WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 131 0:00:01.760 --> 0:00:05.600 Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:08.639 to let you know this is a compilation episode. So 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.160 every episode of the week that just happened is here 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:16.119 in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:18.320 you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:20.840 If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:22.639 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:24.800 you can make your own decisions. 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:29.840 Hi. 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:32.599 Everyone, welcome to the podcast. It's me James, and I'm 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:36.519 joined today by Moe who is an attorney, educator and aberlation. 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:39.320 It's've been on the show before. We've very much enjoyed 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.840 the contributions. We're here today to talk about the recent 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.159 Supreme Court not decision right, but it's Supreme Court declining 0:00:46.159 --> 0:00:48.479 to hear a case. It's been reported a little bit. 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:52.440 Perhaps I think the importance of it may have been overstated, 0:00:52.440 --> 0:00:55.240 and it's going to help us understand that How are 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:56.000 you doing today. 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:58.400 Mo, I'm doing all right. How are you doing? 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.080 I'm doing well. It's nice day. Went for a run 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:05.520 this morning, saw some flowers, picked some fennel. That was nice. 0:01:05.760 --> 0:01:06.640 Yeah, that's very nice. 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.080 Yeah, wild Fannel if you didn't sell in California now 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:13.920 so time. Just a little tip from me, don't get 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:15.399 it at the height that dog's pe. You want to 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:16.120 go above that. 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:17.560 It's a pro tip. 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.200 You can't say that. We don't fill this podcast with 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:26.560 a little easter eggs. Talking of little easter eggs, let's 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:30.560 let's get into the things that are buried within this. 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:33.559 What happened was the Supreme Court declined to hear a case. 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:34.120 Is that right? 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:35.240 That's right. 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:39.800 So the case that the Supreme Court declined to hear 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:45.640 is McKesson the dough. This is a case that they 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:50.200 have declined to hear eight times, and it keeps going 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.160 back up and down from I think the Middle District 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:59.800 of Louisiana to the Fifth Circuit all the way up 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:03.960 to the Supreme Court. And it's a case that involves 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:08.440 the First Amendment. And the way that it has been reported, 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:12.560 I think, or at least the way that it has 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:19.880 been received, particularly by communities of people who do engage 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.000 in a lot of First Amendment protected activity, has been 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:28.840 with a certain amount of panic that the Supreme Court 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:31.400 saying we're not going to hear this case, We're going 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.200 to kick it back down to the Fifth Circuit. We're 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:36.200 going to kick it back down to the district court. 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:42.280 Is you know, a harbinger of terrible things to come 0:02:43.040 --> 0:02:46.359 for the right to protest and for the kinds of 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:50.359 liability that you might be exposed to if you are 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:56.800 engaging in protest, And there is some truth to that. 0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:03.240 It is I would say often dangerous to engage in 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:08.600 acts of dissent. But I think that there's some real 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.120 misapprehension of what's going on with this particular case, and 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:14.840 so I thought it was worth having a conversation with 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.040 you to try to clarify a little bit about what's 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:23.760 going on here, what the risks are associated specifically with 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:28.160 this case, and what the risks actually are on the 0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:31.840 ground with respect to protest, and also to talk to 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:34.640 you about some of the resources that are available. 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:35.160 To protect yourself. 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:35.840 Wonderful. 0:03:35.920 --> 0:03:39.120 Yeah, So I guess to give you a little roadmap. 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.040 I think I'll start by talking to you about what 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.880 is actually the law on the ground at this point 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.840 with respect to the First Amendment and rights to protest? Yes, 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:53.840 have those rights actually been meaningfully altered by this case 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.560 or by the Supreme Court declining to hear this case? 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:01.200 Has it actually become more dangerous to protest. Are there 0:04:01.200 --> 0:04:04.160 things that we should be worried about? What are they? 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:07.880 And then what kinds of resources there are? I guess 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:09.640 the first thing I'm going to do is give you 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:13.600 a very brief premer on the First Amendment. So the 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.440 First Amendment guarantees, as I like to say, the very 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:21.839 First Amendment guarantees our rights to speech and assembly. The 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:24.400 government can place limits on the time, place, and manner 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:28.479 of your protest, but the government is not authorized to 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:33.560 criminalize speech based on subject matter or viewpoint. And it 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:38.279 can't impose what's called a prior restraint on speech, which 0:04:38.440 --> 0:04:43.200 can include making it so risky to speak that people 0:04:43.240 --> 0:04:49.159 engage in self censorship. But the First Amendment doesn't immunize 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:57.280 you from prosecution or civil liability for otherwise unlawful conduct. 0:04:58.560 --> 0:04:58.880 Right. 0:04:59.040 --> 0:05:04.039 So that's why true threats of violence are not protected 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:08.760 by the First Amendment. Right, And it doesn't protect you 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:14.800 from being arrested for behavior just because that behavior is 0:05:14.839 --> 0:05:19.840 politically motivated, which is why breaking Starbucks windows and graffiti 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:23.920 and assassination are not protected by the First Amendment. 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:24.760 Right. 0:05:26.480 --> 0:05:30.800 On the other hand, the fact that there are one 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:36.520 or more people at a demonstration who are acting unlawfully 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:43.039 does not strip the larger demonstration of First Amendment protection right. 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:49.359 And that principle comes from a case called NAACP versus 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:55.120 Claiborn Hardware and Clayborn. It was decided in nineteen eighty two, 0:05:56.160 --> 0:06:00.000 and it was a case where the NAACP was soon 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:05.640 food civilly on the basis that they had organized a 0:06:05.720 --> 0:06:11.520 protest where some people in the crowd had caused some damage. 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:16.680 I see this is a very very similar case to 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:25.920 the underlying case in this situation where Deray McKesson has 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:34.720 been sued civilly, meaning he's being sued for money damages. 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:40.279 He is not being criminally prosecuted. Right, That's an important distinction. So, 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:41.840 you know what, let's back up a little bit. 0:06:42.160 --> 0:06:46.880 So can you explain who is Deray McKesson. Why is 0:06:46.960 --> 0:06:50.000 Deray McKesson bouncing up and down between Louisiana and the 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:50.760 Supreme Court? 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:54.919 Yes? Okay, So I'm going to back up even farther 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.760 than that. The reason that we are here today, that 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:00.599 I am here with you talking about the case is 0:07:00.600 --> 0:07:04.200 that the way that this case is being reported on 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.840 or received is that people are going, oh God, it's 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.360 now illegal to protest, and we're all going to go 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:14.240 to prison for protesting. Like, okay, I mean, first of all, 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:19.280 please using mass arrest of protesters to chill in silent 0:07:19.400 --> 0:07:23.360 speech is already a time honored American tradition. 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.680 Yes, but that isn't. 0:07:26.400 --> 0:07:30.120 What this case is about. This is a civil case, 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.760 which means that somebody is being sued for money damages, 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:37.920 and the person who's being sued is de Ray McKesson. 0:07:38.280 --> 0:07:41.960 Deray McKesson was at one point, for anyone who can 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:49.400 remember a decade ago, was very high profile, very visible 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:53.840 in the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and in 0:07:53.920 --> 0:08:00.280 Baltimore and then later in Louisiana, and he was somebody 0:08:00.360 --> 0:08:03.560 who was very visible in the media. He made a 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.520 lot of public statements. He made a lot of public 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:11.520 statements on behalf of Black Lives Matter, which you know 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:15.880 I'm going to get into is not a membership organization. 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:19.320 But he made a bunch of statements as though he 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:25.560 were the representative of a movement which he referred to 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:29.760 as Black Lives Matter. He organized a lot of protests. 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:32.080 I think at one point I have a memory that 0:08:32.120 --> 0:08:36.560 he ran for office, so he was a very visible 0:08:38.040 --> 0:08:43.200 movement organizer, right. He organized a protest in I believe 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:48.640 twenty seventeen in the wake of the police murder of 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:55.520 Altms Sterling, at which a police officer was hit in 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.719 the head with a hard object, a rock or a 0:08:58.760 --> 0:09:02.240 piece of concrete, and he was like, the police officer 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:03.559 was injured. 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.000 Right, like pretty seriously, yeah. 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:15.200 And he then sued Deray McKesson for money damages on 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:21.920 the theory that because he had organized the protest, he 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:28.200 had control of the protest and he had some responsibility 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:32.640 for the fact that this other person had thrown a 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:37.200 rock at him. This theory requires a real failure to 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:42.680 understand social movements and distributed networks because what it presumes, 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.240 and I think we've talked about this before on this show, 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:51.679 is the inability of the police and the courts to 0:09:52.040 --> 0:10:00.280 understand that not every social movement operates with a clear 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:05.960 hierarchy like the police, right or the military. Because their 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:11.120 social movement groups do imitate the military, they do imitate 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:14.720 that hierarchy. They totally reproduce this sort of chain of 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:19.040 command theory. So if you look at the Klan, right, 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:23.600 they are organized via they are incorporated, they have a membership, 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.080 there is a clear hierarchy, who is in charge, who 0:10:27.160 --> 0:10:29.120 is giving orders, who is following orders? 0:10:29.760 --> 0:10:33.640 Right, that is not the case Proud Boys, Patriot Front 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:37.800 like very of organizing without authority and the conceiving of 0:10:37.840 --> 0:10:40.360 anyone doing so, it would seem right. 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:43.480 And so I think I've told you before. I've actually 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:46.360 had to drop footnotes in federal court filings to explain 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:49.199 that Antifa is not a membership organization. 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:52.600 Yeah, this is a discussion that I have been privy 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:57.040 to as a historian of the same organization. Which day 0:10:57.120 --> 0:11:01.559 it was ironically right that the KPg was Yeah, when 0:11:01.600 --> 0:11:03.200 we were referring it to that, we're not talking about 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:04.560 nineteen thirty three Germany. 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:11.439 No. So you know when someone says and this becomes 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:17.760 relevant here because the initially when this suit was filed, 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:22.800 it was two different lawsuits, and it was a group 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.520 of police officers who had been shot in different places 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:30.400 in the country, suing not only during McKesson but black 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.920 lives matter. And I think in fact, one of the 0:11:34.960 --> 0:11:39.160 defendants who was named in one of the initial suits 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.000 was hashtag black lives matter. So I don't know how 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:43.120 you serve a hashtag. 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:47.120 Yeah, fascinating totally fascinating. 0:11:47.160 --> 0:11:50.959 I mean, the legal theory underlying these cases was pretty bonkers. 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:56.800 And then various other individuals who were part of different 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:04.320 Black Lives Matter groups. The initial suit that went after 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:11.199 all these people and hashtags for the shootings were really 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:13.600 just legally insufficient. 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:13.880 Right. 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:18.000 The allegations that were made were Black Lives Matter whatever 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:23.000 that is, made statements about how policing is unjust and 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:25.840 police shouldn't be surprised if there's you know, if they 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:30.360 encounter resistance, and then these other people kind of showed 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.920 up and shot at cops. And the theory is that 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:42.520 by sort of making these statements, Black Lives Matter encouraged 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:48.720 or incited and was responsible for these shootings. Yes, this 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.160 is not a this is not a valid legal theory, right, 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.240 I mean, it just is not. And that case was dismissed, 0:12:56.600 --> 0:12:59.120 you know, just entirely. And then the second case that 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:01.360 was brought was this one where the guy who was 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:03.480 hit in the head with a rock, and it's the 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:08.199 same allegations, the same theory of liability, and everybody got 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:10.679 dismissed out of that case. All of the defendants got 0:13:10.679 --> 0:13:14.360 dismissed out of that case, except for Deray McKesson. And 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.559 part of the reason that everyone else was dismissed out 0:13:17.559 --> 0:13:21.079 of that case, or that the suit was dismissed with 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:27.280 respect to those named defendants, is that Black Lives Matter 0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:35.319 was an unincorporated association, and an unincorporated association can't be sued. 0:13:36.240 --> 0:13:39.520 So and this has been relevant in other cases. I'm 0:13:39.520 --> 0:13:41.560 not trying to give anyone legal advice, but I want 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.640 people to think about the fact. I think there's like 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.960 a real impulse sometimes in social movement organizing that like 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:49.680 we need to make everything a nonprofit. 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:52.520 Yeah, yeah they can, or we need to have a. 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:56.320 Bank account even And the fact is when you create 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:02.240 an organization, even if it's an unincorporated association, that where 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.520 the entity has what you would say is its personality 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:10.599 is distinct from that of its members. Right, right, it 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:15.480 can be sued. You become susceptible to a lawsuit. And 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.840 so for example, when Energy Transfer Partners tried to sue 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:24.000 there's currently a suit against green Peace, yes, the Standing 0:14:24.080 --> 0:14:27.080 Rock suit, and we'll talk about that later. Right, it's 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:32.600 a slap suit. It's a suit that endeavors to stifle 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:38.200 speech that's in the public interest. When that suit first started, 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:42.640 they tried to sue Earth First, but Earth first is 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:47.240 not an entity. There's no one to serve. You know, 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:51.000 there's nobody there. It's not you know, it's like antify. 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:53.520 It'd be like trying to sue Batman fans. 0:14:54.280 --> 0:15:01.480 Right, yeah, yeah, swifties, I would love to see it. 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:05.800 Right, there's there are maybe people who identify in that way, 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:09.160 but there is not a coherent group, right, and there's 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:11.520 certainly not a group that can take that can take 0:15:11.560 --> 0:15:13.960 responsibility for the behavior of its members. 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:18.120 Right. Talking of taking responsibility, mo, we we unfortunately have 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:19.960 to take responsibility for the fact that we now have 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:21.160 to pivot to ads. 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.840 Okay, if you say so, I do. 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:28.120 I'm so sorry. It's not my favorite part of my job. 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:41.640 All Right, we're back there. We've pivoted to add So, yeah, 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.520 we're talking about like this, the difference between like an 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:47.960 incorporated organization, which can be So can you maybe just 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:51.360 even if we step it back like a little bit 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:56.160 further and explain the difference between civil and criminal liability, 0:15:56.240 --> 0:15:58.480 just in case people haven't got that. 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:03.520 Criminal liability is like when you are criminally charged by 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:11.000 the state, by the government for violating a criminal law. Right, 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:16.480 and when you are criminally charged. The what is on 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:18.800 the table is that you might go to jail or 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:23.760 you might go to prison. You can also be civilly sued. 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:28.400 And what's happening there is if someone says, okay, you've 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.760 you know, you wrecked my car, or your dog bit me, 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:34.600 or you punched me in the face and I lost 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:41.160 a tooth, then you can be civilly sued by that 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:46.080 person for money, damages, got it right to compensate you 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:52.040 for the loss. So in this case, mister McKesson is 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:58.880 being civilly sued, not arrested, not prosecuted, not subject like, 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.640 there is no possability that if he loses this case, 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:02.520 he'll go to jail. 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:09.240 Yeah, so this civil case happens in Louisiana. Right, Yeah, 0:17:09.320 --> 0:17:12.600 let's talk about how it bounces around the fifth circuit. 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:15.440 So I started to tell you that there were sort 0:17:15.480 --> 0:17:18.400 of these two cases. The first one is entirely dismissed. 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:22.480 The second one they say, all right, Black Lives Matter 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.880 is not an association that can be sued. These other 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.320 individuals that you've named here as defendants were not present, 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:34.040 made no statements about it. Well, first they dismissed the 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:39.159 whole thing actually, then the cop appealed to the circuit, 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:42.919 and the circuit said, yeah, mostly you're right, District Court, 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.919 all of these people can't be sued. But mister McKesson, 0:17:46.000 --> 0:17:49.000 we do think could be liable under a theory of 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:54.119 negligence because he organized the protest and was present. This 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:59.479 officer sues McKesson and a bunch of other people, and 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:03.960 the office says that mister McKesson is liable because he 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:06.840 organizes protests and should knew or should have known that 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:11.080 it could potentially turn violent. And so he says under 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:14.920 Louisiana law, he can sue on a theory of negligence, 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:19.040 which doesn't require any kind of intent or certain knowledge. 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:24.800 It's just being you know, negligent. Initially, the court, the 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:30.000 federal district Court, dismisses those claims, all of them based 0:18:30.000 --> 0:18:35.439 on NAACPD Claiborne, which I talked about earlier, right, which says, 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:38.480 if you're at a protest and one person gets violent, 0:18:38.760 --> 0:18:41.840 like the rest of the protest doesn't get does not 0:18:41.960 --> 0:18:46.679 lose its First Amendment protected character just because other people 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:50.960 are violent. Then the cop appeals and the Fifth Circuit 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.880 in part affirms their rulings about all of the other 0:18:56.080 --> 0:19:02.920 people who were sued, but reinstates the negligence against mister McKesson. Right, 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:06.560 he then it does it never, by the way, has 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:09.680 proceeded to trial. This case is still in a very 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:14.280 preliminary phase. Oh wow, it has been going on since 0:19:14.320 --> 0:19:17.960 twenty seventeen and it's been bouncing up and down the courts. 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:25.720 But the question is can he even be sued under 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.920 this theory? So we haven't gotten he hasn't been found guilty, 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:34.359 we haven't had a presentation of evidence. There's all kinds 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:37.439 of stuff that has not yet happened in this case. 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:44.960 The question is very, very narrow. It's can a person 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:50.960 be sued under a theory of negligence when they organize 0:19:51.280 --> 0:19:56.120 a protest and somebody else at that protest causes some 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:56.840 kind of harm? 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:57.320 Right? 0:19:58.119 --> 0:20:03.119 So the Fifth Circuit says, go back district court and 0:20:03.200 --> 0:20:07.000 hear this claim of negligence. McKesson then brings it to 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:11.560 the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court reverses the Fifth 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:17.520 Circuit and says it overturns their decision and says, you 0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.439 actually can't force the district court to proceed with this 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:24.600 trial because you didn't check in with the Louisiana State 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:30.440 Court to get their feedback about whether Louisiana state law 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:36.159 actually allows for this kind of negligence claim. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:39.520 Okay, so they missed procedurally, they fucked up. 0:20:39.760 --> 0:20:40.040 Yes. 0:20:40.840 --> 0:20:44.320 Then the Fifth Circuit says, okay, find Louisiana Supreme Court. 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:48.159 What do you think? And the court says, yeah, we 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.320 think you can proceed on this negligence claim. And then 0:20:51.440 --> 0:20:54.360 the Fifth Circuit affirms its previous ruling and says, okay, Now, 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:57.439 District Court, hear it again, and you can hear this 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.679 negligence claim. As to mister McKesson, they tried to distinguish 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.159 it from Claiborn. I don't think they did a good job. 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:09.960 One of the there was a three judge panel that 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:12.960 ruled on this, so it was a two to one ruling. 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:15.320 Two of the judges try to distinguish it from Claiborne. 0:21:15.720 --> 0:21:20.919 One of the judges Uh says, no, you know, Clayborn. 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:26.520 It's exactly the controlling You can only hold somebody liable 0:21:26.640 --> 0:21:30.879 for their own behavior, right, And one of the things 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:35.800 he says is that if you make protest organizers liable 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.800 for someone else's violent behavior, all accounter protester has to 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:41.880 do is show up and start throwing rocks in order 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:48.760 to order to get the whole protest too, you know, 0:21:49.200 --> 0:21:55.880 to impute liability to the the organizerson who organized the protest. Yeah, 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:00.480 and that goes both ways, right, So i've I am 0:22:00.560 --> 0:22:06.800 sort of surprised that they given that there are social 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.439 movements that are probably more aligned with the values and 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:15.280 beliefs of these federal judges in the Fifth Circuit. So 0:22:15.359 --> 0:22:18.520 the Fifth Circuit at this point says, no, go back 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.520 to the district court and have the trial on the 0:22:21.520 --> 0:22:26.480 theory of negligence. Right, then, the Supreme Court decided a 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:33.320 case called Counterman be. Colorado. Counterman be. Colorado is not 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:39.000 a First Amendment political speech case. It's a case about 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:46.760 somebody making threats. But that case relies very heavily on Clayborne. 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:51.639 So in that case, we have what's called a true 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:55.920 threats analysis, and they're trying to determine whether a person 0:22:55.920 --> 0:23:00.320 who's making threats needs to actually know that the threats 0:23:00.359 --> 0:23:05.080 they're making are going to be perceived as real threats. 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.320 And what they decided was they do need to know 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:13.199 to some degree that these statements could be taken as 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:17.159 true threats. But they talk a lot. Kagan authored this opinion, 0:23:17.200 --> 0:23:20.320 and she talks a lot about how careful we have 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:24.600 to be even with speech that is traditionally not protected 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:29.760 like true threats, because it's very important not to chill 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:34.000 protected speech. And what she says is that the Court 0:23:34.040 --> 0:23:38.479 has always been really wary of chilling protected speech, and 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:44.520 so sometimes it makes extra space for speech that isn't 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:47.480 protected in order to make really sure it doesn't chill 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:53.000 protected speech. Right, So she says, the court must consider 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:57.800 the prospect of chilling non threatening expression given the ordinary 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:03.480 citizens predictable tendency to wide of the unlawful zone. The 0:24:03.520 --> 0:24:06.399 speaker's fear of mistaking whether a statement is a threat, 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:09.080 his fear of the legal system getting that judgment wrong, 0:24:09.560 --> 0:24:13.040 his fear in any event of incurring legal costs, all 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:15.080 those may lead him to swallow words that are in 0:24:15.119 --> 0:24:19.919 fact not true threats. And so what they say is 0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:25.719 we need to make a standard that has enough what 0:24:25.720 --> 0:24:29.720 they say is breathing room to make sure that even 0:24:29.760 --> 0:24:33.760 if it means that some unprotected speech gets through, we 0:24:33.920 --> 0:24:37.679 have enough space for all of the protected speech to 0:24:37.760 --> 0:24:41.600 still exist and for nobody to feel uncertain about whether 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:42.240 or not their. 0:24:42.080 --> 0:24:43.040 Speech is protected. 0:24:43.200 --> 0:24:46.200 Yeah, sure, they don't want to gradually have a creeping 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:48.080 sort of boundary. 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:51.359 Yeah. So what she says is, if we're going to 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:55.960 ban any kind of speech, it has to be known 0:24:56.440 --> 0:25:01.560 and knowable to the speaker, and there has to be 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:06.080 sort of a requirement that the speaker is actually aware 0:25:06.720 --> 0:25:11.200 that this is not protected speech. And so in this 0:25:11.320 --> 0:25:14.400 case encounterman with the guy who's making the bizarre threats, 0:25:15.640 --> 0:25:22.040 what they decide is you only need to be reckless 0:25:22.160 --> 0:25:26.600 about the speech. You don't have to be doing it 0:25:26.680 --> 0:25:31.040 intentionally to threaten someone. But if you're saying things that 0:25:31.680 --> 0:25:35.520 you even if you don't mean it to be a threat, 0:25:35.600 --> 0:25:38.280 if you could reasonably anticipate that it will be received 0:25:38.280 --> 0:25:43.200 as a threat, that's sufficient. Okay, okay, And then she says, 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:49.840 this are incitement decisions, right, So, Supreme Court decisions regarding 0:25:50.280 --> 0:25:56.040 incitement to violence demand more. But the reason for that 0:25:56.160 --> 0:25:59.640 demand is not present here where we're talking about threats. 0:26:00.600 --> 0:26:04.080 When incitement is at issue, we have spoken in terms 0:26:04.160 --> 0:26:09.399 of specific intent, presumably equivalent to purpose or knowledge. In 0:26:09.520 --> 0:26:14.040 doing so, we recognized that incitement to disorder is commonly 0:26:14.080 --> 0:26:18.400 a hair spread the way from political advocacy, and particularly 0:26:18.440 --> 0:26:23.520 from strong protests against the government and prevailing order. Such 0:26:23.600 --> 0:26:26.879 protests gave rise to all the cases in which the 0:26:26.920 --> 0:26:30.840 Court demanded a showing of intent, and the Court decided 0:26:30.880 --> 0:26:36.200 those cases against a resonant historical backdrop the Court's failure 0:26:36.400 --> 0:26:40.800 in an earlier era to protect mere advocacy of force 0:26:41.000 --> 0:26:46.240 or law breaking from legal sanction. A strong intent requirement 0:26:46.640 --> 0:26:50.960 was and remains one way to guarantee history was not repeated. 0:26:52.119 --> 0:26:54.719 It was a way to ensure the efforts to prosecute 0:26:54.760 --> 0:26:58.960 incitement would not bleed over, either directly or through a 0:26:59.040 --> 0:27:04.280 chilling effect, to dissenting political speech at the First Amendment's core. Okay, 0:27:04.600 --> 0:27:11.040 so we have this case that's decided days after the 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:20.720 Fifth Circuit makes its decision that directly speaks to this decision. Right, 0:27:21.080 --> 0:27:27.520 it reaffirms Clayborne. It reaffirms that political speech is protected. 