Speaker 1: Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted
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Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: Everyone, welcome to the podcast. It's me James, and I'm
Speaker 3: joined today by Moe who is an attorney, educator and aberlation.
Speaker 3: It's've been on the show before. We've very much enjoyed
Speaker 3: the contributions. We're here today to talk about the recent
Speaker 3: Supreme Court not decision right, but it's Supreme Court declining
Speaker 3: to hear a case. It's been reported a little bit.
Speaker 3: Perhaps I think the importance of it may have been overstated,
Speaker 3: and it's going to help us understand that How are
Speaker 3: you doing today.
Speaker 4: Mo, I'm doing all right. How are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm doing well. It's nice day. Went for a run
Speaker 3: this morning, saw some flowers, picked some fennel. That was nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very nice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, wild Fannel if you didn't sell in California now
Speaker 3: so time. Just a little tip from me, don't get
Speaker 3: it at the height that dog's pe. You want to
Speaker 3: go above that.
Speaker 4: It's a pro tip.
Speaker 3: You can't say that. We don't fill this podcast with
Speaker 3: a little easter eggs. Talking of little easter eggs, let's
Speaker 3: let's get into the things that are buried within this.
Speaker 3: What happened was the Supreme Court declined to hear a case.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: So the case that the Supreme Court declined to hear
Speaker 4: is McKesson the dough. This is a case that they
Speaker 4: have declined to hear eight times, and it keeps going
Speaker 4: back up and down from I think the Middle District
Speaker 4: of Louisiana to the Fifth Circuit all the way up
Speaker 4: to the Supreme Court. And it's a case that involves
Speaker 4: the First Amendment. And the way that it has been reported,
Speaker 4: I think, or at least the way that it has
Speaker 4: been received, particularly by communities of people who do engage
Speaker 4: in a lot of First Amendment protected activity, has been
Speaker 4: with a certain amount of panic that the Supreme Court
Speaker 4: saying we're not going to hear this case, We're going
Speaker 4: to kick it back down to the Fifth Circuit. We're
Speaker 4: going to kick it back down to the district court.
Speaker 4: Is you know, a harbinger of terrible things to come
Speaker 4: for the right to protest and for the kinds of
Speaker 4: liability that you might be exposed to if you are
Speaker 4: engaging in protest, And there is some truth to that.
Speaker 4: It is I would say often dangerous to engage in
Speaker 4: acts of dissent. But I think that there's some real
Speaker 4: misapprehension of what's going on with this particular case, and
Speaker 4: so I thought it was worth having a conversation with
Speaker 4: you to try to clarify a little bit about what's
Speaker 4: going on here, what the risks are associated specifically with
Speaker 4: this case, and what the risks actually are on the
Speaker 4: ground with respect to protest, and also to talk to
Speaker 4: you about some of the resources that are available.
Speaker 2: To protect yourself.
Speaker 3: Wonderful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I guess to give you a little roadmap.
Speaker 4: I think I'll start by talking to you about what
Speaker 4: is actually the law on the ground at this point
Speaker 4: with respect to the First Amendment and rights to protest? Yes,
Speaker 4: have those rights actually been meaningfully altered by this case
Speaker 4: or by the Supreme Court declining to hear this case?
Speaker 4: Has it actually become more dangerous to protest. Are there
Speaker 4: things that we should be worried about? What are they?
Speaker 4: And then what kinds of resources there are? I guess
Speaker 4: the first thing I'm going to do is give you
Speaker 4: a very brief premer on the First Amendment. So the
Speaker 4: First Amendment guarantees, as I like to say, the very
Speaker 4: First Amendment guarantees our rights to speech and assembly. The
Speaker 4: government can place limits on the time, place, and manner
Speaker 4: of your protest, but the government is not authorized to
Speaker 4: criminalize speech based on subject matter or viewpoint. And it
Speaker 4: can't impose what's called a prior restraint on speech, which
Speaker 4: can include making it so risky to speak that people
Speaker 4: engage in self censorship. But the First Amendment doesn't immunize
Speaker 4: you from prosecution or civil liability for otherwise unlawful conduct.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So that's why true threats of violence are not protected
Speaker 4: by the First Amendment. Right, And it doesn't protect you
Speaker 4: from being arrested for behavior just because that behavior is
Speaker 4: politically motivated, which is why breaking Starbucks windows and graffiti
Speaker 4: and assassination are not protected by the First Amendment.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, the fact that there are one
Speaker 4: or more people at a demonstration who are acting unlawfully
Speaker 4: does not strip the larger demonstration of First Amendment protection right.
Speaker 4: And that principle comes from a case called NAACP versus
Speaker 4: Claiborn Hardware and Clayborn. It was decided in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 4: and it was a case where the NAACP was soon
Speaker 4: food civilly on the basis that they had organized a
Speaker 4: protest where some people in the crowd had caused some damage.
Speaker 4: I see this is a very very similar case to
Speaker 4: the underlying case in this situation where Deray McKesson has
Speaker 4: been sued civilly, meaning he's being sued for money damages.
Speaker 4: He is not being criminally prosecuted. Right, That's an important distinction. So,
Speaker 4: you know what, let's back up a little bit.
Speaker 3: So can you explain who is Deray McKesson. Why is
Speaker 3: Deray McKesson bouncing up and down between Louisiana and the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court?
Speaker 5: Yes? Okay, So I'm going to back up even farther
Speaker 5: than that. The reason that we are here today, that
Speaker 5: I am here with you talking about the case is
Speaker 5: that the way that this case is being reported on
Speaker 5: or received is that people are going, oh God, it's
Speaker 5: now illegal to protest, and we're all going to go
Speaker 5: to prison for protesting. Like, okay, I mean, first of all,
Speaker 5: please using mass arrest of protesters to chill in silent
Speaker 5: speech is already a time honored American tradition.
Speaker 3: Yes, but that isn't.
Speaker 5: What this case is about. This is a civil case,
Speaker 5: which means that somebody is being sued for money damages,
Speaker 5: and the person who's being sued is de Ray McKesson.
Speaker 5: Deray McKesson was at one point, for anyone who can
Speaker 5: remember a decade ago, was very high profile, very visible
Speaker 5: in the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and in
Speaker 5: Baltimore and then later in Louisiana, and he was somebody
Speaker 5: who was very visible in the media. He made a
Speaker 5: lot of public statements. He made a lot of public
Speaker 5: statements on behalf of Black Lives Matter, which you know
Speaker 5: I'm going to get into is not a membership organization.
Speaker 5: But he made a bunch of statements as though he
Speaker 5: were the representative of a movement which he referred to
Speaker 5: as Black Lives Matter. He organized a lot of protests.
Speaker 5: I think at one point I have a memory that
Speaker 5: he ran for office, so he was a very visible
Speaker 5: movement organizer, right. He organized a protest in I believe
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen in the wake of the police murder of
Speaker 5: Altms Sterling, at which a police officer was hit in
Speaker 5: the head with a hard object, a rock or a
Speaker 5: piece of concrete, and he was like, the police officer
Speaker 5: was injured.
Speaker 3: Right, like pretty seriously, yeah.
Speaker 5: And he then sued Deray McKesson for money damages on
Speaker 5: the theory that because he had organized the protest, he
Speaker 5: had control of the protest and he had some responsibility
Speaker 5: for the fact that this other person had thrown a
Speaker 5: rock at him. This theory requires a real failure to
Speaker 5: understand social movements and distributed networks because what it presumes,
Speaker 5: and I think we've talked about this before on this show,
Speaker 5: is the inability of the police and the courts to
Speaker 5: understand that not every social movement operates with a clear
Speaker 5: hierarchy like the police, right or the military. Because their
Speaker 5: social movement groups do imitate the military, they do imitate
Speaker 5: that hierarchy. They totally reproduce this sort of chain of
Speaker 5: command theory. So if you look at the Klan, right,
Speaker 5: they are organized via they are incorporated, they have a membership,
Speaker 5: there is a clear hierarchy, who is in charge, who
Speaker 5: is giving orders, who is following orders?
Speaker 3: Right, that is not the case Proud Boys, Patriot Front
Speaker 3: like very of organizing without authority and the conceiving of
Speaker 3: anyone doing so, it would seem right.
Speaker 5: And so I think I've told you before. I've actually
Speaker 5: had to drop footnotes in federal court filings to explain
Speaker 5: that Antifa is not a membership organization.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a discussion that I have been privy
Speaker 3: to as a historian of the same organization. Which day
Speaker 3: it was ironically right that the KPg was Yeah, when
Speaker 3: we were referring it to that, we're not talking about
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty three Germany.
Speaker 5: No. So you know when someone says and this becomes
Speaker 5: relevant here because the initially when this suit was filed,
Speaker 5: it was two different lawsuits, and it was a group
Speaker 5: of police officers who had been shot in different places
Speaker 5: in the country, suing not only during McKesson but black
Speaker 5: lives matter. And I think in fact, one of the
Speaker 5: defendants who was named in one of the initial suits
Speaker 5: was hashtag black lives matter. So I don't know how
Speaker 5: you serve a hashtag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fascinating totally fascinating.
Speaker 5: I mean, the legal theory underlying these cases was pretty bonkers.
Speaker 5: And then various other individuals who were part of different
Speaker 5: Black Lives Matter groups. The initial suit that went after
Speaker 5: all these people and hashtags for the shootings were really
Speaker 5: just legally insufficient.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: The allegations that were made were Black Lives Matter whatever
Speaker 5: that is, made statements about how policing is unjust and
Speaker 5: police shouldn't be surprised if there's you know, if they
Speaker 5: encounter resistance, and then these other people kind of showed
Speaker 5: up and shot at cops. And the theory is that
Speaker 5: by sort of making these statements, Black Lives Matter encouraged
Speaker 5: or incited and was responsible for these shootings. Yes, this
Speaker 5: is not a this is not a valid legal theory, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, it just is not. And that case was dismissed,
Speaker 5: you know, just entirely. And then the second case that
Speaker 5: was brought was this one where the guy who was
Speaker 5: hit in the head with a rock, and it's the
Speaker 5: same allegations, the same theory of liability, and everybody got
Speaker 5: dismissed out of that case. All of the defendants got
Speaker 5: dismissed out of that case, except for Deray McKesson. And
Speaker 5: part of the reason that everyone else was dismissed out
Speaker 5: of that case, or that the suit was dismissed with
Speaker 5: respect to those named defendants, is that Black Lives Matter
Speaker 5: was an unincorporated association, and an unincorporated association can't be sued.
Speaker 5: So and this has been relevant in other cases. I'm
Speaker 5: not trying to give anyone legal advice, but I want
Speaker 5: people to think about the fact. I think there's like
Speaker 5: a real impulse sometimes in social movement organizing that like
Speaker 5: we need to make everything a nonprofit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah they can, or we need to have a.
Speaker 5: Bank account even And the fact is when you create
Speaker 5: an organization, even if it's an unincorporated association, that where
Speaker 5: the entity has what you would say is its personality
Speaker 5: is distinct from that of its members. Right, right, it
Speaker 5: can be sued. You become susceptible to a lawsuit. And
Speaker 5: so for example, when Energy Transfer Partners tried to sue
Speaker 5: there's currently a suit against green Peace, yes, the Standing
Speaker 5: Rock suit, and we'll talk about that later. Right, it's
Speaker 5: a slap suit. It's a suit that endeavors to stifle
Speaker 5: speech that's in the public interest. When that suit first started,
Speaker 5: they tried to sue Earth First, but Earth first is
Speaker 5: not an entity. There's no one to serve. You know,
Speaker 5: there's nobody there. It's not you know, it's like antify.
Speaker 5: It'd be like trying to sue Batman fans.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, swifties, I would love to see it.
Speaker 5: Right, there's there are maybe people who identify in that way,
Speaker 5: but there is not a coherent group, right, and there's
Speaker 5: certainly not a group that can take that can take
Speaker 5: responsibility for the behavior of its members.
Speaker 3: Right. Talking of taking responsibility, mo, we we unfortunately have
Speaker 3: to take responsibility for the fact that we now have
Speaker 3: to pivot to ads.
Speaker 5: Okay, if you say so, I do.
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry. It's not my favorite part of my job.
Speaker 3: All Right, we're back there. We've pivoted to add So, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're talking about like this, the difference between like an
Speaker 3: incorporated organization, which can be So can you maybe just
Speaker 3: even if we step it back like a little bit
Speaker 3: further and explain the difference between civil and criminal liability,
Speaker 3: just in case people haven't got that.
Speaker 5: Criminal liability is like when you are criminally charged by
Speaker 5: the state, by the government for violating a criminal law. Right,
Speaker 5: and when you are criminally charged. The what is on
Speaker 5: the table is that you might go to jail or
Speaker 5: you might go to prison. You can also be civilly sued.
Speaker 5: And what's happening there is if someone says, okay, you've
Speaker 5: you know, you wrecked my car, or your dog bit me,
Speaker 5: or you punched me in the face and I lost
Speaker 5: a tooth, then you can be civilly sued by that
Speaker 5: person for money, damages, got it right to compensate you
Speaker 5: for the loss. So in this case, mister McKesson is
Speaker 5: being civilly sued, not arrested, not prosecuted, not subject like,
Speaker 5: there is no possability that if he loses this case,
Speaker 5: he'll go to jail.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this civil case happens in Louisiana. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's talk about how it bounces around the fifth circuit.
Speaker 5: So I started to tell you that there were sort
Speaker 5: of these two cases. The first one is entirely dismissed.
Speaker 5: The second one they say, all right, Black Lives Matter
Speaker 5: is not an association that can be sued. These other
Speaker 5: individuals that you've named here as defendants were not present,
Speaker 5: made no statements about it. Well, first they dismissed the
Speaker 5: whole thing actually, then the cop appealed to the circuit,
Speaker 5: and the circuit said, yeah, mostly you're right, District Court,
Speaker 5: all of these people can't be sued. But mister McKesson,
Speaker 5: we do think could be liable under a theory of
Speaker 5: negligence because he organized the protest and was present. This
Speaker 5: officer sues McKesson and a bunch of other people, and
Speaker 5: the office says that mister McKesson is liable because he
Speaker 5: organizes protests and should knew or should have known that
Speaker 5: it could potentially turn violent. And so he says under
Speaker 5: Louisiana law, he can sue on a theory of negligence,
Speaker 5: which doesn't require any kind of intent or certain knowledge.
Speaker 5: It's just being you know, negligent. Initially, the court, the
Speaker 5: federal district Court, dismisses those claims, all of them based
Speaker 5: on NAACPD Claiborne, which I talked about earlier, right, which says,
Speaker 5: if you're at a protest and one person gets violent,
Speaker 5: like the rest of the protest doesn't get does not
Speaker 5: lose its First Amendment protected character just because other people
Speaker 5: are violent. Then the cop appeals and the Fifth Circuit
Speaker 5: in part affirms their rulings about all of the other
Speaker 5: people who were sued, but reinstates the negligence against mister McKesson. Right,
Speaker 5: he then it does it never, by the way, has
Speaker 5: proceeded to trial. This case is still in a very
Speaker 5: preliminary phase. Oh wow, it has been going on since
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen and it's been bouncing up and down the courts.
Speaker 5: But the question is can he even be sued under
Speaker 5: this theory? So we haven't gotten he hasn't been found guilty,
Speaker 5: we haven't had a presentation of evidence. There's all kinds
Speaker 5: of stuff that has not yet happened in this case.
Speaker 5: The question is very, very narrow. It's can a person
Speaker 5: be sued under a theory of negligence when they organize
Speaker 5: a protest and somebody else at that protest causes some
Speaker 5: kind of harm?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: So the Fifth Circuit says, go back district court and
Speaker 5: hear this claim of negligence. McKesson then brings it to
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court reverses the Fifth
Speaker 5: Circuit and says it overturns their decision and says, you
Speaker 5: actually can't force the district court to proceed with this
Speaker 5: trial because you didn't check in with the Louisiana State
Speaker 5: Court to get their feedback about whether Louisiana state law
Speaker 5: actually allows for this kind of negligence claim.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they missed procedurally, they fucked up.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 5: Then the Fifth Circuit says, okay, find Louisiana Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: What do you think? And the court says, yeah, we
Speaker 5: think you can proceed on this negligence claim. And then
Speaker 5: the Fifth Circuit affirms its previous ruling and says, okay, Now,
Speaker 5: District Court, hear it again, and you can hear this
Speaker 5: negligence claim. As to mister McKesson, they tried to distinguish
Speaker 5: it from Claiborn. I don't think they did a good job.
Speaker 5: One of the there was a three judge panel that
Speaker 5: ruled on this, so it was a two to one ruling.
Speaker 5: Two of the judges try to distinguish it from Claiborne.
Speaker 5: One of the judges Uh says, no, you know, Clayborn.
Speaker 5: It's exactly the controlling You can only hold somebody liable
Speaker 5: for their own behavior, right, And one of the things
Speaker 5: he says is that if you make protest organizers liable
Speaker 5: for someone else's violent behavior, all accounter protester has to
Speaker 5: do is show up and start throwing rocks in order
Speaker 5: to order to get the whole protest too, you know,
Speaker 5: to impute liability to the the organizerson who organized the protest. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and that goes both ways, right, So i've I am
Speaker 5: sort of surprised that they given that there are social
Speaker 5: movements that are probably more aligned with the values and
Speaker 5: beliefs of these federal judges in the Fifth Circuit. So
Speaker 5: the Fifth Circuit at this point says, no, go back
Speaker 5: to the district court and have the trial on the
Speaker 5: theory of negligence. Right, then, the Supreme Court decided a
Speaker 5: case called Counterman be. Colorado. Counterman be. Colorado is not
Speaker 5: a First Amendment political speech case. It's a case about
Speaker 5: somebody making threats. But that case relies very heavily on Clayborne.
Speaker 5: So in that case, we have what's called a true
Speaker 5: threats analysis, and they're trying to determine whether a person
Speaker 5: who's making threats needs to actually know that the threats
Speaker 5: they're making are going to be perceived as real threats.
Speaker 5: And what they decided was they do need to know
Speaker 5: to some degree that these statements could be taken as
Speaker 5: true threats. But they talk a lot. Kagan authored this opinion,
Speaker 5: and she talks a lot about how careful we have
Speaker 5: to be even with speech that is traditionally not protected
Speaker 5: like true threats, because it's very important not to chill
Speaker 5: protected speech. And what she says is that the Court
Speaker 5: has always been really wary of chilling protected speech, and
Speaker 5: so sometimes it makes extra space for speech that isn't
Speaker 5: protected in order to make really sure it doesn't chill
Speaker 5: protected speech. Right, So she says, the court must consider
Speaker 5: the prospect of chilling non threatening expression given the ordinary
Speaker 5: citizens predictable tendency to wide of the unlawful zone. The
Speaker 5: speaker's fear of mistaking whether a statement is a threat,
Speaker 5: his fear of the legal system getting that judgment wrong,
Speaker 5: his fear in any event of incurring legal costs, all
Speaker 5: those may lead him to swallow words that are in
Speaker 5: fact not true threats. And so what they say is
Speaker 5: we need to make a standard that has enough what
Speaker 5: they say is breathing room to make sure that even
Speaker 5: if it means that some unprotected speech gets through, we
Speaker 5: have enough space for all of the protected speech to
Speaker 5: still exist and for nobody to feel uncertain about whether
Speaker 5: or not their.
Speaker 2: Speech is protected.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, they don't want to gradually have a creeping
Speaker 3: sort of boundary.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So what she says is, if we're going to
Speaker 5: ban any kind of speech, it has to be known
Speaker 5: and knowable to the speaker, and there has to be
Speaker 5: sort of a requirement that the speaker is actually aware
Speaker 5: that this is not protected speech. And so in this
Speaker 5: case encounterman with the guy who's making the bizarre threats,
Speaker 5: what they decide is you only need to be reckless
Speaker 5: about the speech. You don't have to be doing it
Speaker 5: intentionally to threaten someone. But if you're saying things that
Speaker 5: you even if you don't mean it to be a threat,
Speaker 5: if you could reasonably anticipate that it will be received
Speaker 5: as a threat, that's sufficient. Okay, okay, And then she says,
Speaker 5: this are incitement decisions, right, So, Supreme Court decisions regarding
Speaker 5: incitement to violence demand more. But the reason for that
Speaker 5: demand is not present here where we're talking about threats.
Speaker 5: When incitement is at issue, we have spoken in terms
Speaker 5: of specific intent, presumably equivalent to purpose or knowledge. In
Speaker 5: doing so, we recognized that incitement to disorder is commonly
Speaker 5: a hair spread the way from political advocacy, and particularly
Speaker 5: from strong protests against the government and prevailing order. Such
Speaker 5: protests gave rise to all the cases in which the
Speaker 5: Court demanded a showing of intent, and the Court decided
Speaker 5: those cases against a resonant historical backdrop the Court's failure
Speaker 5: in an earlier era to protect mere advocacy of force
Speaker 5: or law breaking from legal sanction. A strong intent requirement
Speaker 5: was and remains one way to guarantee history was not repeated.
Speaker 5: It was a way to ensure the efforts to prosecute
Speaker 5: incitement would not bleed over, either directly or through a
Speaker 5: chilling effect, to dissenting political speech at the First Amendment's core. Okay,
Speaker 5: so we have this case that's decided days after the
Speaker 5: Fifth Circuit makes its decision that directly speaks to this decision. Right,
Speaker 5: it reaffirms Clayborne. It reaffirms that political speech is protected.
Speaker 5: It reaffirms that you cannot have a negligence standard. You
Speaker 5: have to have a standard. You can't just say, well,
Speaker 5: somebody knew or should have known that organizing a protest
Speaker 5: might lead to violence, and you say they have to
Speaker 5: be like, we're going to go out and we're going
Speaker 5: to do violence at this protest at this time. Right,
Speaker 5: they have to be actually advocating for violence in order
Speaker 5: to be held responsible for violence.
Speaker 3: Right, So how does this not just lead to his
Speaker 3: case being dismissed.
Speaker 5: So then at the same time as that's happening, mister
Speaker 5: McKesson has asked the court again to weigh in on
Speaker 5: whether this case can proceed under a negligence theory, right,
Speaker 5: meaning should he have can he be prosecuted because it's
Speaker 5: possible that a protest will turn violent. And the Court
Speaker 5: says we're not going to hear this case, and somewhat unusually,
Speaker 5: Justice Sonya Soda Mayort issues a statement along with the
Speaker 5: denial of hearing the case, and she says, this court
Speaker 5: may deny what's called curcherai right hearing the case. The
Speaker 5: Court may deny sorcherai for many reasons, including that the
Speaker 5: law is not in need of further clarification.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: It's denial today expresses no view about the merits of
Speaker 5: mckesson's claim. Although the Fifth Circuit did not have the
Speaker 5: benefit of this Court's recent decision in count Determine when
Speaker 5: it issued its opinion, the lower courts now do I
Speaker 5: expect them to give full and fair consideration to arguments
Speaker 5: regarding Counterman's impact in any future proceedings.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So, I don't think that it's some like terrible thing
Speaker 5: that the Court said, Oh, no, we're not going to
Speaker 5: hear this case. I don't think they're saying in any way,
Speaker 5: oh we're not going to hear this case because we
Speaker 5: think it ought to proceed further and go to trial
Speaker 5: down in Louisiana. I think what they're saying is we
Speaker 5: already decided this issue. The law remains the same. Claiborne
Speaker 5: is still the controlling case here.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it seems very clear that what they're saying
Speaker 3: is that we've already made clear what we stand on this.
Speaker 5: That's right. And so the last thing that's on the
Speaker 5: docket in mister mckesson's case is basically a submission that
Speaker 5: reiterates what Justice Sotomayor said, streat you a little from this,
Speaker 5: It says, so do. Mayor's statement explains that the court's
Speaker 5: decision expresses no view about the merits of the claim
Speaker 5: because the law is not in need of further clarification.
Speaker 5: So it suggests that the existing clear law comes from countermen.
Speaker 5: And the statement makes even clearer that the First Amendment
Speaker 5: does not permit liability on the negligence theory advanced by
Speaker 5: the cop in this case. It doesn't say the cop
Speaker 5: in this case, so it makes very clear. You know,
Speaker 5: they have submitted mister mckesson's council has submitted this statement
Speaker 5: to the judge, and I think there is every possibility
Speaker 5: that this case is just going to die at this point.
Speaker 5: You know, remember the District Court already dismissed it altogether
Speaker 5: at once, and it has only been carrying it forward
Speaker 5: because they were ordered to buy the Fifth Circuit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it would just go back to the district.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. So in fact, there has been a lot
Speaker 5: of anxiety about, oh, the Supreme Court is signaling that
Speaker 5: the law has changed and that the Fifth Circuit can
Speaker 5: just criminalize protest. In fact, what I think has happened
Speaker 5: here is that the Supreme Court affirmed that the Fifth
Speaker 5: Circuit may not expose people to civil liability for organizing
Speaker 5: a protest. That does not mean that the courts down
Speaker 5: there are not going to try to keep going forward
Speaker 5: with this. But I think if they did, and if
Speaker 5: mister McKesson was like a if they even allowed it
Speaker 5: to continue, it might just go right back up to
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court might at that
Speaker 5: point hear it because they've already said, no, we expect
Speaker 5: you to follow the law that we just rearticulated in
Speaker 5: this other case. Right, But again, remember that we haven't
Speaker 5: had a trial yet. He hasn't been found guilty. He hasn't, right, Like,
Speaker 5: the question is can we even proceed in this case?
Speaker 3: Let's take a second outbreak here, and then we'll come
Speaker 3: back and discuss This may have been over exaggerated in
Speaker 3: terms of it's importance of state repression approtest, but that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that state repression approtest is not happening, right,
Speaker 3: it is. So can you explain to us the mechanisms
Speaker 3: through which that happens and the considerations and resources available
Speaker 3: to people who may wish to exercise the First Amendment? Right? Yes?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? So has it become more dangerous to protest? I mean,
Speaker 5: I guess, but not because of this case?
Speaker 3: Right? Right? Yeah, I mean generally right. They cops get
Speaker 3: bigger guns and more guns and tear guess things every year,
Speaker 3: and then they love to use him. Yeah, along with
Speaker 3: the legal consequences.
Speaker 5: Yes, And are there things that we should be worried about? Yes,
Speaker 5: But I don't think that this particular case on its
Speaker 5: own is the harbinger of the end of the First Amendment.
Speaker 5: It's one symptom of the larger underlying effort by the
Speaker 5: state and you know, corporate capital and all of the
Speaker 5: forces of retrogression and repression to quell dissent. But it's
Speaker 5: just one of many, right. And we've seen so many
Speaker 5: examples of this, and they are by no means new
Speaker 5: or novel, right, They're just trying out new legal theories,
Speaker 5: and this was one of them. And I don't think
Speaker 5: it's going to go anywhere, But I think we need
Speaker 5: to remember there's always sort of multiple fronts on which
Speaker 5: we're fighting this battle. Right. There's the legal front, right,
Speaker 5: and then there's the sort of on the ground law
Speaker 5: enforcement front. One of the reasons that mister McKesson was
Speaker 5: targeted here is because he did make and this is
Speaker 5: not to say this is his fault, it absolutely is not.
