. I'm out here defined
Speaker 1: like defying transcise stereotypes by such being asset coding. Um So,
Speaker 1: my my understanding of what happened is you were browsing
Speaker 1: a list of servers that are cocking to the Internet
Speaker 1: that you can use through sort of like various search
Speaker 1: engines that do this, and you stop. You stumbled upon
Speaker 1: the server that belongs to commute Air and then they
Speaker 1: just like I had a bunch of hard coded privileges there,
Speaker 1: and like us, it's it's still it's still funny to me.
Speaker 1: How Like I realized what it was because I saw,
Speaker 1: like there word eight cars and stuff, and I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: that that reminds me of like mentor Pilot YouTube videos,
Speaker 1: because of course I'm an autistic transfer and binge watch
Speaker 1: mentor Pilot while eating dinner. Um So, so that is
Speaker 1: the only reason I clocked it as like an aviation thing,
Speaker 1: and that's something I should dig into deeper, because, like
Speaker 1: you can imagine, like while I'm going through these search results,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at like hundreds of servers in a day,
Speaker 1: and most of the stuff I decided is boring or
Speaker 1: it was too easy to hack, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: further because I have a h d um So yeah,
Speaker 1: and then this cause it was like, wait, that's an
Speaker 1: aviation word. I've heard that before. Um, So I take
Speaker 1: a little deeper and there were just passwords there, and
Speaker 1: and then like two minutes after I found that server,
Speaker 1: I was looking at like a car's messages, as in
Speaker 1: like messaging between ground stations and the airplanes, and that
Speaker 1: was just like, yeah, this is a story, and started
Speaker 1: tweeting about it, looking for journalists to work with because
Speaker 1: with stories like this, I like to work with journalists
Speaker 1: from the very start because I want to make sure
Speaker 1: it doesn't get wiped under the rock when I reported
Speaker 1: to a company. So I make sure that when I
Speaker 1: do reach out and get things fixed, I reach out
Speaker 1: via journalists so that the company's not yet this is
Speaker 1: being reported on, so they can't be like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: will fix it under the condition that you never tell
Speaker 1: anyone about our bad security. Because like the whole point
Speaker 1: of what I'm doing is exposing like the security issues,
Speaker 1: but also exposing yeah, with a political background at the
Speaker 1: end of the day. Yeah, And I guess like another thing,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know how many people sort of
Speaker 1: are aware of this. But like another thing that has
Speaker 1: happened with people who have tried to go to companies
Speaker 1: and been like, hey, here's the security thing is like
Speaker 1: the company tries to like go after them criminally, like immediately,
Speaker 1: which sucks. Ass end is the worst. Yeah, so so
Speaker 1: so from that stand but it doesn't even matter if
Speaker 1: I like do it, like this are actually reported to them,
Speaker 1: But this way I get to talk about the publicly
Speaker 1: and like that's important, not because I'm on cloud, like
Speaker 1: I don't mind the cloud, but like yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: so okay, so uh, there's there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: focus on the fact that you found the no fly
Speaker 1: list on there, which is very funny. But okay, why
Speaker 1: like okay, one thing I'm trying to figure out why
Speaker 1: was there? Why were there just message used from like
Speaker 1: ground cruise to airplane just like sitting around on this
Speaker 1: random server that's just like the exposed to the internet, right,
Speaker 1: so the messages weren't directly on that server, but like
Speaker 1: it's the server where they like for testing purposes, like
Speaker 1: I don't know how much I can understand really, but
Speaker 1: where they like test the software automatically. And and so
Speaker 1: there's all, and because of how they configured the server,
Speaker 1: I could just have access to all the source code,
Speaker 1: which included lots of passwords for example, for like the
Speaker 1: server that then had the car's messages on it. Okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, or access credentials for APIs that would have
Speaker 1: followed me to update the crew and are which like,
Speaker 1: if you think about that's almost the bigger story that
Speaker 1: ye like at least theoretically could have been able to
Speaker 1: change crew cruise because like that's the real terrorism risk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if I'm just like if I'm just allowed to
Speaker 1: spell it out like that, like that, that's the dream
Speaker 1: of any Yeah. Yeah, like I mean, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm One of the things you were talking about
Speaker 1: when when you're writing about this was that like journalists
Speaker 1: thought that you were the one who had like caused
Speaker 1: all of the flight delays. It was like, no, that
Speaker 1: was just their computer breaking. No, But yeah, like that
Speaker 1: was just funny because I didn't even know the thing
Speaker 1: with yes, with the f a A happened. But I
Speaker 1: was like tweeting about, oh, I have a big aviation
Speaker 1: story any churnal that's interested it's like a security breach,
Speaker 1: and people were like, wait, what did you two to
Speaker 1: the f A A And it was like hot, what
Speaker 1: f A A. Oh so that happened, Like I am
Speaker 1: still not up to date in US anymore. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean so for people who don't know what that story is.
Speaker 1: So basically, the Federal Aviation Administration had a computer problem.
Speaker 1: It was very the very very short version data computer
Speaker 1: problem and this grounded like a ship ton of flights
Speaker 1: because the huge like computer bottlenecks where if you know,
Speaker 1: it was we saw this over like like like last
Speaker 1: month when there was that when all of those flights
Speaker 1: got down by uh Southwestern because the computer system just
Speaker 1: went down. It's it's the same thing except us y. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it's just funny because yeah, I first found
Speaker 1: this server like exactly the day after Like that was
Speaker 1: literally a day after the f a A incident, So
Speaker 1: people were rightly assuming that that was me, which it
Speaker 1: obviously wasn't, but like it would have been cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But it's also like it is very disturbed to be
Speaker 1: like this kind of stuff is just sitting there and
Speaker 1: like someone yeah could just like theoretically going and screw
Speaker 1: with all of this stuff, which is like and then
Speaker 1: also the fact that like there was just all of
Speaker 1: like the personal information of all of the pilots on there,
Speaker 1: Like what the hell like that is? Yeah that yeah,
Speaker 1: it was terrifying. Yeah, it's it is crazy how much
Speaker 1: stuff is just out there, and like that's part of
Speaker 1: what I tried to show with my work. It's just, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much stuff out there and it's just waiting
Speaker 1: to be found. And I both mean that in terms
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, you can find ship if you try to,
Speaker 1: but also in the sense of things are not secure,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, like all the systems are like entire life
Speaker 1: depend on nowadays, not none of those systems are really secure.
Speaker 1: They're entirely dependent on like one system administrator who doesn't
Speaker 1: get paid enough. Our entire like computer systems depend on
Speaker 1: like a bunch of furies being motivated enough to do
Speaker 1: their work. Uh So, basically, like the moral of the
Speaker 1: story is pay furies well. And yeah, yeah, and this
Speaker 1: is probably looking everything that I was thinking about when
Speaker 1: I was looking at this, which is like, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so like when when when I was like a teenager,
Speaker 1: Like one one of the things I think I was
Speaker 1: the most wrong about that I believed was like I
Speaker 1: actually genuinely believed that like automating cars was a good
Speaker 1: idea because humans are really really bad at driving. And
Speaker 1: then and then, and then I had to learn the program,
Speaker 1: and I had to like see scientists code, and I
Speaker 1: had to I I I opened a program and there's
Speaker 1: a section of it that no one knows how it works.
Speaker 1: And I look, I look at the notes, and the
Speaker 1: notes say, I don't I didn't write this. I don't
Speaker 1: know how it works. This is produced. This is produced
Speaker 1: at four am on like like seven billigrams of caffeine.
Speaker 1: And that's like, yeah, on at least caffeine, if not
Speaker 1: the Yeah, well these are these were astronomers, so I
Speaker 1: I think it was actually just a lot of caffeine
Speaker 1: and not means but yeah, like you know. And then
Speaker 1: I had the realization the only single thing that we
Speaker 1: as humans are worse at than driving is coding exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: we are. We are even worse at that. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing we're also very bad at is labeling data,
Speaker 1: which is like the whole thing machine learning is dependent,
Speaker 1: like because like the entire intelligence of like an automateive car,
Speaker 1: like a self driving car, is entirely dependent on how
Speaker 1: intelligent the like underpaid workers and Kenya are getting paid
Speaker 1: like two bucks an hour to label things as car, human,
Speaker 1: and child and then make moral this sessions of whether
Speaker 1: or not those should get run over. Um like yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is you know what one of one of
Speaker 1: my sort of political things that I'm coming to is
Speaker 1: I I think the only person people who should be
Speaker 1: allowed to do machine learning are astronomers, and no one
Speaker 1: else should be allowed to do it. And even they
Speaker 1: know because they have to. They like they have a
Speaker 1: legitimate reason, which is that like they actually a they're
Speaker 1: doing a bunch of big dates, like most of astronomy
Speaker 1: is just big data analysis and then be like the
Speaker 1: the the analysis itself doesn't really hurt anyone. Uh, you
Speaker 1: you can argue about putting the telescopes, but like you're not,
Speaker 1: You're not, Like yeah, just like anything that involves humans
Speaker 1: probably yeah, also involves AI in anyone. Yeah that's terrible idea,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I guess, I guess. Okay, So circling back
Speaker 1: around to the point I was going to make and
Speaker 1: then forgot distracted talking about AI because such as the world.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, so you know, it's really remarkable to me,
Speaker 1: like how little technical skill you need to just like
Speaker 1: absolutely own enormous corporations and governments and you know. But
Speaker 1: but the other thing that that that struck me about this,
Speaker 1: that I've been thinking about for a while is that, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you have how easy hacking is,
Speaker 1: like like this server stuff is like easier than the
Speaker 1: stuff that I remember back in the day, which is
Speaker 1: a lot of like people like you, someone somewhere long
Speaker 1: ago in a galaxy far far away wrote like a
Speaker 1: script and then you just copy and paste it into
Speaker 1: like every single text box on a web page, and
Speaker 1: like that's I think, like that's probably maybe like more
Speaker 1: hackery quote unquote than just like looking through a list
Speaker 1: of servers. But like even that is like the level
Speaker 1: of technical sophistication is so low or or you know,
Speaker 1: you don't need technically it's just needs to be stupid
Speaker 1: enough to pull it up. Like yeah, but but you know,
Speaker 1: but the thing that I realized about this and I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this was like, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: the level technical sophistication for this is extreme below. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, one of the sort of like like
Speaker 1: one of one of the sort of trends of the
Speaker 1: way capitalism has been distributing digital technology, which is sort
Speaker 1: of by apping it, like by by which has been
Speaker 1: packing it into apps and these closed guarding ecosystems and
Speaker 1: like putting uys in between you and like what like
Speaker 1: you and what's actually happening in your computer has been
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's been designing a way to make
Speaker 1: a quote unquote consumer friendly, but also it's been designed
Speaker 1: away such like successive generations of computer users just have
Speaker 1: less and less knowledge of how their devices technology actually work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like like there's that whole thing of like about
Speaker 1: how how like younger kids just don't understand the concept
Speaker 1: of faults anymore because like that's completely abstracted away on
Speaker 1: like smartphones. Yea chromebook in particularly, which I I genuinely
Speaker 1: think we need to ban chromebooks and schools like just
Speaker 1: just like for for for the sake of human Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awful, Like, oh god, they're the worst. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Like at the end of today, That's what
Speaker 1: I wanted to say earlier about like how easy it
Speaker 1: is to hack all the paper operations and stuff. And
Speaker 1: it's just like the answers are asked to why it's
Speaker 1: just capitalism, It's it's cheaper not to deficit about cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: It's cheaper to just pay when you get hacked than
Speaker 1: to like secure your ship upfront, because like the only
Speaker 1: people that will really suffer is like your customers and
Speaker 1: your empathies, and they can forget your your shareholders, they're
Speaker 1: gonna be just fine, you know. And you look at
Speaker 1: the way the regulatory structure works is like, okay, so
Speaker 1: what what what happens if you get in trouble of
Speaker 1: something like this? Will the government takes a cut? That's it? Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's it. Like it's literally, it's it's literally like
Speaker 1: you can budget getting there. There is cyber insurance now
Speaker 1: you can get insured against getting hacked. Like like it's
Speaker 1: it's just capitalism out of work. And I feel like
Speaker 1: one of the things that one of the things that
Speaker 1: journalists have sort of I don't know and I understand
Speaker 1: why they focus on it, but I feel like there's
Speaker 1: a lot of focus in in sort of like intech
Speaker 1: journalism and journalism on sort of hacking stuff in like
Speaker 1: the really big sophisticated like stut necks or what was
Speaker 1: the what was the more recent one I can remember, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the were the really sort of convoluted trawling program
Speaker 1: and things that like you know, take nation state level
Speaker 1: of resources and it's like, well, yeah, you know this.