0:27:27.840 --> 0:27:31.359 It reaffirms that you cannot have a negligence standard. You 0:27:31.440 --> 0:27:34.880 have to have a standard. You can't just say, well, 0:27:34.920 --> 0:27:37.400 somebody knew or should have known that organizing a protest 0:27:37.480 --> 0:27:41.320 might lead to violence, and you say they have to 0:27:41.359 --> 0:27:43.959 be like, we're going to go out and we're going 0:27:44.040 --> 0:27:47.200 to do violence at this protest at this time. Right, 0:27:47.720 --> 0:27:50.800 they have to be actually advocating for violence in order 0:27:50.840 --> 0:27:52.840 to be held responsible for violence. 0:27:53.760 --> 0:27:57.159 Right, So how does this not just lead to his 0:27:57.240 --> 0:27:59.320 case being dismissed. 0:28:00.119 --> 0:28:04.640 So then at the same time as that's happening, mister 0:28:04.720 --> 0:28:08.640 McKesson has asked the court again to weigh in on 0:28:09.160 --> 0:28:12.440 whether this case can proceed under a negligence theory, right, 0:28:12.560 --> 0:28:16.120 meaning should he have can he be prosecuted because it's 0:28:16.160 --> 0:28:19.520 possible that a protest will turn violent. And the Court 0:28:19.680 --> 0:28:25.640 says we're not going to hear this case, and somewhat unusually, 0:28:26.320 --> 0:28:30.479 Justice Sonya Soda Mayort issues a statement along with the 0:28:30.480 --> 0:28:36.200 denial of hearing the case, and she says, this court 0:28:36.240 --> 0:28:40.760 may deny what's called curcherai right hearing the case. The 0:28:40.800 --> 0:28:44.920 Court may deny sorcherai for many reasons, including that the 0:28:45.000 --> 0:28:47.560 law is not in need of further clarification. 0:28:49.280 --> 0:28:49.520 Right. 0:28:50.600 --> 0:28:53.800 It's denial today expresses no view about the merits of 0:28:53.840 --> 0:28:57.280 mckesson's claim. Although the Fifth Circuit did not have the 0:28:57.280 --> 0:29:00.840 benefit of this Court's recent decision in count Determine when 0:29:00.880 --> 0:29:05.280 it issued its opinion, the lower courts now do I 0:29:05.400 --> 0:29:08.840 expect them to give full and fair consideration to arguments 0:29:08.880 --> 0:29:12.120 regarding Counterman's impact in any future proceedings. 0:29:12.560 --> 0:29:12.760 Right. 0:29:12.840 --> 0:29:16.840 So, I don't think that it's some like terrible thing 0:29:16.920 --> 0:29:19.000 that the Court said, Oh, no, we're not going to 0:29:19.040 --> 0:29:22.520 hear this case. I don't think they're saying in any way, 0:29:22.600 --> 0:29:24.080 oh we're not going to hear this case because we 0:29:24.080 --> 0:29:27.680 think it ought to proceed further and go to trial 0:29:27.880 --> 0:29:31.120 down in Louisiana. I think what they're saying is we 0:29:31.160 --> 0:29:34.800 already decided this issue. The law remains the same. Claiborne 0:29:35.080 --> 0:29:37.640 is still the controlling case here. 0:29:37.880 --> 0:29:40.560 Right, Yeah, it seems very clear that what they're saying 0:29:40.600 --> 0:29:43.080 is that we've already made clear what we stand on this. 0:29:43.920 --> 0:29:48.080 That's right. And so the last thing that's on the 0:29:48.160 --> 0:29:55.880 docket in mister mckesson's case is basically a submission that 0:29:56.040 --> 0:30:01.040 reiterates what Justice Sotomayor said, streat you a little from this, 0:30:01.160 --> 0:30:04.440 It says, so do. Mayor's statement explains that the court's 0:30:04.480 --> 0:30:08.040 decision expresses no view about the merits of the claim 0:30:08.480 --> 0:30:10.800 because the law is not in need of further clarification. 0:30:13.360 --> 0:30:17.720 So it suggests that the existing clear law comes from countermen. 0:30:18.840 --> 0:30:21.520 And the statement makes even clearer that the First Amendment 0:30:22.040 --> 0:30:26.600 does not permit liability on the negligence theory advanced by 0:30:26.640 --> 0:30:29.080 the cop in this case. It doesn't say the cop 0:30:29.120 --> 0:30:36.240 in this case, so it makes very clear. You know, 0:30:36.320 --> 0:30:41.200 they have submitted mister mckesson's council has submitted this statement 0:30:41.760 --> 0:30:46.120 to the judge, and I think there is every possibility 0:30:46.160 --> 0:30:50.840 that this case is just going to die at this point. 0:30:52.080 --> 0:30:56.440 You know, remember the District Court already dismissed it altogether 0:30:56.480 --> 0:30:59.000 at once, and it has only been carrying it forward 0:30:59.040 --> 0:31:02.280 because they were ordered to buy the Fifth Circuit. 0:31:02.760 --> 0:31:06.720 Yeah, yeah, it would just go back to the district. 0:31:07.120 --> 0:31:11.160 Yeah, exactly. So in fact, there has been a lot 0:31:11.200 --> 0:31:15.320 of anxiety about, oh, the Supreme Court is signaling that 0:31:16.680 --> 0:31:19.000 the law has changed and that the Fifth Circuit can 0:31:19.120 --> 0:31:23.440 just criminalize protest. In fact, what I think has happened 0:31:23.440 --> 0:31:27.120 here is that the Supreme Court affirmed that the Fifth 0:31:27.160 --> 0:31:32.520 Circuit may not expose people to civil liability for organizing 0:31:32.560 --> 0:31:36.600 a protest. That does not mean that the courts down 0:31:36.640 --> 0:31:40.040 there are not going to try to keep going forward 0:31:40.080 --> 0:31:43.880 with this. But I think if they did, and if 0:31:44.000 --> 0:31:48.479 mister McKesson was like a if they even allowed it 0:31:48.480 --> 0:31:52.720 to continue, it might just go right back up to 0:31:52.760 --> 0:31:55.080 the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court might at that 0:31:55.160 --> 0:31:58.640 point hear it because they've already said, no, we expect 0:31:58.680 --> 0:32:04.040 you to follow the law that we just rearticulated in 0:32:04.080 --> 0:32:09.720 this other case. Right, But again, remember that we haven't 0:32:09.720 --> 0:32:13.880 had a trial yet. He hasn't been found guilty. He hasn't, right, Like, 0:32:14.000 --> 0:32:17.360 the question is can we even proceed in this case? 0:32:17.840 --> 0:32:19.920 Let's take a second outbreak here, and then we'll come 0:32:19.960 --> 0:32:33.160 back and discuss This may have been over exaggerated in 0:32:33.200 --> 0:32:35.960 terms of it's importance of state repression approtest, but that 0:32:36.000 --> 0:32:40.400 doesn't mean that state repression approtest is not happening, right, 0:32:40.680 --> 0:32:43.360 it is. So can you explain to us the mechanisms 0:32:43.400 --> 0:32:47.400 through which that happens and the considerations and resources available 0:32:47.400 --> 0:32:51.000 to people who may wish to exercise the First Amendment? Right? Yes? 0:32:51.640 --> 0:32:55.000 Absolutely? So has it become more dangerous to protest? I mean, 0:32:55.680 --> 0:32:57.840 I guess, but not because of this case? 0:32:58.240 --> 0:33:01.479 Right? Right? Yeah, I mean generally right. They cops get 0:33:01.560 --> 0:33:05.480 bigger guns and more guns and tear guess things every year, 0:33:05.520 --> 0:33:08.640 and then they love to use him. Yeah, along with 0:33:08.680 --> 0:33:10.280 the legal consequences. 0:33:10.560 --> 0:33:13.520 Yes, And are there things that we should be worried about? Yes, 0:33:15.840 --> 0:33:21.680 But I don't think that this particular case on its 0:33:21.720 --> 0:33:26.240 own is the harbinger of the end of the First Amendment. 0:33:26.720 --> 0:33:32.920 It's one symptom of the larger underlying effort by the 0:33:33.000 --> 0:33:37.400 state and you know, corporate capital and all of the 0:33:37.440 --> 0:33:43.920 forces of retrogression and repression to quell dissent. But it's 0:33:44.080 --> 0:33:47.920 just one of many, right. And we've seen so many 0:33:48.040 --> 0:33:50.960 examples of this, and they are by no means new 0:33:51.160 --> 0:33:56.440 or novel, right, They're just trying out new legal theories, 0:33:56.480 --> 0:33:58.680 and this was one of them. And I don't think 0:33:58.720 --> 0:34:01.560 it's going to go anywhere, But I think we need 0:34:01.600 --> 0:34:05.160 to remember there's always sort of multiple fronts on which 0:34:05.200 --> 0:34:10.279 we're fighting this battle. Right. There's the legal front, right, 0:34:10.920 --> 0:34:14.600 and then there's the sort of on the ground law 0:34:14.760 --> 0:34:19.719 enforcement front. One of the reasons that mister McKesson was 0:34:19.760 --> 0:34:23.400 targeted here is because he did make and this is 0:34:23.440 --> 0:34:25.799 not to say this is his fault, it absolutely is not. 0:34:26.920 --> 0:34:30.480 But one of the things that made him more susceptible 0:34:30.640 --> 0:34:32.799 to targeting is that he did make a ton of 0:34:32.840 --> 0:34:37.040 public statements and he was extremely visible in a way 0:34:37.200 --> 0:34:44.440 that aligned with the governments and the right wings understanding 0:34:45.200 --> 0:34:50.160 of social structures. Right because if they understand that social 0:34:50.160 --> 0:34:53.759 movements are being directed from the top, which is not 0:34:53.920 --> 0:34:58.040 typically the case. But if that's if that's what it 0:34:58.120 --> 0:35:02.200 looks like to them, is a person that they can identify, 0:35:02.719 --> 0:35:10.000 who they can even a little bit make out, even 0:35:10.360 --> 0:35:17.200 the most tenuous case, is in charge, then you know 0:35:17.280 --> 0:35:18.759 that's the person they're going to go after. 0:35:19.280 --> 0:35:19.480 Yeah. 0:35:19.560 --> 0:35:24.319 Yeah, So to the extent that we're doing organizing that 0:35:24.600 --> 0:35:29.719 where it is distributed, it is autonomous. You know, it 0:35:29.800 --> 0:35:35.319 is spontaneous. And we aren't working with in structures that 0:35:35.440 --> 0:35:38.719 are hierarchical, and we're not working in structures that are 0:35:38.719 --> 0:35:44.080 incorporated and have bank accounts in public meetings and membership structures. 0:35:45.600 --> 0:35:50.240 You know, we're already very insulated from this kind of thing. Anyway, 0:35:51.400 --> 0:35:56.560 the dangers are what the dangers have always been, which 0:35:56.560 --> 0:36:00.399 are mass arrest because the police neither know nor care 0:36:00.480 --> 0:36:03.920 what the law is, and they don't care about Clayborn, 0:36:04.040 --> 0:36:06.000 and they don't care that the fact that you did 0:36:06.040 --> 0:36:10.000 not personally throw a rock doesn't constitute probable cause to 0:36:10.120 --> 0:36:14.960 arrest you. Right, Like, I am always more concerned about 0:36:14.960 --> 0:36:17.680 things on the ground like mass arrests and police involved 0:36:17.719 --> 0:36:23.200 injuries than I am about frankly about even long term 0:36:23.239 --> 0:36:26.960 legal consequences because so often, and I guess I say 0:36:26.960 --> 0:36:29.959 this because I have the privilege of practicing in New York, 0:36:30.080 --> 0:36:36.040 where there is a very strong history of public protest 0:36:36.320 --> 0:36:39.640 and everyone sort of understands what that is and no 0:36:39.719 --> 0:36:43.640 one feels all that threatened by it. Which doesn't mean 0:36:43.640 --> 0:36:46.319 that there aren't a lot of police involved injuries, and 0:36:46.400 --> 0:36:49.280 it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of traumatic arrests, 0:36:49.320 --> 0:36:53.919 but it does mean that typically there are not devastating 0:36:54.120 --> 0:36:57.960 legal consequences of that. Now, that's not the case in 0:36:58.040 --> 0:37:03.839 places like Georgia, right where they're doing their own sort 0:37:03.880 --> 0:37:07.799 of boundary testing down there to see what kinds of 0:37:07.880 --> 0:37:11.160 criminal liability and what kinds of theories of criminal law 0:37:11.600 --> 0:37:17.640 they can use to sort of bootstrap absolutely garden variety 0:37:17.760 --> 0:37:26.000 protest behavior into really serious felony charges. Right. So that's 0:37:26.000 --> 0:37:27.680 the kind of stuff that I would say, Yeah, we 0:37:27.719 --> 0:37:30.400 should be worried about it. It is dangerous to protest. 0:37:30.719 --> 0:37:37.520 There's widespread surveillance, there's widespread public private collaboration, there's widespread 0:37:37.640 --> 0:37:43.520 agency cooperation. There's all kinds of non state actors, right, 0:37:43.719 --> 0:37:51.800 corporate actors, political actors, random sort of individuals and small 0:37:51.840 --> 0:37:55.680 groups that are doing are engaged in all kinds of surveillance. 0:37:56.160 --> 0:37:59.400 There's counter groups, right, we have like you mentioned before, 0:37:59.440 --> 0:38:03.120 the Proud Boy, we have all kinds of well, look, 0:38:03.239 --> 0:38:06.400 Canary Mission is a really good example, right, We have 0:38:06.560 --> 0:38:12.680 all kinds of actors, groups, individuals, corporations, government entities that 0:38:12.920 --> 0:38:16.640 have an interest in suppressing descent, and they engage in 0:38:16.719 --> 0:38:22.319 all kinds of conduct, you know, ranging from intense surveillance 0:38:22.440 --> 0:38:29.400 to doxing to you know, even more violent behavior, you know, 0:38:29.640 --> 0:38:36.120 targeted harassment, not just by law enforcement, but by individuals, 0:38:36.160 --> 0:38:41.040 by neighbors, by media outlets. Right. And those are the 0:38:41.160 --> 0:38:45.520 kinds of things that make it dangerous to protest, I guess, 0:38:45.800 --> 0:38:49.120 But since when do we let that stop us? 0:38:49.840 --> 0:38:50.040 You know? 0:38:50.160 --> 0:38:50.440 I mean? 0:38:51.000 --> 0:38:56.080 The solution to these kinds of dangerous is to be thoughtful, 0:38:56.120 --> 0:39:00.680 to remember that discretion is the better part of valor, right, Meaning, 0:39:00.719 --> 0:39:02.839 you don't need to be bragging about whatever you're doing 0:39:02.880 --> 0:39:05.480 on Twitter. You don't need to always be the public 0:39:05.480 --> 0:39:08.360 face of the movement, because even if you're not speaking 0:39:08.400 --> 0:39:12.040 directly to cops in an interrogation, anything you say publicly 0:39:12.160 --> 0:39:15.040 can and very much will be used against you. Yeah, 0:39:15.160 --> 0:39:18.319 We're seeing a lot of employment and educational consequences right 0:39:18.360 --> 0:39:20.919 people are currently what's happening right now as we speak 0:39:20.960 --> 0:39:23.759 at Columbia University, people are losing their student housing, they're 0:39:23.760 --> 0:39:27.600 getting suspended from school, they're getting arrested, they're getting you know, 0:39:27.640 --> 0:39:32.719 these student disciplinary proceedings. There's all kinds of risks to 0:39:33.120 --> 0:39:38.120 being a public dissident. But the solution to that kind 0:39:38.120 --> 0:39:42.040 of repression is not self censorship. It's courage. 0:39:42.440 --> 0:39:44.880 There are other ways that we secure change, but showing 0:39:44.920 --> 0:39:46.800 up in the streets is always how you make history, 0:39:47.160 --> 0:39:49.799 and you have to be smart, but you also have 0:39:49.840 --> 0:39:55.719 to be brave. As we reach another election year, almost 0:39:55.760 --> 0:40:00.320 certainly like there will be protest, which, whatever happen, depends 0:40:00.360 --> 0:40:03.000 in the election, right, that will lead to people who 0:40:03.080 --> 0:40:08.399 are perhaps not so familiar with horizontal organizing, with like 0:40:08.680 --> 0:40:12.399 anti authoritarian or non authoritarian organizing, all these things, entering 0:40:12.440 --> 0:40:17.240 a protest movement, and people will inevitably have to learn 0:40:18.200 --> 0:40:21.480 like one way or the other, you know, like these 0:40:21.520 --> 0:40:24.000 basic things they can do to make it as safe 0:40:24.000 --> 0:40:26.000 as possible to protest, and it would be great if 0:40:26.000 --> 0:40:27.879 they can learn them from a podcast, not from them 0:40:27.960 --> 0:40:29.560 or their friends getting hurt. 0:40:29.640 --> 0:40:34.560 Here's what I would say too, if it is at 0:40:34.560 --> 0:40:38.960 all possible, find a lawyer who is willing to consult 0:40:39.000 --> 0:40:43.280 with you before you go out and do your action, 0:40:44.280 --> 0:40:47.120 just so that you can be prepared right for purposes 0:40:47.160 --> 0:40:52.280 of informed consent, because I cannot tell you. You know, lawyers 0:40:52.280 --> 0:40:54.879 are not allowed to advise their clients to break the law, 0:40:55.200 --> 0:40:57.759 but it's very much our job to tell you what 0:40:57.840 --> 0:41:01.520 the possible or likely consequences of certain courses of action. 0:41:02.080 --> 0:41:04.600 And you are probably better off knowing what that is 0:41:05.120 --> 0:41:08.040 before you do the thing than after you do that thing. 0:41:08.280 --> 0:41:09.400 Yeah, that's a good idea. 0:41:10.040 --> 0:41:12.920 I will tell you that. Personally, I would rather spend 0:41:13.400 --> 0:41:20.800 many hours talking people through, you know, the various outcomes 0:41:20.840 --> 0:41:26.600 of different ideas, than spending ten minutes talking to them 0:41:26.640 --> 0:41:30.799 after they're already in a cell. Right, you know, there 0:41:30.840 --> 0:41:34.680 are ways of protesting that are entirely lawful that can 0:41:34.719 --> 0:41:38.640 still help you to accomplish your political goals. And if 0:41:38.680 --> 0:41:41.160 you are going to go out and do something that 0:41:41.200 --> 0:41:43.799 you think is likely to involve a rest, I at 0:41:43.880 --> 0:41:47.520 least want you to know that it is likely to 0:41:47.840 --> 0:41:53.160 involve our resty exactly you know, and what your specific 0:41:53.320 --> 0:41:56.880 risks might be and to have somebody lined up to 0:41:56.920 --> 0:42:01.480 take care of you, to represent you if that becomes necessary. 0:42:01.680 --> 0:42:01.879 Right. 0:42:03.280 --> 0:42:06.360 I really don't mean to say, oh, don't worry about 0:42:06.520 --> 0:42:09.680 McKesson VD, It's no big deal. It is a big deal. 0:42:09.800 --> 0:42:14.400 It's a big deal because this whole judicial system and 0:42:14.480 --> 0:42:20.520 legal apparatus is working over time to find every possible 0:42:20.600 --> 0:42:26.480 way to discourage protest. But it is not unique in 0:42:26.520 --> 0:42:29.279 that regard. And I guess that's really what I'm trying 0:42:29.280 --> 0:42:32.120 to say. There are all kinds of ways in which 0:42:32.480 --> 0:42:37.279 we are at risk by being dissidents. I just don't 0:42:37.320 --> 0:42:41.320 think that this one is particularly special or particularly alarming. 0:42:42.200 --> 0:42:45.239 And again, what I just referred to as the law 0:42:45.280 --> 0:42:50.080 of the land is not the same thing as law 0:42:50.200 --> 0:42:53.040 enforcement practice, right yeah. 0:42:53.640 --> 0:42:54.240 I would. 0:42:55.920 --> 0:42:58.520 Really want to make sure that everyone remembers a the 0:42:58.640 --> 0:43:02.200 law is not the same thing as justice, and neither 0:43:02.320 --> 0:43:06.480 is the law the same thing or even necessarily related 0:43:06.560 --> 0:43:11.600 to what police are doing on the ground during a protest. 0:43:12.160 --> 0:43:17.439 Right yeah, there's very different things. Where can people I guess, 0:43:17.440 --> 0:43:21.799 people who are organizing, people who are you know, organizing autonomous, 0:43:21.840 --> 0:43:25.759 spontaneous horizontal movements, are they good resources for them to 0:43:25.800 --> 0:43:28.720 find because they might be they might need in my state? 0:43:28.840 --> 0:43:31.920 What's you know, what do I have to avoid that 0:43:32.080 --> 0:43:32.560 kind of thing? 0:43:32.680 --> 0:43:32.919 Yes? 0:43:33.560 --> 0:43:34.680 Where would they find those? 0:43:35.560 --> 0:43:39.239 One resource if you are contacted by federal law enforcement 0:43:39.960 --> 0:43:43.040 is you can call the National Lawyer's Guild Federal Anti 0:43:43.080 --> 0:43:46.839 Repression Hotline at two one two six seven nine two 0:43:46.880 --> 0:43:51.960 eight one one. A really good resource is the Electronic 0:43:52.080 --> 0:43:57.319 Frontier Foundation's Surveillance Self Defense which is at s as 0:43:57.320 --> 0:44:01.800 in Surveillance s as in Self d in Defense dot 0:44:02.440 --> 0:44:06.399 E as in Electronic f as in Frontier f as 0:44:06.440 --> 0:44:13.800 in foundation dot org. The National Lawyer's Guild has various 0:44:14.600 --> 0:44:20.480 know your Rights guides that are available at NLG dot org. 0:44:22.120 --> 0:44:25.200 We also have chapters all over the country and if 0:44:25.239 --> 0:44:29.719 you look in our referral directory you can find where 0:44:29.760 --> 0:44:34.600 those contacts for people all over the country. I think 0:44:35.560 --> 0:44:38.640 if you want a know your Rights training, you can 0:44:38.680 --> 0:44:41.960 reach out to the NALG and there are a lot 0:44:42.000 --> 0:44:45.920 of other a lot of other organizations that do know 0:44:45.960 --> 0:44:49.319 your Rights trainings. I know in New York we have 0:44:49.400 --> 0:44:54.520 a really amazing organization called Cuney Clear, and I would 0:44:54.960 --> 0:44:58.760 highly recommend you follow them on Instagram because they often 0:44:58.800 --> 0:45:03.000 have a lot of resources they're posting Protect your People 0:45:03.200 --> 0:45:07.400 a digital toolkit for organizations and employers, and it was 0:45:07.440 --> 0:45:13.160 developed to combat anti LGBTQ plus harassment. But I think 0:45:13.200 --> 0:45:17.680 the principles remain the same no matter what it is 0:45:18.320 --> 0:45:20.319 that you're looking at. And I'll put the link to 0:45:20.400 --> 0:45:24.080 that again. It's called Protect Your People and it's hosted 0:45:24.120 --> 0:45:29.239 by the Harvard Law LGBTQ Clinic. But I'll stick the 0:45:29.680 --> 0:45:32.160 link here in the chat for you, James, so that 0:45:32.200 --> 0:45:33.760 you can share it in the show notes. 0:45:34.080 --> 0:45:34.200 Well. 0:45:34.320 --> 0:45:38.359 To finish up, you've mentioned the national Lawyers Guilds and 0:45:38.400 --> 0:45:41.160 some other resources. Is there anywhere else where people can 0:45:41.200 --> 0:45:43.120 find you or where do you think that they should 0:45:43.120 --> 0:45:45.440 be following along? Like you know, like we said, we're 0:45:45.440 --> 0:45:49.600 going into an election year. Stuff's probably becoming more relevant again, 0:45:49.800 --> 0:45:52.480 and there's a genocide happening right now that people are 0:45:52.480 --> 0:45:55.520 facing severe personal consequences for protesting. 0:45:56.960 --> 0:45:59.359 Yeah, I mean, I don't want anyone to follow me. 0:45:59.320 --> 0:46:01.040 On social media. 0:46:02.840 --> 0:46:06.840 If that's what you're asking, I will always every single 0:46:06.880 --> 0:46:13.840 time plug landback dot org. And if people yes, I 0:46:13.920 --> 0:46:17.200 can see that you have a land back flag behind you. 0:46:19.400 --> 0:46:21.160 Yeah, there's a black one next to it. 0:46:21.360 --> 0:46:24.960 Okay, also a solid choice for flags if we got 0:46:24.960 --> 0:46:30.040 to do flags. Oh also, please, for the love of God, 0:46:30.120 --> 0:46:31.120 don't talk to cops. 0:46:47.280 --> 0:46:50.319 It's it could happen. Here a podcast where I didn't 0:46:50.360 --> 0:46:52.120 come up with an intro. So you're getting this one. 0:46:52.520 --> 0:46:54.480 I'm your host, Bia Wong. This is this is the 0:46:54.520 --> 0:46:56.920 podcast where actually, this is the part of the podcast 0:46:56.960 --> 0:46:59.600 where after things have fallen apart, you put them back 0:46:59.600 --> 0:47:03.759 together again. And yeah, the thing that's being put back 0:47:03.800 --> 0:47:06.080 together here. You know, I really I really should have 0:47:06.080 --> 0:47:08.200 planned this intro more. But this is what happened. This 0:47:08.239 --> 0:47:13.319 is what happens when we get night recordings. But yeah, 0:47:13.480 --> 0:47:16.680 the thing, the thing we're putting together today is a 0:47:16.960 --> 0:47:21.640 union at a really interesting kind of very very interesting kind. 0:47:21.560 --> 0:47:22.200 Of coffee shop. 0:47:22.640 --> 0:47:25.560 So with me to talk about this is Alex, Rocky 0:47:25.600 --> 0:47:29.080 and Madeline from Blue Bottle Independent Union. And yeah, thank 0:47:29.120 --> 0:47:29.960 you all for joining me. 0:47:31.920 --> 0:47:33.480 Yeah, thank you so much for having us. 0:47:35.040 --> 0:47:37.399 Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you all. And so 0:47:37.520 --> 0:47:39.640 I guess the first thing that I want to start 0:47:39.640 --> 0:47:42.360 with is can you talk a bit about what Blue 0:47:42.360 --> 0:47:45.960 Bottle is, because this is a really weird story that 0:47:46.000 --> 0:47:48.200 I think kind of reveals a lot about the way 0:47:48.400 --> 0:47:51.080 I don't know, it is sort of lofty terms, is 0:47:51.120 --> 0:47:53.200 like the direction that capital has been moving in the 0:47:53.239 --> 0:47:55.080 past like ten years. 0:47:55.880 --> 0:47:56.320 Absolutely. 0:47:56.400 --> 0:47:56.600 Yeah. 0:47:56.640 --> 0:48:00.600 So Blue Bottle is a specialty coffee chain founded by 0:48:00.760 --> 0:48:04.839 James Freeman in Oakland, California, like two thousand and two. 0:48:05.600 --> 0:48:09.080 Like most specialty shops, starts off as like this small 0:48:09.080 --> 0:48:12.120 little cart where you know, one guy is doing all 0:48:12.160 --> 0:48:15.520 the parts of production, roasting, serving the coffee and all that. 0:48:16.000 --> 0:48:16.600 And then. 0:48:18.360 --> 0:48:23.359 Throughout you know, the early aughts twenty ten's, they do 0:48:24.120 --> 0:48:27.799 lots of rounds of venture capital financing with like Fidelity 0:48:27.840 --> 0:48:33.680 and other firms until twenty seventeen, when Nesley purchased a 0:48:33.880 --> 0:48:37.799 sixty eight percent majority ownership in Blue Bottle at I 0:48:37.800 --> 0:48:44.520 think a seven hundred million dollar evaluation. And since then, no, no, no, 0:48:44.680 --> 0:48:47.919 the it was a seven hundred million dollar evaluation. They 0:48:48.000 --> 0:48:52.520 paid four hundred million dollars too. Yeah, isn't this great? 0:48:54.880 --> 0:48:58.400 And since then they've expanded from you know, the tiny 0:48:58.400 --> 0:49:02.080 little location in California to seventy stores in the US 0:49:02.520 --> 0:49:05.600 and then over one hundred globally, including in China, Japan, 0:49:05.719 --> 0:49:10.160 Hong Kong, South Korea, and am I forgetting anywhere else. 0:49:10.760 --> 0:49:12.040 I think that's I think that's it. 0:49:12.120 --> 0:49:15.520 Yeah, Yeah, it's it's a fun time to be a 0:49:15.520 --> 0:49:16.120 coffee worker. 0:49:16.160 --> 0:49:16.719 I guess. 0:49:16.960 --> 0:49:20.080 Yeah, it's interesting to me the extent to which this 0:49:20.239 --> 0:49:23.000 it has. I mean, okay, so like one hundred shops 0:49:23.080 --> 0:49:25.000 is like a lot of shops, but it's not seven 0:49:25.080 --> 0:49:28.080 hundred million dollars of shops. Like it really seems like 0:49:28.120 --> 0:49:31.600 this company has like it really has like tech valuation, 0:49:32.480 --> 0:49:33.640 which is alarming. 0:49:34.360 --> 0:49:38.960 Yeah, and I mean it's not uncommon for specialty right now, 0:49:38.960 --> 0:49:41.840 which is also concerning. Like, as far as I understand, 0:49:41.880 --> 0:49:45.880 Intelligentsia and La Cologne are also owned in part by 0:49:45.960 --> 0:49:50.680 venture capital firms, and this is really confusing, especially because 0:49:51.520 --> 0:49:53.880 for anybody that knows anything about like the economics of 0:49:54.320 --> 0:49:59.960 coffee shops, the margins are terrible. Yeah, and really a 0:50:00.000 --> 0:50:02.560 as far as I can tell, the only value that 0:50:02.560 --> 0:50:06.360 Blue Bottle offers to Nesley is brand and like the 0:50:06.440 --> 0:50:10.279 ability to eventually grow to the point where at some 0:50:10.440 --> 0:50:12.160 point in the future they'll be able to make a 0:50:12.200 --> 0:50:13.120 little bit of money. 0:50:12.880 --> 0:50:18.160 Off of it all, which is a deeply weird business strategy. Yeah, 0:50:18.200 --> 0:50:21.000 and so I guess I wanted to start here because 0:50:21.480 --> 0:50:25.120 it feels like a very different organizing terrain than a 0:50:25.160 --> 0:50:28.600 lot of like you know, a lot of the shops 0:50:28.600 --> 0:50:30.120 that we've been that we talked to on this show, 0:50:30.160 --> 0:50:35.200 because it's like the value of this company is only 0:50:35.800 --> 0:50:38.680 kind of tangentially, you know, like on a sort of 0:50:38.760 --> 0:50:40.759 macro level, the value of the company is like kind 0:50:40.800 --> 0:50:42.960 of tenuously connected to your labor. But on the other hand, 0:50:43.000 --> 0:50:46.120 like at the individual shop level, you're still dealing with 0:50:46.239 --> 0:50:49.160 all of the same sort of like you know, like 0:50:49.239 --> 0:50:53.279 hyper exploitation and trying to like ring every cent out 0:50:53.320 --> 0:50:53.680 of stuff. 0:50:53.719 --> 0:50:55.879 So I guess I. 0:50:55.840 --> 0:50:58.919 Wanted to start by kind of asking, like how how 0:50:58.960 --> 0:51:04.400 did that the weirdness of what of what Blue Bottle 0:51:04.560 --> 0:51:06.839 is influence like how this campaign started. 0:51:07.239 --> 0:51:09.080 To be pretty frank about our campaign, Like there was 0:51:09.120 --> 0:51:12.480 a crop of organizers before Gonzo myself, who I would 0:51:12.520 --> 0:51:14.840 say at this point are kind of the longest running 0:51:14.920 --> 0:51:17.799 organizers on this campaign. Look, there was a crop before us, 0:51:17.800 --> 0:51:21.279 so we joined. We did not start the campaign here 0:51:21.280 --> 0:51:26.160 at Blue Bottle, but I think, I mean it was 0:51:26.440 --> 0:51:29.040 difficult in the very beginning, Like you know, blue bottle 0:51:29.120 --> 0:51:31.640 it pays now, like I think starting wage for brista 0:51:31.760 --> 0:51:35.360 like eighteen an hour. You know, we just got to 0:51:35.360 --> 0:51:37.360 pave up in April, so it's like I, you know, 0:51:37.400 --> 0:51:40.840 I do make more of the minimum wage. It's it 0:51:40.880 --> 0:51:42.560 can be a tough sell for people to be like, oh, 0:51:42.600 --> 0:51:44.879 but you know it's like marginally better, Like oh, I'm 0:51:44.920 --> 0:51:47.200 working at this like fancy coffee shop, don't they treat 0:51:47.280 --> 0:51:50.080 us a little better? Like? But when you look at 0:51:50.080 --> 0:51:53.279 like also, the coffee industry has a hole on like 0:51:53.760 --> 0:51:58.080 on a global scale, incredibly exploitative industry that like we 0:51:58.200 --> 0:52:01.880 are both we play in too as people like in 0:52:01.960 --> 0:52:05.279 the US who make incredibly expensive specialty coffee, but also 0:52:05.360 --> 0:52:07.240 like as workers who are exploited ourselves. 0:52:07.239 --> 0:52:10.120 Like, this is something that I think we have to think. 0:52:10.000 --> 0:52:14.799 About often as like how I don't know, how can 0:52:14.840 --> 0:52:16.879 our union affect this industry as a whole, How can 0:52:16.920 --> 0:52:19.200 we affect you know, Nestle as this conglomer as a whole, 0:52:19.280 --> 0:52:21.480 But also how can I afford my red next month? 0:52:22.040 --> 0:52:22.800 Yeah? 0:52:22.840 --> 0:52:25.240 And so you know, having those kinds of discussions with workers, 0:52:25.320 --> 0:52:27.919 like putting our day to day labor into this kind 0:52:27.920 --> 0:52:32.759 of larger context both of the company and of the industry. 0:52:34.000 --> 0:52:36.479 I mean, I think this campaign, you know, we didn't 0:52:36.520 --> 0:52:39.160 we didn't start out independent. We had a little bit 0:52:39.200 --> 0:52:43.920 of shopping around almost of different unions. I think we 0:52:43.920 --> 0:52:47.120 were also largely spout here in Boston specifically, like it 0:52:47.160 --> 0:52:50.600 is kind of a hotbed for coffee organizing. A lot 0:52:50.640 --> 0:52:53.280 of shops around here organized. There have been some incredibly 0:52:53.320 --> 0:52:56.480 like militant shops out here, like I think Gonza and 0:52:56.520 --> 0:52:59.640 I first got introduced to the Bluebettle campaign from the 0:52:59.680 --> 0:53:02.520 Star eight seven four picket line and they were out 0:53:02.560 --> 0:53:04.359 there for like two months, and I think that that, 0:53:04.920 --> 0:53:07.040 you know, those kinds of things have really influenced this 0:53:07.080 --> 0:53:10.399 campaign and really influenced our organizing as we go into 0:53:10.440 --> 0:53:15.319 this like really kind of corporate, bougie coffee shop that 0:53:16.120 --> 0:53:20.920 is hard to hard to reconcile with, like, hey, I 0:53:20.960 --> 0:53:24.879 am also an exploited laborer. I you know, I am 0:53:25.960 --> 0:53:29.200 forced to make coffee all day for customers who are 0:53:29.280 --> 0:53:33.239 frankly quite rude and having to have those conversations with 0:53:33.280 --> 0:53:36.319 your coacs of like, hey, we deserve better. It might 0:53:36.320 --> 0:53:39.200 be marginally better than some other place, we still deserve 0:53:39.239 --> 0:53:41.279 better and we can fight for so much more. So 0:53:42.520 --> 0:53:43.880 I feel like I went on for a little bit there, 0:53:43.880 --> 0:53:46.000 but I hope that answered that. 0:53:46.680 --> 0:53:49.560 One thing to kind of add on to that is 0:53:50.120 --> 0:53:53.719 when organizing in the stores. Part of the fact that 0:53:53.719 --> 0:53:57.400 we're owned by Nesti makes it actually much easier because 0:53:58.760 --> 0:54:02.960 people aren't like easily fooled. We understand that Neslei is 0:54:02.960 --> 0:54:05.840 putting a lot of money into this company with the 0:54:05.880 --> 0:54:09.680 hope of future returns, you know, in the shorter medium term. 0:54:09.960 --> 0:54:14.400 And also people implicitly understand that the current model that 0:54:14.440 --> 0:54:18.880 the cafes operate on is kind of reckless, Like because 0:54:19.360 --> 0:54:23.920 we're owned basically as a venture capital scheme, this means that, 0:54:24.800 --> 0:54:27.880 you know, we're constantly trying to cut costs that shouldn't 0:54:27.880 --> 0:54:32.000 be cut. Like even today, Madeline and I ran out 0:54:32.040 --> 0:54:35.680 of decaf coffee beans because they hadn't placed in order 0:54:35.680 --> 0:54:36.000 for them. 0:54:36.400 --> 0:54:37.000 Oh my god. 0:54:37.800 --> 0:54:38.680 Yeah uh. 0:54:39.160 --> 0:54:42.960 And you know we've run out of you know, milks 0:54:42.960 --> 0:54:46.600 fairly frequently. We've run out of things like cups and 0:54:46.719 --> 0:54:50.319 lids and very basic things that you need to run 0:54:50.360 --> 0:54:52.840 a coffee shop as far as I can tell, only 0:54:52.920 --> 0:54:58.080 because they need to keep operating costs comically low so 0:54:58.120 --> 0:55:00.759 that way they can appease their nestly over lots. 0:55:01.880 --> 0:55:03.719 Which is pretty funny because the math doesn't make any 0:55:03.760 --> 0:55:06.560 sense on that right, because it's like, Okay, you need 0:55:06.600 --> 0:55:09.160 to find a way to make like four hundred million dollars. 0:55:09.280 --> 0:55:11.839 Your solution to this is We're gonna delay ordering more 0:55:11.840 --> 0:55:15.960 coffee beans. It's like, is there anyone who like, No, 0:55:16.080 --> 0:55:18.279 you don't like. This isn't even an accountant situation. This 0:55:18.360 --> 0:55:20.840 is a like, is there anyone here who understands what 0:55:20.920 --> 0:55:24.600 an order of magnitude is? What are we doing here? 0:55:25.120 --> 0:55:27.040 Wait till you hear about the saffron latte? 0:55:27.560 --> 0:55:28.920 Oh god, what a disaster. 0:55:29.640 --> 0:55:30.319 Oh yeah, so. 0:55:30.280 --> 0:55:32.240 They don't have enough money to pay us a living wage. 0:55:32.440 --> 0:55:37.120 But from January until April of this year, we were 0:55:37.120 --> 0:55:41.359 serving a saffron vanilla latte with and I kid you, 0:55:41.400 --> 0:55:44.200 not real saffron, both in a syrup and also and 0:55:44.239 --> 0:55:47.400 a powdered Yeah no, no kidding. It tasted like Plato. 0:55:48.640 --> 0:55:51.560 I kind of like that, but not everybody does, apparently, 0:55:52.760 --> 0:55:53.000 you know. 0:55:53.440 --> 0:55:55.200 The first time, this is the first time I've ever 0:55:55.239 --> 0:55:57.920 said this in my entire life, But I sincerely hope 0:55:57.920 --> 0:56:04.560 that they were buying the fucking cheap fakes stuff real saffron. 0:56:04.600 --> 0:56:06.960 Oh god, well, to be fair, to be fair, a 0:56:06.960 --> 0:56:09.759 lot of something people think is real saffron probably is fake. 0:56:10.080 --> 0:56:13.520 So maybe maybe the scammers were getting something out of this. 0:56:13.600 --> 0:56:16.439 But dear God, that doesn't make them look good. 0:56:16.480 --> 0:56:19.360 But yeah, no, real, somebody who's good with the economy 0:56:19.400 --> 0:56:22.480 helped me out here. You know, three thousand dollars a 0:56:22.520 --> 0:56:27.000 week for Saffron and eighteen dollars an hour for Bereiza's. 0:56:30.640 --> 0:56:35.319 God, that's gonna like haunt me in my dreams. So 0:56:35.440 --> 0:56:38.800 what order are gonna ask? How much should that cost? 0:56:39.360 --> 0:56:42.480 Eight Jesus Christ. 0:56:43.640 --> 0:56:46.680 Oh no, but not enough money to pay us a 0:56:46.680 --> 0:56:47.280 living wage. 0:56:48.719 --> 0:56:52.680 No, that's o no, no, that is that is that 0:56:52.800 --> 0:56:54.480 is Jenny widely disgusting. 0:56:54.760 --> 0:56:57.319 Like how you know, when you think about it, we 0:56:57.360 --> 0:57:01.320 can like buy a little over two of them every 0:57:01.440 --> 0:57:02.560 hour we work. 0:57:02.800 --> 0:57:05.479 So like that's all we need. 0:57:07.520 --> 0:57:10.640 Yeah, yeah, that's also got to be like a kind 0:57:10.719 --> 0:57:14.520 of radicalizing moment of oh my god, yeah, and here 0:57:14.800 --> 0:57:17.360 our time is worth so little to these people. 0:57:18.240 --> 0:57:20.680 This is actually one of the biggest conversations I would 0:57:20.680 --> 0:57:22.240 have with my cocher is that I had to stop 0:57:22.280 --> 0:57:25.040 having so it make them incredibly upset. Was I would 0:57:25.040 --> 0:57:26.400 break down the mouth of them. I'd be like, you 0:57:26.440 --> 0:57:29.640 can make a latte in about a minute, two minutes, like, 0:57:30.040 --> 0:57:32.640 and those lattes are seven dollars. You make seventeen an hour, 0:57:32.720 --> 0:57:35.160 make three lattes, and that's more than your hourly wage, 0:57:35.400 --> 0:57:37.840 and you're making what one hundred of those an hour 0:57:37.960 --> 0:57:40.960 in a rush. Like people would get really upset when 0:57:41.000 --> 0:57:43.680 you're confronted with like the oh wow, the money coming 0:57:43.720 --> 0:57:44.760 in and then the money. 0:57:44.560 --> 0:57:48.200 That I'm receiving. It'll drive you crazy. 0:57:49.400 --> 0:57:50.680 Yeah, And I think, I don't know. 0:57:50.720 --> 0:57:52.400 That's one of these things where I think in a 0:57:52.400 --> 0:57:58.160 lot of industries it's kind of that kind of value 0:57:58.280 --> 0:58:01.520 thing is abstracted because like I don't know, Like you're, 0:58:01.600 --> 0:58:03.640 like I just talked about it like an accountant earlier, right, 0:58:03.680 --> 0:58:06.720 Like you're an accountant, you have no idea how much 0:58:06.760 --> 0:58:09.040 of well, I guess maybe an accountant would know exactly 0:58:09.120 --> 0:58:10.800 about a value like that. 0:58:11.280 --> 0:58:12.000 Okay, I don't know. 0:58:12.080 --> 0:58:15.520 You work in like you work in a factory that 0:58:15.560 --> 0:58:18.480 produces an auto part, right, like one thing that goes 0:58:18.520 --> 0:58:20.440 into an assembly of an auto parts, Like you have 0:58:20.520 --> 0:58:22.440 no like there's no good way for you to like 0:58:22.480 --> 0:58:24.040 actually understand this sort of value. 0:58:24.760 --> 0:58:25.000 Things. 0:58:25.160 --> 0:58:26.480 You can get kind of close, but I think it's 0:58:26.560 --> 0:58:29.280 less visceral than just yeah, this is an item of 0:58:29.360 --> 0:58:32.520 food that I'm watching all of these people like consume 0:58:32.640 --> 0:58:35.000 that I'm making, and it's like, yeah, sure, obviously there's 0:58:35.080 --> 0:58:38.600 like you know, like back down the value chain, there's 0:58:38.640 --> 0:58:42.080 also probably like Nessley doing like slave labor, like child 0:58:42.200 --> 0:58:46.040 slave labor to get chocolate or something. Right, But I 0:58:46.080 --> 0:58:48.120 don't know, there's this there's something really kind of just 0:58:48.920 --> 0:58:54.040 viscerally horrifying about like I've produced eight hundred dollars of 0:58:54.080 --> 0:58:58.200 coffee and they're paying me eighteen dollars. Yeah, so speaking 0:58:58.280 --> 0:59:01.080 of eight hundred dollars of coffee, this show. 0:59:01.520 --> 0:59:02.360 Actually, I don't think. 