Speaker 5: But one of the things that made him more susceptible
Speaker 5: to targeting is that he did make a ton of
Speaker 5: public statements and he was extremely visible in a way
Speaker 5: that aligned with the governments and the right wings understanding
Speaker 5: of social structures. Right because if they understand that social
Speaker 5: movements are being directed from the top, which is not
Speaker 5: typically the case. But if that's if that's what it
Speaker 5: looks like to them, is a person that they can identify,
Speaker 5: who they can even a little bit make out, even
Speaker 5: the most tenuous case, is in charge, then you know
Speaker 5: that's the person they're going to go after.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So to the extent that we're doing organizing that
Speaker 5: where it is distributed, it is autonomous. You know, it
Speaker 5: is spontaneous. And we aren't working with in structures that
Speaker 5: are hierarchical, and we're not working in structures that are
Speaker 5: incorporated and have bank accounts in public meetings and membership structures.
Speaker 5: You know, we're already very insulated from this kind of thing. Anyway,
Speaker 5: the dangers are what the dangers have always been, which
Speaker 5: are mass arrest because the police neither know nor care
Speaker 5: what the law is, and they don't care about Clayborn,
Speaker 5: and they don't care that the fact that you did
Speaker 5: not personally throw a rock doesn't constitute probable cause to
Speaker 5: arrest you. Right, Like, I am always more concerned about
Speaker 5: things on the ground like mass arrests and police involved
Speaker 5: injuries than I am about frankly about even long term
Speaker 5: legal consequences because so often, and I guess I say
Speaker 5: this because I have the privilege of practicing in New York,
Speaker 5: where there is a very strong history of public protest
Speaker 5: and everyone sort of understands what that is and no
Speaker 5: one feels all that threatened by it. Which doesn't mean
Speaker 5: that there aren't a lot of police involved injuries, and
Speaker 5: it doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of traumatic arrests,
Speaker 5: but it does mean that typically there are not devastating
Speaker 5: legal consequences of that. Now, that's not the case in
Speaker 5: places like Georgia, right where they're doing their own sort
Speaker 5: of boundary testing down there to see what kinds of
Speaker 5: criminal liability and what kinds of theories of criminal law
Speaker 5: they can use to sort of bootstrap absolutely garden variety
Speaker 5: protest behavior into really serious felony charges. Right. So that's
Speaker 5: the kind of stuff that I would say, Yeah, we
Speaker 5: should be worried about it. It is dangerous to protest.
Speaker 5: There's widespread surveillance, there's widespread public private collaboration, there's widespread
Speaker 5: agency cooperation. There's all kinds of non state actors, right,
Speaker 5: corporate actors, political actors, random sort of individuals and small
Speaker 5: groups that are doing are engaged in all kinds of surveillance.
Speaker 5: There's counter groups, right, we have like you mentioned before,
Speaker 5: the Proud Boy, we have all kinds of well, look,
Speaker 5: Canary Mission is a really good example, right, We have
Speaker 5: all kinds of actors, groups, individuals, corporations, government entities that
Speaker 5: have an interest in suppressing descent, and they engage in
Speaker 5: all kinds of conduct, you know, ranging from intense surveillance
Speaker 5: to doxing to you know, even more violent behavior, you know,
Speaker 5: targeted harassment, not just by law enforcement, but by individuals,
Speaker 5: by neighbors, by media outlets. Right. And those are the
Speaker 5: kinds of things that make it dangerous to protest, I guess,
Speaker 5: But since when do we let that stop us?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 7: I mean?
Speaker 5: The solution to these kinds of dangerous is to be thoughtful,
Speaker 5: to remember that discretion is the better part of valor, right, Meaning,
Speaker 5: you don't need to be bragging about whatever you're doing
Speaker 5: on Twitter. You don't need to always be the public
Speaker 5: face of the movement, because even if you're not speaking
Speaker 5: directly to cops in an interrogation, anything you say publicly
Speaker 5: can and very much will be used against you. Yeah,
Speaker 5: We're seeing a lot of employment and educational consequences right
Speaker 5: people are currently what's happening right now as we speak
Speaker 5: at Columbia University, people are losing their student housing, they're
Speaker 5: getting suspended from school, they're getting arrested, they're getting you know,
Speaker 5: these student disciplinary proceedings. There's all kinds of risks to
Speaker 5: being a public dissident. But the solution to that kind
Speaker 5: of repression is not self censorship. It's courage.
Speaker 3: There are other ways that we secure change, but showing
Speaker 3: up in the streets is always how you make history,
Speaker 3: and you have to be smart, but you also have
Speaker 3: to be brave. As we reach another election year, almost
Speaker 3: certainly like there will be protest, which, whatever happen, depends
Speaker 3: in the election, right, that will lead to people who
Speaker 3: are perhaps not so familiar with horizontal organizing, with like
Speaker 3: anti authoritarian or non authoritarian organizing, all these things, entering
Speaker 3: a protest movement, and people will inevitably have to learn
Speaker 3: like one way or the other, you know, like these
Speaker 3: basic things they can do to make it as safe
Speaker 3: as possible to protest, and it would be great if
Speaker 3: they can learn them from a podcast, not from them
Speaker 3: or their friends getting hurt.
Speaker 5: Here's what I would say too, if it is at
Speaker 5: all possible, find a lawyer who is willing to consult
Speaker 5: with you before you go out and do your action,
Speaker 5: just so that you can be prepared right for purposes
Speaker 5: of informed consent, because I cannot tell you. You know, lawyers
Speaker 5: are not allowed to advise their clients to break the law,
Speaker 5: but it's very much our job to tell you what
Speaker 5: the possible or likely consequences of certain courses of action.
Speaker 5: And you are probably better off knowing what that is
Speaker 5: before you do the thing than after you do that thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 5: I will tell you that. Personally, I would rather spend
Speaker 5: many hours talking people through, you know, the various outcomes
Speaker 5: of different ideas, than spending ten minutes talking to them
Speaker 5: after they're already in a cell. Right, you know, there
Speaker 5: are ways of protesting that are entirely lawful that can
Speaker 5: still help you to accomplish your political goals. And if
Speaker 5: you are going to go out and do something that
Speaker 5: you think is likely to involve a rest, I at
Speaker 5: least want you to know that it is likely to
Speaker 5: involve our resty exactly you know, and what your specific
Speaker 5: risks might be and to have somebody lined up to
Speaker 5: take care of you, to represent you if that becomes necessary.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: I really don't mean to say, oh, don't worry about
Speaker 5: McKesson VD, It's no big deal. It is a big deal.
Speaker 5: It's a big deal because this whole judicial system and
Speaker 5: legal apparatus is working over time to find every possible
Speaker 5: way to discourage protest. But it is not unique in
Speaker 5: that regard. And I guess that's really what I'm trying
Speaker 5: to say. There are all kinds of ways in which
Speaker 5: we are at risk by being dissidents. I just don't
Speaker 5: think that this one is particularly special or particularly alarming.
Speaker 5: And again, what I just referred to as the law
Speaker 5: of the land is not the same thing as law
Speaker 5: enforcement practice, right yeah.
Speaker 8: I would.
Speaker 5: Really want to make sure that everyone remembers a the
Speaker 5: law is not the same thing as justice, and neither
Speaker 5: is the law the same thing or even necessarily related
Speaker 5: to what police are doing on the ground during a protest.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, there's very different things. Where can people I guess,
Speaker 3: people who are organizing, people who are you know, organizing autonomous,
Speaker 3: spontaneous horizontal movements, are they good resources for them to
Speaker 3: find because they might be they might need in my state?
Speaker 3: What's you know, what do I have to avoid that
Speaker 3: kind of thing?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Where would they find those?
Speaker 5: One resource if you are contacted by federal law enforcement
Speaker 5: is you can call the National Lawyer's Guild Federal Anti
Speaker 5: Repression Hotline at two one two six seven nine two
Speaker 5: eight one one. A really good resource is the Electronic
Speaker 5: Frontier Foundation's Surveillance Self Defense which is at s as
Speaker 5: in Surveillance s as in Self d in Defense dot
Speaker 5: E as in Electronic f as in Frontier f as
Speaker 5: in foundation dot org. The National Lawyer's Guild has various
Speaker 5: know your Rights guides that are available at NLG dot org.
Speaker 5: We also have chapters all over the country and if
Speaker 5: you look in our referral directory you can find where
Speaker 5: those contacts for people all over the country. I think
Speaker 5: if you want a know your Rights training, you can
Speaker 5: reach out to the NALG and there are a lot
Speaker 5: of other a lot of other organizations that do know
Speaker 5: your Rights trainings. I know in New York we have
Speaker 5: a really amazing organization called Cuney Clear, and I would
Speaker 5: highly recommend you follow them on Instagram because they often
Speaker 5: have a lot of resources they're posting Protect your People
Speaker 5: a digital toolkit for organizations and employers, and it was
Speaker 5: developed to combat anti LGBTQ plus harassment. But I think
Speaker 5: the principles remain the same no matter what it is
Speaker 5: that you're looking at. And I'll put the link to
Speaker 5: that again. It's called Protect Your People and it's hosted
Speaker 5: by the Harvard Law LGBTQ Clinic. But I'll stick the
Speaker 5: link here in the chat for you, James, so that
Speaker 5: you can share it in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: To finish up, you've mentioned the national Lawyers Guilds and
Speaker 3: some other resources. Is there anywhere else where people can
Speaker 3: find you or where do you think that they should
Speaker 3: be following along? Like you know, like we said, we're
Speaker 3: going into an election year. Stuff's probably becoming more relevant again,
Speaker 3: and there's a genocide happening right now that people are
Speaker 3: facing severe personal consequences for protesting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I don't want anyone to follow me.
Speaker 3: On social media.
Speaker 5: If that's what you're asking, I will always every single
Speaker 5: time plug landback dot org. And if people yes, I
Speaker 5: can see that you have a land back flag behind you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a black one next to it.
Speaker 5: Okay, also a solid choice for flags if we got
Speaker 5: to do flags. Oh also, please, for the love of God,
Speaker 5: don't talk to cops.
Speaker 6: It's it could happen. Here a podcast where I didn't
Speaker 6: come up with an intro. So you're getting this one.
Speaker 6: I'm your host, Bia Wong. This is this is the
Speaker 6: podcast where actually, this is the part of the podcast
Speaker 6: where after things have fallen apart, you put them back
Speaker 6: together again. And yeah, the thing that's being put back
Speaker 6: together here. You know, I really I really should have
Speaker 6: planned this intro more. But this is what happened. This
Speaker 6: is what happens when we get night recordings. But yeah,
Speaker 6: the thing, the thing we're putting together today is a
Speaker 6: union at a really interesting kind of very very interesting kind.
Speaker 3: Of coffee shop.
Speaker 6: So with me to talk about this is Alex, Rocky
Speaker 6: and Madeline from Blue Bottle Independent Union. And yeah, thank
Speaker 6: you all for joining me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm excited to talk with you all. And so
Speaker 6: I guess the first thing that I want to start
Speaker 6: with is can you talk a bit about what Blue
Speaker 6: Bottle is, because this is a really weird story that
Speaker 6: I think kind of reveals a lot about the way
Speaker 6: I don't know, it is sort of lofty terms, is
Speaker 6: like the direction that capital has been moving in the
Speaker 6: past like ten years.
Speaker 8: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So Blue Bottle is a specialty coffee chain founded by
Speaker 9: James Freeman in Oakland, California, like two thousand and two.
Speaker 9: Like most specialty shops, starts off as like this small
Speaker 9: little cart where you know, one guy is doing all
Speaker 9: the parts of production, roasting, serving the coffee and all that.
Speaker 8: And then.
Speaker 9: Throughout you know, the early aughts twenty ten's, they do
Speaker 9: lots of rounds of venture capital financing with like Fidelity
Speaker 9: and other firms until twenty seventeen, when Nesley purchased a
Speaker 9: sixty eight percent majority ownership in Blue Bottle at I
Speaker 9: think a seven hundred million dollar evaluation. And since then, no, no, no,
Speaker 9: the it was a seven hundred million dollar evaluation. They
Speaker 9: paid four hundred million dollars too. Yeah, isn't this great?
Speaker 9: And since then they've expanded from you know, the tiny
Speaker 9: little location in California to seventy stores in the US
Speaker 9: and then over one hundred globally, including in China, Japan,
Speaker 9: Hong Kong, South Korea, and am I forgetting anywhere else.
Speaker 2: I think that's I think that's it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Yeah, it's it's a fun time to be a
Speaker 9: coffee worker.
Speaker 8: I guess.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting to me the extent to which this
Speaker 6: it has. I mean, okay, so like one hundred shops
Speaker 6: is like a lot of shops, but it's not seven
Speaker 6: hundred million dollars of shops. Like it really seems like
Speaker 6: this company has like it really has like tech valuation,
Speaker 6: which is alarming.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I mean it's not uncommon for specialty right now,
Speaker 9: which is also concerning. Like, as far as I understand,
Speaker 9: Intelligentsia and La Cologne are also owned in part by
Speaker 9: venture capital firms, and this is really confusing, especially because
Speaker 9: for anybody that knows anything about like the economics of
Speaker 9: coffee shops, the margins are terrible. Yeah, and really a
Speaker 9: as far as I can tell, the only value that
Speaker 9: Blue Bottle offers to Nesley is brand and like the
Speaker 9: ability to eventually grow to the point where at some
Speaker 9: point in the future they'll be able to make a
Speaker 9: little bit of money.
Speaker 6: Off of it all, which is a deeply weird business strategy. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and so I guess I wanted to start here because
Speaker 6: it feels like a very different organizing terrain than a
Speaker 6: lot of like you know, a lot of the shops
Speaker 6: that we've been that we talked to on this show,
Speaker 6: because it's like the value of this company is only
Speaker 6: kind of tangentially, you know, like on a sort of
Speaker 6: macro level, the value of the company is like kind
Speaker 6: of tenuously connected to your labor. But on the other hand,
Speaker 6: like at the individual shop level, you're still dealing with
Speaker 6: all of the same sort of like you know, like
Speaker 6: hyper exploitation and trying to like ring every cent out
Speaker 6: of stuff.
Speaker 3: So I guess I.
Speaker 6: Wanted to start by kind of asking, like how how
Speaker 6: did that the weirdness of what of what Blue Bottle
Speaker 6: is influence like how this campaign started.
Speaker 7: To be pretty frank about our campaign, Like there was
Speaker 7: a crop of organizers before Gonzo myself, who I would
Speaker 7: say at this point are kind of the longest running
Speaker 7: organizers on this campaign. Look, there was a crop before us,
Speaker 7: so we joined. We did not start the campaign here
Speaker 7: at Blue Bottle, but I think, I mean it was
Speaker 7: difficult in the very beginning, Like you know, blue bottle
Speaker 7: it pays now, like I think starting wage for brista
Speaker 7: like eighteen an hour. You know, we just got to
Speaker 7: pave up in April, so it's like I, you know,
Speaker 7: I do make more of the minimum wage. It's it
Speaker 7: can be a tough sell for people to be like, oh,
Speaker 7: but you know it's like marginally better, Like oh, I'm
Speaker 7: working at this like fancy coffee shop, don't they treat
Speaker 7: us a little better? Like? But when you look at
Speaker 7: like also, the coffee industry has a hole on like
Speaker 7: on a global scale, incredibly exploitative industry that like we
Speaker 7: are both we play in too as people like in
Speaker 7: the US who make incredibly expensive specialty coffee, but also
Speaker 7: like as workers who are exploited ourselves.
Speaker 2: Like, this is something that I think we have to think.
Speaker 7: About often as like how I don't know, how can
Speaker 7: our union affect this industry as a whole, How can
Speaker 7: we affect you know, Nestle as this conglomer as a whole,
Speaker 7: But also how can I afford my red next month?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: And so you know, having those kinds of discussions with workers,
Speaker 7: like putting our day to day labor into this kind
Speaker 7: of larger context both of the company and of the industry.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think this campaign, you know, we didn't
Speaker 7: we didn't start out independent. We had a little bit
Speaker 7: of shopping around almost of different unions. I think we
Speaker 7: were also largely spout here in Boston specifically, like it
Speaker 7: is kind of a hotbed for coffee organizing. A lot
Speaker 7: of shops around here organized. There have been some incredibly
Speaker 7: like militant shops out here, like I think Gonza and
Speaker 7: I first got introduced to the Bluebettle campaign from the
Speaker 7: Star eight seven four picket line and they were out
Speaker 7: there for like two months, and I think that that,
Speaker 7: you know, those kinds of things have really influenced this
Speaker 7: campaign and really influenced our organizing as we go into
Speaker 7: this like really kind of corporate, bougie coffee shop that
Speaker 7: is hard to hard to reconcile with, like, hey, I
Speaker 7: am also an exploited laborer. I you know, I am
Speaker 7: forced to make coffee all day for customers who are
Speaker 7: frankly quite rude and having to have those conversations with
Speaker 7: your coacs of like, hey, we deserve better. It might
Speaker 7: be marginally better than some other place, we still deserve
Speaker 7: better and we can fight for so much more. So
Speaker 7: I feel like I went on for a little bit there,
Speaker 7: but I hope that answered that.
Speaker 9: One thing to kind of add on to that is
Speaker 9: when organizing in the stores. Part of the fact that
Speaker 9: we're owned by Nesti makes it actually much easier because
Speaker 9: people aren't like easily fooled. We understand that Neslei is
Speaker 9: putting a lot of money into this company with the
Speaker 9: hope of future returns, you know, in the shorter medium term.
Speaker 9: And also people implicitly understand that the current model that
Speaker 9: the cafes operate on is kind of reckless, Like because
Speaker 9: we're owned basically as a venture capital scheme, this means that,
Speaker 9: you know, we're constantly trying to cut costs that shouldn't
Speaker 9: be cut. Like even today, Madeline and I ran out
Speaker 9: of decaf coffee beans because they hadn't placed in order
Speaker 9: for them.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 8: Yeah uh.
Speaker 9: And you know we've run out of you know, milks
Speaker 9: fairly frequently. We've run out of things like cups and
Speaker 9: lids and very basic things that you need to run
Speaker 9: a coffee shop as far as I can tell, only
Speaker 9: because they need to keep operating costs comically low so
Speaker 9: that way they can appease their nestly over lots.
Speaker 6: Which is pretty funny because the math doesn't make any
Speaker 6: sense on that right, because it's like, Okay, you need
Speaker 6: to find a way to make like four hundred million dollars.
Speaker 6: Your solution to this is We're gonna delay ordering more
Speaker 6: coffee beans. It's like, is there anyone who like, No,
Speaker 6: you don't like. This isn't even an accountant situation. This
Speaker 6: is a like, is there anyone here who understands what
Speaker 6: an order of magnitude is? What are we doing here?
Speaker 8: Wait till you hear about the saffron latte?
Speaker 1: Oh god, what a disaster.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, so.
Speaker 9: They don't have enough money to pay us a living wage.
Speaker 9: But from January until April of this year, we were
Speaker 9: serving a saffron vanilla latte with and I kid you,
Speaker 9: not real saffron, both in a syrup and also and
Speaker 9: a powdered Yeah no, no kidding. It tasted like Plato.
Speaker 9: I kind of like that, but not everybody does, apparently,
Speaker 9: you know.
Speaker 6: The first time, this is the first time I've ever
Speaker 6: said this in my entire life, But I sincerely hope
Speaker 6: that they were buying the fucking cheap fakes stuff real saffron.
Speaker 6: Oh god, well, to be fair, to be fair, a
Speaker 6: lot of something people think is real saffron probably is fake.
Speaker 6: So maybe maybe the scammers were getting something out of this.
Speaker 8: But dear God, that doesn't make them look good.
Speaker 9: But yeah, no, real, somebody who's good with the economy
Speaker 9: helped me out here. You know, three thousand dollars a
Speaker 9: week for Saffron and eighteen dollars an hour for Bereiza's.
Speaker 3: God, that's gonna like haunt me in my dreams. So
Speaker 3: what order are gonna ask? How much should that cost?
Speaker 3: Eight Jesus Christ.
Speaker 8: Oh no, but not enough money to pay us a
Speaker 8: living wage.
Speaker 6: No, that's o no, no, that is that is that
Speaker 6: is Jenny widely disgusting.
Speaker 10: Like how you know, when you think about it, we
Speaker 10: can like buy a little over two of them every
Speaker 10: hour we work.
Speaker 3: So like that's all we need.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that's also got to be like a kind
Speaker 6: of radicalizing moment of oh my god, yeah, and here
Speaker 6: our time is worth so little to these people.
Speaker 7: This is actually one of the biggest conversations I would
Speaker 7: have with my cocher is that I had to stop
Speaker 7: having so it make them incredibly upset. Was I would
Speaker 7: break down the mouth of them. I'd be like, you
Speaker 7: can make a latte in about a minute, two minutes, like,
Speaker 7: and those lattes are seven dollars. You make seventeen an hour,
Speaker 7: make three lattes, and that's more than your hourly wage,
Speaker 7: and you're making what one hundred of those an hour
Speaker 7: in a rush. Like people would get really upset when
Speaker 7: you're confronted with like the oh wow, the money coming
Speaker 7: in and then the money.
Speaker 2: That I'm receiving. It'll drive you crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think, I don't know.
Speaker 6: That's one of these things where I think in a
Speaker 6: lot of industries it's kind of that kind of value
Speaker 6: thing is abstracted because like I don't know, Like you're,
Speaker 6: like I just talked about it like an accountant earlier, right,
Speaker 6: Like you're an accountant, you have no idea how much
Speaker 6: of well, I guess maybe an accountant would know exactly
Speaker 6: about a value like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I don't know.
Speaker 6: You work in like you work in a factory that
Speaker 6: produces an auto part, right, like one thing that goes
Speaker 6: into an assembly of an auto parts, Like you have
Speaker 6: no like there's no good way for you to like
Speaker 6: actually understand this sort of value.
Speaker 3: Things.
Speaker 6: You can get kind of close, but I think it's
Speaker 6: less visceral than just yeah, this is an item of
Speaker 6: food that I'm watching all of these people like consume
Speaker 6: that I'm making, and it's like, yeah, sure, obviously there's
Speaker 6: like you know, like back down the value chain, there's
Speaker 6: also probably like Nessley doing like slave labor, like child
Speaker 6: slave labor to get chocolate or something. Right, But I
Speaker 6: don't know, there's this there's something really kind of just
Speaker 6: viscerally horrifying about like I've produced eight hundred dollars of
Speaker 6: coffee and they're paying me eighteen dollars. Yeah, so speaking
Speaker 6: of eight hundred dollars of coffee, this show.
Speaker 3: Actually, I don't think.
Speaker 6: We've ever gotten the coffee ad, which is sort of remarkable.
Speaker 6: You'd think at some point, I.
Speaker 9: Don't know, I don't dream really funny, you know, if
Speaker 9: if on the ad that we're about to go to,
Speaker 9: it's you know, like the Black Rifle Coffee Company or
Speaker 9: some shit.
Speaker 6: Oh god, wait no, I think I think one of
Speaker 6: the I think one of the insane. It might have
Speaker 6: been the other one. So there's like Black Rifle Coffee,
Speaker 6: which is the right wing coffee thing. But then they
Speaker 6: they condemned Kyle Rittenhouse murdering all those people, and so
Speaker 6: then there became a second to even more anti woe
Speaker 6: coffee shop that was even shittier. I think those people
Speaker 6: might legitimately have tried to sell an ad to our show.
Speaker 3: At one point we were like.
Speaker 6: No, what the fuck, that's why there's we had so
Speaker 6: many insane ads. We had the famously the Washington Highway
Speaker 6: Patrol put one on here. So let's let's hope you
Speaker 6: have a reasonable ad instead of that, and we are back.
Speaker 6: Luckily this is podcasting or not regulated like radio, so
Speaker 6: I could just fucking say, shit, it's great. We love
Speaker 6: we love, we love to be we love to be
Speaker 6: in podcasting. So yeah, this, this brings us in no
Speaker 6: particular bye by by no particular rhyme of reason.
Speaker 3: This brings us to a neoxt.
Speaker 6: Thing I wanted to sort of talk about, which is
Speaker 6: about the decision to go independent and about independent unions
Speaker 6: versus sort of the traditional business unions that have been
Speaker 6: trying to run a lot of these campaigns. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I guess wherever you want to start in that whole
Speaker 6: sort of thickets of issues.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the decision to go independent was maybe eight months
Speaker 7: into our campaign. We didivo to go independent. We were,
Speaker 7: you know, kind of we had not a with anyone.
Speaker 7: We some weird stuff that happened with some previous business
Speaker 7: unions and so we're kind of an shopping around phase,
Speaker 7: and I like good friend of the union and someone
Speaker 7: who has helped us incredibly throughout the campaign, said hey,
Speaker 7: can I pitch you guys on going independent? Like and
Speaker 7: at that time, I mean, I can't speak for the
Speaker 7: other folks, Like I did not know anything about independent unions.
Speaker 7: This campaign has also been an incredible like learning process
Speaker 7: for me. And so you know, we talked about a
Speaker 7: little bit of like, hey, unions, everything that a union does,
Speaker 7: workers can do and really like trying to like instill
Speaker 7: this like we can do it ourselves because I think
Speaker 7: that like, for me, like the dream of independent unionism
Speaker 7: is like the having autonomy and control of our lives
Speaker 7: both in the workplace and in our unions at like
Speaker 7: as workers. And so you know this idea of like
Speaker 7: oh yeah, this the the union just takes care of it. Oh,
Speaker 7: you pay dues and this stafford does all these things
Speaker 7: for you. But when you know, when we filed our petition,
Speaker 7: you know I filled that out, it's not that hard.
Speaker 7: You know, there are so many things where it's like oh, yeah,
Speaker 7: the union will take care of it, or oh this
Speaker 7: is what does pay for like, oh, we can have
Speaker 7: a lawyer look at it. At no part of this
Speaker 7: process was there really anything that workers could not have done.
Speaker 7: Did we seek legal advice? Absolutely? Did we have people
Speaker 7: help us out who maybe knew more than I did. Yes,
Speaker 7: But that isn't to say that we were not learning
Speaker 7: the entire time. So to me, that's like the big
Speaker 7: ethos of independent unionism of like learning it, doing it,
Speaker 7: teaching others. I think it has been an incredible opportunity.
Speaker 7: I think also like we really are committed to like
Speaker 7: rank and file democracy and so having workers have a
Speaker 7: say in all major decisions, especially like now that we
Speaker 7: have had our election, we're moving into bargaining hopefully soon,
Speaker 7: Like being able to have workers submit proposals, have workers
Speaker 7: look and do open bargaining, have them look at every
Speaker 7: at the contract at every step of the way, and
Speaker 7: things like this, having people participate in their unions. I mean,
Speaker 7: I think that we are in a time of like
Speaker 7: the revitalization of the labor movement, and I don't want
Speaker 7: workers to get left behind in that. Like I think
Speaker 7: that we, you know, like we are the labor and
Speaker 7: so being able to control our unions and lead them
Speaker 7: in the ways that we want to as democratically as
Speaker 7: we can.
Speaker 2: To me, it's been what it's all about. Did that
Speaker 2: mean that it was an easy campaign. No, it was
Speaker 2: a lot of work. It was a lot of.
Speaker 7: Work that maybe a paid staff or would have done,
Speaker 7: but we did it ourselves and it took longer, and
Speaker 7: it took a lot of education as well of explaining
Speaker 7: to my coworkers of like, hey, we want to form
Speaker 7: a union and it's not just this thing that kind
Speaker 7: of happens to you, Like, actually, you have to make
Speaker 7: it happen now if you want to do it. So
Speaker 7: I think that for us the choice to go in
Speaker 7: dependent independent has like only reaped benefits so far.