Speaker 1: This was always the thing with like the with like
Speaker 1: the n s A, to where it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so the the the the the the the. On the
Speaker 1: on the one hand, the n s A does have
Speaker 1: enough money to like spend like fifty million dollars factoring
Speaker 1: one numbers like a break a bunch of encryption. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, like they can't just force us companies
Speaker 1: and and also give them access. And also like I
Speaker 1: don't know they can they can get most of this
Speaker 1: information because like some server admin in like a farm
Speaker 1: in like the middle of world, Nebraska, like misconfigured a file,
Speaker 1: like misconfigured a server. So like, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's so that's what I find funny about the things
Speaker 1: I find because I like almost exclusively go for like
Speaker 1: the low hanging fruit, because like, why why would I
Speaker 1: invest more effort when I can get the really big
Speaker 1: scoops like this. And also sometimes sometimes I do kind
Speaker 1: of think about how, hey, you know, like maybe I
Speaker 1: just cut off access to the CIA. Maybe this was
Speaker 1: like how the CIA got this access. Maybe maybe the
Speaker 1: n s A was here obviously most likely not in
Speaker 1: most cases, but it's just a funny little thought of
Speaker 1: like who did I just kind of access by reporting this?
Speaker 1: I will say this, like I can't imagine that there
Speaker 1: isn't someone at the n s A and there isn't
Speaker 1: someone at the CIA whose job it is to do
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing you do and like scrolling server
Speaker 1: list every day, like absolutely like like like that. That's
Speaker 1: why by now I you sue my like for the surgeon,
Speaker 1: since there's Showdown, which is like the famous U S one,
Speaker 1: which is why I still always say I found it
Speaker 1: on show them, even though by now I use because
Speaker 1: Showdown has like half of like all U S I
Speaker 1: P centered and they have an artificial delay between finding
Speaker 1: the servers and showing them to you and have really
Speaker 1: bad search. And I'm pretty sure it's just because at
Speaker 1: one point the US government got upset because they kept
Speaker 1: getting yeah uh and so yeah, but like the Chinese
Speaker 1: are very a link to give me all the that's
Speaker 1: that they too centsor a lot of Chinese I P
Speaker 1: s though, but I think a lot of that was
Speaker 1: so I was I was trying to figure out why
Speaker 1: that name was relation. But then I had this, I
Speaker 1: remembered that there was a story where some researcher did
Speaker 1: like almost the exact same thing you did to a
Speaker 1: Chinese security company and found out that they were doing
Speaker 1: I guess what, exactly the same ship the U. S.
Speaker 1: Government was doing, which was using using a bunch of
Speaker 1: valance cameras to spy on Muslims. And it was like, well,
Speaker 1: this is great. Yeah, it's it's always like like it's
Speaker 1: always appointing and doing the same thing behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: like yeah, okay, so we unfortunately going to have to
Speaker 1: take an ad break. I yeah, but then once we
Speaker 1: returned from capitalism, we will go back to opposing capitalism.
Speaker 1: Welcome to all right, and we're back. Yeah, so speaking
Speaker 1: of any capitalism that that was another thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to sort of talk about, which is said, okay, so
Speaker 1: like long long, long ago, in a galaxy far far away,
Speaker 1: little little little baby, fifteen year old Mia was radicalized,
Speaker 1: like back back, back back when I was overthrowing trying
Speaker 1: to overthrow my first government. It was um, a lot
Speaker 1: a lot of it was being in the same spheres,
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of anaitist hackers that were in
Speaker 1: the sort of like loose anonymous sphere. But you know,
Speaker 1: by by like sixteen, like that stuff was kind of
Speaker 1: falling apart, like partially because of in fighting, partially because
Speaker 1: of FED infiltration, partially because you know, like everyone arrested. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all the big players have been arrested like three years
Speaker 1: p yeah, and and you know, and the other thing
Speaker 1: that was going on too, I think was like Anonymous,
Speaker 1: like it's politics were always really incoherent. Like you you've
Speaker 1: had I don't know, you're just like everywhere. Like the
Speaker 1: thing I remember was there was a big split between
Speaker 1: like basically the fascist and the anarchists between like like
Speaker 1: over Trump specifically, Like yeah, I think the thing with
Speaker 1: Anonymous is just like the way it started to just started.
Speaker 1: That's just like a group of trap was like, well
Speaker 1: okay that bic just to say, like, I mean, it
Speaker 1: makes instead. Anonymous is the way it is and has
Speaker 1: been the way it has been. I think it's still
Speaker 1: like important that it exists and that it motivates people. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like I have been involved with Anonymous before. There's the
Speaker 1: one thing I can talk about with like Operation mean
Speaker 1: Mar where we did like support things. Um that was
Speaker 1: shortly before my indictment. But yeah, it's it's interesting like
Speaker 1: Anonymous brings people together to do operations and that's what
Speaker 1: they do, and they can do pr for stuff. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to like to talk down on them,
Speaker 1: Yeah no, but I think, like I think, especially especially
Speaker 1: like in life, when I was got involved with Chilse' thirteen,
Speaker 1: it was like like it was it was a lot different,
Speaker 1: like it was you know, like a yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was. It was like a thing. And also it
Speaker 1: wasn't just like like it wasn't just that it was
Speaker 1: sort of like Okay, we're like we're like trolling, trolling
Speaker 1: a government by taking down their web pages or whatever,
Speaker 1: like they were actually sort of there was like there
Speaker 1: was real coordination between like people like you know, revolutionaries
Speaker 1: on the ground in like Egypt, Uran, Brazil and not
Speaker 1: like that does still happen, Yeah, that does still happen,
Speaker 1: it's just less of a public thing. Like that's what
Speaker 1: we did in in as well as where we did
Speaker 1: communications with people on the ground where we helped them
Speaker 1: communicate among each other, where we helped them keep the
Speaker 1: Internet got up even when the government tried to turn
Speaker 1: it off, other fund other other fun shenanigans like that,
Speaker 1: and also archival and that like just in case some
Speaker 1: kids that does decide to eat us literally every web
Speaker 1: page in the country, which is mostly nonsensical, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do find it interesting how like yeah, there's
Speaker 1: like the twenty twelve twenty generation that was mostly anonymous
Speaker 1: tone terminated and now we're in like this new generation
Speaker 1: where it's just small little groups. Yeah, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about that because it's much more decentralized. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's weird to talk about it because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, I inspired a lot of it,
Speaker 1: which is really weird to say. It's so weird to
Speaker 1: say that. I like, but yeah, I'm kind of part
Speaker 1: of what revived activism and it sounds so so pretentious
Speaker 1: of me to just say that myself, but like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it is kind of what happened, and like yeah, and
Speaker 1: like that that was what was interesting to be too,
Speaker 1: because it was it was very like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like the the US and twelve stuff was also like
Speaker 1: it was very very I guess media centered in a
Speaker 1: way where it was it was about drawing, like drawing
Speaker 1: masses of people into things and then using it to
Speaker 1: sort of get media attention, using it to sort of like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, be be this sort of like online
Speaker 1: like also this sort of like online social movements in
Speaker 1: a way that I think it's very different than the
Speaker 1: modern stuff. So this is my conception of it, though,
Speaker 1: because I've also been kind of like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was off doing other stuff in twenty nineteen that
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with this. So yeah, I'm I'm curious. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm curious a like, how how you see the
Speaker 1: politics of these new groups either sort of as different
Speaker 1: from what came before it. I think it's hard for
Speaker 1: a lot of the groups, it's hard to like see
Speaker 1: what their politics are, and some of them aren't even
Speaker 1: Like there's things like Lapses that aren't specifically doing activism,
Speaker 1: but they're accidentally doing anti corporate activism by just making
Speaker 1: everything like uh, that's like groups that are like in
Speaker 1: the way that they operate are very clear and inspired
Speaker 1: by my work that I used to do um and
Speaker 1: they're just not very like political per se. They but
Speaker 1: but I still call them activists because even if it
Speaker 1: might not be their intention, they're doing activism, and they're
Speaker 1: making corporations angry and wasting corporate resources, and in my book,
Speaker 1: that counts as like activism and the fact that they
Speaker 1: in a way fi for like freedom of information, even
Speaker 1: if they might not be the goal. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like that is the main unifying factor. Now
Speaker 1: it's just a fight for information because like they're currently
Speaker 1: like the single biggest active activist thing happening right now
Speaker 1: since like twenty nineteen is just leaking the whole linkedivism
Speaker 1: thing that happened before as well, but like now that's
Speaker 1: like the main thing. Before it was often a lot
Speaker 1: like just dedosing and stuff, but now we're so focused
Speaker 1: and like getting documents, getting software, getting files, getting like
Speaker 1: proof that things happened, getting fucking no fly list. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just a very different environment, where like the
Speaker 1: goals are probably about the same in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: at least for the people who do have an ideology.
