Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
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Speaker 3: Welcome, dig it out and here a podcast. I asked
Speaker 3: the question what happens when the people who are trying
Speaker 3: to help put things back together are also being exploited
Speaker 3: in the process. I am your host, Mia Wong, and
Speaker 3: today we are going to be talking about a union
Speaker 3: that is attempting to do exactly that. And with me
Speaker 3: to discuss this are Jess and Hazeus, who are mentors
Speaker 3: for Friends of the Children PDX and members of the
Speaker 3: Friends PDX union network. Yeah, Jess is Zeus. Welcome to
Speaker 3: the show.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm really happy to talk to you both, because I
Speaker 3: think this is a very very unique an interesting union
Speaker 3: especially you know, talk about especially right now. But to
Speaker 3: get people sort of rolling. Can you explain what Friends
Speaker 3: with the Children is and what it is that you
Speaker 3: two do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so Friends with the Children is it's a national organization.
Speaker 5: It's a nonprofit, but they're there are individual chapters throughout
Speaker 5: different cities. We work out of Portland, which is the
Speaker 5: founding chapter and also the largest one. Some of the language,
Speaker 5: I'll say that it's like used from the website and
Speaker 5: from like the mission statement that really encompasses what our
Speaker 5: role is and also how it is told to like
Speaker 5: our community partnerships and the families and youth that we
Speaker 5: work with. Is that we are committing to youth when
Speaker 5: they are typically around kindergarten age level and they're being
Speaker 5: paired with a mentor, and they will have a mentor
Speaker 5: until they graduate the program, so that usually ends up
Speaker 5: being a total of twelve and a half years. And
Speaker 5: that like within that, we were doing a lot of
Speaker 5: like individualized care and support. We work with them in
Speaker 5: the schools, we work with them outside the schools, We
Speaker 5: help them get into extracurriculars, We help them with like
Speaker 5: social emotional regulation, developing relationships with other youth in the program,
Speaker 5: and really just like being a consistently reliable human being,
Speaker 5: and one of the big pillars of our organization is
Speaker 5: the commitment to long term, which sometimes can be an
Speaker 5: issue when you are facing a lot of high turnover
Speaker 5: As an organization. We both have eight kids on our roster,
Speaker 5: as do most mentors, and within that we have youth.
Speaker 5: I personally have youth that have been assigned to me
Speaker 5: that have just started in the program, meaning that they
Speaker 5: were like maybe first grade when I was assigned to them.
Speaker 5: And then I also have youth that are middle school
Speaker 5: level that have had several different men tours in the past,
Speaker 5: some that have stayed there for maybe a few years,
Speaker 5: and like sometimes there's ones that have been there for months.
Speaker 6: Yeah, if I can add to that. The kids we
Speaker 6: work with, they're enrolled into the program because they have
Speaker 6: some risk factors in their lives that would lead them
Speaker 6: to needing a little bit of extra support and help.
Speaker 6: So we work with a lot of kids that come
Speaker 6: from immigrant families, from families that have you know, single
Speaker 6: parent households, foster care families, and kids kids that like unfortunately,
Speaker 6: are likely to face some challenges that our society and
Speaker 6: the way it's built up will deal to them, and
Speaker 6: our goal is to help them through those challenges, just
Speaker 6: be there for them so that they have a chance
Speaker 6: of you know, graduating high school or entering adulthood without
Speaker 6: having you know, having had kids or facing like the
Speaker 6: justice system. It's kids that we love dearly that we
Speaker 6: work with in a similar way as like you know,
Speaker 6: a program like Big Brothers Big Sisters. But we are
Speaker 6: paid mentors, which is the big difference, right, We're not
Speaker 6: volunteer based. We are employees basically social workers for all.
Speaker 1: Of the families that we work with.
Speaker 6: It's honestly, like it's a great job, and I think
Speaker 6: right now, especially like super necessary because things are falling apart.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, just adding like one that made
Speaker 5: me think of how within the work, Like I think
Speaker 5: social work is a very apt choice of words because
Speaker 5: we are paired with the youth and it doesn't like
Speaker 5: stop there like we work like we work with the families.
Speaker 5: We also work with like the siblings too, because sometimes
Speaker 5: you'll have a youth that maybe is the only child
Speaker 5: in that family that for whatever reason got a mentor
Speaker 5: and then you support also I mean it's a choice,
Speaker 5: but I would say that most mentors definitely opt into
Speaker 5: being there for siblings and family members in the household
Speaker 5: and making sure that they're also showing up for the
Speaker 5: caregivers to help them create a loving home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean, you know, I think that you
Speaker 3: can you can look at this and see how it's
Speaker 3: supposed to work structurally, And you know, you were talking
Speaker 3: about like, I mean, this is supposed to be a
Speaker 3: like over a decade long commitment to these kids, right
Speaker 3: that ideally you're working with the same person, and you know,
Speaker 3: you're forming really deep emotional attachments because you can't not
Speaker 3: do that if you're doing this kind of work. But
Speaker 3: then also, you know, in order for that to work,
Speaker 3: I think it's you know, you can see this the outside, like,
Speaker 3: in order for this to work, this has to be
Speaker 3: a job that you could stayably do for a decade, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, which I will say we do and I
Speaker 5: want to do. I want to give so many props
Speaker 5: to one of our mentors who has stayed for twelve
Speaker 5: years and has graduated their youth. But of of all
Speaker 5: of our co workers, I believe it's only one that
Speaker 5: has currently been able to do that and has stayed
Speaker 5: there as long as I have.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And the truth of the fact, like, yeah, a
Speaker 6: for any job, twelve and a half years is a
Speaker 6: really long time, right, I mean six years is a
Speaker 6: really long time. And with this job, we're like we're
Speaker 6: an emotional sponge for a lot of things. Right, So
Speaker 6: our kids go through everything that you can imagine, and
Speaker 6: and within that like everything good and everything bad that
Speaker 6: you can imagine. And our job a lot of times
Speaker 6: is like we can't solve the things that are affecting
Speaker 6: these kids, but we can take in some of those
Speaker 6: negative feelings and that grief, that anger. We can take
Speaker 6: it in and almost like dissolve it a little bit, right,
Speaker 6: But within that, like it can affect us so so much.
Speaker 6: And that's where, Yeah, the sustainability part of like twelve
Speaker 6: and a half years in this job, like that is
Speaker 6: a lot, and you we need a lot for that
Speaker 6: to like at all be be possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like that there's this way in which
Speaker 3: you're effectively what this job is is like you're the
Speaker 3: person who is trying to like mitigate the impact of
Speaker 3: like all like literally all of the structural systems of
Speaker 3: violence that exist in this entire country, and how like
Speaker 3: how they're just sort of targeted down on these kids,
Speaker 3: and your job is to like try to like protect
Speaker 3: them as much as possible, and that's unbelievable amount of
Speaker 3: like physical and emotional labor. And then also like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, it seems pretty bad that there's only been
Speaker 3: one co worker who's been able to graduate their kids.
Speaker 7: Like.
Speaker 5: Just to clarify for history that's been in like our time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know if like over.
Speaker 5: The thirty years, I hope that other people have, but yeah,
Speaker 5: in recent years it's only been the one. And also like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is a job where you are not necessarily able
Speaker 5: to like undo the systems at play, but trying to
Speaker 5: support them. And like we as mentors are inevitably also
Speaker 5: facing those systems against ourselves. And like one of the
Speaker 5: reasons that I think people gravitate towards this job is
Speaker 5: their empathy because they have those shared experiences.
Speaker 4: One of the.
Speaker 5: Things that is kind of heavy in the culture of
Speaker 5: friends is being asked your why when you start, like
Speaker 5: why did you choose friends? And for a lot of people,
Speaker 5: it is because of wanting to be the person that
Speaker 5: they needed when they were going through those periods of time.
Speaker 5: So there's bound to be like a lot of like
Speaker 5: reactivation of feelings inside yourself that I think we all,
Speaker 5: like I want to say, like every mentor I've worked
Speaker 5: with does an incredible job of like handling that and
Speaker 5: like taking good care of themselves. But it is definitely
Speaker 5: something that like takes a lot of regulation, and I
Speaker 5: think empathy is one of the greatest skills in this job.
Speaker 5: But it also yeah, it also then leads to us
Speaker 5: needing greater needs of self care and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like I mean, I guess like to put
Speaker 3: this in person active for like people listening to this
Speaker 3: as like, Okay, your job is to be the person
Speaker 3: like in the friend group who like manages like when
Speaker 3: someone's like having an emotional crisis, like you have to
Speaker 3: like help them deal with it, and that is your
Speaker 3: job for like eight kids like the worst shit in
Speaker 3: the world, like Jesus Christ's Oh good lord.
Speaker 6: It's honestly, like like hearing this, it's always really helpful
Speaker 6: to hear someone's outside perspective of our job, right because
Speaker 6: we get so so into it, so into the munk
Speaker 6: of like what this job can be. And I think
Speaker 6: like overall, like like social work, it's not just like
Speaker 6: our our job, but like I'm sure other social workers
Speaker 6: and people in care industries, like we have that like
Speaker 6: continuous like vicarious trauma that makes us forget like how
Speaker 6: how our job is sometimes and then it's helpful to
Speaker 6: hear other people mention it because it's like, yeah, wow,
Speaker 6: our job is kind of crazy and and the work
Speaker 6: we do is like really important and really important for society.
Speaker 6: And also yeah, like it's hard. It's hard work.
Speaker 5: It's it's hard, and it doesn't like really have an endpoint,
Speaker 5: Like we have the hours we work with kids, and
Speaker 5: then we have the hours we think about them and
Speaker 5: the things going on in their lives.
Speaker 4: And sometimes it's like sweet things.
Speaker 5: Like a lot of times it's sweet things where I'll
Speaker 5: see something and be like, oh my gosh, you know
Speaker 5: who love that? And like things like that are like oh,
Speaker 5: great idea, or oh, let's go see this movie. And
Speaker 5: a lot of times it's like worrying though too, and
Speaker 5: knowing that there is there is only so many things
Speaker 5: we can control and some things we just have to
Speaker 5: be the person that's there as they have to go
Speaker 5: through something, which, yeah, it's it's hard because we also
Speaker 5: obviously like develop such loving relationships with these kids. It's
Speaker 5: hard to see like kids that you care about so
Speaker 5: much that sometimes the most you can do is just
Speaker 5: be there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It definitely is a job that, like to some degree,
Speaker 5: is sort of always with you.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: We have a joke about this with this job, where
Speaker 3: it's likely I do what you love when you'll never
Speaker 3: be free for a single second of your entire life
Speaker 3: because you're just always awes.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's so true.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as you say this, I worked till like nine
Speaker 6: thirty last night because I was like, you know what,
Speaker 6: I'm enjoying this so much, hagging out with my guys,
Speaker 6: so I'm just going to keep working.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, speaking speaking of keeping working, we need to
Speaker 3: go to ads and then we will come back and
Speaker 3: talk about the ways in which this job that requires
Speaker 3: an incredible amount of structural support to keep people there
Speaker 3: for like over a decade, is failing to do that.
Speaker 3: And we are back. So Okay, now now that we've
Speaker 3: sort of talked about what this is, let's talk about
Speaker 3: the actual union.
Speaker 4: It was just the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so can you can you talk about sort
Speaker 3: of how how did organizing for this union start and
Speaker 3: what were the sort of issues that could have brought
Speaker 3: everyone to be like, Okay, we need to do.
Speaker 6: This, yeah, for sure. So we first brought about our
Speaker 6: petition to unionize in March of twenty twenty three, so
Speaker 6: that was two years ago, a long time ago, right,
Speaker 6: But the work for a unionization, obviously, the organizing behind
Speaker 6: it had started like much before that. When I first
Speaker 6: joined Friends, it was in September of twenty two, and
Speaker 6: I knew that the work had already been like happening
Speaker 6: the summer before. What was the catalyst was post covid.
Speaker 9: A.
Speaker 6: Obviously a lot of people left, given what COVID did
Speaker 6: to a lot of industries and especially care work. But
Speaker 6: then likewise, a lot of people are fired and where
Speaker 6: many would say like fired without like a full on
Speaker 6: like due process, that included a program manager who you
Speaker 6: know was really listening to friends and advocating for the
Speaker 6: mentor role, and they were let go, which spurred a
Speaker 6: lot of people to want to start organizing. Some of
Speaker 6: the issues that we face, like the pay obviously, like
Speaker 6: within social work in general and nonprofit work, like it's
Speaker 6: never gonna match up and never gonna really be as
Speaker 6: good as like the cost of living, especially here in Portland.
Speaker 6: But the pay compared to like all of the emotional
Speaker 6: work and all the work that we do was just
Speaker 6: not there and not sustainable. It's why people were not
Speaker 6: able to stick around because frankly, we were looking at
Speaker 6: the same issues that our families were facing of, like
Speaker 6: you know, food of insecurity and needing to like get
Speaker 6: food stamps, or like needing like rental and like housing
Speaker 6: assistants because our pay was just not up to par.
Speaker 6: Those are a few of the issues. Jess, I don't
Speaker 6: know if you have other thoughts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you touched on a lot of them.
Speaker 5: I think it's hard to stay in this job if
Speaker 5: you are looking to have a family. There's been issues yeat,
Speaker 5: with pay, with insurance, with other sorts of things that
Speaker 5: have led to mentors leaving rather than like staying there
Speaker 5: even if they like really wanted to stay there, just
Speaker 5: wouldn't necessarily allow for them to have maybe like the
Speaker 5: life they wanted and also just honoring I think with
Speaker 5: like bereavement leave and critical issue leave has been areas
Speaker 5: that haven't really been addressed. We have had very tragic
Speaker 5: things happen in the in our working community with the
Speaker 5: families and that have drastically affected. Yeah, the well being
Speaker 5: of mentors and staff members alike.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean, you know, this is a job
Speaker 3: that structurally is designed to be a kind of like
Speaker 3: like again, if the goal is to have one person
Speaker 3: from from like kindergarten to ntealthy like a graduating high school, right,
Speaker 3: Like that is something that requires like nineteen fifties nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties style forwardism, like you have one job for decades,
Speaker 3: and the only way you can to that is if
Speaker 3: people are incredibly well supported. And it's like the fact
Speaker 3: that it's like, Okay, you're trying to do this, but
Speaker 3: you're not paying people enough money to fucking afford food, Like.
Speaker 10: What the hell, like Jesus Christ, Yeah, just like oh
Speaker 10: my god, yeah, or even I mean it's still something
Speaker 10: that we're fighting.
Speaker 6: But like our our workplace like doesn't provide health insurance
Speaker 6: for dependence, which I think, oh my god, really ironic
Speaker 6: giving how much we care for kids, and then some
Speaker 6: of our mentors and other coworkers that have kids, like
Speaker 6: have to spend so much money on health insurance for
Speaker 6: their own personal.
Speaker 3: Kids friends of some of the kids apparently works.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah, And honestly, like big big picture thinking,
Speaker 6: like the reason why we like started this whole unionizing
Speaker 6: project was because we care so much about our kids, right,
Speaker 6: Like I when I first started working at Friends, Like,
Speaker 6: I think was the first MASK mentor to be hired
Speaker 6: in a fairly long time, after a lot of firings
Speaker 6: of other mass mentors and two of the youth that
Speaker 6: but actually it's more than two of the youth. But
Speaker 6: the first two youth that I was matched up with,
Speaker 6: they hadn't had a mentor for over two years, jeez,
Speaker 6: which is a really long time. Like when when you know,
Speaker 6: are five six years old, and you're used to one
Speaker 6: person consistently picking you up every single week and hanging
Speaker 6: out with you and spending time with you for several
Speaker 6: hours for six or seven years, and then just like
Speaker 6: next day, next week, maybe even that same day, you
Speaker 6: find out like, oh, you no longer have a mentor
Speaker 6: and you're not going to have a mentor for two
Speaker 6: more years because people keep leaving, People aren't wanting to
Speaker 6: apply for this job because the pay isn't high enough.
Speaker 6: Right That then like creates like a lot of issues
Speaker 6: with the kids that we're dealing with. It's not like
Speaker 6: we are these like saviors or like anything like along
Speaker 6: those lines, right, But when someone has consistent support and
Speaker 6: then that support is lost for a long time, especially
Speaker 6: when you're a young kid where it's been the majority
Speaker 6: of your life you've been having that consistant support. That
Speaker 6: then creates like a lot of trust issues and like
Speaker 6: overall like attachment issues that a youth could face. And
Speaker 6: for me, that was the main thing. Like working with
Speaker 6: these kids and having to like regain that trust was
Speaker 6: something that's like still to this day is like really
Speaker 6: emotionally like daunting. And I, like I will keep saying this.
Speaker 6: I love my kids so much, like I like can't
Speaker 6: stop thinking about them, and I want to be with
Speaker 6: my kids until they graduate, which would mean me staying
Speaker 6: at this job for another eight years, which it's a
Speaker 6: long time, right, but I want to do that. So
Speaker 6: I want to you know, get paid, have time off
Speaker 6: when what of my sadly this is something that did
Speaker 6: a curve where you've passed away that I worked with
Speaker 6: and like didn't have time off to like really grieve that.
Speaker 1: Hard stuff.
Speaker 6: And I just want to be able to stay there
Speaker 6: until they're done with the program.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's like there's just it's just like a
Speaker 3: litany of horrors where it's like one it's like, you
Speaker 3: know what when there is like it's it's not you know,
Speaker 3: like turnover in a normal job sucks, but this is
Speaker 3: like when there's turnover because people can't afford to live
Speaker 3: their lives. It's like you're just like ripping a hole
Speaker 3: in these kids, like the fabric of their social lives.
Speaker 3: And then also it's like, yeah, one of these kids
Speaker 3: that is literally your job to care for dies, you
Speaker 3: just have to fucking go to work the next day.
Speaker 3: Like it is so hideous, and it's.
Speaker 11: Just like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Like it makes sense
Speaker 11: that like, yeah, people are organizing because it's like, you know,
Speaker 11: like this organization is just systemically failing both the people
Speaker 11: that are trying to help and the people whose job it.
Speaker 3: Is to like help them.
Speaker 4: And yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: I think one of the things that is like hardest
Speaker 5: to see while like working there is the ways in
Speaker 5: which this like job that you do, like that like
Speaker 5: I care so much about and love doing, but like
Speaker 5: seeing this like institution in a way be like part
Speaker 5: be part of the problem because if we aren't like
Speaker 5: having it so that employees feel supported in the way
Speaker 5: that they need to, like, life happens. Sometimes people leave
Speaker 5: and like move and get a different job for various reasons,
Speaker 5: but a lot of the times it's it's because it's
Speaker 5: not sustainable and it's really hard to leave, and like
Speaker 5: it's a heartbreaking thing because I, like, I want to
Speaker 5: graduate many of my youth and it is something that
Speaker 5: I think about of like how feasible is that, Like
Speaker 5: I want to do it, and like also, okay, then
Speaker 5: that means I got to be frugal and all these
Speaker 5: other ways are et cetera. And yeah, I'm working with
Speaker 5: youth that have already kind of experienced loss and wanting
Speaker 5: to continue to show up for them.
Speaker 4: The job itself feels so.
Speaker 5: Sacred and like I feel so lucky to be in
Speaker 5: these kids' lives, and I think just a lot of
Speaker 5: the turnover has been out of like lack of sustainability
Speaker 5: for yourself, like for your well being.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, And I mean the turnover numbers were pretty well.
Speaker 6: I think one time we calculated it and mentors were
Speaker 6: it was like a forty something percent turnover mentors. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And a lot of that happened because in this two
Speaker 6: year time period where we've been fighting for a construct,
Speaker 6: they also froze wage increases, so I've had the same
Speaker 6: the same wage for the past two years, about two
Speaker 6: and a half years that I've been working here, you know,
Speaker 6: and in that same time period, inflation has been prettigue
Speaker 6: crazy and rent for me. Yeah yeah, which which you
Speaker 6: know gladly. Now we're we have this fight and we're
Speaker 6: at the two year mark and not at the zero
Speaker 6: year mark and not looking forward to two more years
Speaker 6: of doing this. But yeah, it's it's been hard to
Speaker 6: sustain this when everything is increasing in price and our
Speaker 6: wages are completely stagnant.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So let's take one more ad break and then
Speaker 3: we will come back to talk about, Yeah, how how
Speaker 3: unionization efforts are going, and yeah, we are back. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so's let's talk about how this campaign is going. So
Speaker 3: you said you've been in bargaining for like two years.
Speaker 5: So we had our petition for recognition on March twenty third,
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three, so that was over two years ago,
Speaker 5: and then ours Yeah yeah, our employer didn't formally recognize us,
Speaker 5: but through the process of like voting, we got over
Speaker 5: ninety three percent of Wow.
Speaker 3: That's an incredible that's incredible.
Speaker 12: It's super great, and it's also like, wow, we all
Speaker 12: really need it, Yeah, and like there were some other barriers,
Speaker 12: including like not being formually recognized. Like we also had
Speaker 12: management contest a few positions that I believe most, if
Speaker 12: not all, we were able to successfully happy part of
Speaker 12: our unit. And then we didn't have our first bargaining
Speaker 12: session until September of twenty twenty three, so like almost
Speaker 12: six months.
Speaker 4: I think if I did the math right.
Speaker 5: After we formally presented our letter for recognition, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: and like throughout that process so now it has been
Speaker 5: like Haesus is quite good at keeping track of it,
Speaker 5: but I think as of today we're about at five
Speaker 5: hundred and eighty days of bargaining.
Speaker 3: God.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, it's been a long one and it hasn't
Speaker 5: been It's been like also a choppy journey where there
Speaker 5: has been delays in scheduling, delays in just getting different
Speaker 5: articles back in time. One of the biggest ones obviously
Speaker 5: with compensation. And I think I can't quite remember the
Speaker 5: period of time, but we presented it over a year ago,
Speaker 5: I think maybe I could be wrong, and it took
Speaker 5: like it took several several several months for us to
Speaker 5: get anything back from management, which yeah, was a big bummer.
Speaker 4: Amongst other things.
Speaker 9: It sucks.
Speaker 6: It sucks, and obviously that's the one that we have
Speaker 6: yet to finalize, like as we're talking right now.
Speaker 5: It is insurance and compensation are still our last two
Speaker 5: articles left.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and some of the like the difficult things. I
Speaker 6: mean when you are working on a project, I mean,
Speaker 6: I wouldn't be surprised given like really when these conversations started,
Speaker 6: if we're looking at like over nine hundred or one
Speaker 6: thousand days of like really talking about this, but then
Speaker 6: when you're dealing with bargaining for five hundred and eighty days, Like,
Speaker 6: it's exhausting. It is so exhausting. We have regular meetings
Speaker 6: that we attend to that our bargaining meetings were specifically
Speaker 6: schedules outside of work hours, so that like the people
Speaker 6: on our bargaining team and other union members would have
Speaker 6: to put in that extra time outside of our forty
Speaker 6: hour week. Yeah, and within that, Like the hardest part
Speaker 6: is when you directly confront right your managers and your
Speaker 6: bosses about like the rights and the things that you need.
Speaker 1: So much of it like.
Speaker 6: Boils down to respect right and your respect as like
Speaker 6: a worker and the value that you have as a
Speaker 6: worker in your organization, and when there is a pushback
Speaker 6: on that, it honestly is like for me at times
Speaker 6: was debilitating, right when you're doing this work and your
Speaker 6: workplace is stretching things out for so long, Yeah, and
Speaker 6: you're pouring your heart out on your kids, like really
Speaker 6: trying to do the best that response from our you know,
Speaker 6: our supervisors and managers, like it really was hard. What
Speaker 6: was hard for me was hard for other union organizers
Speaker 6: in our workplace, and it was hard for all of
Speaker 6: our workers where we started thinking like dang, like what
Speaker 6: is the value that we have like in this workplace,
Speaker 6: What is the value that we intrinsically have in the
Speaker 6: work that we're doing with our kids? It's a lot,
Speaker 6: And it's a lot when you're facing all these systems
Speaker 6: that our kids are facing and like taking those things
Speaker 6: in and then are trying to change those systems. Finally
Speaker 6: able to try to change those systems, and we learned
Speaker 6: that like, oh wait, like the place that we're working
Speaker 6: is actually part of these systems too, and it's doing
Speaker 6: the same things that we're like fighting to have our
Speaker 6: kids like have better lives. Like we're facing it right
Speaker 6: now from inside the house.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, I wanted to add into yeah, very much,
Speaker 5: realizing that like our management is also in a way
Speaker 5: operating you know, maybe like a corporation, which isn't the
Speaker 5: hope you would have for a nonprofit. And one of
Speaker 5: the steps we had to take as a union was
Speaker 5: filing a UOP so unfair labor practice, which cited like
Speaker 5: I had mentioned before, like delays and scheduling and also
Speaker 5: regressive bargaining, which just means that like the way in
Speaker 5: which they were presenting things would have lessened our like
Speaker 5: quality of conditions. So definitely not what you want to
Speaker 5: be getting, not what you want to be handed across
Speaker 5: from the bargaining table.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Within this process, they were currently surly workers, but they
Speaker 6: tried to change us to hourly workers.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 12: Yeah, which again like we're always working, you know, we're
Speaker 12: always working, so unless you want to pay me for
Speaker 12: twenty four.