Speaker 2: It's been this wonderful thing.
Speaker 7: I think that we are all much better for it
Speaker 7: and much closer like as co workers. I think that
Speaker 7: people are more excited about their union. But it certainly,
Speaker 7: you know, it took a lot of work, It took
Speaker 7: a lot of time. It took a lot of trust
Speaker 7: from our coworkers as well.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, one of the most formative experiences that
Speaker 9: has stuck with me, and I think I might have
Speaker 9: mentioned this in the interview before the interview was when
Speaker 9: we were shopping around with business unions. Rocky and I
Speaker 9: had sat down with somebody from a fairly large one,
Speaker 9: and we're trying to ask all of these questions about,
Speaker 9: you know, would we be able to have rank and
Speaker 9: file control of our own campaign, would we be able
Speaker 9: to you know, legitimately examine unconventional tactics for launching or
Speaker 9: sustaining our campaign, you know, what is the actual process
Speaker 9: for requesting finances from the larger affiliate if we needed it,
Speaker 9: And more or less, what we were told by this
Speaker 9: staffer was that none of this would be in the
Speaker 9: hands of rank and file, and it would either be
Speaker 9: determined by what this particular staffer thought was best or
Speaker 9: you know, they would have to get approval from you know,
Speaker 9: whoever was above them, which, despite the fact that this
Speaker 9: person was within the reform caucus of their union, did
Speaker 9: not strike them as being anti democratic at all.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And at that point, I mean, you know, we'd
Speaker 9: been talking to our co workers for months at that point,
Speaker 9: you know, hanging out with them, becoming building community, and
Speaker 9: it didn't seem like there was really anything that you know,
Speaker 9: a larger business union would have had to offer to
Speaker 9: begin with. In fact, in my own experience, the idea
Speaker 9: of affiliation has more or less come across as an
Speaker 9: implicit threat of how else are you going to take
Speaker 9: on Nesley without all of the money and resources that
Speaker 9: we have but won't let you use anyways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is like not a thing.
Speaker 6: I don't know, if you've gotten to the point where
Speaker 6: your union is threatening you, and this is something that
Speaker 6: like happens more than you'd think, Like, you know, but
Speaker 6: listeners of this show may or may not have listened
Speaker 6: to some previous episodes talking to some of the reformed
Speaker 6: nurses slates that we've we've had on this show.
Speaker 3: Where that's happened.
Speaker 6: But if your union is threatening to you, something has
Speaker 6: gone very badly wrong, and you're probably you're in a
Speaker 6: position where you're probably going to be having to fight
Speaker 6: yourself out of a deep hole. And one way you
Speaker 6: can avoid getting in there in the first place is
Speaker 6: by not digging the hole and building something yourself.
Speaker 9: Yeah, exactly, And I mean, you know, one of the
Speaker 9: things that we heard a lot about at Labor Notes
Speaker 9: two weeks ago at this point was people within larger
Speaker 9: unions talking about how to fight off staffers or bureaucrats
Speaker 9: and I'm personally very glad that we are not in
Speaker 9: that fight ourselves because we have Nestlie to take care of.
Speaker 6: Now. Yeah, yeah, the sort of two way fight between
Speaker 6: your boss and then also and staffers is not a
Speaker 6: thing that usually goes well for you.
Speaker 3: It's a bad situation to be it. I would recommend
Speaker 3: of waiting it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I guess the next thing that I'm sort
Speaker 6: of interested in is, you know, so you talked a
Speaker 6: bit about how sort of being an independent union like
Speaker 6: made the union closer. How else did that influence how
Speaker 6: the campaign went? And how is like how how has
Speaker 6: it been going in the past, Like, I know, I
Speaker 6: know you won your election. I mean, they're right, yeah,
Speaker 6: it was it was an election with sorry it has
Speaker 6: been this is This has been the most chaotic two
Speaker 6: weeks I've had in several years.
Speaker 9: So, I mean, it's just like Lennon said, there are
Speaker 9: years when you fuck around and weeks where you find out.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna get so much shit for that comment now, anyways.
Speaker 3: Cool Zobebia is not endorsed. Letting made two good lines.
Speaker 9: I promise I only said it for the joke. Yeah,
Speaker 9: our campaign started April third. There are six stores in
Speaker 9: the Greater Boston area, with roughly sixty seven sixty five
Speaker 9: workers across all of them.
Speaker 8: On April third, fifty.
Speaker 9: Workers from five of those stores handed cards like union
Speaker 9: authorization cards to management, announcing our campaign, our union, and
Speaker 9: asking for voluntary recognition by noon on April eighth. Management
Speaker 9: accepted the cards, but then did not recognize the union
Speaker 9: voluntarily by newon April eighth, and instead they put up
Speaker 9: a flyer in the back of the house of all
Speaker 9: the cafes saying that they would respect the outcome of
Speaker 9: an election, at which point, yeah, they didn't even publicly
Speaker 9: acknowledge us. So at that point, across five of the
Speaker 9: six stores, we had a walk out on the eighth,
Speaker 9: and then that same day went downtown to file for
Speaker 9: an election with the NLRB, which despite the fact that
Speaker 9: we called them a week in advance to be like,
Speaker 9: is it okay if a lot of people show up
Speaker 9: kind of spontaneously to file for an election, And despite
Speaker 9: the fact that the person in the office said, yeah,
Speaker 9: it's fine as so long as like less than one
Speaker 9: hundred and you don't have like a sound stage or
Speaker 9: anything you got to set up, and if you do
Speaker 9: get a permit. Once we walked up to the office,
Speaker 9: at least four DHS cop cars like a sump in
Speaker 9: front of us, and they would only let Rocky go
Speaker 9: into the office to file for our election while being
Speaker 9: escorted by a DHS agent the entire times.
Speaker 6: You know, sometimes you get just these this is something
Speaker 6: that's been happening, so like, well, I have no idea
Speaker 6: when this episode is gonna go. This is being recorded
Speaker 6: in the middle of the protest. Like literally today, seventy
Speaker 6: year old professors are getting dragged out of like protests
Speaker 6: by cops, and like this is one of these moments
Speaker 6: where when things actually happenet these really visceral demonstrations of
Speaker 6: like what the society you actually live in is. And
Speaker 6: I don't think there's like a more perfect demonstration of
Speaker 6: the National Labor Relations Boards sometimes will help you, but
Speaker 6: also also is very clearly a bureaucratic mechanism of a
Speaker 6: police state.
Speaker 3: Then the cops show up and only one of you
Speaker 3: can go talk to the n l R and P
Speaker 3: person escorted by police. That is wild.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: It was also the same day as the solar eclipse.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, it was a very magic day. Yeah,
Speaker 9: nothing was more enchanting than the fact that we got
Speaker 9: to watch the eclipse when we otherwise would have had
Speaker 9: to have been at work at rules.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I get I guess. I guess that's another
Speaker 6: way to get to get turnout for a walk out.
Speaker 6: It's like, hey, look we're gonna do a walk and
Speaker 6: also you could go see the eclipse instead of serving
Speaker 6: rich people coffee.
Speaker 3: And it worked. Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But all that is to say, I think being
Speaker 2: independent lets us do fun and creative things.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thank you for remembering what the actual question was.
Speaker 7: Like, I think we're allowed to be a little silly
Speaker 7: with it, and we're allowed to have fun, and we're
Speaker 7: allowed to come up with ideas that maybe.
Speaker 3: Other like haters would shoot down.
Speaker 7: But when me and my cocher say yeah that would
Speaker 7: be cool and fun, we just get to do it
Speaker 7: and there's like joy and creativity and all of it.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, So I guess you know, do you have
Speaker 6: anything else that you want to make sure we get
Speaker 6: you before we sort of wrap things up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So.
Speaker 9: I mean, as much as we've talked about a lot
Speaker 9: of the benefits of independent unionism, one of the downsides
Speaker 9: is that we have no money, and if people would
Speaker 9: be so gracious as to give us some of their money.
Speaker 9: You can go to link t R dot e E
Speaker 9: slash Blue Bottle Union so link tree slash Blue Bottle Union,
Speaker 9: where there'll be a link to our GoFundMe. I'll also
Speaker 9: say that since we don't have staffers, our overhead is
Speaker 9: incredibly low and this will once again allows us to
Speaker 9: you know, actually do cool and fun things like we
Speaker 9: were able to pay everybody that did the walkout because
Speaker 9: we were able to raise enough money in the in
Speaker 9: between from April third to eighth, which was incredible.
Speaker 10: I have like some personal stuff when it comes to
Speaker 10: like filing independent and talking with a lot of people
Speaker 10: that I know, I feel like it actually helped the
Speaker 10: fact that we were independent because you know, there was
Speaker 10: none of that background, oh unions. You know that there's
Speaker 10: this big influence when it comes to like unions and
Speaker 10: like big scary unions taking all your money through union
Speaker 10: dues and YadA YadA. But you know, with filing independent,
Speaker 10: you know we can just be like, actually, we don't
Speaker 10: have to worry about anything like that. We set union
Speaker 10: dues democratically and like and so it's just been like
Speaker 10: really helpful for when we were getting organized and everything.
Speaker 10: Just relaying that idea to coworkers, to family, friends and
Speaker 10: everyone just kind of like helps them be like, oh
Speaker 10: that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I mean the old like you know, anti union talking
Speaker 9: point of like you know, there being an outside organization
Speaker 9: really falls flat with an independent union because it really
Speaker 9: is just you and all of your friends. And then
Speaker 9: on top of that, it also means that management hasn't
Speaker 9: known how to respond to us, because in the week
Speaker 9: leading up to our election, which we won thirty eight
Speaker 9: to four this past Friday, May third, Yeah, they put
Speaker 9: out like three or four different flyers, one talking about
Speaker 9: business unions that have signed management's rights clauses in the
Speaker 9: most fucking like I'm not owned.
Speaker 6: I'm not owned.
Speaker 8: I'm still going to get my mentionmans rights claus like ever.
Speaker 9: And then also another flyer about union dues and examples
Speaker 9: of business unions that you know, to anybody that doesn't
Speaker 9: know anything about unism, would seem high.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 9: They also, in a letter that they sent out to
Speaker 9: all of us the night before our election, talked complained
Speaker 9: about us seeking external assistance, and all of this just
Speaker 9: completely falls flat because you know, it's literally we've done
Speaker 9: this mostly by like having pot lucks together to talk
Speaker 9: about all of our issues at work and or like
Speaker 9: movie nights or some shit, and it's much tougher to
Speaker 9: convince people to vote against the person that they're on
Speaker 9: the floor with eight hours a day.
Speaker 10: Yeah, the overall like way that these papers were received
Speaker 10: is has been like met with kind of like a
Speaker 10: lot of skull emojis in group chats and like just
Speaker 10: kind of like generally making fun of the whole thing.
Speaker 10: And I think that like that's been really good for
Speaker 10: morale as well, because like, you know, it's just not
Speaker 10: getting to us. It's goofy and like just doesn't work.
Speaker 10: So and also the way that they've been handing these
Speaker 10: flyers out, I don't know about like other cafes, but
Speaker 10: at mine specifically, it's been kind of awkward, like haha,
Speaker 10: cover my eyes, here's this flyer that I have to
Speaker 10: hand you kind of thing, and it's just like okay, yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it really seems like it is something, you know, Okay,
Speaker 6: Diffinitely I'm I'm I'm not I'm not going to do
Speaker 6: my tangent about the infiltration of political parties.
Speaker 9: But yeah, I mean, really political cults within the Greater
Speaker 9: Boston area continuously subvert and undermine union elections are not
Speaker 9: just elections, but campaigns as well. I won't name examples
Speaker 9: because these same cults are also incredibly vindictive and they
Speaker 9: will try to dox me.
Speaker 8: But this is also the implicit threat.
Speaker 9: That you know, like if you know, they can't turn
Speaker 9: a union into their own stupid vanguard, then they will
Speaker 9: try and push through something that rank and file don't
Speaker 9: want and try and undermine or tank the campaign.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that's that's something I think like to take
Speaker 6: it to okay, so to take a little step back.
Speaker 6: So yeah, one of the things that's very common in
Speaker 6: union in sort of like local union spaces is there
Speaker 6: will be like there'll be like a local of a
Speaker 6: union or like maybe sometimes its own union that's just
Speaker 6: run by a cult, and these sort of like these
Speaker 6: sort of like I don't know, sometimes you're Stalinis and
Speaker 6: under Trotskyites sometimes, like it depends, the ideology changes to
Speaker 6: some extent. But because because of like the you know,
Speaker 6: the because because you can run like a staff union
Speaker 6: with like five people, right, this is this is a
Speaker 6: pretty good way for them to sort of like like
Speaker 6: you know, gain something that looks like political power, and
Speaker 6: like it's a way for them to bring other people
Speaker 6: who don't know what's going on into like the influencers
Speaker 6: of their organization, and they this can get really bad
Speaker 6: and really dangerous, at least the stuff you're talking about where, yeah,
Speaker 6: they start trying to sabotage campaigns because they're not you know,
Speaker 6: like these groups aren't actually in this for you know,
Speaker 6: like they're not they're not in this for class struggles.
Speaker 6: But whatever they you know, will say about it, they're
Speaker 6: they're in this specifically to expand the influence of their
Speaker 6: own party. And you know, when you try to like
Speaker 6: actually do your own thing, this stuff happens.
Speaker 8: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 9: It's also really telling that despite the fact that you know,
Speaker 9: some of these groups are like known for undermining campaigns
Speaker 9: in this way, or for harassing staffers that you know,
Speaker 9: don't play ball with them or whatever, that they continue
Speaker 9: to do the entriest thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't have.
Speaker 9: Any good ideas for how to subvert that, but I'm
Speaker 9: sure dear listeners will send me many of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think also at some point we're gonna do the
Speaker 6: micro We're gonna do the micro sect episode Micro to
Speaker 6: the to like introduce people to the basics of like, hey,
Speaker 6: you are like the range of tiny political parties in
Speaker 6: the US that are actually cults that show up at
Speaker 6: protests all the time. So yeah, maybe maybe maybe that
Speaker 6: will help too, because I think a lot of it
Speaker 6: is people just you know, they're you run into like
Speaker 6: the World Workers Party, and like, you don't know that
Speaker 6: this party is a weird cult, right, They're just sort
Speaker 6: of talking about workers stuff. Yeah, so I think education
Speaker 6: will help with it too, but the bureaucratic maneuvering stuff
Speaker 6: is like the only thing they're good at because they're
Speaker 6: all these like weird micro party formations.
Speaker 2: So I don't know.
Speaker 9: Yeah, er, I only way that I think might help
Speaker 9: is you know, horizontalizing the structure somewhat, but then you
Speaker 9: still run into like the issue of like social capital
Speaker 9: within that structure. So if you know, somebody is savvy enough,
Speaker 9: they can still indoctrinate people into a silly cult.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't know, that's that's just something that
Speaker 6: you're gonna have to I mean, and we should also
Speaker 6: mention too, like these thing these groups like they work
Speaker 6: with larger unions too sometimes, Like so one of the
Speaker 6: most famous examples of this is Pride at Work, which
Speaker 6: is a really big afl CIO thing, but it's also
Speaker 6: jointly run with the Party of Socialism Liberation, which is
Speaker 6: another one of these cults because of a bunch of
Speaker 6: like long running actions even though like a bunch of
Speaker 6: their really senior staffers unbelief to be transphobic, and you know,
Speaker 6: there's there's a whole thing there. But yeah, this is
Speaker 6: something that is not just a problem with independent unions
Speaker 6: and not just a problem with sort of like random locals.
Speaker 6: It can and does get into actual like national unions.
Speaker 6: On the other hand, one way to avoid this is
Speaker 6: to in fact organize your own union and don't let
Speaker 6: them be.
Speaker 9: So this is actually something that we've thought conscious about
Speaker 9: with our own union is that on the we sent
Speaker 9: out a community support forum for people that wanted to
Speaker 9: show up the data, we announced our campaign, and on
Speaker 9: the form specifically, we made people tick a box saying
Speaker 9: that they wouldn't endorse or try to fly or for
Speaker 9: or otherwise promote any group that they might have affiliation with,
Speaker 9: including political parties or you know, otherwise organizations that are
Speaker 9: not you know, our specific union.
Speaker 8: And so far that's worked.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, I would also say like in our constitution
Speaker 7: by laws. I don't know if that if it's in
Speaker 7: the current ones and we're revising them soon anyways. But
Speaker 7: it's a conversation that we've had before also, like people
Speaker 7: in like keyboard positions, what, yeah, what kind of affiliations
Speaker 7: can they have to outside political parties?
Speaker 2: Like where where are we drawing the line on that?
Speaker 2: Like that's something that I think we also considered very
Speaker 2: early on as well for people in the union.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think there's another aspec they're too, which
Speaker 6: is like another thing that can happen to your union
Speaker 6: is that it gets eaten by the Democratic Party machine.
Speaker 6: And that's happened to I mean, like this is this
Speaker 6: is a lot of how like these giant business unions
Speaker 6: became business unions, is they became basically these like lobbying
Speaker 6: firms on behalf of like whatever random like local democratic
Speaker 6: machine is running, Like this happens to Chicago, Like all
Speaker 6: the time you get these like just like the most
Speaker 6: important machine like candidates you've ever seen come out of
Speaker 6: the Democratic Party who are like guys who are like
Speaker 6: so comically corrupt that like you know, you're They're like
Speaker 6: walking down the street and like like bundles of cash
Speaker 6: are falling out of the suitcases and they're getting endorsed
Speaker 6: by like the team stars, and it's like, well, you know.
Speaker 3: Okay, I wonder, I wonder what happened there? Legally legally
Speaker 3: legally conjecture, but.
Speaker 9: You know, who's to say, really, yeah, you know, it
Speaker 9: just so happens that they have these large briefcases full
Speaker 9: of cash. Nobody can really say where the cash materialized.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but amazingly I was actually get to go on
Speaker 6: a different ranch, but political parties. So I'm going to
Speaker 6: circle back to there to close this out. Which is
Speaker 6: one of the nice things about independent unions is that
Speaker 6: you know, it's something they all three of you were
Speaker 6: started getting at, which is that, like employers have been
Speaker 6: fighting these sort of large corporate unions business unions for
Speaker 6: like one hundred years now, right. They know how they operate,
Speaker 6: they know how their campaigns work, they know what levers
Speaker 6: to push against them. On the other hand, they have
Speaker 6: not been fighting you specifically, random listener of this show,
Speaker 6: and you, specifically random listener of this show, and your
Speaker 6: coworkers can do things to surprise them and can do
Speaker 6: things in ways that they don't understand, and you know,
Speaker 6: you have we have a moment like right now, Like
Speaker 6: in like five years, they'll probably have worked out a
Speaker 6: bunch of stuff about how to break independent unions. But
Speaker 6: right now, like literally right now, we have a we
Speaker 6: have a master strategic advantage because their playbook wasn't written
Speaker 6: to deal with people who are running these sort of
Speaker 6: like very low to the ground, very agile, very nimble,
Speaker 6: very sort of like you know, these spontaneous and creative campaigns,
Speaker 6: and you can use that to beat the crap out
Speaker 6: of your boss and get more money from them. So
Speaker 6: this is the BA endorsement of doing doing fun things
Speaker 6: with unions.
Speaker 3: That your bosses don't expect.
Speaker 6: Hell yeah, Yeah. So I think unless there's anything else
Speaker 6: where where else can people find you, We'll have a
Speaker 6: link to your link tree in the description. Is there
Speaker 6: anywhere else like social media stuff where people can find
Speaker 6: the union?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Our social media for Twitter and Instagram is BBI Union
Speaker 7: and then on TikTok, I believe it is BBIU sixteen.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 6: We will have that in the description too. Yeah, and
Speaker 6: thank you all so much for coming on. And yeah,
Speaker 6: make make NESTLEI bleed for us.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thanks so much for having us. We can't say
Speaker 8: how much we appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you, of course.
Speaker 6: And yeah, this has been taken happened here. You can
Speaker 6: find us in the usual places. And yeah, you too
Speaker 6: can also go start your own union and make your
Speaker 6: bosses suffer.
Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Robert Evans, and
Speaker 1: this is a podcast about things falling apart. This week,
Speaker 1: the thing falling apart was my bedroom. Allow me to explain,
Speaker 1: three years or so ago, I was finally able to
Speaker 1: buy a house or at least, you know, get a mortgage.
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Speaker 1: wondering what all of this has to do with solar power,
Speaker 1: and I swear there will be an answer to that question.
Speaker 1: I also want to make it clear upfront that this
Speaker 1: is not an ad. Some of the equipment I tested
Speaker 1: was provided for free as review units, some of it
Speaker 1: was purchased with my own money, and some with company money.
Speaker 1: I'll try to make it pretty clear at each point,
Speaker 1: but I promise it doesn't matter ari my opinions on
Speaker 1: any specific product. No one paid us in any way
Speaker 1: for their inclusion in this episode. Anyway, back to my
Speaker 1: stupid waterbed. The first thing to know about waterbeds is
Speaker 1: that they are surprisingly cheap. They cost about as much
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Speaker 1: of the fact that, as a small child, my aunt
Speaker 1: and uncle fell upon hard times and had to live
Speaker 1: with us for a while. Then for another while they
Speaker 1: lived elsewhere, but their stuff stayed with us. That stuff
Speaker 1: included a waterbed, and for a few glorious months it
Speaker 1: was my waterbed. I have craved the insane high of
Speaker 1: waterbed ownership ever since. For three perfect years. Then I
Speaker 1: slept in wavy comfort until about two days before I
Speaker 1: wrote this episode. My bed sprang a pinhole leak. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you might guess a cat, but the
Speaker 1: actual bladder that contains the water is inside and underneath
Speaker 1: a very thick, padded frame that cat claws can't really puncture.
Speaker 1: I should also note that the bladder sits inside a
Speaker 1: vinyl sort of soft cage, so that when it sprang
Speaker 1: a leak, it got some of my sheets wet, but
Speaker 1: it did not cause damage to my home anyway. Because
Speaker 1: waterbeds are the kind of product that only an insane
Speaker 1: manchild would dare to own, fixing a hole in one
Speaker 1: is not the same as performing maintenance on your regular mattress,
Speaker 1: because the kinds of beds that reasonable people own don't
Speaker 1: spring leaks. To patch the leak, then I had to
Speaker 1: purchase a patch kit. But you can't apply a patch
Speaker 1: kit to what is effectively a soft bladder filled with
Speaker 1: roughly a metric ton of water. I did do the
Speaker 1: bare minimum of research here, and king sized waterbeds weigh
Speaker 1: around two thousand pounds. Now that's not all water weight,
Speaker 1: but it is basically all water weight. I bring this
Speaker 1: up because I'm proud of myself for guessing right. So
Speaker 1: to apply the patch we had to first drain the bed,
Speaker 1: which necessitated attaching a hose to one of the spigots
Speaker 1: through which we had originally filled the bed. Because of
Speaker 1: the layout of my home and the ground outside of
Speaker 1: the window where we intended to pour the water, we
Speaker 1: couldn't get the hosts started without assistance, the kind of
Speaker 1: assistance that you would say, need to suck gasoline free
Speaker 1: if a stranger's truck were you hard up for fuel money. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: my roommate had a wet back which we were able
Speaker 1: to hook up to the hose, but how to power
Speaker 1: the wetback well. We could have run an extra long
Speaker 1: extension cord, but mine were all in use for various
Speaker 1: insane projects around the farm, and instead I opted to
Speaker 1: wheel out the solar generator that I had filled with
Speaker 1: the beneficence of the Sun God Raw just a couple
Speaker 1: of days earlier. The generator was one of two similar
Speaker 1: products I tested for this episode, a Jackery SG two
Speaker 1: thousand plus, which had been sent to me by the
Speaker 1: good people at Jackery in previous weeks. I'd tested it
Speaker 1: by powering my deep freeze and a refer refrigerator, and
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering with the panels outside in the sun.
Speaker 1: I got a little over a day before things ran
Speaker 1: dry on my refrigerator. If I'd had the panels in
Speaker 1: a better position, I could have had longer and the
Speaker 1: deep freeze it would have been able to power essentially indefinitely,
Speaker 1: because deep freezes are actually insanely efficient machines. I also
Speaker 1: used it to run a heat gun for my friend's
Speaker 1: art project, which is about as intense a test of
Speaker 1: output as you can run a battery through short of
Speaker 1: powering your home, and it handles that. In terms of specs,
Speaker 1: this battery is part of a more modular system that
Speaker 1: you could wire in to power your home or off
Speaker 1: grid setup. You can actually attach this to your breaker.
Speaker 1: It has a maximum output of six thousand watts in
Speaker 1: parallel connection and one twenty to two forty expandable voltage.
Speaker 1: For a rough idea of what that means, it can
Speaker 1: power most household electronics and even power tools for a while.
Speaker 1: You'd get about one and a half hours of running
Speaker 1: a home as unit, and more like two two and
Speaker 1: a half. You know, with a portable unit or a
Speaker 1: window unit, you could charge this thing too full in
Speaker 1: two hours with good sunlight. If you had six two
Speaker 1: hundred watt panels attached in perfect sunlight, which is another
Speaker 1: three thousand or so dollars in panels. But that's not
Speaker 1: an insignificant thing to be able to do, mind you,
Speaker 1: that would mean just running your ac most of the
Speaker 1: day and nothing else. Neither of these are cheap products.
Speaker 1: In Jackery's case, the battery itself runs about two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: I understand that's out of reach, perhaps wildly so for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. We will be talking about cheaper
Speaker 1: options at the end, but it is an unavoidable fact
Speaker 1: that unless you are a skilled electrician and scavenger, setting
Speaker 1: up substantial solar systems costs money period. Jackery actually represents
Speaker 1: one of the more affordable options for a plug and
Speaker 1: play home backup system that is also portable, i e.
Speaker 1: Can be taken camping or hauled away with your shit
Speaker 1: during an evacuation. I should note that you can connect
Speaker 1: the Jackery SG two thousand plus directly to your breaker,
Speaker 1: and also connect the battery to other similar Jackery battery
Speaker 1: generators to g additional capacity and output from it. I
Speaker 1: tested another solar gener radar system for this episode, the
Speaker 1: Geniverse Home Power O two, which was provided to me
Speaker 1: by Genniverse. Both the Genniverse and Jackery systems are similar
Speaker 1: enough that they can use each other's solar panels and
Speaker 1: operate in basically the same manner. Jackery's product is cheaper.
Speaker 1: Other reviews I've read suggests the Geniverse system might be
Speaker 1: more robust, lasting longer over time. It is certainly heavier
Speaker 1: and thus has a higher capacity around twenty four hundred
Speaker 1: watt hours as opposed to a little over two thousand
Speaker 1: for the Jackery system. Both of these can be the
Speaker 1: basis of an off grid or full backup power system
Speaker 1: for your home, and we'll be talking about home off
Speaker 1: grid power in future episodes. I want to make clear
Speaker 1: upfront that what I'm advising you on today is the
Speaker 1: quality and utility of different solar generator battery products for
Speaker 1: emergency power. So let's talk about what emergency means. The
Speaker 1: primary emergency you might encounter that a battery solar setup
Speaker 1: would help with is a power outage at your home.