Speaker 1: But but like, yeah, I feel like it's just much
Speaker 1: more focused on like releasing information into the free, which
Speaker 1: I find really great. Like that that is kind of
Speaker 1: my big fight that I tried to devote myself to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask also sort of just about your
Speaker 1: personal anarchism, because I don't know, I like talking about
Speaker 1: anarchism and yeah, everyone has their own. Um, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a difficult question, and I feel my
Speaker 1: answer to this question changes like every other thing. Um.
Speaker 1: I especially find it hard because like I am like
Speaker 1: doing work in very specific focus bits of like anarchists work,
Speaker 1: and so I don't really want to lock myself into
Speaker 1: like I'm sorry, So so it's it's like very fluid.
Speaker 1: I'm just like obviously against states. I am like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's hard. No no governments, no shitty
Speaker 1: co operations, and it's just like having fun with friends
Speaker 1: and being gay. That is like the rules we take
Speaker 1: this is this is a good form of chasm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's just some form of queer anarchism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: being gay doing crimes, it's a it's a good it's
Speaker 1: a good thing. I guess in a way, like what
Speaker 1: kind of defines me and what keeps getting me into
Speaker 1: the spotlight is that I do just kind of have
Speaker 1: like a very strong moral compass and I go by
Speaker 1: that rather by what's legal or not legal or like
Speaker 1: sure I try to stay with him like some safe boundaries,
Speaker 1: especially now like post indictment, um, given that they're definitely
Speaker 1: even more eyes on me now than than before and
Speaker 1: this podcast is definitely being played at some NBR. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's there's ah, so that's something to consider, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I want to demonstrate this that like if you have morals,
Speaker 1: you can't just stick by them, like no one is
Speaker 1: stopping you from doing that. They might try to, but
Speaker 1: like you can just stick with your morals. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I I think it's worth mentioning even like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people go to prison for doing
Speaker 1: stuff like this, some of them didn't like there there
Speaker 1: there's like, to the best of my knowledge, there is
Speaker 1: at least still one low set guy who's just in
Speaker 1: the wind who they never got and like and low
Speaker 1: sec like they they had a FED mole in the
Speaker 1: group and one of these people still got away fox. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just so really don't do Savo's basically the guy that
Speaker 1: the Fed's flipped inside of lo Sek who got everyonce
Speaker 1: at the prison. Um. Like, like I do have to
Speaker 1: say I kind of get why he flipped like he
Speaker 1: at that point already had a family and stuff. But like,
Speaker 1: I get that that is hard, but still, yeah, your friends, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you simply do not like like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and the fact that he still like has some sort
Speaker 1: of image. Honestly, I don't know that it's just in commune.
Speaker 1: It's uh, I don't know. It's it's interesting for sure,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I can't come in too much a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. There are a lot of funny chokes to
Speaker 1: be made that I shouldn't. Yeah, the Feds suck. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say that, like, oh god, it's it's been.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's been. It's been a bad week of
Speaker 1: Feds in the US too. Like yeah, honestly, just one
Speaker 1: thing again. But I am so curious what's going to
Speaker 1: happen with the Congression link. Yeah, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw that, like, especially since like this means that
Speaker 1: the Republicans are going to be exposed to my block
Speaker 1: post presumably. Ah, And I am so excited for all
Speaker 1: these larks they can come up with. It is going
Speaker 1: to be extremely funny. But I'm also very excited for
Speaker 1: like the Turfs to be like this is terrorism, see
Speaker 1: right along. Yeah, yeah, I have gotten that before. I
Speaker 1: have gotten terffre applies before on like articles about me
Speaker 1: where they were like, see, no, women don't commit cry.
Speaker 1: So this is clear proof that it's just like what
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? This is this is my
Speaker 1: male cheenes coming out. I always also like, man, like
Speaker 1: do do you do? You do? You do? You know
Speaker 1: what people? What people did? So you have the right
Speaker 1: to vote, Like come on that, Like That's the funny
Speaker 1: thing is that they at the same time also like
Speaker 1: fetishizes the whole suffragette thing. Yeah, I think, no fucking
Speaker 1: clue what that movement? Yeah, it's like no, no, no
Speaker 1: suffragette what what whatever? Horsewhip, Richie suonac, no turf whatever,
Speaker 1: unlike unlike the suffragettes, who Yeah, exactly, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's it's silly. I'm surprised how little harassment I've gotten
Speaker 1: on Twitter so far if we exclude the whole by
Speaker 1: lesbian this. Yeah, I'm so sorry for re start that this.
Speaker 1: I think me talking about that single handedly restarted that this.
Speaker 1: It just happened. It just happens periodically, Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just funny because like I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna get me some hatred place. But like
Speaker 1: within five minutes, I had twenty one private quote Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like my, my my. I won't wake an
Speaker 1: official statement on that, which is that if you give
Speaker 1: a single ship about people calling themselves by lesbians, like,
Speaker 1: please let me know so I can trade lives with you.
Speaker 1: Like you you seem to have like very few problems
Speaker 1: going on. I would love to like have grown up
Speaker 1: in the world where like that's like that's the thing
Speaker 1: that you think, Like, I don't know. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's funny how there's people who were like
Speaker 1: one thing to follow me wanting to interact with me
Speaker 1: as like and it's it's uh fury and kitten who
Speaker 1: like does uh funny things to the U. S. Government,
Speaker 1: but then they draw the line at a specific sexuality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really like I I then made like a post
Speaker 1: where I was like sorry, I deleted that I didn't.
Speaker 1: I don't have the energy to deal with people getting
Speaker 1: so upset over an innocent word, and that has gotten
Speaker 1: so many many quote weeks being like yeah, and an
Speaker 1: innocent word in question was by lesbian. I say if
Speaker 1: I said, like the N word or something like that
Speaker 1: was literally the kind of response I got. And it's
Speaker 1: just like do you not have anything else to do?
Speaker 1: Like like do you know how many people the cops
Speaker 1: killed last week? Can you please do something like come
Speaker 1: on and all the things are happening here right now,
Speaker 1: Like especially then when some of the people that come
Speaker 1: up with that are like non binary lesbians, which if
Speaker 1: you know anything about this purity and discourse, like half
Speaker 1: of the them would also like from the sounder the
Speaker 1: pit because non binary lesbians also can't exist, and like
Speaker 1: it's why are you why? Why are you fighting for
Speaker 1: the turf? Like that? That is my one single question
Speaker 1: that I have through all the fourteen year old careers
Speaker 1: on Twitter dot com. Also, why did that Why did
Speaker 1: that discourse ever escaped Tumbler? Like that was because all
Speaker 1: the Tumbler because all the Tumbler refugees came to Twitter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they could have left a discourse there. Yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: the world I don't know Twitter, Twitter, Twitter in the
Speaker 1: last like like okay, like twitter'sdress course has never been good,
Speaker 1: but like in the last obviously it's just been getting
Speaker 1: worse and it's it's yeah, it's just the same side,
Speaker 1: like it's it's not even that it's just bad discourse.
Speaker 1: It's just the same discourse every week, and I'm just
Speaker 1: tired of it. And I guess now that I'm a
Speaker 1: big account, I have to have an opinion on everything.
Speaker 1: Um And also the fun part about being trans ever,
Speaker 1: everyone is like like absolutely razor focused for like the
Speaker 1: exact one word that you say wrong so they can act,
Speaker 1: so they can like like legitimately uoteunquote beechan trobic at you.
Speaker 1: And it's like this is great, Like this is a
Speaker 1: great system that we've developed for existing with each other.
Speaker 1: We could simply do this, Yeah, you can just say
Speaker 1: like that. The fact that literally, like I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna see what happens if I say by lesbian
Speaker 1: and then I can't wait twenty four followers, and and
Speaker 1: the fact that it literally took seconds for people to
Speaker 1: tell me to tell all their mutuals to unfollow me
Speaker 1: because I'm highly problematic. Um was it was quite interesting
Speaker 1: and someone was just like this has completely shattered my
Speaker 1: world view, and I'm just like sorry, if your world
Speaker 1: view gets shattered by my sexuality, you have some soul
Speaker 1: seeking to do, like yeah, like like like like like
Speaker 1: like actually, like like I grew, I grew like like
Speaker 1: for some of them. For some people, me saying the
Speaker 1: phrase by lesbian was genuinely like my milkshake doc moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like it was like a second it's called
Speaker 1: a second sexuality description as hit the towers, like it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so like god, it was like five am when
Speaker 1: I made that tweet. It was just like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get a little silly with it. And I
Speaker 1: expected like a backlash, but not that much. It was
Speaker 1: just too much. And yeah, like I know, it's not
Speaker 1: like backlash that matters and I should just ignore it,
Speaker 1: but it's like so overwhelming. Yeah, I guess do you
Speaker 1: do you have anything else that you want to say?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that's that covers like most
Speaker 1: of the things I have to talk about. H Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like be gay to crime, Hacked the Planet, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it was genuinely it is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things in the world that they made the movie Hackers,
Speaker 1: and it was the worst depicture. But then also like
Speaker 1: like I was like, so I did watch them. I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: I watched it, like not to the first time, Like
Speaker 1: it wasn't like like like I was. I was like
Speaker 1: not that or when I watched it, but it was
Speaker 1: after I like first ran into Hackers, So it took
Speaker 1: me a while to figure out that, like, wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: no hack the planet is the thing that everyone says,
Speaker 1: but that's actually because it's a joke for hackers, which
Speaker 1: I see. I still find it funny how Hackers is
Speaker 1: a movie that got hacking culture completely wrong and changed
Speaker 1: it forever, because like because like there's I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen that, but from like Defcon from
Speaker 1: there's a page on the official Deacon website talking about
Speaker 1: how bad Hackers is and how it gets everything wrong
Speaker 1: and no one should watch this movie. And now you
Speaker 1: look at this like twenty years later, and that's just
Speaker 1: what hacking culture turned in. Yeah, the most incredible thing
Speaker 1: about Hackers is that someone managed to get the queerest
Speaker 1: fucking movie ever made made by one of the biggest
Speaker 1: companies in Hollywood, and also make it about hacking, and
Speaker 1: like it's it's the best piece of cinema ever. And
Speaker 1: I stand by this, like it fucking sucks in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, but it's just they just managed to
Speaker 1: make a movie where no one has says somehow like
Speaker 1: so no one says it's pretty amazing. I will say
Speaker 1: the two Asian characters are kind of whack, but yeah,
Speaker 1: other than that, it's like, yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: like like it's it's a whack movie. Like like if
Speaker 1: you look at it objectively, it's a pretty bad movie.