0:59:02.200 --> 0:59:04.840 We've ever gotten the coffee ad, which is sort of remarkable. 0:59:05.520 --> 0:59:07.800 You'd think at some point, I. 0:59:07.760 --> 0:59:10.000 Don't know, I don't dream really funny, you know, if 0:59:10.160 --> 0:59:12.040 if on the ad that we're about to go to, 0:59:12.120 --> 0:59:14.120 it's you know, like the Black Rifle Coffee Company or 0:59:14.120 --> 0:59:14.479 some shit. 0:59:15.080 --> 0:59:18.920 Oh god, wait no, I think I think one of 0:59:18.960 --> 0:59:21.320 the I think one of the insane. It might have 0:59:21.400 --> 0:59:24.600 been the other one. So there's like Black Rifle Coffee, 0:59:24.600 --> 0:59:26.600 which is the right wing coffee thing. But then they 0:59:26.760 --> 0:59:30.160 they condemned Kyle Rittenhouse murdering all those people, and so 0:59:30.560 --> 0:59:33.120 then there became a second to even more anti woe 0:59:33.120 --> 0:59:36.960 coffee shop that was even shittier. I think those people 0:59:37.000 --> 0:59:39.120 might legitimately have tried to sell an ad to our show. 0:59:39.120 --> 0:59:40.000 At one point we were like. 0:59:39.960 --> 0:59:44.680 No, what the fuck, that's why there's we had so 0:59:44.720 --> 0:59:48.960 many insane ads. We had the famously the Washington Highway 0:59:49.000 --> 0:59:55.720 Patrol put one on here. So let's let's hope you 0:59:55.720 --> 1:00:09.800 have a reasonable ad instead of that, and we are back. 1:00:10.360 --> 1:00:13.920 Luckily this is podcasting or not regulated like radio, so 1:00:13.960 --> 1:00:16.600 I could just fucking say, shit, it's great. We love 1:00:16.640 --> 1:00:18.040 we love, we love to be we love to be 1:00:18.080 --> 1:00:22.560 in podcasting. So yeah, this, this brings us in no 1:00:22.720 --> 1:00:25.800 particular bye by by no particular rhyme of reason. 1:00:25.840 --> 1:00:27.760 This brings us to a neoxt. 1:00:27.480 --> 1:00:30.400 Thing I wanted to sort of talk about, which is 1:00:30.560 --> 1:00:34.880 about the decision to go independent and about independent unions 1:00:34.960 --> 1:00:37.720 versus sort of the traditional business unions that have been 1:00:37.760 --> 1:00:39.760 trying to run a lot of these campaigns. So yeah, 1:00:39.800 --> 1:00:42.200 I guess wherever you want to start in that whole 1:00:42.240 --> 1:00:44.720 sort of thickets of issues. 1:00:46.000 --> 1:00:50.360 Yeah, the decision to go independent was maybe eight months 1:00:50.400 --> 1:00:56.320 into our campaign. We didivo to go independent. We were, 1:00:56.840 --> 1:01:00.720 you know, kind of we had not a with anyone. 1:01:00.800 --> 1:01:03.280 We some weird stuff that happened with some previous business 1:01:03.400 --> 1:01:05.960 unions and so we're kind of an shopping around phase, 1:01:07.040 --> 1:01:09.320 and I like good friend of the union and someone 1:01:09.360 --> 1:01:12.800 who has helped us incredibly throughout the campaign, said hey, 1:01:12.880 --> 1:01:16.120 can I pitch you guys on going independent? Like and 1:01:16.200 --> 1:01:18.640 at that time, I mean, I can't speak for the 1:01:18.680 --> 1:01:21.520 other folks, Like I did not know anything about independent unions. 1:01:22.240 --> 1:01:24.960 This campaign has also been an incredible like learning process 1:01:25.000 --> 1:01:27.640 for me. And so you know, we talked about a 1:01:27.680 --> 1:01:31.919 little bit of like, hey, unions, everything that a union does, 1:01:31.960 --> 1:01:36.880 workers can do and really like trying to like instill 1:01:36.960 --> 1:01:38.880 this like we can do it ourselves because I think 1:01:38.880 --> 1:01:43.440 that like, for me, like the dream of independent unionism 1:01:43.520 --> 1:01:46.520 is like the having autonomy and control of our lives 1:01:47.000 --> 1:01:50.160 both in the workplace and in our unions at like 1:01:50.240 --> 1:01:52.920 as workers. And so you know this idea of like 1:01:52.920 --> 1:01:55.880 oh yeah, this the the union just takes care of it. Oh, 1:01:55.920 --> 1:01:58.160 you pay dues and this stafford does all these things 1:01:58.160 --> 1:02:00.480 for you. But when you know, when we filed our petition, 1:02:00.520 --> 1:02:02.920 you know I filled that out, it's not that hard. 1:02:03.280 --> 1:02:06.000 You know, there are so many things where it's like oh, yeah, 1:02:06.040 --> 1:02:07.560 the union will take care of it, or oh this 1:02:07.640 --> 1:02:09.600 is what does pay for like, oh, we can have 1:02:09.640 --> 1:02:12.160 a lawyer look at it. At no part of this 1:02:12.240 --> 1:02:15.200 process was there really anything that workers could not have done. 1:02:15.240 --> 1:02:18.120 Did we seek legal advice? Absolutely? Did we have people 1:02:18.160 --> 1:02:20.479 help us out who maybe knew more than I did. Yes, 1:02:21.080 --> 1:02:23.040 But that isn't to say that we were not learning 1:02:23.040 --> 1:02:25.040 the entire time. So to me, that's like the big 1:02:25.080 --> 1:02:29.120 ethos of independent unionism of like learning it, doing it, 1:02:29.200 --> 1:02:32.800 teaching others. I think it has been an incredible opportunity. 1:02:32.880 --> 1:02:36.640 I think also like we really are committed to like 1:02:36.720 --> 1:02:39.320 rank and file democracy and so having workers have a 1:02:39.480 --> 1:02:43.680 say in all major decisions, especially like now that we 1:02:43.720 --> 1:02:46.919 have had our election, we're moving into bargaining hopefully soon, 1:02:47.880 --> 1:02:51.920 Like being able to have workers submit proposals, have workers 1:02:52.000 --> 1:02:54.600 look and do open bargaining, have them look at every 1:02:54.840 --> 1:02:56.440 at the contract at every step of the way, and 1:02:56.480 --> 1:03:00.560 things like this, having people participate in their unions. I mean, 1:03:00.560 --> 1:03:01.840 I think that we are in a time of like 1:03:01.920 --> 1:03:04.480 the revitalization of the labor movement, and I don't want 1:03:04.520 --> 1:03:06.320 workers to get left behind in that. Like I think 1:03:06.400 --> 1:03:09.640 that we, you know, like we are the labor and 1:03:09.720 --> 1:03:14.000 so being able to control our unions and lead them 1:03:14.040 --> 1:03:16.520 in the ways that we want to as democratically as 1:03:16.520 --> 1:03:17.000 we can. 1:03:17.920 --> 1:03:19.800 To me, it's been what it's all about. Did that 1:03:19.840 --> 1:03:22.680 mean that it was an easy campaign. No, it was 1:03:22.720 --> 1:03:24.360 a lot of work. It was a lot of. 1:03:24.320 --> 1:03:26.280 Work that maybe a paid staff or would have done, 1:03:26.320 --> 1:03:28.840 but we did it ourselves and it took longer, and 1:03:28.880 --> 1:03:31.400 it took a lot of education as well of explaining 1:03:31.440 --> 1:03:33.760 to my coworkers of like, hey, we want to form 1:03:33.800 --> 1:03:36.040 a union and it's not just this thing that kind 1:03:36.080 --> 1:03:38.120 of happens to you, Like, actually, you have to make 1:03:38.120 --> 1:03:40.320 it happen now if you want to do it. So 1:03:40.400 --> 1:03:42.000 I think that for us the choice to go in 1:03:42.000 --> 1:03:46.880 dependent independent has like only reaped benefits so far. 1:03:47.000 --> 1:03:48.240 It's been this wonderful thing. 1:03:48.280 --> 1:03:50.760 I think that we are all much better for it 1:03:50.760 --> 1:03:53.800 and much closer like as co workers. I think that 1:03:53.800 --> 1:03:57.240 people are more excited about their union. But it certainly, 1:03:57.360 --> 1:03:58.919 you know, it took a lot of work, It took 1:03:58.960 --> 1:04:00.520 a lot of time. It took a lot of trust 1:04:01.080 --> 1:04:02.479 from our coworkers as well. 1:04:03.160 --> 1:04:09.080 Yeah, I mean, one of the most formative experiences that 1:04:09.720 --> 1:04:11.200 has stuck with me, and I think I might have 1:04:11.240 --> 1:04:14.640 mentioned this in the interview before the interview was when 1:04:14.640 --> 1:04:18.000 we were shopping around with business unions. Rocky and I 1:04:18.080 --> 1:04:20.880 had sat down with somebody from a fairly large one, 1:04:21.040 --> 1:04:24.800 and we're trying to ask all of these questions about, 1:04:25.360 --> 1:04:27.160 you know, would we be able to have rank and 1:04:27.200 --> 1:04:30.680 file control of our own campaign, would we be able 1:04:30.760 --> 1:04:38.200 to you know, legitimately examine unconventional tactics for launching or 1:04:38.200 --> 1:04:42.720 sustaining our campaign, you know, what is the actual process 1:04:42.800 --> 1:04:47.320 for requesting finances from the larger affiliate if we needed it, 1:04:47.800 --> 1:04:50.000 And more or less, what we were told by this 1:04:50.080 --> 1:04:53.000 staffer was that none of this would be in the 1:04:53.040 --> 1:04:55.320 hands of rank and file, and it would either be 1:04:55.400 --> 1:04:59.040 determined by what this particular staffer thought was best or 1:04:59.160 --> 1:05:02.480 you know, they would have to get approval from you know, 1:05:02.560 --> 1:05:07.200 whoever was above them, which, despite the fact that this 1:05:07.280 --> 1:05:09.960 person was within the reform caucus of their union, did 1:05:10.000 --> 1:05:12.000 not strike them as being anti democratic at all. 1:05:12.160 --> 1:05:13.440 Yeah. 1:05:13.760 --> 1:05:19.720 Yeah, And at that point, I mean, you know, we'd 1:05:19.760 --> 1:05:23.360 been talking to our co workers for months at that point, 1:05:24.400 --> 1:05:28.400 you know, hanging out with them, becoming building community, and 1:05:29.040 --> 1:05:33.000 it didn't seem like there was really anything that you know, 1:05:33.040 --> 1:05:35.320 a larger business union would have had to offer to 1:05:35.360 --> 1:05:39.680 begin with. In fact, in my own experience, the idea 1:05:39.720 --> 1:05:44.040 of affiliation has more or less come across as an 1:05:44.080 --> 1:05:46.720 implicit threat of how else are you going to take 1:05:46.760 --> 1:05:48.880 on Nesley without all of the money and resources that 1:05:48.880 --> 1:05:50.640 we have but won't let you use anyways. 1:05:53.080 --> 1:05:54.760 Yeah, which is like not a thing. 1:05:55.360 --> 1:05:57.360 I don't know, if you've gotten to the point where 1:05:57.360 --> 1:05:59.280 your union is threatening you, and this is something that 1:05:59.480 --> 1:06:04.400 like happens more than you'd think, Like, you know, but 1:06:04.640 --> 1:06:06.840 listeners of this show may or may not have listened 1:06:06.880 --> 1:06:09.680 to some previous episodes talking to some of the reformed 1:06:09.760 --> 1:06:12.120 nurses slates that we've we've had on this show. 1:06:12.000 --> 1:06:12.760 Where that's happened. 1:06:12.800 --> 1:06:15.160 But if your union is threatening to you, something has 1:06:15.160 --> 1:06:20.800 gone very badly wrong, and you're probably you're in a 1:06:20.800 --> 1:06:22.960 position where you're probably going to be having to fight 1:06:22.960 --> 1:06:25.040 yourself out of a deep hole. And one way you 1:06:25.080 --> 1:06:27.520 can avoid getting in there in the first place is 1:06:27.520 --> 1:06:29.880 by not digging the hole and building something yourself. 1:06:31.600 --> 1:06:34.440 Yeah, exactly, And I mean, you know, one of the 1:06:34.480 --> 1:06:37.160 things that we heard a lot about at Labor Notes 1:06:37.920 --> 1:06:41.320 two weeks ago at this point was people within larger 1:06:41.400 --> 1:06:44.040 unions talking about how to fight off staffers or bureaucrats 1:06:44.160 --> 1:06:48.080 and I'm personally very glad that we are not in 1:06:48.120 --> 1:06:50.560 that fight ourselves because we have Nestlie to take care of. 1:06:50.600 --> 1:06:56.640 Now. Yeah, yeah, the sort of two way fight between 1:06:57.000 --> 1:07:01.280 your boss and then also and staffers is not a 1:07:01.320 --> 1:07:02.880 thing that usually goes well for you. 1:07:04.360 --> 1:07:06.680 It's a bad situation to be it. I would recommend 1:07:06.760 --> 1:07:07.480 of waiting it. 1:07:08.480 --> 1:07:08.720 Yeah. 1:07:09.240 --> 1:07:11.680 Yeah, So I guess the next thing that I'm sort 1:07:11.680 --> 1:07:14.120 of interested in is, you know, so you talked a 1:07:14.120 --> 1:07:17.320 bit about how sort of being an independent union like 1:07:17.520 --> 1:07:21.200 made the union closer. How else did that influence how 1:07:21.200 --> 1:07:23.920 the campaign went? And how is like how how has 1:07:23.960 --> 1:07:26.160 it been going in the past, Like, I know, I 1:07:26.160 --> 1:07:30.120 know you won your election. I mean, they're right, yeah, 1:07:30.120 --> 1:07:31.880 it was it was an election with sorry it has 1:07:31.920 --> 1:07:34.400 been this is This has been the most chaotic two 1:07:34.440 --> 1:07:35.960 weeks I've had in several years. 1:07:36.440 --> 1:07:39.160 So, I mean, it's just like Lennon said, there are 1:07:39.400 --> 1:07:41.640 years when you fuck around and weeks where you find out. 1:07:44.720 --> 1:07:50.040 I'm gonna get so much shit for that comment now, anyways. 1:07:49.800 --> 1:07:54.000 Cool Zobebia is not endorsed. Letting made two good lines. 1:07:55.600 --> 1:07:58.760 I promise I only said it for the joke. Yeah, 1:07:58.800 --> 1:08:03.840 our campaign started April third. There are six stores in 1:08:03.920 --> 1:08:09.200 the Greater Boston area, with roughly sixty seven sixty five 1:08:09.320 --> 1:08:10.720 workers across all of them. 1:08:11.880 --> 1:08:14.880 On April third, fifty. 1:08:14.720 --> 1:08:19.280 Workers from five of those stores handed cards like union 1:08:19.280 --> 1:08:23.600 authorization cards to management, announcing our campaign, our union, and 1:08:24.479 --> 1:08:29.200 asking for voluntary recognition by noon on April eighth. Management 1:08:29.520 --> 1:08:33.160 accepted the cards, but then did not recognize the union 1:08:33.240 --> 1:08:36.360 voluntarily by newon April eighth, and instead they put up 1:08:36.560 --> 1:08:38.000 a flyer in the back of the house of all 1:08:38.040 --> 1:08:40.920 the cafes saying that they would respect the outcome of 1:08:40.960 --> 1:08:44.679 an election, at which point, yeah, they didn't even publicly 1:08:44.680 --> 1:08:48.120 acknowledge us. So at that point, across five of the 1:08:48.200 --> 1:08:50.599 six stores, we had a walk out on the eighth, 1:08:51.040 --> 1:08:55.000 and then that same day went downtown to file for 1:08:55.040 --> 1:08:58.600 an election with the NLRB, which despite the fact that 1:08:58.680 --> 1:09:00.680 we called them a week in advance to be like, 1:09:00.840 --> 1:09:02.599 is it okay if a lot of people show up 1:09:03.160 --> 1:09:07.200 kind of spontaneously to file for an election, And despite 1:09:07.240 --> 1:09:09.120 the fact that the person in the office said, yeah, 1:09:09.200 --> 1:09:10.800 it's fine as so long as like less than one 1:09:10.880 --> 1:09:12.519 hundred and you don't have like a sound stage or 1:09:12.520 --> 1:09:13.840 anything you got to set up, and if you do 1:09:14.120 --> 1:09:17.479 get a permit. Once we walked up to the office, 1:09:17.520 --> 1:09:20.439 at least four DHS cop cars like a sump in 1:09:20.520 --> 1:09:24.200 front of us, and they would only let Rocky go 1:09:24.439 --> 1:09:27.320 into the office to file for our election while being 1:09:27.560 --> 1:09:30.280 escorted by a DHS agent the entire times. 1:09:31.160 --> 1:09:34.320 You know, sometimes you get just these this is something 1:09:34.320 --> 1:09:36.400 that's been happening, so like, well, I have no idea 1:09:36.400 --> 1:09:38.360 when this episode is gonna go. This is being recorded 1:09:38.360 --> 1:09:40.639 in the middle of the protest. Like literally today, seventy 1:09:40.720 --> 1:09:43.960 year old professors are getting dragged out of like protests 1:09:44.000 --> 1:09:46.559 by cops, and like this is one of these moments 1:09:46.560 --> 1:09:51.680 where when things actually happenet these really visceral demonstrations of 1:09:51.800 --> 1:09:54.479 like what the society you actually live in is. And 1:09:55.040 --> 1:09:57.960 I don't think there's like a more perfect demonstration of 1:09:58.840 --> 1:10:01.680 the National Labor Relations Boards sometimes will help you, but 1:10:01.800 --> 1:10:05.360 also also is very clearly a bureaucratic mechanism of a 1:10:05.400 --> 1:10:06.040 police state. 1:10:06.680 --> 1:10:09.519 Then the cops show up and only one of you 1:10:09.600 --> 1:10:10.760 can go talk to the n l R and P 1:10:10.920 --> 1:10:14.599 person escorted by police. That is wild. 1:10:16.320 --> 1:10:16.519 Yeah. 1:10:16.560 --> 1:10:18.360 It was also the same day as the solar eclipse. 1:10:18.800 --> 1:10:24.000 Oh my god, it was a very magic day. Yeah, 1:10:24.600 --> 1:10:27.280 nothing was more enchanting than the fact that we got 1:10:27.320 --> 1:10:29.840 to watch the eclipse when we otherwise would have had 1:10:29.880 --> 1:10:31.880 to have been at work at rules. 1:10:32.760 --> 1:10:35.479 Yeah, yeah, I get I guess. I guess that's another 1:10:35.560 --> 1:10:37.599 way to get to get turnout for a walk out. 1:10:37.640 --> 1:10:39.560 It's like, hey, look we're gonna do a walk and 1:10:39.760 --> 1:10:42.000 also you could go see the eclipse instead of serving 1:10:42.160 --> 1:10:43.360 rich people coffee. 1:10:43.760 --> 1:10:45.719 And it worked. Hell yeah. 1:10:47.400 --> 1:10:49.400 Yeah. But all that is to say, I think being 1:10:49.479 --> 1:10:51.760 independent lets us do fun and creative things. 1:10:51.920 --> 1:10:52.160 Yeah. 1:10:53.360 --> 1:10:55.400 Yeah, thank you for remembering what the actual question was. 1:10:58.880 --> 1:11:00.840 Like, I think we're allowed to be a little silly 1:11:00.920 --> 1:11:03.400 with it, and we're allowed to have fun, and we're 1:11:03.400 --> 1:11:05.360 allowed to come up with ideas that maybe. 1:11:05.240 --> 1:11:07.040 Other like haters would shoot down. 1:11:07.120 --> 1:11:08.719 But when me and my cocher say yeah that would 1:11:08.720 --> 1:11:10.920 be cool and fun, we just get to do it 1:11:12.200 --> 1:11:15.000 and there's like joy and creativity and all of it. 1:11:15.560 --> 1:11:29.760 Yeah yeah, So I guess you know, do you have 1:11:29.800 --> 1:11:31.200 anything else that you want to make sure we get 1:11:31.240 --> 1:11:32.559 you before we sort of wrap things up. 1:11:33.520 --> 1:11:34.080 Yeah. So. 1:11:34.280 --> 1:11:36.200 I mean, as much as we've talked about a lot 1:11:36.240 --> 1:11:40.440 of the benefits of independent unionism, one of the downsides 1:11:41.600 --> 1:11:44.599 is that we have no money, and if people would 1:11:44.640 --> 1:11:46.639 be so gracious as to give us some of their money. 1:11:47.760 --> 1:11:51.479 You can go to link t R dot e E 1:11:52.040 --> 1:11:56.519 slash Blue Bottle Union so link tree slash Blue Bottle Union, 1:11:57.200 --> 1:12:00.880 where there'll be a link to our GoFundMe. I'll also 1:12:00.920 --> 1:12:02.920 say that since we don't have staffers, our overhead is 1:12:02.960 --> 1:12:06.120 incredibly low and this will once again allows us to 1:12:07.000 --> 1:12:09.040 you know, actually do cool and fun things like we 1:12:09.120 --> 1:12:12.080 were able to pay everybody that did the walkout because 1:12:12.080 --> 1:12:14.120 we were able to raise enough money in the in 1:12:14.240 --> 1:12:17.640 between from April third to eighth, which was incredible. 1:12:19.160 --> 1:12:22.240 I have like some personal stuff when it comes to 1:12:23.280 --> 1:12:26.800 like filing independent and talking with a lot of people 1:12:26.840 --> 1:12:31.479 that I know, I feel like it actually helped the 1:12:31.560 --> 1:12:34.519 fact that we were independent because you know, there was 1:12:34.600 --> 1:12:38.439 none of that background, oh unions. You know that there's 1:12:38.479 --> 1:12:41.080 this big influence when it comes to like unions and 1:12:41.280 --> 1:12:44.800 like big scary unions taking all your money through union 1:12:44.920 --> 1:12:50.040 dues and YadA YadA. But you know, with filing independent, 1:12:50.640 --> 1:12:54.120 you know we can just be like, actually, we don't 1:12:54.200 --> 1:12:57.320 have to worry about anything like that. We set union 1:12:57.439 --> 1:13:01.640 dues democratically and like and so it's just been like 1:13:01.840 --> 1:13:07.400 really helpful for when we were getting organized and everything. 1:13:07.600 --> 1:13:14.360 Just relaying that idea to coworkers, to family, friends and 1:13:14.520 --> 1:13:17.519 everyone just kind of like helps them be like, oh 1:13:17.800 --> 1:13:18.639 that makes sense. 1:13:20.040 --> 1:13:20.240 Yeah. 1:13:20.280 --> 1:13:22.800 I mean the old like you know, anti union talking 1:13:22.880 --> 1:13:25.360 point of like you know, there being an outside organization 1:13:26.680 --> 1:13:29.840 really falls flat with an independent union because it really 1:13:30.000 --> 1:13:32.880 is just you and all of your friends. And then 1:13:34.080 --> 1:13:36.080 on top of that, it also means that management hasn't 1:13:36.080 --> 1:13:39.200 known how to respond to us, because in the week 1:13:39.560 --> 1:13:42.280 leading up to our election, which we won thirty eight 1:13:42.320 --> 1:13:47.200 to four this past Friday, May third, Yeah, they put 1:13:47.240 --> 1:13:50.840 out like three or four different flyers, one talking about 1:13:51.000 --> 1:13:53.880 business unions that have signed management's rights clauses in the 1:13:53.960 --> 1:13:55.840 most fucking like I'm not owned. 1:13:55.920 --> 1:13:56.519 I'm not owned. 1:13:56.760 --> 1:14:01.280 I'm still going to get my mentionmans rights claus like ever. 1:14:01.640 --> 1:14:06.800 And then also another flyer about union dues and examples 1:14:06.880 --> 1:14:09.479 of business unions that you know, to anybody that doesn't 1:14:09.479 --> 1:14:11.040 know anything about unism, would seem high. 1:14:11.760 --> 1:14:11.960 Yeah. 1:14:12.200 --> 1:14:14.200 They also, in a letter that they sent out to 1:14:14.360 --> 1:14:17.320 all of us the night before our election, talked complained 1:14:17.320 --> 1:14:20.120 about us seeking external assistance, and all of this just 1:14:20.200 --> 1:14:24.360 completely falls flat because you know, it's literally we've done 1:14:24.400 --> 1:14:26.760 this mostly by like having pot lucks together to talk 1:14:26.800 --> 1:14:29.320 about all of our issues at work and or like 1:14:29.439 --> 1:14:34.080 movie nights or some shit, and it's much tougher to 1:14:34.640 --> 1:14:37.400 convince people to vote against the person that they're on 1:14:37.479 --> 1:14:38.599 the floor with eight hours a day. 1:14:39.200 --> 1:14:42.360 Yeah, the overall like way that these papers were received 1:14:42.840 --> 1:14:46.000 is has been like met with kind of like a 1:14:46.080 --> 1:14:50.720 lot of skull emojis in group chats and like just 1:14:50.840 --> 1:14:54.880 kind of like generally making fun of the whole thing. 1:14:57.439 --> 1:15:00.080 And I think that like that's been really good for 1:15:00.200 --> 1:15:04.560 morale as well, because like, you know, it's just not 1:15:04.680 --> 1:15:09.080 getting to us. It's goofy and like just doesn't work. 1:15:10.120 --> 1:15:14.240 So and also the way that they've been handing these 1:15:14.280 --> 1:15:16.880 flyers out, I don't know about like other cafes, but 1:15:17.080 --> 1:15:22.880 at mine specifically, it's been kind of awkward, like haha, 1:15:23.200 --> 1:15:25.760 cover my eyes, here's this flyer that I have to 1:15:25.880 --> 1:15:33.080 hand you kind of thing, and it's just like okay, yeah. 1:15:34.560 --> 1:15:37.519 Yeah, it really seems like it is something, you know, Okay, 1:15:37.520 --> 1:15:39.560 Diffinitely I'm I'm I'm not I'm not going to do 1:15:39.680 --> 1:15:43.200 my tangent about the infiltration of political parties. 1:15:43.640 --> 1:15:47.040 But yeah, I mean, really political cults within the Greater 1:15:47.120 --> 1:15:51.880 Boston area continuously subvert and undermine union elections are not 1:15:52.080 --> 1:15:55.559 just elections, but campaigns as well. I won't name examples 1:15:55.600 --> 1:15:58.320 because these same cults are also incredibly vindictive and they 1:15:58.320 --> 1:15:59.439 will try to dox me. 1:15:59.560 --> 1:16:03.040 But this is also the implicit threat. 1:16:02.880 --> 1:16:05.000 That you know, like if you know, they can't turn 1:16:05.120 --> 1:16:08.080 a union into their own stupid vanguard, then they will 1:16:08.520 --> 1:16:11.439 try and push through something that rank and file don't 1:16:11.479 --> 1:16:14.000 want and try and undermine or tank the campaign. 1:16:14.640 --> 1:16:16.960 Yeah, and that's that's something I think like to take 1:16:17.000 --> 1:16:18.680 it to okay, so to take a little step back. 1:16:18.840 --> 1:16:21.360 So yeah, one of the things that's very common in 1:16:21.560 --> 1:16:24.320 union in sort of like local union spaces is there 1:16:24.360 --> 1:16:27.080 will be like there'll be like a local of a 1:16:27.200 --> 1:16:29.640 union or like maybe sometimes its own union that's just 1:16:29.800 --> 1:16:33.040 run by a cult, and these sort of like these 1:16:33.080 --> 1:16:35.439 sort of like I don't know, sometimes you're Stalinis and 1:16:35.520 --> 1:16:38.439 under Trotskyites sometimes, like it depends, the ideology changes to 1:16:38.560 --> 1:16:42.280 some extent. But because because of like the you know, 1:16:42.400 --> 1:16:46.160 the because because you can run like a staff union 1:16:46.280 --> 1:16:49.680 with like five people, right, this is this is a 1:16:49.720 --> 1:16:52.400 pretty good way for them to sort of like like 1:16:53.040 --> 1:16:55.400 you know, gain something that looks like political power, and 1:16:55.479 --> 1:16:57.160 like it's a way for them to bring other people 1:16:57.240 --> 1:17:00.879 who don't know what's going on into like the influencers 1:17:00.880 --> 1:17:06.040 of their organization, and they this can get really bad 1:17:06.160 --> 1:17:08.840 and really dangerous, at least the stuff you're talking about where, yeah, 1:17:08.880 --> 1:17:12.120 they start trying to sabotage campaigns because they're not you know, 1:17:12.240 --> 1:17:15.640 like these groups aren't actually in this for you know, 1:17:15.840 --> 1:17:17.519 like they're not they're not in this for class struggles. 1:17:17.600 --> 1:17:19.240 But whatever they you know, will say about it, they're 1:17:19.240 --> 1:17:21.479 they're in this specifically to expand the influence of their 1:17:21.520 --> 1:17:25.040 own party. And you know, when you try to like 1:17:25.200 --> 1:17:29.040 actually do your own thing, this stuff happens. 1:17:30.720 --> 1:17:31.599 Yeah, one hundred percent. 1:17:33.120 --> 1:17:37.680 It's also really telling that despite the fact that you know, 1:17:37.840 --> 1:17:40.560 some of these groups are like known for undermining campaigns 1:17:40.600 --> 1:17:42.960 in this way, or for harassing staffers that you know, 1:17:43.040 --> 1:17:46.920 don't play ball with them or whatever, that they continue 1:17:47.120 --> 1:17:48.599 to do the entriest thing. 1:17:50.200 --> 1:17:50.439 Yeah. 1:17:51.439 --> 1:17:52.800 Yeah, I don't have. 1:17:52.840 --> 1:17:56.559 Any good ideas for how to subvert that, but I'm 1:17:56.600 --> 1:17:58.439 sure dear listeners will send me many of them. 1:17:59.560 --> 1:17:59.760 Yeah. 1:18:00.040 --> 1:18:02.880 I think also at some point we're gonna do the 1:18:02.960 --> 1:18:07.720 micro We're gonna do the micro sect episode Micro to 1:18:07.880 --> 1:18:10.800 the to like introduce people to the basics of like, hey, 1:18:10.920 --> 1:18:15.160 you are like the range of tiny political parties in 1:18:15.240 --> 1:18:18.080 the US that are actually cults that show up at 1:18:18.120 --> 1:18:22.600 protests all the time. So yeah, maybe maybe maybe that 1:18:22.680 --> 1:18:24.200 will help too, because I think a lot of it 1:18:24.360 --> 1:18:26.600 is people just you know, they're you run into like 1:18:26.680 --> 1:18:29.720 the World Workers Party, and like, you don't know that 1:18:30.000 --> 1:18:32.639 this party is a weird cult, right, They're just sort 1:18:32.680 --> 1:18:36.439 of talking about workers stuff. Yeah, so I think education 1:18:36.520 --> 1:18:40.240 will help with it too, but the bureaucratic maneuvering stuff 1:18:40.640 --> 1:18:43.960 is like the only thing they're good at because they're 1:18:43.960 --> 1:18:46.160 all these like weird micro party formations. 1:18:46.720 --> 1:18:47.519 So I don't know. 1:18:48.200 --> 1:18:53.240 Yeah, er, I only way that I think might help 1:18:53.360 --> 1:18:57.120 is you know, horizontalizing the structure somewhat, but then you 1:18:57.200 --> 1:18:59.240 still run into like the issue of like social capital 1:18:59.320 --> 1:19:02.920 within that structure. So if you know, somebody is savvy enough, 1:19:03.000 --> 1:19:06.240 they can still indoctrinate people into a silly cult. 1:19:06.880 --> 1:19:07.040 Yeah. 1:19:07.240 --> 1:19:08.680 I mean, I don't know, that's that's just something that 1:19:08.720 --> 1:19:10.720 you're gonna have to I mean, and we should also 1:19:10.800 --> 1:19:14.479 mention too, like these thing these groups like they work 1:19:14.520 --> 1:19:17.840 with larger unions too sometimes, Like so one of the 1:19:17.840 --> 1:19:21.280 most famous examples of this is Pride at Work, which 1:19:21.320 --> 1:19:23.920 is a really big afl CIO thing, but it's also 1:19:24.040 --> 1:19:27.000 jointly run with the Party of Socialism Liberation, which is 1:19:27.000 --> 1:19:29.320 another one of these cults because of a bunch of 1:19:29.439 --> 1:19:33.479 like long running actions even though like a bunch of 1:19:33.520 --> 1:19:37.080 their really senior staffers unbelief to be transphobic, and you know, 1:19:37.439 --> 1:19:38.960 there's there's a whole thing there. But yeah, this is 1:19:39.000 --> 1:19:41.880 something that is not just a problem with independent unions 1:19:41.880 --> 1:19:45.240 and not just a problem with sort of like random locals. 1:19:46.760 --> 1:19:50.960 It can and does get into actual like national unions. 1:19:51.000 --> 1:19:53.519 On the other hand, one way to avoid this is 1:19:53.640 --> 1:19:55.920 to in fact organize your own union and don't let 1:19:56.000 --> 1:19:56.200 them be. 1:19:57.240 --> 1:20:00.360 So this is actually something that we've thought conscious about 1:20:00.400 --> 1:20:05.479 with our own union is that on the we sent 1:20:05.600 --> 1:20:08.720 out a community support forum for people that wanted to 1:20:08.720 --> 1:20:10.960 show up the data, we announced our campaign, and on 1:20:11.120 --> 1:20:14.120 the form specifically, we made people tick a box saying 1:20:14.120 --> 1:20:17.280 that they wouldn't endorse or try to fly or for 1:20:17.600 --> 1:20:22.040 or otherwise promote any group that they might have affiliation with, 1:20:22.439 --> 1:20:27.479 including political parties or you know, otherwise organizations that are 1:20:27.560 --> 1:20:29.679 not you know, our specific union. 1:20:30.840 --> 1:20:31.800 And so far that's worked. 1:20:32.439 --> 1:20:35.479 Oh yeah, I would also say like in our constitution 1:20:35.840 --> 1:20:38.000 by laws. I don't know if that if it's in 1:20:38.080 --> 1:20:40.320 the current ones and we're revising them soon anyways. But 1:20:40.360 --> 1:20:42.960 it's a conversation that we've had before also, like people 1:20:43.200 --> 1:20:47.120 in like keyboard positions, what, yeah, what kind of affiliations 1:20:47.200 --> 1:20:49.280 can they have to outside political parties? 1:20:49.360 --> 1:20:51.200 Like where where are we drawing the line on that? 1:20:51.360 --> 1:20:53.280 Like that's something that I think we also considered very 1:20:53.600 --> 1:20:56.080 early on as well for people in the union. 1:20:58.520 --> 1:21:00.599 Yeah, and I think there's another aspec they're too, which 1:21:00.640 --> 1:21:02.559 is like another thing that can happen to your union 1:21:02.720 --> 1:21:05.040 is that it gets eaten by the Democratic Party machine. 1:21:06.000 --> 1:21:08.160 And that's happened to I mean, like this is this 1:21:08.280 --> 1:21:10.639 is a lot of how like these giant business unions 1:21:10.680 --> 1:21:13.400 became business unions, is they became basically these like lobbying 1:21:13.640 --> 1:21:16.639 firms on behalf of like whatever random like local democratic 1:21:16.760 --> 1:21:20.000 machine is running, Like this happens to Chicago, Like all 1:21:20.120 --> 1:21:22.320 the time you get these like just like the most 1:21:22.360 --> 1:21:25.439 important machine like candidates you've ever seen come out of 1:21:25.439 --> 1:21:28.040 the Democratic Party who are like guys who are like 1:21:28.200 --> 1:21:30.880 so comically corrupt that like you know, you're They're like 1:21:30.960 --> 1:21:33.240 walking down the street and like like bundles of cash 1:21:33.240 --> 1:21:35.240 are falling out of the suitcases and they're getting endorsed 1:21:35.280 --> 1:21:37.840 by like the team stars, and it's like, well, you know. 1:21:38.000 --> 1:21:41.960 Okay, I wonder, I wonder what happened there? Legally legally 1:21:42.120 --> 1:21:43.439 legally conjecture, but. 1:21:43.920 --> 1:21:50.640 You know, who's to say, really, yeah, you know, it 1:21:50.800 --> 1:21:53.720 just so happens that they have these large briefcases full 1:21:53.760 --> 1:21:57.520 of cash. Nobody can really say where the cash materialized. 1:21:58.479 --> 1:22:00.280 Yeah, but amazingly I was actually get to go on 1:22:00.360 --> 1:22:02.600 a different ranch, but political parties. So I'm going to 1:22:02.640 --> 1:22:04.160 circle back to there to close this out. Which is 1:22:04.400 --> 1:22:06.519 one of the nice things about independent unions is that 1:22:07.400 --> 1:22:09.360 you know, it's something they all three of you were 1:22:09.400 --> 1:22:13.760 started getting at, which is that, like employers have been 1:22:13.880 --> 1:22:18.479 fighting these sort of large corporate unions business unions for 1:22:18.680 --> 1:22:21.559 like one hundred years now, right. They know how they operate, 1:22:21.680 --> 1:22:23.559 they know how their campaigns work, they know what levers 1:22:23.600 --> 1:22:25.960 to push against them. On the other hand, they have 1:22:26.080 --> 1:22:29.679 not been fighting you specifically, random listener of this show, 1:22:30.840 --> 1:22:34.280 and you, specifically random listener of this show, and your 1:22:34.320 --> 1:22:36.479 coworkers can do things to surprise them and can do 1:22:36.560 --> 1:22:38.800 things in ways that they don't understand, and you know, 1:22:38.960 --> 1:22:41.720 you have we have a moment like right now, Like 1:22:42.560 --> 1:22:45.400 in like five years, they'll probably have worked out a 1:22:45.400 --> 1:22:47.519 bunch of stuff about how to break independent unions. But 1:22:48.200 --> 1:22:51.720 right now, like literally right now, we have a we 1:22:51.800 --> 1:22:55.360 have a master strategic advantage because their playbook wasn't written 1:22:55.479 --> 1:22:57.400 to deal with people who are running these sort of 1:22:57.560 --> 1:23:00.679 like very low to the ground, very agile, very nimble, 1:23:00.920 --> 1:23:04.280 very sort of like you know, these spontaneous and creative campaigns, 1:23:04.400 --> 1:23:07.760 and you can use that to beat the crap out 1:23:07.800 --> 1:23:10.200 of your boss and get more money from them. So 1:23:12.120 --> 1:23:15.880 this is the BA endorsement of doing doing fun things 1:23:15.920 --> 1:23:16.840 with unions. 1:23:16.479 --> 1:23:17.719 That your bosses don't expect. 1:23:18.360 --> 1:23:20.840 Hell yeah, Yeah. So I think unless there's anything else 1:23:21.320 --> 1:23:23.960 where where else can people find you, We'll have a 1:23:24.040 --> 1:23:26.800 link to your link tree in the description. Is there 1:23:26.800 --> 1:23:29.400 anywhere else like social media stuff where people can find 1:23:29.479 --> 1:23:29.880 the union? 1:23:32.240 --> 1:23:32.400 Yeah? 1:23:32.479 --> 1:23:36.559 Our social media for Twitter and Instagram is BBI Union 1:23:36.880 --> 1:23:40.400 and then on TikTok, I believe it is BBIU sixteen. 1:23:43.479 --> 1:23:43.679 Cool. 1:23:43.960 --> 1:23:47.360 We will have that in the description too. Yeah, and 1:23:47.520 --> 1:23:50.200 thank you all so much for coming on. And yeah, 1:23:50.720 --> 1:23:52.439 make make NESTLEI bleed for us. 1:23:53.800 --> 1:23:56.240 Yeah, thanks so much for having us. We can't say 1:23:56.240 --> 1:23:57.160 how much we appreciate it. 1:23:57.360 --> 1:23:58.800 Yeah, I think you, of course. 1:23:59.439 --> 1:24:01.280 And yeah, this has been taken happened here. You can 1:24:01.360 --> 1:24:05.200 find us in the usual places. And yeah, you too 1:24:05.280 --> 1:24:07.320 can also go start your own union and make your 1:24:07.360 --> 1:24:08.000 bosses suffer. 1:24:20.160 --> 1:24:23.280 Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Robert Evans, and 1:24:23.400 --> 1:24:27.080 this is a podcast about things falling apart. This week, 1:24:27.240 --> 1:24:30.639 the thing falling apart was my bedroom. Allow me to explain, 1:24:31.439 --> 1:24:33.880 three years or so ago, I was finally able to 1:24:33.920 --> 1:24:36.519 buy a house or at least, you know, get a mortgage. 1:24:36.960 --> 1:24:40.040 This allowed me to achieve a very stupid lifelong dream, 1:24:40.160 --> 1:24:43.200 which was to finally own a waterbed. I know you're 1:24:43.240 --> 1:24:45.320 wondering what all of this has to do with solar power, 1:24:45.360 --> 1:24:47.479 and I swear there will be an answer to that question. 1:24:47.960 --> 1:24:49.600 I also want to make it clear upfront that this 1:24:49.760 --> 1:24:52.160 is not an ad. Some of the equipment I tested 1:24:52.240 --> 1:24:54.720 was provided for free as review units, some of it 1:24:54.840 --> 1:24:57.400 was purchased with my own money, and some with company money. 1:24:57.680 --> 1:24:59.400 I'll try to make it pretty clear at each point, 1:24:59.479 --> 1:25:02.400 but I promise it doesn't matter ari my opinions on 1:25:02.479 --> 1:25:05.519 any specific product. No one paid us in any way 1:25:05.640 --> 1:25:09.360 for their inclusion in this episode. Anyway, back to my 1:25:09.520 --> 1:25:13.120 stupid waterbed. The first thing to know about waterbeds is 1:25:13.200 --> 1:25:16.080 that they are surprisingly cheap. They cost about as much 1:25:16.120 --> 1:25:19.880 as an equivalent sized mattress. Knew, so not cheap, but 1:25:20.000 --> 1:25:22.479 the one I bought costs the same as any delivery 1:25:22.600 --> 1:25:25.760 mattress sold for, and cheaper than some of them. The 1:25:25.840 --> 1:25:28.080 reason that most people can't afford a waterbed isn't the 1:25:28.160 --> 1:25:30.640 actual cost of the bed itself. It's that landlords are 1:25:30.720 --> 1:25:32.680 terrified of the things, and so you can't get one 1:25:32.760 --> 1:25:36.200 if you don't own your own home. In case you're curious, 1:25:36.600 --> 1:25:39.559 my desire to own a waterbed is entirely the result 1:25:39.600 --> 1:25:41.960 of the fact that, as a small child, my aunt 1:25:42.040 --> 1:25:44.080 and uncle fell upon hard times and had to live 1:25:44.120 --> 1:25:46.840 with us for a while. Then for another while they 1:25:46.880 --> 1:25:50.000 lived elsewhere, but their stuff stayed with us. That stuff 1:25:50.160 --> 1:25:53.360 included a waterbed, and for a few glorious months it 1:25:53.560 --> 1:25:56.840 was my waterbed. I have craved the insane high of 1:25:56.960 --> 1:26:00.920 waterbed ownership ever since. For three perfect years. Then I 1:26:01.040 --> 1:26:03.920 slept in wavy comfort until about two days before I 1:26:04.000 --> 1:26:07.439 wrote this episode. My bed sprang a pinhole leak. I 1:26:07.479 --> 1:26:09.680 don't know how you might guess a cat, but the 1:26:09.720 --> 1:26:12.919 actual bladder that contains the water is inside and underneath 1:26:12.920 --> 1:26:16.920 a very thick, padded frame that cat claws can't really puncture. 