Speaker 1: In that case, you have a couple of immediate and
Speaker 1: real life needs. I will list these from most basic
Speaker 1: and easy cheapest to fill to most expensive and difficult
Speaker 1: to meet. Number one would be to keep your devices
Speaker 1: and stuff like flashlights that are chargeable topped off so
Speaker 1: you can keep in contact with your community and stay
Speaker 1: aware of breaking news on whatever emergency you happen to
Speaker 1: be in. Being able to entertain yourself with books and
Speaker 1: movies does, in my view, count as one purpose for
Speaker 1: these systems and an emergency, because morale ain't nothing. Number
Speaker 1: two is being able to run emergency cooling devices, starting
Speaker 1: with fans and terminating and stuff like window AC units
Speaker 1: or even portable camping AC units. Number three is being
Speaker 1: able to keep a fridge going so your food doesn't spoil.
Speaker 1: If you're prepping for disaster, you should have storable food,
Speaker 1: anything from freeze dried stuff to beans and rits, etc.
Speaker 1: But losing all of your shit in an outage is
Speaker 1: expensive and annoying, and it's nice to be able to avoid.
Speaker 1: The Most achievable of these systems for a person of
Speaker 1: normal income is number one, and if you have disposable
Speaker 1: income at all, you can afford some sort of emergency
Speaker 1: solars set up to keep your phone or laptop and
Speaker 1: rechargeable lights going. There are a wide variety of battery
Speaker 1: packs that have solar panels built into them. I have
Speaker 1: tried a lot of these over the years, and I
Speaker 1: have never once been happy with the quality, either of
Speaker 1: their ability to charge in the sun or to last
Speaker 1: over time. The system that I currently take with me
Speaker 1: on trips is made by a company called Goal zero,
Speaker 1: who produce a variety of solar battery and charger products.
Speaker 1: I purchase for myself a Nomad thirteen solar panels set,
Speaker 1: which folds into something that approximates the size of a
Speaker 1: trapper keeper set you had as a kid in school.
Speaker 1: I've had this for years. I take it with me
Speaker 1: on every flight as my carry on. I have it
Speaker 1: and two batteries, which are different incarnations of Goal Zero's
Speaker 1: Schirpa one hundred on me wherever I go. The Sriper
Speaker 1: one hundred has a little three prong outlet you can
Speaker 1: charge basically any laptop on it. You could even do
Speaker 1: like emergency power for a computer. I think with it
Speaker 1: this and one battery would allow me to keep my
Speaker 1: phone going for emergency purposes indefinitely. Two batteries and shars,
Speaker 1: I'm able to travel with roughly three or four working
Speaker 1: days of power for my laptop and phone wherever I go,
Speaker 1: and that's without me actually trying to recharge them using
Speaker 1: the panels. You can find various years of this battery
Speaker 1: model on Amazon or at other retailers, from two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars on up. The latest model retails for three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars off Goal Zero's website. These batteries are TSA approved,
Speaker 1: as are the panels. I have never had an issue
Speaker 1: flying with them. Obviously in different countries, your experience may vary,
Speaker 1: but I've taken these things to most parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and again I haven't had an issue. They have varying sizes,
Speaker 1: but the Nomad one hundred, which is one hundred watt hours,
Speaker 1: runs about three hundred bucks, So you're looking at five
Speaker 1: or six hundred dollars for this traveling setup, which is
Speaker 1: also great to keep in your home and just have
Speaker 1: less a bit. You know, if you find used versions
Speaker 1: on eBay or wherever, which is often possible, that's not
Speaker 1: an insignificant cost. But if you're building an emergency kit
Speaker 1: over time, most people are capable of bearing that cost
Speaker 1: again over time. You could just start with the battery,
Speaker 1: which is the most initially useful part of the kit,
Speaker 1: and then you could get a panel set six months
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 11: A year later.
Speaker 1: And this brings me to what I'm talking about quantifiably
Speaker 1: when I discuss a disaster and what you actually need
Speaker 1: when we're talking about emergency power in a disaster. It
Speaker 1: is uncommon for the average US consumer to lose power
Speaker 1: for more than an hour or two at a time.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, most consumers lost less than two hours
Speaker 1: of power per year without quote major events. With major events,
Speaker 1: that number leaped to six hours per person per year
Speaker 1: on average. In twenty seventeen, it was closer to eight.
Speaker 1: As we deal with more climate change, more natural disasters,
Speaker 1: all of these things are going to become inevitably more common.
Speaker 1: These are also all averages of huge numbers of people
Speaker 1: in huge areas of terrain. I will guess that the
Speaker 1: percentage of people listening to this who have as adults
Speaker 1: lost power for a day or more at a time
Speaker 1: is very close to one hundred percent. Now, given the averages,
Speaker 1: you might consider just perching battery power units without sol panels,
Speaker 1: because in most instances, what you're trying to do is
Speaker 1: ensure that if your phone is dead and there's a
Speaker 1: bad storm and you know you run out of power
Speaker 1: by the time you get home, a two or three
Speaker 1: hour outage doesn't leave you unable to contact your people
Speaker 1: or emergency services. I have a fuckload of different portable
Speaker 1: batteries because I try to keep enough on my work
Speaker 1: bag wherever I go to function in my job for
Speaker 1: most of a week without power when I go on trips.
Speaker 1: This kind of preparation has stood me in good stead
Speaker 1: in places like Syria, Iraq and the desperate wilds of
Speaker 1: Seattle that one time. But if you're not going to
Speaker 1: such terrifying hellscapes, you can probably get a suitable battery
Speaker 1: that's reasonably tough for under one hundred dollars. And we
Speaker 1: will continue talking about batteries and talking about you know,
Speaker 1: next kind of home solutions and eventually cheap solutions. But
Speaker 1: you know what's not cheap is the products and services
Speaker 1: that support this podcast. Affordable but not cheap. Anyway, here's
Speaker 1: these ads. We're back and we're talking thinking about portable batteries,
Speaker 1: right And my only note here is that if you're
Speaker 1: buying portable batteries, you know, stuff not necessarily to run
Speaker 1: on solar, just to have some extra juice with you
Speaker 1: wherever you'd go to keep it home in an emergency.
Speaker 1: These fluctuate wildly in quality, and when it comes to
Speaker 1: disaster kit to something that you need to work in
Speaker 1: an emergency, it can be worth going with a brand
Speaker 1: that is a known quantity with a long record and
Speaker 1: a lot of testing done on their products, rather than
Speaker 1: whatever the Amazon algorithm spits out when you Google battery.
Speaker 1: The advantage of a small portable folding setup like the
Speaker 1: one I have from Goal zero is that you can
Speaker 1: take it with you and have it on demand if
Speaker 1: shit happens when you're traveling, or if you have to
Speaker 1: evacuate and it's idiot proof right. A good option if
Speaker 1: you just want something in your home to keep your
Speaker 1: devices topped off, is what I'd call a large small
Speaker 1: battery generator. These are a couple of steps below products
Speaker 1: like the Jaggery two thousand to the Geniverse that I tried,
Speaker 1: but above the handheld little batteries that many of you
Speaker 1: have already. The two examples of this product category that
Speaker 1: I have and have tested are the Yeti four hundred
Speaker 1: from Goal zero and the anchor a n Ker Solix
Speaker 1: Solix C eight hundred. The Yeti four hundred is the
Speaker 1: product I purchased with my own money and It's what
Speaker 1: I've taken with me for years into the mountains when
Speaker 1: I go shooting or hunting, usually with a set of
Speaker 1: folding panels. This ensures that if my car dies and
Speaker 1: I've been dumb enough to let my jumper box that
Speaker 1: I keep with me die, I have a backup that
Speaker 1: I can use to charge my jumper box. I also
Speaker 1: have a convenient way to top off my phone or
Speaker 1: my E reader or my sat phone, both for normal
Speaker 1: use and in an emergency. It handles extreme cold and
Speaker 1: extreme heat well, and that's not always something you can
Speaker 1: take for granted with batteries. Again, kind of top of
Speaker 1: the list is that I am an idiot. I don't
Speaker 1: know much about electricity, and these products are pretty idiot proof.
Speaker 1: When it comes to my YETI four hundred or the
Speaker 1: C eight hundred from Anchor, I keep them both plugged
Speaker 1: into the wall at all times that I can grab
Speaker 1: either for an emergency. Now, the Solix C eight hundred
Speaker 1: that I have was sent to me as a review
Speaker 1: by Solix, and by necessity, I have not been able
Speaker 1: to subject it to the years of rigorous real life
Speaker 1: testing that my Goal zero YETI four hundred has endured.
Speaker 1: I will note that it is well reviewed, and from
Speaker 1: the exploration I have done on it, which does not
Speaker 1: include years of testing but does include a decent amount
Speaker 1: of reading and some testing, I think it's better constructed
Speaker 1: and more conveniently laid out in the goal zero, and
Speaker 1: it also gets you about twice the storage nearly eight
Speaker 1: hundred watt hours as opposed to a bit over four hundred.
Speaker 1: Both products cost the same price around six hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: although older generations are often available cheaper online. New and used.
Speaker 1: Either is enough to keep a family of Force phones
Speaker 1: charged for a two or three day outage without severe rationing.
Speaker 1: You can get a lot more obviously on the anchor,
Speaker 1: and you might not want to have someone like gaming
Speaker 1: on an alien ware laptop or whatever with either, but
Speaker 1: you can charge your laptops and the like off of them.
Speaker 1: If you want to watch a movie at the end
Speaker 1: of the night, you're all huddled together there in the dark.
Speaker 1: That's not going to be something you have to stress
Speaker 1: out about too much. Again, theoncre solex is going toe
Speaker 1: you a lot more juice to play around with, but
Speaker 1: either should be enough for an average outage if you
Speaker 1: just keep them plugged in. You can also use them
Speaker 1: to power a fan during the day. They will not
Speaker 1: run small AC units. These are worth considering as an
Speaker 1: intermediate option for the more casual prepper. What you're looking
Speaker 1: for here is not a full off grid replacement, but
Speaker 1: something that can provide you with options from more than
Speaker 1: just basic gadget power. With these big, small batteries, you
Speaker 1: can run a fan or fans, maybe not long enough
Speaker 1: for comfort, but in bursts throughout the day to get
Speaker 1: you through the hottest part of the day during a blackout,
Speaker 1: during what we call a wet bulb event. This would
Speaker 1: be the life saving health emergency that a basic solar
Speaker 1: setup would be most useful in saving you from. For
Speaker 1: context in case people aren't up to date, a wet
Speaker 1: bulb event is a weather situation in which the temperature
Speaker 1: reaches a critical level above eighty eight degrees fahrenheit and
Speaker 1: does not drop below that point for an extended period
Speaker 1: of time. If people lack access to effective cooling during
Speaker 1: heating events like this, they will die. We saw one
Speaker 1: of these hit a couple of years ago where I
Speaker 1: live in Portland, Oregon, which has been long famed for
Speaker 1: its mild temperatures and thus most homes lack central air.
Speaker 1: During a three day heat wave, temperatures rose to record
Speaker 1: highs and did not drop low enough at night to
Speaker 1: allow people any recovery time. More than one hundred of
Speaker 1: them died. This kind of thing is possible anywhere. If
Speaker 1: you have central air standard where you live, the grid
Speaker 1: can always go down, as we've seen happen in Texas
Speaker 1: over and over again. For someone with money, your best
Speaker 1: bet might be pairing a portable air conditioner like the
Speaker 1: Idea Duo, which ranges from five hundred to six hundred
Speaker 1: dollars on Amazon, with something like the Jackery SG two
Speaker 1: thousand plus, which with panels and a good sunlight, would
Speaker 1: allow you to run it during the day at least
Speaker 1: in a single room. As an aside, this is actually
Speaker 1: a case in which someone with a window unit is
Speaker 1: at more of an advantage than someone with central air.
Speaker 1: You can connect your jaggery directly to the breaker, but
Speaker 1: without expansion batteries, it's not going to run a whole
Speaker 1: home long, so you'd want to unplug everything and turn
Speaker 1: off the lights, running your AC in short bursts, and
Speaker 1: maintaining discipline with your doors at windows, ideally putting up
Speaker 1: foil or at least cardboard over the windows to maximize efficiency.
Speaker 1: If you're just being able to run a fan because
Speaker 1: you've got a smaller unit, you're probably looking at something like,
Speaker 1: you know, getting towels and rags wet, putting them over
Speaker 1: people's chests and faces, and kind of getting directly under
Speaker 1: the fan for the periods of time that you can
Speaker 1: afford to run it. Again, we are not talking about
Speaker 1: the most ideal comfort situations here, we are talking survival.
Speaker 1: The limitations I found for are generally twofold. One is
Speaker 1: that even with good sunlight, folding panels like the ones
Speaker 1: Jackerie and Jennifer ship me don't always hit their advertised wattage.
Speaker 1: This is because you've got to deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of other factors, the movement of the sun throughout the day,
Speaker 1: where shadows fall in your home or property, your access
Speaker 1: to the roof, how clean the panels are, and under
Speaker 1: normal use conditions, it is surprisingly easy to get stuff
Speaker 1: on them. On a sunny spring day in Oregon, I
Speaker 1: found my two hundred wat Jackery panels tended to get
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty two one hundred and fifty watts
Speaker 1: during the most optimal parts of the day. I was
Speaker 1: able to plug the Jackery panels into the Geniverse generator
Speaker 1: and vice versa, and I found that Jackerre's panels generally
Speaker 1: performed ten to fifteen percent better during real life conditions.
Speaker 1: I looked it up and on paper, the Genniverse has
Speaker 1: a solar cell efficiency or EFF rating of about twenty
Speaker 1: three point four percent. Jackery beats them by one percent
Speaker 1: with an EFF rating of twenty four point three. That
Speaker 1: is not enough of a difference to matter too much,
Speaker 1: although I should know that what I saw in real
Speaker 1: life use was a notable difference. You may experience something
Speaker 1: different with these panels, with any panels that you get.
Speaker 1: I can't claim to have tested anything but the ones
Speaker 1: that they shipped me. The Jackery Explorer two hundred plus
Speaker 1: is capable of taking fourteen hundred botts of input max,
Speaker 1: which would be seven sets of panels, although from what
Speaker 1: the manual says, it can take up to six solar
Speaker 1: Saga eighty panels to their two hundred wade panels under
Speaker 1: normal conditions. You can expand all this with added Explorer
Speaker 1: two thousands running in tandem and up to twelve solar
Speaker 1: Saga eighties on a single generator but doing that requires
Speaker 1: some wonky shit with cables, and at that point we're
Speaker 1: talking about a system beyond what most people are likely
Speaker 1: to want or need. When it comes to durability, I
Speaker 1: suspect that both the Jackerie and Genniverse are probably close
Speaker 1: and functioning. Online reviews give both systems good user reliability ratings.
Speaker 1: In real world conditions, I had the opportunity to do
Speaker 1: something that you never want to do in real life
Speaker 1: with the device you've paid for, which was work one
Speaker 1: of these systems to death. It shows the Genniverse and
Speaker 1: the torture test I used basically involved keeping it outside,
Speaker 1: charging and providing power at a fairly low trickle for
Speaker 1: twelve days of intermittent rain and wind in the Pacific
Speaker 1: Northwest late winter. We got about two inches of rain
Speaker 1: during this time, and that was enough to eventually kill
Speaker 1: the generator, but it took close to two weeks of
Speaker 1: downright irresponsible treatment. We are talking the kind of neglect
Speaker 1: you would not subject a product like this too without
Speaker 1: no other option. In subsequent tests with the Jaggery, I've
Speaker 1: been able to keep it operating outdoors in bad weather
Speaker 1: without damage through taking minimal measures to shield the generator.
Speaker 1: The least I did was stick a plastic home depot
Speaker 1: crate lid above it, literally at it down on top
Speaker 1: of the unit to stop water from just hitting the
Speaker 1: ports on the sides and back directly. The most elaborate
Speaker 1: protective set up outdoors was a simple tarp cover and
Speaker 1: making sure it was elevated a bit above the ground.
Speaker 1: When it comes to which of these systems would be
Speaker 1: best for you, the primary difference between the Giniverse and
Speaker 1: the Jackery is that the Ginniverse is higher capacity twenty
Speaker 1: four hundred nineteen watt hours as opposed to a little
Speaker 1: over twenty forty two for the Jackery. This means that
Speaker 1: without input, you can run a normal fridge off the
Speaker 1: Giniverse for about six hours, and goodsn you can recharge
Speaker 1: it fully in eight hours with two Geniverse solar powered
Speaker 1: two panels. The Jackery system will recharge in a similar
Speaker 1: timeframe under optimal conditions and give you a bit less
Speaker 1: usable power. It has the benefit of being almost twenty
Speaker 1: pounds lighter and significantly friendlier in design. For reasons that
Speaker 1: elude explanation, the Giniverse lacks a telescoping handle or wheels
Speaker 1: to help you maneuver it. Into or out of position.
Speaker 1: This sucks because it's heavy, and if it's not wired
Speaker 1: into your breaker and you're using this for an emergency,
Speaker 1: you might need to move it around so that you
Speaker 1: can have the panels in different positions to take advantage
Speaker 1: of the sun. This also makes the geniverse less useful
Speaker 1: than the Jaggery in normal daily life tasks. I started
Speaker 1: this episode with a rather ridiculous story about my waterbed,
Speaker 1: but I've actually found quite a few tasks at which
Speaker 1: having a weeelable battery capable of this kind of output
Speaker 1: is handy. Basically, any power tool that you are likely
Speaker 1: to own will run off of either of these systems,
Speaker 1: but only the Jaggery is friendly enough to want to
Speaker 1: move around outdoors to take advantage of this fact. And
Speaker 1: this kind of gets us to the crux of a
Speaker 1: question some of you have been asking this whole episode,
Speaker 1: how practical are any of these solutions. My answer is complicated,
Speaker 1: but I think fair. If you can't or aren't going
Speaker 1: to expend the energy to become competent with solar power
Speaker 1: to the extent that someone living off grid would generally
Speaker 1: want to be, these are exceptional solutions so long as
Speaker 1: you can afford them. In both cases, you're looking at
Speaker 1: around three thousand dollars for a setup that could power
Speaker 1: anything in your home and would handle all necessary tasks
Speaker 1: for law longer than the length of an average blackout.
Speaker 1: The Jackerree and Geniverse systems are also future capable. You
Speaker 1: can expand both with added batteries over time and add
Speaker 1: in more panel capacity up to a point that makes
Speaker 1: them quite attractive if you can afford them. My personal
Speaker 1: recommendation would be for the Jackery over the Geniverse for
Speaker 1: most people for a couple of reasons. Please note that
Speaker 1: I received review units from both companies and money from neither,
Speaker 1: so I have no vested interest in picking one over
Speaker 1: the other. One reason that I chose the Jackery Explorer
Speaker 1: two thousand is that it is a bit cheaper nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred for the base system and four hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: nine for each set of two hundred watt folding panels.
Speaker 1: Compare that to the Geniverse Home Power two Pro, which
Speaker 1: starts at two two hundred and ninety nine dollars and
Speaker 1: thirty four hundred dollars for the generator with two two
Speaker 1: hundred watt panels. The Jackery is also meaningfully easier to
Speaker 1: use in recreational situations, so it is a system that
Speaker 1: the average person will get more use out of. You
Speaker 1: can take it camping easily, you can use it for overlanding,
Speaker 1: and you can have it ready for another emergency. I
Speaker 1: will note that if you have a system like this,
Speaker 1: you will surprise yourself with how often it comes in
Speaker 1: a handy for simple tasks. What I like about both
Speaker 1: systems is again their future compatible. You can start with
Speaker 1: the base system and then add a couple of panels,
Speaker 1: and as you save more money, you can add an
Speaker 1: additional battery packs and panels to give you both more
Speaker 1: capacity and more input, with the goal of eventually storing
Speaker 1: a day or a couple of days of power and
Speaker 1: being able to run your home minimally during extended emergencies.
Speaker 1: The shortcoming that you'll find with either system is that
Speaker 1: if you have a normal home, it will cost as
Speaker 1: much as a nice used car to have a setup
Speaker 1: that could run your house for extended periods of time,
Speaker 1: let alone indefinitely. A typical home AC unit can burn
Speaker 1: something like fourteen thousand kilowat hours per day, and that's
Speaker 1: just half of what an average home draws heating amounts
Speaker 1: to a comparable draw. So while these systems can be
Speaker 1: expanded significantly with additional batteries, if you're dealing with an
Speaker 1: outage that extends past several days, you will encounter severe limitations.
Speaker 1: This brings me to the most impressive but least accessible
Speaker 1: piece of gear that I test for these episodes, The
Speaker 1: Anchor Solick's F thirty eight hundred portable power station. This
Speaker 1: holds about three eight hundred and forty watt hours of
Speaker 1: electricity and can output six thousand watts if necessary. You
Speaker 1: can charge your electric car or run a welding rig
Speaker 1: off of this thing. It can be expanded with additional
Speaker 1: battery storage, and if you had thirty or forty grand
Speaker 1: to spend, you could wire this thing up to power
Speaker 1: your house for close to a week without sunlight. The
Speaker 1: F thirty eight hundred itself costs four thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: you can run two of them in tandem with twelve
Speaker 1: battery packs each to power your home for about two
Speaker 1: weeks for just the cost of at this point a
Speaker 1: rather nice car that is wildly out of reach for
Speaker 1: most people, But if you can afford it, the Anchor
Speaker 1: is a really cool system. There's been a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of thought put into everything, from how the device is
Speaker 1: constructed and laid out to how you carry it. I
Speaker 1: particularly appreciate the fact that you can wheel it like
Speaker 1: a big suitcase or lay it on its side, where
Speaker 1: it has additional pop out handles to enable you to
Speaker 1: carry it in multiple different ways. All of Anchor's products
Speaker 1: feel premium, and the metal handles that I said pop
Speaker 1: out are like metal. They're very solid. Everything has a
Speaker 1: clean interface and what I would describe as an exceedingly
Speaker 1: livable industrial design. If you happen to be one of
Speaker 1: the people who can consider putting down four thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for an emergency battery, the Solix F thirty eight hundred
Speaker 1: will see you through ninety nine percent of the power
Speaker 1: loss situations you are likely to encounter, and require minimal
Speaker 1: knowledge to set up and get working. It is easy
Speaker 1: to attach to your home breaker, and Anchor's instructions for
Speaker 1: doing so are simple to follow for folks who can
Speaker 1: afford the cost then, and that cost is not inconsiderable.
Speaker 1: It is a great mix of might save your life
Speaker 1: and will definitely come in handy. I should also note
Speaker 1: that the Jaggery system has a better pedigree than the
Speaker 1: Geniverse system in the industry, probably similar to Anchor. They've
Speaker 1: got a long track record and are well regarded not
Speaker 1: as inexpensive solution, but as a reliable one with a
Speaker 1: good warranty and a lot of history to back them up.
Speaker 1: All of these systems are, in my experience, reliable and
Speaker 1: easy to use. All of them are and I have
Speaker 1: to hit on this a few times because it matters expensive.
Speaker 1: That presents a problem if you're someone who sees the
Speaker 1: value and these is potential emergency devices, but will realistically
Speaker 1: never be able to throw down three thousand dollars for them.
Speaker 1: It would be irresponsible of me to give you some
Speaker 1: specific technical advice because I lack that knowledge. But I
Speaker 1: have some experience here, and we're going to get to
Speaker 1: that after this next set of adds. We're back and
Speaker 1: we're talking about what you can do at least a
Speaker 1: little bit of what you can do. Again the furthest
Speaker 1: thing in the world from an expert here, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to at least provide some starting points from folks
Speaker 1: who are never going to be able to afford these
Speaker 1: more formal, easier to use idiot proof kind of situations,
Speaker 1: because while I'm not an expert on this, I have
Speaker 1: lived off grit a bit, and I have known people
Speaker 1: who have done so in a wide variety of weird situations.
Speaker 1: At one point, my partner operated a solar powered shack
Speaker 1: that they lived out of, with batteries so comparatively primitive
Speaker 1: that she had to regularly refill them with water. That
Speaker 1: kind of maintenance is going to be second nature to
Speaker 1: people who know they're shit with solar, and those people
Speaker 1: have a lot more options than the laymen. Probably the
Speaker 1: most impressive in cash neutral setup I saw was in
Speaker 1: a place called East Jesus in far southern California. This
Speaker 1: was a totally off grid power setup that kept around
Speaker 1: twelve to eighteen people alive year round and often intense temperatures,
Speaker 1: powering AC units and trailers and RVs, fridges, fans, lights,
Speaker 1: The entertainment equipment they used the wakes Now. Their setup
Speaker 1: was all scavenged or bought cheap in auction. The batteries
Speaker 1: they used, which took up an entire shipping container sized space,
Speaker 1: were purchased cheap from a telecom company in the area,
Speaker 1: which retired its deep cycle batteries once they hit eighty
Speaker 1: percent of their original functioning capacity or something like that.
Speaker 1: Panels were likewise scavenged or bought cheap and used. Since
Speaker 1: they had a lot of space but little money, Wiring
Speaker 1: a shitload of panels a varying efficiency together was a
Speaker 1: solution that they could afford, both in terms of the
Speaker 1: money that it cost and in terms of the space
Speaker 1: that was required. Most people lack the technical knowledg to
Speaker 1: set something like this up. I sure do, and even
Speaker 1: more of them lack the space, but it is an
Speaker 1: example of the sort of solutions that people with little
Speaker 1: to no cash can cook up if they're clever and
Speaker 1: knowledgeable about the fundamental technology. It would be extremely irresponsible
Speaker 1: if I did not add here that solar setups are
Speaker 1: the sort of thing where it behooves you to be
Speaker 1: exceedingly fucking careful. The chief benefit of the system's goal
Speaker 1: zero anchor, Jenniverse and Jackery make is that they are
Speaker 1: all as close to idiot proof as they can be.
Speaker 1: Part of the cost comes from the fact that they
Speaker 1: use expensive but extremely stable lithium iron phosphate batteries. These
Speaker 1: have long life spans. Jackery rates theirs at ten years
Speaker 1: and a cycle life of up to two thousand cycles.
Speaker 1: They have a good standby time too. Jackery rates theirs
Speaker 1: at up to fifty percent charge after two years in storage.
Speaker 1: A lot of the cheaper or scavenged options you find
Speaker 1: are lithium polymer batteries. These are rather infamous for igniting
Speaker 1: and burning down people's homes. There are solutions you can
Speaker 1: find online and if you're interested in cheaper homebrew solar
Speaker 1: setups out there, one place I'd suggest starting is diyssolarforum
Speaker 1: dot com. The people there will have suggestions for minimizing risk.
Speaker 1: Since LiPo is one of the most dangerous battery chemistry
Speaker 1: types out there. Some people build what are called battery bunkers.
Speaker 1: One a form I've seen this tape is basically a
Speaker 1: cube of bricks around and below the batteries with a
Speaker 1: ceramic flat sheet above them. Some people will suggest lacing
Speaker 1: sandbags above the bunkers that if the battery goes into
Speaker 1: a thermal runway, it will melt the sandbag and pour
Speaker 1: sand into the battery to stop the fire. Again, I
Speaker 1: am not giving advice here, just providing you with an
Speaker 1: example of the kinds of concerns that you do have
Speaker 1: to think about. When considering building setups like this for
Speaker 1: your own, it is unfortunate. The most financially accessible way
Speaker 1: to do this is by taking the research into your
Speaker 1: own hands and relying on the experience of hobbyists and
Speaker 1: lifestyle explorers who have been there before. But disasters aren't fair,
Speaker 1: and neither is life. Another exploratory option I'd suggest is
Speaker 1: googling questions like how to run small room ac off
Speaker 1: solar or how to run twelve volt fridge indefinitely I'm
Speaker 1: a solar, and then add Reddit as a search term.