Speaker 1: Like like there's you know, there was just like a
Speaker 1: lot of way stuff in the nineties is absolutely terrible,
Speaker 1: but also like there was stuff you could just do
Speaker 1: in movies in the nineties that like you can't now,
Speaker 1: like like okay, well, like what my example this is.
Speaker 1: I may have said this on the podcast before, but
Speaker 1: like they so they they did a like completely straight
Speaker 1: like modern day live adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that
Speaker 1: is like it's Romeo and Juliet. It's it's exactly the
Speaker 1: lines in Shakespeare, but it's like with characters set in
Speaker 1: like the like modern times, and they're shooting guns each other.
Speaker 1: But like one of these happens now is there's just
Speaker 1: like a black guy doing drag and it's just like
Speaker 1: a thing, like nobody comments on it, like it's just
Speaker 1: like a thing that he's having a good time and
Speaker 1: you could not like like people people people would show
Speaker 1: up to yeah, like people people, which people like yeah,
Speaker 1: like I won't be on Tucker Carlson like yeah, like
Speaker 1: like the people people. Yeah, you'd have like mobs showing
Speaker 1: up in front of your house like it's yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like yeah, if hackers came out now,
Speaker 1: we would have like Tucker Carson complaining about the wokeme
Speaker 1: up trying to kids and to gay activists like I
Speaker 1: don't know. I love the movie so much, not not
Speaker 1: because it's good, but because it's culturally important, yes, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and the characters are like great, like they made everyone
Speaker 1: career somehow. And I'm still not sure I whether Devil
Speaker 1: was intentional or not. I don't know, but I leaned
Speaker 1: towards they didn't know what they were doing, and that
Speaker 1: makes it even funnier. Yeah, it makes it so much better.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that it's like got past like
Speaker 1: producers and everything, and it was made the queerest piece
Speaker 1: of like Hollywood media I have ever seen that wasn't
Speaker 1: meant to be queer. It's just like, yeah, yeah, cool
Speaker 1: time we weren't on this tension because yeah we we
Speaker 1: we we we we We simply love to see it
Speaker 1: be gay, do crimes hack the planet? Uh, this is
Speaker 1: not legally for the FBI. This is not legally actionable.
Speaker 1: This is a joke, yes, from the movie Hackers, which
Speaker 1: you could watch Hackers. Yeah in places. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: can watch it very legally on the internet. I actually
Speaker 1: don't know if it's on any streaming platform. I don't
Speaker 1: think I watched it. I think it is because I
Speaker 1: watched it with my family kind of recently, which was
Speaker 1: a wild time. It's probably streaming. Oh, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: an Apple TV apparently. Yeah, so it's there. You can
Speaker 1: find it there. You can find it in other places.
Speaker 1: It can it can find it somewhere, both legally and illegally.
Speaker 1: If I'm allowed to endorse like piracy on your podcast,
Speaker 1: it's we We We did an entire episode about how
Speaker 1: the pirate stuff. So yeah, so yeah, you can find
Speaker 1: it both legally and illegally, and if you're lucky, I'm
Speaker 1: the one seeding the Torrent. And then actually, okay, but
Speaker 1: the other thing I actually should before you if people
Speaker 1: want to find you, where can they find you? I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Underscore nine crime you and in case
Speaker 1: Twitter suspends me once again for the sex time. I
Speaker 1: have a website at Maya dot crime you dot k
Speaker 1: it rules. It's so good it Yes, the reason I'm
Speaker 1: famous now, it's just because my website is paying. It's great.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So this this has been Make it Happen here.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Happened here pod at Twitter, Instagram. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I am at it b h R three.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, go in, go in crime. Welcome back once again.
Speaker 1: This is the crew from It's Going Down, squatting the
Speaker 1: air waves if it could happen here. On today's show,
Speaker 1: we're going to look at the growing crisis around homelessness
Speaker 1: and how the state has moved to address it with
Speaker 1: brutal sweeps and new laws that target the poor. In
Speaker 1: the wake of the global COVID nineteen pandemic, the US
Speaker 1: housing crisis deepened, and homelessness crew following the George Foyd rebellion.
Speaker 1: Republicans pointed to a rising murderate during the election cycle,
Speaker 1: along with growing encampments of the houseless, as examples of
Speaker 1: rampant democratic mismanagement and the supposed in result of defunding
Speaker 1: the police. In reality, two years after the uprising. Both
Speaker 1: funding for the police has only increased along with the
Speaker 1: number of people killed per year by law enforcement, while
Speaker 1: growing police budgets have had no impact on crime. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: both parties have embraced a draconian crackdown on the house
Speaker 1: list as a slew of new laws targets sleeping outside,
Speaker 1: and police move against encampments even in the midst of
Speaker 1: extreme weather. But a new wave of resistance is also
Speaker 1: materializing as communities mobilized to provide mutual aid, fight for
Speaker 1: access to housing, and resist sweeps of encampments. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: we investigate the history of these struggles and how these tactics,
Speaker 1: ranging from squatting to a cant defense, are spreading across
Speaker 1: the social terrain as the current crisis deepens, can more
Speaker 1: people find themselves out in the call? But to kick
Speaker 1: things off, let's talk about state strategy. Just why are
Speaker 1: they carrying out these sweeps? I think one of the
Speaker 1: first thing that comes to mind for me is how
Speaker 1: this behavior from like the Democrats or like liberals or
Speaker 1: progressives isn't an anomaly that they are You know that
Speaker 1: their role is facilitating a capitalist state, just with slightly
Speaker 1: different tactics than the Republicans, but basically they're trying to
Speaker 1: do that. What they're doing, which is basically demonizing unhoused
Speaker 1: people and sort of pushes the blame of, um, what's
Speaker 1: going on, of the failings basically of our culture, onto
Speaker 1: these individuals that are unhoused, rather than on their failures
Speaker 1: as like mayors of democratic cities or whatever, um and
Speaker 1: the kind of logical outcome of class based capitalists extracted society.
Speaker 1: And when they can just make it that instead of
Speaker 1: it being like a social problem that people are on hours,
Speaker 1: they can make it these bad homeless people and they're
Speaker 1: dirty and crime or whatever, and just kind of trying
Speaker 1: and eliminate that to protect their image. But I think
Speaker 1: it's just a way of scapegoating a built in problem
Speaker 1: with how they operate. And actually it's something that makes
Speaker 1: me think, especially thinking about San Francisco in terms of
Speaker 1: like precedence for this. It makes me think about the
Speaker 1: Ugly Laws, which, for anyone who doesn't know that was
Speaker 1: something kind of in the San Francisco implemented in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, which was a law forbidding people who were
Speaker 1: kind of like unsightly according to this law, UM to
Speaker 1: not be seen in the streets. So if people were
Speaker 1: physically disabled or they were begging or even limping, there
Speaker 1: were laws targeting them. And part of it even says
Speaker 1: that anything that's triggering like disgust or guilt like to
Speaker 1: not be seen. And I feel like it's a really
Speaker 1: similar thing that's happening now. And so yeah, progressive as
Speaker 1: they do this. I'm one that you brought up able
Speaker 1: is because I think that this ties in rur role
Speaker 1: while into that. So we live in essentially like on
Speaker 1: a extremely able to society that says if you don't work,
Speaker 1: you die, and I think criminalizing homeless people is a
Speaker 1: huge part of that. I mean, really think about it.
Speaker 1: We have to rent our bodies to corporations so we
Speaker 1: can get money to pay rent to landlords. Essentially we're
Speaker 1: being paid at tax to live. But how do you
Speaker 1: force people? How else can you get people to do
Speaker 1: the drudgery that we have to do at work if
Speaker 1: you don't like show them the consequences of that. So
Speaker 1: like if they were nice to homeless people, if they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, here's a free home, they not create
Speaker 1: a president of like, oh, you cannot work and have
Speaker 1: a home. So like they don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think one thing that people don't
Speaker 1: talk about, like homelessness is existing. I think it's like
Speaker 1: a way to like scare us into essentially doing these
Speaker 1: things that we don't want to do to live, because
Speaker 1: you're constantly reminding us of like, oh, you want to
Speaker 1: quiet Quinn, you want to go on a strike, this
Speaker 1: is what your life could be. You're gonna be homeless.
Speaker 1: And not only that, we're gonna make it so that
Speaker 1: you can't exist as a homeless person in this society
Speaker 1: because people like if you go to New York right now,
Speaker 1: all these brunchy folks they eat on the sidewalk, they
Speaker 1: have all these like houses build up on the sidewalk,
Speaker 1: people and drinking mimosas. But you can't have a tan
Speaker 1: but one of these makeshift things. So I mean it
Speaker 1: goes to show you like it's not even like the
Speaker 1: idea of taking public space. It's like who's taking public space?
Speaker 1: And if it's somebody who's not serving capitalism, you can't
Speaker 1: take up public space. The housing question. To really understand
Speaker 1: the connection with democrats and capitalists understands of housing, we
Speaker 1: have to think about how housing, how property structure space, right,
Speaker 1: how capitalism structures space. And so you know, when I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this before we're recording, I keep going
Speaker 1: back to James Scott Seeing Like a State, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, an amazing book. If people haven't read it,
Speaker 1: absolutely pick up a copy. But in the first you know,
Speaker 1: couple of chapters, one of the things he talks about
Speaker 1: islantic closure, and he's talking about this structure specifically in France,
Speaker 1: in which sort of towards the end of monarchism, there
Speaker 1: was an attempt to actually create a tax regime where
Speaker 1: individuals were taxed, and to do that into jules had
Speaker 1: to exist legally, but they didn't at that point. They
Speaker 1: existed as communities within feudalism. They pay taxes as communities
Speaker 1: that held land as communities. When the French government went
Speaker 1: to these towns to figure out who owned what, but
Speaker 1: they found was that every single community broke up their
Speaker 1: understanding of land differently and that it wasn't really based
Speaker 1: on ownership, is based on use. And so they had
Speaker 1: to standardize all of that. To do that, they had
Speaker 1: to fragment the commons. They had to sit there and go,
Speaker 1: you owned this piece of land, and you owned this
Speaker 1: piece of land. They did that, they made maps, and
Speaker 1: they went back two years later they realized nobody was
Speaker 1: following the maps. But what they did was they started
Speaker 1: charging taxes based on the maps. And so people had
Speaker 1: to start making money on the land to pay the
Speaker 1: taxes based on the maps that have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with their lives, right. And what that was was the
Speaker 1: creation of property right. Because when we think about property,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this fiction of you know, stateless capitalism, right,
Speaker 1: you have like Murray Rothbard grand types we were talking about.