1:26:17.280 --> 1:26:19.200 I should also note that the bladder sits inside a 1:26:19.360 --> 1:26:22.080 vinyl sort of soft cage, so that when it sprang 1:26:22.160 --> 1:26:24.040 a leak, it got some of my sheets wet, but 1:26:24.120 --> 1:26:27.759 it did not cause damage to my home anyway. Because 1:26:27.800 --> 1:26:30.040 waterbeds are the kind of product that only an insane 1:26:30.120 --> 1:26:33.080 manchild would dare to own, fixing a hole in one 1:26:33.320 --> 1:26:36.559 is not the same as performing maintenance on your regular mattress, 1:26:36.880 --> 1:26:40.040 because the kinds of beds that reasonable people own don't 1:26:40.120 --> 1:26:42.840 spring leaks. To patch the leak, then I had to 1:26:42.920 --> 1:26:45.479 purchase a patch kit. But you can't apply a patch 1:26:45.600 --> 1:26:48.200 kit to what is effectively a soft bladder filled with 1:26:48.360 --> 1:26:51.120 roughly a metric ton of water. I did do the 1:26:51.200 --> 1:26:54.400 bare minimum of research here, and king sized waterbeds weigh 1:26:54.560 --> 1:26:57.720 around two thousand pounds. Now that's not all water weight, 1:26:57.800 --> 1:27:00.439 but it is basically all water weight. I bring this 1:27:00.560 --> 1:27:03.479 up because I'm proud of myself for guessing right. So 1:27:04.000 --> 1:27:06.519 to apply the patch we had to first drain the bed, 1:27:06.680 --> 1:27:09.759 which necessitated attaching a hose to one of the spigots 1:27:09.880 --> 1:27:12.400 through which we had originally filled the bed. Because of 1:27:12.439 --> 1:27:14.400 the layout of my home and the ground outside of 1:27:14.439 --> 1:27:16.640 the window where we intended to pour the water, we 1:27:16.720 --> 1:27:19.760 couldn't get the hosts started without assistance, the kind of 1:27:19.800 --> 1:27:22.840 assistance that you would say, need to suck gasoline free 1:27:22.880 --> 1:27:26.639 if a stranger's truck were you hard up for fuel money. Thankfully, 1:27:26.920 --> 1:27:29.040 my roommate had a wet back which we were able 1:27:29.080 --> 1:27:31.639 to hook up to the hose, but how to power 1:27:31.760 --> 1:27:34.880 the wetback well. We could have run an extra long 1:27:34.960 --> 1:27:37.799 extension cord, but mine were all in use for various 1:27:37.840 --> 1:27:40.920 insane projects around the farm, and instead I opted to 1:27:40.920 --> 1:27:43.120 wheel out the solar generator that I had filled with 1:27:43.200 --> 1:27:45.679 the beneficence of the Sun God Raw just a couple 1:27:45.720 --> 1:27:49.080 of days earlier. The generator was one of two similar 1:27:49.160 --> 1:27:52.559 products I tested for this episode, a Jackery SG two 1:27:52.600 --> 1:27:54.760 thousand plus, which had been sent to me by the 1:27:54.800 --> 1:27:58.040 good people at Jackery in previous weeks. I'd tested it 1:27:58.160 --> 1:28:00.640 by powering my deep freeze and a refer refrigerator, and 1:28:00.720 --> 1:28:03.720 in case you're wondering with the panels outside in the sun. 1:28:03.800 --> 1:28:05.880 I got a little over a day before things ran 1:28:06.000 --> 1:28:07.920 dry on my refrigerator. If I'd had the panels in 1:28:08.000 --> 1:28:10.040 a better position, I could have had longer and the 1:28:10.120 --> 1:28:12.960 deep freeze it would have been able to power essentially indefinitely, 1:28:13.040 --> 1:28:17.120 because deep freezes are actually insanely efficient machines. I also 1:28:17.240 --> 1:28:18.880 used it to run a heat gun for my friend's 1:28:19.000 --> 1:28:21.160 art project, which is about as intense a test of 1:28:21.320 --> 1:28:23.760 output as you can run a battery through short of 1:28:23.840 --> 1:28:27.000 powering your home, and it handles that. In terms of specs, 1:28:27.080 --> 1:28:29.439 this battery is part of a more modular system that 1:28:29.520 --> 1:28:31.640 you could wire in to power your home or off 1:28:31.720 --> 1:28:34.400 grid setup. You can actually attach this to your breaker. 1:28:34.880 --> 1:28:37.519 It has a maximum output of six thousand watts in 1:28:37.680 --> 1:28:41.000 parallel connection and one twenty to two forty expandable voltage. 1:28:41.439 --> 1:28:43.680 For a rough idea of what that means, it can 1:28:43.800 --> 1:28:47.599 power most household electronics and even power tools for a while. 1:28:48.040 --> 1:28:50.040 You'd get about one and a half hours of running 1:28:50.040 --> 1:28:52.360 a home as unit, and more like two two and 1:28:52.400 --> 1:28:54.400 a half. You know, with a portable unit or a 1:28:54.479 --> 1:28:58.120 window unit, you could charge this thing too full in 1:28:58.280 --> 1:29:00.840 two hours with good sunlight. If you had six two 1:29:00.960 --> 1:29:04.360 hundred watt panels attached in perfect sunlight, which is another 1:29:04.439 --> 1:29:07.160 three thousand or so dollars in panels. But that's not 1:29:07.280 --> 1:29:09.960 an insignificant thing to be able to do, mind you, 1:29:10.200 --> 1:29:12.640 that would mean just running your ac most of the 1:29:12.760 --> 1:29:16.040 day and nothing else. Neither of these are cheap products. 1:29:16.320 --> 1:29:19.839 In Jackery's case, the battery itself runs about two thousand dollars. 1:29:20.320 --> 1:29:22.920 I understand that's out of reach, perhaps wildly so for 1:29:23.000 --> 1:29:25.599 a lot of people. We will be talking about cheaper 1:29:25.720 --> 1:29:28.320 options at the end, but it is an unavoidable fact 1:29:28.400 --> 1:29:31.679 that unless you are a skilled electrician and scavenger, setting 1:29:31.720 --> 1:29:37.240 up substantial solar systems costs money period. Jackery actually represents 1:29:37.280 --> 1:29:39.439 one of the more affordable options for a plug and 1:29:39.520 --> 1:29:42.360 play home backup system that is also portable, i e. 1:29:42.800 --> 1:29:45.280 Can be taken camping or hauled away with your shit 1:29:45.560 --> 1:29:49.160 during an evacuation. I should note that you can connect 1:29:49.200 --> 1:29:52.120 the Jackery SG two thousand plus directly to your breaker, 1:29:52.160 --> 1:29:55.040 and also connect the battery to other similar Jackery battery 1:29:55.160 --> 1:29:58.560 generators to g additional capacity and output from it. I 1:29:58.680 --> 1:30:01.680 tested another solar gener radar system for this episode, the 1:30:01.760 --> 1:30:04.800 Geniverse Home Power O two, which was provided to me 1:30:05.000 --> 1:30:09.200 by Genniverse. Both the Genniverse and Jackery systems are similar 1:30:09.360 --> 1:30:11.560 enough that they can use each other's solar panels and 1:30:11.760 --> 1:30:15.920 operate in basically the same manner. Jackery's product is cheaper. 1:30:16.200 --> 1:30:19.000 Other reviews I've read suggests the Geniverse system might be 1:30:19.120 --> 1:30:23.000 more robust, lasting longer over time. It is certainly heavier 1:30:23.040 --> 1:30:25.960 and thus has a higher capacity around twenty four hundred 1:30:26.000 --> 1:30:28.040 watt hours as opposed to a little over two thousand 1:30:28.080 --> 1:30:31.240 for the Jackery system. Both of these can be the 1:30:31.320 --> 1:30:34.160 basis of an off grid or full backup power system 1:30:34.280 --> 1:30:36.680 for your home, and we'll be talking about home off 1:30:36.760 --> 1:30:39.599 grid power in future episodes. I want to make clear 1:30:39.680 --> 1:30:42.200 upfront that what I'm advising you on today is the 1:30:42.360 --> 1:30:45.920 quality and utility of different solar generator battery products for 1:30:46.080 --> 1:30:50.080 emergency power. So let's talk about what emergency means. The 1:30:50.160 --> 1:30:53.880 primary emergency you might encounter that a battery solar setup 1:30:53.920 --> 1:30:56.400 would help with is a power outage at your home. 1:30:57.160 --> 1:30:59.519 In that case, you have a couple of immediate and 1:30:59.640 --> 1:31:02.719 real life needs. I will list these from most basic 1:31:02.840 --> 1:31:05.839 and easy cheapest to fill to most expensive and difficult 1:31:05.880 --> 1:31:08.719 to meet. Number one would be to keep your devices 1:31:08.800 --> 1:31:11.439 and stuff like flashlights that are chargeable topped off so 1:31:11.520 --> 1:31:13.880 you can keep in contact with your community and stay 1:31:13.920 --> 1:31:16.800 aware of breaking news on whatever emergency you happen to 1:31:16.880 --> 1:31:19.680 be in. Being able to entertain yourself with books and 1:31:19.720 --> 1:31:22.240 movies does, in my view, count as one purpose for 1:31:22.400 --> 1:31:26.360 these systems and an emergency, because morale ain't nothing. Number 1:31:26.400 --> 1:31:30.200 two is being able to run emergency cooling devices, starting 1:31:30.280 --> 1:31:33.200 with fans and terminating and stuff like window AC units 1:31:33.280 --> 1:31:37.360 or even portable camping AC units. Number three is being 1:31:37.400 --> 1:31:39.920 able to keep a fridge going so your food doesn't spoil. 1:31:40.280 --> 1:31:42.760 If you're prepping for disaster, you should have storable food, 1:31:42.840 --> 1:31:45.280 anything from freeze dried stuff to beans and rits, etc. 1:31:45.760 --> 1:31:47.439 But losing all of your shit in an outage is 1:31:47.479 --> 1:31:50.080 expensive and annoying, and it's nice to be able to avoid. 1:31:50.720 --> 1:31:53.200 The Most achievable of these systems for a person of 1:31:53.360 --> 1:31:56.440 normal income is number one, and if you have disposable 1:31:56.479 --> 1:31:59.440 income at all, you can afford some sort of emergency 1:31:59.560 --> 1:32:01.800 solars set up to keep your phone or laptop and 1:32:01.880 --> 1:32:05.719 rechargeable lights going. There are a wide variety of battery 1:32:05.800 --> 1:32:08.360 packs that have solar panels built into them. I have 1:32:08.439 --> 1:32:09.920 tried a lot of these over the years, and I 1:32:10.000 --> 1:32:12.040 have never once been happy with the quality, either of 1:32:12.080 --> 1:32:14.320 their ability to charge in the sun or to last 1:32:14.400 --> 1:32:17.439 over time. The system that I currently take with me 1:32:17.520 --> 1:32:19.840 on trips is made by a company called Goal zero, 1:32:20.080 --> 1:32:23.360 who produce a variety of solar battery and charger products. 1:32:23.840 --> 1:32:27.280 I purchase for myself a Nomad thirteen solar panels set, 1:32:27.560 --> 1:32:30.120 which folds into something that approximates the size of a 1:32:30.240 --> 1:32:32.679 trapper keeper set you had as a kid in school. 1:32:33.080 --> 1:32:34.880 I've had this for years. I take it with me 1:32:35.040 --> 1:32:37.479 on every flight as my carry on. I have it 1:32:37.680 --> 1:32:40.559 and two batteries, which are different incarnations of Goal Zero's 1:32:40.680 --> 1:32:43.519 Schirpa one hundred on me wherever I go. The Sriper 1:32:43.560 --> 1:32:46.120 one hundred has a little three prong outlet you can 1:32:46.240 --> 1:32:49.320 charge basically any laptop on it. You could even do 1:32:49.520 --> 1:32:52.120 like emergency power for a computer. I think with it 1:32:53.000 --> 1:32:55.240 this and one battery would allow me to keep my 1:32:55.360 --> 1:32:59.519 phone going for emergency purposes indefinitely. Two batteries and shars, 1:32:59.520 --> 1:33:01.840 I'm able to travel with roughly three or four working 1:33:01.920 --> 1:33:04.479 days of power for my laptop and phone wherever I go, 1:33:04.800 --> 1:33:07.559 and that's without me actually trying to recharge them using 1:33:07.600 --> 1:33:11.400 the panels. You can find various years of this battery 1:33:11.479 --> 1:33:14.400 model on Amazon or at other retailers, from two hundred 1:33:14.400 --> 1:33:17.599 dollars on up. The latest model retails for three hundred 1:33:17.640 --> 1:33:21.679 dollars off Goal Zero's website. These batteries are TSA approved, 1:33:21.760 --> 1:33:23.840 as are the panels. I have never had an issue 1:33:23.880 --> 1:33:28.200 flying with them. Obviously in different countries, your experience may vary, 1:33:28.280 --> 1:33:31.040 but I've taken these things to most parts of the world, 1:33:31.080 --> 1:33:34.559 and again I haven't had an issue. They have varying sizes, 1:33:34.680 --> 1:33:37.080 but the Nomad one hundred, which is one hundred watt hours, 1:33:37.160 --> 1:33:39.000 runs about three hundred bucks, So you're looking at five 1:33:39.080 --> 1:33:41.479 or six hundred dollars for this traveling setup, which is 1:33:41.520 --> 1:33:43.400 also great to keep in your home and just have 1:33:44.240 --> 1:33:46.240 less a bit. You know, if you find used versions 1:33:46.280 --> 1:33:49.400 on eBay or wherever, which is often possible, that's not 1:33:49.479 --> 1:33:52.320 an insignificant cost. But if you're building an emergency kit 1:33:52.439 --> 1:33:55.679 over time, most people are capable of bearing that cost 1:33:55.840 --> 1:33:58.960 again over time. You could just start with the battery, 1:33:58.960 --> 1:34:01.000 which is the most initially useful part of the kit, 1:34:01.240 --> 1:34:03.240 and then you could get a panel set six months 1:34:03.320 --> 1:34:03.639 or whatever. 1:34:03.760 --> 1:34:04.479 A year later. 1:34:05.000 --> 1:34:07.560 And this brings me to what I'm talking about quantifiably 1:34:07.800 --> 1:34:10.120 when I discuss a disaster and what you actually need 1:34:10.280 --> 1:34:13.760 when we're talking about emergency power in a disaster. It 1:34:13.920 --> 1:34:17.479 is uncommon for the average US consumer to lose power 1:34:17.600 --> 1:34:19.599 for more than an hour or two at a time. 1:34:20.160 --> 1:34:23.120 In twenty eighteen, most consumers lost less than two hours 1:34:23.160 --> 1:34:28.120 of power per year without quote major events. With major events, 1:34:28.200 --> 1:34:30.840 that number leaped to six hours per person per year 1:34:30.920 --> 1:34:33.519 on average. In twenty seventeen, it was closer to eight. 1:34:33.840 --> 1:34:37.080 As we deal with more climate change, more natural disasters, 1:34:37.439 --> 1:34:41.240 all of these things are going to become inevitably more common. 1:34:41.560 --> 1:34:44.000 These are also all averages of huge numbers of people 1:34:44.120 --> 1:34:47.200 in huge areas of terrain. I will guess that the 1:34:47.360 --> 1:34:49.920 percentage of people listening to this who have as adults 1:34:50.240 --> 1:34:52.160 lost power for a day or more at a time 1:34:52.360 --> 1:34:56.600 is very close to one hundred percent. Now, given the averages, 1:34:56.840 --> 1:35:00.639 you might consider just perching battery power units without sol panels, 1:35:00.680 --> 1:35:03.240 because in most instances, what you're trying to do is 1:35:03.400 --> 1:35:05.320 ensure that if your phone is dead and there's a 1:35:05.360 --> 1:35:07.400 bad storm and you know you run out of power 1:35:07.439 --> 1:35:09.200 by the time you get home, a two or three 1:35:09.200 --> 1:35:11.880 hour outage doesn't leave you unable to contact your people 1:35:12.000 --> 1:35:15.400 or emergency services. I have a fuckload of different portable 1:35:15.400 --> 1:35:17.599 batteries because I try to keep enough on my work 1:35:17.640 --> 1:35:20.120 bag wherever I go to function in my job for 1:35:20.240 --> 1:35:22.639 most of a week without power when I go on trips. 1:35:23.280 --> 1:35:25.400 This kind of preparation has stood me in good stead 1:35:25.439 --> 1:35:28.360 in places like Syria, Iraq and the desperate wilds of 1:35:28.400 --> 1:35:30.640 Seattle that one time. But if you're not going to 1:35:30.720 --> 1:35:33.920 such terrifying hellscapes, you can probably get a suitable battery 1:35:34.000 --> 1:35:37.120 that's reasonably tough for under one hundred dollars. And we 1:35:37.200 --> 1:35:40.560 will continue talking about batteries and talking about you know, 1:35:40.680 --> 1:35:44.040 next kind of home solutions and eventually cheap solutions. But 1:35:44.160 --> 1:35:48.719 you know what's not cheap is the products and services 1:35:48.800 --> 1:35:52.479 that support this podcast. Affordable but not cheap. Anyway, here's 1:35:52.520 --> 1:36:02.120 these ads. We're back and we're talking thinking about portable batteries, 1:36:02.439 --> 1:36:04.479 right And my only note here is that if you're 1:36:04.520 --> 1:36:07.559 buying portable batteries, you know, stuff not necessarily to run 1:36:07.920 --> 1:36:10.000 on solar, just to have some extra juice with you 1:36:10.080 --> 1:36:12.280 wherever you'd go to keep it home in an emergency. 1:36:12.880 --> 1:36:16.720 These fluctuate wildly in quality, and when it comes to 1:36:16.960 --> 1:36:19.280 disaster kit to something that you need to work in 1:36:19.320 --> 1:36:22.519 an emergency, it can be worth going with a brand 1:36:22.600 --> 1:36:25.680 that is a known quantity with a long record and 1:36:25.760 --> 1:36:28.200 a lot of testing done on their products, rather than 1:36:28.280 --> 1:36:31.320 whatever the Amazon algorithm spits out when you Google battery. 1:36:31.880 --> 1:36:34.640 The advantage of a small portable folding setup like the 1:36:34.680 --> 1:36:36.439 one I have from Goal zero is that you can 1:36:36.479 --> 1:36:38.240 take it with you and have it on demand if 1:36:38.240 --> 1:36:40.439 shit happens when you're traveling, or if you have to 1:36:40.520 --> 1:36:44.599 evacuate and it's idiot proof right. A good option if 1:36:44.640 --> 1:36:46.479 you just want something in your home to keep your 1:36:46.520 --> 1:36:49.519 devices topped off, is what I'd call a large small 1:36:49.600 --> 1:36:53.120 battery generator. These are a couple of steps below products 1:36:53.200 --> 1:36:55.559 like the Jaggery two thousand to the Geniverse that I tried, 1:36:55.880 --> 1:36:58.439 but above the handheld little batteries that many of you 1:36:58.600 --> 1:37:02.000 have already. The two examples of this product category that 1:37:02.040 --> 1:37:04.200 I have and have tested are the Yeti four hundred 1:37:04.240 --> 1:37:08.000 from Goal zero and the anchor a n Ker Solix 1:37:08.160 --> 1:37:12.240 Solix C eight hundred. The Yeti four hundred is the 1:37:12.280 --> 1:37:14.880 product I purchased with my own money and It's what 1:37:14.960 --> 1:37:17.000 I've taken with me for years into the mountains when 1:37:17.000 --> 1:37:19.040 I go shooting or hunting, usually with a set of 1:37:19.080 --> 1:37:22.160 folding panels. This ensures that if my car dies and 1:37:22.240 --> 1:37:24.160 I've been dumb enough to let my jumper box that 1:37:24.200 --> 1:37:26.320 I keep with me die, I have a backup that 1:37:26.360 --> 1:37:28.559 I can use to charge my jumper box. I also 1:37:28.680 --> 1:37:30.680 have a convenient way to top off my phone or 1:37:30.760 --> 1:37:33.479 my E reader or my sat phone, both for normal 1:37:33.600 --> 1:37:36.960 use and in an emergency. It handles extreme cold and 1:37:37.080 --> 1:37:39.599 extreme heat well, and that's not always something you can 1:37:39.640 --> 1:37:42.960 take for granted with batteries. Again, kind of top of 1:37:43.040 --> 1:37:45.120 the list is that I am an idiot. I don't 1:37:45.160 --> 1:37:48.880 know much about electricity, and these products are pretty idiot proof. 1:37:49.040 --> 1:37:50.680 When it comes to my YETI four hundred or the 1:37:50.760 --> 1:37:53.120 C eight hundred from Anchor, I keep them both plugged 1:37:53.120 --> 1:37:54.800 into the wall at all times that I can grab 1:37:54.920 --> 1:37:58.280 either for an emergency. Now, the Solix C eight hundred 1:37:58.320 --> 1:37:59.800 that I have was sent to me as a review 1:38:00.280 --> 1:38:03.000 by Solix, and by necessity, I have not been able 1:38:03.040 --> 1:38:05.320 to subject it to the years of rigorous real life 1:38:05.360 --> 1:38:07.920 testing that my Goal zero YETI four hundred has endured. 1:38:08.560 --> 1:38:10.960 I will note that it is well reviewed, and from 1:38:11.000 --> 1:38:13.000 the exploration I have done on it, which does not 1:38:13.160 --> 1:38:16.160 include years of testing but does include a decent amount 1:38:16.200 --> 1:38:19.440 of reading and some testing, I think it's better constructed 1:38:19.479 --> 1:38:22.240 and more conveniently laid out in the goal zero, and 1:38:22.320 --> 1:38:24.800 it also gets you about twice the storage nearly eight 1:38:24.920 --> 1:38:27.439 hundred watt hours as opposed to a bit over four hundred. 1:38:27.920 --> 1:38:31.400 Both products cost the same price around six hundred dollars, 1:38:31.680 --> 1:38:35.639 although older generations are often available cheaper online. New and used. 1:38:36.280 --> 1:38:38.400 Either is enough to keep a family of Force phones 1:38:38.600 --> 1:38:41.880 charged for a two or three day outage without severe rationing. 1:38:41.960 --> 1:38:43.920 You can get a lot more obviously on the anchor, 1:38:44.720 --> 1:38:47.040 and you might not want to have someone like gaming 1:38:47.120 --> 1:38:49.320 on an alien ware laptop or whatever with either, but 1:38:49.400 --> 1:38:51.680 you can charge your laptops and the like off of them. 1:38:51.720 --> 1:38:53.160 If you want to watch a movie at the end 1:38:53.160 --> 1:38:55.160 of the night, you're all huddled together there in the dark. 1:38:55.479 --> 1:38:56.960 That's not going to be something you have to stress 1:38:57.080 --> 1:39:00.000 out about too much. Again, theoncre solex is going toe 1:39:00.160 --> 1:39:02.120 you a lot more juice to play around with, but 1:39:02.200 --> 1:39:04.479 either should be enough for an average outage if you 1:39:04.600 --> 1:39:06.880 just keep them plugged in. You can also use them 1:39:06.920 --> 1:39:09.240 to power a fan during the day. They will not 1:39:09.520 --> 1:39:12.920 run small AC units. These are worth considering as an 1:39:12.960 --> 1:39:16.200 intermediate option for the more casual prepper. What you're looking 1:39:16.240 --> 1:39:19.000 for here is not a full off grid replacement, but 1:39:19.200 --> 1:39:21.599 something that can provide you with options from more than 1:39:21.680 --> 1:39:25.560 just basic gadget power. With these big, small batteries, you 1:39:25.600 --> 1:39:28.000 can run a fan or fans, maybe not long enough 1:39:28.040 --> 1:39:30.360 for comfort, but in bursts throughout the day to get 1:39:30.400 --> 1:39:33.040 you through the hottest part of the day during a blackout, 1:39:33.200 --> 1:39:36.439 during what we call a wet bulb event. This would 1:39:36.439 --> 1:39:39.200 be the life saving health emergency that a basic solar 1:39:39.240 --> 1:39:42.200 setup would be most useful in saving you from. For 1:39:42.400 --> 1:39:44.760 context in case people aren't up to date, a wet 1:39:44.840 --> 1:39:47.919 bulb event is a weather situation in which the temperature 1:39:48.000 --> 1:39:51.120 reaches a critical level above eighty eight degrees fahrenheit and 1:39:51.240 --> 1:39:54.040 does not drop below that point for an extended period 1:39:54.080 --> 1:39:57.360 of time. If people lack access to effective cooling during 1:39:57.439 --> 1:40:00.720 heating events like this, they will die. We saw one 1:40:00.760 --> 1:40:02.280 of these hit a couple of years ago where I 1:40:02.400 --> 1:40:04.880 live in Portland, Oregon, which has been long famed for 1:40:04.960 --> 1:40:08.120 its mild temperatures and thus most homes lack central air. 1:40:08.680 --> 1:40:11.120 During a three day heat wave, temperatures rose to record 1:40:11.240 --> 1:40:13.160 highs and did not drop low enough at night to 1:40:13.240 --> 1:40:16.280 allow people any recovery time. More than one hundred of 1:40:16.320 --> 1:40:20.360 them died. This kind of thing is possible anywhere. If 1:40:20.400 --> 1:40:23.320 you have central air standard where you live, the grid 1:40:23.439 --> 1:40:25.880 can always go down, as we've seen happen in Texas 1:40:25.960 --> 1:40:28.840 over and over again. For someone with money, your best 1:40:28.880 --> 1:40:31.640 bet might be pairing a portable air conditioner like the 1:40:31.760 --> 1:40:34.760 Idea Duo, which ranges from five hundred to six hundred 1:40:34.760 --> 1:40:38.040 dollars on Amazon, with something like the Jackery SG two 1:40:38.080 --> 1:40:41.360 thousand plus, which with panels and a good sunlight, would 1:40:41.360 --> 1:40:43.479 allow you to run it during the day at least 1:40:43.520 --> 1:40:46.559 in a single room. As an aside, this is actually 1:40:46.600 --> 1:40:48.600 a case in which someone with a window unit is 1:40:48.640 --> 1:40:50.920 at more of an advantage than someone with central air. 1:40:51.439 --> 1:40:54.519 You can connect your jaggery directly to the breaker, but 1:40:54.680 --> 1:40:57.040 without expansion batteries, it's not going to run a whole 1:40:57.120 --> 1:40:59.320 home long, so you'd want to unplug everything and turn 1:40:59.400 --> 1:41:01.960 off the lights, running your AC in short bursts, and 1:41:02.120 --> 1:41:05.479 maintaining discipline with your doors at windows, ideally putting up 1:41:05.520 --> 1:41:08.560 foil or at least cardboard over the windows to maximize efficiency. 1:41:08.920 --> 1:41:10.519 If you're just being able to run a fan because 1:41:10.520 --> 1:41:12.720 you've got a smaller unit, you're probably looking at something like, 1:41:13.160 --> 1:41:15.479 you know, getting towels and rags wet, putting them over 1:41:15.520 --> 1:41:18.880 people's chests and faces, and kind of getting directly under 1:41:18.920 --> 1:41:20.479 the fan for the periods of time that you can 1:41:20.520 --> 1:41:23.519 afford to run it. Again, we are not talking about 1:41:23.520 --> 1:41:26.960 the most ideal comfort situations here, we are talking survival. 1:41:27.360 --> 1:41:30.479 The limitations I found for are generally twofold. One is 1:41:30.520 --> 1:41:33.400 that even with good sunlight, folding panels like the ones 1:41:33.479 --> 1:41:37.400 Jackerie and Jennifer ship me don't always hit their advertised wattage. 1:41:37.880 --> 1:41:39.360 This is because you've got to deal with a lot 1:41:39.439 --> 1:41:42.080 of other factors, the movement of the sun throughout the day, 1:41:42.400 --> 1:41:45.280 where shadows fall in your home or property, your access 1:41:45.320 --> 1:41:47.720 to the roof, how clean the panels are, and under 1:41:47.800 --> 1:41:50.960 normal use conditions, it is surprisingly easy to get stuff 1:41:51.000 --> 1:41:53.519 on them. On a sunny spring day in Oregon, I 1:41:53.560 --> 1:41:55.800 found my two hundred wat Jackery panels tended to get 1:41:55.840 --> 1:41:57.800 one hundred and twenty two one hundred and fifty watts 1:41:57.840 --> 1:42:00.320 during the most optimal parts of the day. I was 1:42:00.360 --> 1:42:03.320 able to plug the Jackery panels into the Geniverse generator 1:42:03.360 --> 1:42:06.439 and vice versa, and I found that Jackerre's panels generally 1:42:06.560 --> 1:42:09.720 performed ten to fifteen percent better during real life conditions. 1:42:10.400 --> 1:42:12.479 I looked it up and on paper, the Genniverse has 1:42:12.520 --> 1:42:15.679 a solar cell efficiency or EFF rating of about twenty 1:42:15.720 --> 1:42:19.160 three point four percent. Jackery beats them by one percent 1:42:19.240 --> 1:42:21.720 with an EFF rating of twenty four point three. That 1:42:21.880 --> 1:42:23.599 is not enough of a difference to matter too much, 1:42:23.800 --> 1:42:25.800 although I should know that what I saw in real 1:42:25.880 --> 1:42:29.479 life use was a notable difference. You may experience something 1:42:29.560 --> 1:42:31.960 different with these panels, with any panels that you get. 1:42:32.120 --> 1:42:34.280 I can't claim to have tested anything but the ones 1:42:34.360 --> 1:42:37.639 that they shipped me. The Jackery Explorer two hundred plus 1:42:37.800 --> 1:42:41.400 is capable of taking fourteen hundred botts of input max, 1:42:41.439 --> 1:42:43.960 which would be seven sets of panels, although from what 1:42:44.080 --> 1:42:46.160 the manual says, it can take up to six solar 1:42:46.200 --> 1:42:48.679 Saga eighty panels to their two hundred wade panels under 1:42:48.720 --> 1:42:52.240 normal conditions. You can expand all this with added Explorer 1:42:52.320 --> 1:42:55.599 two thousands running in tandem and up to twelve solar 1:42:55.680 --> 1:42:58.599 Saga eighties on a single generator but doing that requires 1:42:58.600 --> 1:43:00.760 some wonky shit with cables, and at that point we're 1:43:00.760 --> 1:43:02.920 talking about a system beyond what most people are likely 1:43:03.000 --> 1:43:05.560 to want or need. When it comes to durability, I 1:43:05.600 --> 1:43:08.679 suspect that both the Jackerie and Genniverse are probably close 1:43:08.760 --> 1:43:13.320 and functioning. Online reviews give both systems good user reliability ratings. 1:43:13.479 --> 1:43:15.920 In real world conditions, I had the opportunity to do 1:43:16.080 --> 1:43:18.000 something that you never want to do in real life 1:43:18.040 --> 1:43:20.240 with the device you've paid for, which was work one 1:43:20.280 --> 1:43:23.400 of these systems to death. It shows the Genniverse and 1:43:23.479 --> 1:43:26.400 the torture test I used basically involved keeping it outside, 1:43:26.479 --> 1:43:29.080 charging and providing power at a fairly low trickle for 1:43:29.200 --> 1:43:31.719 twelve days of intermittent rain and wind in the Pacific 1:43:31.800 --> 1:43:34.640 Northwest late winter. We got about two inches of rain 1:43:34.720 --> 1:43:36.960 during this time, and that was enough to eventually kill 1:43:37.040 --> 1:43:39.720 the generator, but it took close to two weeks of 1:43:39.840 --> 1:43:43.040 downright irresponsible treatment. We are talking the kind of neglect 1:43:43.120 --> 1:43:45.799 you would not subject a product like this too without 1:43:45.920 --> 1:43:49.400 no other option. In subsequent tests with the Jaggery, I've 1:43:49.439 --> 1:43:51.920 been able to keep it operating outdoors in bad weather 1:43:52.080 --> 1:43:55.320 without damage through taking minimal measures to shield the generator. 1:43:55.479 --> 1:43:57.920 The least I did was stick a plastic home depot 1:43:57.960 --> 1:44:00.680 crate lid above it, literally at it down on top 1:44:00.720 --> 1:44:02.479 of the unit to stop water from just hitting the 1:44:02.560 --> 1:44:05.680 ports on the sides and back directly. The most elaborate 1:44:05.760 --> 1:44:08.400 protective set up outdoors was a simple tarp cover and 1:44:08.479 --> 1:44:10.519 making sure it was elevated a bit above the ground. 1:44:11.200 --> 1:44:13.160 When it comes to which of these systems would be 1:44:13.240 --> 1:44:15.840 best for you, the primary difference between the Giniverse and 1:44:15.880 --> 1:44:19.120 the Jackery is that the Ginniverse is higher capacity twenty 1:44:19.160 --> 1:44:21.360 four hundred nineteen watt hours as opposed to a little 1:44:21.400 --> 1:44:24.560 over twenty forty two for the Jackery. This means that 1:44:24.600 --> 1:44:26.640 without input, you can run a normal fridge off the 1:44:26.720 --> 1:44:30.280 Giniverse for about six hours, and goodsn you can recharge 1:44:30.320 --> 1:44:33.320 it fully in eight hours with two Geniverse solar powered 1:44:33.360 --> 1:44:36.759 two panels. The Jackery system will recharge in a similar 1:44:36.840 --> 1:44:39.720 timeframe under optimal conditions and give you a bit less 1:44:39.800 --> 1:44:42.360 usable power. It has the benefit of being almost twenty 1:44:42.400 --> 1:44:46.240 pounds lighter and significantly friendlier in design. For reasons that 1:44:46.320 --> 1:44:50.280 elude explanation, the Giniverse lacks a telescoping handle or wheels 1:44:50.320 --> 1:44:52.559 to help you maneuver it. Into or out of position. 1:44:53.080 --> 1:44:55.759 This sucks because it's heavy, and if it's not wired 1:44:55.800 --> 1:44:58.360 into your breaker and you're using this for an emergency, 1:44:58.640 --> 1:45:00.479 you might need to move it around so that you 1:45:00.560 --> 1:45:03.160 can have the panels in different positions to take advantage 1:45:03.200 --> 1:45:06.360 of the sun. This also makes the geniverse less useful 1:45:06.400 --> 1:45:09.880 than the Jaggery in normal daily life tasks. I started 1:45:09.920 --> 1:45:12.799 this episode with a rather ridiculous story about my waterbed, 1:45:12.880 --> 1:45:15.120 but I've actually found quite a few tasks at which 1:45:15.200 --> 1:45:17.880 having a weeelable battery capable of this kind of output 1:45:18.040 --> 1:45:21.280 is handy. Basically, any power tool that you are likely 1:45:21.360 --> 1:45:23.879 to own will run off of either of these systems, 1:45:24.200 --> 1:45:26.320 but only the Jaggery is friendly enough to want to 1:45:26.400 --> 1:45:29.439 move around outdoors to take advantage of this fact. And 1:45:29.560 --> 1:45:31.519 this kind of gets us to the crux of a 1:45:31.640 --> 1:45:33.919 question some of you have been asking this whole episode, 1:45:34.520 --> 1:45:38.800 how practical are any of these solutions. My answer is complicated, 1:45:38.880 --> 1:45:41.479 but I think fair. If you can't or aren't going 1:45:41.560 --> 1:45:44.240 to expend the energy to become competent with solar power 1:45:44.280 --> 1:45:46.559 to the extent that someone living off grid would generally 1:45:46.640 --> 1:45:50.599 want to be, these are exceptional solutions so long as 1:45:50.640 --> 1:45:53.720 you can afford them. In both cases, you're looking at 1:45:53.760 --> 1:45:56.160 around three thousand dollars for a setup that could power 1:45:56.320 --> 1:45:59.400 anything in your home and would handle all necessary tasks 1:45:59.600 --> 1:46:01.760 for law longer than the length of an average blackout. 1:46:02.280 --> 1:46:05.240 The Jackerree and Geniverse systems are also future capable. You 1:46:05.360 --> 1:46:08.240 can expand both with added batteries over time and add 1:46:08.280 --> 1:46:10.920 in more panel capacity up to a point that makes 1:46:10.960 --> 1:46:14.400 them quite attractive if you can afford them. My personal 1:46:14.479 --> 1:46:17.760 recommendation would be for the Jackery over the Geniverse for 1:46:17.960 --> 1:46:20.920 most people for a couple of reasons. Please note that 1:46:20.960 --> 1:46:24.000 I received review units from both companies and money from neither, 1:46:24.160 --> 1:46:26.720 so I have no vested interest in picking one over 1:46:26.840 --> 1:46:30.400 the other. One reason that I chose the Jackery Explorer 1:46:30.439 --> 1:46:32.920 two thousand is that it is a bit cheaper nineteen 1:46:33.040 --> 1:46:35.240 hundred for the base system and four hundred and seventy 1:46:35.320 --> 1:46:37.879 nine for each set of two hundred watt folding panels. 1:46:38.400 --> 1:46:40.840 Compare that to the Geniverse Home Power two Pro, which 1:46:40.880 --> 1:46:43.479 starts at two two hundred and ninety nine dollars and 1:46:43.560 --> 1:46:46.439 thirty four hundred dollars for the generator with two two 1:46:46.560 --> 1:46:50.560 hundred watt panels. The Jackery is also meaningfully easier to 1:46:50.640 --> 1:46:53.280 use in recreational situations, so it is a system that 1:46:53.360 --> 1:46:55.880 the average person will get more use out of. You 1:46:55.960 --> 1:46:58.520 can take it camping easily, you can use it for overlanding, 1:46:58.720 --> 1:47:01.040 and you can have it ready for another emergency. I 1:47:01.120 --> 1:47:02.960 will note that if you have a system like this, 1:47:03.120 --> 1:47:05.040 you will surprise yourself with how often it comes in 1:47:05.080 --> 1:47:08.439 a handy for simple tasks. What I like about both 1:47:08.479 --> 1:47:11.680 systems is again their future compatible. You can start with 1:47:11.800 --> 1:47:14.200 the base system and then add a couple of panels, 1:47:14.240 --> 1:47:16.200 and as you save more money, you can add an 1:47:16.200 --> 1:47:18.920 additional battery packs and panels to give you both more 1:47:18.960 --> 1:47:22.240 capacity and more input, with the goal of eventually storing 1:47:22.280 --> 1:47:24.400 a day or a couple of days of power and 1:47:24.520 --> 1:47:28.000 being able to run your home minimally during extended emergencies. 1:47:28.560 --> 1:47:30.720 The shortcoming that you'll find with either system is that 1:47:30.760 --> 1:47:32.400 if you have a normal home, it will cost as 1:47:32.479 --> 1:47:34.200 much as a nice used car to have a setup 1:47:34.240 --> 1:47:36.360 that could run your house for extended periods of time, 1:47:36.640 --> 1:47:39.960 let alone indefinitely. A typical home AC unit can burn 1:47:40.040 --> 1:47:43.280 something like fourteen thousand kilowat hours per day, and that's 1:47:43.439 --> 1:47:46.559 just half of what an average home draws heating amounts 1:47:46.600 --> 1:47:48.560 to a comparable draw. So while these systems can be 1:47:48.640 --> 1:47:51.880 expanded significantly with additional batteries, if you're dealing with an 1:47:51.880 --> 1:47:55.520 outage that extends past several days, you will encounter severe limitations. 1:47:56.280 --> 1:47:58.800 This brings me to the most impressive but least accessible 1:47:58.880 --> 1:48:01.519 piece of gear that I test for these episodes, The 1:48:01.680 --> 1:48:05.439 Anchor Solick's F thirty eight hundred portable power station. This 1:48:05.560 --> 1:48:08.439 holds about three eight hundred and forty watt hours of 1:48:08.520 --> 1:48:12.720 electricity and can output six thousand watts if necessary. You 1:48:12.840 --> 1:48:15.680 can charge your electric car or run a welding rig 1:48:15.800 --> 1:48:18.439 off of this thing. It can be expanded with additional 1:48:18.479 --> 1:48:20.639 battery storage, and if you had thirty or forty grand 1:48:20.720 --> 1:48:22.760 to spend, you could wire this thing up to power 1:48:22.800 --> 1:48:25.280 your house for close to a week without sunlight. The 1:48:25.439 --> 1:48:28.600 F thirty eight hundred itself costs four thousand dollars, and 1:48:28.680 --> 1:48:30.719 you can run two of them in tandem with twelve 1:48:30.800 --> 1:48:32.840 battery packs each to power your home for about two 1:48:32.880 --> 1:48:35.280 weeks for just the cost of at this point a 1:48:35.400 --> 1:48:38.880 rather nice car that is wildly out of reach for 1:48:38.960 --> 1:48:41.439 most people, But if you can afford it, the Anchor 1:48:41.560 --> 1:48:44.559 is a really cool system. There's been a tremendous amount 1:48:44.560 --> 1:48:46.479 of thought put into everything, from how the device is 1:48:46.560 --> 1:48:48.920 constructed and laid out to how you carry it. I 1:48:49.040 --> 1:48:51.360 particularly appreciate the fact that you can wheel it like 1:48:51.400 --> 1:48:53.439 a big suitcase or lay it on its side, where 1:48:53.439 --> 1:48:56.160 it has additional pop out handles to enable you to 1:48:56.200 --> 1:48:59.599 carry it in multiple different ways. All of Anchor's products 1:48:59.680 --> 1:49:02.000 feel premium, and the metal handles that I said pop 1:49:02.080 --> 1:49:04.840 out are like metal. They're very solid. Everything has a 1:49:04.920 --> 1:49:07.400 clean interface and what I would describe as an exceedingly 1:49:07.520 --> 1:49:10.439 livable industrial design. If you happen to be one of 1:49:10.479 --> 1:49:13.160 the people who can consider putting down four thousand dollars 1:49:13.240 --> 1:49:16.320 for an emergency battery, the Solix F thirty eight hundred 1:49:16.360 --> 1:49:18.639 will see you through ninety nine percent of the power 1:49:18.720 --> 1:49:22.000 loss situations you are likely to encounter, and require minimal 1:49:22.120 --> 1:49:24.760 knowledge to set up and get working. It is easy 1:49:24.840 --> 1:49:27.400 to attach to your home breaker, and Anchor's instructions for 1:49:27.520 --> 1:49:30.559 doing so are simple to follow for folks who can 1:49:30.640 --> 1:49:33.560 afford the cost then, and that cost is not inconsiderable. 1:49:33.720 --> 1:49:35.760 It is a great mix of might save your life 1:49:35.840 --> 1:49:39.040 and will definitely come in handy. I should also note 1:49:39.080 --> 1:49:41.840 that the Jaggery system has a better pedigree than the 1:49:41.880 --> 1:49:45.639 Geniverse system in the industry, probably similar to Anchor. They've 1:49:45.680 --> 1:49:48.160 got a long track record and are well regarded not 1:49:48.280 --> 1:49:50.840 as inexpensive solution, but as a reliable one with a 1:49:50.880 --> 1:49:53.840 good warranty and a lot of history to back them up. 1:49:54.479 --> 1:49:57.120 All of these systems are, in my experience, reliable and 1:49:57.280 --> 1:49:59.800 easy to use. All of them are and I have 1:50:00.000 --> 1:50:02.640 to hit on this a few times because it matters expensive. 1:50:03.160 --> 1:50:05.360 That presents a problem if you're someone who sees the 1:50:05.479 --> 1:50:08.920 value and these is potential emergency devices, but will realistically 1:50:09.000 --> 1:50:11.680 never be able to throw down three thousand dollars for them. 1:50:12.360 --> 1:50:14.880 It would be irresponsible of me to give you some 1:50:14.960 --> 1:50:17.880 specific technical advice because I lack that knowledge. But I 1:50:17.960 --> 1:50:19.800 have some experience here, and we're going to get to 1:50:19.880 --> 1:50:28.360 that after this next set of adds. We're back and 1:50:28.520 --> 1:50:31.080 we're talking about what you can do at least a 1:50:31.160 --> 1:50:33.599 little bit of what you can do. Again the furthest 1:50:33.640 --> 1:50:35.240 thing in the world from an expert here, but I 1:50:35.320 --> 1:50:37.599 wanted to at least provide some starting points from folks 1:50:37.640 --> 1:50:39.800 who are never going to be able to afford these 1:50:39.920 --> 1:50:43.480 more formal, easier to use idiot proof kind of situations, 1:50:43.479 --> 1:50:45.600 because while I'm not an expert on this, I have 1:50:45.760 --> 1:50:47.599 lived off grit a bit, and I have known people 1:50:47.640 --> 1:50:50.800 who have done so in a wide variety of weird situations. 