Speaker 3: Hours, you know, you're talking about like, yeah, that they're
Speaker 3: behaving like a corporations, Like oh yeah, this is exactly
Speaker 3: what like by employer did to me, which is like like, like,
Speaker 3: what are the largest media companies in the world, And
Speaker 3: they dragged out negotiations for two years and like you
Speaker 3: know you're talking about this sort like just like oh,
Speaker 3: they're like the feeling of disrespect where they're just not
Speaker 3: getting stuff back to you. And it's like I remember,
Speaker 3: you know, like we'd be sitting there for a bargaining
Speaker 3: meeting and they wouldn't and they would be an hour late,
Speaker 3: and they'd be an hour late because they hadn't like
Speaker 3: bothered to beforehand spend time drafting out what their responses
Speaker 3: were going to be, so they were frantically trying to
Speaker 3: get it done before we were there, and we're all
Speaker 3: just sitting there for literally an hour waiting for them
Speaker 3: to show up. But it's like, Okay, there are people
Speaker 3: in this unit whose job it is to stand next
Speaker 3: to car bombs, like and you can't show up on
Speaker 3: time to your to this, to this meeting that you
Speaker 3: have know was going to happen for weeks. Like it's
Speaker 3: just I say this every single lepany these episodes was like,
Speaker 3: this is an incredibly common YouTube blisting tactic is draw
Speaker 3: out the first contract, because that's that's like the second
Speaker 3: point where unions fail after like the after after you
Speaker 3: get like recognition votes is like here, yeah, for sure,
Speaker 3: you know, like I mean I think there's something extent
Speaker 3: we expect corporations do this, but it's like, Okay, this
Speaker 3: is an NGO that's like the point of which you're
Speaker 3: supposed to be like helping underprivileged, underprivileged youth. And then
Speaker 3: they're like we're going to turn around and we're going
Speaker 3: to screw over different underprivileged youth.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, it sucks, yeah.
Speaker 6: And I think that's like for me, one of the
Speaker 6: things that just like mess with my mind the most
Speaker 6: is that, like we're not selling a product, right, We're
Speaker 6: not trying to like get revenue or anything along those lines.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 6: So, like our job is a job that we actually
Speaker 6: like fully love and like want to stick around, like
Speaker 6: not not just for our own like financial you know,
Speaker 6: peace and our own like financial security. Like we want
Speaker 6: to stick around this job because we care about the job.
Speaker 6: And you know that's not to like like other you know,
Speaker 6: businesses and other workplaces that unionize, a lot of times
Speaker 6: people want to do that because they want financial security, right,
Speaker 6: And I think for a lot of NGOs, nonprofits and
Speaker 6: care work like, we unionize because we want to stick
Speaker 6: around both because of financial security, right, but also because
Speaker 6: we just like care so much about the work that
Speaker 6: we're doing.
Speaker 1: And to be faced with.
Speaker 6: Actions by our workplace that you know, try to dissuade
Speaker 6: us from that, try to like you know, in a sense,
Speaker 6: like it felt like stopping us from wanting to stick
Speaker 6: around like that again really hard, really hard, And I
Speaker 6: think like a really like psychologically hard part that comes
Speaker 6: with unionizing in the care work field in the like
Speaker 6: nonprofit space.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, this isn't a job that people are going
Speaker 5: to take for the money, but we do need to
Speaker 5: be receiving like equitable pay and benefits so that we
Speaker 5: stay at this job like this by all means, and
Speaker 5: like still like this is the same way I feel about.
Speaker 4: It to this day.
Speaker 5: I remember like reading the little like job description for
Speaker 5: this role and was like, oh, this is dude, this
Speaker 5: is like my dream job. This is like one hundred
Speaker 5: percent what I want to spend my energy towards. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and yeah, I think that's a huge part of why
Speaker 5: we were able to get like that ninety three percent
Speaker 5: and to have also like routine support for different actions
Speaker 5: and stuff is just because we have people that care
Speaker 5: so much about wanting to stick around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the thing that ngngos, you know, and
Speaker 3: you see this in abortion work, you see this in like,
Speaker 3: you see this in nursing, you see this in all
Speaker 3: of these different fields. Like that's the thing that these
Speaker 3: NGOs used to exploit people, is you know, like, is
Speaker 3: the basic human empathy and love and care that we
Speaker 3: have for the people who were caring for and they're
Speaker 3: and these people are like, aha, look at this. Aha,
Speaker 3: these people they care about the thing that they're doing.
Speaker 3: We could underpay them and overwork them.
Speaker 4: It's like, why is there system work like this?
Speaker 3: Like it's just what a terrible way to decide an
Speaker 3: economic system. Yeah, just good lord, Let's talk a little
Speaker 3: bit about, like, you know, what kinds of organizing things
Speaker 3: you all have been able to do, and the kinds
Speaker 3: of things you've been able to accomplish by you know,
Speaker 3: working together even in these really kind of like I
Speaker 3: don't know, structurally difficult conditions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've had.
Speaker 5: We've had a multitude of different actions over the past,
Speaker 5: you know, over the past one.
Speaker 4: Hundred and eighty days.
Speaker 5: I think one of our one of our biggest ones
Speaker 5: by far, which was I think also was just one
Speaker 5: of our most beautiful in a way, was November of
Speaker 5: last year, we did an info picket, and it was
Speaker 5: one of those things too where it was very well
Speaker 5: planned out, but also even with the best of planning,
Speaker 5: midway through it, we had a shift location based off
Speaker 5: of just changing information we were getting.
Speaker 4: And we had one of our little bits.
Speaker 5: It is because our union is called fun a lot
Speaker 5: of our posters were SpongeBob themed, so instead of imagination,
Speaker 5: you know, it's compensation.
Speaker 4: And the rules.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think it's indicative of, like also how
Speaker 5: much people that work with us are playful and sweet
Speaker 5: and why we're are good at our jobs of working
Speaker 5: with kids.
Speaker 4: And yeah, we had very high turnout.
Speaker 5: I think we had forty something people within our own
Speaker 5: organization that showed up for that. We've done smaller actions too,
Speaker 5: by just asking for community support, like we've had caregivers
Speaker 5: write letters of support to different people in management. We've
Speaker 5: also done a few pack the rooms for bargeting sessions,
Speaker 5: like especially when there have been times that have felt
Speaker 5: like there's been some semblance of stalling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, those are just some of them. He stays, chime
Speaker 4: in with others.
Speaker 6: Yeah, within that, and I think, like an interesting thing
Speaker 6: about nonprofits, our revenue comes from donors, right, so we
Speaker 6: have to play this like fun game of like, Okay,
Speaker 6: how do we communicate with our donors, right, so that
Speaker 6: we make sure that they know that, like you know,
Speaker 6: this is part of like what they're donating too. But
Speaker 6: then within that also, like you knows, ask for money
Speaker 6: as well, right, because we do want you know, better
Speaker 6: pay and better benefits.
Speaker 14: Right.
Speaker 6: So we've contacted donors and will still plan to do
Speaker 6: that with both that ask of like support the union
Speaker 6: and support our organization, right because the thing that we
Speaker 6: care about the most is the work that we do
Speaker 6: with our kids, and for that to happen, we want
Speaker 6: our organization to like stay afloat truly, right, Yeah, some
Speaker 6: of the wins that we've gotten. I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 6: they were trying to have us be hourly workers, and
Speaker 6: that was a big campaign that we like were fighting
Speaker 6: back on for a long time. It's also like what
Speaker 6: precipitated the ULP filing. I made too many buttons that
Speaker 6: said you could never have peuty butons truly that said
Speaker 6: I worked forty plus hours a week. Because one of
Speaker 6: the people on the bargaining team for management at the
Speaker 6: bargaining table asked if we even worked forty hours a
Speaker 6: week while we were talking about this, and that's like
Speaker 6: one of those instances that I mean like yeah, wow,
Speaker 6: that's like a little disrespectful and like really bites. So
Speaker 6: we all were wearing these pins regularly. We you know,
Speaker 6: we signed a strike pledge where we had like eighty
Speaker 6: something percent of the unit say that like if we
Speaker 6: came to voting.
Speaker 1: For a strike, people would strike.
Speaker 6: And the big win was like, Okay, great, we get
Speaker 6: to stay a salaried workers because they walk back on
Speaker 6: that on that threat. We our time off. We have
Speaker 6: a time off contract or agreement now that like some
Speaker 6: of my co workers that have been around a long time,
Speaker 6: once the contract gets ratified, they'll have like two more
Speaker 6: weeks of time off.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 6: Because they haven't. They've been around for seven years and
Speaker 6: they're still at the same amount of time off basically
Speaker 6: that I'm at and that I've been at since the beginning. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And when it comes to wages, like, well, we're still
Speaker 6: figuring that out, but some of the gains that we
Speaker 6: are potentially looking at is like incredible, Like I looked
Speaker 6: at the numbers yesterday of like what hopefully given like
Speaker 6: where we're at right now in the agreements like what
Speaker 6: I would hopefully get and I straight up like tiered
Speaker 6: up looking at the number because it felt like such
Speaker 6: a big change in my financial status. Right, And yesterday,
Speaker 6: like as I said, I worked on nine thirty PM
Speaker 6: with my kids, probably because I had this like massive
Speaker 6: like weight of you know, this financial doom that I'm
Speaker 6: looking at somewhat lifted at the hope of the winds
Speaker 6: that we might get from this contract. So it's been
Speaker 6: incredibly hard, incredibly long, way too long, and all of
Speaker 6: it is so it is going to be so worth it, right.
Speaker 6: I hope that's something that the listeners really get that, like,
Speaker 6: this is hard work, but in the end, like is
Speaker 6: the change that we were hoping for, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And recently, one of the things that we did
Speaker 5: do just like a run through of just to kind
Speaker 5: of boost morales since sparketing has gone on for so long,
Speaker 5: was compile all the wins that we have so far
Speaker 5: just through thas so still tensative, but yeah, did map
Speaker 5: out a lot of huge things. One of the things
Speaker 5: we do a lot on this job is drive and
Speaker 5: we don't have many things in policy about.
Speaker 4: Cleanings or repairs.
Speaker 5: When something happens in your car, with the youth, like
Speaker 5: say they throw up, it happens with kids, Like that
Speaker 5: isn't necessarily something that would have been like covered. We
Speaker 5: would have had to just pay for that cleaning ourselves.
Speaker 5: And like coleage is a huge thing where one of
Speaker 5: our potential like big wins is that we'll get like
Speaker 5: full mileage covered rather than having to like deduct time
Speaker 5: from like this illusion of having an office where we
Speaker 5: would have to minus some mileage in whatever way made
Speaker 5: sense with where our buildings were located. Despite even if
Speaker 5: our kids were like totally somewhere else where we were
Speaker 5: picking them up, it definitely wasn't like the most sensible
Speaker 5: way for us to be like being fully.
Speaker 4: Reimbursed for what we were doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and those are all huge that we do have,
Speaker 5: Like obviously compensation insurance are two of the biggest that
Speaker 5: we're still working on. I think recently, like almost within
Speaker 5: this week, we've started to tip in a way that
Speaker 5: feels like we may be close to having a contract soon,
Speaker 5: which I do want to say, like, you know, as
Speaker 5: inspiration to everybody out there that.
Speaker 4: Works for a nonprofit like.
Speaker 5: Unionize and you know what you might it might farewell
Speaker 5: for you. I have hope for everybody, and like, right now,
Speaker 5: I think a lot of are, like a lot of
Speaker 5: my coworkers are starting to have hope again because I
Speaker 5: do think, like you said, it is totally a manipulation
Speaker 5: tool to have it drawn out so long, And yeah,
Speaker 5: it is exhausting to be basically stalled in your wage.
Speaker 4: For two and a half years.
Speaker 5: But we are like gaining some traction again, which I
Speaker 5: do think is something that we're still being you know,
Speaker 5: cautious with, just because right now it does feel like
Speaker 5: management is working with that's a little bit more. But
Speaker 5: I also think that there are reasonings around that, Like
Speaker 5: we're about to have in a few weeks our biggest
Speaker 5: fundraiser for our work, because like Caseue said, we are
Speaker 5: majority donor based, and I do think there's an appeal
Speaker 5: to management to have a contract by then.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it adds to.
Speaker 5: The whole We're doing good work and we treat our
Speaker 5: employees well. I hope that that is something then that
Speaker 5: is fulfilled by them in an honest way, not just
Speaker 5: a superficial way, because we are still pushing for a
Speaker 5: little bit more right now and have bargaining coming up
Speaker 5: next week. So yeah, I'm really hoping that what they're
Speaker 5: showing us isn't just performative, that we really might be
Speaker 5: able to get to a point where there is something
Speaker 5: that is truly good for us, because.
Speaker 4: We're all ready we're all ready for a contract.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as you know someone, we've got our contract. Like
Speaker 3: it doesn't it doesn't magically solve everything, but like, my god,
Speaker 3: it should make your life better, like it is, it
Speaker 3: is absolutely worth it. Yeah, okay, So how can people
Speaker 3: support y'all both sort of locally here and then just
Speaker 3: like broader because most people are not here.
Speaker 5: Honestly, most of our like people in like management positions,
Speaker 5: information is public. If you want to email them in support,
Speaker 5: go for it. Also, just like encouraging either your workplace
Speaker 5: if you work in kind of a social work setting,
Speaker 5: or like you know, if you know people that are
Speaker 5: because this whole field of work takes such a toll
Speaker 5: on people and it is the most necessary work. And
Speaker 5: I think it's really easy to fall into the mindset
Speaker 5: of I'm doing this for the greater good, not you know,
Speaker 5: not for money, not for these things, but like you
Speaker 5: also deserve to feel okay and taken care of and
Speaker 5: like have the things you need to be saying yeah, hey,
Speaker 5: says anything else do you want to add?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 6: I would add that, like we have an Instagram right
Speaker 6: as friends PDX Union Network.
Speaker 3: It's a mouthful, but will link the inscription.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great.
Speaker 6: And then within that, like if you're in Portland, like
Speaker 6: make sure to like follow us and like pay attention
Speaker 6: to what we're posting, because we you know, hopefully we
Speaker 6: do not have to get to a point of striking,
Speaker 6: especially at the place that we're at right now with
Speaker 6: our contract, but in truth, like we're looking at five
Speaker 6: hundred and eighty days and that is quite a long time.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And then also like if if listeners do have the
Speaker 6: ability to donate, if they could donate some funds for
Speaker 6: Friends of the Children Portland and somehow in their notes
Speaker 6: be like I support the union, Like I think that
Speaker 6: could also be a really interesting way to show the
Speaker 6: support that like our supporters have, like for both the
Speaker 6: work that we're doing on the youth level, but then
Speaker 6: also like in the union side of things too, there's
Speaker 6: been a lot of like communication of like, oh, this
Speaker 6: is really going to impact like the development side of
Speaker 6: our organization and like all of the things that like
Speaker 6: our fundraising team is going to have to do to
Speaker 6: like meet thees, which again I think, yeah, that would
Speaker 6: be more true if like our executive director wasn't making
Speaker 6: like what like five times as much money as I
Speaker 6: am Jeu Christ. Yeah, but yeah, showing that support, like
Speaker 6: it doesn't have to be a lot, but showing our
Speaker 6: bosses just how much like the populace like is supporting
Speaker 6: our unionization efforts like that power do you really don't too?
Speaker 6: And and then also like it impacts our kids, like
Speaker 6: our kids, like that's the truth of it all, Like
Speaker 6: I want my kids to have the best life that
Speaker 6: they could possibly have, and sadly we live in a
Speaker 6: world for money really dictates that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so those are will we will
Speaker 3: we will, we will have links in the description to
Speaker 3: all of that, And yeah, thank you to both so
Speaker 3: much for coming on the show and hope I hope
Speaker 3: you win, and yeah, I hope you get to go
Speaker 3: back to caring for these kids and not and also
Speaker 3: while not having to worry about like being able to
Speaker 3: live your lives.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much for having us. Yeah,
Speaker 5: of course, honestly, it's been great talking about the work
Speaker 5: because it is it is really important work and I'm
Speaker 5: happy we get to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's wonderful and yeah and so this is yeah,
Speaker 3: this just bin I could happened here, and yeah, i'd
Speaker 3: also go unionize your workplace. You can do it. I
Speaker 3: guarantee it.
Speaker 9: Hello, and welcome to the show. It's me James today
Speaker 9: and I am joined by Garrison Davis. Hi, Garrison.
Speaker 8: Hello.
Speaker 4: Hello.
Speaker 9: Garrison has just said some words about something that's happening
Speaker 9: on social media that I don't understand, and it's made
Speaker 9: me feel very old. That's what's happening today in my world.
Speaker 9: It's very sad we're gathered here today to talk about
Speaker 9: the earthquake in me anma, right, I think most of
Speaker 9: you will probably have been made aware of the earthquake.
Speaker 9: It's somewhat odd that corporate media has really not reported
Speaker 9: on the revolution in any substantial way since twenty twenty one,
Speaker 9: but the earthquake apparently justified a lot of network sending
Speaker 9: people to me Amma for the first time. Very amusingly,
Speaker 9: people dming me on Blue Sky and Twitter are asking
Speaker 9: how to get a visa from the Burmese Hunter, which
Speaker 9: is not a thing I've ever done. The last communication
Speaker 9: I had with them came in the form of a
Speaker 9: car bomb that they said of near to a place
Speaker 9: where we were. But if you're not aware, the earthquake
Speaker 9: happened on the twenty eighth of March of this year,
Speaker 9: just before one in the afternoon. It was the biggest
Speaker 9: earthquake in Myanma. So it's nineteen twelve and it registered
Speaker 9: seven point seven on the Richter scale, which is huge
Speaker 9: because it's it's very hard for foreign journalists to get
Speaker 9: a visa to enter Memba. The initial reporting focused on
Speaker 9: Bangkok and the damage done in Thailand, but the epithet
Speaker 9: was in Sagang, which is near Mandalay, Madelaide's second biggest
Speaker 9: city in Memba, and that was where like the worst
Speaker 9: of the destruction happened. Almost every street in Mandalai has
Speaker 9: collapsed buildings. It's a little difficult for us to get
Speaker 9: a sense of the exact scale of the damage because
Speaker 9: the Hunter refuses to allow Some media has been allowed
Speaker 9: in the BBC. I saw like sneaked up in. It's
Speaker 9: very difficult for media to move and report freely. And
Speaker 9: in addition to this, the Hunter has continued to practice
Speaker 9: of cutting off Internet for people in Memma, right.
Speaker 8: Even during like emergency situations. Yes, yeah, especially during emergency.
Speaker 9: They've kind it off like as a response to this
Speaker 9: because I guess they perceive it to be something that
Speaker 9: makes them look weak. This is a tendency that the
Speaker 9: Hunter has displayed before. So in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 9: cyclone Nagas affected Mema and killed over one hundred and
Speaker 9: thirty thousand people, and they blocked international aid. They said
Speaker 9: that people didn't need the quote chocolate bars that the
Speaker 9: US and other countries were trying to deliver, and that
Speaker 9: they could exist by like hunting frogs in ditches, was
Speaker 9: their suggestion. I don't think people realize like how far
Speaker 9: down the North Korea scale that the Burmese Hunter is,
Speaker 9: but like they're very worried that any interaction with the
Speaker 9: outside world, specifically with like I guess western neoliberal powers,
Speaker 9: will be damaging for their like ability to control the population.
Speaker 9: So for that reason, we don't know how many people
Speaker 9: have died. Right from what I've heard on the ground,
Speaker 9: the death toll is substantially higher than the three thy
Speaker 9: six hundred number being reported. The US Geological Survey estimated
Speaker 9: that an earthquake of that magnitude in that region would
Speaker 9: kill between ten and one hundred thousand people. Obviously, that's
Speaker 9: quite a big kind of delta there. What I can
Speaker 9: tell you is that I've heard firsthand that there are
Speaker 9: some parts of mandolines A going where the stench of
Speaker 9: rotting bodies is so powerful that people have stopped returning
Speaker 9: to their homes. There have been so many aftershocks that
Speaker 9: people are still sleeping in the street because they're worried
Speaker 9: about the damage structures falling down. The UN has an
Speaker 9: estimate of seventeen million people of cross fifty seven townships.
Speaker 9: Townships are like the administrative districts that are used in
Speaker 9: miannber a bit affected, with over nine million people facing
Speaker 9: severe hardship. And of course this is all compounded by
Speaker 9: the fact that there were already twenty million people in
Speaker 9: Miamma who needed humanitarian assistance, and they're about three and
Speaker 9: a half million internally displaced people as a result of
Speaker 9: the fighting that's happened after the revolution, So like, it
Speaker 9: really came at a pretty difficult time in a place
Speaker 9: where the government is not willing to They said after
Speaker 9: the earth quake they wanted international aid, but they've as
Speaker 9: we'll see later in this script. They've only accepted it
Speaker 9: from certain countries. I spoke to a friend who has
Speaker 9: family in Mandalay yesterday. He told me that the way
Speaker 9: they're assessing the damage is using like open source intelligence.
Speaker 9: They're trying to look in the backgrounds of people's videos
Speaker 9: on Facebook to work out if their childhood homes fell down. Right,
Speaker 9: they were using satellite imaging software when I spoke to
Speaker 9: them yesterday to try and ascertaining of their families were okay,
Speaker 9: they told me. Or Sagang has very famous pagodas, and
Speaker 9: the pagodas are all on a hill. Apparently a lot
Speaker 9: of those pagodas have fallen down, and even the hill
Speaker 9: itself is like listing. So there's been like massive cultural
Speaker 9: damage as well. Another way in which the damage was
Speaker 9: compounded by Miamma's politics was the quake struck like I said,
Speaker 9: at one pm on a Friday, right, which is Friday prayers.
Speaker 9: This happened during Ramadan speciularly the day before it'll fitter,
Speaker 9: which is a very busy day for mosques if you're
Speaker 9: not aware, right, Successive governments of Meamma since the nineteen
Speaker 9: sixties have refused to allow even basic maintenance for mosques.
Speaker 9: That means that these buildings were in great states of disrepair. Right, Myanma,
Speaker 9: there is an ulternationalist Buddhist movement which has been embraced
Speaker 9: to a great degree by the Hunter, but also limited
Speaker 9: even like the National League for Democracy, which was the
Speaker 9: relatively neo liberal aligned party that had previously been in
Speaker 9: power in Myanma or somewhat in power. I suppose alternationalist
Speaker 9: Buddhist monks like Ashin Wurathu and his nine six nine
Speaker 9: movement have kind of condemned anythink that they did as
Speaker 9: making the pro Muslim and they have this essentially they
Speaker 9: have a great replacement theory, right that Muslims are trying
Speaker 9: to come in through Bangladesh to replace Buddhists in Mianma.
Speaker 8: Yeah, lots of people here have this like very orientalist
Speaker 8: perspective of like Buddhism TM as this like you know,
Speaker 8: like like like peaceful blah blah blah blah blah, and
Speaker 8: like no, like Buddhism, like every religion has a variety
Speaker 8: of sex, yes, and the Buddhist national sex can be
Speaker 8: particularly nasty.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean as vicious as any other people. I'm
Speaker 9: sure will be familiar with their Hindi genocide, and like
Speaker 9: there are a lot of monks that supported that, including
Speaker 9: where Rathu is the most notable one, but there are
Speaker 9: plenty more, right, and they're part of the I mean
Speaker 9: he's he's literally explicitly expressed like how much he looks
Speaker 9: at to the English Defense League Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, Like
Speaker 9: these are people who like they are part of this
Speaker 9: global nativist movement. People's orientalism, I think sometimes stops them
Speaker 9: seeing that or appreciating that this extends outside of like
Speaker 9: white global North countries. Yeah. One thing that I did
Speaker 9: think that that really touched me in the days after
Speaker 9: the earthquake was young Buddhist Bamar people of the majority ethnicity,
Speaker 9: reaching out to me and being like, hey man, this
Speaker 9: happened in Friday prayers to Ramadan, and it has devastated
Speaker 9: the Muslim population, Like thousands of people, hundreds of mosques
Speaker 9: have gone, and thousands of people are trapped in a
Speaker 9: rubble and like no one's talking about it. Why it is,
Speaker 9: no we're talking about it. This is terrible and like
Speaker 9: it would have been inconceivable to hear young Bama Buddhist
Speaker 9: people so concerned with the well being of like their
Speaker 9: Muslim countrymen. Before the coup in twenty twenty one, This
Speaker 9: was a country that had been manufacturing consent for genocide
Speaker 9: against it it's Muslim minorities for four or five years
Speaker 9: by that point, right specifically on Facebook. That's a behind
Speaker 9: the bath this episode on this you can also listen
Speaker 9: if you're new to the show. Robert and I have
Speaker 9: made two scripted series about the revolution in the Emma,
Speaker 9: which will include in the show notes. But like that
Speaker 9: change to a real genuine solidarity and care between these
Speaker 9: two groups was really touching in the moments after the earthquake,
Speaker 9: in the days after the earthquake. When we come back,
Speaker 9: I want to talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 9: revolution and I want to talk about how the revolution
Speaker 9: has been responding to this and the impact it has
Speaker 9: had on the revolution. We are back, and of course
Speaker 9: the revolution hasn't stopped because of the earthquake, right The
Speaker 9: conflict is still ongoing and the PDFs and their allied
Speaker 9: ethnic business organizations are still fight against the Hunter. In fact,
Speaker 9: within an hour of the earthquake, the Hunter began using
Speaker 9: paramotors to drop bombs on Hangul village in Sugang. This
Speaker 9: has been a thing that they've started to do recently.