Speaker 1: You know, capitalism can exist without the state. But really
Speaker 1: we can see the fallacy of at when we look
Speaker 1: at the at the question of property right, the question
Speaker 1: of exclusion from property or exclusion from space. Um. Not
Speaker 1: only is it fragmenting public space, but we start to
Speaker 1: look at um the way that all of a sudden
Speaker 1: property has to exist. Right. And so in the Rust Belt,
Speaker 1: for example, after the financial crisis, cities Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit
Speaker 1: got all this money from the federal government to tear
Speaker 1: houses down, and they were tearing down like fifty houses
Speaker 1: a day in these cities right for years on end.
Speaker 1: And these are cities that have people that don't have houses.
Speaker 1: And so you you sit there and you go, well,
Speaker 1: why are they tearing houses down when there are people
Speaker 1: that don't have houses, right, When there's more vacant houses
Speaker 1: than there are people without housing, How can you justify
Speaker 1: tearing the houses down. And the answer was, we need
Speaker 1: to create a real estate market again, because if you
Speaker 1: allow people to just squat, there's no reason to pay
Speaker 1: for housing. If there's a reason to pay for housing,
Speaker 1: housing seasons to be a commodity. Right, Like this is
Speaker 1: actually the important part. Like capitalism has to function through
Speaker 1: that exclusion of access. Otherwise commodities can't have the scarcity
Speaker 1: necessary to allow them to be priced right. There can't
Speaker 1: be a supply that is lower than in demand, for example,
Speaker 1: unless you artificially limit supply. Right. And so when we
Speaker 1: really see this, we can really see not just the
Speaker 1: way that capitalism sort of atomizes us, right, creates us
Speaker 1: as people who live in individual housing units, as opposed
Speaker 1: to as people who can see ourselves as living in communities.
Speaker 1: But it also really comes to highlight the relationship between
Speaker 1: the state and the police at capital and how we
Speaker 1: have to understand capital as a content of the state.
Speaker 1: It is a definition of life that is imposed through
Speaker 1: policing purity and can't exist outside of that. Right, It's
Speaker 1: the fallacy of quote unquote anarcho capitalism, which isn't the
Speaker 1: thing that really exists for this exact reason. Right, And
Speaker 1: so when we're looking at why are democrats engaging in
Speaker 1: techniques that involve pushing people off the streets, this is
Speaker 1: exactly why it's a capital was political property. They're trying
Speaker 1: to maintain properly, They're trying to be properly value, right,
Speaker 1: And this is why you see this happen in cities
Speaker 1: where gentrification is really horrible and a much much faster
Speaker 1: clip than you see it in cities where there's like
Speaker 1: open housing stock. That really makes me think about the
Speaker 1: beginning of like workhouses in England in the eighteen thirties
Speaker 1: and the poor law reforms, and it goes back to
Speaker 1: what you were saying more about just that making it
Speaker 1: really undesirable to be poor, you know, like needing a
Speaker 1: group of people who are in that position, And the
Speaker 1: workhouses was something that were introduced by liberals, progressives, you know,
Speaker 1: like this as a form of like changing this or
Speaker 1: poor release system. So instead of giving people money so
Speaker 1: they could be supported and stay with their families or whatever.
Speaker 1: People would put into these institutions where they're separated from
Speaker 1: their kids, from their husbands and wives or whatever. And
Speaker 1: it's meant to be so undesirable that you would only
Speaker 1: seek it if you was desperately needed it or whatever,
Speaker 1: um as a way to like save on taxes for
Speaker 1: like money. Basically it's really sucked up. And it's like
Speaker 1: this was part of the sort social reform progressive like project,
Speaker 1: and I think we can see echoes of that in this.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I wanted to bring up is
Speaker 1: like you talked about atomizing and isolating and like how
Speaker 1: capitalism does that. One thing that I think about specifically
Speaker 1: New York is that homeless and camps do offer this
Speaker 1: radical idea of like what it looks like to take
Speaker 1: back a public space and to collectively like meet together,
Speaker 1: you know. And like that's the other thing that I
Speaker 1: was thinking about last night when I was high, this
Speaker 1: whole idea of what happens if we just allow homeless
Speaker 1: encampments to spread and take over. Then people who are
Speaker 1: not homeless start interacting with homeless people as we do
Speaker 1: like people in the city do. Then you form these
Speaker 1: connections in these relationships, and then it becomes perfectly normal
Speaker 1: for people to take over public spaces, and then what
Speaker 1: does that mean? Then we have to provide services in
Speaker 1: public spaces like bathrooms and showers because the public would
Speaker 1: start requesting and like asking for these things the more
Speaker 1: of a relationship they form with homeless folks. So I
Speaker 1: think part of the cleaning, which is what the term
Speaker 1: Eric Adams is used, which is absolutely disgusting terms of
Speaker 1: like moving homeless people the whole, I think a huge
Speaker 1: part of it is also just like destroying the notion
Speaker 1: that we own public spaces, like you do not own
Speaker 1: a public space, and we want to let you know
Speaker 1: that and we want you out. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: that really And and the additional aspect of that too
Speaker 1: is like when you look at homeless is in New York,
Speaker 1: like a huge chunk of it like black people too,
Speaker 1: So there's like a racial component of it too. When
Speaker 1: you really want to add it for this whole idea
Speaker 1: of like black people are not allowed to take up
Speaker 1: space and then specifically if you're homeless, you're not allowed
Speaker 1: to take up public space. I wanted to bring that in.
Speaker 1: It's like very much related to work, but also just
Speaker 1: related to the idea that the government owns everything and
Speaker 1: corporations own everything, including the spaces that we exist in. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of corporations owning everything, here's some words from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Across the US, in large cities, often controlled by Democrats,
Speaker 1: a war on the poor, and specifically on encampments of
Speaker 1: houses people has been increasing ways over the past year.
Speaker 1: In San Francisco, the city's mayor, London Breed recently declared
Speaker 1: it was time to que be less tolerant of all
Speaker 1: the bullshit that has destroyed our city, an effort to
Speaker 1: ramp up police harassment of the poor and unhoused. In Portland,
Speaker 1: city officials openly toyed with the idea of forcing quote
Speaker 1: up to three thousand homeless people in the massive temporary
Speaker 1: shelters staffed by the Oregon National Guard, while on California,
Speaker 1: the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has pushed for quote care courts,
Speaker 1: which threatened to place those who do not complete state
Speaker 1: directives under involuntary hospitalization of policy, which mirrors efforts already
Speaker 1: underway in New York. Bands against camping, panhandling, sleeping in
Speaker 1: one's car have also proliferated last spring For instance, Tennessee
Speaker 1: made it a felony to camp on public owned land.
Speaker 1: In Missouri, those caught sleeping on state property could now
Speaker 1: get jail time and fines under a new law that
Speaker 1: just went into effect on January one. Other new laws
Speaker 1: out lawn caminton, l a next to schools and forbid
Speaker 1: houses folks from sleeping on public transit in New York.
Speaker 1: In the progressive bashing the Asheville, North Carolina, over a
Speaker 1: dozen mutual aid organizers also now faced trumped up charges
Speaker 1: of felony littering for supporting protest against sweeps of encampments.
Speaker 1: This shift in many liberal cities to criminalize attack and
Speaker 1: band encampments shows just how much the Democratic Party has
Speaker 1: continued to move to the right while embracing Republicans line
Speaker 1: on combating rising crime. Instead of mobilizing the state's forces
Speaker 1: to house people need their most basic needs in a
Speaker 1: period of mass pandemic and a growing housing crisis, liberal
Speaker 1: governments across the country have instead mobilized their forces to
Speaker 1: attack some of the most vulnerable. When you know more
Speaker 1: about what's driving these ongoing attacks on the houses and
Speaker 1: how it relates to the housing crisis itself, we sat
Speaker 1: down with Gifford Hartman, a long time radical organizer in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. In a former squatter movements arise like
Speaker 1: say the George Floyd Uprising, and there's some changes. There's
Speaker 1: some movement towards reforms the police brutality and things like that,
Speaker 1: and then there's kind of a backlash. And I think
Speaker 1: right now we're kind of suffering through a backlash. And
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of a pattern that happens, is
Speaker 1: there's pushback kind of penal reform, trying to ring the
Speaker 1: pelias in a little bit, and then the kind of
Speaker 1: the backlash means just the police have more power and
Speaker 1: they have more power to really kind of brutalize on
Speaker 1: house people. And I think we're living through that right now.
Speaker 1: I think the trends go, you know, like back and forth,
Speaker 1: and the pendulum has swung in the direction where right
Speaker 1: now in San Francisco there's constant sweeps of tents and
Speaker 1: how and how's people living on the streets. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of media support given to that, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, as I said, the tail lags the dog
Speaker 1: and then they start doing all this stuff and the
Speaker 1: pushback hasn't really Activism hasn't really been able to kind
Speaker 1: of stand up to that and stop it or even
Speaker 1: challenge it. Right now, at least what I see, booms
Speaker 1: happen and property values go up and vacancies go to
Speaker 1: almost zero, the cops cracked down harder. And I think
Speaker 1: there have been periods at least in my lifetime here
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area, where there's out of a lulla,
Speaker 1: there's the bottom of the trough, when maybe there's more vacancies,
Speaker 1: a little bit more wiggle room, the cups quite aren't
Speaker 1: quite so brutal. But when things are peaking, or when
Speaker 1: the economies, you know, it's dynamic, kind of high poise,
Speaker 1: that's where I see the repression is the worst, because
Speaker 1: there's more people to complain. There's more people whose you know,
Speaker 1: values are tied to property and who are more willing
Speaker 1: to push the cops to brutalize on house people and um.