1:50:51.200 --> 1:50:54.320 At one point, my partner operated a solar powered shack 1:50:54.439 --> 1:50:57.320 that they lived out of, with batteries so comparatively primitive 1:50:57.520 --> 1:51:00.720 that she had to regularly refill them with water. That 1:51:00.880 --> 1:51:02.720 kind of maintenance is going to be second nature to 1:51:02.760 --> 1:51:04.880 people who know they're shit with solar, and those people 1:51:04.960 --> 1:51:07.880 have a lot more options than the laymen. Probably the 1:51:07.920 --> 1:51:10.560 most impressive in cash neutral setup I saw was in 1:51:10.600 --> 1:51:14.439 a place called East Jesus in far southern California. This 1:51:14.760 --> 1:51:17.800 was a totally off grid power setup that kept around 1:51:17.800 --> 1:51:21.080 twelve to eighteen people alive year round and often intense temperatures, 1:51:21.160 --> 1:51:25.000 powering AC units and trailers and RVs, fridges, fans, lights, 1:51:25.120 --> 1:51:28.839 The entertainment equipment they used the wakes Now. Their setup 1:51:29.000 --> 1:51:32.160 was all scavenged or bought cheap in auction. The batteries 1:51:32.200 --> 1:51:35.120 they used, which took up an entire shipping container sized space, 1:51:35.200 --> 1:51:37.800 were purchased cheap from a telecom company in the area, 1:51:38.040 --> 1:51:41.080 which retired its deep cycle batteries once they hit eighty 1:51:41.160 --> 1:51:43.760 percent of their original functioning capacity or something like that. 1:51:44.439 --> 1:51:47.920 Panels were likewise scavenged or bought cheap and used. Since 1:51:47.920 --> 1:51:50.360 they had a lot of space but little money, Wiring 1:51:50.400 --> 1:51:53.120 a shitload of panels a varying efficiency together was a 1:51:53.240 --> 1:51:55.360 solution that they could afford, both in terms of the 1:51:55.400 --> 1:51:57.200 money that it cost and in terms of the space 1:51:57.240 --> 1:52:00.320 that was required. Most people lack the technical knowledg to 1:52:00.360 --> 1:52:03.040 set something like this up. I sure do, and even 1:52:03.120 --> 1:52:05.320 more of them lack the space, but it is an 1:52:05.360 --> 1:52:07.519 example of the sort of solutions that people with little 1:52:07.520 --> 1:52:09.479 to no cash can cook up if they're clever and 1:52:09.600 --> 1:52:14.440 knowledgeable about the fundamental technology. It would be extremely irresponsible 1:52:14.439 --> 1:52:16.519 if I did not add here that solar setups are 1:52:16.560 --> 1:52:18.439 the sort of thing where it behooves you to be 1:52:18.600 --> 1:52:22.240 exceedingly fucking careful. The chief benefit of the system's goal 1:52:22.400 --> 1:52:25.880 zero anchor, Jenniverse and Jackery make is that they are 1:52:26.040 --> 1:52:28.280 all as close to idiot proof as they can be. 1:52:28.880 --> 1:52:30.559 Part of the cost comes from the fact that they 1:52:30.680 --> 1:52:35.519 use expensive but extremely stable lithium iron phosphate batteries. These 1:52:35.560 --> 1:52:38.240 have long life spans. Jackery rates theirs at ten years 1:52:38.320 --> 1:52:40.599 and a cycle life of up to two thousand cycles. 1:52:40.920 --> 1:52:43.719 They have a good standby time too. Jackery rates theirs 1:52:43.760 --> 1:52:46.679 at up to fifty percent charge after two years in storage. 1:52:47.240 --> 1:52:49.599 A lot of the cheaper or scavenged options you find 1:52:49.720 --> 1:52:53.439 are lithium polymer batteries. These are rather infamous for igniting 1:52:53.600 --> 1:52:56.840 and burning down people's homes. There are solutions you can 1:52:56.920 --> 1:52:59.519 find online and if you're interested in cheaper homebrew solar 1:52:59.560 --> 1:53:04.040 setups out there, one place I'd suggest starting is diyssolarforum 1:53:04.120 --> 1:53:07.800 dot com. The people there will have suggestions for minimizing risk. 1:53:08.400 --> 1:53:11.799 Since LiPo is one of the most dangerous battery chemistry 1:53:11.800 --> 1:53:14.719 types out there. Some people build what are called battery bunkers. 1:53:15.080 --> 1:53:16.920 One a form I've seen this tape is basically a 1:53:17.000 --> 1:53:19.760 cube of bricks around and below the batteries with a 1:53:19.840 --> 1:53:23.040 ceramic flat sheet above them. Some people will suggest lacing 1:53:23.160 --> 1:53:25.760 sandbags above the bunkers that if the battery goes into 1:53:25.760 --> 1:53:28.200 a thermal runway, it will melt the sandbag and pour 1:53:28.320 --> 1:53:31.479 sand into the battery to stop the fire. Again, I 1:53:31.560 --> 1:53:33.800 am not giving advice here, just providing you with an 1:53:33.880 --> 1:53:36.120 example of the kinds of concerns that you do have 1:53:36.240 --> 1:53:38.920 to think about. When considering building setups like this for 1:53:39.080 --> 1:53:42.559 your own, it is unfortunate. The most financially accessible way 1:53:42.600 --> 1:53:44.640 to do this is by taking the research into your 1:53:44.640 --> 1:53:47.000 own hands and relying on the experience of hobbyists and 1:53:47.080 --> 1:53:50.280 lifestyle explorers who have been there before. But disasters aren't fair, 1:53:50.479 --> 1:53:54.080 and neither is life. Another exploratory option I'd suggest is 1:53:54.120 --> 1:53:57.200 googling questions like how to run small room ac off 1:53:57.280 --> 1:54:00.160 solar or how to run twelve volt fridge indefinitely I'm 1:54:00.160 --> 1:54:02.760 a solar, and then add Reddit as a search term. 1:54:03.200 --> 1:54:05.880 You'll find threads of people in off grids, solar or 1:54:05.960 --> 1:54:09.080 overlanding subreddits who have explored these problems for themselves and 1:54:09.120 --> 1:54:11.320 their journeys can at least act as a basis for 1:54:11.479 --> 1:54:14.080 your own. I'd like to thank at the end of 1:54:14.120 --> 1:54:16.720 this the reps at Jacker, each universe and anchor who 1:54:16.800 --> 1:54:19.760 sent products for me to review. It was incredibly nice 1:54:19.800 --> 1:54:21.599 of them all, and from an esthetic point of view, 1:54:21.640 --> 1:54:23.759 they all make great gear that is a genuine pleasure 1:54:23.800 --> 1:54:26.479 to use. Goll Zero didn't send me anything, but I've 1:54:26.520 --> 1:54:28.160 paid for their stuff for years and I've never had 1:54:28.160 --> 1:54:30.280 anything fail in the field, so I figure I owe 1:54:30.280 --> 1:54:31.160 them a shout out here. 1:54:31.120 --> 1:54:33.280 Too, and it's going to do it for us. 1:54:33.680 --> 1:54:35.840 It could happen here for the day, so you know, 1:54:36.200 --> 1:54:39.160 check in tomorrow or you know, Monday, depending on when 1:54:39.200 --> 1:54:42.840 you hear this. Whenever it drops and yeah, goodbye. 1:54:57.760 --> 1:55:00.240 Welcome to It could happen here. I'm Garrison, David, and 1:55:00.520 --> 1:55:03.240 once again it has been happening here as protest encampments 1:55:03.240 --> 1:55:05.880 have sprung up in at least eighty college campuses all 1:55:05.920 --> 1:55:08.880 across the country as Israel continues its genoside of the 1:55:08.920 --> 1:55:12.280 Palestine people and is now currently bombing multiple sides of Rafa. 1:55:13.120 --> 1:55:17.120 Last month, students at American universities began protesting their university's 1:55:17.160 --> 1:55:20.520 ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers, calling for divestment, as 1:55:20.560 --> 1:55:23.400 well as urging their institutions to join in calls for ceasefire. 1:55:23.920 --> 1:55:27.520 After a militarized police raid at the Humboldt protest utilizing 1:55:27.560 --> 1:55:30.560 a prison swat team, police departments around the country began 1:55:30.640 --> 1:55:33.640 cracking down more harshly on the protest encampments. The day 1:55:33.680 --> 1:55:37.360 after the Humboldt one, NYPD raided Columbia University and fired 1:55:37.400 --> 1:55:40.640 a gun inside Hamilton Hall while trying to use their 1:55:40.640 --> 1:55:44.440 handgun as a flashlight. The Portland Police Bureau quickly followed 1:55:44.480 --> 1:55:47.440 suit and cracked down at the encampment at Portland State 1:55:47.560 --> 1:55:51.360 University and have since barricaded that library. As of time 1:55:51.400 --> 1:55:54.480 of recording, around twenty five hundred arrests have taken place 1:55:54.520 --> 1:55:57.600 at college protests all around the country. Police have displayed 1:55:57.640 --> 1:56:00.400 incredible violence, sending people to the hospital with broken ankles 1:56:00.400 --> 1:56:02.920 and concussions. In many cities, there's been heavy use of 1:56:02.920 --> 1:56:06.720 pepper spray, pepperballs as well as tasers. The protests have 1:56:06.800 --> 1:56:09.440 also faced violence from a mix of far right agitators, 1:56:09.600 --> 1:56:13.200 zionist counter protesters, and racist frats that have targeted the 1:56:13.240 --> 1:56:17.800 protest encampments with physical violence, especially at UCLA. We here 1:56:17.920 --> 1:56:19.680 at it could happen here are lucky enough to have 1:56:19.720 --> 1:56:22.480 correspondence kind of based all around the country. So I'm 1:56:22.560 --> 1:56:25.400 joined today by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Molly Konger 1:56:25.880 --> 1:56:29.520 to discuss our experiences as people who have been present 1:56:29.640 --> 1:56:33.280 at some of these encampments all across the country. I'm 1:56:33.320 --> 1:56:37.360 going to start by talking about Emory University here in Atlanta, Georgia. 1:56:38.800 --> 1:56:40.560 This is a weird one and I think I'll actually 1:56:40.600 --> 1:56:43.880 go into more depth in a future episode, but this 1:56:44.000 --> 1:56:46.400 episode's going to kind of focus on discussions and we're 1:56:46.400 --> 1:56:50.240 going to kind of compare our experiences. So oddly enough, 1:56:50.280 --> 1:56:52.880 I think Emory was the first one to actually face 1:56:53.120 --> 1:56:57.080 significant police repression. Tents went up on the Emory Quad 1:56:57.200 --> 1:57:00.720 on April fifteenth, and that morning there was a heavy 1:57:00.800 --> 1:57:05.440 police response from EMORYPD, APD and Georgia State Patrol. They 1:57:05.720 --> 1:57:09.040 fired tasers, there was rubber bullets, pepper balls, and over 1:57:09.160 --> 1:57:13.960 two dozen arrests. Students and others began to rally later 1:57:14.040 --> 1:57:16.800 that afternoon to retake the quad. A few hundred people 1:57:16.960 --> 1:57:20.440 did so, and a small occupation began inside the Kendler 1:57:20.520 --> 1:57:24.480 School of Theology building. M REYPD was pinned up against 1:57:24.520 --> 1:57:28.160 this building. GSP arrived as reinforcements, and people started to flee, 1:57:28.400 --> 1:57:31.040 as you know, you see GSP kind of form this area. 1:57:31.400 --> 1:57:33.680 But people were able to calm some of those other 1:57:33.720 --> 1:57:36.320 students down and regroup and actually hold that position for 1:57:36.360 --> 1:57:39.480 a little while longer police began attacking students, a small 1:57:39.560 --> 1:57:42.520 clash began, there was pepper balls. People continued to kind 1:57:42.520 --> 1:57:44.800 of hold that ground in front of the building. There 1:57:44.880 --> 1:57:48.080 was students also inside. As people try to you know, 1:57:49.000 --> 1:57:52.600 render aid to those who have been pepper baled, and 1:57:53.400 --> 1:57:55.920 while maintaining this position in front of the building, more 1:57:56.000 --> 1:58:00.120 and more police arrived like a ridiculous number, and the 1:58:00.200 --> 1:58:03.480 crowd eventually starts to slowly disperse as police just flood campus. 1:58:03.840 --> 1:58:06.680 Police from all around the greater Atlanta area just flood 1:58:06.760 --> 1:58:09.560 this very small section of Decatur, which is a small 1:58:09.600 --> 1:58:12.240 suburb to the northeast of Atlanta or to the east 1:58:12.280 --> 1:58:12.720 of Atlanta. 1:58:12.760 --> 1:58:13.080 I guess. 1:58:13.520 --> 1:58:17.480 Emory President Greg Femmes said the Thursday protest was concocted 1:58:17.560 --> 1:58:22.000 by outside entities, which is why Emory PD, APD and 1:58:22.160 --> 1:58:25.760 GSP violently disrupted the protest because it was caused by 1:58:26.080 --> 1:58:30.520 outside agitators. Line that New York Mayor Eric Adams would 1:58:30.520 --> 1:58:35.520 then reiterate to justify the massive crackdown at Columbia. So 1:58:36.080 --> 1:58:38.600 the next day we had five hundred people march around 1:58:38.720 --> 1:58:43.560 campus and then this little kind of committee of Emory 1:58:43.600 --> 1:58:48.000 faculty and staff called the Every Open Expression Committee began 1:58:48.080 --> 1:58:52.240 to negotiate with the protest and they quote unquote allowed 1:58:52.720 --> 1:58:56.160 the protest to march around campus, and this small subset 1:58:56.200 --> 1:58:59.000 of the group began to occupy the Coxhaull Food Court 1:58:59.520 --> 1:59:01.280 and police. Plice were ordered to stay out of sight 1:59:01.920 --> 1:59:04.000 this whole day and a few of the days after 1:59:04.400 --> 1:59:07.880 unless the Open Expression Committee specifically called them in. And 1:59:08.000 --> 1:59:09.800 what was able to happen is that this Open Expression 1:59:09.800 --> 1:59:12.440 Committee was able to wield the threat of police as 1:59:12.480 --> 1:59:15.880 a deterrent from people taking kind of more militant action 1:59:16.040 --> 1:59:18.240 or to actually set up things that would hold down 1:59:18.280 --> 1:59:21.040 an encampment, like if tenths were set up, this would 1:59:21.200 --> 1:59:24.280 result in this Open Expression Committee to call in the police. 1:59:24.400 --> 1:59:28.040 So this was a very successfully wielded threat. So as 1:59:28.120 --> 1:59:30.000 the night goes on, the Open Spression Committee does threaten 1:59:30.120 --> 1:59:32.760 to call police on the Cox Food Hall protest, which 1:59:32.880 --> 1:59:35.360 scares a whole bunch of these you know, young teens 1:59:35.440 --> 1:59:38.360 early twenties out of the building. A smaller group of 1:59:38.400 --> 1:59:40.360 around one hundred people remain on the quad till midnight, 1:59:40.440 --> 1:59:43.160 police arrive and then everyone disperses. The next day kind 1:59:43.160 --> 1:59:46.400 of follows a similar pattern open expression and some student 1:59:46.480 --> 1:59:49.280 organizers over the course of the next few days actually 1:59:49.360 --> 1:59:53.200 start directing police to detain and criminally trespass people wearing 1:59:53.280 --> 1:59:57.200 cafeas on suspicion of them having been engaged in like 1:59:57.320 --> 2:00:00.480 doing graffiti, and really it just allows police to target 2:00:00.520 --> 2:00:03.360 specific people that the Open Expression Committee kind of just 2:00:03.480 --> 2:00:06.720 don't want on campus based on either how they dress, 2:00:06.840 --> 2:00:09.720 how they're kind of walking, acting, behaving, that sort of thing. 2:00:10.240 --> 2:00:13.400 And this pattern followed basically up until the present. People 2:00:13.440 --> 2:00:16.640 would try to take buildings do smaller protests. Police would 2:00:16.720 --> 2:00:18.560 either be called or there would be threats that they 2:00:18.600 --> 2:00:20.680 would be called. It would kind of calm the crowd down, 2:00:20.760 --> 2:00:23.320 everyone would disperse. If ten's got set up, that was 2:00:23.360 --> 2:00:25.480 seen as like a major sign of escalation, which would 2:00:25.480 --> 2:00:27.400 result in police being called. And it's kind of the 2:00:27.480 --> 2:00:29.760 small back and forth, and eventually this just kind of 2:00:29.840 --> 2:00:33.720 led to the situation Emory slowly dissolving, slowly fizzling out 2:00:34.320 --> 2:00:38.200 as the people who were wanting to do stuff kind 2:00:38.200 --> 2:00:40.600 of got pushed more to the side, got pushed out, 2:00:40.960 --> 2:00:44.400 more and more people became began getting criminally trespassed, and 2:00:45.040 --> 2:00:48.800 the group of students at Emory just did not want 2:00:48.840 --> 2:00:51.960 to risk a further engagement with police after the first day, 2:00:52.480 --> 2:00:55.600 and that's kind of led to things slowly slowly dissolving, 2:00:56.160 --> 2:01:00.200 And that's basically with the situation currently. Things of the 2:01:00.320 --> 2:01:02.840 kind of tapered off. School's ending. I'm sure this will 2:01:02.840 --> 2:01:05.600 be a similar, similar thing across the country as the 2:01:05.640 --> 2:01:09.520 school season is ending and these protest encampments will so 2:01:09.640 --> 2:01:13.280 we also just dissolve away as police repression continues. Let's 2:01:13.320 --> 2:01:16.560 see who should we move on to the next little report? 2:01:17.800 --> 2:01:21.720 James James stout from you. You went to U see 2:01:22.080 --> 2:01:22.800 San Diego. 2:01:23.600 --> 2:01:26.400 That's right. I did both both as a graduate student 2:01:26.480 --> 2:01:29.600 and then again as an adjunct professor, and then again 2:01:29.840 --> 2:01:31.840 as a journalist last week, which is what we're going 2:01:31.920 --> 2:01:34.760 to talk about this time. So you see San Diego 2:01:35.160 --> 2:01:38.440 had it was interesting the encampment began on the first 2:01:38.520 --> 2:01:41.400 of May, but s JP had posted this thing about 2:01:41.440 --> 2:01:44.200 their big rally was going to be on the third 2:01:44.280 --> 2:01:45.200 of May, on the Friday. 2:01:45.280 --> 2:01:45.360 Right. 2:01:45.560 --> 2:01:48.840 S JP is Students for Justice in Palestine. It's one 2:01:48.880 --> 2:01:51.560 of the groups it's organized a lot of these protests 2:01:51.640 --> 2:01:54.200 across It depends you know where you're at. You might 2:01:54.280 --> 2:01:56.800 have the Council on American Islamic Relations, you might have 2:01:56.880 --> 2:02:00.600 the Muslim Student Association, you might have both. But yeah, yeah, 2:02:00.600 --> 2:02:03.320 you Jewish Fast for Peace. Yeah yeah. Very often they're 2:02:03.520 --> 2:02:06.160 they're collaborating, which is great. We love to see collaboration. 2:02:06.800 --> 2:02:08.800 So what they did was they posted that they were 2:02:08.800 --> 2:02:11.720 going to have a big rally on Friday, and that, 2:02:12.280 --> 2:02:14.040 as it turned out, was like a fake out, and 2:02:14.080 --> 2:02:17.600 they actually started their encampment on Wednesday, So they distracted 2:02:17.640 --> 2:02:20.880 admin with that Instagram post, which is pretty clever, pretty funny, 2:02:21.280 --> 2:02:25.080 And they began this encampment on Wednesday on Library Walk, 2:02:25.120 --> 2:02:26.720 which is kind of right in the middle of UCSD. 2:02:27.520 --> 2:02:29.520 If people have seen, you know, people would be familiar 2:02:29.560 --> 2:02:31.840 with the UCSD guys Le Library from the film Attack 2:02:31.880 --> 2:02:34.720 of the Killer Tomatoes, which it played important role in. Yeah, 2:02:35.560 --> 2:02:38.640 I can see the look of recognition on my colleagues faces. 2:02:39.120 --> 2:02:41.720 But yeah, that's the only thing that's ever cool that's 2:02:41.720 --> 2:02:46.000 happened at UCSD. So they set up this encampment. It 2:02:46.240 --> 2:02:50.640 wasn't huge, but it was certainly a serious presence, right, 2:02:50.720 --> 2:02:55.040 and they didn't barricade it or sort of make it 2:02:55.160 --> 2:02:58.480 make a defensible That was a conscious choice, right, And 2:02:58.600 --> 2:03:04.440 they did set up a security system whereby they had 2:03:04.680 --> 2:03:10.080 student security people controlling who entered and I guess left 2:03:10.160 --> 2:03:12.880 the encampment if you really wanted to, you get the 2:03:12.960 --> 2:03:14.840 cops got in, right, Like it was a wist high 2:03:15.000 --> 2:03:18.840 vinyl offence. But in theory, these people were controlling who 2:03:18.880 --> 2:03:22.240 went in and who went out. Some times these people 2:03:22.280 --> 2:03:25.000 were asking people to sign up on a sheet. I 2:03:25.120 --> 2:03:29.400 think I hope they stopped doing that because obviously that 2:03:29.480 --> 2:03:32.120 you're sort of helping the cops make their prosecution case. There. 2:03:32.840 --> 2:03:37.040 Over the next five days, the encampment was extremely peaceful. 2:03:37.120 --> 2:03:39.480 Right There was a focus among this group on not 2:03:39.640 --> 2:03:44.120 giving any provocation to police or to addmin to any 2:03:44.240 --> 2:03:48.360 reason to evict them. So they had some lectures, some speeches, 2:03:48.640 --> 2:03:52.240 they had some live music, they did some dancing, all 2:03:52.320 --> 2:03:56.080 stuff that's in no way provocation or violent. On the 2:03:56.200 --> 2:03:59.840 fifth of May, a large counter protest was organized. Most 2:04:00.400 --> 2:04:03.800 it bought kind of like get off my Law and 2:04:03.880 --> 2:04:09.000 boomer types, but then also like some right wing streamers 2:04:09.480 --> 2:04:13.400 Oreo Express or I guess the surviving half of Oreo Express, 2:04:13.520 --> 2:04:17.040 Josh Fulfer, was there. I think the guy who was 2:04:17.120 --> 2:04:21.400 first responded to media, Jsuay or Joe Felix, was also there. 2:04:21.840 --> 2:04:23.720 These are right wing streamers that, sadly, like, if you 2:04:23.800 --> 2:04:25.640 live where I live, you have to be familiar with 2:04:25.720 --> 2:04:28.360 where they do a lot of border harassment to They 2:04:28.400 --> 2:04:30.720 were obviously trying to film and identify students, so I 2:04:30.800 --> 2:04:34.920 guess this was on the evening of the fifth That evening, 2:04:35.080 --> 2:04:38.520 the Chancellor Costler sent around an email basically saying that 2:04:38.640 --> 2:04:41.400 what the students were doing was prohibited, that the tents 2:04:41.560 --> 2:04:45.360 were not included in freedom of speech, and asking them 2:04:45.520 --> 2:04:50.600 to disband peacefully. The next morning, at about five or 2:04:50.640 --> 2:04:55.560 six in their morning, literally hundreds of cops from several agencies. 2:04:55.720 --> 2:04:59.720 Right the UCPD does not have the footprint that we saw. 2:05:00.040 --> 2:05:04.120 There was California Highway Patrol, San Diego Sheriff's Department, and 2:05:04.320 --> 2:05:09.240 UCPD all in full right gear lined up opposite the encampment. 2:05:10.240 --> 2:05:13.120 They say that they asked students to leave and that 2:05:13.280 --> 2:05:16.040 those who didn't were arrested. And when they're arrested, obviously 2:05:16.160 --> 2:05:18.160 like violence was used by the police, as always is, 2:05:18.760 --> 2:05:23.320 the encampment was destroyed. Everything that was there was tossed 2:05:23.360 --> 2:05:25.520 into a dumpster. Some stuff was then recovered. I guess 2:05:25.560 --> 2:05:27.840 there's now a lost and found people to recover their 2:05:28.240 --> 2:05:31.320 things like laptops, right, like expensive personal items that were 2:05:31.360 --> 2:05:34.720 swept up. At that point, people were arrested and then 2:05:34.840 --> 2:05:38.320 detained in the Price Center at UCSD. The Price Center, 2:05:38.520 --> 2:05:41.320 if you've not been on campus, is like a large 2:05:41.320 --> 2:05:44.840 shopping mall that also has some lecture facilities. But it's 2:05:44.880 --> 2:05:49.160 where the Panda expresses on campus. It's not trapped in 2:05:49.320 --> 2:05:52.560 with the Panda Express, which is a dangerous situation. Yeah yeah, 2:05:52.600 --> 2:05:55.160 and the Panda Express is not operational sadly more it's 2:05:55.160 --> 2:05:57.960 a shame, but it's where they have those their dining horn. 2:05:58.040 --> 2:06:01.360 It's like a center of corporate operations on campus. It's 2:06:01.400 --> 2:06:04.880 a very bleak place. So they're trapped in the Price Center. 2:06:05.680 --> 2:06:08.080 The students around campus, those who are not in the 2:06:08.160 --> 2:06:11.840 encampment then rallied to protect these students and tried to 2:06:12.040 --> 2:06:15.240 block the police from loading them on buses and then 2:06:15.440 --> 2:06:17.920 block the buses from leaving. And that's when we saw 2:06:17.960 --> 2:06:21.560 the Sheriff's department using massive amounts of violence. Right, our 2:06:21.600 --> 2:06:25.880 Sheriff's department still carry just like big wooden sticks. They're 2:06:25.920 --> 2:06:28.120 not like the black night sticks, you know, with like 2:06:28.240 --> 2:06:32.280 the right angled grip. It's just a giant it's just 2:06:32.360 --> 2:06:36.160 a big wooden baton. Yeah, it's the esthetic of our 2:06:36.240 --> 2:06:40.680 Sheriff's Department's right gear is consciously or unconsciously something that 2:06:40.720 --> 2:06:42.760 I associate with the civil rights tear and the repression 2:06:42.760 --> 2:06:45.680 of the civil rights movement. Perhaps that's a choice. I 2:06:45.720 --> 2:06:48.720 don't know, but that was when the Sheriff's department started 2:06:48.760 --> 2:06:52.480 to become violent. That's when they brutalized and arrested both 2:06:52.600 --> 2:06:56.760 generalists and students. In total, sixty five people are arrested 2:06:57.120 --> 2:06:59.840 protests and moved down to the two jails. We have 2:07:00.160 --> 2:07:03.480 different facility. There's a men's journal at women's jail, and 2:07:03.600 --> 2:07:07.920 they tend to they tend to incarcerate trans people with 2:07:08.040 --> 2:07:10.560 the gender they're assigned at birth. I've heard about lots 2:07:10.560 --> 2:07:13.360 of things that happened in those jails that were pretty bad, 2:07:14.000 --> 2:07:15.760 but I haven't been able to confirm them enough that 2:07:15.880 --> 2:07:20.360 I think I'd be comfortable airing them. So people are released, 2:07:20.480 --> 2:07:24.640 lots of them charged with several misdemeanors, trespassing, encroachment, being 2:07:24.680 --> 2:07:27.720 at the scene of a riot, resisting arrests, things like that. Right, 2:07:28.320 --> 2:07:32.360 two members of faculty were also arrested. Forty people were students, 2:07:32.400 --> 2:07:34.280 and at the last time I checked, they hadn't confirmed 2:07:34.320 --> 2:07:37.600 the status of the other twenty ish people. So that 2:07:37.800 --> 2:07:42.360 happened on the sixth yesterday, which was of course the eighth. 2:07:42.560 --> 2:07:45.120 There was a big march about a thousand students. It 2:07:45.200 --> 2:07:47.800 looked like kind of both calling for the UC to 2:07:47.880 --> 2:07:52.200 divest and calling for the UC to drop charges and 2:07:52.960 --> 2:07:55.360 drop academic sanctions. So right now, all the people who 2:07:55.360 --> 2:07:59.200 are arrested are facing interim suspension, they're facing a viction 2:07:59.360 --> 2:08:03.000 from their student housing, which San Diego, if we've spoken 2:08:03.000 --> 2:08:06.360 about brazilion times, has an incredibly expensive housing market and 2:08:06.680 --> 2:08:10.120 it's almost impossible to access to affordable housing here. And 2:08:10.480 --> 2:08:13.560 in some cases, you know, they're facing serious academic sanctions. 2:08:13.600 --> 2:08:15.840 It could affect the rest of their academic careers, student 2:08:15.960 --> 2:08:18.840 workers who are arrested or also now not being allowed 2:08:18.880 --> 2:08:22.560 to work on campus. So one hundred and eighty three 2:08:22.600 --> 2:08:25.360 faculty signed the letter asking the university to not do that. 2:08:25.800 --> 2:08:28.480 That came out last night, and that's kind of where 2:08:28.520 --> 2:08:32.000 we're at in terms of what's happened to these people. 2:08:32.440 --> 2:08:36.680 I think it's probably worth noting that the U see 2:08:36.760 --> 2:08:41.120 Riverside settled, right that they negotiated a settlement. That's in 2:08:42.320 --> 2:08:45.160 so Riverside is north and slightly east of here, east 2:08:45.200 --> 2:08:49.720 of Los Angeles County. You see Riverside is. I don't 2:08:49.720 --> 2:08:52.040 know in terms of student numbers how big it is, 2:08:52.160 --> 2:08:55.960 but they settled I think on the Wednesday, so it'd 2:08:56.000 --> 2:08:58.680 be mad Mayda. The Friday, May the third, I was 2:08:58.760 --> 2:09:01.160 at the UCSD and meant that day and I heard 2:09:01.200 --> 2:09:05.000 them announce it. They were overside settlement. I'm just going 2:09:05.080 --> 2:09:07.080 to say it didn't achieve some of the more radical 2:09:07.160 --> 2:09:10.240 goals of the student organizing movement, not to be divestment, 2:09:10.760 --> 2:09:13.320 to be an academic boycott. They did get the university 2:09:13.400 --> 2:09:17.080 to publish its investments which are linked to Israel at least, 2:09:17.680 --> 2:09:20.880 which is a step. I guess. They got a task force. 2:09:21.800 --> 2:09:23.520 The university is going to be very willing to grant 2:09:23.560 --> 2:09:26.400 you task forces and panels and things which can turn 2:09:26.480 --> 2:09:29.480 your radical aims into a bureaucratic mess. Right, And they 2:09:29.600 --> 2:09:31.880 got the university to look into removing Sabra Hummas from 2:09:31.880 --> 2:09:36.240 its men use as well. Get get Yeah. 2:09:36.920 --> 2:09:40.480 The biggest concession was the Hummers, which isn't isn't great? 2:09:41.120 --> 2:09:43.200 Wait that was That wasn't a joke? I thought you 2:09:43.280 --> 2:09:43.680 were joking. 2:09:43.880 --> 2:09:46.600 No no, I'm not joking. No no, no, no, Sobra 2:09:46.680 --> 2:09:49.760 Hummas was called out by name. They didn't. I'm not 2:09:49.840 --> 2:09:52.600 saying they're really investment yeah, yeah, no, no, they're not 2:09:52.760 --> 2:09:56.680 divesting from Sabra Hummas, Molly, they're looking into doing that. 2:09:57.840 --> 2:10:01.440 In conjunction with their acquisitions procedure. Yeah, so you know, 2:10:01.520 --> 2:10:03.960 it's a huge dub. I don't want to undermine what 2:10:04.040 --> 2:10:06.400 these people have done. Like it's it's scary when the 2:10:06.480 --> 2:10:09.800 cops come to get you. And I understand, but this 2:10:10.000 --> 2:10:11.920 is a sort of visa concessions or university is going 2:10:12.000 --> 2:10:15.400 to give you. Right, you might get a snack task force, 2:10:15.560 --> 2:10:20.560 and you might get they're already publicly available investments listed 2:10:20.600 --> 2:10:25.200 in one place on their website at UCSD. The administration 2:10:25.360 --> 2:10:30.080 claims that the students were unwilling to negotiate. I wasn't 2:10:30.120 --> 2:10:33.400 able to ascertain if what system they had, right, Like 2:10:33.520 --> 2:10:36.960 I was trying to ask if they had delegates or representatives, 2:10:37.720 --> 2:10:39.560 who are going to do those being different things, right, 2:10:39.840 --> 2:10:43.040 who are going to negotiate? I was enabled to get 2:10:43.040 --> 2:10:46.320 a clear answer, and that they did very clearly publish 2:10:46.360 --> 2:10:48.560 their demands right, And the university doesn't seem to have 2:10:48.640 --> 2:10:51.680 proceeded to any of them. So that more or less 2:10:51.840 --> 2:10:54.320 is where we're at in San Diego. They're are ongoing 2:10:55.080 --> 2:10:57.760 panels and press conferences. I'm going to attend one, so 2:10:57.880 --> 2:11:00.320 it's going to be one by faculty tomorrow on the ninth, 2:11:00.600 --> 2:11:02.800 the faculty have also been organizing right in a group 2:11:02.840 --> 2:11:05.720 called Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and they've been organizing. 2:11:05.760 --> 2:11:07.640 I think it was very impressive that they like accepted 2:11:07.640 --> 2:11:10.800 student leadership and didn't try and like, you know, come 2:11:10.880 --> 2:11:13.040 in and take a vanguard roll or tell everybody what 2:11:13.160 --> 2:11:15.560 to do. But but there mostly to facilitate the student 2:11:15.600 --> 2:11:18.839 protest and protect it. So they're having a press conference tomorrow, 2:11:18.920 --> 2:11:21.560 so things that's definitely ongoing here. But that's kind of 2:11:21.600 --> 2:11:24.080 where we're at as of today, which is the ninth 2:11:24.480 --> 2:11:24.680 of me. 2:11:25.560 --> 2:11:28.400 We will be back in here about the happenings in 2:11:28.560 --> 2:11:33.440 Chicago and I believe Richmond Charlottesville after this outbreak. Yeah 2:11:33.520 --> 2:11:40.800 for Sobra, I hope probably not Chockolahamas. That's the chocolate 2:11:40.840 --> 2:11:43.480 Hammas is a travesty, crime against humanity. 2:11:53.800 --> 2:11:55.120 All Right, we are back. 2:11:55.760 --> 2:11:59.040 I have a big bowl of non Sobra chocolate hummers. Actually, 2:11:59.160 --> 2:12:00.680 so fuck all of you. 2:12:02.760 --> 2:12:04.960 Yeah, and the break Garrison got out that chickpeas and 2:12:05.040 --> 2:12:07.000 a blenda is a really beautiful thing. 2:12:07.520 --> 2:12:09.800 Let's hear from me about what's been happening in Chicago 2:12:09.840 --> 2:12:13.440 where there it's been multiple, multiple of these protest occupations. 2:12:14.400 --> 2:12:17.879 Yeah, so there's been four occupations so far in Chicago 2:12:18.080 --> 2:12:20.880 that it's it's possible. I don't know. I'm actually kind 2:12:20.880 --> 2:12:23.000 of surprised, Like the University of Ville Nois hasn't, Like 2:12:23.200 --> 2:12:24.880 there have been a few campuses that I thought would 2:12:24.880 --> 2:12:27.240 go up that haven't. Yeah, so we're gonna talk about 2:12:27.240 --> 2:12:29.280 three of them because the other one I didn't get to. 2:12:29.440 --> 2:12:32.920 We'll we'll well, we'll explain why I wasn't at the 2:12:33.360 --> 2:12:35.240 School of the Art Institute one because. 2:12:35.000 --> 2:12:37.520 That's a shit show, sixty eight arrests. 2:12:37.960 --> 2:12:38.919 Yeah, disaster. 2:12:39.320 --> 2:12:40.080 We will get to that. 2:12:40.160 --> 2:12:42.040 So the first one I was at was at Northwestern, 2:12:42.360 --> 2:12:44.160 And I think the other thing that's important about these 2:12:44.200 --> 2:12:49.600 encampments is that they're really really geographically spread out across 2:12:49.640 --> 2:12:53.000 the city. So Northwestern is not in Chicago, it is 2:12:53.040 --> 2:12:56.880 in is it a like is it a suburb called Evanston? 2:12:57.040 --> 2:12:59.400 Is a very rich suburb. Okay, the other thing we 2:12:59.400 --> 2:13:02.160 should probably get across this these the Chicago camp it's 2:13:02.200 --> 2:13:05.680 all started kind of late into this process. They're not 2:13:06.240 --> 2:13:07.880 there's reasons for this that I can't get into, but 2:13:08.000 --> 2:13:10.640 they're all kind of late comers. On April twenty fifth, 2:13:10.720 --> 2:13:16.360 Northwestern one starts and it's a really chill occupation for 2:13:16.480 --> 2:13:18.080 the most part. So there's like a police raid on 2:13:18.240 --> 2:13:20.280 night one, but then the kids just come back and 2:13:20.320 --> 2:13:21.760 put all the tents up again. And then after that, 2:13:22.600 --> 2:13:25.640 like the Evanston police department is a joke, right, Like 2:13:25.720 --> 2:13:27.920 they're not I mean, they've probably done terrible things, but 2:13:28.000 --> 2:13:30.000 like they're not. They're not like the police departments in 2:13:30.040 --> 2:13:32.600 the rest of the city, who are like the guys 2:13:32.640 --> 2:13:35.040 you teach the CIA how to torture people, right, Yeah, 2:13:36.440 --> 2:13:38.080 and so yeah, I wanted to talk a bit about 2:13:38.120 --> 2:13:40.080 kind of the vibes of it because it was it's 2:13:40.080 --> 2:13:43.720 a very like early occupation kind of vibe, right. It's 2:13:44.040 --> 2:13:46.640 I mean, like I walk in, there's it's a bunch 2:13:46.680 --> 2:13:51.600 of kids like sitting on tents doing homework. People are sleeping, 2:13:52.080 --> 2:13:53.960 There's like people are like eating meals. 2:13:54.120 --> 2:13:57.120 Everyone's really happy, very similar to people just hanging out 2:13:57.160 --> 2:13:58.800 in the quat at Emory and I'm sure many other 2:13:58.880 --> 2:14:02.080 places around the country. Yeah, I think I think in 2:14:02.160 --> 2:14:04.800 everything that that should be mentioned is you know, so 2:14:04.920 --> 2:14:06.880 like obviously these are these are proteo, these are camps 2:14:06.920 --> 2:14:10.240 insolidated with palessign, right, so you're you're expecting an internationalist event. 2:14:10.400 --> 2:14:13.200 This one like I walked in there and there is 2:14:13.280 --> 2:14:15.440 a woman on the stage in the encampment while I 2:14:15.520 --> 2:14:18.320 say stage, and there's a woman using their sound equipment, 2:14:18.320 --> 2:14:19.520 which made you quieter. 2:14:21.000 --> 2:14:23.160 Too, but was talking about the. 2:14:23.200 --> 2:14:25.400 Zapatistas and this is the thing you see over and 2:14:25.480 --> 2:14:27.120 over and over again, right, It's like, yeah, these are 2:14:27.160 --> 2:14:28.960 about these the enchampsts that I'm at are you know, 2:14:29.000 --> 2:14:32.240 obviously they're about Palestign, But there's this real there's very 2:14:32.400 --> 2:14:36.680 kind of there's a deep internationalism there that's very tangible 2:14:36.720 --> 2:14:38.360 and powerful. I mean, like, you know, I was walking 2:14:38.400 --> 2:14:39.960 through the tamp and I was I was like, you know, 2:14:40.080 --> 2:14:42.160 there are kids like reading on the on the lawn 2:14:42.240 --> 2:14:43.960 and I'm like I'm like pointing out like, oh hey, 2:14:44.040 --> 2:14:45.440 this is that's the copy of The Wretched of the 2:14:45.480 --> 2:14:48.160 Earth that I have from college. Like you know, it's 2:14:48.160 --> 2:14:50.440 all stuff like that. It was all very chill. It 2:14:50.600 --> 2:14:53.000 like rained on us. So we spend much time like 2:14:53.040 --> 2:14:55.960 waterproofing tents. I think the interesting things about this is 2:14:56.000 --> 2:15:00.280 that there's a there's a really kind of wild mix 2:15:00.400 --> 2:15:03.040 of people there. It's it's this, it's this thing you 2:15:03.160 --> 2:15:05.360 only really get in social movements that are like going 2:15:05.480 --> 2:15:07.680 somewhere where, you know, I mean I was running into 2:15:07.720 --> 2:15:13.160 people from groups like old school, like like I ran 2:15:13.240 --> 2:15:15.320 to zone from students for a democratic society, Like I 2:15:15.320 --> 2:15:17.000 didn't even know that groups still existed, like I thought 2:15:17.000 --> 2:15:19.960 I thought went down well, so there there was a 2:15:20.000 --> 2:15:21.520 second round of them in the two thousands, so I 2:15:21.520 --> 2:15:24.080 thought they died after that, but apparently not. You know, 2:15:24.160 --> 2:15:26.040 so you have these mix of people from like groups 2:15:26.080 --> 2:15:28.200 that everyone thought was dead, right, Like, you know, there's 2:15:28.200 --> 2:15:30.400 a lot of sort of very experienced, like student organizers. 2:15:30.400 --> 2:15:33.120 There's also a lot of grad students, which is a dynamic. 2:15:33.120 --> 2:15:35.880 I don't think it's talked about very much because it's 2:15:36.120 --> 2:15:37.720 it's not just like eighteen year olds. There are a 2:15:37.720 --> 2:15:39.760 lot of people in these camps who have been doing 2:15:39.840 --> 2:15:42.480 this for a very long time. And you know, so 2:15:42.560 --> 2:15:44.760 you have those people, but you also have people who 2:15:44.960 --> 2:15:46.840 just I mean, like I talked to people who this 2:15:46.960 --> 2:15:48.920 was literally their first protest, right, It's like the first 2:15:48.920 --> 2:15:51.600 thing that evertility they'd ever come out to, And you know, 2:15:52.880 --> 2:15:54.920 there was this very kind of there's this very sort 2:15:54.960 --> 2:15:58.000 of camarader ReVibe. What there wasn't was a functional democracy, 2:15:58.520 --> 2:16:01.160 and that's that's a very Dusty everything about this encampment 2:16:01.240 --> 2:16:04.680 that was very different than the Chicago one, which I'll 2:16:04.680 --> 2:16:07.760 be getting to in a second. It's like they there 2:16:07.880 --> 2:16:11.000 was this sort of there was this group that was 2:16:11.080 --> 2:16:17.320 negotiating with the administration, and no one could really tell 2:16:17.440 --> 2:16:19.880 what they were doing. Like every once in a while 2:16:19.880 --> 2:16:22.240 a representative would come back from them and you'd hear something. 2:16:22.320 --> 2:16:24.640 But in the meantime, everyone is sort of running around 2:16:24.640 --> 2:16:26.600 based on rumors, trying to figure out what these people 2:16:26.600 --> 2:16:30.920 are negotiating. And it turns out what they're negotiating is 2:16:31.080 --> 2:16:35.920 an end to the protests, and basically the students like, okay, 2:16:35.920 --> 2:16:38.640 so there's a complicated set of demands. What actually happens 2:16:38.720 --> 2:16:41.080 is that all of the entire occupation is taken down. 2:16:41.120 --> 2:16:44.360 After a week, it's completely gone. Now there's nothing there. 