Speaker 9: In a sense, I guess it's a good sign because
Speaker 9: it shows that maybe their jets and other aircraft are
Speaker 9: in a poor state of repair, or that they're struggling
Speaker 9: to keep enough of them airborne. Initially, I wondered if
Speaker 9: they were using the paramotors because their runways have been damaged,
Speaker 9: but there doesn't seem to be the case. They've been
Speaker 9: air striking just as much as they ever did, which
Speaker 9: is unfortunate. Satellite images or imports some my source on
Speaker 9: the ground suggests that they're able to continue carrying out
Speaker 9: bombing rates at a pretty similar rate from when they
Speaker 9: did before. Despite this, the National Unity Government, which is
Speaker 9: kind of the shadow government composed mostly of people who
Speaker 9: are elected and then deposed by the coup in twenty
Speaker 9: twenty one, and the PDF, who in theory are commanded
Speaker 9: by the National Unity Government, called a two week ceasefire
Speaker 9: right after the earthquake to allow for like a humanitarian pause.
Speaker 9: The Three Brotherhood Alliance, which is an alliance of the
Speaker 9: three most powerful ethnic resistance organizations in Myanmar, also called
Speaker 9: what they called a humanitarian pause for a month in
Speaker 9: both cases, they said they wouldn't undertake offensive operations, but
Speaker 9: they would defend themselves, right because I think they had
Speaker 9: a CeNSE that the Hunter wasn't going to stop attacking them.
Speaker 9: The Hunter did declare its own ceasfire on April third,
Speaker 9: and the Kachin Independence Army, which is another ethnic residence organization,
Speaker 9: followed shortly thereafter. Notably, that ceasefire from the Hunter came
Speaker 9: the day after its troops fired on a Chinese Red
Speaker 9: Cross convoy, which is not a great look for them.
Speaker 8: No, never love to see that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we don't love to see people firing on the
Speaker 9: Red Cross. This is especially bad for the Hunter because
Speaker 9: China has been growing closer and closer to the Hunter
Speaker 9: and supporting it. China's had this weird back and forth
Speaker 9: relationship with the Revolution. At times, it's the Revolution, it
Speaker 9: seems like just supporting the me and my National Democratic
Speaker 9: Alliance Army, which is a group that broke off the
Speaker 9: Communist Party of Burma in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 8: That, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: There's also the United War State Army, which isn't part
Speaker 9: of the Revolution, which is that which has the strongest
Speaker 9: relationship with the PSC, and they're just chilling. They haven't
Speaker 9: really entered the conflict.
Speaker 8: It's called straight chillin, by the way, Jane.
Speaker 9: Straight chillin. Yeah, there you go. That's how you say. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I marked myself out yet again, straight chillin. The United
Speaker 9: War State Army, Thank you, Garrison. Actually, it spoke to
Speaker 9: some Cadridge from the Burmese Communist Party recently the Communist
Speaker 9: Party of Burma re entered after twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 9: like they're not focusing on like proselytizing the Maoist gospel
Speaker 9: to people. They're focusing on like fighting the Hunter and
Speaker 9: like developing alliances. And it's kind of it's interesting to
Speaker 9: see where that will go. Given Yeah, Marcus Leninism MAUSM
Speaker 9: is definitely not the majority ideology the revolution. Most people
Speaker 9: are committed to some form of federal democracy, which when
Speaker 9: you speak to different fighters varies from like we want
Speaker 9: what you guys have in the US to something more
Speaker 9: akin to the democratic confederalism that people might be familiar
Speaker 9: with in Rajaba. China is competing with Russia in me
Speaker 9: and mar so both of them are interested in supporting
Speaker 9: the Hunter right like, and obviously both their ideologies are
Speaker 9: far from liberatory that they're interested in propping up a
Speaker 9: totalitarian state. So we have seen both Russia and China
Speaker 9: send support to the Hunter, send like rescue teams after
Speaker 9: the earthquake. Meanwhile, the US offered two million dollars, which
Speaker 9: I was kind of surprisedly offered.
Speaker 8: Anythink that is low key surprising considering Yeah, Mark Rubio.
Speaker 9: Right, yeah, well I think Rubio is more of a
Speaker 9: like a slightly Rubio is a neokhon.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I guess like it makes sense Mark Rubio like
Speaker 8: five years ago. Yeah, it doesn't make sense like post
Speaker 8: like you say, to being gutted. They're like, oh, you're
Speaker 8: still doing that kind of stuff.
Speaker 9: Huh.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's like a weird like mix of things because
Speaker 8: because yes, like a traditional neocon style Rubio this this tract,
Speaker 8: but all of the movements that the Trump administration has
Speaker 8: been doing more recently, this seems like it seems like
Speaker 8: some kind of Dei Shenanigans if you ask.
Speaker 9: Yeah, actually they added another seven million later nine million,
Speaker 9: which is yeah, it's not a lot of money compared
Speaker 9: to what we would normally expect. And at the same
Speaker 9: time they did it three USAID workers at least three
Speaker 9: I should say three. That I'm aware of were laid off,
Speaker 9: like literally they received emails telling them that they no
Speaker 9: longer had a job while they were on the ground
Speaker 9: assisting earthquake survivors.
Speaker 8: Department of Government efficiency strikes again.
Speaker 9: Highly efficient, will send you the money and then also
Speaker 9: put out our own people who I guess are supervising
Speaker 9: how the money has spent or would be. It definitely
Speaker 9: shows so like a strategic shift in the region China Russia.
Speaker 9: China is interested in memr because of its rare earth metals,
Speaker 9: because of jade, like China has triginally had a lot
Speaker 9: of jade trade with mian Ma, and then because it
Speaker 9: controls a large amount of seafront right, which which China
Speaker 9: wouldn't want to fall into like way it would see
Speaker 9: as like someone with adversarial interests. Russia is still interested
Speaker 9: in just kind of projecting itself as a global power,
Speaker 9: even as it continues to shrink of every day in
Speaker 9: terms of its global ability to project power. But there
Speaker 9: definitely are both Chinese and Russian assistants helping the Miamma hunter. Now, meanwhile,
Speaker 9: the US doesn't seem to give a shit what happens
Speaker 9: here now, like this is kind of not that the
Speaker 9: Biden administration was doing very much either, but at least
Speaker 9: we had USAID and USIP was very invested in MEMR
Speaker 9: and actually did a really good job of kind of
Speaker 9: almost like being the Foreign Affairs not branch, but they
Speaker 9: explained the revolution to the world like whenever a journalist
Speaker 9: wanted to understand the revolution in MEMMR, it was USIP.
Speaker 9: They went to. All the contents that have at USIB
Speaker 9: have now been doged, which is a shame. So despite
Speaker 9: the ceasefire, right I said, they fired on these Chinese troops,
Speaker 9: the Hunter has in fact not stop bombing earthquakes struck
Speaker 9: areas since the earthquake madele APDF, who I'm in contact
Speaker 9: with the other revolutionary forces in the area that was
Speaker 9: most affected by the earthquake on April seventh, told me
Speaker 9: that they're aware of ten strikes in their area of
Speaker 9: operations since the earthquake. Three months old baby and a
Speaker 9: ten year old child were killed in an air raid
Speaker 9: on Niicar village and Papun township that was in Corren
Speaker 9: State on April tenth. They bombed a school and something
Speaker 9: that the Hunter likes to do a lot that they
Speaker 9: dropped two five hundred pound bombs on a food court.
Speaker 9: They then circled back and dropped another bomb on the
Speaker 9: people responding to and giving aid to the people they'd
Speaker 9: initially bombed in the food court. By food court here,
Speaker 9: Just to clarify, I'm not talking about like at the
Speaker 9: shopping mall. I'm talking about like a market where people
Speaker 9: can buy like prepared food.
Speaker 14: Right.
Speaker 9: They've killed, at the best I can collate from various
Speaker 9: sources at least seventy two people and injured about one
Speaker 9: hundred people, in addition to thousands who died after the earthquake.
Speaker 9: There are also reports that Hunter quote unquote recruiters here
Speaker 9: are engaging in forced conscription in the disaster zone. I
Speaker 9: read of at least one person who was on a
Speaker 9: search and rescue team that they were a trained search
Speaker 9: and rescue volunteer. Right, So they were moving rebel to
Speaker 9: rescue people, and they were forcibly conscripted while they were
Speaker 9: doing that. Obviously, that's had a chilling effect on people
Speaker 9: going out to help others.
Speaker 15: Right.
Speaker 9: What the Hunter is not doing is rescuing its citizens.
Speaker 9: The military is detested in most of me Ima, even
Speaker 9: in the areas that it controls, and its failure to
Speaker 9: even try and track people rescued on the ubel won't
Speaker 9: help this. There was a video that went viral recently
Speaker 9: of Hunter troops literally a line of soldiers rescuing bricks.
Speaker 9: They've gone to a collapsed building and they're inspecting the
Speaker 9: bricks to see if the bricks a whole, and then
Speaker 9: passing them down the lines and stacking them up.
Speaker 8: Don't worry, the bricks are safe.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the bricks are save the people are not. Which
Speaker 9: just like it was genuinely like infuriating to see it,
Speaker 9: And I can't imagine for people who have lost family
Speaker 9: members how that must feel. Even rescue workers, like I said,
Speaker 9: have been forcibly conscripted. Equality Mianma has noted more than
Speaker 9: one hundred cases to force conscriptions since the earthquake. So
Speaker 9: Meama has a conscription rule right, a law, so anyone
Speaker 9: men and now women between certain ages can be forcibly
Speaker 9: conscripted into the Hunter's army.
Speaker 8: So they're just finding people displaced from the earthquake and
Speaker 8: forcing them.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's people who have been hiding in their homes
Speaker 9: right who now don't have homes to hide it, Yeah,
Speaker 9: or people who came out in order to save their neighbors,
Speaker 9: and now now they're forcing them to be to fight
Speaker 9: for them, just as as they Hunted did with cyclone Nagis.
Speaker 9: They've also delayed and in cases blocked AID. A team
Speaker 9: came from France to assist in a search and rescue.
Speaker 9: They spent twenty four hours sitting in an airport waiting
Speaker 9: for their visa to be approved, and then they spent
Speaker 9: one day working in search and rescue efforts before being
Speaker 9: told that search and rescue efforts had now finished and
Speaker 9: they were to go home. So they traveled around the
Speaker 9: entire world, didn't save a single life abundance. It's great,
Speaker 9: presumably because the Hunter wanted to plicate China. A Taiwanese
Speaker 9: team was straight up refused entry into Mienmar, that Taiwan
Speaker 9: had a search and rescue team that they were willing
Speaker 9: to say send who could have saved people lives, and
Speaker 9: that they weren't allowed to enter. All tourist visas have
Speaker 9: been suspended, so it's not like the Hunter is like
Speaker 9: overwhelmed with visa applications, but they're not allowing search and
Speaker 9: rescue teams to enter from countries. I guess they're not
Speaker 9: politically aligned with this kind of horrific indifference to human
Speaker 9: suffering has characterized a toutmudor for decades, and it's really
Speaker 9: unlikely to change as it grows even more desperate and
Speaker 9: it loses even more territory. If just going to clamp
Speaker 9: down harder and harder on its people, be one. In
Speaker 9: the liberated areas, aid is being mobilized using the mutual
Speaker 9: aid structures which have existed for decades in the absence
Speaker 9: of the state. In significant and growing parts of Me
Speaker 9: and mar people are relying on each other instead of
Speaker 9: the government for aid, and that has its benefits. Right, Like,
Speaker 9: people have been out rescuing people from the rebel, but
Speaker 9: they're also desperately short of resources. I spoke to mandal
Speaker 9: APDF rescue team at the first week of April and
Speaker 9: they literally sent me a they have a notebook of
Speaker 9: a list of like we've run out of gorze, we've
Speaker 9: run out of twenty k's, we've run out of adhesive dressings,
Speaker 9: we've run out of elastic bandages. Right, they're like the
Speaker 9: little nuts and bolts of saving people's lives. They run
Speaker 9: out of We did a fund raising campaign for them
Speaker 9: through Behind the Bastards. We raised nearly two thousand dollars,
Speaker 9: which is great. So they're restocking their supplies, which is fantastic,
Speaker 9: But that's just one township. All across the country, people
Speaker 9: are struggling for the basic supplies that they need to
Speaker 9: save lives. The military has also blocked aid and medicine
Speaker 9: from entering their areas. Right, so the military controls a
Speaker 9: lot of road and it uses its control of those
Speaker 9: roadblocks to stop aid in medicine. Often it's kind of
Speaker 9: hoarding it. In the capital city, which is Napi Door.
Speaker 9: If people not familiar in Napi Door is a city
Speaker 9: that they couldn't have built for itself to go from.
Speaker 9: I mean seat of Kings. Also in napidor right now,
Speaker 9: it's the US Aid agency Samaritans Purse. Are you familiar
Speaker 9: with Samaritans perse Gratin? I don't think so.
Speaker 8: It sounds vaguely familiar, But all these humanitarian organizations all
Speaker 8: have like the same like four words that they shuffle
Speaker 8: around in different ways.
Speaker 9: So yeah, yeah, yeah. Samaritans Perse perhaps the most famous
Speaker 9: for being run by Franklin Graham.
Speaker 8: Okay, yes, idea what this is and who this is?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 9: Yeah, having all their volunteers sign like a statement of
Speaker 9: faith and being extremely homophobic. For some reason, Samaritans Purse
Speaker 9: is establishing a field hospital in Napi door right now.
Speaker 4: They're going to.
Speaker 8: Force people to convert to Evangelical Christianity before they give services,
Speaker 8: like they do in some cases.
Speaker 9: Yeah, or just leave them like they did in afghanis
Speaker 9: Don if they're not Christian. I cannot work out for
Speaker 9: the life of me what the fuck they're doing, because
Speaker 9: like the Hunter has made a consistent policy of bombing
Speaker 9: Christians in me Emma. Right in Karen and Kareni state,
Speaker 9: there are a lot of Christian people. On Christmas Day,
Speaker 9: the Hunter bombed people going to services because it knew
Speaker 9: that Christians would be going to services at churches. Right
Speaker 9: the Kareni Christians this year I saw celebrated Christmas in
Speaker 9: caves because they were so afraid of being bombed. Right, Like,
Speaker 9: I have no idea what logical leap you have to make,
Speaker 9: sar Yeah, it's and they're like, they're not even at
Speaker 9: the Insagang. The only people, the only international AID I'm
Speaker 9: aware of that was able to make it to Sigang
Speaker 9: was a Malaysian team who were able to save some lives. Unfortunately,
Speaker 9: there were really strong rains this week and that made
Speaker 9: all the collapse structures even more unstable. And the Malaysian
Speaker 9: team I saw have now returned home. We're going to
Speaker 9: take another ad break here and when we come back,
Speaker 9: we will talk about what you can do t help.
Speaker 9: All right, and we're back first, I want to, I
Speaker 9: guess have some good news. Despite everything. The military has
Speaker 9: still been taking massive losses. The all Burma students Democratic
Speaker 9: Front captured remaining Hunter positions in Indoor. They're all both.
Speaker 9: Democratic Front are a group that's been around since nineteen
Speaker 9: eighty eight, right, and they have armed up and re
Speaker 9: entered the revolution since twenty twenty one. One of the
Speaker 9: things that they captured on Monday was a underground Japanese
Speaker 9: field hospital from World War II, which I guess had
Speaker 9: been like entrench position. I guess they're not covered technically
Speaker 9: by the ceasefire, but there was a unit under the
Speaker 9: National Uniti government's command that operated with them, and from
Speaker 9: what I understand, this began as a defensive action. They'd
Speaker 9: surrounded the Hunter I think it's called yet japan Came Hill.
Speaker 9: They'd surrounded them on Japancave Hill for a long time,
Speaker 9: and then the Hunter obviously, seeing the earthquake and everything thereafter,
Speaker 9: decided that now was the time for them to break
Speaker 9: out of this circlement. They did not break out, They
Speaker 9: took a fat l and as a result, they've all
Speaker 9: been captured now. Meanwhile, in chin Land, if people haven't
Speaker 9: listened to the episode, I did a couple of weeks
Speaker 9: ago with a Zad from the Anti Fascist Internationalists Front.
Speaker 9: I was just going back and listening to that to
Speaker 9: understand chin Land. But the AIF and a lot of
Speaker 9: their allied forces from a Chinland Defense Force and a
Speaker 9: chin Brotherhood had a significant victory in capturing the rest
Speaker 9: of the Hunter's positions in Flam last week. And I
Speaker 9: think it's very much like on the table that we
Speaker 9: will see the whole of chin Land liberated in the
Speaker 9: next few months or by the end of the year,
Speaker 9: which would be great to see. So people are wondering,
Speaker 9: like what they can do to help, right, And I
Speaker 9: think it's a very valid question because I saw today
Speaker 9: that the un was meeting with the Hunter in and
Speaker 9: I just have no faith that any money that goes
Speaker 9: to the Hunter is going to get to people who
Speaker 9: need it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, absolutely not. You cannot like they want them
Speaker 8: to die that like that. I don't know, they're like
Speaker 8: evil why.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, they are literally genocide or they have done
Speaker 9: a genocide like that has been prosecuted international Criminal court.
Speaker 9: Like I have no understanding why people continue to like
Speaker 9: international organizations continue to funnel money to them, other than
Speaker 9: because like they have a status quo bias. I guess,
Speaker 9: so don't be doing that. But there are groups who
Speaker 9: are making a really big difference. And one of them
Speaker 9: that I wanted to highlight, and Robert and I are
Speaker 9: very familiar with their work from the last time that
Speaker 9: we were over reporting is Community Partists International CPI are
Speaker 9: really cool because they work by empowering members of the
Speaker 9: local community to be health volunteers, as opposed to like
Speaker 9: dropping in some some like doctors from America or doctors
Speaker 9: from the United Kingdom or whatever, and then when those
Speaker 9: people leave, they take their skills with them. CPI the
Speaker 9: thing is to educate folks within the community so that
Speaker 9: they can take care of one another. And I saw
Speaker 9: that CPI has a matching donations thing right now, which
Speaker 9: is pretty cool. So like if you donate, someone else
Speaker 9: will match your donation and that will double the amount
Speaker 9: that you receive otherwise, I will provide a list of
Speaker 9: mutual aid funds that have been shared with me. Most
Speaker 9: of them are like gofundmes or things like that. I'll
Speaker 9: put it all in the show description. They've all been vetted,
Speaker 9: and like I know, people are sometimes reluctant to give
Speaker 9: to go fundmes and they'd rather give to like a
Speaker 9: five oh one C three or an organization which has
Speaker 9: a little bit more I guess, like online presence. In
Speaker 9: this case, you have to understand that like a lot
Speaker 9: of orgs just aren't operating in the liberated areas. The
Speaker 9: two that I'm aware of CPI and Free Burma Rangers.
Speaker 9: I spoke to Dave from Free Burma Ranges. They're trying
Speaker 9: to get to as many people as it can as well.
Speaker 9: That would be another great place to donate. And I
Speaker 9: would include a list of vetted gofundmes. If you want
Speaker 9: to have a look through those and see if any
Speaker 9: of them kind of speaks to you more, you can
Speaker 9: do that too. What this will mean for the future
Speaker 9: of Memma, we don't know yet. Right we have really
Speaker 9: no sense of how many people have died, of what
Speaker 9: it's done to the Hunter's ability to control those areas.
Speaker 9: But until the revolution has a way to stop planes
Speaker 9: bombing people, we will continue to see the same dynamic
Speaker 9: of the Hunter losing terrain on the ground, pulling back
Speaker 9: its soldiers, and then bombing civilians in the areas.
Speaker 1: So it's lost.
Speaker 9: That is its game plan. It's continuing to get more
Speaker 9: drones from China. It's getting aircraft, munitions and jet fuel
Speaker 9: from China. Until there is an embargo on jet fuel
Speaker 9: and munitions to the Hunter, then we will see this
Speaker 9: same pattern continue. Right, they lose terrain, they bomba school,
Speaker 9: they lose terrain, they bomb a hospital. It's the same
Speaker 9: stuff that Israel's doing, and they've of course previously been
Speaker 9: armed by Israel as well, but we don't see as
Speaker 9: much solidarity for the people at Burma. If you want
Speaker 9: to stay in touch with what's happening on the ground,
Speaker 9: I think the Irawiti I Double r a Wa d
Speaker 9: d Y does a really good job of doing daily
Speaker 9: summaries right now. So I would suggest checking out what's
Speaker 9: happening there, and of course we'll keep you updated on
Speaker 9: developments in the Spring Revolution as they come.
Speaker 8: This is it could happen here. I am not going
Speaker 8: to El Salvador. It's not gonna happen, no way, No,
Speaker 8: thank you, mister President. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by
Speaker 8: James Stout.
Speaker 9: Hi, Garrison.
Speaker 8: We're here to talk about possibly the most upsetting thing
Speaker 8: I've seen in American politics in like the past six
Speaker 8: months to maybe even I don't know viscerally had hit
Speaker 8: me for like the past few years. Like yet what
Speaker 8: happened on Monday in the Oval Office was is kind
Speaker 8: of the most black pilt I've ever been, which is
Speaker 8: not a great way to start an episode.
Speaker 9: Yeah, its like it made me feel like I found
Speaker 9: twenty twenty three very hard, like going out and seeing
Speaker 9: people freezing in the desert and then coming home and
Speaker 9: some by n the ice cream on the on the timeline,
Speaker 9: But like this was different. This was so like blatant.
Speaker 8: There's like a level of like intentional depravity that you're
Speaker 8: reminded of more and more blatantly.
Speaker 9: So and like Bouque's trolling of yes everyone.
Speaker 8: So we're gonna be talking about an over office meeting
Speaker 8: between President Trump and El Salvador President Bukle.
Speaker 9: I guess I could learn his first name, Naib there
Speaker 9: you go. You know he's Palestinian salvadorre Are you fucking serious? No,
Speaker 9: that's an emam.
Speaker 8: I don't even have time for that.
Speaker 9: It's just fucking I'm sorry. If anyone's driving it has
Speaker 9: had an accident upon hearing that.
Speaker 8: So, as you probably know, recently, the United States government
Speaker 8: has sent upwards of three hundred people immigrants to the
Speaker 8: L Salvador Terrorism Confinement Center. This prison black site that
Speaker 8: people never return from. I guess I could point to
Speaker 8: for a pop culture reference, which feels a little bit
Speaker 8: in bad taste, but you can point to like the
Speaker 8: prison in the TV show and Or as being a
Speaker 8: very comparable facility, frankly, except they turn off the lights
Speaker 8: in and Or they do not turn off the lights
Speaker 8: in Seacott lights around all the time. They put ten
Speaker 8: to twenty people per sell. It's pretty bad. Jameson has
Speaker 8: done episodes on Seacott in the past, will probably keep
Speaker 8: doing more.
Speaker 9: The lights thing, by the way, was a specific policy
Speaker 9: change by Bouquele. There was a particularly violent weekend in
Speaker 9: El Salvador, and as a result he stopped letting people
Speaker 9: who were detained for gang crimes go outside and stopped
Speaker 9: building windows into the prison and just put the lights
Speaker 9: on because a way of punishing I guess the gangs
Speaker 9: by punishing the people who are detained there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they can't go outside. They stay in their cell
Speaker 8: for almost twenty four hours a day. They might occasionally
Speaker 8: get thirty minutes outside, but that's not even confirmed because
Speaker 8: no one's even allowed inside to see what's going on
Speaker 8: in there. And we've sent upwards of three hundred immigrants there,
Speaker 8: the majority, vast majority of which have no criminal record.
Speaker 8: Even if you do have a criminal record, being renditioned
Speaker 8: to a foreign prison camp is still bad. But this
Speaker 8: is something that Trump hopes to expand on greatly, and
Speaker 8: they are currently defending their ability to do so in
Speaker 8: the court since it has been learned that a few
Speaker 8: people sent there may have been partially sent by accident.