Speaker 1: You'll find threads of people in off grids, solar or
Speaker 1: overlanding subreddits who have explored these problems for themselves and
Speaker 1: their journeys can at least act as a basis for
Speaker 1: your own. I'd like to thank at the end of
Speaker 1: this the reps at Jacker, each universe and anchor who
Speaker 1: sent products for me to review. It was incredibly nice
Speaker 1: of them all, and from an esthetic point of view,
Speaker 1: they all make great gear that is a genuine pleasure
Speaker 1: to use. Goll Zero didn't send me anything, but I've
Speaker 1: paid for their stuff for years and I've never had
Speaker 1: anything fail in the field, so I figure I owe
Speaker 1: them a shout out here.
Speaker 3: Too, and it's going to do it for us.
Speaker 1: It could happen here for the day, so you know,
Speaker 1: check in tomorrow or you know, Monday, depending on when
Speaker 1: you hear this. Whenever it drops and yeah, goodbye.
Speaker 12: Welcome to It could happen here. I'm Garrison, David, and
Speaker 12: once again it has been happening here as protest encampments
Speaker 12: have sprung up in at least eighty college campuses all
Speaker 12: across the country as Israel continues its genoside of the
Speaker 12: Palestine people and is now currently bombing multiple sides of Rafa.
Speaker 12: Last month, students at American universities began protesting their university's
Speaker 12: ties to Israel and weapons manufacturers, calling for divestment, as
Speaker 12: well as urging their institutions to join in calls for ceasefire.
Speaker 12: After a militarized police raid at the Humboldt protest utilizing
Speaker 12: a prison swat team, police departments around the country began
Speaker 12: cracking down more harshly on the protest encampments. The day
Speaker 12: after the Humboldt one, NYPD raided Columbia University and fired
Speaker 12: a gun inside Hamilton Hall while trying to use their
Speaker 12: handgun as a flashlight. The Portland Police Bureau quickly followed
Speaker 12: suit and cracked down at the encampment at Portland State
Speaker 12: University and have since barricaded that library. As of time
Speaker 12: of recording, around twenty five hundred arrests have taken place
Speaker 12: at college protests all around the country. Police have displayed
Speaker 12: incredible violence, sending people to the hospital with broken ankles
Speaker 12: and concussions. In many cities, there's been heavy use of
Speaker 12: pepper spray, pepperballs as well as tasers. The protests have
Speaker 12: also faced violence from a mix of far right agitators,
Speaker 12: zionist counter protesters, and racist frats that have targeted the
Speaker 12: protest encampments with physical violence, especially at UCLA. We here
Speaker 12: at it could happen here are lucky enough to have
Speaker 12: correspondence kind of based all around the country. So I'm
Speaker 12: joined today by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Molly Konger
Speaker 12: to discuss our experiences as people who have been present
Speaker 12: at some of these encampments all across the country. I'm
Speaker 12: going to start by talking about Emory University here in Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 12: This is a weird one and I think I'll actually
Speaker 12: go into more depth in a future episode, but this
Speaker 12: episode's going to kind of focus on discussions and we're
Speaker 12: going to kind of compare our experiences. So oddly enough,
Speaker 12: I think Emory was the first one to actually face
Speaker 12: significant police repression. Tents went up on the Emory Quad
Speaker 12: on April fifteenth, and that morning there was a heavy
Speaker 12: police response from EMORYPD, APD and Georgia State Patrol. They
Speaker 12: fired tasers, there was rubber bullets, pepper balls, and over
Speaker 12: two dozen arrests. Students and others began to rally later
Speaker 12: that afternoon to retake the quad. A few hundred people
Speaker 12: did so, and a small occupation began inside the Kendler
Speaker 12: School of Theology building. M REYPD was pinned up against
Speaker 12: this building. GSP arrived as reinforcements, and people started to flee,
Speaker 12: as you know, you see GSP kind of form this area.
Speaker 12: But people were able to calm some of those other
Speaker 12: students down and regroup and actually hold that position for
Speaker 12: a little while longer police began attacking students, a small
Speaker 12: clash began, there was pepper balls. People continued to kind
Speaker 12: of hold that ground in front of the building. There
Speaker 12: was students also inside. As people try to you know,
Speaker 12: render aid to those who have been pepper baled, and
Speaker 12: while maintaining this position in front of the building, more
Speaker 12: and more police arrived like a ridiculous number, and the
Speaker 12: crowd eventually starts to slowly disperse as police just flood campus.
Speaker 12: Police from all around the greater Atlanta area just flood
Speaker 12: this very small section of Decatur, which is a small
Speaker 12: suburb to the northeast of Atlanta or to the east
Speaker 12: of Atlanta.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 12: Emory President Greg Femmes said the Thursday protest was concocted
Speaker 12: by outside entities, which is why Emory PD, APD and
Speaker 12: GSP violently disrupted the protest because it was caused by
Speaker 12: outside agitators. Line that New York Mayor Eric Adams would
Speaker 12: then reiterate to justify the massive crackdown at Columbia. So
Speaker 12: the next day we had five hundred people march around
Speaker 12: campus and then this little kind of committee of Emory
Speaker 12: faculty and staff called the Every Open Expression Committee began
Speaker 12: to negotiate with the protest and they quote unquote allowed
Speaker 12: the protest to march around campus, and this small subset
Speaker 12: of the group began to occupy the Coxhaull Food Court
Speaker 12: and police. Plice were ordered to stay out of sight
Speaker 12: this whole day and a few of the days after
Speaker 12: unless the Open Expression Committee specifically called them in. And
Speaker 12: what was able to happen is that this Open Expression
Speaker 12: Committee was able to wield the threat of police as
Speaker 12: a deterrent from people taking kind of more militant action
Speaker 12: or to actually set up things that would hold down
Speaker 12: an encampment, like if tenths were set up, this would
Speaker 12: result in this Open Expression Committee to call in the police.
Speaker 12: So this was a very successfully wielded threat. So as
Speaker 12: the night goes on, the Open Spression Committee does threaten
Speaker 12: to call police on the Cox Food Hall protest, which
Speaker 12: scares a whole bunch of these you know, young teens
Speaker 12: early twenties out of the building. A smaller group of
Speaker 12: around one hundred people remain on the quad till midnight,
Speaker 12: police arrive and then everyone disperses. The next day kind
Speaker 12: of follows a similar pattern open expression and some student
Speaker 12: organizers over the course of the next few days actually
Speaker 12: start directing police to detain and criminally trespass people wearing
Speaker 12: cafeas on suspicion of them having been engaged in like
Speaker 12: doing graffiti, and really it just allows police to target
Speaker 12: specific people that the Open Expression Committee kind of just
Speaker 12: don't want on campus based on either how they dress,
Speaker 12: how they're kind of walking, acting, behaving, that sort of thing.
Speaker 12: And this pattern followed basically up until the present. People
Speaker 12: would try to take buildings do smaller protests. Police would
Speaker 12: either be called or there would be threats that they
Speaker 12: would be called. It would kind of calm the crowd down,
Speaker 12: everyone would disperse. If ten's got set up, that was
Speaker 12: seen as like a major sign of escalation, which would
Speaker 12: result in police being called. And it's kind of the
Speaker 12: small back and forth, and eventually this just kind of
Speaker 12: led to the situation Emory slowly dissolving, slowly fizzling out
Speaker 12: as the people who were wanting to do stuff kind
Speaker 12: of got pushed more to the side, got pushed out,
Speaker 12: more and more people became began getting criminally trespassed, and
Speaker 12: the group of students at Emory just did not want
Speaker 12: to risk a further engagement with police after the first day,
Speaker 12: and that's kind of led to things slowly slowly dissolving,
Speaker 12: And that's basically with the situation currently. Things of the
Speaker 12: kind of tapered off. School's ending. I'm sure this will
Speaker 12: be a similar, similar thing across the country as the
Speaker 12: school season is ending and these protest encampments will so
Speaker 12: we also just dissolve away as police repression continues. Let's
Speaker 12: see who should we move on to the next little report?
Speaker 12: James James stout from you. You went to U see
Speaker 12: San Diego.
Speaker 3: That's right. I did both both as a graduate student
Speaker 3: and then again as an adjunct professor, and then again
Speaker 3: as a journalist last week, which is what we're going
Speaker 3: to talk about this time. So you see San Diego
Speaker 3: had it was interesting the encampment began on the first
Speaker 3: of May, but s JP had posted this thing about
Speaker 3: their big rally was going to be on the third
Speaker 3: of May, on the Friday.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: S JP is Students for Justice in Palestine. It's one
Speaker 3: of the groups it's organized a lot of these protests
Speaker 3: across It depends you know where you're at. You might
Speaker 3: have the Council on American Islamic Relations, you might have
Speaker 3: the Muslim Student Association, you might have both. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you Jewish Fast for Peace. Yeah yeah. Very often they're
Speaker 3: they're collaborating, which is great. We love to see collaboration.
Speaker 3: So what they did was they posted that they were
Speaker 3: going to have a big rally on Friday, and that,
Speaker 3: as it turned out, was like a fake out, and
Speaker 3: they actually started their encampment on Wednesday, So they distracted
Speaker 3: admin with that Instagram post, which is pretty clever, pretty funny,
Speaker 3: And they began this encampment on Wednesday on Library Walk,
Speaker 3: which is kind of right in the middle of UCSD.
Speaker 3: If people have seen, you know, people would be familiar
Speaker 3: with the UCSD guys Le Library from the film Attack
Speaker 3: of the Killer Tomatoes, which it played important role in. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I can see the look of recognition on my colleagues faces.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's the only thing that's ever cool that's
Speaker 3: happened at UCSD. So they set up this encampment. It
Speaker 3: wasn't huge, but it was certainly a serious presence, right,
Speaker 3: and they didn't barricade it or sort of make it
Speaker 3: make a defensible That was a conscious choice, right, And
Speaker 3: they did set up a security system whereby they had
Speaker 3: student security people controlling who entered and I guess left
Speaker 3: the encampment if you really wanted to, you get the
Speaker 3: cops got in, right, Like it was a wist high
Speaker 3: vinyl offence. But in theory, these people were controlling who
Speaker 3: went in and who went out. Some times these people
Speaker 3: were asking people to sign up on a sheet. I
Speaker 3: think I hope they stopped doing that because obviously that
Speaker 3: you're sort of helping the cops make their prosecution case. There.
Speaker 3: Over the next five days, the encampment was extremely peaceful.
Speaker 3: Right There was a focus among this group on not
Speaker 3: giving any provocation to police or to addmin to any
Speaker 3: reason to evict them. So they had some lectures, some speeches,
Speaker 3: they had some live music, they did some dancing, all
Speaker 3: stuff that's in no way provocation or violent. On the
Speaker 3: fifth of May, a large counter protest was organized. Most
Speaker 3: it bought kind of like get off my Law and
Speaker 3: boomer types, but then also like some right wing streamers
Speaker 3: Oreo Express or I guess the surviving half of Oreo Express,
Speaker 3: Josh Fulfer, was there. I think the guy who was
Speaker 3: first responded to media, Jsuay or Joe Felix, was also there.
Speaker 3: These are right wing streamers that, sadly, like, if you
Speaker 3: live where I live, you have to be familiar with
Speaker 3: where they do a lot of border harassment to They
Speaker 3: were obviously trying to film and identify students, so I
Speaker 3: guess this was on the evening of the fifth That evening,
Speaker 3: the Chancellor Costler sent around an email basically saying that
Speaker 3: what the students were doing was prohibited, that the tents
Speaker 3: were not included in freedom of speech, and asking them
Speaker 3: to disband peacefully. The next morning, at about five or
Speaker 3: six in their morning, literally hundreds of cops from several agencies.
Speaker 3: Right the UCPD does not have the footprint that we saw.
Speaker 3: There was California Highway Patrol, San Diego Sheriff's Department, and
Speaker 3: UCPD all in full right gear lined up opposite the encampment.
Speaker 3: They say that they asked students to leave and that
Speaker 3: those who didn't were arrested. And when they're arrested, obviously
Speaker 3: like violence was used by the police, as always is,
Speaker 3: the encampment was destroyed. Everything that was there was tossed
Speaker 3: into a dumpster. Some stuff was then recovered. I guess
Speaker 3: there's now a lost and found people to recover their
Speaker 3: things like laptops, right, like expensive personal items that were
Speaker 3: swept up. At that point, people were arrested and then
Speaker 3: detained in the Price Center at UCSD. The Price Center,
Speaker 3: if you've not been on campus, is like a large
Speaker 3: shopping mall that also has some lecture facilities. But it's
Speaker 3: where the Panda expresses on campus. It's not trapped in
Speaker 3: with the Panda Express, which is a dangerous situation. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: and the Panda Express is not operational sadly more it's
Speaker 3: a shame, but it's where they have those their dining horn.
Speaker 3: It's like a center of corporate operations on campus. It's
Speaker 3: a very bleak place. So they're trapped in the Price Center.
Speaker 3: The students around campus, those who are not in the
Speaker 3: encampment then rallied to protect these students and tried to
Speaker 3: block the police from loading them on buses and then
Speaker 3: block the buses from leaving. And that's when we saw
Speaker 3: the Sheriff's department using massive amounts of violence. Right, our
Speaker 3: Sheriff's department still carry just like big wooden sticks. They're
Speaker 3: not like the black night sticks, you know, with like
Speaker 3: the right angled grip. It's just a giant it's just
Speaker 3: a big wooden baton. Yeah, it's the esthetic of our
Speaker 3: Sheriff's Department's right gear is consciously or unconsciously something that
Speaker 3: I associate with the civil rights tear and the repression
Speaker 3: of the civil rights movement. Perhaps that's a choice. I
Speaker 3: don't know, but that was when the Sheriff's department started
Speaker 3: to become violent. That's when they brutalized and arrested both
Speaker 3: generalists and students. In total, sixty five people are arrested
Speaker 3: protests and moved down to the two jails. We have
Speaker 3: different facility. There's a men's journal at women's jail, and
Speaker 3: they tend to they tend to incarcerate trans people with
Speaker 3: the gender they're assigned at birth. I've heard about lots
Speaker 3: of things that happened in those jails that were pretty bad,
Speaker 3: but I haven't been able to confirm them enough that
Speaker 3: I think I'd be comfortable airing them. So people are released,
Speaker 3: lots of them charged with several misdemeanors, trespassing, encroachment, being
Speaker 3: at the scene of a riot, resisting arrests, things like that. Right,
Speaker 3: two members of faculty were also arrested. Forty people were students,
Speaker 3: and at the last time I checked, they hadn't confirmed
Speaker 3: the status of the other twenty ish people. So that
Speaker 3: happened on the sixth yesterday, which was of course the eighth.
Speaker 3: There was a big march about a thousand students. It
Speaker 3: looked like kind of both calling for the UC to
Speaker 3: divest and calling for the UC to drop charges and
Speaker 3: drop academic sanctions. So right now, all the people who
Speaker 3: are arrested are facing interim suspension, they're facing a viction
Speaker 3: from their student housing, which San Diego, if we've spoken
Speaker 3: about brazilion times, has an incredibly expensive housing market and
Speaker 3: it's almost impossible to access to affordable housing here. And
Speaker 3: in some cases, you know, they're facing serious academic sanctions.
Speaker 3: It could affect the rest of their academic careers, student
Speaker 3: workers who are arrested or also now not being allowed
Speaker 3: to work on campus. So one hundred and eighty three
Speaker 3: faculty signed the letter asking the university to not do that.
Speaker 3: That came out last night, and that's kind of where
Speaker 3: we're at in terms of what's happened to these people.
Speaker 3: I think it's probably worth noting that the U see
Speaker 3: Riverside settled, right that they negotiated a settlement. That's in
Speaker 3: so Riverside is north and slightly east of here, east
Speaker 3: of Los Angeles County. You see Riverside is. I don't
Speaker 3: know in terms of student numbers how big it is,
Speaker 3: but they settled I think on the Wednesday, so it'd
Speaker 3: be mad Mayda. The Friday, May the third, I was
Speaker 3: at the UCSD and meant that day and I heard
Speaker 3: them announce it. They were overside settlement. I'm just going
Speaker 3: to say it didn't achieve some of the more radical
Speaker 3: goals of the student organizing movement, not to be divestment,
Speaker 3: to be an academic boycott. They did get the university
Speaker 3: to publish its investments which are linked to Israel at least,
Speaker 3: which is a step. I guess. They got a task force.
Speaker 3: The university is going to be very willing to grant
Speaker 3: you task forces and panels and things which can turn
Speaker 3: your radical aims into a bureaucratic mess. Right, And they
Speaker 3: got the university to look into removing Sabra Hummas from
Speaker 3: its men use as well. Get get Yeah.
Speaker 8: The biggest concession was the Hummers, which isn't isn't great?
Speaker 13: Wait that was That wasn't a joke? I thought you
Speaker 13: were joking.
Speaker 3: No no, I'm not joking. No no, no, no, Sobra
Speaker 3: Hummas was called out by name. They didn't. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying they're really investment yeah, yeah, no, no, they're not
Speaker 3: divesting from Sabra Hummas, Molly, they're looking into doing that.
Speaker 3: In conjunction with their acquisitions procedure. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 3: it's a huge dub. I don't want to undermine what
Speaker 3: these people have done. Like it's it's scary when the
Speaker 3: cops come to get you. And I understand, but this
Speaker 3: is a sort of visa concessions or university is going
Speaker 3: to give you. Right, you might get a snack task force,
Speaker 3: and you might get they're already publicly available investments listed
Speaker 3: in one place on their website at UCSD. The administration
Speaker 3: claims that the students were unwilling to negotiate. I wasn't
Speaker 3: able to ascertain if what system they had, right, Like
Speaker 3: I was trying to ask if they had delegates or representatives,
Speaker 3: who are going to do those being different things, right,
Speaker 3: who are going to negotiate? I was enabled to get
Speaker 3: a clear answer, and that they did very clearly publish
Speaker 3: their demands right, And the university doesn't seem to have
Speaker 3: proceeded to any of them. So that more or less
Speaker 3: is where we're at in San Diego. They're are ongoing
Speaker 3: panels and press conferences. I'm going to attend one, so
Speaker 3: it's going to be one by faculty tomorrow on the ninth,
Speaker 3: the faculty have also been organizing right in a group
Speaker 3: called Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and they've been organizing.
Speaker 3: I think it was very impressive that they like accepted
Speaker 3: student leadership and didn't try and like, you know, come
Speaker 3: in and take a vanguard roll or tell everybody what
Speaker 3: to do. But but there mostly to facilitate the student
Speaker 3: protest and protect it. So they're having a press conference tomorrow,
Speaker 3: so things that's definitely ongoing here. But that's kind of
Speaker 3: where we're at as of today, which is the ninth
Speaker 3: of me.
Speaker 12: We will be back in here about the happenings in
Speaker 12: Chicago and I believe Richmond Charlottesville after this outbreak. Yeah
Speaker 12: for Sobra, I hope probably not Chockolahamas. That's the chocolate
Speaker 12: Hammas is a travesty, crime against humanity.
Speaker 3: All Right, we are back.
Speaker 8: I have a big bowl of non Sobra chocolate hummers. Actually,
Speaker 8: so fuck all of you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the break Garrison got out that chickpeas and
Speaker 3: a blenda is a really beautiful thing.
Speaker 12: Let's hear from me about what's been happening in Chicago
Speaker 12: where there it's been multiple, multiple of these protest occupations.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so there's been four occupations so far in Chicago
Speaker 6: that it's it's possible. I don't know. I'm actually kind
Speaker 6: of surprised, Like the University of Ville Nois hasn't, Like
Speaker 6: there have been a few campuses that I thought would
Speaker 6: go up that haven't. Yeah, so we're gonna talk about
Speaker 6: three of them because the other one I didn't get to.
Speaker 6: We'll we'll well, we'll explain why I wasn't at the
Speaker 6: School of the Art Institute one because.
Speaker 8: That's a shit show, sixty eight arrests.
Speaker 6: Yeah, disaster.
Speaker 3: We will get to that.
Speaker 6: So the first one I was at was at Northwestern,
Speaker 6: And I think the other thing that's important about these
Speaker 6: encampments is that they're really really geographically spread out across
Speaker 6: the city. So Northwestern is not in Chicago, it is
Speaker 6: in is it a like is it a suburb called Evanston?
Speaker 6: Is a very rich suburb. Okay, the other thing we
Speaker 6: should probably get across this these the Chicago camp it's
Speaker 6: all started kind of late into this process. They're not
Speaker 6: there's reasons for this that I can't get into, but
Speaker 6: they're all kind of late comers. On April twenty fifth,
Speaker 6: Northwestern one starts and it's a really chill occupation for
Speaker 6: the most part. So there's like a police raid on
Speaker 6: night one, but then the kids just come back and
Speaker 6: put all the tents up again. And then after that,
Speaker 6: like the Evanston police department is a joke, right, Like
Speaker 6: they're not I mean, they've probably done terrible things, but
Speaker 6: like they're not. They're not like the police departments in
Speaker 6: the rest of the city, who are like the guys
Speaker 6: you teach the CIA how to torture people, right, Yeah,
Speaker 6: and so yeah, I wanted to talk a bit about
Speaker 6: kind of the vibes of it because it was it's
Speaker 6: a very like early occupation kind of vibe, right. It's
Speaker 6: I mean, like I walk in, there's it's a bunch
Speaker 6: of kids like sitting on tents doing homework. People are sleeping,
Speaker 6: There's like people are like eating meals.
Speaker 12: Everyone's really happy, very similar to people just hanging out
Speaker 12: in the quat at Emory and I'm sure many other
Speaker 12: places around the country. Yeah, I think I think in
Speaker 12: everything that that should be mentioned is you know, so
Speaker 12: like obviously these are these are proteo, these are camps
Speaker 12: insolidated with palessign, right, so you're you're expecting an internationalist event.
Speaker 12: This one like I walked in there and there is
Speaker 12: a woman on the stage in the encampment while I
Speaker 12: say stage, and there's a woman using their sound equipment,
Speaker 12: which made you quieter.
Speaker 3: Too, but was talking about the.
Speaker 6: Zapatistas and this is the thing you see over and
Speaker 6: over and over again, right, It's like, yeah, these are
Speaker 6: about these the enchampsts that I'm at are you know,
Speaker 6: obviously they're about Palestign, But there's this real there's very
Speaker 6: kind of there's a deep internationalism there that's very tangible
Speaker 6: and powerful. I mean, like, you know, I was walking
Speaker 6: through the tamp and I was I was like, you know,
Speaker 6: there are kids like reading on the on the lawn
Speaker 6: and I'm like I'm like pointing out like, oh hey,
Speaker 6: this is that's the copy of The Wretched of the
Speaker 6: Earth that I have from college. Like you know, it's
Speaker 6: all stuff like that. It was all very chill. It
Speaker 6: like rained on us. So we spend much time like
Speaker 6: waterproofing tents. I think the interesting things about this is
Speaker 6: that there's a there's a really kind of wild mix
Speaker 6: of people there. It's it's this, it's this thing you
Speaker 6: only really get in social movements that are like going
Speaker 6: somewhere where, you know, I mean I was running into
Speaker 6: people from groups like old school, like like I ran
Speaker 6: to zone from students for a democratic society, Like I
Speaker 6: didn't even know that groups still existed, like I thought
Speaker 6: I thought went down well, so there there was a
Speaker 6: second round of them in the two thousands, so I
Speaker 6: thought they died after that, but apparently not. You know,
Speaker 6: so you have these mix of people from like groups
Speaker 6: that everyone thought was dead, right, Like, you know, there's
Speaker 6: a lot of sort of very experienced, like student organizers.
Speaker 6: There's also a lot of grad students, which is a dynamic.
Speaker 6: I don't think it's talked about very much because it's
Speaker 6: it's not just like eighteen year olds. There are a
Speaker 6: lot of people in these camps who have been doing
Speaker 6: this for a very long time. And you know, so
Speaker 6: you have those people, but you also have people who
Speaker 6: just I mean, like I talked to people who this
Speaker 6: was literally their first protest, right, It's like the first
Speaker 6: thing that evertility they'd ever come out to, And you know,
Speaker 6: there was this very kind of there's this very sort
Speaker 6: of camarader ReVibe. What there wasn't was a functional democracy,
Speaker 6: and that's that's a very Dusty everything about this encampment
Speaker 6: that was very different than the Chicago one, which I'll
Speaker 6: be getting to in a second. It's like they there
Speaker 6: was this sort of there was this group that was
Speaker 6: negotiating with the administration, and no one could really tell
Speaker 6: what they were doing. Like every once in a while
Speaker 6: a representative would come back from them and you'd hear something.
Speaker 6: But in the meantime, everyone is sort of running around
Speaker 6: based on rumors, trying to figure out what these people
Speaker 6: are negotiating. And it turns out what they're negotiating is
Speaker 6: an end to the protests, and basically the students like, okay,
Speaker 6: so there's a complicated set of demands. What actually happens
Speaker 6: is that all of the entire occupation is taken down.
Speaker 6: After a week, it's completely gone. Now there's nothing there.
Speaker 6: What they get from it was the university is re
Speaker 6: establishing an advisory committee on investment responsibilities. They got like
Speaker 6: question this Northwest supposed to answer questions about holding some
Speaker 6: stakeholders which may be disclosure, may not be. And they
Speaker 6: got some stuff that like is real from for like
Speaker 6: visiting like Palestinian faculty. But basically they didn't get any
Speaker 6: of the goals of the encampment, right, there's no investments.
Speaker 6: There's you know, a committee that can make recommendations about
Speaker 6: the investment, and we'll see if that even happens, because
Speaker 6: that's supposed to be spun out back in the fall. So,
Speaker 6: you know, they take down the encampment, they get nothing,
Speaker 6: they get no leverage, and nothing is you know, and
Speaker 6: all of the sort of student negotiators, and these negotiators
Speaker 6: tend they you know, Okay, so there are also like
Speaker 6: political splits in the camp. Right, It's kind of hard
Speaker 6: to get a sense of them just from looking at it,
Speaker 6: but you know, if you talk to enough people, you
Speaker 6: can sort of get the sense of like what the
Speaker 6: splits are, right, and Northwestern was sort of split between
Speaker 6: like the sort of liberal nego student negotiators who are
Speaker 6: from a lot of like some of the sort of
Speaker 6: more liberal student organizations, and the people who want to
Speaker 6: like you know, they're sort of like Baxibleist radicals and
Speaker 6: the maximust radicals get out maduvry because there's just not
Speaker 6: enough of them, and so they take the encampment down.
Speaker 6: And the people who were doing the negotiations had this
Speaker 6: whole line by we're building power, this is just the beginning,
Speaker 6: and there's nothing. There's been nothing else. They're screwed. They
Speaker 6: lost everything. Their negotiating power is gone.
Speaker 3: They got nothing.