2:16:45.240 --> 2:16:49.200 What they get from it was the university is re 2:16:49.480 --> 2:16:55.840 establishing an advisory committee on investment responsibilities. They got like 2:16:56.440 --> 2:17:01.000 question this Northwest supposed to answer questions about holding some 2:17:01.120 --> 2:17:05.680 stakeholders which may be disclosure, may not be. And they 2:17:05.800 --> 2:17:09.280 got some stuff that like is real from for like 2:17:09.800 --> 2:17:14.640 visiting like Palestinian faculty. But basically they didn't get any 2:17:14.720 --> 2:17:17.080 of the goals of the encampment, right, there's no investments. 2:17:17.360 --> 2:17:21.520 There's you know, a committee that can make recommendations about 2:17:21.560 --> 2:17:23.840 the investment, and we'll see if that even happens, because 2:17:23.879 --> 2:17:26.480 that's supposed to be spun out back in the fall. So, 2:17:26.680 --> 2:17:28.880 you know, they take down the encampment, they get nothing, 2:17:29.040 --> 2:17:31.760 they get no leverage, and nothing is you know, and 2:17:32.000 --> 2:17:34.240 all of the sort of student negotiators, and these negotiators 2:17:34.360 --> 2:17:38.040 tend they you know, Okay, so there are also like 2:17:38.120 --> 2:17:40.760 political splits in the camp. Right, It's kind of hard 2:17:40.800 --> 2:17:42.760 to get a sense of them just from looking at it, 2:17:43.520 --> 2:17:45.360 but you know, if you talk to enough people, you 2:17:45.400 --> 2:17:47.200 can sort of get the sense of like what the 2:17:47.280 --> 2:17:51.080 splits are, right, and Northwestern was sort of split between 2:17:52.280 --> 2:17:55.920 like the sort of liberal nego student negotiators who are 2:17:56.040 --> 2:17:59.440 from a lot of like some of the sort of 2:17:59.520 --> 2:18:02.040 more liberal student organizations, and the people who want to 2:18:02.200 --> 2:18:04.680 like you know, they're sort of like Baxibleist radicals and 2:18:04.680 --> 2:18:06.800 the maximust radicals get out maduvry because there's just not 2:18:06.920 --> 2:18:09.400 enough of them, and so they take the encampment down. 2:18:09.640 --> 2:18:12.160 And the people who were doing the negotiations had this 2:18:12.200 --> 2:18:14.400 whole line by we're building power, this is just the beginning, 2:18:14.440 --> 2:18:16.760 and there's nothing. There's been nothing else. They're screwed. They 2:18:16.840 --> 2:18:18.920 lost everything. Their negotiating power is gone. 2:18:19.040 --> 2:18:19.680 They got nothing. 2:18:20.879 --> 2:18:25.600 So in the wake of this, the University of Chicago 2:18:25.840 --> 2:18:29.480 encampment starts up. Vnwversit of Chicago complete other side of 2:18:29.520 --> 2:18:33.640 the city, like Northwestern is in like the like the 2:18:33.800 --> 2:18:38.360 fucking bougiest, like richest, whitest of the like of like 2:18:38.400 --> 2:18:40.160 the north side of Chicago, which is like where rich 2:18:40.200 --> 2:18:42.640 white people are, except I mean, they're not even in Chicago, right, 2:18:42.680 --> 2:18:45.680 They're they're they're literally like they are they are a 2:18:46.200 --> 2:18:48.960 They're a suburb. The University of Chicago, on the other hand, 2:18:49.240 --> 2:18:51.280 is smack dab in the middle of the south side 2:18:51.280 --> 2:18:54.560 of Chicago. There's the University bubble, and then around the 2:18:54.640 --> 2:18:56.440 university this is like the heart, like the heart of 2:18:56.440 --> 2:19:00.400 black Chicago, right, very very different vibe. The other thing 2:19:00.440 --> 2:19:02.520 that's important about this is so the University of Chicago 2:19:02.720 --> 2:19:06.280 occupation starts in the context of the massive raids in Columbia, 2:19:06.320 --> 2:19:11.600 the raid and Humboldt, and very importantly the raids in UCLA, and. 2:19:12.160 --> 2:19:14.400 Both of both the sort of brutal police. 2:19:14.160 --> 2:19:19.160 Raid and the like absolute horrowing mass fascist attack on 2:19:19.200 --> 2:19:21.400 the barricades where you know me of people getting beat 2:19:21.480 --> 2:19:24.000 up the middle pipes. They're shooting. They're shooting like Fourth 2:19:24.080 --> 2:19:27.320 of July ass fireworks, like directly into into the people 2:19:27.400 --> 2:19:30.119 on the barricades. They are trying to kill the protesters. 2:19:30.200 --> 2:19:32.720 They beat a bunch of student journalists like half to death. 2:19:33.640 --> 2:19:38.000 And so University of Chicago camp when I get there, 2:19:38.280 --> 2:19:41.240 is right in the middle of transforming from a kind 2:19:41.280 --> 2:19:44.720 of like Northwestern style everyone's getting along like singing Kumbaya 2:19:44.840 --> 2:19:48.640 camp to like an actual fighting camp. Because I get 2:19:48.680 --> 2:19:51.240 there and like that day I get there at like nine, 2:19:51.480 --> 2:19:54.200 right three hours from when I get there, they were 2:19:54.240 --> 2:19:57.520 scheduled to be a giant rally of like right wing 2:19:57.680 --> 2:20:00.480 frats that is going to go come and attack the encampment. 2:20:01.040 --> 2:20:04.880 So the vibe is extremely different. It is a fighting camp. 2:20:04.959 --> 2:20:08.000 Everyone is preparing to, like, you know, fight for their lives. 2:20:08.560 --> 2:20:12.560 Everyone knows what happens at UCLA, and also everyone knows 2:20:12.600 --> 2:20:15.959 what happened at Northwestern, and people are fucking pissed. People 2:20:16.080 --> 2:20:19.520 are like, I mean unbelievably angry that then you know, 2:20:19.640 --> 2:20:23.160 then their view is the Northwestern camp sold everyone out, sure, 2:20:23.400 --> 2:20:25.840 and so you know, I mean, and the other thing 2:20:25.879 --> 2:20:27.960 about Chicago that was different from Northwestern is that U 2:20:28.040 --> 2:20:32.600 Chicago had has functional general assemblies, So there are like 2:20:32.800 --> 2:20:36.600 functional democratic meetings where everyone in the camp goes, Okay, 2:20:36.640 --> 2:20:38.200 we're going to like figure out what we're going to do. 2:20:38.800 --> 2:20:44.440 And these meetings are people are not happy with, you know, 2:20:44.560 --> 2:20:47.119 like they're not happy with what happened at the Northwestern. 2:20:47.840 --> 2:20:52.360 They're also like really pissed off at the third occupation, 2:20:52.920 --> 2:20:54.360 which was well, I mean, I guess I think that 2:20:54.440 --> 2:20:56.280 Paul happened in the middle of there. But the third 2:20:56.280 --> 2:20:58.840 occupation was the occupation at the School of the Art Institute. 2:20:59.000 --> 2:21:01.920 The School of the Art Institute is literally right in 2:21:02.040 --> 2:21:05.120 the heart of downtown Chicago. Like it is across like 2:21:05.200 --> 2:21:07.480 it is like across the street from Ballennium Park. It 2:21:07.600 --> 2:21:10.320 is like across the street from like the Art Institute 2:21:10.320 --> 2:21:14.320 of Chicago. It is in like the corporate center of Chicago. Sure, 2:21:14.680 --> 2:21:17.080 so they they they do. They do an occupation right 2:21:17.480 --> 2:21:19.760 and inside of like like I think I think they 2:21:20.000 --> 2:21:24.320 got seven hours in before SWAT teams showed up. They 2:21:24.400 --> 2:21:26.640 rerest sixty of people. It is a brutal raid. 2:21:26.680 --> 2:21:28.959 They're they're like the cops are beating people with metal 2:21:29.040 --> 2:21:30.640 bars like it is. 2:21:30.720 --> 2:21:30.920 It is. 2:21:31.080 --> 2:21:32.240 It is fucking terrible. 2:21:32.280 --> 2:21:33.840 It's it is. It is a bunch of swat teams 2:21:33.879 --> 2:21:36.000 beating up art students, very switch and harsh. 2:21:36.080 --> 2:21:38.320 To make sure it doesn't become like a continued thing. 2:21:38.720 --> 2:21:40.440 Yeah, yeah, because because then and this is the thing 2:21:40.440 --> 2:21:43.400 about but both U Chicago and DePaul to less tuge 2:21:43.440 --> 2:21:48.120 extent too. But U Chicago and Northwestern are on basically 2:21:48.240 --> 2:21:50.320 like opposite extremes of the city right there. They're not 2:21:50.360 --> 2:21:52.000 in the middle of the city, of the downtown area 2:21:52.120 --> 2:21:54.000 that yeah, like the political league care about. It's on 2:21:54.040 --> 2:21:56.480 the north side, on the south side. Yeah, yeah, the 2:21:56.520 --> 2:21:59.039 school the artistry, like this is literally the middle of Chicago. 2:21:59.560 --> 2:22:02.600 And so they like it's very clear orders are coming 2:22:02.640 --> 2:22:06.000 down from above that this encampment can't be allowed to stay, 2:22:06.040 --> 2:22:07.760 and so they get the ship beaten out of them. 2:22:08.240 --> 2:22:10.480 And this is important for a few reasons. One it 2:22:10.600 --> 2:22:13.040 kind of like it kind of heightens the fear of 2:22:13.080 --> 2:22:15.640 police deppression. But the thing that it does that's important 2:22:15.840 --> 2:22:19.720 is that this goes fucking this like completely backfires on 2:22:20.000 --> 2:22:22.080 Brandon Johnson and you know, so that's sort of the 2:22:22.640 --> 2:22:26.000 mayor of the political administration, because this is you know, 2:22:26.080 --> 2:22:28.560 it turns out people are very very angry that a 2:22:28.600 --> 2:22:30.440 bunch of swat teams just beat up a bunch of 2:22:30.560 --> 2:22:33.400 art students with metal bars, right, And the consequence of 2:22:33.480 --> 2:22:36.360 this is that Brandon Johnson like refuses to or at 2:22:36.440 --> 2:22:39.240 least openly what he's saying is that he won't use 2:22:39.600 --> 2:22:43.000 the Chicago Police Department at at at on the University 2:22:43.040 --> 2:22:45.760 Chicago campus. University of Chicago has its own police force 2:22:45.800 --> 2:22:48.520 that's about one hundred and fifty officers. It's sort of 2:22:48.600 --> 2:22:50.960 vaunted as like the largest police force in like the 2:22:51.000 --> 2:22:52.800 largest pri one of the largest private police forces in 2:22:52.840 --> 2:22:56.760 the world. You know, they also shot a fucking kit 2:22:56.840 --> 2:22:58.840 while I was at school there, so you know, I 2:22:58.959 --> 2:23:02.480 have a like depatriot of them. But what kind of 2:23:02.560 --> 2:23:05.360 ends up happening is so there's there's that big the 2:23:05.440 --> 2:23:08.320 day I'm there, there's this big like confentration between protesters 2:23:08.360 --> 2:23:11.400 and kind of protesters, and you know, the kids form a. 2:23:11.400 --> 2:23:13.560 Shield protesters and counter protesters. 2:23:14.120 --> 2:23:14.320 Yeah. 2:23:14.400 --> 2:23:16.960 Yeah, so so like the the FRAT show up, there's 2:23:17.000 --> 2:23:19.760 like a huge right wing media circus, but the kids 2:23:19.840 --> 2:23:21.760 have a shield wall, and the shield wall fucking holds 2:23:22.000 --> 2:23:25.400 and the counter protesters can't break it. They eventually back 2:23:25.480 --> 2:23:29.240 off and they're separated by the cops, and from there 2:23:29.600 --> 2:23:33.000 things get weird. The encampment gets cleared by a raid 2:23:33.320 --> 2:23:36.400 that probably could have been stopped, you know, it has 2:23:36.560 --> 2:23:37.920 they have one of these five am raids. 2:23:38.920 --> 2:23:40.080 You can't stop the police. 2:23:40.440 --> 2:23:42.039 Well, okay, So the thing I say about this, though, 2:23:42.120 --> 2:23:45.040 this is this isn't CPD, this is UCPD. They have 2:23:45.200 --> 2:23:47.480 like forty total, Like the number of people they can 2:23:47.520 --> 2:23:51.840 amass at one time is about forty. So like this 2:23:52.120 --> 2:23:55.560 this was the only occupation that like maybe like plausibly 2:23:55.600 --> 2:23:57.640 could have actually beaten off the beaten off the police 2:23:57.720 --> 2:24:00.400 tech because you know, if they only have four people 2:24:00.440 --> 2:24:04.000 and you have six hundred like that, that that that's 2:24:04.080 --> 2:24:05.959 about the point at which it's like plugs. 2:24:06.040 --> 2:24:08.240 It's unusual for cops to engage if they don't have 2:24:08.280 --> 2:24:09.279 the numerical advantage. 2:24:09.360 --> 2:24:09.640 That's odd. 2:24:09.879 --> 2:24:12.680 Yeah, yeah, But what happens is that the basically the 2:24:12.720 --> 2:24:16.400 protesters through through through, like there's a very convoluted process 2:24:16.400 --> 2:24:18.200 of this. But the protesters decide not to define the camp, 2:24:18.280 --> 2:24:20.200 so I everyone it gets raided and they'll and like 2:24:20.760 --> 2:24:22.600 no one has I'm getting arrested, but they destroy the 2:24:22.760 --> 2:24:25.760 entire camp. And Okay, I guess there's one thing that 2:24:25.879 --> 2:24:28.960 I I probably should have fit this in better somewhere else. 2:24:29.000 --> 2:24:31.400 But something that's very interesting about both of these encampments, 2:24:31.440 --> 2:24:33.080 and this has been true of both of the encampments 2:24:33.120 --> 2:24:36.960 that I've I've seen, is is who is like the 2:24:37.320 --> 2:24:41.320 racial and gender composition of who's there, Because these are 2:24:41.480 --> 2:24:42.959 you know, and you could see this like when you're 2:24:42.959 --> 2:24:46.960 when when the counter protesters are facing off against the protesters, 2:24:47.000 --> 2:24:51.320 is the counter protesters they're like exclusively white, like most 2:24:51.360 --> 2:24:55.040 of them are white frat ros, white CIS dudes usually yeah, yeah. 2:24:55.120 --> 2:25:01.280 And then in the camps it is basically like it 2:25:01.440 --> 2:25:04.560 is like non it's non white people of all genders 2:25:04.879 --> 2:25:10.879 and like non sistued people of all races. Yeah, very 2:25:11.000 --> 2:25:13.280 very very very prominently. And this this is something that 2:25:13.480 --> 2:25:16.520 I think is a sign of how the sort of 2:25:16.600 --> 2:25:18.760 like American political alignment has changed and the kind of 2:25:18.840 --> 2:25:22.120 kinds of political alliances that are kind of so normal 2:25:22.240 --> 2:25:24.240 now that we don't even really think about them. But 2:25:24.280 --> 2:25:26.000 if you step back for a second and look at 2:25:26.000 --> 2:25:28.400 what's actually happening, this is this is the this is 2:25:28.440 --> 2:25:32.440 the actual political composition of these protests. It's queer people 2:25:32.520 --> 2:25:35.640 and non white people and obviously like people like me 2:25:35.720 --> 2:25:38.520 who are both. And I think that's an important thing 2:25:38.640 --> 2:25:42.080 because you know, it's it's a dynamic of these camps. 2:25:42.120 --> 2:25:43.840 It doesn't get talked about, it en off, but is 2:25:44.280 --> 2:25:47.759 the core thing that's happening like politically. 2:25:47.720 --> 2:25:49.320 I agree that that was the same that was the 2:25:49.360 --> 2:25:52.880 same demographic balance at Emory. Let's take another break and 2:25:52.959 --> 2:25:55.160 we'll come back and hear from Ali and then kind 2:25:55.160 --> 2:25:56.760 of have a bit more of an open discussion to 2:25:56.760 --> 2:26:00.200 close things out, comparing the similarities and differences for our 2:26:00.240 --> 2:26:05.600 experiences at these these four different protest encampments or different cities. 2:26:05.640 --> 2:26:06.119 I guess. 2:26:16.600 --> 2:26:18.520 All right, we are back. Mollie. 2:26:19.640 --> 2:26:24.400 You saw some pretty bad police violence at the camp 2:26:24.560 --> 2:26:25.960 in Chardsville, I believe right. 2:26:26.520 --> 2:26:26.720 Yes. 2:26:27.240 --> 2:26:30.280 The encampment at the University of Virginia was cleared on 2:26:30.560 --> 2:26:35.680 May fourth by Virginia State Police. It was not a 2:26:35.760 --> 2:26:39.119 pretty site, so the students at the University of Virginia 2:26:39.360 --> 2:26:42.880 set up an encampment on April thirtieth in the afternoon 2:26:42.959 --> 2:26:45.440 of the thirtieth. They had announced ahead of time that 2:26:45.480 --> 2:26:47.800 there will be programming during the day on May Day. 2:26:48.600 --> 2:26:51.640 So this sudden setup the day prior was I think 2:26:51.680 --> 2:26:55.800 a surprise to the university. When the students first put 2:26:55.840 --> 2:26:58.320 their stuff down, they put up some tents. The police 2:26:58.400 --> 2:27:01.520 chief of the university Police Force, Timothy Longo, showed up 2:27:01.560 --> 2:27:04.200 immediately and said, no tense tends to the red line. 2:27:04.320 --> 2:27:07.360 Take the tents down. So that first night they took 2:27:07.400 --> 2:27:11.360 the tents down, and so for three nights they slept 2:27:11.400 --> 2:27:14.920 outside unsheltered because it was clear from the university that 2:27:15.520 --> 2:27:17.800 the tents are going to be the problem. That's the 2:27:17.879 --> 2:27:19.600 only issue that we have is the tents. You can 2:27:19.680 --> 2:27:21.320 be here, you just can't put up the tents, and 2:27:21.400 --> 2:27:24.039 you can't use amplified sound. You can't be too noisy. 2:27:24.400 --> 2:27:27.039 The place where they'd set up was this patch of grass. 2:27:27.200 --> 2:27:29.680 That's so if you're familiar with the University of Virginia, 2:27:29.760 --> 2:27:32.800 there's the lawn. It's called the lawn. It's not the 2:27:32.879 --> 2:27:34.800 only grass, but it's just the special grass. It's the 2:27:35.600 --> 2:27:38.720 grass between the lawn rooms and the rotunda. It's like 2:27:38.800 --> 2:27:40.560 a long narrow They weren't on the lawn. I think 2:27:40.600 --> 2:27:43.200 that would have been a much bigger problem for the university, 2:27:43.280 --> 2:27:45.120 just because of the optics of it, and because students 2:27:45.200 --> 2:27:47.080 live in the lawn rooms, so they were actually on 2:27:47.160 --> 2:27:49.520 the other side of the rotunda, in this shady, grassy 2:27:49.520 --> 2:27:54.080 area between the rotunda and the chapel, so within kind 2:27:54.120 --> 2:27:57.080 of spitting distance of that statue of Thomas Jefferson that 2:27:57.200 --> 2:28:00.440 the Nazis famously surrounded in twenty seventeen, so that that 2:28:00.560 --> 2:28:03.400 same sort of area of the university. So for three 2:28:03.480 --> 2:28:07.000 nights they were out there unsheltered. It was pretty quiet. 2:28:07.080 --> 2:28:08.840 It was, you know, a few dozen students. Most of 2:28:08.879 --> 2:28:11.520 the time classes had just ended, so they were preparing 2:28:11.560 --> 2:28:14.680 for finals, they were writing papers. I think some afternoons 2:28:14.720 --> 2:28:17.640 they had tas come out and help people with their 2:28:17.840 --> 2:28:19.279 with their papers, help them study. 2:28:19.600 --> 2:28:19.720 You know. 2:28:19.840 --> 2:28:22.040 It was it was chill, they were they were just 2:28:22.120 --> 2:28:25.000 kind of out there vibing. And then on the evening 2:28:25.080 --> 2:28:27.080 of the third they held a vigil for the dead 2:28:27.120 --> 2:28:29.680 and Palestine. There was great turnout for that. A lot 2:28:29.720 --> 2:28:32.320 of people came out, students, families, you know, there were 2:28:32.400 --> 2:28:35.760 babies there, dogs, like it was. It was a safe place, right, 2:28:35.800 --> 2:28:38.119 It was a place where people felt safe letting their 2:28:38.200 --> 2:28:41.040 toddlers kick a ball around. Like it was not a 2:28:42.040 --> 2:28:45.480 violent or embattled environment. There were babies there and they 2:28:45.520 --> 2:28:47.920 held the vigil and after the vigil they had Shabbot dinner. 2:28:48.480 --> 2:28:50.200 But as the sun was going down, it was starting 2:28:50.280 --> 2:28:52.480 to rain, so they put up a pop up tent 2:28:53.040 --> 2:28:55.960 to cover the Shabbat dinner, you know, the food that 2:28:56.040 --> 2:28:58.240 had been set out. And it was at that point 2:28:58.320 --> 2:29:01.640 that they began setting up the camping tents. And you know, 2:29:01.680 --> 2:29:04.440 they've been told all along by the police chief, you 2:29:04.480 --> 2:29:06.200 can't put tens up. You can't put tens up. It's 2:29:06.200 --> 2:29:07.960 against the rules. That's that's when we're going to have 2:29:07.959 --> 2:29:11.000 to intervene if you put the tense up. But every 2:29:11.080 --> 2:29:15.000 UVA school policy is available on the school's website. They 2:29:15.040 --> 2:29:17.280 have a policy database where you can, you know, search 2:29:17.360 --> 2:29:19.640 by keyword. You can, you know, you can see every 2:29:19.680 --> 2:29:22.320 official school policy. And the official school policy is that 2:29:23.280 --> 2:29:26.400 tens are allowed. It's on the website. You can have 2:29:26.480 --> 2:29:29.200 a tent. And so now this, you know, the university 2:29:29.280 --> 2:29:32.120 is saying that this discrepancy as well. You know that 2:29:32.200 --> 2:29:35.600 actually isn't a policy. It was a sort it's guidance 2:29:35.920 --> 2:29:40.200 on the policy. But it is in the policy database 2:29:40.280 --> 2:29:43.000 on the policy website where they keep the policies and 2:29:43.080 --> 2:29:45.560 it says guideline on it, and a guideline it's a 2:29:45.600 --> 2:29:47.800 synonym for a policy. So they are there. I think 2:29:47.840 --> 2:29:49.560 the lesson to take away here, you know, I'm not 2:29:49.600 --> 2:29:52.720 going to Monday morning quarterback the student organizers. I was 2:29:52.800 --> 2:29:55.240 not privy to internal discussions. I don't think that's my role. 2:29:56.440 --> 2:29:59.120 I think the takeaway here though, is that they're always 2:29:59.200 --> 2:30:03.360 going to move the posts. The only protest the administration 2:30:03.520 --> 2:30:06.119 will ever approve of is one that happened at least 2:30:06.160 --> 2:30:09.000 thirty years ago. Right, you have to be decades removed 2:30:09.040 --> 2:30:12.040 from progress to see it as positive. They never like 2:30:12.120 --> 2:30:15.080 progress while it's happening. They never like protest while it 2:30:15.200 --> 2:30:18.760 is happening. There's nothing you can do that will be allowed. Right, 2:30:18.760 --> 2:30:21.200 Because the entire time of those first three days, when 2:30:21.240 --> 2:30:23.360 the police were keeping their distance, they were always there. 2:30:23.520 --> 2:30:25.760 There was always this sort of like needling back and 2:30:25.879 --> 2:30:28.320 forth while you know, can you just can you adjust this, 2:30:28.560 --> 2:30:30.560 can you change this kind of behavior, like you know 2:30:30.640 --> 2:30:32.400 you're not breaking the rules yet, but just you know, 2:30:32.480 --> 2:30:36.840 we're watching, be careful, this constant needling. And so in 2:30:36.879 --> 2:30:39.080 the end on the fourth when the Virginia State Police 2:30:39.080 --> 2:30:43.760 showed up, you know, up until that point, the idea was, well, 2:30:43.800 --> 2:30:46.000 the provocation was the tense. The problem was the tents. 2:30:46.040 --> 2:30:48.440 The police had to become because of the tents. You 2:30:48.520 --> 2:30:53.400 know that the policy on the school's website changed Saturday morning, 2:30:53.600 --> 2:30:56.600 like we have the you know, the cash on the website. 2:30:56.640 --> 2:30:59.119 You can see when the PDF was altered. 2:30:59.200 --> 2:30:59.560 It was that. 2:31:00.360 --> 2:31:03.240 So it's like, is it about the tents? Did you 2:31:03.360 --> 2:31:06.600 change this policy as pretext for the police raid? Because 2:31:06.640 --> 2:31:09.080 now in the aftermath, since they were caught out changing 2:31:09.160 --> 2:31:12.440 that policy immediately before the police raided the camp, they're saying, well, no, actually, 2:31:13.000 --> 2:31:15.280 actually it wasn't about the tents. That's not really what 2:31:15.360 --> 2:31:18.640 this is about. It's because they're saying now that you know, 2:31:18.920 --> 2:31:22.800 four men in essentially a black block, right, So four 2:31:22.920 --> 2:31:25.680 men in black were carrying backpacks with helmets were seen 2:31:25.720 --> 2:31:27.840 in the area and they're known to law enforcement. And 2:31:28.480 --> 2:31:30.959 I'll be honest with you, I did not see these individuals. 2:31:31.480 --> 2:31:36.400 But at the same time, who care who? It's public property, right, 2:31:36.440 --> 2:31:40.200 this is a public university. You know, this outside agitator narrative. 2:31:40.200 --> 2:31:42.160 You know, we had to beat and Pepper's bray these 2:31:42.160 --> 2:31:45.200 students because of these mysterious men. But at the same time, 2:31:45.640 --> 2:31:47.520 you know, the entire time that the students were in 2:31:47.560 --> 2:31:51.800 the encampment, they had faculty liaisons from Faculty for Justice 2:31:51.840 --> 2:31:55.680 in Palestine, and the faculty liaison were not you know, negotiating, 2:31:55.720 --> 2:31:58.600 because students were clear that there was no negotiation, right that, 2:31:58.879 --> 2:32:00.640 you know, they're not negotiating on their demands, but that 2:32:00.760 --> 2:32:05.160 all communication between admin and the police into the encampment 2:32:05.240 --> 2:32:07.520 came through these faculty liaisons and they were in constant 2:32:07.640 --> 2:32:12.120 open communication. And the faculty liaisms are saying, well, if 2:32:12.160 --> 2:32:14.840 there was someone dangerous here, if the police had identified 2:32:14.879 --> 2:32:17.480 like a you know, an actual danger in this space, 2:32:17.920 --> 2:32:20.360 they never communicated that to us, right that before this 2:32:20.520 --> 2:32:22.640 raid happened, no one ever said to the faculty liaison, 2:32:23.280 --> 2:32:26.280 someone here is dangerous, there's a known criminal here, there's 2:32:26.360 --> 2:32:28.800 you know, this is why this has to That was 2:32:28.879 --> 2:32:31.280 never communicated. So I'm not sure these you know, four 2:32:31.360 --> 2:32:33.480 mysterious individuals exist. 2:32:33.800 --> 2:32:34.200 I don't know. 2:32:34.280 --> 2:32:36.880 I think that is a manufactured, you know, sort of 2:32:36.959 --> 2:32:40.480 after the fact pretext. But in any case, on Saturday morning, 2:32:41.200 --> 2:32:46.200 the anniversary of the Kent State massacre, state police showed 2:32:46.280 --> 2:32:50.520 up a lot of them all at once, and there 2:32:50.640 --> 2:32:54.240 was you know, the local police set up a perimeter 2:32:54.320 --> 2:32:56.760 around the encampment. And again, so it had been raining 2:32:56.800 --> 2:32:59.440 all night. It was soaking wet. Like I showed up 2:32:59.440 --> 2:33:02.200 Saturday morning to take some wet blankets home to wash them, 2:33:02.240 --> 2:33:05.680 because things seemed fine, Things were very calm. Again, there 2:33:05.720 --> 2:33:08.119 had been babies there the day before. It was very calm, 2:33:08.200 --> 2:33:10.959 and so I thought, well, I'll wash their wet blankets 2:33:11.000 --> 2:33:12.920 and socks and bring them back and then we can, 2:33:13.040 --> 2:33:15.920 you know, they can regroup and move forward. And while 2:33:15.959 --> 2:33:19.000 I was in home washing wet socks, I heard that 2:33:19.080 --> 2:33:21.800 the raid was starting. And again so you know, because 2:33:21.840 --> 2:33:23.360 it had been raining, and it was a pretty small 2:33:23.360 --> 2:33:25.920 protest to begin with, people are doing their finals. There 2:33:25.959 --> 2:33:28.600 were maybe a few dozen people there, like a few 2:33:28.720 --> 2:33:32.240 dozen at most. But once the riot cops showed up, 2:33:32.320 --> 2:33:35.560 people start pouring out of the libraries. Hundreds and hundreds 2:33:35.600 --> 2:33:38.840 of students come to see what all the noise is about, right, 2:33:38.840 --> 2:33:41.240 they come to see what the disturbance is about. The 2:33:41.360 --> 2:33:45.120 university used the emergency alert system that texts students. It 2:33:45.240 --> 2:33:47.640 sends texts and emails for emergencies, you know, things like 2:33:48.160 --> 2:33:51.640 a fire or a tornado or a mass shooting. Right 2:33:51.720 --> 2:33:54.320 that a lot of these students have recent memory of 2:33:54.560 --> 2:33:57.080 a very serious shooting here that they got these texts for. 2:33:57.360 --> 2:34:00.160 These texts are for real emergencies, but they use the 2:34:00.200 --> 2:34:03.039 emergency alert system to tell students to avoid the area. 2:34:03.200 --> 2:34:05.680 So of course they poured into the area to see 2:34:05.680 --> 2:34:08.240 what was happening, and so they set up a perimeter 2:34:08.240 --> 2:34:10.200 around the camp so the people inside could not get 2:34:10.240 --> 2:34:11.840 out and the people who came to see what was 2:34:11.879 --> 2:34:14.320 happening could not get in, and a lie on riot 2:34:14.360 --> 2:34:18.840 cops marched into the camp and just bludgeoned and pepper 2:34:18.920 --> 2:34:21.600 sprayed at like point blank range. Pepper sprang them directly 2:34:21.680 --> 2:34:25.040 into their mouth, nose, and eyes. I think one student 2:34:25.240 --> 2:34:27.600 was wearing goggles and they removed her goggles so they 2:34:27.600 --> 2:34:29.640 could spray her directly in the eyes while she was 2:34:29.680 --> 2:34:34.080 already prone on the ground. One woman was having a seizure, 2:34:34.240 --> 2:34:37.520 but they didn't stop arresting her to let her seize 2:34:37.560 --> 2:34:39.280 in peace, and they were just sort of dragging her 2:34:39.360 --> 2:34:43.840 limp body away. It was very nasty and once they 2:34:43.920 --> 2:34:47.720 made their leave twenty six arrests, they turned on the 2:34:47.800 --> 2:34:50.039 crowd that had gathered to watch, and they started pushing 2:34:50.080 --> 2:34:53.400 this massive crowd of students out into the street. They 2:34:53.440 --> 2:34:55.400 didn't close the street, like there was a dean on 2:34:55.640 --> 2:34:58.280 scene who was watching this happen and sort of making 2:34:58.320 --> 2:35:00.560 frantic phone calls to try and close the street that 2:35:00.640 --> 2:35:02.480 the students were being pushed into because it was an 2:35:02.520 --> 2:35:05.880 open street with traffic. And then the frat boys showed up, right, so, 2:35:06.000 --> 2:35:07.400 you know, the students are coming out to see. Some 2:35:07.480 --> 2:35:09.039 of them are joining the protests, some of them are 2:35:09.120 --> 2:35:11.240 just curious, and all of a sudden, now there's an 2:35:11.400 --> 2:35:13.920 entire hillside covered in frat boys. Some of them have 2:35:14.000 --> 2:35:17.280 Israeli flags, some of them have American flags. And there 2:35:17.320 --> 2:35:19.040 were times as that, you know, the police were you know, 2:35:19.480 --> 2:35:21.320 I'm very short, I'm about five feet tall, so there 2:35:21.360 --> 2:35:23.200 were times as the police were pushing towards us. I 2:35:23.280 --> 2:35:25.760 can't actually see that because the person in front of 2:35:25.800 --> 2:35:27.800 me is taller than me, and I would know the 2:35:27.879 --> 2:35:30.800 police were starting to advance again because the frat boys 2:35:30.920 --> 2:35:34.400 would cheer. They would start cheering, and you know, at 2:35:34.400 --> 2:35:37.640 one point, I'm standing next to this older professor. You know, 2:35:37.720 --> 2:35:40.160 I don'tant to call anybody elderly, right, but this was 2:35:40.200 --> 2:35:43.800 this sort of a grandmotherly professor who had been Pepper 2:35:43.840 --> 2:35:46.320 sprayed and was, you know, shouldered or shoulder with students, 2:35:46.480 --> 2:35:48.800 And she looked over at those frat boys and she said, 2:35:49.760 --> 2:35:52.560 I don't know how we're supposed to teach them. 2:35:53.200 --> 2:35:54.320 Yeah, like it. 2:35:55.240 --> 2:35:57.520 I mean, I expect a cop to be a cop. 2:35:57.600 --> 2:35:59.920 I've been pushed around by a cop before. I'll also 2:36:01.520 --> 2:36:04.960 but I've never seen a cheering section for police violence before, 2:36:05.760 --> 2:36:06.039 and like. 2:36:06.360 --> 2:36:08.680 I have a few times, and it's one of the 2:36:08.720 --> 2:36:12.760 most disturbing feelings I've ever had, is when you have 2:36:13.400 --> 2:36:17.320 police attacking people and there's a group of like twenty 2:36:17.440 --> 2:36:19.120 to fifty to one hundred people on the other side 2:36:19.120 --> 2:36:21.720 of the police cheering them on. It's it's one of 2:36:21.760 --> 2:36:26.240 the most like like death worshiping moments in my life 2:36:26.320 --> 2:36:27.320 that I've like felt like. 2:36:27.400 --> 2:36:30.160 It's very ugly, very very ugly. 2:36:30.959 --> 2:36:33.040 Yeah, it reminds me of how like in It's not 2:36:33.320 --> 2:36:37.920 the same, but like like in Napoleonic Area, for certain battles, 2:36:38.040 --> 2:36:40.400 it became a thing to go and spectate and people 2:36:40.440 --> 2:36:43.160 would sit on hills and watch the like formations move 2:36:43.280 --> 2:36:47.879 and literally have a picnic, right and have this is real? Yeah, yeah, yeah, 2:36:48.320 --> 2:36:50.320 they did it in Turkey in the Battle of Kabani too. 2:36:50.440 --> 2:36:54.000 Like people they call it media Hill until the Turkish 2:36:54.000 --> 2:36:58.039 police take guests the BBC guys who were there, do you. 2:36:58.080 --> 2:37:01.480 Know, how do you know a round numbers for arrests 2:37:01.879 --> 2:37:03.160 or anything like that. 2:37:03.640 --> 2:37:05.800 I believe there were twenty six arrests, the majority of 2:37:05.840 --> 2:37:08.920 them students. One was a professor, one was a reporter, 2:37:09.760 --> 2:37:11.840 but a lot of students and grad students. And again, like, 2:37:12.080 --> 2:37:13.920 I think it's important to talk about this idea of 2:37:13.959 --> 2:37:15.880 the outside agitator, right because I don't want to get 2:37:15.879 --> 2:37:17.600 bogged down and like, oh, you know, a third of 2:37:17.640 --> 2:37:20.520 the arrests were not affiliated with the university. That doesn't 2:37:20.800 --> 2:37:25.840 mean anything, right, Like Charlottesville is a college town. Charlottesville 2:37:26.080 --> 2:37:29.720 is UVA. UVA is Charlottesville. It is the largest employer 2:37:29.800 --> 2:37:31.480 in the region. It is sort of the you know, 2:37:31.560 --> 2:37:34.959 the iconic focal point of the region. It's a public school. 2:37:35.080 --> 2:37:38.080 People attend sporting events there, They attend concerts that like 2:37:38.120 --> 2:37:41.880 our largest local concert venue as a UVA property. You know, 2:37:42.320 --> 2:37:45.920 I did attend UBA, and I sometimes speak at classes 2:37:45.920 --> 2:37:47.960 at UBA, so like I have some sort of tangential 2:37:48.000 --> 2:37:51.119 affiliation with the university, but I don't have to justify 2:37:51.200 --> 2:37:54.000 my presence there, right. I mean, that's like saying you 2:37:54.040 --> 2:37:57.520 can't protest Elbit or Boeing unless you purchase bomb systems 2:37:57.640 --> 2:37:58.199 or work. 2:37:58.080 --> 2:38:01.640 There, right right, Yeah, it's ridiculous. 2:38:01.320 --> 2:38:04.120 What this enormous institution does with its billions of my 2:38:04.360 --> 2:38:07.320 tax dollars. Actually is my business. It is my business. 2:38:07.360 --> 2:38:10.080 And if you're going to beat teenagers in my backyard, 2:38:10.400 --> 2:38:11.679 that is my business. 2:38:12.920 --> 2:38:16.200 Right yeah, And like this is yeah, the university is 2:38:16.200 --> 2:38:18.360 part of the community. They spend their entire like three 2:38:18.440 --> 2:38:20.880 hundred and sixty four days a year that that is 2:38:20.920 --> 2:38:23.760 their messaging. And yeah, let's as suit if the community 2:38:23.800 --> 2:38:25.320 shows up for the university, they change that. 2:38:25.600 --> 2:38:28.200 Let's maybe you have like a brief discussion about some 2:38:28.240 --> 2:38:30.200 of this. I think one thing I'm afterely hearing from 2:38:30.280 --> 2:38:33.520 from you, Mollie, is like like the presence of tents 2:38:33.800 --> 2:38:36.879 is seen as like a massive like sign of like escalation, 2:38:37.080 --> 2:38:39.560 like this this is this is there for some reason, 2:38:39.640 --> 2:38:41.520 that's where they decided to draw the line. It's like 2:38:41.560 --> 2:38:43.280 when tents are going up and that's what needs to 2:38:43.320 --> 2:38:44.039 be cracked down. 2:38:43.959 --> 2:38:46.440 On, which makes no sense because like I said, they'd 2:38:46.520 --> 2:38:48.360 been sleeping there for three days. 2:38:48.600 --> 2:38:53.240 Sure, not wanting to be very symbolic. Yeah, it's very symbolic. 2:38:53.400 --> 2:38:54.920 Like I think if especially if you look at like 2:38:55.160 --> 2:38:57.840 the images from the Columbia Quad, like it's a very 2:38:57.840 --> 2:39:01.560 symbolic thing of like tenses, like we are like staking territory, 2:39:01.680 --> 2:39:05.040 like literally putting down stakes. Yeah, I think like that 2:39:05.280 --> 2:39:08.000 that is has been a massive thing. I think it's 2:39:08.040 --> 2:39:12.760 interesting the universities that have and haven't had barricades set up, 2:39:12.840 --> 2:39:14.720 Like there was there was no barricades at every there 2:39:14.760 --> 2:39:17.320 was no really attempt to put barricades up. And you 2:39:17.400 --> 2:39:20.080 have like, you know, pretty pretty big barricades in Portland 2:39:20.520 --> 2:39:24.000 of course, and then like Humboldt being really the one 2:39:24.040 --> 2:39:26.320 that was like no, like you could like hold down 2:39:26.360 --> 2:39:28.400 a space for like a while if you have like 2:39:29.240 --> 2:39:31.800 lots of barricades. We see that, we see that in 2:39:32.640 --> 2:39:37.000 LA and I know the difference between the bear kids 2:39:37.040 --> 2:39:38.640 going up and the barricades not and how that that 2:39:38.720 --> 2:39:41.360 does kind of slow. That's just slow a police story. 2:39:41.400 --> 2:39:44.039 That just slow some police response. And I think one 2:39:44.040 --> 2:39:45.720 of the one of the one of the dynamics we 2:39:45.800 --> 2:39:49.000 have there is like at least her a emory, right, 2:39:49.080 --> 2:39:51.640 we had the first day people faced you know, a 2:39:51.680 --> 2:39:53.640 pretty sizable amount of plice violence. You know, there was 2:39:54.000 --> 2:39:57.160 like twenty twenty eight arrests. A lot of people were 2:39:57.160 --> 2:39:59.920 assaulted by police. And for many people, this this was 2:40:00.080 --> 2:40:02.280 their first protest. A lot of these people were too 2:40:02.400 --> 2:40:04.960 young to participate in twenty twenty, which is kind of 2:40:05.080 --> 2:40:07.840 you know, odd looking back on it, but yeah, a 2:40:07.840 --> 2:40:09.960 lot of these people were quite young, and this is 2:40:10.040 --> 2:40:12.680 their first experience of like police brutality in person. 2:40:13.320 --> 2:40:15.600 And like what a first protest though, I mean, like 2:40:15.760 --> 2:40:18.240 I'm trying to think back to like, you know, usually 2:40:18.280 --> 2:40:22.199 your first protest doesn't end like this. Sorry, my dogs 2:40:22.200 --> 2:40:24.680 are going crazy right now, but I you know, I 2:40:25.080 --> 2:40:27.560 was thinking about this. It's just I think it's a 2:40:28.840 --> 2:40:32.360 radicalizing and traumatizing first protest experience for a lot of 2:40:32.440 --> 2:40:35.280 young people. I was talking to a young student. Want 2:40:35.320 --> 2:40:36.920 to give too much information about her, but she was 2:40:37.040 --> 2:40:38.880 quite young, right, It was, you know, one of her 2:40:38.920 --> 2:40:43.280 first protest experiences. And she said, when the cop approached 2:40:43.320 --> 2:40:46.000 her with something in his hand, she didn't know what 2:40:46.120 --> 2:40:50.840 it was, and she couldn't understand what he was doing 2:40:50.959 --> 2:40:53.119 or what he wanted from her. And it wasn't until 2:40:53.160 --> 2:40:55.880 he raised the object above his head that she had 2:40:55.959 --> 2:41:00.480 this realization that he can hit me. Yeah, only can 2:41:00.560 --> 2:41:02.400 he hit me, but he is going to hit me. 2:41:02.520 --> 2:41:05.800 That like, to have that realization in real time that 2:41:05.879 --> 2:41:08.119 you are not safe in your body, that the state 2:41:08.160 --> 2:41:10.960 will carry out violence against you. To not have known 2:41:11.040 --> 2:41:14.800 that before and to find it out as it is happening, 2:41:14.879 --> 2:41:16.720 I think is truly horrifying. 