Speaker 8: But the Trump administration is refusing to return these people
Speaker 8: and is instead still trying to convince the public that
Speaker 8: these are dangerous terrorists that deserve to be disappeared. So
Speaker 8: let's kind of start with that main case. The case
Speaker 8: that's receiving the most public attention right now is of
Speaker 8: a Maryland man named Kilmayor Abrego Garcia, who's the subject
Speaker 8: of a district court case that has been sent up
Speaker 8: to the Supreme Court and then sent back to the
Speaker 8: district court on whether this man can be returned home
Speaker 8: to his US citizen wife and child. And then on Monday,
Speaker 8: April fourteenth, in the Oval Office meeting, President Bouquela said
Speaker 8: that he will not return this Maryland immigrant with protected
Speaker 8: legal status back to the United States, who Ice admits
Speaker 8: was sent to Seacot based on a quote unquote administrative
Speaker 8: Errorka said, quote, how can I smuggle a terrorist into
Speaker 8: the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 8: The question is preposterous unquote. The Al Salvador president also
Speaker 8: balked at the idea of releasing Garcia from Seacott since
Speaker 8: he can't have a quote unquote terrorist free in his country,
Speaker 8: lying about Garcia being a criminal. I am going to
Speaker 8: play a few clips in this episode because I think
Speaker 8: it is necessary to listen to these people actually say
Speaker 8: the words that they are saying, in the tone that
Speaker 8: they're saying them, and the exact phrasing on these I
Speaker 8: think is actually pretty important right now. So, unfortunately, you
Speaker 8: are gonna have to hear the voices of a few
Speaker 8: people who you might not rather hear from, including the
Speaker 8: president of El Salvador. So I'll play this first.
Speaker 5: Clip President and President Bukayla Waiyan on this Do you
Speaker 5: plan to return him?
Speaker 1: Well, I get I'm suppose are suggested that a smuggle
Speaker 1: and terroristic today United States? Right, how can I smuggle?
Speaker 8: How can I return him to the latter It's like
Speaker 8: I smuggle him into the United States or whether we do,
Speaker 8: of course, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 1: It's like, I mean, the question is preposterous.
Speaker 16: How can I smuggle the terrorists to the United States.
Speaker 8: I don't have the power to return him to the
Speaker 8: United States inside.
Speaker 17: Yeah, but I'm not releasing I mean, we're not very
Speaker 17: fond of releasing terrorists into our country.
Speaker 18: We just turned the murder capital of the world to
Speaker 18: the safest country of the Western.
Speaker 14: Hemisphere, and he want us to go back into the
Speaker 14: releasing criminals so we can go back to being the
Speaker 14: murder capital of the world.
Speaker 1: And that's that's not going to happen.
Speaker 14: Well, they'd love to have a criminal, you know, with
Speaker 14: the schedule.
Speaker 6: I mean, I mean there's there's a fascinator.
Speaker 14: Yeah, the sick piece are sick people.
Speaker 9: It's just insane. Like the whole pretense of any any
Speaker 9: like serious engagement with reality there, it's just gone yeah.
Speaker 8: And they're both like miming that neither of them have
Speaker 8: the ability to make any kind of deal between each
Speaker 8: other to send people back, even though they have the
Speaker 8: ability to make a deal to send people there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, As they sit in the same room.
Speaker 8: The whole time Bekayley's talking, Trump has like this like
Speaker 8: a growing smirk on his face. As Bkayley's talking about
Speaker 8: this preposterous notion of smuggling a US immigrant back into
Speaker 8: the United States despite the Supreme Court order to facilitate
Speaker 8: the return of this immigrant back into the country. The
Speaker 8: whole smuggling framing is obviously absurd, with him saying like,
Speaker 8: I don't have the power to return him to the
Speaker 8: United States. All he needs to do is release him
Speaker 8: from SECAT and the US can fly him back right
Speaker 8: just as we flew him to l Salvador. Like the
Speaker 8: two heads of state are sitting right next to each other.
Speaker 8: They could agree to do this at any time, But
Speaker 8: now everyone's pretending that that suddenly they don't have the
Speaker 8: power to undo what they seemingly had the power to
Speaker 8: do in the first place.
Speaker 9: Like Bukeley has ruled, and we're going to do a
Speaker 9: whole episode of and like his rise to power and
Speaker 9: then his use of power. But like he's ruled, and
Speaker 9: there a state of exception for years in Elsabador which
Speaker 9: allows them to detain people without warrants, without trials, right,
Speaker 9: and like it's that state of exception that is now
Speaker 9: the norm there. And that's kind of what he seems
Speaker 9: to be referring to, right, Like like we just get
Speaker 9: to lock people up. Why would I not do that?
Speaker 8: In effect, they are arguing that every single human being
Speaker 8: that is sent to Seacot by the United States is
Speaker 8: unable to ever leave the prison alive. Yeah, Like that's
Speaker 8: basically what they're saying, because they're saying both both parties,
Speaker 8: both Trump and Bouquela, are unable to have someone who's
Speaker 8: been sent there returned. So they're just they're just saying
Speaker 8: like no one's able to do anything, Like they're just
Speaker 8: stuck there until they die, and like this is part
Speaker 8: of the design of Seacot. Uh, the person who runs,
Speaker 8: Like the Seacott Like security has said that they do
Speaker 8: not intend in any person ever being released from Seacott.
Speaker 8: You are not designed to get out. You are stuck
Speaker 8: there forever. No one's ever left there. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 8: where you get disappeared, and that's that's all. That's all
Speaker 8: that it is. And I think part of why they're
Speaker 8: so unwilling to send Garcia back is because then you
Speaker 8: have someone like the first person who's ever gotten out
Speaker 8: and can talk about what it's actually like in there,
Speaker 8: when you don't have like Christinome and like propaganda cameras
Speaker 8: pointed at at the prison bars.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Bukela is very redicentially to anyone for that reason,
Speaker 9: And like there are plenty of valigations and like I
Speaker 9: think looks like Time Magazine has publicist is not husually
Speaker 9: controversial that he made deals with gangs in the past
Speaker 9: in elsabul or right to get them to reduce the
Speaker 9: murder rate, and like he certainly wouldn't like to hear
Speaker 9: that testified to certainly not in the United States court, right, So,
Speaker 9: like he doesn't want people to be released from there either,
Speaker 9: Like you said, they don't want anyone to be able
Speaker 9: to go to any international human rights courts and testify
Speaker 9: as to what happened to them there. So it's kind
Speaker 9: of in his interest to never have anyone be released.
Speaker 9: It's not just also, I guess like in his interest,
Speaker 9: he's also being paid right twenty thousand dollars per detainee
Speaker 9: per year by the United States right now, so he
Speaker 9: also has a financial interest in keeping people in there.
Speaker 8: Even this per year deal makes now kind of makes
Speaker 8: the zero sense because both of them are arguing that
Speaker 8: there's no way to send anyone back, right, So, like
Speaker 8: it's not that it's even like, oh, they're only gonna
Speaker 8: be there for one year. It's like they're just they're
Speaker 8: just there, and like who knows if they're gonna like
Speaker 8: still be alive by the time that some of these
Speaker 8: people would be able to get out, whether that's through
Speaker 8: the miraculous Donald Trump impeachment of twenty twenty six which
Speaker 8: will never happen, or like however, like these people are
Speaker 8: just they are just stuck there because he's not going
Speaker 8: to release them into his country. We are seemingly unable
Speaker 8: to take anyone back from there.
Speaker 4: I think it's.
Speaker 9: Unwilling, right, Like the US is theoretically able.
Speaker 8: It's argued that we're unable as as people get into
Speaker 8: more after this ad break, Okay, we are back. One
Speaker 8: thing that we've seen across the Trump administration the past
Speaker 8: eighty days or so. Something that we saw very evident
Speaker 8: in this meeting is that whenever a single person is
Speaker 8: asked a question about the outrageous, possibly illegal, possibly not,
Speaker 8: but just immoral or evils things that are being done,
Speaker 8: the first instinct is always to pass the buck on
Speaker 8: to someone else. We saw this a lot with Signalgate,
Speaker 8: how it was always someone else's faults. No single person
Speaker 8: could get like hammered down of being like, okay, you
Speaker 8: are the person that's going to be like accountable for this.
Speaker 8: And throughout this Oval Office meeting, eventually they started taking
Speaker 8: questions from journalists and reporters and propagandists who are in
Speaker 8: the room. And you saw this trend of you know,
Speaker 8: if someone asks Trump about what's going on, he passes
Speaker 8: the buck to Stephen Miller, who passes the buck to Bouquetle,
Speaker 8: who then passes the buck to Mark Rubio. And it's
Speaker 8: like this big circle of like everyone's just talking around
Speaker 8: each other because no one really has the authority to
Speaker 8: to speak on what's going on or how to fix
Speaker 8: this problem because they don't see it as a problem.
Speaker 8: So instead they just talk in a circle. And I
Speaker 8: think Miller was one of the most effective at this
Speaker 8: and unfortunately, we're going to play the longest clip in
Speaker 8: this episode, just under two minutes from Stephen Miller, where
Speaker 8: he lays out the Trump admins thought process and strategy
Speaker 8: behind what they are doing. And I apologize for this,
Speaker 8: but it is useful to hear from Himmler.
Speaker 1: Two.
Speaker 19: So here we go with respect to you, He's a
Speaker 19: citizen of El Salvador. So it's very arrogant, even for
Speaker 19: American media to suggest that we would even tell El
Speaker 19: Salvador how to handle their own citizens as a starting point.
Speaker 19: As two immigration courts found that he was a member
Speaker 19: of MS thirteen. When President Trump declared MS thirteen to
Speaker 19: be a foreign terrorist organization, that meant that he was
Speaker 19: no longer eligible under federal law, which I'm sure you
Speaker 19: know you're very familiar with. The iron eg that he
Speaker 19: was no longer eligible for any form of him a
Speaker 19: greation relief in the United States. So we had a
Speaker 19: deportation order that was valid, which meant that under our
Speaker 19: law he's not even allowed to be present in the
Speaker 19: United States and had to be returned because of the
Speaker 19: foreign terrorist designation. This issue was then by District Court
Speaker 19: judge completely inverted, and a district court judge tried to
Speaker 19: tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen
Speaker 19: of El Salvador and fly him back here. That issue
Speaker 19: was raised to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court
Speaker 19: said the district court order was unlawful and its main
Speaker 19: components were reversed nine zero, unanimously stating clearly that neither
Speaker 19: Secretary of State nor the President could be compelled by
Speaker 19: anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from
Speaker 19: Al Salvador, who again is a member of MS thirteen,
Speaker 19: which is I'm sure you understand, rapes little girls, murder's women,
Speaker 19: murder's children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in
Speaker 19: the world. And I can promise you if he was
Speaker 19: your neighbor, you would move right away.
Speaker 9: So you don't think most came.
Speaker 14: And what was the r and the Supreme Court save
Speaker 14: was a nine to nothing.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was a nine zero in our favor, in
Speaker 1: our favor against.
Speaker 14: The Juicu Court ruling saying that no has the power
Speaker 14: to the.
Speaker 1: Tele foreign policy function of the United States.
Speaker 3: As Pam said, the ruler solely sayd that if this
Speaker 3: individual El Salvador sole distress was set out to our country,
Speaker 3: that we could to pour him.
Speaker 19: A seven times no version of this legally ends up
Speaker 19: with an ever living here because he is a citizen
Speaker 19: of El Savador.
Speaker 14: That is the president of Al Sadidorg.
Speaker 3: Your question about for the court can only be directed
Speaker 3: the tenant.
Speaker 8: So there's a lot there. Yeah, I think I'm going
Speaker 8: to start with I can promise you if he was
Speaker 8: your neighbor, you would move right away. And I think
Speaker 8: that is really the heart of what the Strump administration
Speaker 8: is is doing. Like it's it's appealing to this most
Speaker 8: basic like suburban crime, panic, fear, racism of well, if
Speaker 8: he was your neighbor, you wouldn't want him living next to.
Speaker 9: You, Yeah, like a Vegos neighborhood kind of.
Speaker 8: Well, just completely lying about like the context of this
Speaker 8: case with you Miller saying it's arrogant suggest that we,
Speaker 8: the most powerful country in the world, are used to
Speaker 8: be before the tariffs can tell El Salvador how to
Speaker 8: handle its citizens, falsely claiming that immigration courts deemed him
Speaker 8: a member of MS thirteen, which just is not true,
Speaker 8: talking about kidnapping him from Seacott to return him to
Speaker 8: the United States, as if Ice didn't just to kidnap
Speaker 8: hundreds of people with no criminal records and send them
Speaker 8: to a foreign goo lug and then also lied about
Speaker 8: about the Supreme Court ruling, saying they found the district
Speaker 8: court order to return to Garcia unlawful and grossly mischaracterizing
Speaker 8: the scope of what the Supreme Court ruling was and
Speaker 8: how it was sent back to the district court to
Speaker 8: work with the details on what facilitate the return actually means.
Speaker 8: And again, I think like the one of the most
Speaker 8: telling parts is how he ends by saying, quote, no
Speaker 8: version of this ever ends up with him living here,
Speaker 8: And yeah, like they're gonna look for any any way
Speaker 8: to like make this test case to work, right and
Speaker 8: if and if they if they can do this to
Speaker 8: someone with protected legal status, who is not a who's
Speaker 8: not a terrorist, who is not an actual MS thirteen
Speaker 8: gang member, right, this is this is kind of ideal
Speaker 8: for them because that means they can paint anybody as
Speaker 8: as a foreign policy threat enough to be sent to
Speaker 8: a foreign goolag. Then at the very end of the clip,
Speaker 8: he passes the buck off to to bouquettist to have
Speaker 8: to have him answer this question again perfectly laying out
Speaker 8: their strategy.
Speaker 9: There's a lot to break down in what military. It's
Speaker 9: also just kind of interesting cambillary is like amongst the press,
Speaker 9: he's not one of the people like sat on the
Speaker 9: couches supposed to be giving the press conference. Right, he
Speaker 9: just kind of wades in too. I guess like like
Speaker 9: offer this opinion and kind kind of like be the
Speaker 9: kind of embassy of this of their response, I guess
Speaker 9: in a sense. Yeah, I think crucially, like a gonna go.
Speaker 9: Sea's protection was from being returned to El Salvador, right,
Speaker 9: because he had been harassed by gang members when leaving
Speaker 9: El Salvador and when being in El Salvador.
Speaker 8: He's lived in the States since twenty eleven, and he
Speaker 8: left El Salvador to flee harassment and abuse from from
Speaker 8: gang members.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the gangs that he's been accused of being a
Speaker 9: part of. But like it then follows that, like it
Speaker 9: would be legal for them to deport him to a
Speaker 9: third country, right, and that is the path that they've
Speaker 9: followed with all the Venezuelan migrants. Right, They've accused him
Speaker 9: of being members of Trend de Ragua. I have not
Speaker 9: seen a compelling case made that any of them are yet.
Speaker 9: I'm sure people from Trend de Ragua have come to
Speaker 9: this country, but they have not provided any evidence that
Speaker 9: the people they have sent to say God, are those people.
Speaker 8: No, Like we've had like fourteen people are like accused
Speaker 8: of some kind of like violent crime like murder or rape,
Speaker 8: and in the other like two hundred and seventy five
Speaker 8: do not have a criminal record whatsoever.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and the bulk of this is reliant on some
Speaker 9: kind of idea that they have entirely created from fiction,
Speaker 9: that they're are tattooing practices and one entered to end
Speaker 9: a war. And for them, right, even if they can't
Speaker 9: be returned to Venezuela, they feel that they have this endraum,
Speaker 9: which is okay, we'll send them to a Salvador. But
Speaker 9: for the Salvadarians, that's a different question, right, And that
Speaker 9: is what they're trying to find here, and that is
Speaker 9: worrying because the case here that is getting the most publicity,
Speaker 9: that seems to be the one that the Supreme Court
Speaker 9: has taken up, is about the Salbadaran man. And I
Speaker 9: hope that doesn't mean that like the ship has sailed
Speaker 9: for the Venezuelans, right that essentially, yeah, No, like they
Speaker 9: don't have a case because that was the vast bulk
Speaker 9: of them. I think there was only like sixty Salbadrean
Speaker 9: citizens and the rest Venezuelans, no.
Speaker 8: One, hundreds of people have been like forgotten in this.
Speaker 8: After Miller's rant there, Mark Rubio jumped in to state that, quote,
Speaker 8: no court in the United States has the right to
Speaker 8: conduct the foreign policy of the United States unquote. And
Speaker 8: Steven Miller hopped back in to talk about this Supreme
Speaker 8: Court case that they're falsely saying they won nine to zero,
Speaker 8: which is not how that case went, and they start
Speaker 8: talking more broadly about what can be allowed if it
Speaker 8: has to do with the foreign policy of the United States,
Speaker 8: and how the courts don't have the ability to intervene
Speaker 8: in that process.
Speaker 20: No, the foreign policy of the United States is conducted
Speaker 20: by the President of the United States, not by a court,
Speaker 20: and no court in the United States has a right
Speaker 20: to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. It's
Speaker 20: that simple end.
Speaker 9: The story, and that's what the Supreme Court held.
Speaker 19: By the way, has Marcara fort the Supoini Court said
Speaker 19: exactly what Marco said. The no court has the authority
Speaker 19: to compel the foreign policy function the United States. We
Speaker 19: want a case nine zero, and people like CNN are
Speaker 19: portraying it as a loss as usual because they want
Speaker 19: foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children.
Speaker 8: Part of what I find so disturbing about this idea
Speaker 8: of you know, no habeas corpus, no due process if
Speaker 8: you aren't on foreign soil, is that like this idea
Speaker 8: of the court's having no jurisdiction over foreign policy decisions
Speaker 8: means that as long as you whether you're citizen, whether
Speaker 8: you're a permanent resident to document or undocumented immigrant, as
Speaker 8: long as you are forcedly removed from the United States soil,
Speaker 8: your rights and your due process has been forfeit, and
Speaker 8: the US has neither the obligation nor sometimes the ability
Speaker 8: to return you to US soil if that is their
Speaker 8: foreign policy interest. And this is such a troubling broad
Speaker 8: concept that the portions of the courts are kind of
Speaker 8: allowing them to claim right now. And the complete removal
Speaker 8: of due process is like slowly getting encroached upon at
Speaker 8: first with undocumented immigrants and green card holders, but as
Speaker 8: we will see in the next section. They are also
Speaker 8: absolutely going to be targeting US citizens.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I think like we should just point out obviously, the
Speaker 9: court is not conducting the foreign policy of the United States.
Speaker 9: It's ruling on the legality of the action taken by
Speaker 9: the President, which is exactly what it's supposed to do.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And as it relates to your rights for due
Speaker 8: process if you are in the United States.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, Like every single US person, right, US person
Speaker 9: would be anybody who resides in the US, be they
Speaker 9: documented or done, documented, migrant, citizen, what have you like,
Speaker 9: has a stake in this.
Speaker 8: We're gonna go on break and then come back to
Speaker 8: discuss the expansion of the sea Cott detention program and
Speaker 8: the possible targeting of US citizens.
Speaker 9: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 8: So on April seventh, a few weeks ago, while on
Speaker 8: Air Force one, President Trump told reporters that he would
Speaker 8: be quote unquote honored for the president of Al Salvador
Speaker 8: to take a US citizens quote unquote American grown and
Speaker 8: born criminals and put them in sea Cott, the Terrorism
Speaker 8: Confinement Center prison Black Site, saying quote why should it
Speaker 8: stop just at people that crossed the border illegally unquote?
Speaker 8: A few days later, the White House Presecretary reiterated that
Speaker 8: this is something that Trump is discussing both publicly and privately,
Speaker 8: and later during the April fourteenth Oval Office meeting, Trump
Speaker 8: said that if Salvador was to build more of these
Speaker 8: torture megaprisons, the United States would quote unquote help them out.
Speaker 8: If the Trump administration could disappear more American immigrants and
Speaker 8: US citizens to these prison black sites, well.
Speaker 16: I pay for those societies to be open.
Speaker 13: I'd do something.
Speaker 14: We'd help them out.
Speaker 6: We help them.
Speaker 14: They great facilities, very strong facilities, and they don't play games.
Speaker 14: I'd like to go a step further. I mean, I
Speaker 14: say I said it to Pam. I don't know what
Speaker 14: the laws are. We always have to obey the laws.
Speaker 14: But we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways,
Speaker 14: that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head
Speaker 14: with a baseball bat when they're not looking. That are
Speaker 14: absolute monsters. I'd like to include them in the group
Speaker 14: of people to get them out of the country. But
Speaker 14: you'll have to be looking at the laws on that state.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 8: So this is just the start of a long process
Speaker 8: that is going to be deeply troublesome and worrying, and
Speaker 8: again like this is something that they keep talking about.
Speaker 8: I think they're still looking for some kind of legal
Speaker 8: justification or they're looking for something that maybe, if not
Speaker 8: allows for this, explicitly prohibits this in a way that they
Speaker 8: can't like get around.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Did you notice he called out Miller. He said, you'll
Speaker 9: have to look at the laws and the sieve Obviously
Speaker 9: Miller is not the Attorney general.
Speaker 8: He also did mention Attorney General Pambondi. Pambondi, Yeah, who's
Speaker 8: also looking into this option right now?
Speaker 9: Right, But Miller is often credited with being the kind
Speaker 9: of mastermind between behind Title forty two right, which was
Speaker 9: an extremely obscure piece of public health law that was
Speaker 9: immobilized by the first Trump administration to immediately return migrants
Speaker 9: to Mexico without giving them their right to it an
Speaker 9: asylum hearing right. And that's what I'm wondering if they're
Speaker 9: going for again, Like Steve Miller has been very good
Speaker 9: at this, at finding obscure justifications in the United States
Speaker 9: federal law for shit that they want to do.
Speaker 8: I think this is why they're definitely trying to stretch
Speaker 8: this foreign policy claim as far as they can that
Speaker 8: if it's if it's outside US soil, there's a limited
Speaker 8: way US courts can actually interfere or undo things that
Speaker 8: have already been done. And again, like the idea that
Speaker 8: we're going to like fund the construction of even more
Speaker 8: of these l Salvador mega prisons just to house American
Speaker 8: grown and born criminals as well as immigrants, Like we're
Speaker 8: just funding like goolog camps on foreign soil to send
Speaker 8: the undesirables to. And no matter how much Trump talks
Speaker 8: about how we're oldly going to send quote unquote like
Speaker 8: American criminals there, as we've seen with Seacott so far, Like, no,
Speaker 8: like the majority of people they are sending do not
Speaker 8: have criminal criminal histories. I don't think anyone can trust
Speaker 8: the Trump administration's definition of what isn't isn't criminal to
Speaker 8: this extent anymore. Later in the same meeting, Trump reiterated
Speaker 8: the same idea about sending you a citizens who his
Speaker 8: administration deems criminals to this foreign black site. Here's another
Speaker 8: clip is a fall question on a.
Speaker 16: Clarification you mentioned that you're open to supporting individuals that
Speaker 16: aren't foreign aliens for our criminals to Al Salvador. Does
Speaker 16: that Does that include potentially US citizens fully naturalized.
Speaker 14: Immrading if they're criminals, and if they hit people with
Speaker 14: baseball bats over the head that happened to be ninety
Speaker 14: years old, and if if they rape eighty seven year
Speaker 14: old women in Coney.
Speaker 13: Island, Brooklyn.
Speaker 14: Yeah, yeah, that includes Why do you think there's a
Speaker 14: special category of person. They're as bad as anybody that
Speaker 14: comes in. We have bad ones too, and I'm all
Speaker 14: for it. We have others that were negotiating with to
Speaker 14: But no, it's if it's if it's a home grown criminal,
Speaker 14: I have no problem.
Speaker 8: He's really obsessed with baseball bats thing. I don't quite
Speaker 8: know what that's about.
Speaker 4: There seems like a specific case that he's referring to.
Speaker 8: Maybe it's something he remembers like thirty years ago that
Speaker 8: it really got stuck in his head. Right, But also
Speaker 8: later he says that they're negotiating with other countries to
Speaker 8: send US citizens to not just El Salvador.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean they've sent migrants third country migrant to
Speaker 9: Panama before, right, and detain them there. Honduras I believe
Speaker 9: is building like a prison that's not dissimilar to siicort, Like,
Speaker 9: I'm be guessing this will be their sort of way
Speaker 9: of courting allies in the hemisphere because they'll sort of
Speaker 9: pay them a relatively large amount in order to attempt
Speaker 9: to offshore people they don't like.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and again, like as we've seen the past few
Speaker 8: years and increasingly so now, the effort to label like
Speaker 8: activists or people who are vocally opposed to the United
Speaker 8: States foreign policy the United States and the State of
Speaker 8: Israel deeming them terrorists and then by extension, if you
Speaker 8: charge them with the crime, then criminals getting that they
Speaker 8: can be housed in a place like Seacot now with
Speaker 8: very very limited to no due process. The whole due
Speaker 8: process question is still very up in the air for
Speaker 8: how they're going to handle that aspect. But you can't
Speaker 8: just take this as like, oh, you know that that's
Speaker 8: just Trump talking, like no, this is this is this
Speaker 8: is something they really want to do, and it's like
Speaker 8: one of the freakiest things that I've seen in like
Speaker 8: domestic US politics in a long time. Earlier, Trump was
Speaker 8: recorded half whispering to Beckley telling him that El Salvador
Speaker 8: needs to build five more Sea cought style torture prisons
Speaker 8: to house US citizens, as Trump says, homegrown criminals. Bukeley
Speaker 8: replies that they will have enough room, and then the
Speaker 8: entire Oval Office laughs.