Speaker 1: But you know, right now it's kind of framed because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tech layoffs. Yet the agenda of
Speaker 1: sweeping tense and none house people off the streets is
Speaker 1: kind of still kind of a rapid pace. So I
Speaker 1: don't know how much longer to last, but right now
Speaker 1: it's at a pretty high point as we speak. The
Speaker 1: weather is awful and the sweeps haven't really stopped, and
Speaker 1: there aren't enough shelter beds to house although on the
Speaker 1: house folks. So it's really a crisis. It's not only
Speaker 1: just a you know, human crisis, but it's a health
Speaker 1: crisis because people out in the cold rain are more
Speaker 1: vulnerable to getting sick and dying. And it's it should
Speaker 1: be the time where we're doing the opposite. We're making
Speaker 1: sure everybody's housed, and it just certainly isn't happening. Even
Speaker 1: though San Francisco, the Marits have been Democrats, I believe
Speaker 1: since the mid sixties. The Democrats aren't a monolith, and
Speaker 1: they're not all progressive, and even the progressive ones aren't
Speaker 1: that good. But the ones that are in power now,
Speaker 1: like mayor London Breed are moderates, and um, they really
Speaker 1: are more believe in the police more, and they believe
Speaker 1: in using police for social crimes. And when they're not moderate,
Speaker 1: it's a little less bad, but it's not better, it's
Speaker 1: just less bad. I don't know if that really makes sense,
Speaker 1: because I don't think there's ever been a political regime
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. That wasn't pro cop. You know, everybody
Speaker 1: loves the cops. Everybody sees the cops is um ways
Speaker 1: to enforce the social values of society, which are private
Speaker 1: property and all that. And it just never stops. It
Speaker 1: just depends how brutal they are. And again, unless I
Speaker 1: said earlier, it goes through waves. And presently we're in
Speaker 1: a brutal way and the only alternative that is a
Speaker 1: less rutal way. And so my opinion, there's never a
Speaker 1: time when the cops don't, you know, run rapid, but
Speaker 1: just right now. But right now they're actually at the
Speaker 1: high point that they've been in a long time. And
Speaker 1: now we speak with Javier from the National Coach on
Speaker 1: Homelessness in San Francisco. We talk about the current wave
Speaker 1: of a tox against house those people in big cities
Speaker 1: and how they mirror historic attempts at policing and repressing
Speaker 1: the poor. The income that you need to rent a
Speaker 1: two bedroom apartment, by the city's own estimation, you need
Speaker 1: an hourly wage of about sixty one fifty to have
Speaker 1: an apartment like that. So the income gap is becoming
Speaker 1: more evident than ever. Nowadays, there's a nine percent increase
Speaker 1: in homelessness for every hundred dollar increase in rents. So
Speaker 1: it's like if healthcare, housing, education all gets more expensive
Speaker 1: but wages don't go up, people are gonna lose their housing. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I think people need to understand and how similar we
Speaker 1: are to the unhoused population and how important it is
Speaker 1: to recognize that we should have solidarity with each other,
Speaker 1: because if we're fighting against each other, then guests is
Speaker 1: when the millionaires in the build we're doing the city
Speaker 1: because when they do these sweeps, they're taking people's belongings,
Speaker 1: which is a legal searcuncedure and cruel and unusual punishment
Speaker 1: because the shelter that they're offering a lot of times
Speaker 1: isn't adequate for the folks who are being sweat. We're
Speaker 1: looking for permanent supportive housing for folks and it's not there.
Speaker 1: And if you're telling people that they have to move
Speaker 1: across the street every day in the morning, then it
Speaker 1: kind of shows I think a social and kind of
Speaker 1: cultural understanding that mirrors the ugly laws people have had
Speaker 1: in place, especially in America for a long time, which
Speaker 1: is homeless people are not supposed to be seen and
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be criminalized and speaking of things that
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't be scene again some words from our sponsors,
Speaker 1: from resisting sweeps, studying up autonomous warming centers, to taking
Speaker 1: over vacant buildings. Over the past few years, there's been
Speaker 1: a wide array of expressions of solidarity, direct action, and
Speaker 1: mutual aid in the face of attempts by the state
Speaker 1: to displace and destroy the lives of houses people across
Speaker 1: the US. But these projects and actions haven't come out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, building on the radical history of groups in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area, such as the Diggers and the White Panthers,
Speaker 1: who set up free stores, grocery programs, and squatted buildings.
Speaker 1: Starting in the nineteen eighties, out of the anti nuclear movement,
Speaker 1: peace activists began sharing free vegan food in a protest
Speaker 1: of the US war budget under the banner Food not Bombs.
Speaker 1: In the late nineteen eighties, Food Not Bombs in San
Speaker 1: Francisco faced over one thousand arrest for sharing free food
Speaker 1: publicly and taking part in demonstrations. Soon, another group, Homes
Speaker 1: not Jails, evolved out of the same scene and began
Speaker 1: to open up and squat vacant housing, part of a
Speaker 1: wave of other houses activist groups that sprouted nationwide following
Speaker 1: the economic recession of the nineteen eighties. Chapters of Homes
Speaker 1: Not Jail's work to open squats weekly to covertly house people,
Speaker 1: also organizing public housing takeovers, which thrust squatting into the
Speaker 1: spotlight of the mass media. Again, here's Gifford Hartman talking
Speaker 1: about squatting in the ninety nineties. There have been a
Speaker 1: wave of I'm really successful squats in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: One group was called the White Panthers that did it
Speaker 1: in the Lower Hate neighborhood, and they were modeled on
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers. So they actually squatted, but actually created
Speaker 1: community programs for things like new distribution. They defended their squads,
Speaker 1: they fortified their squads, and that was a tradition that
Speaker 1: kind of preceded my period of squatting. But so that
Speaker 1: we're both looking at the squatting in Europe but also
Speaker 1: the previous generations doing it here in San Francisco. Um
Speaker 1: I moved to the Bay Area in nineteen eight six.
Speaker 1: I have been Berkeley for most of the beginning of
Speaker 1: the years I was here. From the end of World
Speaker 1: War Two in the nineteen forties, the population in San
Speaker 1: Francisco peak in the mid twentieth century, and then it
Speaker 1: went down. Population decreased by a hundred thousand in the
Speaker 1: late eighties. There were still a lot of cracks in
Speaker 1: the surface of housing, and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: empty units. There's a lot of abandoned units, and there
Speaker 1: was a lot of a lot of ability to people
Speaker 1: to find squads and I was part of that. And
Speaker 1: there were various times where I either wasn't working or
Speaker 1: had a part time job, and I chose as a
Speaker 1: political active squad, and I began doing that in late eighties,
Speaker 1: but most of my success in squadding was in their
Speaker 1: early nineties. But then I kind of ran up against
Speaker 1: the contradiction, and groups like Homeside Jails were founded in
Speaker 1: nineteen two had already been squatting um. But then there
Speaker 1: was another wave of repression. So in nine to the
Speaker 1: former chief of police in San Francisco, Frank Jordan, got
Speaker 1: elected mayor and by nineteen ninety three he was doing
Speaker 1: something called the Matrix program. And the Matrix program was
Speaker 1: very much like what Juliani did in New York with
Speaker 1: his zero tolerance for broken windows, which just cops would
Speaker 1: get tough on quality of life crimes, which means like
Speaker 1: broken windows and graffiti, but it also included food not bombs.
Speaker 1: Feedings were attacked by the police, and squatters were even
Speaker 1: myself included, were attacked and cleared out, even in a
Speaker 1: way that was not legal. When I succeeded, we squatted covertly,
Speaker 1: and when we didn't succeed often we were aligned with
Speaker 1: groups like Homes Not Jails, where they were a high
Speaker 1: profile group or media savvy. Well, media savvy might be
Speaker 1: an overstatement. They were kind of had a media focus,
Speaker 1: and the media focus was often a double edged sword.
Speaker 1: It brought popular understanding of the conditions of the housing stock,
Speaker 1: but also it was a way for the police to
Speaker 1: be telegraphed exactly what we were doing in to come
Speaker 1: down and crack down on our squads. Homes on Jails
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the last group to take over vacant homes
Speaker 1: for housing. In mid two thousands, Take Back the Land,
Speaker 1: based out of Miami, Florida, work to block evictions and
Speaker 1: move un housed families into foreclosed homes. In the present period,
Speaker 1: various grassroots groups have organized to stop the sweeping of
Speaker 1: houses and cameras cruise in Olympia Washington and Austin, Texas
Speaker 1: have been successful in organizing broad campaigns. In Minneapolis, groups
Speaker 1: have mobilized mass numbers two at times all divictions. In
Speaker 1: the following interview, we speak with Christian and Post from
Speaker 1: Minnieapolis on the ongoing battle with the city government and
Speaker 1: police to stop attacks and sweeps on their houses neighbors.
Speaker 1: In the summer of George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.
Speaker 1: It raised a lot of people's awareness as to the
Speaker 1: way that our systems and practices in our city aren't
Speaker 1: really serving us UM. I think there was there was
Speaker 1: a lot of work happening in Minneapolis in particular before
Speaker 1: that in regard to policing and the way that our
Speaker 1: systems do or do not serve people UM. And then
Speaker 1: in tw twenty, the awareness just grew exponentially. And because
Speaker 1: that foundational path had been laid already, we had something
Speaker 1: to go with UM and we can see the direct
Speaker 1: line between what happened to George Floyd and to the
Speaker 1: community at George Floyd Square and the way that that
Speaker 1: also shows up in other spaces in our communities, such
Speaker 1: as with our own house neighbors. We know that the
Speaker 1: majority of people that are living at encampments in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: are indigenous UM immigrant populations or UM Black Americans, and
Speaker 1: so we can see that there is you know, a
Speaker 1: specific need and also a real um a you know,
Speaker 1: a disparity between and a direct through line to all
Speaker 1: of them oppression that through in the face of every
Speaker 1: you know, I mean person with the heart absolutely and
Speaker 1: I think she started practicing a lot of mutual aid
Speaker 1: UM more like much bigger than we ever have his historically.
Speaker 1: In the summer, we saw lots of people getting involved
Speaker 1: that were encampments UM throughout the city as there was
Speaker 1: for some time because of covid UM people were able
Speaker 1: to stay outside and couldn't be evicted as easily UM
Speaker 1: at that time, and we saw lots of community getting
Speaker 1: involved and doing mutual aid UM and that really helped
Speaker 1: build I think, a movement that is you know, sort
Speaker 1: of beautifully disorganized in many ways because lots of people
Speaker 1: from lots of different walks of life coming together and
Speaker 1: showing up for each other. I mean, I think people
Speaker 1: started to become aware of the way that we are
Speaker 1: all connected to each other, and that when when we're
Speaker 1: taking care of each other, we're all happier, we're all safer,
Speaker 1: we're actually able to meet needs, and the resources are there.