2:41:17.040 --> 2:41:18.959 Well, yeah, and so we have all these people who've 2:41:18.959 --> 2:41:21.440 experienced it now for the first time, and when they, 2:41:21.600 --> 2:41:25.400 you know, return to the campus the next day, they 2:41:25.440 --> 2:41:27.680 don't want to go through that traumatic event again, Like 2:41:27.760 --> 2:41:31.040 they don't want to. And so after we saw this 2:41:31.120 --> 2:41:33.160 in a few cities, but we saw this even in Columbia, 2:41:33.560 --> 2:41:37.280 but like after the first police response, how people behave 2:41:37.400 --> 2:41:40.440 afterwards on campus can be quite different because they really 2:41:40.520 --> 2:41:42.959 don't want that, and now admin is able to kind 2:41:42.959 --> 2:41:45.040 of use threat of police. It's a very effective to 2:41:45.160 --> 2:41:47.320 turn to be like, hey, if you keep things kind 2:41:47.320 --> 2:41:49.520 of chill, no tense, nothing crazy. 2:41:49.600 --> 2:41:51.440 But if you just hang out on the quad, that's it. 2:41:51.840 --> 2:41:54.360 Like that's fine, but if you do anything else, we're 2:41:54.400 --> 2:41:57.160 gonna call in those guys again and they're gonna fuck 2:41:57.200 --> 2:41:59.920 you up even worse. And like that is a very 2:42:00.040 --> 2:42:02.560 very effective and scaring people away from from doing anything. 2:42:02.640 --> 2:42:06.000 And I think a big thing to navigate here is 2:42:06.080 --> 2:42:08.440 like how how can you get students to feel like 2:42:08.560 --> 2:42:11.080 empowered once again, to like actually be able to do stuff. 2:42:11.400 --> 2:42:13.760 There was this there's there's this one moment at Emory 2:42:14.080 --> 2:42:16.840 where some like some other like like more like you know, 2:42:17.520 --> 2:42:20.640 more militanty. I don't know their exact affiliation at the university. 2:42:20.680 --> 2:42:23.160 I don't care, but so some more some more like militant, 2:42:23.200 --> 2:42:26.720 need more anarchistic people. Because it's Atlanta, we're like kind 2:42:26.720 --> 2:42:29.040 of like like shaming some of the students for not 2:42:29.160 --> 2:42:31.760 like doing more stuff. Like they got on the microphone 2:42:31.800 --> 2:42:33.200 and were like shaving them be like hey, this this 2:42:33.280 --> 2:42:36.280 isn't a protest, You're just you're just hanging out, and like, 2:42:37.480 --> 2:42:40.240 I I get it, but also like what is that 2:42:40.640 --> 2:42:42.760 going to accomplish? I think I think shaming people for 2:42:42.879 --> 2:42:44.880 being scared of police is not effective. You need to 2:42:45.080 --> 2:42:47.520 you need to help them to feel empowered, and that 2:42:47.600 --> 2:42:49.199 that's a very different thing to navigate. 2:42:50.120 --> 2:42:52.480 And you can't expect, you know, can't expect their first 2:42:52.520 --> 2:42:55.680 protest action to be all out militant, nor should you 2:42:55.760 --> 2:42:58.320 want it to be. Like I'm sure I think one 2:42:58.320 --> 2:43:01.320 of the things to remember is that, you know, what 2:43:01.440 --> 2:43:03.920 does success look like that if you know, most of 2:43:03.959 --> 2:43:06.760 these university encampments aren't going to win divestment, right, They 2:43:06.760 --> 2:43:09.080 all have really similar demands and they include you know, 2:43:09.280 --> 2:43:11.520 divestment of university funds, and most of them aren't going 2:43:11.560 --> 2:43:14.040 to get that. But I think you can still envision 2:43:14.160 --> 2:43:17.800 success as you know, these are young people. They are 2:43:18.320 --> 2:43:21.520 learning to organize together, they're learning to create that space together, 2:43:21.600 --> 2:43:24.280 they are coming together to talk about this issue, and 2:43:24.360 --> 2:43:26.960 I think that can be success. I don't think you 2:43:27.080 --> 2:43:29.400 have to bleed to have succeeded. 2:43:29.200 --> 2:43:32.040 No, totally, absolutely. I think just this being a learning 2:43:32.040 --> 2:43:34.200 experience for people, and now you have a lot of 2:43:34.320 --> 2:43:37.439 both professors and students whose view of police will forever 2:43:37.520 --> 2:43:40.040 be different, which you know, in the long run, it's 2:43:40.080 --> 2:43:42.240 probably I would view that as like a quote unquote 2:43:42.280 --> 2:43:44.000 good thing, even though it is you know, it's short 2:43:44.080 --> 2:43:47.640 term trauma and possibly long term trauma. But like you 2:43:47.800 --> 2:43:49.800 have a much more accurate view of how the world 2:43:49.879 --> 2:43:52.640 works now, especially for a lot of these like Ivy 2:43:52.720 --> 2:43:55.960 League kids who've never never thought of police as a 2:43:56.080 --> 2:43:59.160 threat before. Police is always like a helper, right, A 2:43:59.160 --> 2:44:01.960 lot of these are like you know, good kids exactly, Yeah, 2:44:02.320 --> 2:44:04.800 and and and learning that like there doesn't need to 2:44:04.840 --> 2:44:07.920 be provocation to entice a police response. That is, that 2:44:08.040 --> 2:44:09.640 is not a that's not a real dynamic. 2:44:10.480 --> 2:44:13.080 I mean, especially UVA. Right, Like this wasn't one of 2:44:13.120 --> 2:44:15.560 those encampments where there had been prior clashes or real 2:44:15.680 --> 2:44:19.280 escalation or any sort of hardening of barricades. No, they were. 2:44:19.400 --> 2:44:21.520 They were lying in their tents when the cops showed up. 2:44:22.560 --> 2:44:26.400 Like the lesson is that nothing you can do is acceptable, 2:44:26.480 --> 2:44:27.680 so you might as well do what you want. 2:44:28.520 --> 2:44:30.840 Yeah, and like keep your eyes. The other thing I 2:44:30.959 --> 2:44:34.040 wanted to mention was like victory looks like a number 2:44:34.080 --> 2:44:36.360 of different things in these protests, but like you should 2:44:36.400 --> 2:44:39.480 focus on whatever that is. And like something I saw 2:44:39.800 --> 2:44:43.200 among faculty colleagues sometimes like it was just like should 2:44:43.240 --> 2:44:46.560 we get arrested? Like sure, suld, should we choose to 2:44:46.640 --> 2:44:50.000 get arrested? Like and like, no, you should not choose 2:44:50.040 --> 2:44:52.960 to get arrested, like you know, we always avoid it 2:44:53.000 --> 2:44:56.040 if you can, Yeah, avoid it. It is not an end. 2:44:56.120 --> 2:44:59.240 It's not a good strategic goal to get arrested on purpose. Yeah, 2:45:00.160 --> 2:45:01.840 I mean this is in DC where you get you know, 2:45:01.920 --> 2:45:03.240 a ticket and they let you go home. 2:45:03.840 --> 2:45:05.879 Yeah, no, this will fuck up as I'm lucky if 2:45:05.959 --> 2:45:08.080 your tenured faculty will suck up your life a lot 2:45:08.160 --> 2:45:10.959 less than people in other social and economic circumstances. 2:45:11.040 --> 2:45:14.080 Right, but even in the most privileged possible circumstance, like 2:45:14.480 --> 2:45:15.440 it fucking sucks. 2:45:16.040 --> 2:45:18.240 Yeah. You might be denied access to your medication, You 2:45:18.360 --> 2:45:20.560 might be confined in a cell with people who do 2:45:20.680 --> 2:45:22.760 not identify with the same gender as you. Right, the 2:45:22.840 --> 2:45:24.480 cops are going to be fucking mean to you. That's 2:45:24.480 --> 2:45:26.680 what they do, Like they do violence retect capital. 2:45:26.720 --> 2:45:28.039 That's why we have a lot of people are getting 2:45:28.080 --> 2:45:30.600 permanent nerve damage from being left in flexi cuffs. Like 2:45:30.680 --> 2:45:33.280 even if even if your charges get dropped, like you 2:45:33.360 --> 2:45:34.520 could suffer forever from this. 2:45:35.240 --> 2:45:37.400 Yeah, and there's you have, no you know, it doesn't 2:45:37.440 --> 2:45:39.720 matter how good your dad's lawyer is or whatever. They're 2:45:39.720 --> 2:45:41.840 the cops. They're going to get away with it. But yeah, 2:45:41.920 --> 2:45:44.160 Like when I think about the young people I was 2:45:44.400 --> 2:45:47.400 talking to people, and like when I think about twenty twenty, 2:45:47.480 --> 2:45:50.840 where I'm talking to young people, I'm older, I'm thirty seven. 2:45:51.320 --> 2:45:53.320 Like I think about my own like, you know, growing 2:45:53.400 --> 2:45:55.040 up as a little kid. Like there was the like 2:45:56.120 --> 2:45:59.440 the anti sweatshow movement, which morphed into the G eight movement, 2:46:00.400 --> 2:46:04.039 which morphed into like xapeties to Solidarity, which morphed into 2:46:04.200 --> 2:46:06.920 the Free Palestine movement and moving against the British National Party, 2:46:06.959 --> 2:46:09.920 and we got to like step up until we were 2:46:09.959 --> 2:46:13.920 fighting Nazis, right because folks, young people who are protesting 2:46:14.040 --> 2:46:18.000 now who didn't participate in twenty twenty didn't get like 2:46:18.120 --> 2:46:19.920 this was just like a baptism of fire. Like the 2:46:19.959 --> 2:46:21.680 people in twenty twenty got to go out in twenty 2:46:21.720 --> 2:46:23.959 sixteen for Donald Trump, bright in twenty seventeen and wear 2:46:23.959 --> 2:46:27.080 the little pink hats and walk around in the pink hats, 2:46:27.080 --> 2:46:29.120 you know, and they got introduced to the cops and 2:46:29.360 --> 2:46:30.640 the fact that they are just going to fuck you 2:46:30.720 --> 2:46:33.360 up because they want too slowly. But these people didn't 2:46:33.400 --> 2:46:35.040 And I don't think we should blame them for being 2:46:35.200 --> 2:46:38.320 like none of us are, to be clear, but like, folks, 2:46:38.440 --> 2:46:40.160 I've seen it too much on the internet, like don't 2:46:40.200 --> 2:46:42.840 do that shit, like teach people to be stronger than 2:46:42.879 --> 2:46:45.480 the state. Don't shame them for not already being there. 2:46:46.040 --> 2:46:48.560 That's something that happened, like I literally watched this like 2:46:49.600 --> 2:46:54.720 happen at the Chicago cant was people like getting ready 2:46:55.080 --> 2:46:58.040 to have to fight off like these rap ros and 2:46:59.640 --> 2:47:02.040 you know, like that experience, and you know, and this 2:47:02.160 --> 2:47:04.160 is something I think is interesting about these protests. Two 2:47:04.320 --> 2:47:08.279 was like from UCLA, Like UCLA was like a pretty 2:47:08.360 --> 2:47:10.560 explicit attempt to try to use these like right wing 2:47:10.760 --> 2:47:14.760 like paramilitary people to knock out an encampment, and they 2:47:14.800 --> 2:47:17.720 couldn't do it. Like, they hurt a lot of people, right, 2:47:17.800 --> 2:47:19.720 like two hundred people I think went to the hospital 2:47:19.800 --> 2:47:21.760 or at least treated by medics after it. Right, they 2:47:21.840 --> 2:47:24.440 hurt a lot of people. It was really scary, but 2:47:24.520 --> 2:47:26.320 they couldn't break they couldn't break the barricades. And that 2:47:26.360 --> 2:47:28.880 happened at Chicago too. It was like they couldn't like 2:47:29.480 --> 2:47:33.000 in the Chicago like those those like they're they're on. 2:47:33.560 --> 2:47:35.600 But at nine o'clock in the morning on the day 2:47:35.640 --> 2:47:37.600 of that encampment, there were no fucking barricades. It was 2:47:37.680 --> 2:47:39.760 just a bunch of tents at a lawn, right, and 2:47:40.080 --> 2:47:42.240 in like three hours they set up a thing that 2:47:42.800 --> 2:47:45.199 you know, still I mean they weren't still weren't really barricades, 2:47:45.480 --> 2:47:49.960 but like you got to watch these kids, and you know, 2:47:50.080 --> 2:47:54.560 the people who were there, like you know, like realize 2:47:54.879 --> 2:47:57.920 that a group of them can stand and fight and 2:47:58.040 --> 2:47:59.879 hold these people. And they and they did it. They 2:48:00.040 --> 2:48:02.360 fucking stood there, they stood their ground, they held them, 2:48:02.400 --> 2:48:03.840 they fought, and at the end of the day, the 2:48:03.920 --> 2:48:08.240 fucking trapros ran away and it wasn't really intel. And 2:48:08.280 --> 2:48:10.160 then this is I think it's been a really interesting 2:48:10.200 --> 2:48:13.160 element of this is that like these these per military 2:48:13.160 --> 2:48:18.440 groups have been just staggeringly unable to actually like beat 2:48:18.560 --> 2:48:21.560 a bunch of protesters like in you know, in in 2:48:21.800 --> 2:48:23.520 the sort of military sense of like who holds the 2:48:23.600 --> 2:48:25.320 field at the end of the fight. They can't do it, 2:48:25.720 --> 2:48:27.160 and only the cops have been able to. 2:48:27.440 --> 2:48:30.360 And the other thing about that is, like you had 2:48:30.520 --> 2:48:34.879 you have a more legitimate way to fight off these 2:48:35.200 --> 2:48:38.640 like non state actions, Yeah, yeah, right, whenever you there 2:48:38.720 --> 2:48:41.080 is because of the nature of the state's monopoly on 2:48:41.120 --> 2:48:43.680 the legitimate violence, fighting off the police can be a 2:48:43.760 --> 2:48:48.840 lot more tricky than fighting off these like frat boy groups. Yeah, 2:48:48.920 --> 2:48:51.920 like that that is that is a very different dynamic. 2:48:52.600 --> 2:48:54.560 That was a process that like unfolded there. It was 2:48:54.560 --> 2:48:55.760 like a lot of people who were like, yeah, we 2:48:55.800 --> 2:48:58.600 don't want to escalate, and it was like, well, okay, 2:48:58.760 --> 2:49:00.879 so like several hundred people are going to show up. 2:49:00.920 --> 2:49:03.400 We also happened to us the UCLA like it has 2:49:03.560 --> 2:49:06.760 to right, Like you know, I mean like like you 2:49:06.920 --> 2:49:09.039 can't just keep doing your sort of like we're not. 2:49:09.040 --> 2:49:10.440 Going to engage your counter protesters thing. 2:49:10.480 --> 2:49:12.040 Where's two hundred of these people who are going to 2:49:12.080 --> 2:49:12.880 try to beat the shit out of you? 2:49:13.480 --> 2:49:15.400 Right, there's I mean, there's choosing not to engage with 2:49:15.480 --> 2:49:18.000 someone who just wants attention, and then there is self defense. 2:49:18.040 --> 2:49:20.640 I think those are two different things. Yeah, definitely some 2:49:21.000 --> 2:49:22.680 like you don't you know, you don't give someone their 2:49:22.760 --> 2:49:24.879 viral video that they can put on YouTube or whatever. 2:49:24.959 --> 2:49:26.400 But if someone's going to beat you with a stick. 2:49:27.560 --> 2:49:29.040 Yeah, And it's like like I'm not saying either them 2:49:29.040 --> 2:49:30.880 are like right or wrong. It's just like, yeah, like 2:49:30.959 --> 2:49:34.440 you can't you can't use the same tactics. And being 2:49:34.680 --> 2:49:38.280 forced to defend yourself like had this real sort of 2:49:38.600 --> 2:49:42.120 like impact on people, and like I don't know, it's 2:49:42.160 --> 2:49:44.440 like like I gotta see people just like understanding what 2:49:44.600 --> 2:49:47.800 you can do with the physical mass of a group 2:49:47.840 --> 2:49:50.680 of people, and I don't know it was it was 2:49:51.040 --> 2:49:52.920 like it was it was a really emotional experience for 2:49:53.040 --> 2:49:54.800 like a lot of the people there, and it was 2:49:54.840 --> 2:49:55.320 really cool. 2:49:55.920 --> 2:49:58.040 So yeah, I think we it would be wrong just 2:49:58.160 --> 2:50:04.280 to like criticize these these students specifically for dropping the 2:50:04.320 --> 2:50:06.320 ball in various ways. I think the thing that we 2:50:06.440 --> 2:50:09.320 can completely criticize and point you as a as a 2:50:09.520 --> 2:50:14.000 as a massive failure is everyone who has not been participating, 2:50:14.600 --> 2:50:17.080 how they have been viewing what's going on, And this 2:50:17.160 --> 2:50:18.440 is this is this will be the last thing I 2:50:18.520 --> 2:50:21.000 talk about, especially even even it's on like the media 2:50:21.080 --> 2:50:23.320 side and in this general discussion, like there's been such 2:50:23.360 --> 2:50:29.039 a such a singular focus on the campus encampment like itself, 2:50:29.720 --> 2:50:32.320 instead of like why the protests are happening in the 2:50:32.440 --> 2:50:35.520 first place, what's going on in Gaza just instead just 2:50:35.640 --> 2:50:40.040 focusing on like, yeah, the actual the actual thing on campus, 2:50:40.120 --> 2:50:42.480 but but but not caring about why these protests are 2:50:42.480 --> 2:50:48.160 even happening, wilfully ignoring why it's happening, framing all literally 2:50:48.320 --> 2:50:51.640 all of the campus protests as inherently anti semitic, as 2:50:51.680 --> 2:50:55.480 if that is the main driver, and ignoring ignoring the 2:50:55.840 --> 2:50:59.400 many instances for people who have expressed anti Semitic things 2:50:59.480 --> 2:51:02.160 have been being like removed and pushed out of campus, 2:51:02.480 --> 2:51:05.400 which has happened in many places. But it's it's just 2:51:05.560 --> 2:51:09.280 it's just so lazy to totally like reject the reasoning 2:51:09.360 --> 2:51:13.240 for why these protests are happening, the framing of trespassing 2:51:13.400 --> 2:51:16.560 as a form of violence, call calling these encampments violent 2:51:17.480 --> 2:51:20.440 as if as if being on campus is violent, and 2:51:20.720 --> 2:51:23.920 meanwhile never once mentioning the actual violence on display, which 2:51:23.920 --> 2:51:26.480 is almost solely at the hands of police and these 2:51:26.520 --> 2:51:29.760 other far right groups. Friend of the Pod Cody Johnston 2:51:29.840 --> 2:51:32.840 had a had a very very good tweet quote, these 2:51:32.920 --> 2:51:35.800 people who I despise and never agree with, should protest 2:51:35.879 --> 2:51:38.160 the way I prefer unquote. 2:51:38.840 --> 2:51:41.879 Don't don't debate tactics with people who don't share your goals. 2:51:42.879 --> 2:51:43.760 Yeah, yeah, and. 2:51:44.160 --> 2:51:48.040 Again like these people who who who have like an 2:51:48.080 --> 2:51:51.039 ideological opposition to every single thing that these protest are 2:51:51.080 --> 2:51:52.879 staying for people. 2:51:52.680 --> 2:51:57.240 Doing this in the actual Bush administration just a wild 2:51:57.360 --> 2:51:59.920 fucking mental gymnastics to be like, it is a leag 2:52:00.080 --> 2:52:02.040 go for you to have your attempts here that is trespassed, 2:52:02.040 --> 2:52:05.520 Therefore we can violently displace you. Also, I stand with Israel, 2:52:05.920 --> 2:52:06.800 like exactly. 2:52:07.959 --> 2:52:10.560 Your head remind people of too is you know, you know, 2:52:10.640 --> 2:52:14.119 the saying like, well, technically they broke the rules. Okay, Well, technically, 2:52:14.200 --> 2:52:16.360 if you're going twenty over the speed limit, the cop 2:52:16.440 --> 2:52:19.440 can book you into jail. Would it be a bizarre 2:52:19.600 --> 2:52:21.880 escalation of force for him to do that? Do they 2:52:21.959 --> 2:52:22.600 normally do it? 2:52:22.920 --> 2:52:23.040 Now? 2:52:23.120 --> 2:52:25.560 They don't? Right, So, just because just because the police 2:52:26.040 --> 2:52:29.280 can intervene in certain ways doesn't mean it makes sense 2:52:29.320 --> 2:52:29.760 for them. 2:52:29.640 --> 2:52:30.120 To do so. 2:52:30.600 --> 2:52:34.039 Technically, you're not supposed to bomb forty thousand civilians, right 2:52:34.840 --> 2:52:36.600 So I think that's that's really. 2:52:36.480 --> 2:52:39.720 Weapons says are illegal the under under the Lahi Act, 2:52:39.760 --> 2:52:40.720 And it doesn't matter. 2:52:40.640 --> 2:52:44.520 For shit because the rules, you know, the police are 2:52:44.680 --> 2:52:46.480 only only powerful to punish you. 2:52:47.240 --> 2:52:50.240 The fact that there's more moral outrage across the country 2:52:50.879 --> 2:52:55.119 or students protesting a genocide than there is for forty 2:52:55.200 --> 2:52:59.040 thousand civilians being murdered is just looking at a deep 2:52:59.120 --> 2:53:01.680 hole at the at the conscience of this country. 2:53:02.520 --> 2:53:02.720 Yeah. 2:53:02.720 --> 2:53:03.680 Also, the thing I. 2:53:03.720 --> 2:53:04.960 Will say about that is if you look at the 2:53:05.000 --> 2:53:08.560 polling numbers on this, like, yeah, there's like like forty 2:53:08.720 --> 2:53:12.720 seven ish percent support for like banning like protesters on campus. However, 2:53:13.000 --> 2:53:15.840 when you actually look at the numbers, like especially if 2:53:15.879 --> 2:53:17.240 you look at the numbers of my cultures, you look 2:53:17.240 --> 2:53:20.560 at the numbers of people in general who now like 2:53:20.800 --> 2:53:24.520 who now support like ceasing like ceasing sending arms to Israel. 2:53:24.560 --> 2:53:27.040 It's been interesting, so like they have been working totally. 2:53:27.120 --> 2:53:29.440 It's just that the people who control this country is 2:53:29.520 --> 2:53:32.600 a different demographic than all the young people who are 2:53:32.640 --> 2:53:34.760 potesting on campus, right, which is what we are looking at. 2:53:34.800 --> 2:53:37.600 And I think it's also important to remind her that 2:53:37.640 --> 2:53:41.840 almost every single campus protest historically has been completely vindicated 2:53:42.080 --> 2:53:44.920 over time because they're obviously correct. 2:53:45.360 --> 2:53:47.879 And if you deny that, who are you fooling? 2:53:47.959 --> 2:53:48.359 Anyway? 2:53:48.760 --> 2:53:50.800 I think that this episode's already pretty long, but I 2:53:51.080 --> 2:53:54.080 was happy to hear a collection of our four different 2:53:54.120 --> 2:53:55.600 accounts from four different places. 2:53:56.160 --> 2:53:57.680 Oh, I do want to say really quick before we 2:53:57.760 --> 2:53:59.760 wrap this up. To everyone who says these students are 2:53:59.800 --> 2:54:02.760 too young to know what they are protesting, they couldn't 2:54:02.760 --> 2:54:06.960 possibly understand what they are talking about. Fred Hampton was 2:54:07.000 --> 2:54:07.440 twenty one. 2:54:08.640 --> 2:54:13.040 People forget how how young MLK was when he started 2:54:13.080 --> 2:54:13.879 doing Yeah. 2:54:13.879 --> 2:54:16.600 And they're young enough for fucking Israel to kill them, right. 2:54:17.680 --> 2:54:20.920 There are no universities in guars there anymore. It's just 2:54:21.040 --> 2:54:23.360 it's ridiculous. They're also young enough to join the idea 2:54:23.440 --> 2:54:25.000 for any other military and go and kill people. It's 2:54:25.000 --> 2:54:27.320 a ridiculous argument. Like, you don't have to go there 2:54:27.360 --> 2:54:30.080 and talk to these students. They know exactly what they're protesting. 2:54:30.160 --> 2:54:31.800 They know exactly what they're talking about. 2:54:31.800 --> 2:54:34.240 A lot of them are actually fairly well versed on 2:54:34.280 --> 2:54:37.800 the minutia of what divestment means and what that looks like, 2:54:37.879 --> 2:54:40.400 and what the fiduciary duties are. Like, they're not stupid. 2:54:40.720 --> 2:54:42.080 They know what they're talking about. 2:54:42.160 --> 2:54:45.840 All these dumb college educated youngsters. 2:54:45.520 --> 2:54:48.320 All these lady it's at Columbia anyway. 2:54:48.440 --> 2:54:51.360 This fucking nerds you Chicago. It's like, we don't talk 2:54:51.360 --> 2:54:53.280 about Palestine enough in class. Is like I teach a 2:54:53.320 --> 2:54:55.240 lot of world history classes. It's certainly not on the 2:54:55.320 --> 2:54:57.440 little boxes you have to take. And some people came 2:54:57.480 --> 2:54:59.520 to the encampments to learn, and that's fucking great too. 2:55:00.200 --> 2:55:02.600 And some people taught people and that's great too, Like 2:55:03.440 --> 2:55:05.960 it's a place where a lot of learning happened and 2:55:06.000 --> 2:55:09.080 people became more informed over time. You don't need to 2:55:09.200 --> 2:55:12.400 have a PhD or master's in an area to understand 2:55:12.400 --> 2:55:14.880 that bombing children is bad and wanted to stop. We 2:55:15.000 --> 2:55:17.600 had a world war about this, like genocides are bad. 2:55:17.959 --> 2:55:20.440 So this will be a topic we continue to cover 2:55:20.560 --> 2:55:23.080 on the show over the course. At summer, we'll have 2:55:23.520 --> 2:55:25.760 I'm planning a deep dive about what happened at Emory. 2:55:26.040 --> 2:55:28.240 Margaret has an upcoming episode about how people who were 2:55:28.280 --> 2:55:30.840 engaged in the campus protests can stay involved over the summer, 2:55:31.280 --> 2:55:33.960 and of course we will continue to talk about what's 2:55:34.000 --> 2:55:36.880 been happening in Gaza. Thanks for listening, solid Air. To 2:55:36.879 --> 2:55:37.600 everyone who's out. 2:55:37.520 --> 2:55:39.080 There, Flush your eyes with water. 2:55:39.320 --> 2:55:43.279 Flush your eyes with water again, learned. 2:55:57.640 --> 2:56:00.160 Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I 2:56:00.280 --> 2:56:03.200 am once again your occasional host, Molly Conger joining me 2:56:03.280 --> 2:56:06.360 today for a very special episode. Are my friends and yours, 2:56:06.720 --> 2:56:11.199 Scharen and Mia so Sharinnia. We're here today to honor 2:56:11.320 --> 2:56:14.760 and reflect upon a very somber and important holiday. It 2:56:14.920 --> 2:56:17.800 is May fifteenth as we are recording this today, and 2:56:17.840 --> 2:56:20.320 today is actually recognized the world over as Knackba Day, 2:56:20.400 --> 2:56:22.400 a day to remember the first Knakba, the founding of 2:56:22.440 --> 2:56:24.280 the state of Israel and the force displacement of the 2:56:24.320 --> 2:56:27.680 Palestinian people. And this year, as a new Nakba continues, 2:56:27.720 --> 2:56:30.240 as the genocide is being committed against the Palestinian people, 2:56:30.640 --> 2:56:33.080 it's more important than ever to remember that these atrocities 2:56:33.160 --> 2:56:38.240 did not start last year. But that isn't the memorial 2:56:38.320 --> 2:56:41.000 day I invited you here to talk about. Here in 2:56:41.040 --> 2:56:43.400 the United States, the holiday officially on the books today 2:56:43.560 --> 2:56:48.119 is not Knackba Day. It is National Peace Officers Memorial Day. 2:56:49.120 --> 2:56:52.280 In nineteen sixty two, President Kennedy signed a proclamation establishing 2:56:52.360 --> 2:56:55.640 May fifteenth as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the 2:56:55.680 --> 2:56:58.640 week it falls within as National Police Week. It's an 2:56:58.800 --> 2:57:01.879 entire week to honor commemorate the brave boys in blue 2:57:01.879 --> 2:57:04.400 who've lost their lives in the line of duty. And 2:57:04.480 --> 2:57:05.840 I can't think of a better way to spend this 2:57:05.920 --> 2:57:08.240 afternoon with both of you than to talk about how 2:57:08.280 --> 2:57:10.920 this holiday is celebrated and to share some of these 2:57:10.959 --> 2:57:15.800 incredible stories of courage and sacrifice. So one of the 2:57:15.840 --> 2:57:19.120 most frequently cited sources during Police Week and year round 2:57:19.160 --> 2:57:21.560 when you're talking about the mortality rate of police officers 2:57:21.720 --> 2:57:25.640 is a website called the Officer Down Memorial Page. Highly 2:57:25.760 --> 2:57:28.440 encourage you to visit it, make an account browse the pages. 2:57:29.440 --> 2:57:31.800 The website is run by a nonprofit organization by the 2:57:31.840 --> 2:57:34.760 same name and has had tax exempt status since two thousand. 2:57:35.520 --> 2:57:38.039 According to their IRS Form nine nineties, the tax form 2:57:38.120 --> 2:57:41.160 that tax exempt nonprofits have to file annually, they're pulling 2:57:41.200 --> 2:57:43.680 in around seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, 2:57:44.120 --> 2:57:49.880 a third of which goes directly toward executive compensation and 2:57:50.080 --> 2:57:52.800 why why shouldn't someone make a quarter of a million 2:57:52.840 --> 2:57:56.520 dollars annually to do such important work? Public records show 2:57:56.560 --> 2:57:59.960 the website's founder, Chris Cosgriff, is a police officer himself 2:58:00.240 --> 2:58:04.240 in Fairfax County, Virginia. Available salary data from twenty eighteen 2:58:04.360 --> 2:58:06.840 shows him making a policeman salary of about sixty nine 2:58:06.879 --> 2:58:10.400 thousand dollars. According to his LinkedIn page, Cosgriff still works 2:58:10.400 --> 2:58:13.640 for the Fairfax County Police Department as a recruiting supervisor 2:58:14.920 --> 2:58:17.320 the officer down memorial page. Tax documents show he paid 2:58:17.400 --> 2:58:20.040 himself a paltry twenty four thousand, five hundred dollars in 2:58:20.120 --> 2:58:22.920 twenty twenty three as the executive director of the nonprofit, 2:58:23.480 --> 2:58:26.520 though they list key employee compensation at an expense of 2:58:26.600 --> 2:58:29.120 two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that year, with no 2:58:29.240 --> 2:58:31.480 indication of who is being paid that remaining two hundred 2:58:31.480 --> 2:58:34.000 and twenty five thousand dollars or what that person's position is. 2:58:34.959 --> 2:58:37.680 When the organization received a thirty thousand dollars PPP loan 2:58:37.760 --> 2:58:40.400 in twenty twenty, they indicated on their loan documents that 2:58:40.400 --> 2:58:44.320 there were five employees at the organization. I'm not an accountant, 2:58:44.440 --> 2:58:47.160 so I won't hazard any kind of guesses here, but 2:58:47.240 --> 2:58:49.280 I am having trouble making sense of that twenty twenty 2:58:49.400 --> 2:58:52.640 four nine ninety, which lists five company officers by name 2:58:53.040 --> 2:58:55.560 and only cosgriff is drawing a salary, he paid himself 2:58:55.600 --> 2:58:58.440 fifty thousand dollars that year. So that same document from 2:58:58.440 --> 2:59:00.920 twenty twenty shows that the organization and had expenses of 2:59:01.000 --> 2:59:05.200 two hundred thousand dollars for compensation of officers, but it 2:59:05.280 --> 2:59:07.600 doesn't say where that remaining one hundred and fifty thousand 2:59:07.640 --> 2:59:08.200 dollars went. 2:59:09.080 --> 2:59:11.800 Hmmm, I worried. 2:59:13.360 --> 2:59:16.080 Maybe they have a secret employee that they're not counting. 2:59:17.400 --> 2:59:19.800 His son, his wife, his other wife. 2:59:21.640 --> 2:59:24.400 The website indicates that donations to the nonprofit go towards 2:59:24.480 --> 2:59:28.000 maintaining the website, making posts on their Facebook, maintaining the 2:59:28.040 --> 2:59:31.720 site's companion mobile app, and historic research, claiming that their staff, 2:59:31.800 --> 2:59:35.280 again those five people, have uncovered records of over two 2:59:35.400 --> 2:59:38.640 thousand fallen officers that otherwise would have been forgotten to time. 2:59:39.640 --> 2:59:41.920 The site has memorial pages for officers who died as 2:59:41.959 --> 2:59:44.520 far back as seventeen seventy six, so it's as old 2:59:44.520 --> 2:59:50.280 as America. That's not real, it's not We didn't actually 2:59:50.320 --> 2:59:53.960 really have what is considered modern policing back then, so 2:59:54.000 --> 2:59:56.360 they're really kind of stretching definitions, are. 2:59:56.320 --> 2:59:59.880 They including like people that went after slaves, you know? 3:00:00.240 --> 3:00:07.400 Yeah, yeah, tax collectors, yes, olive stretching. 3:00:07.000 --> 3:00:07.640 Yes a lot. 3:00:07.879 --> 3:00:09.720 I know you want to go that far back, but 3:00:10.160 --> 3:00:10.680 I mean. 3:00:10.959 --> 3:00:11.240 Do you. 3:00:12.560 --> 3:00:16.400 Donations also help fund their No Parole for cop Killers program, 3:00:16.520 --> 3:00:19.240 which tracks the cases of the people they call convicted 3:00:19.360 --> 3:00:22.760 cop killers and flood local parole boards with letters advocating 3:00:22.800 --> 3:00:25.640 against release. The donation page claims to have sent out 3:00:25.680 --> 3:00:28.800 over ten thousand such letters in the last six months alone. 3:00:29.760 --> 3:00:31.879 They also have a merch page where you can buy 3:00:31.959 --> 3:00:35.200 a lovely trio of thin blue line Christmas ornaments in 3:00:35.280 --> 3:00:39.199 a gift box for the low reasonable price of sixty dollars. 3:00:39.800 --> 3:00:40.160 Jesus. 3:00:41.400 --> 3:00:42.959 Kind of all the things I thought you were going 3:00:43.040 --> 3:00:44.360 to say. I did not think you were going to 3:00:44.360 --> 3:00:45.400 say Christmas ornaments. 3:00:45.800 --> 3:00:49.600 Oh yeah, beautiful, beautiful memorial ornaments. You can get them customized. 3:00:50.080 --> 3:00:50.320 Wow. 3:00:52.200 --> 3:00:56.040 The site lists information about American law enforcement officers, prison employees, 3:00:56.240 --> 3:00:58.600 and police dogs who have lost their lives in the 3:00:58.680 --> 3:01:02.640 line of duty. Kind of see. While the website is 3:01:02.760 --> 3:01:05.360 the source cited in every local news puff piece when 3:01:05.360 --> 3:01:08.040 May fifteenth rolls around every year, putting their version of 3:01:08.040 --> 3:01:11.400 the numbers in the headlines, the organization's stats don't match 3:01:11.480 --> 3:01:14.040 those in the FBI's annual report on the subject, an 3:01:14.080 --> 3:01:17.480 official annual report called the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and 3:01:17.560 --> 3:01:21.360 Assaulted or LEOCA Report. The data used by the FBI 3:01:21.520 --> 3:01:23.880 is collected as part of the uniform Crime Reporting System, 3:01:24.520 --> 3:01:26.160 and if you take just a minute to look at 3:01:26.200 --> 3:01:28.920 the Officer down Memorial Page's annual data, the reason for 3:01:29.000 --> 3:01:32.760 this mismatch is immediately clear. They're padding their numbers by 3:01:32.800 --> 3:01:35.680 including deaths by natural causes on duty, deaths due to 3:01:35.720 --> 3:01:38.760 accidents or incidents unrelated to the officer's duties, and they're 3:01:38.760 --> 3:01:42.240 including law enforcement adjacent personnel that the FBI does not 3:01:42.480 --> 3:01:46.120 consider to be law enforcement deaths in their reporting. The 3:01:46.240 --> 3:01:50.040 FBI's LEOCA report has really clear criteria for inclusion. To 3:01:50.120 --> 3:01:52.400 be considered a law enforcement line of duty death, the 3:01:52.520 --> 3:01:55.320 deceased must have been a duly sworn law enforcement officer 3:01:55.400 --> 3:01:57.680 acting in their official capacity at the time of their death. 3:01:58.200 --> 3:01:59.880 So they have to be a real cop, somebody who 3:01:59.879 --> 3:02:01.600 can carries a badge and a gun and has full 3:02:01.680 --> 3:02:05.960 arrest powers. And the FBI specifically excludes death by natural 3:02:06.040 --> 3:02:09.160 causes like heart attacks or COVID deesths that occurred on duty, 3:02:09.280 --> 3:02:12.640 but quote attributed to their own personal situation, such as 3:02:12.760 --> 3:02:18.120 domestic violence, neighbor conflict, et cetera, which like that they 3:02:18.200 --> 3:02:21.320 have to list that by name. If you died doing 3:02:21.360 --> 3:02:24.760 a domestic violence in uniform, that doesn't count. How often 3:02:24.840 --> 3:02:25.440 is that happening? 3:02:25.920 --> 3:02:28.240 Yeah, I hope people who killed them are getting. 3:02:28.040 --> 3:02:32.360 Parole, Like good God, right, Like if your wife kills 3:02:32.400 --> 3:02:34.240 you while you're beating her but you're on the clock, 3:02:34.480 --> 3:02:38.160 the FBI says, no dice. They also specifically note that 3:02:38.160 --> 3:02:41.880 they do not include corrections officers, Bureau of Prisons officers, 3:02:42.080 --> 3:02:45.400 bailiff's judges, probation and parole officers, or US attorneys and 3:02:45.400 --> 3:02:48.879 assistant US attorneys. So just cops, not the people who 3:02:48.920 --> 3:02:51.280 sort of work in the industry around them but are 3:02:51.360 --> 3:02:51.879 not cops. 3:02:52.480 --> 3:02:55.760 Not people that basically are cops, like actual cops, you know, 3:02:55.840 --> 3:02:56.600 in actual cops. 3:02:56.680 --> 3:03:00.280 Yeah, and the FAA is really aware clearly that the 3:03:00.360 --> 3:03:03.160 numbers on the ODMP get cited more often than their own, 3:03:03.640 --> 3:03:07.240 Because the FBI's Crime Data Explorer page offers this weasly 3:03:07.360 --> 3:03:11.000 little caveat quote. The FBI's LEOCA program is one of 3:03:11.040 --> 3:03:13.440 a number of entities that report information concerning line of 3:03:13.480 --> 3:03:15.560 duty deaths and or assaults of law enforcement officers in 3:03:15.560 --> 3:03:18.960 the United States. Each organization has its own purpose and 3:03:19.040 --> 3:03:21.440 may use different methods to collect and report information, or 3:03:21.480 --> 3:03:25.440 focus on somewhat different aspects of these important topics. Therefore, 3:03:25.520 --> 3:03:27.640 care should be taken not to compare LEOCA data to 3:03:27.720 --> 3:03:31.080 data provided by other entities, such as the Officer Down 3:03:31.280 --> 3:03:35.640 Memorial page. So they're specifically saying, we know these numbers 3:03:35.680 --> 3:03:37.520 don't match. We know these numbers don't match because a 3:03:37.560 --> 3:03:39.560 few years ago we gave them a few hundred thousand 3:03:39.600 --> 3:03:42.000 dollars in grant money to make numbers that are fake. 3:03:42.760 --> 3:03:43.040 Wow. 3:03:43.959 --> 3:03:45.199 Incredible, Wow. 3:03:46.400 --> 3:03:48.640 So the odmp is patting out their numbers with off 3:03:48.720 --> 3:03:52.279 duty accidents, prison guards, parking lot heart attacks, and COVID deaths. 3:03:52.800 --> 3:03:57.279 The database includes nearly nine hundred COVID deaths, causing massive 3:03:57.320 --> 3:03:59.720 statistical anomalies. In their twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and 3:03:59.760 --> 3:04:02.920 twenty two data, they include officers who died of natural 3:04:03.000 --> 3:04:06.760 causes years after sustaining minor on the job injuries, which, 3:04:07.120 --> 3:04:09.720 you know, if you're involved in a civil lawsuit after 3:04:09.800 --> 3:04:11.640 the death of a loved one, you could maybe argue 3:04:11.680 --> 3:04:14.120 that this was sort of a you know, a downhill 3:04:14.240 --> 3:04:16.000 kind of thing. If you're trying geting a settlement from 3:04:16.000 --> 3:04:17.800 the state, maybe you could say that, you know, the 3:04:17.879 --> 3:04:21.160 injury sustained contributed to the death, but that's you can't 3:04:21.240 --> 3:04:23.280 tell me that slipping in the parking lot and then 3:04:23.360 --> 3:04:27.080 dying six years later is an experience unique to the 3:04:27.200 --> 3:04:31.800 dangers of law enforcement. A district attorney who flipped his 3:04:31.920 --> 3:04:34.120 car after hitting a log that fell off a truck 3:04:34.200 --> 3:04:36.440 on the highway on a Friday night is not a 3:04:36.560 --> 3:04:38.840 law enforcement line of duty death because that not only 3:04:38.920 --> 3:04:41.440 was that not a cop it was a single car accident. 3:04:42.120 --> 3:04:44.960 And when DeSoto County Search and Rescue Director Deputy William 3:04:45.000 --> 3:04:47.800 Nichols went on a beach vacation and took his family 3:04:47.879 --> 3:04:51.320 into the ocean despite red flag riptide hazard condition warnings. 3:04:51.920 --> 3:04:54.640 He lost his life trying to rescue his son. And 3:04:54.760 --> 3:04:58.560 that's very sad. But drowning on vacation is not a 3:04:58.720 --> 3:05:02.640 line of duty death. When Indiana Department of Natural Resources 3:05:02.680 --> 3:05:05.320 Sergeant Ed Bollman and his friend drowned in the middle 3:05:05.320 --> 3:05:08.200 of a frozen lake while ice fishing, that wasn't a 3:05:08.360 --> 3:05:11.200 line of duty death. It's just a sad accident while 3:05:11.280 --> 3:05:12.160 dudes were hanging out. 3:05:13.800 --> 3:05:17.400 These people, they really, they really should have a bad 3:05:17.440 --> 3:05:18.480 time around water. 3:05:21.240 --> 3:05:27.119 Float. There is a shocking number of drowning desks where 3:05:27.120 --> 3:05:29.000 the cop just like the second his feet caught we 3:05:29.160 --> 3:05:34.040 he just disappeared. Don't get them wet. It's not a 3:05:34.080 --> 3:05:35.720 gremlin situation to. 3:05:35.720 --> 3:05:40.040 Include swimming in the cop test, right, Oh no, I 3:05:40.120 --> 3:05:42.800 mean these people barely know how to point their guns. 3:05:43.040 --> 3:05:46.160 Like expecting them to be able to swim is the 3:05:46.200 --> 3:05:48.120 standards or that that's a bit too high of a 3:05:48.160 --> 3:05:48.959 standard for them. 3:05:49.640 --> 3:05:51.200 I mean, to be fair, most of these deaths are 3:05:51.280 --> 3:05:54.840 single car accidents. One guy died after t boning a 3:05:54.959 --> 3:05:58.240 school bus. The children were fine, the children. 3:05:58.000 --> 3:05:59.800 Were oh, thank god, okay, thank god. 3:06:00.600 --> 3:06:02.160 Weh and so. 3:06:02.320 --> 3:06:06.040 Rather than a detailed statistical analysis relying on uniformly reported 3:06:06.080 --> 3:06:10.760 official data, the ODMP relies on user submitted content. So 3:06:10.879 --> 3:06:16.280 people are submitting things and then Wikipedia, Yeah, Wikipedia for bootleggers, no, 3:06:16.959 --> 3:06:20.600 no thanks. But when National Police Week rolls around, it's 3:06:20.720 --> 3:06:25.240 their inflated numbers in every infographic, not the FBI's methodologically 3:06:25.320 --> 3:06:27.920 consistent data. And if I'm being generous, you know you 3:06:27.959 --> 3:06:30.200 could write that off on the ease of access to 3:06:30.280 --> 3:06:33.199 the data on ODMP. It's very user friendly. It shows 3:06:33.200 --> 3:06:35.240 you a little picture and a bio of each officer. 