Speaker 14: Yea, they said, home grunst, you get a build about
Speaker 14: five more places.
Speaker 15: Yeah, that's all right.
Speaker 8: It's the bleakest clip I've ever seen before. Yeah, talking
Speaker 8: about homegrowns. Their next got to build five more places. Oh,
Speaker 8: we have enough space. Everyone laughs, and then Trump shows
Speaker 8: off the new gold frames for the portraits in the
Speaker 8: Oval Office.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's like a dinner party joke for them. It
Speaker 9: might just be worth noting that, like every totalitarian regime
Speaker 9: has housed its dissidents outside of the imperial core. Right,
Speaker 9: like like Germany totally did this in the East, right,
Speaker 9: Russia send people to Siberia for Russia Soviet Union.
Speaker 8: Creating creating these like stateless zones where like the regular
Speaker 8: laws of your of your like fatherland state do not.
Speaker 9: Apply, right and where the horrors are so far from
Speaker 9: the populace that the populist can't really grasp them. Yeah.
Speaker 8: No, this is like elementary school stuff. It says, like,
Speaker 8: like the first thing you learn about is concentration camps
Speaker 8: and goologs. Now, that's like this symbol of evil and
Speaker 8: now it's something you laugh about in the Oval Office
Speaker 8: to send home growns to five disappearing torture camps.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and like, just to be like even clear, I
Speaker 9: guess what distinguishes a concentration camp from a prison is
Speaker 9: that there is no due process right. People are sent
Speaker 9: there because of who they are, not because of what
Speaker 9: they did.
Speaker 8: Like if you're a Venezuelan man who may or may
Speaker 8: not have a tattoo.
Speaker 9: Yeah, like the way, I don't know what it will
Speaker 9: take for some people to realize what's happening here.
Speaker 8: And like the president of El Salvador is so on
Speaker 8: board for this.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean he doesn't hide from that reputation, right,
Speaker 9: he embraces it. His Twitter for a while had world's
Speaker 9: Coolest dictator in the bio. I don't know if it
Speaker 9: still does.
Speaker 8: Like and like, both him and Trump have openly aligned
Speaker 8: themselves with quote unquote nationalism and nationalists. They're openly saying this.
Speaker 8: Trump said dictator on day one. That wasn't just a
Speaker 8: rhetorical device, that was literal. This is what he's doing.
Speaker 8: A president told Trump, you have three hundred and fifty
Speaker 8: million people to liberate, but to liberate three hundred and
Speaker 8: fifty million people, you have to imprison some. And you
Speaker 8: follow that up by saying that he is eager to
Speaker 8: help with that.
Speaker 6: And if fat mister president, you have three hundred and
Speaker 6: fifty million people to liberate it.
Speaker 14: But to liberate three hundred and fifteen million people, you
Speaker 14: have to imprison some.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the way it.
Speaker 7: Works, right.
Speaker 1: You cannot just you know, free the.
Speaker 20: Criminals and think Rymes is going to go down magically.
Speaker 6: Have to imprisoned them so you can liberate three hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty million Americans that are asking for the end
Speaker 6: of crime and the end of theroists.
Speaker 14: Many can be done, I mean, if you're doing it already.
Speaker 6: So I'm really happy to be here, honored.
Speaker 8: Any anger to help this whole. Like liberation through imprisonment
Speaker 8: thing is elementary school stuff here.
Speaker 9: You don't have to have a PhD in the history
Speaker 9: of the nineteen thirties to have someone tell you that
Speaker 9: the liberation of the chosen nation by purging of the
Speaker 9: undesirables is fascist shit. But like I'm here with one
Speaker 9: tell you if that's what you need. You know, like
Speaker 9: this is textbook stuff. Like Garrison's saying like this is
Speaker 9: not debatable, Like I know, we spent the last four
Speaker 9: years debating is Trump a fascist or not? I don't
Speaker 9: think that matters hugely, right, Like this is a fascist thing.
Speaker 8: It's so much more disturbing that now, according to like polls,
Speaker 8: like half around half the population maybe a little bit
Speaker 8: less just agree with the current way that deportations are
Speaker 8: happening and Trump's immigration policy like on a completely like
Speaker 8: flat basis. And if you spend any time on on
Speaker 8: X the everything app watching videos of the of these
Speaker 8: press conferences, it's full of people just like cheering this
Speaker 8: on completely, like completely blankly.
Speaker 9: I think that's a very skewed samplet of people who
Speaker 9: totally paid for Elon Musk of.
Speaker 8: Course, of course, but like the number of.
Speaker 9: People, Yeah, it's real humans saying like these are real.
Speaker 8: People who just just completely completely blankly think this is
Speaker 8: a this is this is a net good and like
Speaker 8: this is those people are unreachable. You cannot come back
Speaker 8: from that, like you is, there is no coming back
Speaker 8: from that if you believe that the way depretations are
Speaker 8: currently happening is fair, just and right, Like I cannot
Speaker 8: understand you as a human anymore. That is so like
Speaker 8: divorced and like alien.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you've gone past the point of no return, right, like.
Speaker 8: Liberals who like shield the who like shield their eyes
Speaker 8: from like the whores at the border. Like, I don't
Speaker 8: agree with that, but in some ways I can understand it.
Speaker 8: The open like cheering on of this right is like
Speaker 8: a whole It's a whole other level.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's not like I can't bear to see it.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna ignore it so it will cause me to
Speaker 9: confront the no the contradictions. It's I'm seeing it on
Speaker 9: watch again and I think it's fucking great.
Speaker 8: The last thing I'm gonna I'm gonna play here A
Speaker 8: scene and reporter asked Trump if he would obey a
Speaker 8: Supreme Court order to return someone to the United States.
Speaker 8: Instead of answering this question, Trump attacked the reporter and
Speaker 8: complained about how she wasn't praising him for deporting criminals.
Speaker 19: You said that if the Supreme Court said someone needed
Speaker 19: to be returned, that you would abide by that.
Speaker 1: You said that on Air Force one just a few
Speaker 1: days ago, and.
Speaker 3: They said it must facilitating.
Speaker 14: Why don't you just say, isn't it wonderful that we're
Speaker 14: keeping criminals out?
Speaker 6: Of our country.
Speaker 14: Why can't you just say that? Why do you go
Speaker 14: over and over and that's why nobody watches you anymore?
Speaker 14: You know you have no credibility.
Speaker 8: Please go ahead, Yeah, mad very textbook authoritarian like blanket
Speaker 8: stuff like there's there's nothing to like commentate about that.
Speaker 8: It just is what it is. I guess we do.
Speaker 8: We do some breaking news because we're recordings on Tuesday.
Speaker 8: James want to want to, impossibly five minutes or less,
Speaker 8: fill us in about the the update from the from
Speaker 8: the District Court on Garcia's case since it was sent
Speaker 8: back to the district Court from the Supreme Court last
Speaker 8: week regarding his possible facilitated return to the United States.
Speaker 9: Right, so much of this has hinged over what facilitate means, right,
Speaker 9: Like they found a legal concept that they can argue
Speaker 9: at nauseum and in this case, it's the word facilitate.
Speaker 9: DJ didn't presently new information today, but we see that
Speaker 9: like there's some hopeful things on a district court judge
Speaker 9: and then it kind of all goes up in flames.
Speaker 9: But I think genis XI and I s is how
Speaker 9: the name is spelled. I believe it's genius said that
Speaker 9: every day that he's there is a day of further
Speaker 9: irreparable harm. And she talks about the process being at
Speaker 9: the roots of the constitution. Right, She's ordered for like
Speaker 9: two weeks more of discovery, which is going to mean
Speaker 9: that both sides have more time to repair their cases. Right,
Speaker 9: she wants people to testify in front of the court.
Speaker 9: She is so the administration has argued that facilitating his
Speaker 9: return would consist of them allowing him to enter the
Speaker 9: United States if Bukele released him, and possibly providing a
Speaker 9: flight for that to happen, but not crucially ensuring his
Speaker 9: release from secord. Right, and so anything else subsequent to
Speaker 9: that doesn't matter. Chinis said that like their interpretation of
Speaker 9: the word flies in the face of the plain meaning
Speaker 9: of the word. Quote, when a wrong fear removed individual
Speaker 9: is uh. And then I'm adding to the quote here
Speaker 9: I guess or context. She means when a wrong fee
Speaker 9: remove individual is taken outside the US, it's not so
Speaker 9: cut and dry that all you have to do is
Speaker 9: remove obstacles domestically. She also said, quote to the Department
Speaker 9: of Justice here, you made your jurisdictional arguments, you made
Speaker 9: your venue arguments, you major arguments on the merits you lost.
Speaker 9: This is now about the scope of the remedy. Right,
Speaker 9: this is a case that Miller is claiming they want.
Speaker 9: That's pretty unequivocal for a justice. However, she does not
Speaker 9: seem to think that it is within her power to
Speaker 9: request his return from El Salvador. So she's calling for
Speaker 9: things to move quickly. Right, they want to conduct depositions
Speaker 9: about twenty third of April, she said, quote council vacations,
Speaker 9: council over appointments. I'm usually pretty good about it. Not
Speaker 9: this time. I'm going to be available if you need
Speaker 9: to do it odd hours or weekends. That's what I'm
Speaker 9: talking about. Anything short of a judge saying you have
Speaker 9: to go to se Calle, remove him from the cell,
Speaker 9: put him on the plane, and bring him back to
Speaker 9: America is going to be interpreted by the Trump administration
Speaker 9: to mean that they don't.
Speaker 1: Have to do that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they're going to weasel their way around it, the
Speaker 8: same way you heard Steven Miller weasel his way around
Speaker 8: every question, and with with truth being used as a
Speaker 8: as a flexible medium. Yeah, to shape a sculpture of
Speaker 8: their choosing.
Speaker 9: And like they've done that. Right, the word facilitate. I
Speaker 9: think most people who are first language English speakers have
Speaker 9: a fairly good grasp with what that means, and it
Speaker 9: doesn't mean like remove barriers domestically, that's what they've gone for.
Speaker 9: The only way that he is getting out, it's a
Speaker 9: majority Supreme Court decision that is extremely explicit that directs
Speaker 9: the Trump administration to go to El Salvadore and remove
Speaker 9: him from that prison. I haven't seen anything to indicate
Speaker 9: that we're getting that anytime soon. And as the judge said,
Speaker 9: right every day he's there, he's a reparable harm is
Speaker 9: done to him. And that's where we're at right now,
Speaker 9: right with people arguing over the definition of a war,
Speaker 9: as hundreds of people are locked up having done nothing
Speaker 9: wrong in a giant torture prison.
Speaker 8: And this is not the only person who we believe
Speaker 8: was quote unquote mistakingly sent other supporting today coming out
Speaker 8: of documented New York.
Speaker 9: Yeah, good outlet.
Speaker 8: By the way, a father of a nineteen year old
Speaker 8: legal legal immigrant from Brooklyn. This nineteen year old with
Speaker 8: no tattoos, was kidnapped off the streets of New York.
Speaker 8: The quote from his father reads, quote the officers grabbed
Speaker 8: him and two other boys right at the entrance to
Speaker 8: our building. One said, no, he's not the one, like
Speaker 8: they were looking for someone else.
Speaker 9: One officer to be clear, correct, Yeah, but.
Speaker 8: The other officer said take him anyway, unquote. And now
Speaker 8: this father, exactly a month later, is still looking for
Speaker 8: his missing son, who is disappeared into a new Salvador
Speaker 8: torture prison.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Jesus. Like I've said before, for on this show,
Speaker 9: like one of the things that I learned in the
Speaker 9: Darien Gap was how much people can care about their kids,
Speaker 9: and like this shit that I saw people do to
Speaker 9: ensure that kids had a better life, like broke my
Speaker 9: heart in a way that war hasn't that like anything
Speaker 9: else I've seen in my life hasn't. And it's like
Speaker 9: honestly really hard for me to hear stuff like that
Speaker 9: and and like not react just being really sad or
Speaker 9: really angry, like it's fucking brutal.
Speaker 8: Things are looking a lot more grim in my mind
Speaker 8: than they were when we recorded that Should You Leave
Speaker 8: the United States episode. I still think the things I
Speaker 8: said there I stand by, and I stand by the
Speaker 8: only recommendation I have is to create options for yourself,
Speaker 8: and I think those options should be created as soon
Speaker 8: as possible, especially if your citizenship is a topic of
Speaker 8: debate according to the United States government. But even that
Speaker 8: will not keep you safe. As we've talked about today,
Speaker 8: your options include creating networks to take care of one another. Right, Like,
Speaker 8: the things that will probably affect more of you than
Speaker 8: direct state violence are economic downturns, are recessions, right, things
Speaker 8: like this, like those are things that you can take
Speaker 8: care of one another through, and like you should plan
Speaker 8: to do that too. You should you should think about
Speaker 8: how you're going to pay your bills, how you're going
Speaker 8: to feed each other, how you're going to take care
Speaker 8: of your medical needs. Because I don't think that the
Speaker 8: world is going to want to keep doing business with
Speaker 8: the country that acts like this, and both economically and
Speaker 8: in terms of its conduct towards migrants. So like, your
Speaker 8: plans don't have to be to leave, Like your plans
Speaker 8: should also include what to do if things get really bad,
Speaker 8: like in an economic sense.
Speaker 9: I'm not going to tell you what that means. But
Speaker 9: it's all the stuff he's already talked about, right, It's
Speaker 9: mutual aid, it's it's all the all the basic preparedness
Speaker 9: stuff that is not as big and scary as leaving
Speaker 9: the country, but it is nonetheless like vital.
Speaker 8: We will continue to report on the Garcia case other
Speaker 8: court cases regarding these three hundred people renditioned to El
Speaker 8: Salvador and Seacott in the next.
Speaker 9: Few weeks, just to finish up. As things continue to
Speaker 9: get worse, people keep reaching out to us, which we appreciate.
Speaker 9: If you would like to, you can email us cool
Speaker 9: Zone tips at proton dot me. We will read it.
Speaker 9: We might not get back to you. Your email is
Speaker 9: not end to end encrypted unless the email that you're
Speaker 9: sending from is also encrypted, that you can reach out
Speaker 9: to us.
Speaker 15: See you on the other side.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Dake. It happened here a podcast increasingly well
Speaker 3: named as the days go on. I am your host,
Speaker 3: Bio Wong, and.
Speaker 4: It occurs to me.
Speaker 3: Over the course of the many, many, many, many many
Speaker 3: Union episodes we've done in this podcast, we haven't really
Speaker 3: done much coverage of just straight up how do you
Speaker 3: do a strike? So today we're going to be covering
Speaker 3: a pretty long running strike. We're gonna say how many
Speaker 3: days it has been going. It's unclear when this episode
Speaker 3: is gonna come out, So who fucking knows how long
Speaker 3: it'll be when when you hear it. But yeah, with
Speaker 3: me to talk about this strike is Spencer Jordan, who
Speaker 3: is a rank and file member of the Urban or
Speaker 3: Workers Union. Spencer, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Miah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you about this. So
Speaker 3: this is what day is it today? I should know
Speaker 3: this April fifteenth, And as of April fifteenth, you've been
Speaker 3: out try for twenty five days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's just about right. Yeah, it started on the
Speaker 1: twenty second of March. We our strike vote like a
Speaker 1: solid twelve days before before we actually went out on
Speaker 1: the picket line. And one that strike vote with fourteen
Speaker 1: yes is a single no and I think four extensions.
Speaker 1: Pretty yeah. Yeah, so nine of those voting voted yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which good of good ratios?
Speaker 3: Good ratios. I think like typically you want at least
Speaker 3: like mid seventies if we're going to do this kind
Speaker 3: of thing. But you know, as listener to the show,
Speaker 3: hopefully understand by now you can't just like call a
Speaker 3: strike and have it happen. You know, you have to
Speaker 3: do a whole bunch of organizing. So I want to
Speaker 3: kind of start at the dynamics of the organizing of
Speaker 3: how this shop got going, because this is a pretty
Speaker 3: small shop from the sounds of it. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so do you want to talk a bit about what
Speaker 3: the basic process of getting this organizing started was like
Speaker 3: and what the sort of like social mapping looked like
Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the organization process started around like a year
Speaker 1: and a half before we actually had our unionization vote,
Speaker 1: which was actually we had the vote in March and
Speaker 1: we got our win on April seventh, two years ago,
Speaker 1: so we actually just had our union two year birthday birthday.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so preceding that was like, like I said,
Speaker 1: about a year and a half organizing that involved you know,
Speaker 1: the typical thing of like one on one conversations with
Speaker 1: like all the staff, making the you know, color coded
Speaker 1: spreadsheet and everything, which all of this was not my
Speaker 1: my purview. I'm a lot more involved now than I
Speaker 1: was at the start of the process. And I was
Speaker 1: approached by like one of our lead organizers really shortly
Speaker 1: after being hired just to kind of you know read
Speaker 1: the dipstick as too like my sentiments about it and whatnot.
Speaker 1: I was pretty on board right away. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm from the Bay Area, so it's not.
Speaker 3: There are there are only two types of people from
Speaker 3: the Bay Area. You wouldn't be having one of the
Speaker 3: one that ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly exactly. So I'm of the ladder type. So
Speaker 1: you know, it being pro union is isn't isn't like
Speaker 1: a foreign thing to my background.
Speaker 21: You know, you don't look like a tech work Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 21: especially like my family's from the Midwest and everything, so
Speaker 21: there's yeah, my my aunt actually just learned that she
Speaker 21: was like a clerk working for the railroads back in
Speaker 21: the day when my railroad jobs were still like a
Speaker 21: big thing you could have anyways.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so I had had my like own sort
Speaker 1: of like just observations of like whoah, like what's what's
Speaker 1: going on in the workplace aside from like my own
Speaker 1: just like prediliction to thinking, you know, more worker power
Speaker 1: is better. Yeah, also kind of seeing like some of
Speaker 1: the factors that dicipitated it, Like for instance, like when
Speaker 1: I was hired here, I was hired in my interview,
Speaker 1: it was the one of the owners and the manager
Speaker 1: of my department, my department being salvage and recycling department
Speaker 1: of the urban or which is kind of like not
Speaker 1: super public facing. We like go to the dump and
Speaker 1: like root around through the garbage like you know, is
Speaker 1: or whatever, get to get stuff for the store. But
Speaker 1: that manager, you know, he was there in the interview
Speaker 1: and we got to the portion where the owner explained
Speaker 1: what at will employment is. Oh and she and she went,
Speaker 1: so we're at will here. So Sam Weell, Sam was
Speaker 1: my manager. Well, how long have you been here? Twenty
Speaker 1: one years? He's there, hands folded on the table. Yes.
Speaker 1: What at will means is, uh, it could be tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I could say, you know, Samuell, it's been a great
Speaker 1: twenty one years. I really appreciate all the work you've done.
Speaker 1: Today's your last day, what I say. And he has
Speaker 1: to sit there and go Jesus Christ, and then she says,
Speaker 1: of course, likewise, tomorrow sim Well could come to me
Speaker 1: and say, hey, Mary Lou, it's been twenty one years.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it. I'm quitting. So you know, the sort
Speaker 1: of sword over his neck is being cast is somehow
Speaker 1: equal to him not being like indentured.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's also just I mean, like you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: on the basic level, Yeah, it's like okay, your opponent
Speaker 3: I guess they argue to put it your boss. Your
Speaker 3: boss can just instantly fire you for any reason whatsoever,
Speaker 3: for any about of time. And then also you could
Speaker 3: quit the job and then really flects a plans.
Speaker 10: Like as a management tactic, like are you like trying
Speaker 10: to piss off your support? And it's like, what, I
Speaker 10: have never had a boss like just do that in
Speaker 10: a hiring meeting.
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean have you have you worked at like
Speaker 1: a like a like a sat of small like mom
Speaker 1: and pop quote unquote business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's that's probably That's probably why because
Speaker 3: I've usually had like larger my shitty jobs have either
Speaker 3: been like government jobs or like like larger companies, so
Speaker 3: there was less of the like I heard a line
Speaker 3: recently that I wish I remember where it was from.
Speaker 3: It might be a line from Star Trek.
Speaker 1: Like one of the.
Speaker 3: Fengi rules is just like treat your employees like family,
Speaker 3: exploit them ruthlessly, which I like, you.
Speaker 1: Know, that's a that's a traditional line in business, especially
Speaker 1: in small business, and it's it's no stranger here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that question of like whining to piss off your subordinates
Speaker 1: or whatever, it's a I don't know if pissing off
Speaker 1: is necessarily like the concern, but the ownership here definitely.
Speaker 1: I've gotten the impression that they enjoy showing their power,
Speaker 1: and I've gotten the impression that the sort of like
Speaker 1: uncertainty and like my mom would call it jockeying for
Speaker 1: position that you have to do is a dynamic that
Speaker 1: they I can't say I really can't say they honestly
Speaker 1: because the other owner, he hasn't been very active in
Speaker 1: the business since since my hiring, but at least Marry
Speaker 1: Lou Yeah, tends to lean on. That's kind of like
Speaker 1: the the special quality that you get with like a
Speaker 1: small business and organizing in a small workplace is that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you can see sort of in their public
Speaker 1: communications the way that like the Zucks and the Bezos
Speaker 1: is and the rest of them feel about their employees,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can get a sense of perhaps
Speaker 1: how they might act or to their employees if they
Speaker 1: like interacted with them on a daily basis. But in
Speaker 1: a small business setting, you really get a keen view
Speaker 1: into how like the power of the employer mixes very
Speaker 1: readily with a person's like pred election towards discipline, pred
Speaker 1: election towards like personal what'd you call it personal battling? Almost?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, AND's and it's also like it's inescapable in
Speaker 3: a way that it isn't with like you know, if
Speaker 3: you're dealing with people who are you know, you're at
Speaker 3: a larger company, you're not dealing with the person. Like
Speaker 3: there's an old Chinese expression that is like heaven is
Speaker 3: high and the emperor is far away. So you know,
Speaker 3: it's like you know, like a lot of times you're
Speaker 3: dealing with okay, yeah there is like you know, your
Speaker 3: Zuckerberg is there, but he's like he never interacts with you.
Speaker 3: But with this, it's like, no, the small business tyrant
Speaker 3: is right there in your face all the time and
Speaker 3: all of the weird heady shit that they want to
Speaker 3: do in all of this sort of like you know,
Speaker 3: and I would say, this isn't just just like a
Speaker 3: unique thing of like small business owners, like people in
Speaker 3: all positions, like in all portions of of like the
Speaker 3: class society have in them kind of like the capacity
Speaker 3: for cruelty. And there's just people like that, but they
Speaker 3: don't normally have the ability to just do it to
Speaker 3: you directly in your face. And that's yeah, and that's
Speaker 3: like that's you know, this is what you've been talking about,
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, you have like these small business tyrants,
Speaker 3: and like every suddenly in the same way that like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, you're dealing with like like one of
Speaker 3: the random King Louis and you're like in the court
Speaker 3: and suddenly just like the fact that this guy doesn't
Speaker 3: like people going to the bathroom means that everyone around
Speaker 3: him doesn't get it, doesn't get doesn't get a shit, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's just like, yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no exactly. It's like it's actually an argument that
Speaker 1: she's deployed in her Reddit correspondence, which has been skimmingly
Speaker 1: a pretty active part of her spare time that she's
Speaker 1: not spending at the bargaining table with us, you know,
Speaker 1: made this comparison of like this isn't a question about
Speaker 1: oligarchs or whatever. And it's true, like the small businessman
Speaker 1: is not an oligarch, but the small business is a
Speaker 1: microcosm of like the larger capitalist social order. And while
Speaker 1: the small business man might not have the scope of
Speaker 1: power of the oligarch, or like the actual capital resources
Speaker 1: of an oligarch, the behavior certainly rhymes yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again it's like it's a lot of it
Speaker 3: is about it's just how much power you have access to, right, Like,
Speaker 3: lots of people can be like this, but only the few,
Speaker 3: the proud, the small business type get to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And you know, ultimately the employer or wherever
Speaker 1: they are, they're in this privileged position of being able
Speaker 1: to Yeah, you spend most people more on than like
Speaker 1: a thirty your life at work. Yeah, the employer has
Speaker 1: this unique power to dictate what that third of your
Speaker 1: life looks like. You know, yeah, we talk about I mean, shit,
Speaker 1: we don't. People are not so much talking about democracy
Speaker 1: writ large in the US in the same way now
Speaker 1: they used to. But you know, you talk about this
Speaker 1: idea of like living in a democracy, but democracy ends
Speaker 1: at the shop door.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, And like the kind of power that these
Speaker 3: people have is something that like these people get to
Speaker 3: control when you can go to the bathroom, like what
Speaker 3: clothes you where, like literally what you can do, what
Speaker 3: you can say at any given time. If you employed
Speaker 3: the exact level of control that your boss has over
Speaker 3: you on a state, it would be a totalitarian state.