Speaker 6: So in the wake of this, the University of Chicago
Speaker 6: encampment starts up. Vnwversit of Chicago complete other side of
Speaker 6: the city, like Northwestern is in like the like the
Speaker 6: fucking bougiest, like richest, whitest of the like of like
Speaker 6: the north side of Chicago, which is like where rich
Speaker 6: white people are, except I mean, they're not even in Chicago, right,
Speaker 6: They're they're they're literally like they are they are a
Speaker 6: They're a suburb. The University of Chicago, on the other hand,
Speaker 6: is smack dab in the middle of the south side
Speaker 6: of Chicago. There's the University bubble, and then around the
Speaker 6: university this is like the heart, like the heart of
Speaker 6: black Chicago, right, very very different vibe. The other thing
Speaker 6: that's important about this is so the University of Chicago
Speaker 6: occupation starts in the context of the massive raids in Columbia,
Speaker 6: the raid and Humboldt, and very importantly the raids in UCLA, and.
Speaker 3: Both of both the sort of brutal police.
Speaker 6: Raid and the like absolute horrowing mass fascist attack on
Speaker 6: the barricades where you know me of people getting beat
Speaker 6: up the middle pipes. They're shooting. They're shooting like Fourth
Speaker 6: of July ass fireworks, like directly into into the people
Speaker 6: on the barricades. They are trying to kill the protesters.
Speaker 6: They beat a bunch of student journalists like half to death.
Speaker 6: And so University of Chicago camp when I get there,
Speaker 6: is right in the middle of transforming from a kind
Speaker 6: of like Northwestern style everyone's getting along like singing Kumbaya
Speaker 6: camp to like an actual fighting camp. Because I get
Speaker 6: there and like that day I get there at like nine,
Speaker 6: right three hours from when I get there, they were
Speaker 6: scheduled to be a giant rally of like right wing
Speaker 6: frats that is going to go come and attack the encampment.
Speaker 6: So the vibe is extremely different. It is a fighting camp.
Speaker 6: Everyone is preparing to, like, you know, fight for their lives.
Speaker 6: Everyone knows what happens at UCLA, and also everyone knows
Speaker 6: what happened at Northwestern, and people are fucking pissed. People
Speaker 6: are like, I mean unbelievably angry that then you know,
Speaker 6: then their view is the Northwestern camp sold everyone out, sure,
Speaker 6: and so you know, I mean, and the other thing
Speaker 6: about Chicago that was different from Northwestern is that U
Speaker 6: Chicago had has functional general assemblies, So there are like
Speaker 6: functional democratic meetings where everyone in the camp goes, Okay,
Speaker 6: we're going to like figure out what we're going to do.
Speaker 6: And these meetings are people are not happy with, you know,
Speaker 6: like they're not happy with what happened at the Northwestern.
Speaker 6: They're also like really pissed off at the third occupation,
Speaker 6: which was well, I mean, I guess I think that
Speaker 6: Paul happened in the middle of there. But the third
Speaker 6: occupation was the occupation at the School of the Art Institute.
Speaker 6: The School of the Art Institute is literally right in
Speaker 6: the heart of downtown Chicago. Like it is across like
Speaker 6: it is like across the street from Ballennium Park. It
Speaker 6: is like across the street from like the Art Institute
Speaker 6: of Chicago. It is in like the corporate center of Chicago. Sure,
Speaker 6: so they they they do. They do an occupation right
Speaker 6: and inside of like like I think I think they
Speaker 6: got seven hours in before SWAT teams showed up. They
Speaker 6: rerest sixty of people. It is a brutal raid.
Speaker 3: They're they're like the cops are beating people with metal
Speaker 3: bars like it is.
Speaker 13: It is.
Speaker 6: It is fucking terrible.
Speaker 3: It's it is. It is a bunch of swat teams
Speaker 3: beating up art students, very switch and harsh.
Speaker 8: To make sure it doesn't become like a continued thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, because because then and this is the thing
Speaker 6: about but both U Chicago and DePaul to less tuge
Speaker 6: extent too. But U Chicago and Northwestern are on basically
Speaker 6: like opposite extremes of the city right there. They're not
Speaker 6: in the middle of the city, of the downtown area
Speaker 6: that yeah, like the political league care about. It's on
Speaker 6: the north side, on the south side. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 6: school the artistry, like this is literally the middle of Chicago.
Speaker 6: And so they like it's very clear orders are coming
Speaker 6: down from above that this encampment can't be allowed to stay,
Speaker 6: and so they get the ship beaten out of them.
Speaker 6: And this is important for a few reasons. One it
Speaker 6: kind of like it kind of heightens the fear of
Speaker 6: police deppression. But the thing that it does that's important
Speaker 6: is that this goes fucking this like completely backfires on
Speaker 6: Brandon Johnson and you know, so that's sort of the
Speaker 6: mayor of the political administration, because this is you know,
Speaker 6: it turns out people are very very angry that a
Speaker 6: bunch of swat teams just beat up a bunch of
Speaker 6: art students with metal bars, right, And the consequence of
Speaker 6: this is that Brandon Johnson like refuses to or at
Speaker 6: least openly what he's saying is that he won't use
Speaker 6: the Chicago Police Department at at at on the University
Speaker 6: Chicago campus. University of Chicago has its own police force
Speaker 6: that's about one hundred and fifty officers. It's sort of
Speaker 6: vaunted as like the largest police force in like the
Speaker 6: largest pri one of the largest private police forces in
Speaker 6: the world. You know, they also shot a fucking kit
Speaker 6: while I was at school there, so you know, I
Speaker 6: have a like depatriot of them. But what kind of
Speaker 6: ends up happening is so there's there's that big the
Speaker 6: day I'm there, there's this big like confentration between protesters
Speaker 6: and kind of protesters, and you know, the kids form a.
Speaker 8: Shield protesters and counter protesters.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so so like the the FRAT show up, there's
Speaker 6: like a huge right wing media circus, but the kids
Speaker 6: have a shield wall, and the shield wall fucking holds
Speaker 6: and the counter protesters can't break it. They eventually back
Speaker 6: off and they're separated by the cops, and from there
Speaker 6: things get weird. The encampment gets cleared by a raid
Speaker 6: that probably could have been stopped, you know, it has
Speaker 6: they have one of these five am raids.
Speaker 13: You can't stop the police.
Speaker 6: Well, okay, So the thing I say about this, though,
Speaker 6: this is this isn't CPD, this is UCPD. They have
Speaker 6: like forty total, Like the number of people they can
Speaker 6: amass at one time is about forty. So like this
Speaker 6: this was the only occupation that like maybe like plausibly
Speaker 6: could have actually beaten off the beaten off the police
Speaker 6: tech because you know, if they only have four people
Speaker 6: and you have six hundred like that, that that that's
Speaker 6: about the point at which it's like plugs.
Speaker 13: It's unusual for cops to engage if they don't have
Speaker 13: the numerical advantage.
Speaker 3: That's odd.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, But what happens is that the basically the
Speaker 6: protesters through through through, like there's a very convoluted process
Speaker 6: of this. But the protesters decide not to define the camp,
Speaker 6: so I everyone it gets raided and they'll and like
Speaker 6: no one has I'm getting arrested, but they destroy the
Speaker 6: entire camp. And Okay, I guess there's one thing that
Speaker 6: I I probably should have fit this in better somewhere else.
Speaker 6: But something that's very interesting about both of these encampments,
Speaker 6: and this has been true of both of the encampments
Speaker 6: that I've I've seen, is is who is like the
Speaker 6: racial and gender composition of who's there, Because these are
Speaker 6: you know, and you could see this like when you're
Speaker 6: when when the counter protesters are facing off against the protesters,
Speaker 6: is the counter protesters they're like exclusively white, like most
Speaker 6: of them are white frat ros, white CIS dudes usually yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: And then in the camps it is basically like it
Speaker 6: is like non it's non white people of all genders
Speaker 6: and like non sistued people of all races. Yeah, very
Speaker 6: very very very prominently. And this this is something that
Speaker 6: I think is a sign of how the sort of
Speaker 6: like American political alignment has changed and the kind of
Speaker 6: kinds of political alliances that are kind of so normal
Speaker 6: now that we don't even really think about them. But
Speaker 6: if you step back for a second and look at
Speaker 6: what's actually happening, this is this is the this is
Speaker 6: the actual political composition of these protests. It's queer people
Speaker 6: and non white people and obviously like people like me
Speaker 6: who are both. And I think that's an important thing
Speaker 6: because you know, it's it's a dynamic of these camps.
Speaker 6: It doesn't get talked about, it en off, but is
Speaker 6: the core thing that's happening like politically.
Speaker 12: I agree that that was the same that was the
Speaker 12: same demographic balance at Emory. Let's take another break and
Speaker 12: we'll come back and hear from Ali and then kind
Speaker 12: of have a bit more of an open discussion to
Speaker 12: close things out, comparing the similarities and differences for our
Speaker 12: experiences at these these four different protest encampments or different cities.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 3: All right, we are back. Mollie.
Speaker 12: You saw some pretty bad police violence at the camp
Speaker 12: in Chardsville, I believe right.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 13: The encampment at the University of Virginia was cleared on
Speaker 13: May fourth by Virginia State Police. It was not a
Speaker 13: pretty site, so the students at the University of Virginia
Speaker 13: set up an encampment on April thirtieth in the afternoon
Speaker 13: of the thirtieth. They had announced ahead of time that
Speaker 13: there will be programming during the day on May Day.
Speaker 13: So this sudden setup the day prior was I think
Speaker 13: a surprise to the university. When the students first put
Speaker 13: their stuff down, they put up some tents. The police
Speaker 13: chief of the university Police Force, Timothy Longo, showed up
Speaker 13: immediately and said, no tense tends to the red line.
Speaker 13: Take the tents down. So that first night they took
Speaker 13: the tents down, and so for three nights they slept
Speaker 13: outside unsheltered because it was clear from the university that
Speaker 13: the tents are going to be the problem. That's the
Speaker 13: only issue that we have is the tents. You can
Speaker 13: be here, you just can't put up the tents, and
Speaker 13: you can't use amplified sound. You can't be too noisy.
Speaker 13: The place where they'd set up was this patch of grass.
Speaker 13: That's so if you're familiar with the University of Virginia,
Speaker 13: there's the lawn. It's called the lawn. It's not the
Speaker 13: only grass, but it's just the special grass. It's the
Speaker 13: grass between the lawn rooms and the rotunda. It's like
Speaker 13: a long narrow They weren't on the lawn. I think
Speaker 13: that would have been a much bigger problem for the university,
Speaker 13: just because of the optics of it, and because students
Speaker 13: live in the lawn rooms, so they were actually on
Speaker 13: the other side of the rotunda, in this shady, grassy
Speaker 13: area between the rotunda and the chapel, so within kind
Speaker 13: of spitting distance of that statue of Thomas Jefferson that
Speaker 13: the Nazis famously surrounded in twenty seventeen, so that that
Speaker 13: same sort of area of the university. So for three
Speaker 13: nights they were out there unsheltered. It was pretty quiet.
Speaker 13: It was, you know, a few dozen students. Most of
Speaker 13: the time classes had just ended, so they were preparing
Speaker 13: for finals, they were writing papers. I think some afternoons
Speaker 13: they had tas come out and help people with their
Speaker 13: with their papers, help them study.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 13: It was it was chill, they were they were just
Speaker 13: kind of out there vibing. And then on the evening
Speaker 13: of the third they held a vigil for the dead
Speaker 13: and Palestine. There was great turnout for that. A lot
Speaker 13: of people came out, students, families, you know, there were
Speaker 13: babies there, dogs, like it was. It was a safe place, right,
Speaker 13: It was a place where people felt safe letting their
Speaker 13: toddlers kick a ball around. Like it was not a
Speaker 13: violent or embattled environment. There were babies there and they
Speaker 13: held the vigil and after the vigil they had Shabbot dinner.
Speaker 13: But as the sun was going down, it was starting
Speaker 13: to rain, so they put up a pop up tent
Speaker 13: to cover the Shabbat dinner, you know, the food that
Speaker 13: had been set out. And it was at that point
Speaker 13: that they began setting up the camping tents. And you know,
Speaker 13: they've been told all along by the police chief, you
Speaker 13: can't put tens up. You can't put tens up. It's
Speaker 13: against the rules. That's that's when we're going to have
Speaker 13: to intervene if you put the tense up. But every
Speaker 13: UVA school policy is available on the school's website. They
Speaker 13: have a policy database where you can, you know, search
Speaker 13: by keyword. You can, you know, you can see every
Speaker 13: official school policy. And the official school policy is that
Speaker 13: tens are allowed. It's on the website. You can have
Speaker 13: a tent. And so now this, you know, the university
Speaker 13: is saying that this discrepancy as well. You know that
Speaker 13: actually isn't a policy. It was a sort it's guidance
Speaker 13: on the policy. But it is in the policy database
Speaker 13: on the policy website where they keep the policies and
Speaker 13: it says guideline on it, and a guideline it's a
Speaker 13: synonym for a policy. So they are there. I think
Speaker 13: the lesson to take away here, you know, I'm not
Speaker 13: going to Monday morning quarterback the student organizers. I was
Speaker 13: not privy to internal discussions. I don't think that's my role.
Speaker 13: I think the takeaway here though, is that they're always
Speaker 13: going to move the posts. The only protest the administration
Speaker 13: will ever approve of is one that happened at least
Speaker 13: thirty years ago. Right, you have to be decades removed
Speaker 13: from progress to see it as positive. They never like
Speaker 13: progress while it's happening. They never like protest while it
Speaker 13: is happening. There's nothing you can do that will be allowed. Right,
Speaker 13: Because the entire time of those first three days, when
Speaker 13: the police were keeping their distance, they were always there.
Speaker 13: There was always this sort of like needling back and
Speaker 13: forth while you know, can you just can you adjust this,
Speaker 13: can you change this kind of behavior, like you know
Speaker 13: you're not breaking the rules yet, but just you know,
Speaker 13: we're watching, be careful, this constant needling. And so in
Speaker 13: the end on the fourth when the Virginia State Police
Speaker 13: showed up, you know, up until that point, the idea was, well,
Speaker 13: the provocation was the tense. The problem was the tents.
Speaker 13: The police had to become because of the tents. You
Speaker 13: know that the policy on the school's website changed Saturday morning,
Speaker 13: like we have the you know, the cash on the website.
Speaker 13: You can see when the PDF was altered.
Speaker 2: It was that.
Speaker 13: So it's like, is it about the tents? Did you
Speaker 13: change this policy as pretext for the police raid? Because
Speaker 13: now in the aftermath, since they were caught out changing
Speaker 13: that policy immediately before the police raided the camp, they're saying, well, no, actually,
Speaker 13: actually it wasn't about the tents. That's not really what
Speaker 13: this is about. It's because they're saying now that you know,
Speaker 13: four men in essentially a black block, right, So four
Speaker 13: men in black were carrying backpacks with helmets were seen
Speaker 13: in the area and they're known to law enforcement. And
Speaker 13: I'll be honest with you, I did not see these individuals.
Speaker 13: But at the same time, who care who? It's public property, right,
Speaker 13: this is a public university. You know, this outside agitator narrative.
Speaker 13: You know, we had to beat and Pepper's bray these
Speaker 13: students because of these mysterious men. But at the same time,
Speaker 13: you know, the entire time that the students were in
Speaker 13: the encampment, they had faculty liaisons from Faculty for Justice
Speaker 13: in Palestine, and the faculty liaison were not you know, negotiating,
Speaker 13: because students were clear that there was no negotiation, right that,
Speaker 13: you know, they're not negotiating on their demands, but that
Speaker 13: all communication between admin and the police into the encampment
Speaker 13: came through these faculty liaisons and they were in constant
Speaker 13: open communication. And the faculty liaisms are saying, well, if
Speaker 13: there was someone dangerous here, if the police had identified
Speaker 13: like a you know, an actual danger in this space,
Speaker 13: they never communicated that to us, right that before this
Speaker 13: raid happened, no one ever said to the faculty liaison,
Speaker 13: someone here is dangerous, there's a known criminal here, there's
Speaker 13: you know, this is why this has to That was
Speaker 13: never communicated. So I'm not sure these you know, four
Speaker 13: mysterious individuals exist.
Speaker 8: I don't know.
Speaker 13: I think that is a manufactured, you know, sort of
Speaker 13: after the fact pretext. But in any case, on Saturday morning,
Speaker 13: the anniversary of the Kent State massacre, state police showed
Speaker 13: up a lot of them all at once, and there
Speaker 13: was you know, the local police set up a perimeter
Speaker 13: around the encampment. And again, so it had been raining
Speaker 13: all night. It was soaking wet. Like I showed up
Speaker 13: Saturday morning to take some wet blankets home to wash them,
Speaker 13: because things seemed fine, Things were very calm. Again, there
Speaker 13: had been babies there the day before. It was very calm,
Speaker 13: and so I thought, well, I'll wash their wet blankets
Speaker 13: and socks and bring them back and then we can,
Speaker 13: you know, they can regroup and move forward. And while
Speaker 13: I was in home washing wet socks, I heard that
Speaker 13: the raid was starting. And again so you know, because
Speaker 13: it had been raining, and it was a pretty small
Speaker 13: protest to begin with, people are doing their finals. There
Speaker 13: were maybe a few dozen people there, like a few
Speaker 13: dozen at most. But once the riot cops showed up,
Speaker 13: people start pouring out of the libraries. Hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 13: of students come to see what all the noise is about, right,
Speaker 13: they come to see what the disturbance is about. The
Speaker 13: university used the emergency alert system that texts students. It
Speaker 13: sends texts and emails for emergencies, you know, things like
Speaker 13: a fire or a tornado or a mass shooting. Right
Speaker 13: that a lot of these students have recent memory of
Speaker 13: a very serious shooting here that they got these texts for.
Speaker 13: These texts are for real emergencies, but they use the
Speaker 13: emergency alert system to tell students to avoid the area.
Speaker 13: So of course they poured into the area to see
Speaker 13: what was happening, and so they set up a perimeter
Speaker 13: around the camp so the people inside could not get
Speaker 13: out and the people who came to see what was
Speaker 13: happening could not get in, and a lie on riot
Speaker 13: cops marched into the camp and just bludgeoned and pepper
Speaker 13: sprayed at like point blank range. Pepper sprang them directly
Speaker 13: into their mouth, nose, and eyes. I think one student
Speaker 13: was wearing goggles and they removed her goggles so they
Speaker 13: could spray her directly in the eyes while she was
Speaker 13: already prone on the ground. One woman was having a seizure,
Speaker 13: but they didn't stop arresting her to let her seize
Speaker 13: in peace, and they were just sort of dragging her
Speaker 13: limp body away. It was very nasty and once they
Speaker 13: made their leave twenty six arrests, they turned on the
Speaker 13: crowd that had gathered to watch, and they started pushing
Speaker 13: this massive crowd of students out into the street. They
Speaker 13: didn't close the street, like there was a dean on
Speaker 13: scene who was watching this happen and sort of making
Speaker 13: frantic phone calls to try and close the street that
Speaker 13: the students were being pushed into because it was an
Speaker 13: open street with traffic. And then the frat boys showed up, right, so,
Speaker 13: you know, the students are coming out to see. Some
Speaker 13: of them are joining the protests, some of them are
Speaker 13: just curious, and all of a sudden, now there's an
Speaker 13: entire hillside covered in frat boys. Some of them have
Speaker 13: Israeli flags, some of them have American flags. And there
Speaker 13: were times as that, you know, the police were you know,
Speaker 13: I'm very short, I'm about five feet tall, so there
Speaker 13: were times as the police were pushing towards us. I
Speaker 13: can't actually see that because the person in front of
Speaker 13: me is taller than me, and I would know the
Speaker 13: police were starting to advance again because the frat boys
Speaker 13: would cheer. They would start cheering, and you know, at
Speaker 13: one point, I'm standing next to this older professor. You know,
Speaker 13: I don'tant to call anybody elderly, right, but this was
Speaker 13: this sort of a grandmotherly professor who had been Pepper
Speaker 13: sprayed and was, you know, shouldered or shoulder with students,
Speaker 13: And she looked over at those frat boys and she said,
Speaker 13: I don't know how we're supposed to teach them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like it.
Speaker 13: I mean, I expect a cop to be a cop.
Speaker 13: I've been pushed around by a cop before. I'll also
Speaker 13: but I've never seen a cheering section for police violence before,
Speaker 13: and like.
Speaker 12: I have a few times, and it's one of the
Speaker 12: most disturbing feelings I've ever had, is when you have
Speaker 12: police attacking people and there's a group of like twenty
Speaker 12: to fifty to one hundred people on the other side
Speaker 12: of the police cheering them on. It's it's one of
Speaker 12: the most like like death worshiping moments in my life
Speaker 12: that I've like felt like.
Speaker 13: It's very ugly, very very ugly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it reminds me of how like in It's not
Speaker 3: the same, but like like in Napoleonic Area, for certain battles,
Speaker 3: it became a thing to go and spectate and people
Speaker 3: would sit on hills and watch the like formations move
Speaker 3: and literally have a picnic, right and have this is real? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: they did it in Turkey in the Battle of Kabani too.
Speaker 3: Like people they call it media Hill until the Turkish
Speaker 3: police take guests the BBC guys who were there, do you.
Speaker 8: Know, how do you know a round numbers for arrests
Speaker 8: or anything like that.
Speaker 13: I believe there were twenty six arrests, the majority of
Speaker 13: them students. One was a professor, one was a reporter,
Speaker 13: but a lot of students and grad students. And again, like,
Speaker 13: I think it's important to talk about this idea of
Speaker 13: the outside agitator, right because I don't want to get
Speaker 13: bogged down and like, oh, you know, a third of
Speaker 13: the arrests were not affiliated with the university. That doesn't
Speaker 13: mean anything, right, Like Charlottesville is a college town. Charlottesville
Speaker 13: is UVA. UVA is Charlottesville. It is the largest employer
Speaker 13: in the region. It is sort of the you know,
Speaker 13: the iconic focal point of the region. It's a public school.
Speaker 13: People attend sporting events there, They attend concerts that like
Speaker 13: our largest local concert venue as a UVA property. You know,
Speaker 13: I did attend UBA, and I sometimes speak at classes
Speaker 13: at UBA, so like I have some sort of tangential
Speaker 13: affiliation with the university, but I don't have to justify
Speaker 13: my presence there, right. I mean, that's like saying you
Speaker 13: can't protest Elbit or Boeing unless you purchase bomb systems
Speaker 13: or work.
Speaker 8: There, right right, Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 13: What this enormous institution does with its billions of my
Speaker 13: tax dollars. Actually is my business. It is my business.
Speaker 13: And if you're going to beat teenagers in my backyard,
Speaker 13: that is my business.
Speaker 3: Right yeah, And like this is yeah, the university is
Speaker 3: part of the community. They spend their entire like three
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty four days a year that that is
Speaker 3: their messaging. And yeah, let's as suit if the community
Speaker 3: shows up for the university, they change that.
Speaker 12: Let's maybe you have like a brief discussion about some
Speaker 12: of this. I think one thing I'm afterely hearing from
Speaker 12: from you, Mollie, is like like the presence of tents
Speaker 12: is seen as like a massive like sign of like escalation,
Speaker 12: like this this is this is there for some reason,
Speaker 12: that's where they decided to draw the line. It's like
Speaker 12: when tents are going up and that's what needs to
Speaker 12: be cracked down.
Speaker 13: On, which makes no sense because like I said, they'd
Speaker 13: been sleeping there for three days.
Speaker 12: Sure, not wanting to be very symbolic. Yeah, it's very symbolic.
Speaker 12: Like I think if especially if you look at like
Speaker 12: the images from the Columbia Quad, like it's a very
Speaker 12: symbolic thing of like tenses, like we are like staking territory,
Speaker 12: like literally putting down stakes. Yeah, I think like that
Speaker 12: that is has been a massive thing. I think it's
Speaker 12: interesting the universities that have and haven't had barricades set up,
Speaker 12: Like there was there was no barricades at every there
Speaker 12: was no really attempt to put barricades up. And you
Speaker 12: have like, you know, pretty pretty big barricades in Portland
Speaker 12: of course, and then like Humboldt being really the one
Speaker 12: that was like no, like you could like hold down
Speaker 12: a space for like a while if you have like
Speaker 12: lots of barricades. We see that, we see that in
Speaker 12: LA and I know the difference between the bear kids
Speaker 12: going up and the barricades not and how that that
Speaker 12: does kind of slow. That's just slow a police story.
Speaker 12: That just slow some police response. And I think one
Speaker 12: of the one of the one of the dynamics we
Speaker 12: have there is like at least her a emory, right,
Speaker 12: we had the first day people faced you know, a
Speaker 12: pretty sizable amount of plice violence. You know, there was
Speaker 12: like twenty twenty eight arrests. A lot of people were
Speaker 12: assaulted by police. And for many people, this this was
Speaker 12: their first protest. A lot of these people were too
Speaker 12: young to participate in twenty twenty, which is kind of
Speaker 12: you know, odd looking back on it, but yeah, a
Speaker 12: lot of these people were quite young, and this is
Speaker 12: their first experience of like police brutality in person.
Speaker 13: And like what a first protest though, I mean, like
Speaker 13: I'm trying to think back to like, you know, usually
Speaker 13: your first protest doesn't end like this. Sorry, my dogs
Speaker 13: are going crazy right now, but I you know, I
Speaker 13: was thinking about this. It's just I think it's a
Speaker 13: radicalizing and traumatizing first protest experience for a lot of
Speaker 13: young people. I was talking to a young student. Want
Speaker 13: to give too much information about her, but she was
Speaker 13: quite young, right, It was, you know, one of her
Speaker 13: first protest experiences. And she said, when the cop approached
Speaker 13: her with something in his hand, she didn't know what
Speaker 13: it was, and she couldn't understand what he was doing
Speaker 13: or what he wanted from her. And it wasn't until
Speaker 13: he raised the object above his head that she had
Speaker 13: this realization that he can hit me. Yeah, only can
Speaker 13: he hit me, but he is going to hit me.
Speaker 13: That like, to have that realization in real time that
Speaker 13: you are not safe in your body, that the state
Speaker 13: will carry out violence against you. To not have known
Speaker 13: that before and to find it out as it is happening,
Speaker 13: I think is truly horrifying.
Speaker 12: Well, yeah, and so we have all these people who've
Speaker 12: experienced it now for the first time, and when they,
Speaker 12: you know, return to the campus the next day, they
Speaker 12: don't want to go through that traumatic event again, Like
Speaker 12: they don't want to. And so after we saw this
Speaker 12: in a few cities, but we saw this even in Columbia,
Speaker 12: but like after the first police response, how people behave
Speaker 12: afterwards on campus can be quite different because they really
Speaker 12: don't want that, and now admin is able to kind
Speaker 12: of use threat of police. It's a very effective to
Speaker 12: turn to be like, hey, if you keep things kind
Speaker 12: of chill, no tense, nothing crazy.
Speaker 8: But if you just hang out on the quad, that's it.
Speaker 12: Like that's fine, but if you do anything else, we're
Speaker 12: gonna call in those guys again and they're gonna fuck
Speaker 12: you up even worse. And like that is a very
Speaker 12: very effective and scaring people away from from doing anything.
Speaker 12: And I think a big thing to navigate here is
Speaker 12: like how how can you get students to feel like
Speaker 12: empowered once again, to like actually be able to do stuff.
Speaker 12: There was this there's there's this one moment at Emory
Speaker 12: where some like some other like like more like you know,
Speaker 12: more militanty. I don't know their exact affiliation at the university.