3:06:35.400 --> 3:06:38.520 It's very easy to use. You can search by year, agency, 3:06:38.640 --> 3:06:42.040 cause of death, state, or an officer's name. It's not 3:06:42.160 --> 3:06:44.640 a wall of small text with little data tables and 3:06:44.720 --> 3:06:47.920 links to ZIP files of more data tables. The FBI's 3:06:47.920 --> 3:06:50.440 report is ugly and it's uncompelling, and it's sort of 3:06:50.480 --> 3:06:53.320 overwhelming to navigate. If that's not something you are interested 3:06:53.360 --> 3:06:55.200 in doing, so don't want to be too hard on 3:06:55.240 --> 3:06:57.440 the twenty two year old news anchor scrambling to put 3:06:57.520 --> 3:06:59.720 something on the screen at six o'clock. The officer down 3:06:59.760 --> 3:07:01.480 the more page makes it a matter of a few 3:07:01.520 --> 3:07:03.920 easy clicks for your local news anchor to find a 3:07:03.959 --> 3:07:06.640 handful of local interest stories to run on May fifteenth. 3:07:07.600 --> 3:07:10.160 But the people who run the website know exactly what 3:07:10.280 --> 3:07:14.160 they're doing, and it's an intentional ideological project to perpetuate 3:07:14.240 --> 3:07:17.480 the myth of the courageous, noble policeman doing America's most 3:07:17.560 --> 3:07:20.280 dangerous and thankless job, a job that is uniquely and 3:07:20.360 --> 3:07:25.480 outlandishly perilous, standing apart from any other profession, and that 3:07:26.440 --> 3:07:29.240 that's not true. That's not true. And for this I 3:07:29.360 --> 3:07:33.160 take you to another government agency's annual reports, the Bureau 3:07:33.200 --> 3:07:34.400 of Labor Statistics. 3:07:34.640 --> 3:07:37.480 Oh, I love this report. This is the best one. 3:07:38.959 --> 3:07:39.440 The Bureau of. 3:07:39.440 --> 3:07:42.120 Labor Statistics has consistently reported, I'm talking, you know, for 3:07:42.160 --> 3:07:45.119 the last thirty years, consistently since the nineties, a fatal 3:07:45.200 --> 3:07:48.760 workplace injury rate for police officers of around fourteen per 3:07:48.920 --> 3:07:52.680 one hundred thousand full time equivalent employees. You know, it 3:07:52.800 --> 3:07:55.360 varies year to year, but it's consistently a little under 3:07:55.440 --> 3:07:59.120 fourteen per hundred thousand. And of course, yes, that is 3:07:59.280 --> 3:08:01.959 higher than the now average for all labor categories. 3:08:02.320 --> 3:08:03.360 So for all workers. 3:08:03.440 --> 3:08:06.080 In the US, the workplace fatality rate is about three 3:08:06.160 --> 3:08:08.840 point seven per hundred thousand, So the cops are dying 3:08:08.840 --> 3:08:11.440 at a rate of four times higher than the average worker. 3:08:12.320 --> 3:08:15.640 And of course it's more dangerous if your job requires 3:08:16.080 --> 3:08:18.840 driving all day most of these cops die in car accidents. 3:08:19.200 --> 3:08:22.120 Or if your job involves mishandling a firearm every day, 3:08:22.200 --> 3:08:25.000 of course it's more dangerous to do that than it 3:08:25.120 --> 3:08:27.440 is to do data entry or be a cashier. I mean, 3:08:27.520 --> 3:08:30.240 obviously we do not have a high mortality rate for 3:08:30.320 --> 3:08:34.040 the average desk job. But while it is more dangerous 3:08:34.080 --> 3:08:37.600 than being a receptionist, policing doesn't even crack the top 3:08:37.800 --> 3:08:42.560 ten for most dangerous professions. Loggers are seven times more 3:08:42.720 --> 3:08:45.200 likely to die on the job. Roofers are more than 3:08:45.280 --> 3:08:47.640 four times more likely than a cop to die due 3:08:47.640 --> 3:08:50.280 to a workplace incident. Being a fisherman is more than 3:08:50.320 --> 3:08:52.280 three and a half times more dangerous than being a cop. 3:08:52.840 --> 3:08:56.600 General construction work is more than three times more dangerous 3:08:56.600 --> 3:08:59.880 than police work. Delivery drivers are more than twice as 3:09:00.120 --> 3:09:02.080 likely to die at work than a cop. It is 3:09:02.120 --> 3:09:04.199 more dangerous to be a day laborer on a farm 3:09:04.280 --> 3:09:07.320 picking fruit, or to drive a garbage truck. Being a 3:09:07.400 --> 3:09:09.480 cop has a similar level of risk of death by 3:09:09.520 --> 3:09:13.320 workplace incident as being a groundskeeper, So it is about 3:09:13.440 --> 3:09:15.840 as safe as being the guy that cuts the grass 3:09:15.879 --> 3:09:16.320 at the park. 3:09:17.120 --> 3:09:17.320 Yeah. 3:09:17.360 --> 3:09:21.120 And I think there's a real issue with a labor 3:09:21.200 --> 3:09:25.720 reporting for like the category of farm worker, because whenever 3:09:25.760 --> 3:09:28.000 you see data that says like farm worker, that can 3:09:28.200 --> 3:09:30.680 either mean someone who's actually a farm worker, or it 3:09:30.760 --> 3:09:32.680 can mean like a guy who sits in an air 3:09:32.720 --> 3:09:36.800 condition office every day. And even the bure of Laboristics 3:09:36.879 --> 3:09:39.840 is not very good at actually sifting those out because 3:09:39.879 --> 3:09:43.760 there's been a sustained effort by like farm owners to 3:09:44.760 --> 3:09:47.520 make sure this data is like as non transparent as possible. 3:09:47.680 --> 3:09:50.880 So I am I will say, I am fairly confident. 3:09:51.000 --> 3:09:52.959 I cannot say this is nasty effect. I am fairly 3:09:53.000 --> 3:09:55.720 confident that farming is actually significantly more dangerous than the 3:09:55.760 --> 3:09:59.160 real labor statistics says, so like it is so much 3:09:59.240 --> 3:10:02.800 more dangerous you like pick your food that it is 3:10:02.920 --> 3:10:03.600 to be a cop. 3:10:04.120 --> 3:10:05.960 And because I think for a lot of industries there 3:10:06.040 --> 3:10:09.560 is a lot of incentive to underreport workplace accidents, I 3:10:09.600 --> 3:10:11.600 think policing is one of the only industries where they 3:10:11.600 --> 3:10:15.680 are incentivized to over report accidents. Right, So the data 3:10:15.800 --> 3:10:18.080 is I mean, even for as skewed as the data 3:10:18.160 --> 3:10:20.760 may be at the point of entry, it's still a 3:10:20.800 --> 3:10:22.280 lot safer to be a cop than it is to 3:10:22.400 --> 3:10:23.040 drive a truck. 3:10:24.520 --> 3:10:26.360 And this is with the numbers of them like falling 3:10:26.400 --> 3:10:27.039 into a puddle. 3:10:28.320 --> 3:10:28.440 Right. 3:10:29.240 --> 3:10:31.320 Well, so I think the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 3:10:31.400 --> 3:10:34.720 probably using something closer to the FBI numbers, Okay, which 3:10:34.800 --> 3:10:37.280 is still I mean, you know, on. 3:10:37.280 --> 3:10:40.960 The other hand, cops are the biggest babies about this 3:10:41.240 --> 3:10:42.800 in the entire world. 3:10:42.879 --> 3:10:45.640 Because they can't paid leave. If every time you had 3:10:45.680 --> 3:10:47.640 a booboo at work you could just go home for 3:10:47.720 --> 3:10:48.680 a week, you'd do it too. 3:10:49.760 --> 3:10:49.960 Yeah. 3:10:50.040 --> 3:10:51.680 But also, I mean, just like in the media, it's 3:10:51.720 --> 3:10:54.680 like these people never shut up about how dangerous their 3:10:54.760 --> 3:10:58.440 job is, and it's like your job is more safe 3:10:58.920 --> 3:11:02.880 than like most of the actual hard jobs people work, 3:11:03.000 --> 3:11:04.920 like please shut up, Oh my god. 3:11:06.920 --> 3:11:09.120 And the one thing that all those jobs have in common, 3:11:09.240 --> 3:11:12.360 aside from requiring you to be braver, smarter, and stronger 3:11:12.400 --> 3:11:16.400 than a cop, they don't typically come with platinum level 3:11:16.480 --> 3:11:20.720 healthcare paid leave for minor booboos. State subsidized life insurance, 3:11:20.920 --> 3:11:23.200 a pension, a discount at the coffee shop, and a 3:11:23.320 --> 3:11:24.199 license to kill. 3:11:24.840 --> 3:11:26.560 Do you know what else has a license to kill? 3:11:27.120 --> 3:11:30.320 Okay, I was gonna say, before we get into really 3:11:30.440 --> 3:11:33.520 honoring our boys on this special day, I think we 3:11:33.560 --> 3:11:36.440 should take a quick ad break that is hopefully not 3:11:36.520 --> 3:11:51.000 an ad for the Washington State Patrol. Okay, And with 3:11:51.120 --> 3:11:53.440 all that background out of the way, would you care 3:11:53.520 --> 3:11:56.480 to join me in commemorating some of the officers our 3:11:56.600 --> 3:11:59.240 nation is honoring this National Police Week. 3:11:59.480 --> 3:12:00.480 This is what I came here for. 3:12:01.160 --> 3:12:01.960 Yeah, so excited. 3:12:03.160 --> 3:12:04.920 Now, before we get into the handful I picked out 3:12:04.959 --> 3:12:06.560 for us today, I want to be really clear for 3:12:06.640 --> 3:12:08.879 the boys over at the officer down memorial page, because 3:12:08.879 --> 3:12:13.160 their website specifically prohibits the use of their content for 3:12:13.280 --> 3:12:16.600 commercial purposes. So I will say I found these names 3:12:16.640 --> 3:12:20.160 on their website, but I don't trust their methodology enough 3:12:20.200 --> 3:12:22.240 to take their content at face value, so I wouldn't 3:12:22.280 --> 3:12:24.880 use it as a source anyway, even if I were 3:12:24.920 --> 3:12:27.480 allowed to do that. So for each of these vignettes, 3:12:27.520 --> 3:12:30.320 I pulled original contemporaneous local reporting on the incidents, and 3:12:30.440 --> 3:12:34.400 in some cases actual court records, so you can't get me. 3:12:37.520 --> 3:12:41.000 In twenty ten, Saint Joseph, Missouri police officer Dan Dacry 3:12:41.120 --> 3:12:44.480 was participating in a training exercise. During a break, he 3:12:44.560 --> 3:12:47.040 and another officer put down the training weapons they've been using, 3:12:47.280 --> 3:12:51.080 which were loaded with something called simmunition, So simulated ammunition. 3:12:51.160 --> 3:12:54.760 It's not real bullets, it's a plastic, non lethal object 3:12:54.879 --> 3:12:55.360 that goes. 3:12:55.240 --> 3:12:55.640 In the gun. 3:12:56.400 --> 3:12:59.320 Before leaving the training facility, which was a recently closed 3:12:59.360 --> 3:13:02.400 elementary score to walk to a nearby convenience store to 3:13:02.400 --> 3:13:05.320 get a soda, the officers put down their training weapons 3:13:05.560 --> 3:13:08.080 and holstered their duty weapons. So to walk down the 3:13:08.120 --> 3:13:09.920 street to get to the seven eleven, they needed their 3:13:09.959 --> 3:13:11.480 real guns, so they put their real guns back on 3:13:11.560 --> 3:13:15.520 in case they encountered any emergency situations. Yeah, in case, 3:13:15.640 --> 3:13:18.680 you know, in case they saw it. We'll get to 3:13:18.760 --> 3:13:23.480 a dog, so they holstered their duty weapons. Upon returning 3:13:23.480 --> 3:13:26.080 after their break, drinks in hand, officer to Cry asked 3:13:26.120 --> 3:13:29.680 his colleague, officer Jason Strong, to shoot him with a 3:13:29.760 --> 3:13:33.000 simmunition round because he wanted to know what it would 3:13:33.160 --> 3:13:33.640 feel like. 3:13:35.280 --> 3:13:39.200 Oh my gosh, that's just a beautiful desire, you know, 3:13:39.480 --> 3:13:40.039 just curious. 3:13:40.200 --> 3:13:44.240 He's just curious, you know, a day would be curious, 3:13:45.959 --> 3:13:48.760 and so officers Strong drew his weapon and shot officer 3:13:48.840 --> 3:13:54.280 to Cry in the back. I guess they both forgot 3:13:54.520 --> 3:13:57.040 that they put their real guns back on and not 3:13:57.160 --> 3:13:59.520 their training weapons. So I don't know if you ever 3:14:00.040 --> 3:14:02.240 may you probably know this, but the if it's not 3:14:02.360 --> 3:14:04.560 a real gun, if it has fake bullets in it, 3:14:04.640 --> 3:14:07.520 if it is a training object, it has an orange tip. 3:14:07.920 --> 3:14:09.720 I was going to ask that. I was going to ask, 3:14:09.760 --> 3:14:11.960 you can't look identical to a real gun. 3:14:12.320 --> 3:14:17.040 They're easily visually distinguishable for an important reason. And I 3:14:17.080 --> 3:14:19.800 guess he didn't look so he pulled it out and 3:14:19.800 --> 3:14:22.560 shot him in the back, and the officer Decry died 3:14:22.640 --> 3:14:23.280 later that day. 3:14:23.520 --> 3:14:24.760 Wow incredible. 3:14:25.120 --> 3:14:25.800 Well. 3:14:26.560 --> 3:14:30.160 Later reporting on the incident indicates the department did say 3:14:30.160 --> 3:14:32.520 they were going to revise some of their policies regarding 3:14:32.560 --> 3:14:36.440 standard procedure for checking weapons in and out at training exercises. 3:14:36.720 --> 3:14:38.320 So you have to check your weapon in when you 3:14:38.440 --> 3:14:40.560 get your toy gun, and then you check it back out. 3:14:41.320 --> 3:14:44.440 They did not do that previously, but they revised those 3:14:44.480 --> 3:14:48.160 procedures and declined to comment further. The officer who killed 3:14:48.240 --> 3:14:50.720 Dan Decry was not charged and remained with the department. 3:14:51.240 --> 3:14:53.840 Officer Decrai's family received a settlement of three hundred and 3:14:53.879 --> 3:14:57.320 seventy six thousand dollars from the City of Saint Joseph. Again, 3:14:57.400 --> 3:15:00.320 settlement money does not come from police departments. It comes 3:15:00.360 --> 3:15:03.320 from the municipality. It comes from just the taxpayers. It 3:15:03.360 --> 3:15:05.240 does not affect the police's budget to do this. 3:15:05.600 --> 3:15:06.400 That enrages me. 3:15:08.040 --> 3:15:11.119 You know, to give to give credit to that guy, though, 3:15:11.440 --> 3:15:14.840 actually hitting your cop, hitting their target on the first 3:15:14.879 --> 3:15:16.279 shot is pretty remarkable. 3:15:16.320 --> 3:15:17.680 That that is a shooting. 3:15:17.760 --> 3:15:19.280 The guy in the back on the first tries a 3:15:19.320 --> 3:15:23.680 pretty remarkable feet of cop marksmanship. So maybe for his 3:15:23.760 --> 3:15:26.560 knee though that's true, we don't know he was heading 3:15:26.600 --> 3:15:27.000 for the back. 3:15:28.240 --> 3:15:30.280 It's just remarkable. I just want to know what it 3:15:30.320 --> 3:15:31.040 would feel like. 3:15:31.440 --> 3:15:33.520 I wonder how close he was too. He must have 3:15:33.520 --> 3:15:35.000 been close. 3:15:35.120 --> 3:15:37.520 Yeah, I imagine there was sort of a conversational distance. 3:15:37.680 --> 3:15:42.760 That's insane. That is just I cannot well, well. 3:15:42.640 --> 3:15:45.760 Well, well, our next story of a cop who should 3:15:45.840 --> 3:15:48.000 not have gotten wet. It was not actually even about 3:15:48.000 --> 3:15:53.000 a cop. In two thousand and seven, David Polling drowned 3:15:53.040 --> 3:15:56.720 in the Ohio River. Polling, Who's thirty two at the time, 3:15:56.800 --> 3:15:59.160 had previously been employed as a police officer with the 3:15:59.160 --> 3:16:02.600 Gallipolis Police Department and at a different time as a 3:16:02.640 --> 3:16:05.680 sheriff's deputy with the Galia County Sheriff's Office, So by 3:16:05.760 --> 3:16:07.640 thirty two he's been both a police officer and a 3:16:07.680 --> 3:16:09.959 sheriff's deputy, but he is neither of those things anymore. 3:16:10.640 --> 3:16:12.600 In two thousand and seven, he was working as a 3:16:12.879 --> 3:16:17.520 parole officer. In the reporting from the time, it's not 3:16:17.720 --> 3:16:22.000 actually clear why he was present, but he was nearby 3:16:22.400 --> 3:16:25.039 when a police officer stopped a pedestrian on the sidewalk 3:16:25.120 --> 3:16:27.600 and frisked him because he suspected this man may have 3:16:27.760 --> 3:16:29.840 just come out of the house where he believed drug 3:16:29.959 --> 3:16:32.120 deals were being conducted, so he's doing a stop and 3:16:32.160 --> 3:16:35.080 frisk on a guy mined in his business. The man 3:16:35.320 --> 3:16:37.560 was not charged with a drug offense when this was 3:16:37.600 --> 3:16:39.880 all over, so I guess they didn't find drugs. But 3:16:40.000 --> 3:16:43.640 during the encounter, the man bolted, and Polling, who again 3:16:44.080 --> 3:16:47.360 had a cop just a guy who's nearby, chased after him. 3:16:47.920 --> 3:16:50.400 The man jumped into the Ohio River, and Polling jumped 3:16:50.400 --> 3:16:54.000 in after him. The suspect, Joseph Harris, made it quickly 3:16:54.080 --> 3:16:55.720 to a small island in the middle of the river, 3:16:56.560 --> 3:17:00.920 but polling immediately after hitting the water, sank and disappeared. 3:17:01.840 --> 3:17:02.520 No, he did not. 3:17:04.240 --> 3:17:06.640 It took hours for divers to recover his body. 3:17:07.600 --> 3:17:09.959 When you said they didn't float, that wasn't a joke. 3:17:10.520 --> 3:17:12.640 No, he just disappeared, like the second was the water. 3:17:12.720 --> 3:17:13.440 He was just gone. 3:17:14.520 --> 3:17:14.800 That is. 3:17:16.440 --> 3:17:18.039 Comical. I can't believe that's real. 3:17:18.640 --> 3:17:21.240 Like, did he not did he know he couldn't swim? 3:17:22.760 --> 3:17:23.840 He could float? 3:17:24.200 --> 3:17:24.520 Like what? 3:17:24.879 --> 3:17:26.280 He just stuck down to the bar. 3:17:26.640 --> 3:17:28.960 It's it's so good too, because it's like, you know, 3:17:29.280 --> 3:17:33.000 you could attribute this to just purely like the first 3:17:33.040 --> 3:17:34.800 story of a drowning, where it's like, Okay, the cop 3:17:34.920 --> 3:17:36.920 clearly went into a situation he shouldn't have been in 3:17:37.000 --> 3:17:39.640 because he's a cop and doesn't think about, oh wait, 3:17:39.680 --> 3:17:40.720 the ways you get to kill people. 3:17:40.760 --> 3:17:43.760 Like No, clearly this river was symable. The other guy 3:17:43.920 --> 3:17:45.119 made it made. 3:17:45.560 --> 3:17:47.840 The other guy was fine. Well, the other guy was 3:17:47.920 --> 3:17:50.520 fine until they charged him with manslaughter and he did 3:17:50.600 --> 3:17:51.520 four years in jail. 3:17:51.760 --> 3:17:54.000 Oh but he was but wait, this is the guy 3:17:54.040 --> 3:17:56.160 that didn't have was in charge with drugs but was 3:17:56.240 --> 3:17:57.400 charged with man kind of. 3:17:57.520 --> 3:17:59.640 A bad slaughter because the other guy jumped in. 3:18:01.320 --> 3:18:04.280 Wait for manslaughter for the cop that sunk. 3:18:04.480 --> 3:18:08.040 Yeah, yeah, wow, but like some guy who's not even 3:18:08.080 --> 3:18:11.480 a cop is just chasing you. That's kind of on him. Yeah, 3:18:11.640 --> 3:18:13.360 he was convicted of manslaughter. 3:18:13.720 --> 3:18:17.520 That is I hate that. But also can you just 3:18:17.680 --> 3:18:21.840 imagine just this cop like Mario, jumping into like a 3:18:21.959 --> 3:18:26.320 river and just completely just like like the video game 3:18:26.400 --> 3:18:27.720 sound and the bottom. 3:18:29.720 --> 3:18:32.640 And you do have to wonder how he had worked 3:18:32.680 --> 3:18:35.080 for two different police agencies and then didn't work for 3:18:35.200 --> 3:18:37.879 either of any more by the age of thirty two. 3:18:39.280 --> 3:18:39.480 I did. 3:18:39.680 --> 3:18:41.760 I did a little looking. I couldn't find anything about that, 3:18:41.879 --> 3:18:44.200 but it's it's an unusual career trajectory. 3:18:44.560 --> 3:18:48.400 Yeah. Yeah, it's like he's getting bounced down to lower 3:18:48.520 --> 3:18:49.480 leagues every time. 3:18:49.520 --> 3:18:53.120 It's like, howre you that? It's you're a cop? Like, 3:18:53.200 --> 3:18:55.040 it's how do you screw that? 3:18:55.280 --> 3:18:56.120 Up? Right? 3:18:56.160 --> 3:18:58.000 It would seem that he wasn't a cop anymore because 3:18:58.000 --> 3:19:02.280 he wasn't allowed to be a copy. Yeah, And now 3:19:02.360 --> 3:19:04.240 this third one is the one that I had in 3:19:04.320 --> 3:19:06.720 mind when I first started writing this episode, and it's 3:19:06.760 --> 3:19:09.480 really just on its surface, kind of the perfect encapsulation 3:19:09.600 --> 3:19:11.600 of this foolish project, right, it's got a guy getting 3:19:11.600 --> 3:19:13.280 shot in the crotch. It's got a cop trying to 3:19:13.360 --> 3:19:15.840 kill a dog. It's got a dirty cop. It's got 3:19:15.879 --> 3:19:18.240 a cop staying on the force after a string of 3:19:18.360 --> 3:19:23.160 expensive mishaps. This is just policing. But when I started 3:19:23.160 --> 3:19:26.600 looking for primary sources about this incident, actually just kept 3:19:26.680 --> 3:19:28.680 getting weirder. And now I'm kind of down a new 3:19:28.760 --> 3:19:31.160 rabbit hole of got some requests out for more documents. 3:19:31.959 --> 3:19:34.680 I'm gonna figure this out. Something happened here. But before 3:19:34.680 --> 3:19:38.040 I tell you about Officer Henry Macalene and Junior, we'll 3:19:38.040 --> 3:19:50.840 take another quick ad break, all right. I hope he 3:19:51.000 --> 3:19:53.080 used that ad break time not only to think about 3:19:53.080 --> 3:19:56.360 products and services, but to reflect on the sacrifice of 3:19:56.920 --> 3:20:00.400 the parole officer who drowned in the Ohio River. On 3:20:00.520 --> 3:20:04.320 August twenty first, two thousand, Miami Dade Police officers Henry 3:20:04.360 --> 3:20:08.440 Macalene and Junior and his partner Ittala Elias responded to 3:20:08.520 --> 3:20:10.720 a request from a home alarm company to check out 3:20:10.760 --> 3:20:12.800 what turned out to be a false alarm at a 3:20:12.840 --> 3:20:16.240 residential home in southwest Miami. Arriving on the scene, they 3:20:16.280 --> 3:20:19.360 found no sign of a break in, nothing unusual, and 3:20:19.440 --> 3:20:22.640 no one answered the front door. Normally a cop would 3:20:22.640 --> 3:20:25.560 probably just leave. They don't really like working. They don't 3:20:25.560 --> 3:20:27.240 really like doing their jobs. It's hard and it's boring, 3:20:27.280 --> 3:20:29.080 and they have candy Crush to play Molly. 3:20:29.160 --> 3:20:31.240 It's dangerous, it's dangerous. 3:20:31.959 --> 3:20:34.960 It was a weekday, afternoon in a nice neighborhood in Miami, 3:20:35.520 --> 3:20:38.160 but the home belonged to a retired Miami police detective. 3:20:38.680 --> 3:20:41.640 So they took you know, they did the extra mile. So, 3:20:41.840 --> 3:20:44.280 after determining there was no sign of the breaking out front, 3:20:44.320 --> 3:20:46.080 no one answered the door, they went around the back 3:20:46.120 --> 3:20:49.520 of the house and entered the backyard, where two rottweilers 3:20:49.600 --> 3:20:52.760 quote came running at them. According to a South Florida 3:20:52.879 --> 3:20:56.920 Sun article that week, Macalenan pulled out his expandable baton 3:20:57.000 --> 3:21:01.560 and began beating the dogs. Really just doing their job 3:21:01.600 --> 3:21:02.480 in their own backyard. 3:21:02.920 --> 3:21:04.160 Yeah, yeah, like that. 3:21:04.360 --> 3:21:06.400 That's the normal thing that happens when. 3:21:06.320 --> 3:21:09.400 You walk towards a dog, is it runs towards. 3:21:09.120 --> 3:21:12.200 You're invading its territory. You shouldn't be there. 3:21:12.879 --> 3:21:14.800 You gotta figure a guy who has a home alarm 3:21:14.920 --> 3:21:18.000 system and two rottweilers like that, is that dog's job? 3:21:18.400 --> 3:21:21.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I keep thinking about that, uh, that 3:21:22.160 --> 3:21:25.160 picture of Mike Bloomberg when he was running in twenty twenty. 3:21:25.280 --> 3:21:29.120 They were like, he just grabs the dog's face. Oh yeah, 3:21:30.000 --> 3:21:32.959 where It's like there's just something like on a fundamental level, 3:21:33.280 --> 3:21:37.119 like we co evolved with this animal, and like if 3:21:37.160 --> 3:21:42.520 you like cannot do the basic this is a dog 3:21:43.040 --> 3:21:45.039 and your response is like I'm gonna grab his face, 3:21:45.160 --> 3:21:46.960 or your response is I Am going to beat this 3:21:47.120 --> 3:21:50.600 dog up with a baton, like you have somehow fundamentally 3:21:50.680 --> 3:21:52.840 failed at like the process of being human. 3:21:53.959 --> 3:21:56.640 And also like if the dogs are immediately reacting to 3:21:56.760 --> 3:21:59.360 your presence in the yard and they were not previously 3:21:59.440 --> 3:22:02.280 reacting to anything, maybe you could assume there was no 3:22:02.360 --> 3:22:04.360 break in. Maybe you could assume the dogs have it 3:22:04.440 --> 3:22:08.120 covered and you maybe don't break into the yard. But 3:22:08.240 --> 3:22:10.440 our boy, Henry, he's beating these dogs with a stick, 3:22:10.920 --> 3:22:13.360 and I guess maybe he was struggling, so his partner, 3:22:13.480 --> 3:22:17.320 officer Elias, drew her service weapon and attempted to shoot 3:22:17.400 --> 3:22:20.600 the dogs as he is beating them. Wow. Now, we 3:22:20.720 --> 3:22:24.800 talked before about some problems with aiming, right, cops don't 3:22:24.920 --> 3:22:31.840 have great marksmanship. When you're talking about a complicated physical situation, right, 3:22:31.920 --> 3:22:34.320 they're sort of entangled. The dogs are small, the man 3:22:34.480 --> 3:22:39.880 is big. She shot him in the dick, so he's 3:22:39.920 --> 3:22:43.280 beating these dogs. She shoots him in the groin. It 3:22:43.360 --> 3:22:46.480 doesn't say what happened to the dogs, but it doesn't 3:22:46.520 --> 3:22:49.720 indicate she fired her service weapon multiple times, so maybe 3:22:49.760 --> 3:22:53.040 she just shot him and then put it up. He 3:22:53.200 --> 3:22:56.440 was airlifted to the hospital to undergo emergency groin surgery, 3:22:56.800 --> 3:23:01.440 and he did survive. Oh mackalleenen continued to serve with 3:23:01.520 --> 3:23:05.800 the Miami Dade Police Department for another sixteen years, and 3:23:05.879 --> 3:23:07.800 he was still with the department when he passed away 3:23:07.920 --> 3:23:11.920 in twenty sixteen at the age of sixty six. His 3:23:12.040 --> 3:23:14.960 own obituary does not list a cause of death, only 3:23:15.040 --> 3:23:17.119 that his wife was at his bedside for thirty six 3:23:17.240 --> 3:23:20.640 days before he passed. The first mention of macleen in's 3:23:20.640 --> 3:23:23.200 passing being a line of duty death is in a 3:23:23.400 --> 3:23:28.440 National Police Week local news piece the following year, which 3:23:28.520 --> 3:23:32.680 lists his cause of death as accidental gunfire. A year later, 3:23:32.800 --> 3:23:35.960 in twenty eighteen, a Police Week story indicates that he 3:23:36.080 --> 3:23:39.200 was quote killed by gunfire on the date that he 3:23:39.280 --> 3:23:42.280 died in twenty sixteen, it's not until years later that 3:23:42.360 --> 3:23:45.160 you start to see claims that his cause of death 3:23:45.280 --> 3:23:47.960 was due to complications from the sixteen year old wound. 3:23:48.360 --> 3:23:51.440 So it's not clear where that claim even originated. But 3:23:51.520 --> 3:23:54.520 he did die sixteen years after being shot, and during 3:23:54.520 --> 3:23:57.200 those intervening sixteen years, he was well enough to continue 3:23:57.240 --> 3:23:58.120 to serve on the force. 3:24:00.280 --> 3:24:02.640 I mean, if you know, if the family went with 3:24:03.120 --> 3:24:05.280 that lie, maybe they got money out of it. I 3:24:05.280 --> 3:24:05.560 don't know. 3:24:07.560 --> 3:24:09.200 I guess it's possible. 3:24:09.320 --> 3:24:11.199 Well, I mean, there was what else, What other motive 3:24:11.240 --> 3:24:13.440 is there other than I don't know. 3:24:13.959 --> 3:24:16.800 I see an indication that there was a wrongful death lawsuit. 3:24:16.879 --> 3:24:19.640 After he died. He did file a civil lawsuit in 3:24:19.680 --> 3:24:22.680 two thousand and four against the homeowner retired Miami detective 3:24:22.720 --> 3:24:26.360 Haysou's Karamas, but that was dismissed and he didn't even 3:24:26.400 --> 3:24:28.400 recover attorney's fees. He didn't get anything out of that. 3:24:29.120 --> 3:24:34.080 Wait, so he tried, so he started beating two dogs 3:24:34.160 --> 3:24:37.080 with a baton, and his partner shot him in the balls. 3:24:37.160 --> 3:24:39.880 Tried to hit the dog, and he tried to sue 3:24:40.200 --> 3:24:42.120 the guy whose house you broke into. 3:24:43.160 --> 3:24:45.080 I mean, this is incredible. 3:24:45.520 --> 3:24:49.560 If the homeowner hadn't been a retired potentially dirty cop. 3:24:49.959 --> 3:24:52.400 I found some articles in the eighties alleging that this, 3:24:52.720 --> 3:24:55.360 So I'm not alleging in the in the eighties, this 3:24:55.840 --> 3:24:59.279 officer Hasus Karamas, who is deceased now, but was suspended 3:24:59.360 --> 3:25:03.040 briefly during an investigation into a ring of Miami officers 3:25:03.080 --> 3:25:06.360 who were trafficking cocaine. Of course, I don't know how 3:25:06.440 --> 3:25:07.200 that turned out. 3:25:08.280 --> 3:25:11.640 Well, I mean probably it went fine, like well. 3:25:11.640 --> 3:25:13.440 Yeah, he didn't get fired because he was still at 3:25:13.440 --> 3:25:15.080 a force in nineteen ninety seven when he shot a 3:25:15.080 --> 3:25:16.199 guy during a traffic stop. 3:25:16.520 --> 3:25:18.760 Wow Christ, but no. 3:25:18.840 --> 3:25:22.200 His his lawsuit against the homeowner, the alarm company, and 3:25:22.400 --> 3:25:26.480 the woman who shot him did not succeed. Did not succeed. 3:25:27.400 --> 3:25:30.840 I mean, at least there's that he loved being a 3:25:30.920 --> 3:25:34.240 cop so much getting his or did I say Crosser cop? 3:25:34.640 --> 3:25:36.720 He loved being a cop so much as Crosser shot 3:25:36.760 --> 3:25:40.400 off and he doesn't stop him. I didn't stop him. 3:25:41.120 --> 3:25:43.200 I do have a request into the court clerk in 3:25:43.280 --> 3:25:46.160 Miami to see if I can so the documents are 3:25:46.200 --> 3:25:48.400 so old that they're not all uploaded on the court website, 3:25:48.480 --> 3:25:50.880 but I would like to see the original civil complaint 3:25:50.920 --> 3:25:52.960 because maybe it goes into more detail about sort of 3:25:53.080 --> 3:25:55.000 the severity of his injuries and the ways in which 3:25:55.040 --> 3:25:57.640 that he he truly suffered from this. Maybe that'll give 3:25:57.680 --> 3:25:59.680 us some more insight into how it killed him. 3:25:59.600 --> 3:26:00.680 Sixty years later. 3:26:01.200 --> 3:26:03.880 So hopefully, hopefully the clerk in Miami gets back to 3:26:03.959 --> 3:26:05.920 me with that, because I do want to know what happened. 3:26:05.640 --> 3:26:06.360 To the dogs. 3:26:06.720 --> 3:26:09.400 Oh yeah, that's all I really care about there now. 3:26:09.520 --> 3:26:12.680 The officer who shot Macalene and in the crotch, Ittala Elias, 3:26:13.200 --> 3:26:15.120 had been on the force for about five years at 3:26:15.120 --> 3:26:17.760 the time of the incident. In that time, she had 3:26:17.800 --> 3:26:26.880 wrecked her patrol car six times wow, injured her hand 3:26:27.120 --> 3:26:30.720 slamming it in a car door, and racked up fifty 3:26:30.800 --> 3:26:35.000 thousand dollars in workman's comp and medical expense reimbursement after 3:26:35.160 --> 3:26:37.959 falling off a bicycle during a training exercise. 3:26:37.959 --> 3:26:38.119 Oh. 3:26:40.600 --> 3:26:43.120 As of twenty twenty two, Ittala Elias is still an 3:26:43.160 --> 3:26:45.960 officer with the Miami Dade Police Department, earning one hundred 3:26:45.959 --> 3:26:47.200 and eight thousand dollars a year. 3:26:47.760 --> 3:26:54.360 Wow, that's just I mean, I wonder how many more 3:26:54.440 --> 3:26:57.360 car accidents she's she's been in. If that was her 3:26:57.840 --> 3:27:01.039 record in five years. Wow, that's impressive. 3:27:01.120 --> 3:27:03.920 Like, I am trying to think of another job that 3:27:04.040 --> 3:27:07.560 you could keep after crashing your car six times. 3:27:07.360 --> 3:27:09.360 On the j I'm shooting someone in the dick. 3:27:09.959 --> 3:27:16.560 Yeah, chid cops, well, cops. 3:27:16.640 --> 3:27:19.160 Cops have the kind of job security that was previously 3:27:19.320 --> 3:27:22.920 reserved for like workers in state owned industries in Maoist China. 3:27:23.480 --> 3:27:25.840 Like no one else has ever had this kind of 3:27:26.000 --> 3:27:27.320 job security before. 3:27:28.360 --> 3:27:31.879 And so I will end our stories here because Sophie 3:27:31.920 --> 3:27:33.200 will put one of us in the pit if the 3:27:33.280 --> 3:27:36.160 episodes keep coming out over an hour long. But there 3:27:36.200 --> 3:27:40.040 are an unbelievable number of stories of cops getting hurt 3:27:40.160 --> 3:27:43.200 doing shit they were not supposed to be doing. A 3:27:43.280 --> 3:27:45.600 cop who died because he didn't know which antibiotics he 3:27:45.680 --> 3:27:47.959 was allergic to when he went to the hospital because 3:27:47.959 --> 3:27:50.320 he was messing around with an injured feral cat and 3:27:50.400 --> 3:27:54.280 got scratched the fuck. A prison guard who tripped in 3:27:54.360 --> 3:27:57.640 the wreckyard and hit his head. A shocking number of 3:27:57.720 --> 3:28:01.400 accidents at the shooting range or during training exitizes. 3:28:01.000 --> 3:28:02.680 THEASE wan know what it felt like. THEASE want to 3:28:02.720 --> 3:28:03.480 know what it felt. 3:28:03.320 --> 3:28:07.520 Like, including one very weird one where they were role 3:28:07.600 --> 3:28:10.080 playing a scenario and so these were cops in the 3:28:10.480 --> 3:28:13.800 Gaming Commission, so casino cops, but during a training exercises, 3:28:13.959 --> 3:28:16.360 During a training exercise, they were role playing a scenario 3:28:16.480 --> 3:28:18.800 where one of the cops was being attacked by an assailant, 3:28:18.840 --> 3:28:21.280 and he was supposed to, you know, roleplay it out right. 3:28:21.320 --> 3:28:24.600 They're pretending this is pretend they're in a conference room. 3:28:25.120 --> 3:28:28.040 But he got scared and drew his real gun and 3:28:28.240 --> 3:28:31.480 really shot and really killed the director of the Mississippi 3:28:31.520 --> 3:28:40.160 Gaming Commission. Almost every cop death was completely preventable. They're 3:28:40.320 --> 3:28:43.120 careless and they're reckless, and they're doing shit they should 3:28:43.200 --> 3:28:46.520 not be doing. They're counting normal wear and tear, like 3:28:46.640 --> 3:28:49.360 knee injuries and heart attacks as though these are noble 3:28:49.440 --> 3:28:52.480 deaths of martyrs. And it's all part of this ideological 3:28:52.560 --> 3:28:55.960 project of myth making around American policing, right, because you 3:28:56.160 --> 3:28:58.920 have to believe that this is a uniquely dangerous and 3:28:59.120 --> 3:29:03.560 frightening job only the bravest boys can do. Because they're 3:29:03.680 --> 3:29:07.000 under so much risk, they have to react the way 3:29:07.000 --> 3:29:10.000 that they do. They have to react with extreme violence. 3:29:10.040 --> 3:29:12.400 They have to shoot first and ask questions later because 3:29:12.400 --> 3:29:15.240 their job is just so dangerous, Right, And I think 3:29:15.280 --> 3:29:18.160 it's interesting as we drive to a clothes to draw 3:29:18.160 --> 3:29:21.959 a comparison here, right, because they react with great violence 3:29:22.000 --> 3:29:25.960 against us because of their fear of imaginary violence that 3:29:26.080 --> 3:29:30.360 they might face. So the FBI prepares this meticulous report 3:29:30.440 --> 3:29:34.320 every year with rigorous and mandatory data collection processes, so 3:29:34.400 --> 3:29:36.800 we have a comprehensive set of data about not just 3:29:36.840 --> 3:29:39.600 every cop who dies, but every cop who is assaulted 3:29:39.680 --> 3:29:42.320 on the job. The LEOCA report includes on the job 3:29:42.480 --> 3:29:45.400 assaults and injuries, so we have a very clear idea 3:29:45.440 --> 3:29:48.240 of how much violence and how many accidents cops are 3:29:48.320 --> 3:29:51.160 exposed to, mostly in the form of single car accidents. 3:29:52.120 --> 3:29:53.080 But we have the data. 3:29:53.879 --> 3:29:57.880 There is no equivalent data for the kinds of violence 3:29:57.920 --> 3:30:02.000 police perpetrate on others. The FBI only started collecting information 3:30:02.160 --> 3:30:04.720 for the National Use of Force Database in twenty nineteen, 3:30:05.240 --> 3:30:08.720 and participation in that data collection process remains optional. 3:30:12.920 --> 3:30:16.600 Yeah, three years ago, four five, what year it is. 3:30:16.920 --> 3:30:21.760 That was revoluntary. It's voluntary. So police departments do not 3:30:22.040 --> 3:30:24.440 have to tell anyone, They do not have to tell 3:30:24.560 --> 3:30:28.240 the federal government when they kill someone. They don't have 3:30:28.280 --> 3:30:31.760 to report that. So comprehensive data on police killings is 3:30:31.800 --> 3:30:35.080 something that only exists when newsrooms and nonprofits scrape the 3:30:35.120 --> 3:30:38.320 information together on their own. The Washington Post has a 3:30:38.520 --> 3:30:42.000 very thorough police shooting database, and nonprofit websites like Mapping 3:30:42.080 --> 3:30:45.080 Police Violence do their best to document each case, but 3:30:45.240 --> 3:30:48.840 even they admit they aren't capturing every fatal encounter with police. 3:30:49.720 --> 3:30:53.080 So while the FBI reports literally just a few dozen 3:30:53.680 --> 3:30:57.840 officers a year fall into the feloniously killed category in 3:30:57.840 --> 3:31:00.720 the Leoga report, so not the our accident one. So 3:31:00.760 --> 3:31:03.360 there's a few dozen actual killings of officers a year, 3:31:05.240 --> 3:31:07.440 we can only hope to know the names of the 3:31:07.520 --> 3:31:11.520 average of over twelve hundred people who are killed each 3:31:11.600 --> 3:31:15.480 year by a cop, and that does kind of send 3:31:15.520 --> 3:31:20.800 a message about whose lives matter. So as you celebrate 3:31:20.959 --> 3:31:23.000 National Police Week this week, I guess you'll be hearing 3:31:23.040 --> 3:31:24.680 this on Friday if you listen to it the day 3:31:24.680 --> 3:31:28.520 it comes out, just take a moment to remember our 3:31:28.640 --> 3:31:32.879 brave boys like Lonnie Burton, who tripped on a curb 3:31:33.040 --> 3:31:36.920 outside of the Wayland Baptist University police station and later 3:31:37.040 --> 3:31:41.760 died of complications, or brave officers like Trooper Jack Holland 3:31:42.240 --> 3:31:46.439 who died because he was allergic to yellowjackets, or officers 3:31:46.560 --> 3:31:49.840 like Deputy Sheriff Joseph Baka, who was trying to tackle 3:31:49.879 --> 3:31:52.480 a suspect to the ground and fell into a bee's nest. 3:31:53.080 --> 3:31:55.800 It turns out he was allergic to bees. 3:31:58.600 --> 3:31:59.840 It's beautiful, coach. 3:32:00.080 --> 3:32:02.080 Yeah, I should have I should have asked you both 3:32:02.080 --> 3:32:03.920 your hometown so I could get you a local boy, 3:32:04.480 --> 3:32:10.800 because one of my favorites is patrolman Billy Toot. Billy Toot. 3:32:11.640 --> 3:32:14.440 He was a jailer in Richmond who died when two 3:32:14.520 --> 3:32:18.200 inmates were trying to escape after they obtained pistols that 3:32:18.280 --> 3:32:20.880 were smuggled into the jail inside of a baked turkey. 3:32:21.120 --> 3:32:22.280 That just sounds like a cartoon. 3:32:22.800 --> 3:32:24.280 Hell not how it worked for them? 3:32:24.879 --> 3:32:27.760 Yeah, well it it was in nineteen thirty four. I 3:32:27.800 --> 3:32:29.880 don't think you could put guns inside of a turkey anymore. 3:32:30.760 --> 3:32:33.920 I just have a whole turkey as security detector or something. 3:32:35.480 --> 3:32:38.480 But yes, And I hope you're all having a safe 3:32:38.640 --> 3:32:41.400 and healthy police week and that you celebrate that by 3:32:41.520 --> 3:32:43.400 not encountering any policeman. 3:32:47.280 --> 3:32:50.400 Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week 3:32:50.520 --> 3:32:52.360 from now until the heat death of the Universe. 3:32:53.000 --> 3:32:55.320 It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. 3:32:55.600 --> 3:32:58.200 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 3:32:58.280 --> 3:33:01.400 cool zonemedia dot com, or check out on the iHeartRadio app, 3:33:01.400 --> 3:33:04.600 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can 3:33:04.640 --> 3:33:07.280 find sources for It could happen here, updated monthly at 3:33:07.360 --> 3:33:10.560 coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.