Speaker 10: And yet everyone seems to think that this is sort
Speaker 10: of like, you know, and this is this annoytment I've
Speaker 10: been making about like Trump is that like yeah, this
Speaker 10: is this is this is.
Speaker 3: What sort of Trump and Elon and like the whole
Speaker 3: Caudra and and you know, and Petrick, if you want
Speaker 3: to go into the sort of ideologues behind it too,
Speaker 3: this is what people like Peter Thiel want when when
Speaker 3: they say run the government like a business, what they
Speaker 3: mean is that they want to like to import the
Speaker 3: sort of like just the pure tyranny of the workplace
Speaker 3: and expand it into the entire political system so that
Speaker 3: they're they're like sort of pure like totalitarian corporate rule
Speaker 3: can't be challenged.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, wasn't it Missollini who declined the
Speaker 1: term the corporate state?
Speaker 3: Probably, although it would not surprise me if it was
Speaker 3: like some other fascist theorists and Wessolini just started saying
Speaker 3: it because yeah, but yeah, like that's you know, that's
Speaker 3: a substantive thing here. And what this also means is
Speaker 3: that like, even in ways that are sort of hard
Speaker 3: to see, like a fight over democracy in the workplace,
Speaker 3: right is a is a part of the larger struggle
Speaker 3: against all of all the things that's happening because if
Speaker 3: you know, if we're gonna survive this, and if we're
Speaker 3: going to make sure that we don't all live in
Speaker 3: a world where you like, if you say the wrong thing,
Speaker 3: you can be sent to a prison camp. Democracy, if
Speaker 3: you want this to survive, is going to have to
Speaker 3: march into like into the layer of the beast. It
Speaker 3: is going to have to go into the source of
Speaker 3: this tyranny itself, which is the workplace, and it's going
Speaker 3: to have to crush it there.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, I mean, you said it very
Speaker 1: very aptly there, Like the corporate structure maras the totalitarian structure,
Speaker 1: and you know, not only does like fighting the corporate
Speaker 1: structure at the level of labor makes sense in that right,
Speaker 1: labor is what enables the flow of capital that sustains
Speaker 1: the totalitarian state. But also, like you said, you're you're
Speaker 1: you're addressing the structure in its I don't know, I
Speaker 1: almost think of it as like the you know, like
Speaker 1: Grendel's mother and the then or whatever, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: the the authoritarian thing is like it's like Grendel maybe,
Speaker 1: and like Grendel's mother is like this capitalist, hierarchical structure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you take it on with an insistence on
Speaker 1: workplace democracy as kind of libby as that's that sounds.
Speaker 3: Okay, speaking speaking speaking of capitalist will tellitariotism. Here are
Speaker 3: the ads that we are required to run by.
Speaker 13: Our let's hear him.
Speaker 3: And we are back. So let's get back a little
Speaker 3: bit towards the more concrete parts of the union though
Speaker 3: I do have more to say eventually at some point
Speaker 3: about the way that sort of labor liberalism co opted
Speaker 3: democracy in the workplace from like you know, the idea
Speaker 3: the old sort of like anarchist idea of workers control. Right,
Speaker 3: But okay, so one thing I wanted to talk about
Speaker 3: before we sort of get into the more formal stuff
Speaker 3: about about the strike is I was I'm really interested
Speaker 3: to hear you talk about what the process of kind
Speaker 3: of onboarding you to get more involved in the union is,
Speaker 3: because this is something that like, okay, every functional union
Speaker 3: wants to do this, Like if your union is not
Speaker 3: trying to bring people like its members like more to
Speaker 3: get more involved in the union and become more of
Speaker 3: the people becoming like core organizers and becoming you know,
Speaker 3: like they're the people who are doing your bargain and
Speaker 3: people are doing anything like your union is, there's weird
Speaker 3: shit about it and you should probably like be looking
Speaker 3: into that, but it's pretty hard. So, yeah, can can
Speaker 3: you talk a bit about the process of like how
Speaker 3: you were brought in and what sort of worked and
Speaker 3: what didn't.
Speaker 1: Well, I think ultimately, like the easiest thing is a
Speaker 1: sort of ramping up degree of like responsibility within the organization. Right, So,
Speaker 1: like at the start, I would come to some of
Speaker 1: the meetings, I would miss some of them. I would
Speaker 1: be like, Oh, I'm fucking so busy with whatever is
Speaker 1: going on in my life. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: supportive and sort of involved, but you know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: like I mean, I ston wasn't doing things like this.
Speaker 1: And you know, eventually one we like kind of persisted
Speaker 1: as a union over a longer period of time, the
Speaker 1: necessity of involvement became more like obvious to me, right,
Speaker 1: And that's that's a hard ask. You know, Like you're organizing,
Speaker 1: you want momentum and you want yeah, you want to
Speaker 1: be able to change your conditions for the better as
Speaker 1: soon as possible. Yeah, And with with urban or you know,
Speaker 1: lots of workplaces that need unionization have high turnover, right,
Speaker 1: and Urban Ore is no different. And so I saw,
Speaker 1: you know, like some of the more committed elements of
Speaker 1: the bargaining unit be fired or quit or whatever, and
Speaker 1: you know they would be replaced with other people and
Speaker 1: you have to begin the work of organizing over again.
Speaker 1: And with some of them you succeed with something that
Speaker 1: you don't, you know, you have different dynamics. I feel
Speaker 1: like the hiring procedures may have changed a little bit
Speaker 1: afteryone our election, but you know, I can't say that
Speaker 1: for certain. So the sort of like necessity of like
Speaker 1: keeping that like flame going, especially after we had won
Speaker 1: the election we were in contract bargain for a long
Speaker 1: period of time, made me feel like a sort of
Speaker 1: sense of like I need to be more active in
Speaker 1: this because like this is an important struggle and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I see our like main organizers taking on like a
Speaker 1: fuck load of work and like needing more voices at
Speaker 1: the table, needing more more uh, needing more people to
Speaker 1: be more involved. And so like I, you know, volunteered
Speaker 1: to run for treasure. That was the only candidate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but theoretically I could have been voted down. They could
Speaker 1: have been like I don't know about fessor, And you know,
Speaker 1: like ended up having like a little bit more direct responsibilities.
Speaker 1: Like I was like receiving some of the donations to
Speaker 1: our strike phone once we started fundraising for the strike
Speaker 1: and to keep track of those and you know, put
Speaker 1: some special bank account and then eventually take that money,
Speaker 1: get it to like the the i w W branch,
Speaker 1: uh hand it hand a big check to dono that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And just like having like little things
Speaker 1: to be doing, like yeah, spurs involvement other people, you know,
Speaker 1: became responsible for like parts of social media outreach, graphics,
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and also like sort of I guess,
Speaker 1: giving people the opportunity to leverage their individual connections within
Speaker 1: the work because every workplace is like clicks and groups
Speaker 1: and subgroups and all that to leverage those connections in
Speaker 1: like service of bettering everyone's conditions. So like to a
Speaker 1: certain degree, I've I've been like important as like an
Speaker 1: envoid to my particular department because it's our job takes
Speaker 1: us away from the job site or like from like
Speaker 1: the main the main work site often and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: so there's less of a direct avenue for communication there. Ye,
Speaker 1: So I can say that's my experience. Yeah, as far
Speaker 1: as organizing goes, like, I'm easy. You know, I was
Speaker 1: already I was already believing in it, and like there
Speaker 1: are others that it have that it's been harder. I
Speaker 1: will say though, that the strike itself is I mean,
Speaker 1: a strike is a conflict, and when you're in conflict together,
Speaker 1: it's an extremely cohering force. Which isn't to say that
Speaker 1: like necessarily you want your unionization to come to a strike,
Speaker 1: but perhaps like raising a sort of consciousness of like
Speaker 1: the fact that like you are ultimately like in conflict
Speaker 1: with the boss. The boss doesn't want you to unionize.
Speaker 1: The boss doesn't want you to force concessions out of them,
Speaker 1: and that like, as a union we are taking on
Speaker 1: this like responsibility to look after each other's interests and
Speaker 1: to like support each other like tangibly in terms of
Speaker 1: like what we do, and also intangibly in terms of
Speaker 1: like the kind of conversations we have around like morale
Speaker 1: planning and stuff like that, you know, to succeed together.
Speaker 1: I think those are like really potent cohering forces. And
Speaker 1: you know, it helps to have a good you know,
Speaker 1: the boss is the best organizer and at urban or
Speaker 1: it's you don't go along without coming head to head
Speaker 1: with like the with with conflict with ownership or with
Speaker 1: like ownership through the mediator of management. Like although like
Speaker 1: support for the union might be divided a bit at
Speaker 1: the workplace, one thing that's pretty universal is like frustration
Speaker 1: with ownership.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, okay, speaking of speaking of a frustration with ownership,
Speaker 3: it is time for us to go to ads one
Speaker 3: last time.
Speaker 1: And that beautiful.
Speaker 3: But then africames back strike strike, strike, strike.
Speaker 18: Strike, strike, strike, just after this message, Okay, we are
Speaker 18: back from a bunch of people who almost as we
Speaker 18: do not want you to go on strike.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so let's let's let's let's get into the
Speaker 3: process of how you actually organize a strike. Yeah, let's
Speaker 3: start from just like the very beginning, one of the
Speaker 3: kinds of things that were happening that you know, made
Speaker 3: people think that you needed to do this in the
Speaker 3: first place.
Speaker 1: So the strike itself is a result specifically, like, this
Speaker 1: is a ULP strike, So it's in response to something
Speaker 1: that falls under the category of unfairly or practice according
Speaker 1: to the National Labor Relations Act, And it's you know,
Speaker 1: backed up by charges filed with the board as opposed
Speaker 1: to like what's called an economic strike, which is a
Speaker 1: strike that is specifically about economic issues at the workplace.
Speaker 1: So the specific ulp that's being cited for our strike
Speaker 1: is bad faith bargaining. And for us, what that's looked
Speaker 1: like is two years of completely stalled negotiations where we
Speaker 1: are basically being faced with a take it or leave
Speaker 1: it offer of the status quo in the vast majority
Speaker 1: of our proposals. Yeah, bargaining is very, very slow, and
Speaker 1: ownership has held tightly to the offense at us having
Speaker 1: unionized it all, which to my understanding is pretty typical
Speaker 1: of small workplaces. The ownership takes it very personally, and
Speaker 1: that personal feeling of the trail or whatever becomes like
Speaker 1: a stumbling block in the negotiation process. I know that
Speaker 1: was the case with mos Another's bookshop in Berkeley that
Speaker 1: also unionized with the AWW. So, you know, we've had
Speaker 1: our whole proposal on ownership's table for a year and
Speaker 1: a half now. We had started with a bargaining proposal.
Speaker 1: By proposal, they said, well, how can we possibly agree
Speaker 1: to any of this without understanding the full context, especially
Speaker 1: the economic context, And so we gave them a full
Speaker 1: proposal and they said, oh my god, how do you
Speaker 1: expect us to read all of this in time to bargain?
Speaker 1: This is way too much. How we're going to evaluate
Speaker 1: this all? Oh my god, we got to do a
Speaker 1: proposal by proposal. So it's been really unclear to us
Speaker 1: if ownership has even actually like read the entirety of
Speaker 1: our collective bargaining agreement that we put on their desk.
Speaker 1: I know that in the past lawyers have the lawyers
Speaker 1: have said things like, oh my, my eyes glazed over
Speaker 1: when I read your email, So I missed such and
Speaker 1: such part of it.
Speaker 3: It's literally your job contract.
Speaker 9: You have one job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you would think like a lawyer would have like
Speaker 1: a little bit more of like Jesus, like a tweet
Speaker 1: tweet sized reading capacity.
Speaker 3: But well they give any one law degrees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or like ownerships saying like well, I just thought
Speaker 1: it was so ridiculous. I didn't fel they need to
Speaker 1: read all of it. Stuff like that. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: does these readers bad faith bargaining?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's bad by like the standards of like normal,
Speaker 3: it takes two years to do a fucking contract because
Speaker 3: they're just not doing shit, and like, good lord, usually.
Speaker 1: In those long contract negotiations by two years at least,
Speaker 1: there's like been some progress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well that they've read the proposals, Like yes, okay,
Speaker 3: will will will your boss show up to your meeting
Speaker 3: an hour and a half late because they didn't bother
Speaker 3: to look through the proposals until literally right at the
Speaker 3: time the meeting was going to start. Yes, but will
Speaker 3: they have done it?
Speaker 1: Usually yes, m m yeah. And in fact, in the
Speaker 1: sort of company propaganda where they're claiming that this like
Speaker 1: bad faith bargaining charge has no grounds, they're like ownership
Speaker 1: has come to like twenty five to thirty bargaining sessions,
Speaker 1: neglecting to mention there events we're in the range of
Speaker 1: like fifty to sixty, And of course maybe they've shown
Speaker 1: that more than half.
Speaker 7: I don't want to be libelous, but yeah, but still
Speaker 7: like if at the point of which you are failing
Speaker 7: to show up for any bargaining session, I think you
Speaker 7: can like, look, I have.
Speaker 3: Always advocated that if that, if that advantagement doesn't show
Speaker 3: up to a bargaining session, you should just be allowed
Speaker 3: to take the company, because clearly they're not serious about it.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know they've been talking about a worker
Speaker 1: cup for twenty years, not performance reforms, but yeah, so
Speaker 1: those kind of things. And then like finally, like one
Speaker 1: of the bigger precipitating factors is, like we've been trying
Speaker 1: to bargain over economics, ownership has implied a lot of
Speaker 1: times that they cannot afford to pay what we're asking.
Speaker 1: They say it'll ruin the company, they say a company
Speaker 1: will go bankrupt, they say it's unsustainable, they say this
Speaker 1: and that, and then when they get to the table,
Speaker 1: they say, we have never and will never are your
Speaker 1: inability to pay. Because the thing is is that to
Speaker 1: say inability to pay right, it obligates you to furnish
Speaker 1: information to prove that, and they, for whatever reason do
Speaker 1: not want. Wow, I wonder why British financial information. So
Speaker 1: these have been some of the sticking points, and that's
Speaker 1: why we've been out on the picky line for about
Speaker 1: three weeks now, still waiting for them to come to
Speaker 1: the table.
Speaker 3: God damn it. So okay, let's let's talk about like
Speaker 3: the just sort of the process of like how the
Speaker 3: discussions went for doing this, What did those sort of
Speaker 3: look like, and how did how did you sort of
Speaker 3: you know, just like plant plan this thing out.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess the process towards like deciding that I
Speaker 1: needed to come to a strike was like, you know
Speaker 1: that that is a sort of thing that builds over
Speaker 1: a long period of time. You know, you see ownership
Speaker 1: doing bad faith brackening. You go, what more conciliatory approaches
Speaker 1: can we take first? You know, can we try this?
Speaker 1: Can we try offering this to make you know, can
Speaker 1: we try this display of good faith? And we offered
Speaker 1: this compromise. One of the things that was a big
Speaker 1: part was of some of the not exactly contract related discussions,
Speaker 1: but like has been talking for a long time about
Speaker 1: a co op transition that it's never happened. It's been
Speaker 1: twenty years, and you know, now that we've unionized, they're
Speaker 1: like our people who we were talking to about doing
Speaker 1: the co op thing, they don't work with unions and
Speaker 1: so the only way that they were going to be
Speaker 1: a co op is if the union goes away. And
Speaker 1: so in response to that, we said, well, we're totally
Speaker 1: opened to a transition to a co op that involves
Speaker 1: the union, and here is such and such organization. It
Speaker 1: was our lead negotiator who actually provide the information some
Speaker 1: or the name of the organization, but you know, here's
Speaker 1: such and such organization that actually specifically deals with union
Speaker 1: co op workplace transitions. Was not received with interest. So
Speaker 1: it's like your massive catalogue of bad faith bargaining and
Speaker 1: end up in your strategy discussions with the whole unit
Speaker 1: testing the wires of like when is too much? What's
Speaker 1: our red line that we need to take more direct action?
Speaker 1: And what that began with for us was first, well,
Speaker 1: if we're going to have if we're going to have
Speaker 1: a strike, we need funds for it. The IWW is
Speaker 1: an organization that affords its unions a lot of freedom
Speaker 1: and a lot of mutual support and solidarity, is not
Speaker 1: an organization with a huge amount of money. And so
Speaker 1: we did start with trying to get like a sense
Speaker 1: of like what we could get from you know, the
Speaker 1: branches reserve, and we moved on from that to how
Speaker 1: we were going to fundraise and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: we held informational pickets that had donations, we sold shirts, posters,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. We held like a big strike fundraise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think something around like a month in advance of
Speaker 1: our or it was maybe like a month and a
Speaker 1: half in advance of our of our strike. We also
Speaker 1: gave management like a courtesy notice about this so they
Speaker 1: could pass it on to ownership, saying, hey, we've started
Speaker 1: a fundraising for a strike in the hopes that like
Speaker 1: being aware that we're taking active preparations to go on
Speaker 1: strike would facilitate bargaining.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it works, I've seen I've seen it before. I've
Speaker 3: seen it before.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it works, yeah, and sometimes, you know, sometimes you
Speaker 1: end up on a podcast talking about how it didn't.
Speaker 1: You never know what until you try it, You never know.
Speaker 1: But we did. Yeah, we did give them that sort
Speaker 1: of early warning, and our readiness to strike kind of
Speaker 1: like depended then on like where we were at in
Speaker 1: the fundraising process. So we continue to sort of listening donations,
Speaker 1: reaching out to various organizations in the area that are,
Speaker 1: you know, pro labor. You know, we talked to like
Speaker 1: DSA whenever because you know, they have their like a
Speaker 1: workplace Organizing committee, yeah walk Yeah, and various other you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: organizations that are pro labor. And once we got to
Speaker 1: a point where you felt like we were reasonably like
Speaker 1: prepared to sustain they open end to strike because that's
Speaker 1: what we're doing. This is a strike with no set
Speaker 1: end date. Then we announced our intention to hold a
Speaker 1: strike vote. We held our strike vote, strike vote passes.
Speaker 1: The ownership was made aware at the barning session before
Speaker 1: the strike vote, so it was like the Monday before
Speaker 1: the strike vote, which is on I think like a Saturday.
Speaker 1: So in totally it was like around maybe like two
Speaker 1: weeks in change that they knew like definite possibility past
Speaker 1: the strike vote. Twelve days later, drike begins with unfortunately
Speaker 1: no bargaining in between. Good lord, Yeah, the whole way.
Speaker 1: You hope that they'll come to the table. You hope that.
Speaker 3: They will come to their senses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, take take the risks seriously, take the risk seriously.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, this is not what's happened here. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think part of that is maybe an age thing. Here,
Speaker 1: ownership is in their eighties, and it pretty consistently held
Speaker 1: the view that like the union is like a bunch
Speaker 1: of young people who don't know what the hell they're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, even though like the age range
Speaker 1: of our union spans the age range of the workplace.
Speaker 1: We've got people in their fifties and forties and thirties
Speaker 1: and twenties, you know, which is which is of course
Speaker 1: the problematic group, but yeah, the young radicals. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's there's been this sort of patronizing attitude that I
Speaker 1: think as a resulted in like a real strategic failure
Speaker 1: on their part to seriously prepare for the strike or
Speaker 1: you know, bargain to avoid it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: One more fundraising thing that I just I just want
Speaker 3: to mention this for people, if you, if you, if
Speaker 3: you're trying to fundraise for your own things, something that's
Speaker 3: actually we've had a lot of success with up in
Speaker 3: Portland is getting bands to do benefit shows. So like,
Speaker 3: because it's Portland, right, Like, the local hardcore scene has
Speaker 3: a lot of bands that you know, are just supportive
Speaker 3: of stuff, and we've do not this for a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of different causes, and this is this this this
Speaker 3: can also be a good way to just sort of
Speaker 3: do fundraising things that are fun and also raise morale
Speaker 3: because yeah, you're doing the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah I was, I was. I was hoping to have
Speaker 1: that be more of a thing with our fundraiser, but yeah.
Speaker 3: It canna be hard to organize sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the people I knew were didn't get quite the
Speaker 1: response I was hoping from the community.
Speaker 3: If you are hardcore band. If you are abandon Berkeley,
Speaker 3: there's still.
Speaker 1: Time that is that is totally a good option. What
Speaker 1: we did, we ended up doing that. There was music,
Speaker 1: but it's also like one of our organizers is really
Speaker 1: into cooking. You like, did like a barbecue thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sold food stuff like that and had a raffle. A
Speaker 1: raffle is a great way to fundraise for us. We
Speaker 1: like raffled off like stuff we have. But honestly, you
Speaker 1: can even do like a straight monetary raffle is still
Speaker 1: a great fundraising tool, you know, where everyone puts in money,
Speaker 1: the winner, the top freet winners or whatever get like
Speaker 1: a certain percentage like the total pool and the rest
Speaker 1: of the pool. Is is a to be cause it's
Speaker 1: really simple, really effective.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a reason it's not good, but there is
Speaker 3: a reason why a whole bunch of state education budget
Speaker 3: are footed are footed by the lattery.
Speaker 1: It does work and where the people love to gamble
Speaker 1: much better. Yeah, he says.
Speaker 3: I be turned off her lunch her path of exile
Speaker 3: to lunch break to come to this interview.
Speaker 1: How such cases.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's let's speaking of I guess this is
Speaker 3: something that has been tied into sort of all and
Speaker 3: saying here, but yeah, let's talk about you know, sort
Speaker 3: of maintaining the strike when it starts to sort of Yeah,
Speaker 3: what have been the processes of like keeping morale up
Speaker 3: and keeping people engaged?
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, I mean definitely, when you go into
Speaker 1: a strike, you want to go in with a militant
Speaker 1: core group. You want to basically be sure that everyone
Speaker 1: is committed to holding the line until a collective decision
Speaker 1: is made. Otherwise you don't want people like peeling off.
Speaker 1: That's really bad pr for your strike. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: like the bosses will grab on that. So like for instance,
Speaker 1: like you know, we have some people who are respecting
Speaker 1: our picket line but chose not to pick it with us,
Speaker 1: which is fine as far as I'm concerned. But the
Speaker 1: issue with that PR wise is that now the boss
Speaker 1: is are saying and they're like tallying up of who's
Speaker 1: working and who's not working. They're counting them as working.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like, oh, it's only whatever they've been
Speaker 1: saying eight people. I think it's more nine or ten
Speaker 1: we're on the picket line. But the rest is the
Speaker 1: rest of the employees are working. They count themselves as
Speaker 1: employees in that count of course, and they count these
Speaker 1: these people who are not crossing the picket line but
Speaker 1: not on it also as among that count of the
Speaker 1: rest of the employees they are working what and they've
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to really inflate that count because in
Speaker 1: a sort of you know, classic move. Really all the
Speaker 1: moves are classic. You know, you read your organizing books
Speaker 1: and you're like, can it happen here? It does? So
Speaker 1: like we got a lot of new assistant managers after
Speaker 1: we want our election, so right now, like the composition
Speaker 1: of the workplace right got thirty four people fifteen managers.
Speaker 3: I really I wonder when we're going to see the
Speaker 3: day where you have companies that have six like non
Speaker 3: managers and fifty five managers. Like I feel like we're
Speaker 3: not that far out.
Speaker 1: Well, we're leading the charge here. We have a department
Speaker 1: that's two people a manager and assistant manager. Assistant manager
Speaker 1: managing god. So yeah, you know they're they're they've had
Speaker 1: these particular angles to you know, sort of do their
Speaker 1: propaganda from. And I mean, honestly, I think a big
Speaker 1: part of again, the boss is the best organizer, and
Speaker 1: like a thing that keeps you committed on the line
Speaker 1: is like reading all this bullshit they say about you
Speaker 1: and knowing otherwise and being able to talk to each
Speaker 1: other and be like have you seen this? Isn't this crazy?
Speaker 1: Like what the hell? Yeah? Also, you know is uh,
Speaker 1: this is where the sort of like seeds of organizing
Speaker 1: all the way that you start all the way back
Speaker 1: at the beginning of your union campaign become you know,
Speaker 1: you show themselves is like really important again because like
Speaker 1: the start right, anyone will tell you is it's like
Speaker 1: getting to know people, like being like, you know, being
Speaker 1: on like a hey, how's it going kind of level,
Speaker 1: you know, and having like a personal rapport with the
Speaker 1: people you're on the line with is vital just in
Speaker 1: the sense that you know, obviously like you know each other,
Speaker 1: you're sort of friends, You're going to be more likely
Speaker 1: to stick up for each other. But also like you're
Speaker 1: out there nine hours walking in a circle with these people, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you got to you got to have positive,
Speaker 1: strong relationships with them. You want to be able to
Speaker 1: have the kind of rapport where like you can talk
Speaker 1: to people about like what they're feeling anxious about, you know,
Speaker 1: like where they're worried and like the strike strategy, like
Speaker 1: you know, you need to have that like trust between
Speaker 1: each other that you can have like an open dialogue
Speaker 1: about how it feels to be on the picket line,
Speaker 1: because you're not going to maintain morale if ever, if
Speaker 1: like everyone feels like they've got things they got a
Speaker 1: hold in about it, like yeah, there's a room to
Speaker 1: be like shit, like are they going to close the business?