Speaker 12: I don't care, but so some more some more like militant,
Speaker 12: need more anarchistic people. Because it's Atlanta, we're like kind
Speaker 12: of like like shaming some of the students for not
Speaker 12: like doing more stuff. Like they got on the microphone
Speaker 12: and were like shaving them be like hey, this this
Speaker 12: isn't a protest, You're just you're just hanging out, and like,
Speaker 12: I I get it, but also like what is that
Speaker 12: going to accomplish? I think I think shaming people for
Speaker 12: being scared of police is not effective. You need to
Speaker 12: you need to help them to feel empowered, and that
Speaker 12: that's a very different thing to navigate.
Speaker 13: And you can't expect, you know, can't expect their first
Speaker 13: protest action to be all out militant, nor should you
Speaker 13: want it to be. Like I'm sure I think one
Speaker 13: of the things to remember is that, you know, what
Speaker 13: does success look like that if you know, most of
Speaker 13: these university encampments aren't going to win divestment, right, They
Speaker 13: all have really similar demands and they include you know,
Speaker 13: divestment of university funds, and most of them aren't going
Speaker 13: to get that. But I think you can still envision
Speaker 13: success as you know, these are young people. They are
Speaker 13: learning to organize together, they're learning to create that space together,
Speaker 13: they are coming together to talk about this issue, and
Speaker 13: I think that can be success. I don't think you
Speaker 13: have to bleed to have succeeded.
Speaker 12: No, totally, absolutely. I think just this being a learning
Speaker 12: experience for people, and now you have a lot of
Speaker 12: both professors and students whose view of police will forever
Speaker 12: be different, which you know, in the long run, it's
Speaker 12: probably I would view that as like a quote unquote
Speaker 12: good thing, even though it is you know, it's short
Speaker 12: term trauma and possibly long term trauma. But like you
Speaker 12: have a much more accurate view of how the world
Speaker 12: works now, especially for a lot of these like Ivy
Speaker 12: League kids who've never never thought of police as a
Speaker 12: threat before. Police is always like a helper, right, A
Speaker 12: lot of these are like you know, good kids exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 12: and and and learning that like there doesn't need to
Speaker 12: be provocation to entice a police response. That is, that
Speaker 12: is not a that's not a real dynamic.
Speaker 13: I mean, especially UVA. Right, Like this wasn't one of
Speaker 13: those encampments where there had been prior clashes or real
Speaker 13: escalation or any sort of hardening of barricades. No, they were.
Speaker 13: They were lying in their tents when the cops showed up.
Speaker 13: Like the lesson is that nothing you can do is acceptable,
Speaker 13: so you might as well do what you want.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like keep your eyes. The other thing I
Speaker 3: wanted to mention was like victory looks like a number
Speaker 3: of different things in these protests, but like you should
Speaker 3: focus on whatever that is. And like something I saw
Speaker 3: among faculty colleagues sometimes like it was just like should
Speaker 3: we get arrested? Like sure, suld, should we choose to
Speaker 3: get arrested? Like and like, no, you should not choose
Speaker 3: to get arrested, like you know, we always avoid it
Speaker 3: if you can, Yeah, avoid it. It is not an end.
Speaker 13: It's not a good strategic goal to get arrested on purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 13: I mean this is in DC where you get you know,
Speaker 13: a ticket and they let you go home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, this will fuck up as I'm lucky if
Speaker 3: your tenured faculty will suck up your life a lot
Speaker 3: less than people in other social and economic circumstances.
Speaker 13: Right, but even in the most privileged possible circumstance, like
Speaker 13: it fucking sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You might be denied access to your medication, You
Speaker 3: might be confined in a cell with people who do
Speaker 3: not identify with the same gender as you. Right, the
Speaker 3: cops are going to be fucking mean to you. That's
Speaker 3: what they do, Like they do violence retect capital.
Speaker 13: That's why we have a lot of people are getting
Speaker 13: permanent nerve damage from being left in flexi cuffs. Like
Speaker 13: even if even if your charges get dropped, like you
Speaker 13: could suffer forever from this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's you have, no you know, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter how good your dad's lawyer is or whatever. They're
Speaker 3: the cops. They're going to get away with it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: Like when I think about the young people I was
Speaker 3: talking to people, and like when I think about twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: where I'm talking to young people, I'm older, I'm thirty seven.
Speaker 3: Like I think about my own like, you know, growing
Speaker 3: up as a little kid. Like there was the like
Speaker 3: the anti sweatshow movement, which morphed into the G eight movement,
Speaker 3: which morphed into like xapeties to Solidarity, which morphed into
Speaker 3: the Free Palestine movement and moving against the British National Party,
Speaker 3: and we got to like step up until we were
Speaker 3: fighting Nazis, right because folks, young people who are protesting
Speaker 3: now who didn't participate in twenty twenty didn't get like
Speaker 3: this was just like a baptism of fire. Like the
Speaker 3: people in twenty twenty got to go out in twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen for Donald Trump, bright in twenty seventeen and wear
Speaker 3: the little pink hats and walk around in the pink hats,
Speaker 3: you know, and they got introduced to the cops and
Speaker 3: the fact that they are just going to fuck you
Speaker 3: up because they want too slowly. But these people didn't
Speaker 3: And I don't think we should blame them for being
Speaker 3: like none of us are, to be clear, but like, folks,
Speaker 3: I've seen it too much on the internet, like don't
Speaker 3: do that shit, like teach people to be stronger than
Speaker 3: the state. Don't shame them for not already being there.
Speaker 6: That's something that happened, like I literally watched this like
Speaker 6: happen at the Chicago cant was people like getting ready
Speaker 6: to have to fight off like these rap ros and
Speaker 6: you know, like that experience, and you know, and this
Speaker 6: is something I think is interesting about these protests. Two
Speaker 6: was like from UCLA, Like UCLA was like a pretty
Speaker 6: explicit attempt to try to use these like right wing
Speaker 6: like paramilitary people to knock out an encampment, and they
Speaker 6: couldn't do it. Like, they hurt a lot of people, right,
Speaker 6: like two hundred people I think went to the hospital
Speaker 6: or at least treated by medics after it. Right, they
Speaker 6: hurt a lot of people. It was really scary, but
Speaker 6: they couldn't break they couldn't break the barricades. And that
Speaker 6: happened at Chicago too. It was like they couldn't like
Speaker 6: in the Chicago like those those like they're they're on.
Speaker 6: But at nine o'clock in the morning on the day
Speaker 6: of that encampment, there were no fucking barricades. It was
Speaker 6: just a bunch of tents at a lawn, right, and
Speaker 6: in like three hours they set up a thing that
Speaker 6: you know, still I mean they weren't still weren't really barricades,
Speaker 6: but like you got to watch these kids, and you know,
Speaker 6: the people who were there, like you know, like realize
Speaker 6: that a group of them can stand and fight and
Speaker 6: hold these people. And they and they did it. They
Speaker 6: fucking stood there, they stood their ground, they held them,
Speaker 6: they fought, and at the end of the day, the
Speaker 6: fucking trapros ran away and it wasn't really intel. And
Speaker 6: then this is I think it's been a really interesting
Speaker 6: element of this is that like these these per military
Speaker 6: groups have been just staggeringly unable to actually like beat
Speaker 6: a bunch of protesters like in you know, in in
Speaker 6: the sort of military sense of like who holds the
Speaker 6: field at the end of the fight. They can't do it,
Speaker 6: and only the cops have been able to.
Speaker 12: And the other thing about that is, like you had
Speaker 12: you have a more legitimate way to fight off these
Speaker 12: like non state actions, Yeah, yeah, right, whenever you there
Speaker 12: is because of the nature of the state's monopoly on
Speaker 12: the legitimate violence, fighting off the police can be a
Speaker 12: lot more tricky than fighting off these like frat boy groups. Yeah,
Speaker 12: like that that is that is a very different dynamic.
Speaker 6: That was a process that like unfolded there. It was
Speaker 6: like a lot of people who were like, yeah, we
Speaker 6: don't want to escalate, and it was like, well, okay,
Speaker 6: so like several hundred people are going to show up.
Speaker 6: We also happened to us the UCLA like it has
Speaker 6: to right, Like you know, I mean like like you
Speaker 6: can't just keep doing your sort of like we're not.
Speaker 3: Going to engage your counter protesters thing.
Speaker 6: Where's two hundred of these people who are going to
Speaker 6: try to beat the shit out of you?
Speaker 13: Right, there's I mean, there's choosing not to engage with
Speaker 13: someone who just wants attention, and then there is self defense.
Speaker 13: I think those are two different things. Yeah, definitely some
Speaker 13: like you don't you know, you don't give someone their
Speaker 13: viral video that they can put on YouTube or whatever.
Speaker 13: But if someone's going to beat you with a stick.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And it's like like I'm not saying either them
Speaker 6: are like right or wrong. It's just like, yeah, like
Speaker 6: you can't you can't use the same tactics. And being
Speaker 6: forced to defend yourself like had this real sort of
Speaker 6: like impact on people, and like I don't know, it's
Speaker 6: like like I gotta see people just like understanding what
Speaker 6: you can do with the physical mass of a group
Speaker 6: of people, and I don't know it was it was
Speaker 6: like it was it was a really emotional experience for
Speaker 6: like a lot of the people there, and it was
Speaker 6: really cool.
Speaker 12: So yeah, I think we it would be wrong just
Speaker 12: to like criticize these these students specifically for dropping the
Speaker 12: ball in various ways. I think the thing that we
Speaker 12: can completely criticize and point you as a as a
Speaker 12: as a massive failure is everyone who has not been participating,
Speaker 12: how they have been viewing what's going on, And this
Speaker 12: is this is this will be the last thing I
Speaker 12: talk about, especially even even it's on like the media
Speaker 12: side and in this general discussion, like there's been such
Speaker 12: a such a singular focus on the campus encampment like itself,
Speaker 12: instead of like why the protests are happening in the
Speaker 12: first place, what's going on in Gaza just instead just
Speaker 12: focusing on like, yeah, the actual the actual thing on campus,
Speaker 12: but but but not caring about why these protests are
Speaker 12: even happening, wilfully ignoring why it's happening, framing all literally
Speaker 12: all of the campus protests as inherently anti semitic, as
Speaker 12: if that is the main driver, and ignoring ignoring the
Speaker 12: many instances for people who have expressed anti Semitic things
Speaker 12: have been being like removed and pushed out of campus,
Speaker 12: which has happened in many places. But it's it's just
Speaker 12: it's just so lazy to totally like reject the reasoning
Speaker 12: for why these protests are happening, the framing of trespassing
Speaker 12: as a form of violence, call calling these encampments violent
Speaker 12: as if as if being on campus is violent, and
Speaker 12: meanwhile never once mentioning the actual violence on display, which
Speaker 12: is almost solely at the hands of police and these
Speaker 12: other far right groups. Friend of the Pod Cody Johnston
Speaker 12: had a had a very very good tweet quote, these
Speaker 12: people who I despise and never agree with, should protest
Speaker 12: the way I prefer unquote.
Speaker 13: Don't don't debate tactics with people who don't share your goals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 12: Again like these people who who who have like an
Speaker 12: ideological opposition to every single thing that these protest are
Speaker 12: staying for people.
Speaker 3: Doing this in the actual Bush administration just a wild
Speaker 3: fucking mental gymnastics to be like, it is a leag
Speaker 3: go for you to have your attempts here that is trespassed,
Speaker 3: Therefore we can violently displace you. Also, I stand with Israel,
Speaker 3: like exactly.
Speaker 13: Your head remind people of too is you know, you know,
Speaker 13: the saying like, well, technically they broke the rules. Okay, Well, technically,
Speaker 13: if you're going twenty over the speed limit, the cop
Speaker 13: can book you into jail. Would it be a bizarre
Speaker 13: escalation of force for him to do that? Do they
Speaker 13: normally do it?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 13: They don't? Right, So, just because just because the police
Speaker 13: can intervene in certain ways doesn't mean it makes sense
Speaker 13: for them.
Speaker 9: To do so.
Speaker 12: Technically, you're not supposed to bomb forty thousand civilians, right
Speaker 12: So I think that's that's really.
Speaker 6: Weapons says are illegal the under under the Lahi Act,
Speaker 6: And it doesn't matter.
Speaker 13: For shit because the rules, you know, the police are
Speaker 13: only only powerful to punish you.
Speaker 12: The fact that there's more moral outrage across the country
Speaker 12: or students protesting a genocide than there is for forty
Speaker 12: thousand civilians being murdered is just looking at a deep
Speaker 12: hole at the at the conscience of this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, the thing I.
Speaker 6: Will say about that is if you look at the
Speaker 6: polling numbers on this, like, yeah, there's like like forty
Speaker 6: seven ish percent support for like banning like protesters on campus. However,
Speaker 6: when you actually look at the numbers, like especially if
Speaker 6: you look at the numbers of my cultures, you look
Speaker 6: at the numbers of people in general who now like
Speaker 6: who now support like ceasing like ceasing sending arms to Israel.
Speaker 6: It's been interesting, so like they have been working totally.
Speaker 12: It's just that the people who control this country is
Speaker 12: a different demographic than all the young people who are
Speaker 12: potesting on campus, right, which is what we are looking at.
Speaker 12: And I think it's also important to remind her that
Speaker 12: almost every single campus protest historically has been completely vindicated
Speaker 12: over time because they're obviously correct.
Speaker 8: And if you deny that, who are you fooling?
Speaker 3: Anyway?
Speaker 12: I think that this episode's already pretty long, but I
Speaker 12: was happy to hear a collection of our four different
Speaker 12: accounts from four different places.
Speaker 13: Oh, I do want to say really quick before we
Speaker 13: wrap this up. To everyone who says these students are
Speaker 13: too young to know what they are protesting, they couldn't
Speaker 13: possibly understand what they are talking about. Fred Hampton was
Speaker 13: twenty one.
Speaker 12: People forget how how young MLK was when he started
Speaker 12: doing Yeah.
Speaker 3: And they're young enough for fucking Israel to kill them, right.
Speaker 3: There are no universities in guars there anymore. It's just
Speaker 3: it's ridiculous. They're also young enough to join the idea
Speaker 3: for any other military and go and kill people. It's
Speaker 3: a ridiculous argument. Like, you don't have to go there
Speaker 3: and talk to these students. They know exactly what they're protesting.
Speaker 3: They know exactly what they're talking about.
Speaker 13: A lot of them are actually fairly well versed on
Speaker 13: the minutia of what divestment means and what that looks like,
Speaker 13: and what the fiduciary duties are. Like, they're not stupid.
Speaker 13: They know what they're talking about.
Speaker 8: All these dumb college educated youngsters.
Speaker 13: All these lady it's at Columbia anyway.
Speaker 3: This fucking nerds you Chicago. It's like, we don't talk
Speaker 3: about Palestine enough in class. Is like I teach a
Speaker 3: lot of world history classes. It's certainly not on the
Speaker 3: little boxes you have to take. And some people came
Speaker 3: to the encampments to learn, and that's fucking great too.
Speaker 3: And some people taught people and that's great too, Like
Speaker 3: it's a place where a lot of learning happened and
Speaker 3: people became more informed over time. You don't need to
Speaker 3: have a PhD or master's in an area to understand
Speaker 3: that bombing children is bad and wanted to stop. We
Speaker 3: had a world war about this, like genocides are bad.
Speaker 3: So this will be a topic we continue to cover
Speaker 3: on the show over the course. At summer, we'll have
Speaker 3: I'm planning a deep dive about what happened at Emory.
Speaker 3: Margaret has an upcoming episode about how people who were
Speaker 3: engaged in the campus protests can stay involved over the summer,
Speaker 3: and of course we will continue to talk about what's
Speaker 3: been happening in Gaza. Thanks for listening, solid Air. To
Speaker 3: everyone who's out.
Speaker 13: There, Flush your eyes with water.
Speaker 8: Flush your eyes with water again, learned.
Speaker 13: Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I
Speaker 13: am once again your occasional host, Molly Conger joining me
Speaker 13: today for a very special episode. Are my friends and yours,
Speaker 13: Scharen and Mia so Sharinnia. We're here today to honor
Speaker 13: and reflect upon a very somber and important holiday. It
Speaker 13: is May fifteenth as we are recording this today, and
Speaker 13: today is actually recognized the world over as Knackba Day,
Speaker 13: a day to remember the first Knakba, the founding of
Speaker 13: the state of Israel and the force displacement of the
Speaker 13: Palestinian people. And this year, as a new Nakba continues,
Speaker 13: as the genocide is being committed against the Palestinian people,
Speaker 13: it's more important than ever to remember that these atrocities
Speaker 13: did not start last year. But that isn't the memorial
Speaker 13: day I invited you here to talk about. Here in
Speaker 13: the United States, the holiday officially on the books today
Speaker 13: is not Knackba Day. It is National Peace Officers Memorial Day.
Speaker 13: In nineteen sixty two, President Kennedy signed a proclamation establishing
Speaker 13: May fifteenth as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the
Speaker 13: week it falls within as National Police Week. It's an
Speaker 13: entire week to honor commemorate the brave boys in blue
Speaker 13: who've lost their lives in the line of duty. And
Speaker 13: I can't think of a better way to spend this
Speaker 13: afternoon with both of you than to talk about how
Speaker 13: this holiday is celebrated and to share some of these
Speaker 13: incredible stories of courage and sacrifice. So one of the
Speaker 13: most frequently cited sources during Police Week and year round
Speaker 13: when you're talking about the mortality rate of police officers
Speaker 13: is a website called the Officer Down Memorial Page. Highly
Speaker 13: encourage you to visit it, make an account browse the pages.
Speaker 13: The website is run by a nonprofit organization by the
Speaker 13: same name and has had tax exempt status since two thousand.
Speaker 13: According to their IRS Form nine nineties, the tax form
Speaker 13: that tax exempt nonprofits have to file annually, they're pulling
Speaker 13: in around seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 13: a third of which goes directly toward executive compensation and
Speaker 13: why why shouldn't someone make a quarter of a million
Speaker 13: dollars annually to do such important work? Public records show
Speaker 13: the website's founder, Chris Cosgriff, is a police officer himself
Speaker 13: in Fairfax County, Virginia. Available salary data from twenty eighteen
Speaker 13: shows him making a policeman salary of about sixty nine
Speaker 13: thousand dollars. According to his LinkedIn page, Cosgriff still works
Speaker 13: for the Fairfax County Police Department as a recruiting supervisor
Speaker 13: the officer down memorial page. Tax documents show he paid
Speaker 13: himself a paltry twenty four thousand, five hundred dollars in
Speaker 13: twenty twenty three as the executive director of the nonprofit,
Speaker 13: though they list key employee compensation at an expense of
Speaker 13: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that year, with no
Speaker 13: indication of who is being paid that remaining two hundred
Speaker 13: and twenty five thousand dollars or what that person's position is.
Speaker 13: When the organization received a thirty thousand dollars PPP loan
Speaker 13: in twenty twenty, they indicated on their loan documents that
Speaker 13: there were five employees at the organization. I'm not an accountant,
Speaker 13: so I won't hazard any kind of guesses here, but
Speaker 13: I am having trouble making sense of that twenty twenty
Speaker 13: four nine ninety, which lists five company officers by name
Speaker 13: and only cosgriff is drawing a salary, he paid himself
Speaker 13: fifty thousand dollars that year. So that same document from
Speaker 13: twenty twenty shows that the organization and had expenses of
Speaker 13: two hundred thousand dollars for compensation of officers, but it
Speaker 13: doesn't say where that remaining one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 13: dollars went.
Speaker 6: Hmmm, I worried.
Speaker 13: Maybe they have a secret employee that they're not counting.
Speaker 3: His son, his wife, his other wife.
Speaker 13: The website indicates that donations to the nonprofit go towards
Speaker 13: maintaining the website, making posts on their Facebook, maintaining the
Speaker 13: site's companion mobile app, and historic research, claiming that their staff,
Speaker 13: again those five people, have uncovered records of over two
Speaker 13: thousand fallen officers that otherwise would have been forgotten to time.
Speaker 13: The site has memorial pages for officers who died as
Speaker 13: far back as seventeen seventy six, so it's as old
Speaker 13: as America. That's not real, it's not We didn't actually
Speaker 13: really have what is considered modern policing back then, so
Speaker 13: they're really kind of stretching definitions, are.
Speaker 14: They including like people that went after slaves, you know?
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, tax collectors, yes, olive stretching.
Speaker 3: Yes a lot.
Speaker 14: I know you want to go that far back, but
Speaker 14: I mean.
Speaker 9: Do you.
Speaker 13: Donations also help fund their No Parole for cop Killers program,
Speaker 13: which tracks the cases of the people they call convicted
Speaker 13: cop killers and flood local parole boards with letters advocating
Speaker 13: against release. The donation page claims to have sent out
Speaker 13: over ten thousand such letters in the last six months alone.
Speaker 13: They also have a merch page where you can buy
Speaker 13: a lovely trio of thin blue line Christmas ornaments in
Speaker 13: a gift box for the low reasonable price of sixty dollars.
Speaker 3: Jesus.
Speaker 14: Kind of all the things I thought you were going
Speaker 14: to say. I did not think you were going to
Speaker 14: say Christmas ornaments.
Speaker 13: Oh yeah, beautiful, beautiful memorial ornaments. You can get them customized.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 13: The site lists information about American law enforcement officers, prison employees,
Speaker 13: and police dogs who have lost their lives in the
Speaker 13: line of duty. Kind of see. While the website is
Speaker 13: the source cited in every local news puff piece when
Speaker 13: May fifteenth rolls around every year, putting their version of
Speaker 13: the numbers in the headlines, the organization's stats don't match
Speaker 13: those in the FBI's annual report on the subject, an
Speaker 13: official annual report called the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and
Speaker 13: Assaulted or LEOCA Report. The data used by the FBI
Speaker 13: is collected as part of the uniform Crime Reporting System,
Speaker 13: and if you take just a minute to look at
Speaker 13: the Officer down Memorial Page's annual data, the reason for
Speaker 13: this mismatch is immediately clear. They're padding their numbers by
Speaker 13: including deaths by natural causes on duty, deaths due to
Speaker 13: accidents or incidents unrelated to the officer's duties, and they're
Speaker 13: including law enforcement adjacent personnel that the FBI does not
Speaker 13: consider to be law enforcement deaths in their reporting. The
Speaker 13: FBI's LEOCA report has really clear criteria for inclusion. To
Speaker 13: be considered a law enforcement line of duty death, the
Speaker 13: deceased must have been a duly sworn law enforcement officer
Speaker 13: acting in their official capacity at the time of their death.
Speaker 13: So they have to be a real cop, somebody who
Speaker 13: can carries a badge and a gun and has full
Speaker 13: arrest powers. And the FBI specifically excludes death by natural
Speaker 13: causes like heart attacks or COVID deesths that occurred on duty,
Speaker 13: but quote attributed to their own personal situation, such as
Speaker 13: domestic violence, neighbor conflict, et cetera, which like that they
Speaker 13: have to list that by name. If you died doing
Speaker 13: a domestic violence in uniform, that doesn't count. How often
Speaker 13: is that happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope people who killed them are getting.
Speaker 13: Parole, Like good God, right, Like if your wife kills
Speaker 13: you while you're beating her but you're on the clock,
Speaker 13: the FBI says, no dice. They also specifically note that
Speaker 13: they do not include corrections officers, Bureau of Prisons officers,
Speaker 13: bailiff's judges, probation and parole officers, or US attorneys and
Speaker 13: assistant US attorneys. So just cops, not the people who
Speaker 13: sort of work in the industry around them but are
Speaker 13: not cops.
Speaker 14: Not people that basically are cops, like actual cops, you know,
Speaker 14: in actual cops.
Speaker 13: Yeah, and the FAA is really aware clearly that the
Speaker 13: numbers on the ODMP get cited more often than their own,
Speaker 13: Because the FBI's Crime Data Explorer page offers this weasly
Speaker 13: little caveat quote. The FBI's LEOCA program is one of
Speaker 13: a number of entities that report information concerning line of
Speaker 13: duty deaths and or assaults of law enforcement officers in
Speaker 13: the United States. Each organization has its own purpose and
Speaker 13: may use different methods to collect and report information, or
Speaker 13: focus on somewhat different aspects of these important topics. Therefore,
Speaker 13: care should be taken not to compare LEOCA data to
Speaker 13: data provided by other entities, such as the Officer Down
Speaker 13: Memorial page. So they're specifically saying, we know these numbers
Speaker 13: don't match. We know these numbers don't match because a
Speaker 13: few years ago we gave them a few hundred thousand
Speaker 13: dollars in grant money to make numbers that are fake.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Incredible, Wow.
Speaker 13: So the odmp is patting out their numbers with off
Speaker 13: duty accidents, prison guards, parking lot heart attacks, and COVID deaths.
Speaker 13: The database includes nearly nine hundred COVID deaths, causing massive
Speaker 13: statistical anomalies. In their twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 13: twenty two data, they include officers who died of natural
Speaker 13: causes years after sustaining minor on the job injuries, which,
Speaker 13: you know, if you're involved in a civil lawsuit after
Speaker 13: the death of a loved one, you could maybe argue
Speaker 13: that this was sort of a you know, a downhill
Speaker 13: kind of thing. If you're trying geting a settlement from
Speaker 13: the state, maybe you could say that, you know, the
Speaker 13: injury sustained contributed to the death, but that's you can't
Speaker 13: tell me that slipping in the parking lot and then
Speaker 13: dying six years later is an experience unique to the
Speaker 13: dangers of law enforcement. A district attorney who flipped his
Speaker 13: car after hitting a log that fell off a truck
Speaker 13: on the highway on a Friday night is not a
Speaker 13: law enforcement line of duty death because that not only
Speaker 13: was that not a cop it was a single car accident.
Speaker 13: And when DeSoto County Search and Rescue Director Deputy William
Speaker 13: Nichols went on a beach vacation and took his family
Speaker 13: into the ocean despite red flag riptide hazard condition warnings.
Speaker 13: He lost his life trying to rescue his son. And
Speaker 13: that's very sad. But drowning on vacation is not a
Speaker 13: line of duty death. When Indiana Department of Natural Resources
Speaker 13: Sergeant Ed Bollman and his friend drowned in the middle
Speaker 13: of a frozen lake while ice fishing, that wasn't a
Speaker 13: line of duty death. It's just a sad accident while
Speaker 13: dudes were hanging out.
Speaker 3: These people, they really, they really should have a bad
Speaker 3: time around water.
Speaker 13: Float. There is a shocking number of drowning desks where
Speaker 13: the cop just like the second his feet caught we
Speaker 13: he just disappeared. Don't get them wet. It's not a
Speaker 13: gremlin situation to.
Speaker 14: Include swimming in the cop test, right, Oh no, I
Speaker 14: mean these people barely know how to point their guns.
Speaker 6: Like expecting them to be able to swim is the
Speaker 6: standards or that that's a bit too high of a
Speaker 6: standard for them.
Speaker 13: I mean, to be fair, most of these deaths are
Speaker 13: single car accidents. One guy died after t boning a
Speaker 13: school bus. The children were fine, the children.
Speaker 3: Were oh, thank god, okay, thank god.
Speaker 2: Weh and so.
Speaker 13: Rather than a detailed statistical analysis relying on uniformly reported
Speaker 13: official data, the ODMP relies on user submitted content. So
Speaker 13: people are submitting things and then Wikipedia, Yeah, Wikipedia for bootleggers, no,
Speaker 13: no thanks. But when National Police Week rolls around, it's
Speaker 13: their inflated numbers in every infographic, not the FBI's methodologically
Speaker 13: consistent data. And if I'm being generous, you know you
Speaker 13: could write that off on the ease of access to
Speaker 13: the data on ODMP. It's very user friendly. It shows
Speaker 13: you a little picture and a bio of each officer.