Speaker 1: It's a matter of the will. I cannot over emphasize
Speaker 1: enough how terrible the boy Mayor Frey has been since
Speaker 1: he took power here and so called Minneapolis. You know,
Speaker 1: he ran on ending houselessness and was in majority funded
Speaker 1: by developers during his campaign, and we've seen what ending
Speaker 1: houselessness means to democrats. It basically means ending visible poverty
Speaker 1: and ending the new lives of houseless people. But frankly,
Speaker 1: I mean the number of evictions over the course of
Speaker 1: the last few years has just skyrocketed. And you know,
Speaker 1: are so called progressive politicians love to give some money
Speaker 1: to the nonprofit industrial complex and do their private public partnership,
Speaker 1: and then when there are people who are quote unquote
Speaker 1: resistant to service, that's the that's the phrase they love
Speaker 1: to use. They have all of their excuses lined ups
Speaker 1: that they can just build those people's houses and kick
Speaker 1: them out of the roofs that are keeping them warm
Speaker 1: and dry. And it's just been a really eye opening
Speaker 1: thing for a lot of people, I think, to see
Speaker 1: how our progressive quote unquote establishment here has just fully
Speaker 1: committed to jack boot thuggery, all in the name of
Speaker 1: clearing the streets and making it so that people in
Speaker 1: their kind of four story mixed use of condos can
Speaker 1: can have a beautiful view without having to see the
Speaker 1: poverty that that lifestyle the suff You know, in the summer,
Speaker 1: there were several council at the time, council members who
Speaker 1: committed to UM defunding the police. However, that did not
Speaker 1: come to fruition UM. Since that time, there's been um
Speaker 1: increases in the budget to policing in Minneapolis, no decreases,
Speaker 1: only increases that police haven't been able to spend their
Speaker 1: whole budget, and yet the city continues to pour more
Speaker 1: money into them. And what we're seeing happen is unhoused
Speaker 1: people come together to keep one another safe and also
Speaker 1: so community is able to stay connected with them. And
Speaker 1: you know, we'll be in an encampment and then various
Speaker 1: levels of discovery of government will come in and displace them,
Speaker 1: and and so the people don't have anywhere else to go,
Speaker 1: so they need to move to a new space together.
Speaker 1: So what's happening is not housing. What's happening is not
Speaker 1: even laying a foundation for somebody to be able to
Speaker 1: get the services or support that they may want or need.
Speaker 1: What's happening is displacement. When somebody hears about an eviction
Speaker 1: potentially happening, it becomes a situation that's it's almost it's
Speaker 1: almost kind of magical that people come together and it
Speaker 1: is kind of chaotic, but it always comes together and
Speaker 1: we end up having whether it's people they're doing cop
Speaker 1: watch or are just neighbors, like we had neighbors show
Speaker 1: up on the first day the day that the Corey
Speaker 1: was planned to be evicted on December UM, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how many different people that just live in
Speaker 1: that area. We're coming up and asking questions, and we're
Speaker 1: appalled at the response from the city because really that
Speaker 1: the Corey encampment was in a space that you could
Speaker 1: barely see it. You wouldn't know it was there. If
Speaker 1: you didn't know it was there, you know, And we're
Speaker 1: talking about by the last day, the day that it
Speaker 1: was evicted, there were eight people there and over a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty police officers. It was bonkers and that
Speaker 1: extreme response is something that when you see it, you
Speaker 1: can't unsee it. And so we come together in what
Speaker 1: you know, you get in where you fit in, with
Speaker 1: whatever skills you have, whatever gifts you have, whatever time
Speaker 1: you have, you know, and a lot of us show
Speaker 1: up because we are people who have experienced other forms
Speaker 1: of trauma or have seen and experienced other forms of
Speaker 1: oppression too. You can't unsee it once you do. In
Speaker 1: the last few years, mutual aid and autonomous disaster relief
Speaker 1: efforts having formed projects like heat or Block, the squatting
Speaker 1: of land for people displaced by climate change, field fires,
Speaker 1: and the setting up of autonomous warming centers in the
Speaker 1: middle of winter. In the winter of autonomous groups across
Speaker 1: Texas also mobilized when the state's electrical grid failed and
Speaker 1: hundreds of people tragically died the lack of heat. Autonomous
Speaker 1: groups have also worked to directly house people in the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles area. This has looked like houses folks taking
Speaker 1: over homes owned by Caltrans, and various groups in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest, occupying in domaining access to hotels in the
Speaker 1: dead of winter in Philadelphia and housing activists squatted and
Speaker 1: then won the keys to homes for upwards of fifty
Speaker 1: unused families in the midst of the George Floyd Rebellion,
Speaker 1: and there have been other success stories as well. In Boise, Idaho,
Speaker 1: after months of ongoing protests by houses folks and their supporters,
Speaker 1: the city was pushed to green light the building enough
Speaker 1: hundreds of housing units. In Berkeley, California, last summer, people
Speaker 1: once again tore down the fences surrounding people's park and
Speaker 1: destroyed machines, stopping the destruction of the autonomous enclave. Once again.
Speaker 1: In Sacramento, California, households people and their supporters beat back
Speaker 1: in eviction attempt at Camp Resolution, a parking lot which
Speaker 1: is home to people living in their vehicles and r vs.
Speaker 1: Here's two Camp Resolution residents, Sharon and Satara, who speak
Speaker 1: on the deadly impact of sweeps. I think that the
Speaker 1: biggest thing is like being treated inhumanely, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, or or rudely or like you're an animals.
Speaker 1: They're very mean to people, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: When they sweep you, they take people's stuff and just
Speaker 1: throw it out, No don't matter if it matters to
Speaker 1: them or you know what I mean, or you know
Speaker 1: which you know creates mental health issues for some people
Speaker 1: because people get traumatized from stuff like that. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean, You just coming in and the only
Speaker 1: place that they have that they can call home or
Speaker 1: a place of shelter. And you know, stormy times like this,
Speaker 1: you know, they come and even now while it's raining,
Speaker 1: and make them move and tell them, you know, they
Speaker 1: gotta go throw their things out or you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, make them leave without whatever they you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, whatever, no matter if it's important to
Speaker 1: them or not, you know what I mean. Like, I
Speaker 1: think that's the most messed up part because like I
Speaker 1: have a friend out here who who lost you know,
Speaker 1: her child ashes, you know what I mean, half the
Speaker 1: half of the people that were at the we lose
Speaker 1: contact with and and every time they sweep that to
Speaker 1: another half. And they're just diminishing people. Where people are good,
Speaker 1: where are people going? They're just disappearing. And before the
Speaker 1: you know, people who do need like other help with
Speaker 1: other things, help things and stuff like that, the harm
Speaker 1: reduction people and stuff like that that come out and
Speaker 1: you know, give people things their needs, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, they'll they move you around, they can't be found.
Speaker 1: People can die, and people die like that all the time,
Speaker 1: especially you know when they move us around. Sometimes we
Speaker 1: got to go to areas that are not necessarily safe,
Speaker 1: especially the women, you know what I mean, women die
Speaker 1: out here all the time. Separated calf resolution was formed because, uh,
Speaker 1: this lot that we're on, it was part of the
Speaker 1: original sighting plan and they spent six hundred seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars on this for a fence in a parking lot
Speaker 1: and promised folks that they would that they were going
Speaker 1: to get them too little tidy houses or trailers so
Speaker 1: they can get back on their feet and get housing.
Speaker 1: They swept them off the lot as soon as they
Speaker 1: were finished with this. They just came out. They came
Speaker 1: and viciously swept them off of the property the other
Speaker 1: side of the property we're on and could a fence
Speaker 1: up and promised those people and they got nothing, and
Speaker 1: then didn't even bother to contact them or anything, and
Speaker 1: just left those people hanging after they signed up for
Speaker 1: all the services and were denied. And my sister in
Speaker 1: law was one of those people, and she's a quadriplegic
Speaker 1: and she's still waiting for housing, and we weren't gonna
Speaker 1: have another winter of her being down on the countyside
Speaker 1: in the weather, in the water. So that's why we
Speaker 1: started it and if we're here for safety so we
Speaker 1: can get back up on our feet. Were human beings,
Speaker 1: not to mention like half more than half the camp,
Speaker 1: you know, the majority of the camp. There are males
Speaker 1: that I live here, so please don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but this is the camp of majority women. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Who out here, who live out here?
Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of us know we're homeless,
Speaker 1: but we're not. We're not bumms, you know what I mean. Like,
Speaker 1: we're not um We have regular lives like everyone else.
Speaker 1: We have family, we have friends, you know what. We're like.
Speaker 1: We and we take care of each other, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like, and a lot of us have
Speaker 1: been camping right here for the last for years, some
Speaker 1: of us years up against the county, and you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. But for every success, sweeps remain a
Speaker 1: daily constant United States, and many attempts to push back
Speaker 1: by houses folks and their supporters are met with extreme
Speaker 1: resistance from law enforcement. So I'm curious what you all think.
Speaker 1: How can communities continue to organize for change in the
Speaker 1: face of his brutality. Something that comes to mind is
Speaker 1: just kind of more of some things that I have
Speaker 1: already been happening basically, UM and I'm thinking of a
Speaker 1: capolic that you brought up. UM And the INCA was
Speaker 1: really interesting to me because UM it was that that's
Speaker 1: a neighborhood in l A. And it grew to maybe
Speaker 1: two to three hundred people living there. UM And as
Speaker 1: it went on, it kind of like a sense of
Speaker 1: community developed pretty strongly there with support from people in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood to UM and people had set up like
Speaker 1: a garden, a community kitchen. They were like meetings, even
Speaker 1: showers near the end. Like. Um, it was actually kind
Speaker 1: of thriving. I it's like doing well, and people are
Speaker 1: like pretty like uh politicized, are like aware of like
Speaker 1: what's going on and talking about it and sharing with
Speaker 1: each other. UM And yeah, people coming together to resist
Speaker 1: sweeps and like threats of sweeps of the park um
Speaker 1: and the response to it was one of the most
Speaker 1: like heavy handed, sort of disproportionate seeming things that I'd
Speaker 1: ever seen, where they had been threatening the city had
Speaker 1: been threatening that they were going to do a sweep,
Speaker 1: and they were saying they were going to get everyone
Speaker 1: into housing. It's like this humanitarian um offer of secure
Speaker 1: housing to people. UM. That they came with like four
Speaker 1: hundred cops and like all the rest of like l
Speaker 1: A p D S four forcing the hell of copters
Speaker 1: and just like everything. They blocked entrances into Echo Park
Speaker 1: to stop supporters coming from out of the neighborhood. UM
Speaker 1: and basically yeah, evicted people, fought with people resisting UM
Speaker 1: and then put a fence up very quickly like during
Speaker 1: this whole thing, UM, and close the park off. And
Speaker 1: that fence is still up, and that's like and then
Speaker 1: what is it now a year and a half or
Speaker 1: something new years that that fence has been up. And
Speaker 1: something I think is like interesting about this example is
Speaker 1: I really think that the reason that response was so
Speaker 1: heavy handed is because the very existence of it was
Speaker 1: disrupting this logic of like rent and landlord de terms
Speaker 1: of like people were reclaiming the comments basically reclaiming public space,
Speaker 1: using it to meet their needs, and this was incredibly
Speaker 1: threatening to the city and they needed to shut it
Speaker 1: down and sort of turn the park back into recreation
Speaker 1: for middle class people. Basically, UM. And I think you
Speaker 1: know what we've talked about already, Like, um, Tom, what
Speaker 1: you were talking about with like enclosure and stuff like
Speaker 1: I really see that these sweeps, this is such a
Speaker 1: just a continuation of this in echo puk um in
Speaker 1: a really big way. And what you were saying more
Speaker 1: about just like what happens when we challenge that logic
Speaker 1: being the most like threatening thing to them, you know,
Speaker 1: just like what happens if it was just like this
Speaker 1: homes camp survives and then another encampment, another encampment, and
Speaker 1: it basically disrupts everything we know about property and rents
Speaker 1: and everything anyway, So I think just more of that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would, Yeah, I agree with you. So
Speaker 1: I think it's like more of what's happened Like currently
Speaker 1: New York there's still sweets happening, Like um DTAs Department
Speaker 1: of Homer Services puts up these like UM sweet notices UM.