Speaker 1: Like and what are we going to do? And like
Speaker 1: sort of like talk through that from a from a
Speaker 1: place beyond like you know, like what you're not letting
Speaker 1: it speak into a crowd of a million people or whatever.
Speaker 1: You're just like two people, Yeah, going through a stressful
Speaker 1: experience together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and you have to actually grapple with that
Speaker 3: in a way. That's not the sort of like weird
Speaker 3: corporate like we had to improve morale things like that's
Speaker 3: not what that means. It means, like you know, it
Speaker 3: means actually grappling and engaging with people's feelings how and
Speaker 3: what they need in a moment and yeah, and their
Speaker 3: fears and their concerns and yeah, you can't just sort
Speaker 3: of brush them aside. You have to actually grapple with it.
Speaker 3: Because that's that's that's what doing this stuff means.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, having like these authentic conversations with people because
Speaker 1: like like yeah, that's like a totally great point you
Speaker 1: bring up there, Like the hr speak, that's the bosses tool,
Speaker 1: and it's the boss's tool to divide and create disunity.
Speaker 1: So you can't lean on that model for morale within
Speaker 1: your union. It just creates distrust.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean I've seen that happen with unions
Speaker 3: where it's like, you guys did not do a good
Speaker 3: job of like talking to people about this, and like yeah,
Speaker 3: and it can be really disruptive to attempts to do this.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, if you do it well,
Speaker 3: it's like it's the most powerful single thing that you
Speaker 3: can like possibly do. It's like forging relationships that are
Speaker 3: based on like the actual experience of having gone through
Speaker 3: struggle together and having had to like literally had to
Speaker 3: face your fields on the picket line.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Like ideally, you know, the union is a
Speaker 1: is a community, and it's a community of interest, right,
Speaker 1: It's a community of work interest. But it is ideally
Speaker 1: a community. It's not a family, right, and it's certainly
Speaker 1: not not not a family in the way that the
Speaker 1: bosses will type of the workplaces. But it is a community,
Speaker 1: and it's a community in the way that that an
Speaker 1: employer's idea of a community is fundamentally like incompatible.
Speaker 3: With Yeah, there's this this pickI Osto Walt line that
Speaker 3: I think about a lot from her book in Defensive Fluting,
Speaker 3: where she talks about how I feel like it was
Speaker 3: Ferguson that this is about where like the police chiefs
Speaker 3: talking about the damage to the community, and they keep
Speaker 3: saying our Walmart. It's like going into a Walmart and
Speaker 3: buying something is not a community, right, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: they like that like those those kinds of relations are
Speaker 3: not actual community relations. But when the boss was talking
Speaker 3: about community, that's what they mean. They mean like like
Speaker 3: our collective community Walmart. They mean preserving the relation of
Speaker 3: extraction that they have. Yeah, and we are, you know,
Speaker 3: using the same word and reading something literally so radically different.
Speaker 1: Than that, And you have to make sure you're in
Speaker 1: the way that you're acting that that radically different meeting
Speaker 1: is clear. Yeah, And you know, it's funny you bring
Speaker 1: that up, because that's just bringing to mind, like you
Speaker 1: see the difference in those attitudes like when you're out
Speaker 1: there on the picket line, like interact because you know,
Speaker 1: our picket line a really pivotal part of it because
Speaker 1: there are so many managers in there that they're able
Speaker 1: to maintain this, like Skeleton Crew is. The community outreach
Speaker 1: part is like talking to every single person who's coming
Speaker 1: up and being like, Hey, how's it going that I've
Speaker 1: been on strike such and such long? This is what's up.
Speaker 1: Please don't cross our picket line. And you know, I've noticed.
Speaker 1: You get this real funny situation where there are the
Speaker 1: people who are like, I've shopped here for twenty years.
Speaker 1: You don't know what the hell you're talking about. I
Speaker 1: don't know you and have to be like, well, I
Speaker 1: normally at the dump get in the merchandise you're buying.
Speaker 1: But and who attribute the entire attribute everything they like
Speaker 1: about the business to the bosses. And then there's the
Speaker 1: other part of the community that is coming by frequently
Speaker 1: and like hanging out with us on on on the
Speaker 1: picket line. You know, I pet the dog and we
Speaker 1: chat about what's going on. They're like, how's the strike going.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, I know it's been rough on
Speaker 1: you guys. For such and such, and like these people
Speaker 1: are are are our shoppers too?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: But they like, yeah, they it highlights that like sort
Speaker 1: of divide in like what you think of as like
Speaker 1: community and responsibility your community, because like these people also
Speaker 1: love urbanor come here all the time, but they recognize that,
Speaker 1: like it's the workers that urban or that create it
Speaker 1: every day, you know. Yeah, And it is a company
Speaker 1: that was like founded by the individual. The individual still
Speaker 1: owns it. He did found it with his with his
Speaker 1: labor and all that he did, the labor you know,
Speaker 1: back when it was you know, only a few people
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But ultimately, a business, like any
Speaker 1: sort of social phenomenon, has to be constantly recreated in
Speaker 1: order to exist.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like the people who do the work that
Speaker 1: makes it it more than just like a room full
Speaker 1: of garbage rs. And yeah, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of the like regulars recognize that, and a lot of
Speaker 1: them you know, flip me off as they cross the
Speaker 1: big line whatever.
Speaker 3: And I think this is a good place to sort
Speaker 3: of start coming to a close on this is a
Speaker 3: fundamental question about what the nature of our society is
Speaker 3: going to be, right, Like is the fundament mental nature
Speaker 3: of our society that a community is a bunch of
Speaker 3: people who buy things, and a bunch of people who
Speaker 3: make money from you buying things, and who make money
Speaker 3: from the labor that you do, right, and then take
Speaker 3: credit for the labor, and take credit both financially for
Speaker 3: the labor and in public for the labor. Right, is
Speaker 3: that going. Is our society going to just be a
Speaker 3: bunch of pure commercial relations where a bunch of people
Speaker 3: get very very rich off of the wabor of everyone
Speaker 3: else in the society and get to rule the mess
Speaker 3: sort of like these petty tyrant kings. Or is it
Speaker 3: going to be a society where the people who produce
Speaker 3: the society control it, right? And that society is a
Speaker 3: democratic society, is an egalitarian society, is a society where
Speaker 3: people are free to do the things that they need
Speaker 3: to do, and people are free to you know, have
Speaker 3: a life where they can fucking pay for their groceries
Speaker 3: right where like you know, where where they're whe they're
Speaker 3: not forced to go to the market for all of
Speaker 3: the things that they need to live, where you can
Speaker 3: survive in a way that doesn't involve like subjecting yourself
Speaker 3: to just a tyrant for like a third of your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where where like the place that you spend like
Speaker 1: ae a third of your life is a place where
Speaker 1: you actually have like dignity.
Speaker 3: Dignity and freedom and where you know, where you don't
Speaker 3: have to go home at the end of a day
Speaker 3: of making your boss money worrying about whether you're going
Speaker 3: to be able to eat or not. And it's and
Speaker 3: that's also a society that does not involve again at
Speaker 3: the very highest level, like you getting thrown into prison camps.
Speaker 3: Mister God hates you and we can do that. We
Speaker 3: could live with that society.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the demands are not that crazy. No, And that's
Speaker 1: like the thing that we've encountered over and over again,
Speaker 1: is this this constant push and pull of people saying
Speaker 1: that like the expectation of bettering our conditions, whether it
Speaker 1: be like us on the picket line just trying to
Speaker 1: get like a stable wage and just cause employment and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, or whether it be you know, those
Speaker 1: larger societal changes that like you're talking about use butt
Speaker 1: up against these people who who have such like a
Speaker 1: paucity of imagination about what's possible. Yeah, and like about
Speaker 1: the legitimacy of trying to make something better, the legitimacy
Speaker 1: of saying, sure, I can subsist on this, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so much more as possible. Yeah, so I'm maintained
Speaker 1: that there's something more as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's possible too. And that's the thing
Speaker 3: about this world, right, is that our enemies I figured
Speaker 3: out that it actually can change.
Speaker 1: That's why they have to fight so hard. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But the thing is the fact that they can change
Speaker 3: for the worse also means that they can change.
Speaker 11: For the better.
Speaker 1: All beautiful stuff.
Speaker 3: Okay, where where can people find your strike fund? We'll
Speaker 3: also put it in the in the description.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, great, so it's on GoFundMe. I'll send you
Speaker 1: the link and it'll be down there. But also people
Speaker 1: can hit up our union Instagram. It's urban or workers
Speaker 1: with underscores between the words urban, underscore or underscore worker
Speaker 1: that we've got the link to like strike fund. And also, hey,
Speaker 1: if you're in Berkeley, you can sign up for a
Speaker 1: picket shift and you get to enjoy listening to me
Speaker 1: discourse for nine hours instead of one.
Speaker 3: It's great, it's fun. Pickets are cool and good. If
Speaker 3: you have a bit on one, you should go on one.
Speaker 3: They're great, They're great. Yeah, it's a good time.
Speaker 8: This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 8: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 8: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today.
Speaker 8: I'm joined by doctor James's Stout and Reverend doctor the
Speaker 8: Honorable Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: M hmm, that's right, Reverend doctor the honorable Evans, who
Speaker 2: is currently hacking up a fucking lung. No idea why
Speaker 2: I feel otherwise fine?
Speaker 8: Well, I'm sure you feel otherwise fine due to this
Speaker 8: great week in American history we've all been through together, Yeah,
Speaker 8: which started with a meeting between President Donald Trump and
Speaker 8: El Salvador President Buklea on Monday morning in the Oval Office,
Speaker 8: where they discussed the possibility of the United States helping
Speaker 8: to build more Seacott style facility to disappear US citizens
Speaker 8: and immigrants that the Trump administration deems criminals or terrorists.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I keep getting asked, is this the
Speaker 2: panic moment? And I don't think panic is particularly productive,
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, this is the worst case scenario. The
Speaker 2: worst case scenario is happening the President's talking about sending
Speaker 2: citizens overseas to a concentration camp. Honestly, I'm on the
Speaker 2: verge of thinking it's okay to call it a death camp.
Speaker 2: But we just don't have the data yet. There's some
Speaker 2: very concerning satellite shots that appear to show piles of bodies.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's from March of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, but it won't have.
Speaker 9: Gotten better no, no, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. This is about as bad as
Speaker 2: it could be, folks, We're in it.
Speaker 8: During that meeting, both President Bukeley and the Trump cabinet
Speaker 8: argue that there's simply no way for people sent to
Speaker 8: see God to ever return to the United States, coming
Speaker 8: up with a whole bunch of absurd observed reasons for
Speaker 8: why that is that is impossible due to due to
Speaker 8: foreign policy and safety of both El Salvador and the
Speaker 8: United States. Me and James did a whole episode on
Speaker 8: this earlier this week that you can check out on
Speaker 8: the It could Happen here feed. I'm gonna move on
Speaker 8: to an update on the student crackdowns. So ICE has
Speaker 8: targeted a third Green card holder for deportation based on
Speaker 8: pro Palestinian activism. Mosen Matuwi is a Palestinian from the
Speaker 8: West Bank who has lived in the US with a
Speaker 8: green card for a decade while studying philosophy at Columbia.
Speaker 8: He co founded the Columbia Palestinian Student Union in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty three with Mahmoud Khalil. Maduwi was arrested by Ice
Speaker 8: last Monday, April fourteenth at his citizenship interview in Vermont.
Speaker 8: Now after Khalil was arrested last month, Maduwi went into
Speaker 8: hiding and he suspected that this citizenship interview could be
Speaker 8: a honeypot, but decided to go anyway. After waiting a
Speaker 8: long time for this appointment, his lawyers quickly filed a
Speaker 8: habeas corpus petition arguing his detentions unlawful and Violet's First Amendment.
Speaker 8: A US district judge issued an order hours later that
Speaker 8: he was quote not to be removed from the United
Speaker 8: States or moved out of the territory of the District
Speaker 8: of Vermont, pending for their order of this court. Zionistocksing
Speaker 8: accounts targeted Marwi in recent weeks. I'm going to play
Speaker 8: actually this two minute clip of Marwi talking This is
Speaker 8: from December of twenty twenty three on the program sixty minutes.
Speaker 22: What was your initial reaction when you heard about the
Speaker 22: Hamas attack on October seventh.
Speaker 17: I could not believe what my eyes were seeing, where
Speaker 17: I see Hamas members getting into settlements and so on.
Speaker 17: But also the first moment I saw that, I put
Speaker 17: my hand on my heart and I started praying, knowing
Speaker 17: that there will be a huge level of revenge from
Speaker 17: the Israelis, and I was praying that this will not
Speaker 17: be the result, because it would be disastrous.
Speaker 22: The night of the rally, I believe someone in the
Speaker 22: crowd said something very anti Jewish, not just say anti Israeli,
Speaker 22: but anti Jewish.
Speaker 17: Yes, this was as a walk out on November ninth,
Speaker 17: and a person who is not affiliated with Columbia. We've
Speaker 17: never seen him, we don't know who is this guy
Speaker 17: comes down down the stairs yelling death to Jews. I
Speaker 17: was shocked. And they walked directly to the person and
Speaker 17: they told him you don't represent us because this is
Speaker 17: not something that we agree with, and directly what I've done.
Speaker 17: I tooked the megaphone and they gave a speech and
Speaker 17: they said we here are conscious, educated, students, and we
Speaker 17: know how to separate right from wrong, and what this
Speaker 17: guy has said is wrong. What this guy has said
Speaker 17: is clearly anti sematic against Jews. To be anti Semitic
Speaker 17: is unjust, is unjust, and the fight for the freedom
Speaker 17: of Palestine and the fight against anti Semetism go hand
Speaker 17: in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he said everything that would make him
Speaker 2: a respectable protester, at least based on what the fucking
Speaker 2: dims were saying last year, Like, there's nothing in there
Speaker 2: that's pro Hamas. There's nothing in anything I can tell
Speaker 2: this guy has done that his advocacy towards terrorism. But
Speaker 2: obviously that's not what matters. What matters is they have
Speaker 2: the ability to get him out, and they're doing that
Speaker 2: because of his speech.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he took a step back from protests in March
Speaker 8: of twenty twenty four, during the second wave of student
Speaker 8: protests at Columbia.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and like I believe he didn't. Isn't he like
Speaker 9: a member of the university Buddhist Club.
Speaker 8: Yes, part of why took a step back was to
Speaker 8: focus on his role in the Buddhist club as a
Speaker 8: as for I think in the past like two years,
Speaker 8: he has been participating in that on campus. Yeah, he
Speaker 8: told CBS News the day before he was detained. Quote,
Speaker 8: if my story will become another story for the struggle
Speaker 8: to have justice and democracy in this country, let it
Speaker 8: be unquote like other students who've been targeted and arrested,
Speaker 8: he has not been charged or accused of any crime,
Speaker 8: but the State Department has deemed him a threat to
Speaker 8: foreign policy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Hot to see how but I think as we're seeing it,
Speaker 9: that doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Now, last Friday, a Louisiana judge ruled in favor of
Speaker 8: the Trump administration to allow the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil,
Speaker 8: upholding the government's argument that the rarely used Cold War
Speaker 8: era statute of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows for
Speaker 8: the Secretary of State to deport aliens that pose quote
Speaker 8: adverse foreign policy consequences. The only quote unquote evidence presented
Speaker 8: in court was a two page memo written by Mark
Speaker 8: Rubio that alleges that Khalil's presence in the country threatens
Speaker 8: quote US policy had to come at anti semitism around
Speaker 8: the world and in the United States. Based on information
Speaker 8: provided by the DHS ICE and Homeland Security investigations regarding
Speaker 8: the participation and rules of Khalil in anti Semitic protests
Speaker 8: and disruptive actions which foster a hostile environment for Jewish
Speaker 8: students in the United States unquote. So there's no real
Speaker 8: evidence in this document. It is just Mark Rubio's opinion
Speaker 8: for two pages. And this is the only ever and
Speaker 8: said ever, has been held in court that resulted in
Speaker 8: the judge ruling in the government's favor.
Speaker 2: A lot of what we're seeing here is the natural
Speaker 2: conclusion to what was happening with like Dance last year
Speaker 2: talking about Haitian immigrants and admitting like, yeah, it's not
Speaker 2: literally true, but like it's true to how we feel.
Speaker 2: So it's like fine for us to spread this lie.
Speaker 2: Like they're just declaring these people terrorists and even attempting
Speaker 2: to get evidence for that claim, like they certainly have.
Speaker 1: No need to.
Speaker 2: And the media that like I'm seeing coverage on Fox
Speaker 2: particularly that's just repeatedly framing this as like the left
Speaker 2: is angry that like a terrorist got deborded, right, yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean this is the same stuff that we
Speaker 8: saw at the RNC where they referred to students as terrorists,
Speaker 8: like just completely completely flattened. Like every single person at
Speaker 8: a college campus who is upset about a genocide or
Speaker 8: criticizes the state of Israel, that person is a terrorist.
Speaker 8: Lawyers for Khalil until April twenty third to file an
Speaker 8: appeal to halt the deportation, and they plan to file
Speaker 8: an asylum case on his behalf. A separate habeas petition
Speaker 8: case is playing out in a New Jersey court. This week,
Speaker 8: NBC News reviewed over one hundred pages of documents from
Speaker 8: the federal government and Khalil's legal team containing information about
Speaker 8: his immigration process, work experience, and activism. These documents showed
Speaker 8: that the government used unverified tabloid reporting against Khalil and
Speaker 8: contained contradictory information yep, so, essentially using New York Post
Speaker 8: style publications as a pretext for ICE to execute arrests
Speaker 8: against people who are Green card holders, legal permanent residents
Speaker 8: of the United States. We're going to go on break
Speaker 8: and come back to talk about Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 2: Finally, finally something fun.
Speaker 9: All right, we're back.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna throw to Robert Evans for an update on
Speaker 8: everyone's favorite roadkill consumer.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, RFK Junior. He's not just strapping the carcass
Speaker 2: of a dead whale to the head of his truck
Speaker 2: and driving down the highway. Now, he is while kind
Speaker 2: of launching a genocidal campaign against people with autism.
Speaker 8: Kind of doing a national eugenics program.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of calling a large group of people in
Speaker 2: this country useless eaters.
Speaker 8: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Fuck.
Speaker 2: And the gist of what's happening is they just had
Speaker 2: a new quote unquote study come out that looked at
Speaker 2: like apparently rising autism rates. And again I've covered this
Speaker 2: a lot. The reason why rates of autism are increasing
Speaker 2: every credible scientist degrees is because we're looking for it
Speaker 2: more and so we're finding more of it and we
Speaker 2: have a broader understanding of what it is. RFK Junior
Speaker 2: is obsessed with the idea, the image of autism as
Speaker 2: a disease that is spreading due to an environmental contagion,
Speaker 2: and he is trying to make the case that this
Speaker 2: is a calamity. He has promised. The most recent promise
Speaker 2: he made is that by September the government will release
Speaker 2: exhaustive studies that will identify the environmental causes of autism.
Speaker 2: And he made a statement, autism destroys families. More importantly,
Speaker 2: it destroys our greatest resource, which is our children. These
Speaker 2: are children who should not be suffering like this. He
Speaker 2: is called autism a preventable disease, which it is not.
Speaker 2: While there is evidence that some of the factors that
Speaker 2: can be relevant in autism expressing are environmental, the vast
Speaker 2: majority of it seems to be genetic. There's no evidence,
Speaker 2: and there have been repeated studies there has anything to
Speaker 2: do with vaccines. He's positive a couple of other theories
Speaker 2: as to what causes it, including mold and diet, and
Speaker 2: these are largely based on what are already kind of quack,
Speaker 2: both autism treatments and quack autism causes that are are
Speaker 2: popular within the biomedical movement, the experimental biomedical movement, which
Speaker 2: is the fake autism medical industrial complex that we covered
Speaker 2: recently on the Behind the Bastards. One of the things
Speaker 2: I think is really worrying about the language that Kennedy
Speaker 2: is using is how similar it sounds to a lot
Speaker 2: of what you were seeing in the early nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: out of the Nazi state, what we know of as
Speaker 2: the Holocaust, which is generally a term. Generally, Primarily when
Speaker 2: people use that term they are talking about the mass
Speaker 2: killing of Jews and other ethnic minorities in Central Europe
Speaker 2: by the Nazi state. That got a lot of its start,
Speaker 2: and there's a couple of different places got it start. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the wild concentration camps and the political concentration camps are
Speaker 2: in that heritage. When it comes to the actual mass
Speaker 2: killing of people, the very origin of that was in
Speaker 2: getting rid of the disabled.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The term that was used in Nazi propaganda for these
Speaker 2: people was useless eaters. And this is the first time
Speaker 2: that the Nazis tested out gassing right in large numbers.
Speaker 2: And he hasn't used literally the term useless eaters, but
Speaker 2: he talks a lot about. One of the terms he
Speaker 2: uses is severe autism, right, which is not the term
Speaker 2: that is popularly used now for people who have kind
Speaker 2: of profound autism. I think is the preferred term for
Speaker 2: people who do have a significantly higher degree of like
Speaker 2: disability as a result of their autism or that correlates
Speaker 2: with their autism, right, as opposed to the vast majority
Speaker 2: of people who can be diagnosed to somewhere on the
Speaker 2: spectrum who are able to live independently. Right, And Kennedy
Speaker 2: sort of does the thing that is very common within
Speaker 2: this community of sort of number one, correlating that to
Speaker 2: everybody with autism and talking about it as if it
Speaker 2: is a disaster that justifies any kind of response, because
Speaker 2: the people who have profound autism aren't real people in
Speaker 2: his eyes. He made a statement quote, these are kids
Speaker 2: who will never pay taxes, They'll never hold a job,
Speaker 2: they'll never play baseball, they'll never write a poem, they'll
Speaker 2: never go out on a many of them will never
Speaker 2: use a toilet unassisted. We have to recognize we are
Speaker 2: doing this to our children. And first off, having taught
Speaker 2: a lot of kids with profound autism, yes they could
Speaker 2: play baseball, like a number of them held jobs. Now
Speaker 2: do a lot of them need assisted living? Sure, But
Speaker 2: like number one, that's always been the case. There's no
Speaker 2: evidence that people with this kind of autom that there's
Speaker 2: any sort of raise in this right. What's raised is
Speaker 2: the number of people who are being diagnosed. Right, And
Speaker 2: he's using this kind of scare term, right, this idea
Speaker 2: that like parents, you need to be frightened that something
Speaker 2: is going to steal your children from you in order
Speaker 2: to justify the dehumanization of everyone with autism, as well
Speaker 2: as radical biomedical experimental procedures that are going to do
Speaker 2: harm at scale to lots of kids. One of his
Speaker 2: favorite new terms is epidemic denial, which is the term
Speaker 2: that he's using for people who say that, like, this
Speaker 2: is not an epidemic, this is something that we're now
Speaker 2: screening for more. He's kind of kind of repurposing the
Speaker 2: language of like vaccine denial and whatnot as like a
Speaker 2: denial that this is sort of an immediate crisis that
Speaker 2: needs to be hit, which I find interesting.
Speaker 8: Also like co opting like COVID conscious language.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, I think the way he and his group
Speaker 9: were referred to during COVID he's now using in the
Speaker 9: same fashion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's interesting. His initial promise was that like,
Speaker 2: by September, will know why autism rates are on the rise.
Speaker 2: That's not really a thing. You can't make science work
Speaker 2: that way, Like you can't guarantee that.
Speaker 9: Like you said, we already know because people are seeking
Speaker 9: out diagnoses, like because right, we have better awareness of
Speaker 9: it now.
Speaker 2: But he's kind of altered that recently, being like, no,
Speaker 2: we'll have some answers by September, and you know, we're
Speaker 2: going to get those answers by removing the taboo so
Speaker 2: that doctors won't get gas lit by blaming autism on
Speaker 2: vaccines or know, mold exposure or the like. So that's
Speaker 2: that's what we can look forward to in the near future.
Speaker 2: From our good friend RFK Junior, who definitely doesn't pay
Speaker 2: taxes or write poems. I just want to make that clear.
Speaker 2: I don't think either of those are particularly good bars
Speaker 2: for whether or not you're a human being, but he
Speaker 2: for sure doesn't do either.
Speaker 8: So frankly, I know way too many autistic people who write.
Speaker 2: Poems, oh tons of them.
Speaker 9: That's gonna say. Yeah, the ring poem things was a
Speaker 9: really fucking The.
Speaker 2: Poet Lauriate of Washington State since twenty twenty three is
Speaker 2: a is a woman with autism. So yeah, like I
Speaker 2: writing poems nonsense.
Speaker 8: Extremely common activity for for my fellow my fellow autism people.
Speaker 2: Yeah they are, okay, okay, ore f K Junior again,
Speaker 2: but he was talking about, you know, people with what
Speaker 2: he calls severe autism. But he also doesn't ever care
Speaker 2: to like specify his language because there's no there's no benefit.
Speaker 8: That's a real medical Yeah, and there's.
Speaker 2: No benefit to his eyes ideology and acknowledging that, like, well,
Speaker 2: most people who get diagnosed with autism may need some accommodations.
Speaker 2: It's a difference, right, It's a difference in the way
Speaker 2: your mind works. But they're fine, Like they're living healthy,
Speaker 2: happy lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I talk slightly differently in the cool zone work chat,
Speaker 8: which is kind of the extent of it for me, extent,
Speaker 8: but that is an aspect. Speaking of the Department of
Speaker 8: Public Human Services, they released a report page on their
Speaker 8: website for you, the the vigilance citizens Oh yes, to
Speaker 8: report trans miners receiving healthcare. Finally, and so an another
Speaker 8: one of these like snitching hotlines at this time on
Speaker 8: a federal government website that I'm sure will only get real,
Speaker 8: real complaints sent to it, and not the B movies.
Speaker 2: See not repeatedly the B movie scrap. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Speaking of trans people, I do have a few updates
Speaker 8: on some of the trend gender stuff. During that meeting
Speaker 8: between President Buklea and Trump, they went on a small
Speaker 8: tangent about trans people where where Trump said that he
Speaker 8: actually doesn't like talking about quote unquote men in women's
Speaker 8: sports because he wants to wait and save that issue
Speaker 8: to use for the next election.
Speaker 9: Amazing.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm going to play the clip, and I don't.
Speaker 14: Like talking about it because I want to save it
Speaker 14: for just before the next election. I said, my people
Speaker 14: don't even talk about it because they'll change then. But
Speaker 14: I watched this morning it was a congressman fighting to
Speaker 14: the death for men to play against women in sports.
Speaker 8: That's like super interestic, like very clear insight into how
Speaker 8: like Trump sees like the trands of sports issue and
Speaker 8: treats it as this like election winning superpower, and like
Speaker 8: he certainly he is directing like the DOJ and with
Speaker 8: his executive orders, like he still is targeting trans people,
Speaker 8: especially trans people in school. So it's it's not that
Speaker 8: he's treating this as like a hands off issue to
Speaker 8: like ensure that it can remain a hot button thing
Speaker 8: for the next election. But I think I think in
Speaker 8: his mind, like he doesn't want to stop Democrats from
Speaker 8: caring about this issue in a way like like the
Speaker 8: the more that they that they fight for it in
Speaker 8: his mind is like what gives him ammunition for the
Speaker 8: next election, whether he's going to run for a third
Speaker 8: term or just like Republicans like mega stuff in general,
Speaker 8: but I think that it is an interesting look into
Speaker 8: like his personal insight on this issue. Meanwhile, the Department
Speaker 8: of Justice just announced on Wednesday, April sixteenth, that they
Speaker 8: are suing Maine's Department of Education for not complying with
Speaker 8: Trump's anti trans executive order by continuing to allow trans
Speaker 8: people to compete in sports, claiming that they are quote
Speaker 8: failing to protect women in women's sports unquote, which which
Speaker 8: they say violates Title nine. The suit aims to get
Speaker 8: an junt function to force Maine to strip away rights
Speaker 8: from trans people in schools, to take away two winning
Speaker 8: titles from trans of school athletes, and are considering to
Speaker 8: quote unquote retroactively pull all funding that Maine has received.
Speaker 8: Maine's Attorney General, Aaron Frey said on Wednesday, quote our
Speaker 8: position is further bolstered by the complete lack of any
Speaker 8: legal citation supporting the administration's position in its own complaint.
Speaker 8: While the President issued in executive order that reflects his
Speaker 8: own interpretations of the law, anyone with the most basic
Speaker 8: understanding of American civics understands that the President does not
Speaker 8: create law nor interpret law unquote. So Maine and specifically
Speaker 8: the main governor are adamant that this is going to
Speaker 8: be an issue that's only going to be settled in
Speaker 8: the courts, and in fact challenged Trump at a recent
Speaker 8: meeting to see you in court over this issue. We
Speaker 8: are going to go and break and then return to
Speaker 8: close out this episode of executive disorder. Okay, we are back.
Speaker 8: I'm now gonna throw to myself and Mia to discuss
Speaker 8: the tariff talk in a future recording.
Speaker 3: Rocky Jazz Bob, Rocky jazz Bot.
Speaker 1: Sorry, locker.
Speaker 20: Rocking Jazz Bob, Rocky.
Speaker 3: Jazz Bob, Welcome the tariff talk, the talk where I
Speaker 3: talk to you about the turf tariffs. So all right,
Speaker 3: the big thing that happens last week in tariffs was
Speaker 3: that Trump exempted smartphones and electronics. There's a whole suite
Speaker 3: of electronics that are exempted from the one and forty
Speaker 3: five percent turf tariffs from Liberation Day. Now, there was
Speaker 3: still a twenty percent tariff on on all of these
Speaker 3: electronic goods from the earlier round of tariffs. In one
Speaker 3: of the initial rounds, there was a whole thing where
Speaker 3: he put a bunch of tariffs.
Speaker 8: I'm so confused though, because I thought that's ten percent
Speaker 8: tariffs for non Chinese companies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but okay, So here's.
Speaker 8: The thing, right, China like additional or no.
Speaker 3: Okay. So, so what's happening with these is that in
Speaker 3: the very very first round of tariffs that went out,
Speaker 3: there was a twenty percent tariff on all Chinese goods,
Speaker 3: and so the Liberation Day tariffs, which and then the
Speaker 3: subsequent retaliatory tariffs pushed it.
Speaker 8: Pushed all goods now two hundred fifty.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're gonna we're gonna get tw hundred fifty percent.
Speaker 3: That numbers bullshit, But we're at one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five percent like tariff from the Liberation Day stuff. But
Speaker 3: that also had included an earlier twenty percent tariff, and
Speaker 3: you you see why we're reporting about this is so
Speaker 3: fucking hard, right, So that was stack on top of
Speaker 3: that other tariffs. So if he's removed the Liberation Day tariffs,
Speaker 3: but there still are twenty percent tariffs on all like
Speaker 3: iPhones and all the electronicos that are still in effect.
Speaker 3: So the tariff right for those goods is now twenty
Speaker 3: instead of one hundred and forty five. But this is
Speaker 3: where things get even more murky. So even before the
Speaker 3: exemptions for the semiconductor stuff had been released, Trump had
Speaker 3: been talking about imposing a bunch of tariffs specifically on
Speaker 3: semiconductors from all countries, which is going to like, again,
Speaker 3: if this is just awesome, if you want to just
Speaker 3: kneecap your entire economy, you put in a tariff on
Speaker 3: all semiconductors from other countries, which was what this is
Speaker 3: looking like, it's possible the levels are going to be
Speaker 3: that high. Anyways, It's again worth pointing out that, like,
Speaker 3: there's a bunch of the parts of this production process
Speaker 3: that basically can only be done in Taiwan, which will
Speaker 3: presumably have these new tariffs on them. We don't know
Speaker 3: what they're gonna be yet they're coming in who fucking knows,
Speaker 3: But so it seems like they're these tariffs are being
Speaker 3: withdrawn for now to to market sort of backlash, but
Speaker 3: probably they will come back at some point in the future.
Speaker 3: We're not We're not one hundred percent sure. There's also
Speaker 3: another thing I want to mention, where so the number
Speaker 3: that you said, the two hundred and fifty percent tariff thing,
Speaker 3: so Trump tweeted that out, but that's fake. What that
Speaker 3: is is that there are a couple of items, and
Speaker 3: I mean when I say a couple, I mean like
Speaker 3: we're talking like single digit items, like things like medical
Speaker 3: syringes that already had like one hundred percent tariffs on them,
Speaker 3: that the one hundred and forty five percent tariff stack
Speaker 3: on top of all tariffs that are already in effect.
Speaker 3: So there's like like three or four items already had
Speaker 3: one hundred percent tariffs on them, so when you stack
Speaker 3: the one forty five on top of them, they're two
Speaker 3: fifty percent. But again it's like it's like three things, right,
Speaker 3: So like that's fake. On the other hand, like substantively,
Speaker 3: And this is something that a lot of people have
Speaker 3: been talking about the difference between one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five percent and two hundred and forty five percent, Like
Speaker 3: it isn't that relevant because at one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: five percent you stop doing trading, So it's you know,
Speaker 3: the numbers at this point are just sort of in
Speaker 3: comedy levels. But yeah, so that's what's going on with
Speaker 3: the two hundred and fifty number of people have been
Speaker 3: going around from it's it's not real. It's still one
Speaker 3: forty five for all non electronics goods twenty four electronics.
Speaker 3: There's also been a bunch of sort of China has
Speaker 3: been doing retaliatory stuff for a little bit, and they've
Speaker 3: been ramping up this program to restrict US access to
Speaker 3: rare earth elements that are necessary for a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of advanced engineering, particularly sort of defense projects. This is
Speaker 3: only that could genuinely devastate the American defense sector. Trump's
Speaker 3: plan for this is that he's threatening to use the
Speaker 3: Trade Expansion Act nineteen sixty two to impose even more
Speaker 3: devastating tariffs. Now it is genuinely unclear to me, Like
Speaker 3: what are he gonna do impose in one thousand percent tariff?
Speaker 3: Like you need to buy these goods?
Speaker 8: Like you say that, Mia, And yeah, he probably will.
Speaker 3: He probably will. Like two weeks ago, one thousand percent
Speaker 3: tariffs would have been a joke, But no, they might.
Speaker 3: They might legitimately do one thousand percent tariffs.
Speaker 8: Why not.
Speaker 3: There's also been the beginnings of on the US ND
Speaker 3: sort of export restrictions from chip exports to China and
Speaker 3: countries like Nvidia and AMD. And this is a fucking
Speaker 3: big rip to the big rip to the fucking AI people.
Speaker 3: Each hit get fucked. Yeah. So like so that that's
Speaker 3: roughly the state of of the tariffs right now. More
Speaker 3: more bullshit will happen. We'll be back on tariff talk
Speaker 3: next week with another round of unbelievably hideous turf tariff shit.
Speaker 3: But I want to I want to move on to
Speaker 3: one more thing, which is things that have been happening
Speaker 3: at the at the NLRB. So the NLRB, for people
Speaker 3: who are not regular listeners to the show, is the
Speaker 3: National Labor Relations Board. They were in charge of a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of things related to negotiations between employers and unions.
Speaker 3: Are the people who certify union elections. They they handle
Speaker 3: unfair labor practices disputes, and Doge effectively broke into the
Speaker 3: NLRB and has seized a whole bunch of information that
Speaker 3: they shouldn't have. NPR broke the story and has been
Speaker 3: doing a lot of good coverage of it. So it
Speaker 3: came in right. They technically had some kind of like
Speaker 3: order saying that they're supposed to be able to come
Speaker 3: in and do this stuff, and they set up and
Speaker 3: they disable all of the security stuff and all of
Speaker 3: the sort of like logs and all the sort of
Speaker 3: stuff that's supposed to like verify what someone's doing on
Speaker 3: a computer system. They go in and disabled all of them.
Speaker 3: They delete all traces of what they do. And this
Speaker 3: is a big deal because the NLRB has a lot
Speaker 3: of extremely sensitive data, has extremely sensitive data on unions,
Speaker 3: It has a lot of extremely sensitive trade data on
Speaker 3: private companies. Now, the NLRB person who blew the whistle
Speaker 3: on this to NPR described how so he complains about
Speaker 3: to his superiors about Doge again just like sort of
Speaker 3: breaking into this fucking like office and just like stealing
Speaker 3: all of this data because he mean, so he notices
Speaker 3: this program that they're building that's literally just called like backdoor,
Speaker 3: which is like again what you would do if you
Speaker 3: were literally running a hack, right, And we'll come back
Speaker 3: to that in a second. So the NLOP person complains
Speaker 3: to a superior so like, hey, these DOSE people are
Speaker 3: just like stealing all of the data from this And
Speaker 3: then like the next day, someone from Doge tapes to
Speaker 3: his door pictures of him and his dogs with like
Speaker 3: a threatening thing on it, like drone footage of him
Speaker 3: and his dog like walking, which is so fucking weird.
Speaker 3: I don't even know. I don't even So, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's extremely alarming. This is this is they're they're just
Speaker 3: blatantly threatening a whistleblower. Yeah. So so the other reason
Speaker 3: that this is really concerning is that so a lot
Speaker 3: of the corporate media is focused on the fact that
Speaker 3: there's a lot of trade information in there, there's also
Speaker 3: a lot of very personal information about unions, about union strength,
Speaker 3: about size, about tactics, about the history of negotiating things,
Speaker 3: about just where unions are and who's in them, and
Speaker 3: it's it's deeply unclear what DOGE is going to do
Speaker 3: this information, but it's not good And again, and I
Speaker 3: need to emphasize this. So I talked to friend of
Speaker 3: the show Maya Arson crime w about this, who is
Speaker 3: someone who knows a lot about hacking, And I said
Speaker 3: to it, okay, so this is what you would do
Speaker 3: if you were if you were just straight up like
Speaker 3: hacking the NLRB, right, Like, these are the things you
Speaker 3: would do, And they went, yeah, pretty much. So it's great,
Speaker 3: it's great. Yeah, the dose are just stolen a bunch of information.
Speaker 3: Who knows what's gonna happen to it, who knows what's
Speaker 3: gonna happen with their escalation of attacks on whistleblowers. But
Speaker 3: things bad, things continue to go bad.
Speaker 8: Well, thank you for that uplifting story, Miya about Doge
Speaker 8: breaking into and stealing data from the NLRB and posting
Speaker 8: overhead drone photos of people's houses who threatened the Doge supremacy.
Speaker 9: We're back, Thank you, Future Garrison and future Miya. So
Speaker 9: it's my role here to update you on the board
Speaker 9: of fascism, right, and that's what I'm here to do.
Speaker 9: Where I want to start this week is in the
Speaker 9: Roosevelt Reservation. This is something that's been reported on a
Speaker 9: little bit. It's largely by people who maybe only found
Speaker 9: out about it this week and looked at a Wikipedia
Speaker 9: page then wrote a story. The Roosevelt Reservation is a
Speaker 9: sixty foot easement that runs along the southwestern border of
Speaker 9: the United States from the coast in San Diego or
Speaker 9: the way to New Mexico. Doesn't cover the Texas border.
Speaker 9: I've written about it before for the Sierra Club and
Speaker 9: for Drilled News four or five years ago, and I'm
Speaker 9: going to include a link to the Sierra Club piece
Speaker 9: in the show notes that Drilled pieces down. Now they
Speaker 9: don't have that print side anymore. It was established in
Speaker 9: nineteen oh seven by Teddy Roosevelt, and it was transferred
Speaker 9: for three years from the Department of the Interior Department
Speaker 9: of Defense by the Trump administration in twenty nineteen using
Speaker 9: an executive order this year. In twenty twenty five, all
Speaker 9: of the Roosevelt Reservation that is not part of federal
Speaker 9: reservation land was placed on the Apartment of Defense jurisdiction.
Speaker 9: A lot of reporting seems to have missed this exemption
Speaker 9: for federal reservation land, which makes up a significant part
Speaker 9: of the border, especially in Arizona right in the Tornad Reservation.
Speaker 9: I'm going to quote from the language of the executive
Speaker 9: order here quote to provide for the use and jurisdiction
Speaker 9: by the Department of Defense over such federal lands, including
Speaker 9: the Roosevelt Reservation, and excluding Federal Indian reservations, that are
Speaker 9: reasonably necessary to enable military activities directed in this memorandum,
Speaker 9: including border barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment.
Speaker 9: The way I read this, it also doesn't limit to
Speaker 9: the Resort reservation. It seems to include other federal land right,
Speaker 9: which could include National monuments, National parks BLM, and the
Speaker 9: National Forests, all of which exist along the border. The
Speaker 9: Trump administration this week also obtained waivers. The waivers wave
Speaker 9: dozens of laws that have been limiting construction in the
Speaker 9: San Diego sector. I'd like to quote a little bit
Speaker 9: from that Sierra Club piece that I wrote, because I
Speaker 9: think the aspect of the damage done to the sacred
Speaker 9: space of Indigenous people is being completely overlooked by the
Speaker 9: legacy media. In this not perhaps surprisingly so, one of
Speaker 9: the laws waved with a Native American Graves Protection and
Speaker 9: Repatriation Act. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act
Speaker 9: was enacted by Congress in nineteen ninety to protect and
Speaker 9: safely relocate Native burial sites. When construction takes place on
Speaker 9: sensitive sites, the tribing question should be consulted, and in
Speaker 9: the event remains or other archaeological objects are found, construction
Speaker 9: should be altered so as not to disturb the site.
Speaker 9: In the areas of San Diego where they are digging,
Speaker 9: what's called midden soil has been found. Mid and soil
Speaker 9: is soil that contains evidence of cremated human remains. Right
Speaker 9: in this case of Kumii people. With this waver, they
Speaker 9: don't have to comply with nagpro Native American Graves Protection
Speaker 9: and Relocation Act, which means that they can continue digging
Speaker 9: through what are literally people's ancestors graveyards. There's another quote
Speaker 9: from that twenty twenty story. If this were another country's
Speaker 9: government destroying a region's holy land, the US would go
Speaker 9: to war and the people would feel it justified, activist
Speaker 9: Thomas barbatod Sierra. But it happens here at home, in
Speaker 9: front of us, and we just turn away.
Speaker 8: Yep, we sure do a turn away.
Speaker 2: It seems to be most of what we do these days.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's not even what bugs me. It's like, not
Speaker 9: so much of folks, you know, not doing anything. I
Speaker 9: get that it's overwhelming, be horrible at the moment. It's
Speaker 9: that this doesn't even get reported. Yeah, big outlets with
Speaker 9: a massive budget, who are supposed to have a border
Speaker 9: reporter who's never fucking set foot on the border, doesn't
Speaker 9: take the time to talk to the indigenous people whose
Speaker 9: land the border crossed, right like, doesn't take the time
Speaker 9: to hear their concerns, doesn't take the time to think
Speaker 9: about when you dig thirty feet into this ground to
Speaker 9: build your border wall. That's twelve thousand years of someone's history.
Speaker 9: How do they feel about that? And like that is
Speaker 9: a failing of the legacy. Media been a failing for
Speaker 9: a long time, and it will continue to be on
Speaker 9: for a long time and piss me off.
Speaker 1: YEP.
Speaker 9: I guess to talk more broadly than about this militarization
Speaker 9: of the Roosevelt Reservation and other public land. There's been
Speaker 9: some speculation about what this might mean. I don't think
Speaker 9: that you're going to see soldiers pointing their guns at
Speaker 9: the southern border and shooting anyone who comes across. I
Speaker 9: do think it's likely a lot of the people who
Speaker 9: have been deployed to southern border so far at MPs
Speaker 9: military police, right, and it's possible that those MPs will
Speaker 9: be able to detain people and potentially charge and with
Speaker 9: trespassing on a military installation. That would just be another
Speaker 9: string to the bow of their attempt to like rapidly
Speaker 9: deport people because they already have many other kind of
Speaker 9: options through executive order of doing that which which they're
Speaker 9: already implying, right. It might also make it easier for
Speaker 9: them to waive some of these other laws and to
Speaker 9: construct more surveillance equipment in the Epogogacia case, which we've
Speaker 9: covered for several weeks now. The Supreme Court has unanimously
Speaker 9: asked the United States government to quote facilitate his return.
Speaker 9: The US government has embarked upon a unique definition of
Speaker 9: the word facilitate, which it feels like means allowing him
Speaker 9: to enter the country and providing transport if El Salvador
Speaker 9: releases him. Bu Kelly refused to release him, saying that
Speaker 9: doing so would be to quote smuggler terrorists into the
Speaker 9: United States. Garrison and I did a whole episode about
Speaker 9: this yesterday that you can listen to today. Senator Chris
Speaker 9: van Holland went to San Salvador, right capital of El
Speaker 9: Salbador if you're not where. He met with the vice
Speaker 9: president because Boukele is still out the country. Van Holand
Speaker 9: held the press conference right afterwards that I watched for
Speaker 9: it before we recorded this. In the press conference, Van
Speaker 9: Holland basically said that he asserted to the Vice President
Speaker 9: of El Salbador there was no evidence nor any conviction
Speaker 9: of being a member of MS thirteen, and he asked
Speaker 9: the VP why he was holding mister Abrigo Gassier, and
Speaker 9: the VP said, because the US is paying us to
Speaker 9: hold him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which, yeah, they won't even lie.
Speaker 9: Yeah, no, yeah, he's not lying. That's why they're doing it.
Speaker 9: I believe that. Yeah, And credit to this Maryland senator
Speaker 9: of like being the only one to do something and
Speaker 9: it's not enough. And it's just one person. There are
Speaker 9: three hundred people there, right, they're not even going for
Speaker 9: the hundreds of other innocent people are there. It's one guy,
Speaker 9: but at least he's doing something. The rest of the
Speaker 9: Democrats are collectively Yeah, I don't know, like voting for
Speaker 9: Trump's nominees. He asked to meet with mister Abergo Garcia
Speaker 9: and was told that they needed more time. He said,
Speaker 9: I'll come back next week. They said they don't know
Speaker 9: if they can organize it in a week. He asked
Speaker 9: if he could call him. They said they didn't know
Speaker 9: if they could facilitate a call. They said maybe the
Speaker 9: US Embassy would have to be the one that requests that.
Speaker 9: So he has now requested that the embassy requests that
Speaker 9: he be allowed to call mister Abrego Garcia and mister
Speaker 9: Brego Garcia be allowed to speak to his wife. Garreton
Speaker 9: and I spoke about how like it's not in the
Speaker 9: interest of government at El Salbaud or to have people
Speaker 9: leave this prison and to fire to the conditions that
Speaker 9: are in it.
Speaker 8: No one has ever left this prison that we're aware of.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that no one who's been detained there has left.
Speaker 9: The government wouldn't give him a date when he could
Speaker 9: meet mister Abergo Garcia or when he would be luckily
Speaker 9: able to make a call. And a separate case, Judge Boseburg,
Speaker 9: who we've spoken about before as well, Right Judge Bothberg,
Speaker 9: with the judge issues' attentive restraining order on the rendition
Speaker 9: of people to L Salbador, which the government then ignored,
Speaker 9: has found probable cause that the administration is in contempt
Speaker 9: of court. What does this mean? It doesn't mean, despite
Speaker 9: what you have seen on your timeline, that this will
Speaker 9: mean these people will be bought home. When they found
Speaker 9: a contempt, they have two options. Right, they can purge
Speaker 9: themselves of the contempt, and the way they would do
Speaker 9: that would be by providing habeas not by bringing all
Speaker 9: these people home at least not yet, right. Or they
Speaker 9: could present the people who are responsible and then either
Speaker 9: an attorney could be appointed by the DOJ to prosecute them.
Speaker 9: I guess and don't quite know how it works. Sistance
Speaker 9: or the judge himself can appoint an attorney to prosecute
Speaker 9: them for criminal contempt. Again, like, at least the guys
Speaker 9: try and I guess like.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, like I got nothing to say against
Speaker 2: him right now, Like this is what they all should
Speaker 2: be doing. He went there, he'd something, and he's not
Speaker 2: mincing his words. He's saying that this man was disappeared.
Speaker 9: No, yeah, and he's he's asserting that, Like they need
Speaker 9: to listen to the court. They are supposed to listen
Speaker 9: to the court. Judge genez In genez who is a
Speaker 9: judge on the district court that had its case sent
Speaker 9: to the Supreme Court for review in the Abrego Garcia incident,
Speaker 9: also quoted to Merriam Webster Dictionary and said that the
Speaker 9: government's understanding of the word facilitate flew in the face
Speaker 9: of the common understanding of the word. Again, like I've
Speaker 9: seen it assert as like, oh, legal experts can disagree. Meanwhile,
Speaker 9: you've got the actual judge in the actual case being like,
Speaker 9: notice is what the dictionary says. Your definition is ludicrous.
Speaker 9: I would caution people to be very careful looking at
Speaker 9: at like blue check legal experts on except com or
Speaker 9: people blue Sky. There has been so much misleading stuff
Speaker 9: about immigration law and the laws in these particular two cases,
Speaker 9: and they are about the resol reservation. Actually, just be really
Speaker 9: careful where you're getting your information, especially on immigration law
Speaker 9: from maybe go back and check what that person was
Speaker 9: doing in twenty twenty three when thousands of migrants were
Speaker 9: detained in outdoor detention camps. Because I've seen so much
Speaker 9: misinformation and people, understandably who aren't expert in this because
Speaker 9: it's extremely complicated, are likely to be taken advantage of
Speaker 9: by people who are grifting off what is at a
Speaker 9: moment when a lot of us are afraid and a
Speaker 9: lot of us are insertain, So to be very careful
Speaker 9: what you're reading out there.
Speaker 8: All right, I think that's all for us today on
Speaker 8: It could Happen Here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's that's our new Rectiled Executive Dysfunction episode.
Speaker 9: At Rectile Order.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're fucking done, go away.
Speaker 8: We reported the news.
Speaker 1: The news.
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat Death of the Universe.
Speaker 23: It could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.
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