Speaker 1: And the way it works is that when these two
Speaker 1: twops notices go up, like there's a group of people
Speaker 1: who let each other know that that sweet is about
Speaker 1: to happen. People show up to the people who are
Speaker 1: about to be swept. I hate that word swept. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's so disgusting. What can we use instead
Speaker 1: of swept um treated badly by evil air adoms? I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe we could do that. Um but anyway,
Speaker 1: so like, um, so people will go and talk to
Speaker 1: the people who are in the encampment we're going to
Speaker 1: be swept and ask them like what type of support
Speaker 1: would you like, like do you want us to help
Speaker 1: you us move your stuff? Do you want us to
Speaker 1: stand you know when the cops and like so the
Speaker 1: sanitation department comes usually during these cleanups and like throws
Speaker 1: away people's things. And because you know, if you don't
Speaker 1: serve capitalism, your stuff you don't matter. So definitely your
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't matter. One thing that has been happening is
Speaker 1: that people have been showing up for people who are
Speaker 1: about to be have their things thrown out and either
Speaker 1: moving the things for them or supporting them or standing
Speaker 1: in the way from in front of the police, or
Speaker 1: like documenting it. And I think that's like a huge
Speaker 1: way to just like show up right now if you can,
Speaker 1: you sickly block out time on your calendar at work,
Speaker 1: if you know something happening down the street like this
Speaker 1: is like something like you could do now. And I
Speaker 1: think that's really important, Like this is solidarity that we
Speaker 1: should show and which show up for our comrades because
Speaker 1: they are on the ground of fighting for us having
Speaker 1: housing as a human right. Then that's why we should
Speaker 1: show up for them and to support them. Another item
Speaker 1: that I wanted to bring up. I don't know if
Speaker 1: y'all heard about anarchy Rope which happened last year, where
Speaker 1: like s RG was, the Strategic Response Group showed up.
Speaker 1: This is a calendar terrorism group. Y'all showed up to
Speaker 1: get people out of an encampment in Tompkins Square which
Speaker 1: was deemed anarchy roy I think it was like five people.
Speaker 1: Five people brought an SAR or counter terrorism groups. It
Speaker 1: just goes to show you the extent to which like houses,
Speaker 1: people taking up public space is a threat to the
Speaker 1: idea of property as we know. It is a threat
Speaker 1: to capitalist and it's a threat to landlords like Eric Adams.
Speaker 1: Eric Adams is a landlord. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: all know that this the New York the New York
Speaker 1: City mayors, the landlord. If you need to know anything
Speaker 1: as to why they're sweeping homeless people. Landlords run everything,
Speaker 1: and they have rats like Eric Adams because he had
Speaker 1: racks and he was supposed to pay a fine and
Speaker 1: he didn't pay a fine because he's the landlord. I
Speaker 1: guess just going back to that, it's like, yeah, show
Speaker 1: up for people now, Like the need now is like
Speaker 1: onceeps are happening, is for people to show up in
Speaker 1: place with people. And the other part of it, I
Speaker 1: want to say this, and this is a wild idea,
Speaker 1: but I've been thinking about it for a while. What
Speaker 1: if we all stop paying rent? What if we all
Speaker 1: did what if we got together with all our friends
Speaker 1: and stop paying rent? And I know this is wild,
Speaker 1: and I know some people might be like, oh no, Marcella,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get a victim. But what if we aid
Speaker 1: rent and we all thought the cops and they're trying
Speaker 1: to pay us when when when when they're trying to
Speaker 1: evict all of us? So like that's another part of it,
Speaker 1: is like showing up to people's evictions, trying to come
Speaker 1: up together to come up with a long strategy because
Speaker 1: houses people right now are fighting for us to like
Speaker 1: have housing as a human right. We can meet them
Speaker 1: on the other end and s actually, we're not going
Speaker 1: to pay rent as long as you're doing this because
Speaker 1: we're that's like solidarity. When I'm thinking about how to
Speaker 1: resist displacement, you know what, I go back to is
Speaker 1: squatter movements that existed in Europe, right, like the social
Speaker 1: center movements in the seventies and eighties, um, but also
Speaker 1: squatting that happened in the rest Belt in the two thousand's, right,
Speaker 1: And like what was unique about those situations like others
Speaker 1: have have existed obviously, but what was unique about those
Speaker 1: situations is that squatting became about more than just space.
Speaker 1: It also became about autonomy and self defense. Right. So
Speaker 1: in those situations, what would happen is in these rest
Speaker 1: belt squads, people would like lock down a whole street
Speaker 1: and take over a house and then just that was
Speaker 1: just their space, you know, and the cops just couldn't
Speaker 1: get back there or didn't want to get back there, um.
Speaker 1: And some of those squads held out for years, like
Speaker 1: years and years and years um. And we see that
Speaker 1: in Europe too. And so what that does, though, is
Speaker 1: it it accomplishes something really important which I think we
Speaker 1: have to sort of shift in our discussions of this question,
Speaker 1: which is that the question isn't just about housing. The
Speaker 1: questions about space, right and very specifically how we understand space.
Speaker 1: So currently we talked about a neighborhood or when city
Speaker 1: politicians talked about a neighborhood, they don't mean what I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us mean. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: us we talked about our neighborhoods mean like our neighbors, right,
Speaker 1: the people that live around the corner, the old lady
Speaker 1: up the street, the feeds of cats, like whatever it
Speaker 1: happens to be, you know, like you have a community
Speaker 1: that you live in, at least where I live. When
Speaker 1: city politicians talk about a neighborhood, what they mean is
Speaker 1: real estate. They mean this fragmented space of commodified housing
Speaker 1: where individual houses can just be slotted in and slatted out.
Speaker 1: New residents could just be slatted and slatted out, and
Speaker 1: the space becomes reduced down to its physical form, right,
Speaker 1: and within all capitalists understanding some space, that is what happens.
Speaker 1: Space gets reduced down to the commodification of that space, right.
Speaker 1: And so we're talking about that inscription into our spaces.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm saying earlier that doesn't occur without the
Speaker 1: ability to get arrested for trustpassing. And so this becomes
Speaker 1: a fight against the police as much as it's a
Speaker 1: fight against housing, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the enforcements of that structuring of space comes through the
Speaker 1: projection of police force into that space, right, whether that's
Speaker 1: passive things like surveillance, with those active things like sending
Speaker 1: a counter terrorism team to evict five people from a
Speaker 1: park in Manhattan. And so as we're kind of like
Speaker 1: looking through this, we can take some interesting sort of examples.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Paris Commune had a whole discourse that
Speaker 1: talked just about how they were going to rebuild the city,
Speaker 1: Like what is the city going to look like without property?
Speaker 1: How are we going to restart actual our uses space?
Speaker 1: Who gets to decide how to use these big public spaces? Right?
Speaker 1: These were the big discussions that were happening. The Situations
Speaker 1: International had a whole discourse on building conceptual cities and
Speaker 1: avant garde cities, and you know, graffiti was a big
Speaker 1: part of that because what is graffiti. Graffiti is the
Speaker 1: marking of people's presence in space. Why do cities cracked
Speaker 1: down on graffiti so hard every single time? So it
Speaker 1: puts a tag up, that's a gap in police coverage
Speaker 1: is being marked literally every single time. Right, And so
Speaker 1: when we're talking about these questions, we have to push
Speaker 1: this into a question of capitalism in general. But that
Speaker 1: makes it a question of the state. We can't talk
Speaker 1: about capitalism and isolation from that, and so we have
Speaker 1: to really talk about how our spaces are fragmented and
Speaker 1: the ways that things like even encampments or squats or
Speaker 1: things like this that are defended that are able to
Speaker 1: be sort of preserved, isn't the right word, are able
Speaker 1: to maintain their autonomy. Those becomes sort of the models
Speaker 1: of different ways to live in some ways, right, these
Speaker 1: become the places where people are experimenting with different types
Speaker 1: of living, whether it's my choice or not. But these
Speaker 1: are the spaces that get eliminated because of that specific dynamic,
Speaker 1: right that they are fundamentally violating the entire concept of
Speaker 1: property in their very exist and that's why we see
Speaker 1: the crackdowns happening the way that they are. Democrats are
Speaker 1: just as you know, complicit in that as Republicans are.
Speaker 1: It's it's functionally no difference, especially after the George Floyd uprising,
Speaker 1: were you really see in a lot of democratic cities
Speaker 1: them hiring a lot more cops, giving them a lot
Speaker 1: more guns, like doing the same stuff that that happened
Speaker 1: in more conservative cities. Right, The gap is almost non existent.
Speaker 1: That's going to do it for us. Once again. This
Speaker 1: has been the It's Going Down cruise squatting the offices
Speaker 1: of It Could Happen Here. Thanks again for listening and
Speaker 1: we will see you soon. Hey, We'll be back Monday
Speaker 1: with more episodes every week from now until the heat
Speaker 1: death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a
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