Speaker 13: It's very easy to use. You can search by year, agency,
Speaker 13: cause of death, state, or an officer's name. It's not
Speaker 13: a wall of small text with little data tables and
Speaker 13: links to ZIP files of more data tables. The FBI's
Speaker 13: report is ugly and it's uncompelling, and it's sort of
Speaker 13: overwhelming to navigate. If that's not something you are interested
Speaker 13: in doing, so don't want to be too hard on
Speaker 13: the twenty two year old news anchor scrambling to put
Speaker 13: something on the screen at six o'clock. The officer down
Speaker 13: the more page makes it a matter of a few
Speaker 13: easy clicks for your local news anchor to find a
Speaker 13: handful of local interest stories to run on May fifteenth.
Speaker 13: But the people who run the website know exactly what
Speaker 13: they're doing, and it's an intentional ideological project to perpetuate
Speaker 13: the myth of the courageous, noble policeman doing America's most
Speaker 13: dangerous and thankless job, a job that is uniquely and
Speaker 13: outlandishly perilous, standing apart from any other profession, and that
Speaker 13: that's not true. That's not true. And for this I
Speaker 13: take you to another government agency's annual reports, the Bureau
Speaker 13: of Labor Statistics.
Speaker 3: Oh, I love this report. This is the best one.
Speaker 6: The Bureau of.
Speaker 13: Labor Statistics has consistently reported, I'm talking, you know, for
Speaker 13: the last thirty years, consistently since the nineties, a fatal
Speaker 13: workplace injury rate for police officers of around fourteen per
Speaker 13: one hundred thousand full time equivalent employees. You know, it
Speaker 13: varies year to year, but it's consistently a little under
Speaker 13: fourteen per hundred thousand. And of course, yes, that is
Speaker 13: higher than the now average for all labor categories.
Speaker 3: So for all workers.
Speaker 13: In the US, the workplace fatality rate is about three
Speaker 13: point seven per hundred thousand, So the cops are dying
Speaker 13: at a rate of four times higher than the average worker.
Speaker 13: And of course it's more dangerous if your job requires
Speaker 13: driving all day most of these cops die in car accidents.
Speaker 13: Or if your job involves mishandling a firearm every day,
Speaker 13: of course it's more dangerous to do that than it
Speaker 13: is to do data entry or be a cashier. I mean,
Speaker 13: obviously we do not have a high mortality rate for
Speaker 13: the average desk job. But while it is more dangerous
Speaker 13: than being a receptionist, policing doesn't even crack the top
Speaker 13: ten for most dangerous professions. Loggers are seven times more
Speaker 13: likely to die on the job. Roofers are more than
Speaker 13: four times more likely than a cop to die due
Speaker 13: to a workplace incident. Being a fisherman is more than
Speaker 13: three and a half times more dangerous than being a cop.
Speaker 13: General construction work is more than three times more dangerous
Speaker 13: than police work. Delivery drivers are more than twice as
Speaker 13: likely to die at work than a cop. It is
Speaker 13: more dangerous to be a day laborer on a farm
Speaker 13: picking fruit, or to drive a garbage truck. Being a
Speaker 13: cop has a similar level of risk of death by
Speaker 13: workplace incident as being a groundskeeper, So it is about
Speaker 13: as safe as being the guy that cuts the grass
Speaker 13: at the park.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I think there's a real issue with a labor
Speaker 6: reporting for like the category of farm worker, because whenever
Speaker 6: you see data that says like farm worker, that can
Speaker 6: either mean someone who's actually a farm worker, or it
Speaker 6: can mean like a guy who sits in an air
Speaker 6: condition office every day. And even the bure of Laboristics
Speaker 6: is not very good at actually sifting those out because
Speaker 6: there's been a sustained effort by like farm owners to
Speaker 6: make sure this data is like as non transparent as possible.
Speaker 6: So I am I will say, I am fairly confident.
Speaker 6: I cannot say this is nasty effect. I am fairly
Speaker 6: confident that farming is actually significantly more dangerous than the
Speaker 6: real labor statistics says, so like it is so much
Speaker 6: more dangerous you like pick your food that it is
Speaker 6: to be a cop.
Speaker 13: And because I think for a lot of industries there
Speaker 13: is a lot of incentive to underreport workplace accidents, I
Speaker 13: think policing is one of the only industries where they
Speaker 13: are incentivized to over report accidents. Right, So the data
Speaker 13: is I mean, even for as skewed as the data
Speaker 13: may be at the point of entry, it's still a
Speaker 13: lot safer to be a cop than it is to
Speaker 13: drive a truck.
Speaker 14: And this is with the numbers of them like falling
Speaker 14: into a puddle.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 13: Well, so I think the Bureau of Labor Statistics is
Speaker 13: probably using something closer to the FBI numbers, Okay, which
Speaker 13: is still I mean, you know, on.
Speaker 6: The other hand, cops are the biggest babies about this
Speaker 6: in the entire world.
Speaker 13: Because they can't paid leave. If every time you had
Speaker 13: a booboo at work you could just go home for
Speaker 13: a week, you'd do it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: But also, I mean, just like in the media, it's
Speaker 6: like these people never shut up about how dangerous their
Speaker 6: job is, and it's like your job is more safe
Speaker 6: than like most of the actual hard jobs people work,
Speaker 6: like please shut up, Oh my god.
Speaker 13: And the one thing that all those jobs have in common,
Speaker 13: aside from requiring you to be braver, smarter, and stronger
Speaker 13: than a cop, they don't typically come with platinum level
Speaker 13: healthcare paid leave for minor booboos. State subsidized life insurance,
Speaker 13: a pension, a discount at the coffee shop, and a
Speaker 13: license to kill.
Speaker 3: Do you know what else has a license to kill?
Speaker 13: Okay, I was gonna say, before we get into really
Speaker 13: honoring our boys on this special day, I think we
Speaker 13: should take a quick ad break that is hopefully not
Speaker 13: an ad for the Washington State Patrol. Okay, And with
Speaker 13: all that background out of the way, would you care
Speaker 13: to join me in commemorating some of the officers our
Speaker 13: nation is honoring this National Police Week.
Speaker 14: This is what I came here for.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so excited.
Speaker 13: Now, before we get into the handful I picked out
Speaker 13: for us today, I want to be really clear for
Speaker 13: the boys over at the officer down memorial page, because
Speaker 13: their website specifically prohibits the use of their content for
Speaker 13: commercial purposes. So I will say I found these names
Speaker 13: on their website, but I don't trust their methodology enough
Speaker 13: to take their content at face value, so I wouldn't
Speaker 13: use it as a source anyway, even if I were
Speaker 13: allowed to do that. So for each of these vignettes,
Speaker 13: I pulled original contemporaneous local reporting on the incidents, and
Speaker 13: in some cases actual court records, so you can't get me.
Speaker 13: In twenty ten, Saint Joseph, Missouri police officer Dan Dacry
Speaker 13: was participating in a training exercise. During a break, he
Speaker 13: and another officer put down the training weapons they've been using,
Speaker 13: which were loaded with something called simmunition, So simulated ammunition.
Speaker 13: It's not real bullets, it's a plastic, non lethal object
Speaker 13: that goes.
Speaker 2: In the gun.
Speaker 13: Before leaving the training facility, which was a recently closed
Speaker 13: elementary score to walk to a nearby convenience store to
Speaker 13: get a soda, the officers put down their training weapons
Speaker 13: and holstered their duty weapons. So to walk down the
Speaker 13: street to get to the seven eleven, they needed their
Speaker 13: real guns, so they put their real guns back on
Speaker 13: in case they encountered any emergency situations. Yeah, in case,
Speaker 13: you know, in case they saw it. We'll get to
Speaker 13: a dog, so they holstered their duty weapons. Upon returning
Speaker 13: after their break, drinks in hand, officer to Cry asked
Speaker 13: his colleague, officer Jason Strong, to shoot him with a
Speaker 13: simmunition round because he wanted to know what it would
Speaker 13: feel like.
Speaker 14: Oh my gosh, that's just a beautiful desire, you know,
Speaker 14: just curious.
Speaker 13: He's just curious, you know, a day would be curious,
Speaker 13: and so officers Strong drew his weapon and shot officer
Speaker 13: to Cry in the back. I guess they both forgot
Speaker 13: that they put their real guns back on and not
Speaker 13: their training weapons. So I don't know if you ever
Speaker 13: may you probably know this, but the if it's not
Speaker 13: a real gun, if it has fake bullets in it,
Speaker 13: if it is a training object, it has an orange tip.
Speaker 14: I was going to ask that. I was going to ask,
Speaker 14: you can't look identical to a real gun.
Speaker 13: They're easily visually distinguishable for an important reason. And I
Speaker 13: guess he didn't look so he pulled it out and
Speaker 13: shot him in the back, and the officer Decry died
Speaker 13: later that day.
Speaker 14: Wow incredible.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 13: Later reporting on the incident indicates the department did say
Speaker 13: they were going to revise some of their policies regarding
Speaker 13: standard procedure for checking weapons in and out at training exercises.
Speaker 13: So you have to check your weapon in when you
Speaker 13: get your toy gun, and then you check it back out.
Speaker 13: They did not do that previously, but they revised those
Speaker 13: procedures and declined to comment further. The officer who killed
Speaker 13: Dan Decry was not charged and remained with the department.
Speaker 13: Officer Decrai's family received a settlement of three hundred and
Speaker 13: seventy six thousand dollars from the City of Saint Joseph. Again,
Speaker 13: settlement money does not come from police departments. It comes
Speaker 13: from the municipality. It comes from just the taxpayers. It
Speaker 13: does not affect the police's budget to do this.
Speaker 14: That enrages me.
Speaker 6: You know, to give to give credit to that guy, though,
Speaker 6: actually hitting your cop, hitting their target on the first
Speaker 6: shot is pretty remarkable.
Speaker 3: That that is a shooting.
Speaker 6: The guy in the back on the first tries a
Speaker 6: pretty remarkable feet of cop marksmanship. So maybe for his
Speaker 6: knee though that's true, we don't know he was heading
Speaker 6: for the back.
Speaker 13: It's just remarkable. I just want to know what it
Speaker 13: would feel like.
Speaker 14: I wonder how close he was too. He must have
Speaker 14: been close.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I imagine there was sort of a conversational distance.
Speaker 14: That's insane. That is just I cannot well, well.
Speaker 13: Well, well, our next story of a cop who should
Speaker 13: not have gotten wet. It was not actually even about
Speaker 13: a cop. In two thousand and seven, David Polling drowned
Speaker 13: in the Ohio River. Polling, Who's thirty two at the time,
Speaker 13: had previously been employed as a police officer with the
Speaker 13: Gallipolis Police Department and at a different time as a
Speaker 13: sheriff's deputy with the Galia County Sheriff's Office, So by
Speaker 13: thirty two he's been both a police officer and a
Speaker 13: sheriff's deputy, but he is neither of those things anymore.
Speaker 13: In two thousand and seven, he was working as a
Speaker 13: parole officer. In the reporting from the time, it's not
Speaker 13: actually clear why he was present, but he was nearby
Speaker 13: when a police officer stopped a pedestrian on the sidewalk
Speaker 13: and frisked him because he suspected this man may have
Speaker 13: just come out of the house where he believed drug
Speaker 13: deals were being conducted, so he's doing a stop and
Speaker 13: frisk on a guy mined in his business. The man
Speaker 13: was not charged with a drug offense when this was
Speaker 13: all over, so I guess they didn't find drugs. But
Speaker 13: during the encounter, the man bolted, and Polling, who again
Speaker 13: had a cop just a guy who's nearby, chased after him.
Speaker 13: The man jumped into the Ohio River, and Polling jumped
Speaker 13: in after him. The suspect, Joseph Harris, made it quickly
Speaker 13: to a small island in the middle of the river,
Speaker 13: but polling immediately after hitting the water, sank and disappeared.
Speaker 6: No, he did not.
Speaker 13: It took hours for divers to recover his body.
Speaker 14: When you said they didn't float, that wasn't a joke.
Speaker 13: No, he just disappeared, like the second was the water.
Speaker 13: He was just gone.
Speaker 2: That is.
Speaker 14: Comical. I can't believe that's real.
Speaker 13: Like, did he not did he know he couldn't swim?
Speaker 6: He could float?
Speaker 4: Like what?
Speaker 14: He just stuck down to the bar.
Speaker 6: It's it's so good too, because it's like, you know,
Speaker 6: you could attribute this to just purely like the first
Speaker 6: story of a drowning, where it's like, Okay, the cop
Speaker 6: clearly went into a situation he shouldn't have been in
Speaker 6: because he's a cop and doesn't think about, oh wait,
Speaker 6: the ways you get to kill people.
Speaker 3: Like No, clearly this river was symable. The other guy
Speaker 3: made it made.
Speaker 13: The other guy was fine. Well, the other guy was
Speaker 13: fine until they charged him with manslaughter and he did
Speaker 13: four years in jail.
Speaker 14: Oh but he was but wait, this is the guy
Speaker 14: that didn't have was in charge with drugs but was
Speaker 14: charged with man kind of.
Speaker 6: A bad slaughter because the other guy jumped in.
Speaker 14: Wait for manslaughter for the cop that sunk.
Speaker 13: Yeah, yeah, wow, but like some guy who's not even
Speaker 13: a cop is just chasing you. That's kind of on him. Yeah,
Speaker 13: he was convicted of manslaughter.
Speaker 14: That is I hate that. But also can you just
Speaker 14: imagine just this cop like Mario, jumping into like a
Speaker 14: river and just completely just like like the video game
Speaker 14: sound and the bottom.
Speaker 13: And you do have to wonder how he had worked
Speaker 13: for two different police agencies and then didn't work for
Speaker 13: either of any more by the age of thirty two.
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 13: I did a little looking. I couldn't find anything about that,
Speaker 13: but it's it's an unusual career trajectory.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, it's like he's getting bounced down to lower
Speaker 6: leagues every time.
Speaker 3: It's like, howre you that? It's you're a cop? Like,
Speaker 3: it's how do you screw that?
Speaker 2: Up? Right?
Speaker 13: It would seem that he wasn't a cop anymore because
Speaker 13: he wasn't allowed to be a copy. Yeah, And now
Speaker 13: this third one is the one that I had in
Speaker 13: mind when I first started writing this episode, and it's
Speaker 13: really just on its surface, kind of the perfect encapsulation
Speaker 13: of this foolish project, right, it's got a guy getting
Speaker 13: shot in the crotch. It's got a cop trying to
Speaker 13: kill a dog. It's got a dirty cop. It's got
Speaker 13: a cop staying on the force after a string of
Speaker 13: expensive mishaps. This is just policing. But when I started
Speaker 13: looking for primary sources about this incident, actually just kept
Speaker 13: getting weirder. And now I'm kind of down a new
Speaker 13: rabbit hole of got some requests out for more documents.
Speaker 13: I'm gonna figure this out. Something happened here. But before
Speaker 13: I tell you about Officer Henry Macalene and Junior, we'll
Speaker 13: take another quick ad break, all right. I hope he
Speaker 13: used that ad break time not only to think about
Speaker 13: products and services, but to reflect on the sacrifice of
Speaker 13: the parole officer who drowned in the Ohio River. On
Speaker 13: August twenty first, two thousand, Miami Dade Police officers Henry
Speaker 13: Macalene and Junior and his partner Ittala Elias responded to
Speaker 13: a request from a home alarm company to check out
Speaker 13: what turned out to be a false alarm at a
Speaker 13: residential home in southwest Miami. Arriving on the scene, they
Speaker 13: found no sign of a break in, nothing unusual, and
Speaker 13: no one answered the front door. Normally a cop would
Speaker 13: probably just leave. They don't really like working. They don't
Speaker 13: really like doing their jobs. It's hard and it's boring,
Speaker 13: and they have candy Crush to play Molly.
Speaker 14: It's dangerous, it's dangerous.
Speaker 13: It was a weekday, afternoon in a nice neighborhood in Miami,
Speaker 13: but the home belonged to a retired Miami police detective.
Speaker 13: So they took you know, they did the extra mile. So,
Speaker 13: after determining there was no sign of the breaking out front,
Speaker 13: no one answered the door, they went around the back
Speaker 13: of the house and entered the backyard, where two rottweilers
Speaker 13: quote came running at them. According to a South Florida
Speaker 13: Sun article that week, Macalenan pulled out his expandable baton
Speaker 13: and began beating the dogs. Really just doing their job
Speaker 13: in their own backyard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like that.
Speaker 6: That's the normal thing that happens when.
Speaker 3: You walk towards a dog, is it runs towards.
Speaker 14: You're invading its territory. You shouldn't be there.
Speaker 13: You gotta figure a guy who has a home alarm
Speaker 13: system and two rottweilers like that, is that dog's job?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I keep thinking about that, uh, that
Speaker 6: picture of Mike Bloomberg when he was running in twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: They were like, he just grabs the dog's face. Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: where It's like there's just something like on a fundamental level,
Speaker 6: like we co evolved with this animal, and like if
Speaker 6: you like cannot do the basic this is a dog
Speaker 6: and your response is like I'm gonna grab his face,
Speaker 6: or your response is I Am going to beat this
Speaker 6: dog up with a baton, like you have somehow fundamentally
Speaker 6: failed at like the process of being human.
Speaker 13: And also like if the dogs are immediately reacting to
Speaker 13: your presence in the yard and they were not previously
Speaker 13: reacting to anything, maybe you could assume there was no
Speaker 13: break in. Maybe you could assume the dogs have it
Speaker 13: covered and you maybe don't break into the yard. But
Speaker 13: our boy, Henry, he's beating these dogs with a stick,
Speaker 13: and I guess maybe he was struggling, so his partner,
Speaker 13: officer Elias, drew her service weapon and attempted to shoot
Speaker 13: the dogs as he is beating them. Wow. Now, we
Speaker 13: talked before about some problems with aiming, right, cops don't
Speaker 13: have great marksmanship. When you're talking about a complicated physical situation, right,
Speaker 13: they're sort of entangled. The dogs are small, the man
Speaker 13: is big. She shot him in the dick, so he's
Speaker 13: beating these dogs. She shoots him in the groin. It
Speaker 13: doesn't say what happened to the dogs, but it doesn't
Speaker 13: indicate she fired her service weapon multiple times, so maybe
Speaker 13: she just shot him and then put it up. He
Speaker 13: was airlifted to the hospital to undergo emergency groin surgery,
Speaker 13: and he did survive. Oh mackalleenen continued to serve with
Speaker 13: the Miami Dade Police Department for another sixteen years, and
Speaker 13: he was still with the department when he passed away
Speaker 13: in twenty sixteen at the age of sixty six. His
Speaker 13: own obituary does not list a cause of death, only
Speaker 13: that his wife was at his bedside for thirty six
Speaker 13: days before he passed. The first mention of macleen in's
Speaker 13: passing being a line of duty death is in a
Speaker 13: National Police Week local news piece the following year, which
Speaker 13: lists his cause of death as accidental gunfire. A year later,
Speaker 13: in twenty eighteen, a Police Week story indicates that he
Speaker 13: was quote killed by gunfire on the date that he
Speaker 13: died in twenty sixteen, it's not until years later that
Speaker 13: you start to see claims that his cause of death
Speaker 13: was due to complications from the sixteen year old wound.
Speaker 13: So it's not clear where that claim even originated. But
Speaker 13: he did die sixteen years after being shot, and during
Speaker 13: those intervening sixteen years, he was well enough to continue
Speaker 13: to serve on the force.
Speaker 14: I mean, if you know, if the family went with
Speaker 14: that lie, maybe they got money out of it. I
Speaker 14: don't know.
Speaker 13: I guess it's possible.
Speaker 14: Well, I mean, there was what else, What other motive
Speaker 14: is there other than I don't know.
Speaker 13: I see an indication that there was a wrongful death lawsuit.
Speaker 13: After he died. He did file a civil lawsuit in
Speaker 13: two thousand and four against the homeowner retired Miami detective
Speaker 13: Haysou's Karamas, but that was dismissed and he didn't even
Speaker 13: recover attorney's fees. He didn't get anything out of that.
Speaker 6: Wait, so he tried, so he started beating two dogs
Speaker 6: with a baton, and his partner shot him in the balls.
Speaker 6: Tried to hit the dog, and he tried to sue
Speaker 6: the guy whose house you broke into.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is incredible.
Speaker 13: If the homeowner hadn't been a retired potentially dirty cop.
Speaker 13: I found some articles in the eighties alleging that this,
Speaker 13: So I'm not alleging in the in the eighties, this
Speaker 13: officer Hasus Karamas, who is deceased now, but was suspended
Speaker 13: briefly during an investigation into a ring of Miami officers
Speaker 13: who were trafficking cocaine. Of course, I don't know how
Speaker 13: that turned out.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean probably it went fine, like well.
Speaker 13: Yeah, he didn't get fired because he was still at
Speaker 13: a force in nineteen ninety seven when he shot a
Speaker 13: guy during a traffic stop.
Speaker 14: Wow Christ, but no.
Speaker 13: His his lawsuit against the homeowner, the alarm company, and
Speaker 13: the woman who shot him did not succeed. Did not succeed.
Speaker 14: I mean, at least there's that he loved being a
Speaker 14: cop so much getting his or did I say Crosser cop?
Speaker 14: He loved being a cop so much as Crosser shot
Speaker 14: off and he doesn't stop him. I didn't stop him.
Speaker 13: I do have a request into the court clerk in
Speaker 13: Miami to see if I can so the documents are
Speaker 13: so old that they're not all uploaded on the court website,
Speaker 13: but I would like to see the original civil complaint
Speaker 13: because maybe it goes into more detail about sort of
Speaker 13: the severity of his injuries and the ways in which
Speaker 13: that he he truly suffered from this. Maybe that'll give
Speaker 13: us some more insight into how it killed him.
Speaker 6: Sixty years later.
Speaker 13: So hopefully, hopefully the clerk in Miami gets back to
Speaker 13: me with that, because I do want to know what happened.
Speaker 2: To the dogs.
Speaker 14: Oh yeah, that's all I really care about there now.
Speaker 13: The officer who shot Macalene and in the crotch, Ittala Elias,
Speaker 13: had been on the force for about five years at
Speaker 13: the time of the incident. In that time, she had
Speaker 13: wrecked her patrol car six times wow, injured her hand
Speaker 13: slamming it in a car door, and racked up fifty
Speaker 13: thousand dollars in workman's comp and medical expense reimbursement after
Speaker 13: falling off a bicycle during a training exercise.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 13: As of twenty twenty two, Ittala Elias is still an
Speaker 13: officer with the Miami Dade Police Department, earning one hundred
Speaker 13: and eight thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 14: Wow, that's just I mean, I wonder how many more
Speaker 14: car accidents she's she's been in. If that was her
Speaker 14: record in five years. Wow, that's impressive.
Speaker 6: Like, I am trying to think of another job that
Speaker 6: you could keep after crashing your car six times.
Speaker 13: On the j I'm shooting someone in the dick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, chid cops, well, cops.
Speaker 6: Cops have the kind of job security that was previously
Speaker 6: reserved for like workers in state owned industries in Maoist China.
Speaker 6: Like no one else has ever had this kind of
Speaker 6: job security before.
Speaker 13: And so I will end our stories here because Sophie
Speaker 13: will put one of us in the pit if the
Speaker 13: episodes keep coming out over an hour long. But there
Speaker 13: are an unbelievable number of stories of cops getting hurt
Speaker 13: doing shit they were not supposed to be doing. A
Speaker 13: cop who died because he didn't know which antibiotics he
Speaker 13: was allergic to when he went to the hospital because
Speaker 13: he was messing around with an injured feral cat and
Speaker 13: got scratched the fuck. A prison guard who tripped in
Speaker 13: the wreckyard and hit his head. A shocking number of
Speaker 13: accidents at the shooting range or during training exitizes.
Speaker 14: THEASE wan know what it felt like. THEASE want to
Speaker 14: know what it felt.
Speaker 13: Like, including one very weird one where they were role
Speaker 13: playing a scenario and so these were cops in the
Speaker 13: Gaming Commission, so casino cops, but during a training exercises,
Speaker 13: During a training exercise, they were role playing a scenario
Speaker 13: where one of the cops was being attacked by an assailant,
Speaker 13: and he was supposed to, you know, roleplay it out right.
Speaker 13: They're pretending this is pretend they're in a conference room.
Speaker 13: But he got scared and drew his real gun and
Speaker 13: really shot and really killed the director of the Mississippi
Speaker 13: Gaming Commission. Almost every cop death was completely preventable. They're
Speaker 13: careless and they're reckless, and they're doing shit they should
Speaker 13: not be doing. They're counting normal wear and tear, like
Speaker 13: knee injuries and heart attacks as though these are noble
Speaker 13: deaths of martyrs. And it's all part of this ideological
Speaker 13: project of myth making around American policing, right, because you
Speaker 13: have to believe that this is a uniquely dangerous and
Speaker 13: frightening job only the bravest boys can do. Because they're
Speaker 13: under so much risk, they have to react the way
Speaker 13: that they do. They have to react with extreme violence.
Speaker 13: They have to shoot first and ask questions later because
Speaker 13: their job is just so dangerous, Right, And I think
Speaker 13: it's interesting as we drive to a clothes to draw
Speaker 13: a comparison here, right, because they react with great violence
Speaker 13: against us because of their fear of imaginary violence that
Speaker 13: they might face. So the FBI prepares this meticulous report
Speaker 13: every year with rigorous and mandatory data collection processes, so
Speaker 13: we have a comprehensive set of data about not just
Speaker 13: every cop who dies, but every cop who is assaulted
Speaker 13: on the job. The LEOCA report includes on the job
Speaker 13: assaults and injuries, so we have a very clear idea
Speaker 13: of how much violence and how many accidents cops are
Speaker 13: exposed to, mostly in the form of single car accidents.
Speaker 8: But we have the data.
Speaker 13: There is no equivalent data for the kinds of violence
Speaker 13: police perpetrate on others. The FBI only started collecting information
Speaker 13: for the National Use of Force Database in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 13: and participation in that data collection process remains optional.
Speaker 14: Yeah, three years ago, four five, what year it is.
Speaker 13: That was revoluntary. It's voluntary. So police departments do not
Speaker 13: have to tell anyone, They do not have to tell
Speaker 13: the federal government when they kill someone. They don't have
Speaker 13: to report that. So comprehensive data on police killings is
Speaker 13: something that only exists when newsrooms and nonprofits scrape the
Speaker 13: information together on their own. The Washington Post has a
Speaker 13: very thorough police shooting database, and nonprofit websites like Mapping
Speaker 13: Police Violence do their best to document each case, but
Speaker 13: even they admit they aren't capturing every fatal encounter with police.
Speaker 13: So while the FBI reports literally just a few dozen
Speaker 13: officers a year fall into the feloniously killed category in
Speaker 13: the Leoga report, so not the our accident one. So
Speaker 13: there's a few dozen actual killings of officers a year,
Speaker 13: we can only hope to know the names of the
Speaker 13: average of over twelve hundred people who are killed each
Speaker 13: year by a cop, and that does kind of send
Speaker 13: a message about whose lives matter. So as you celebrate
Speaker 13: National Police Week this week, I guess you'll be hearing
Speaker 13: this on Friday if you listen to it the day
Speaker 13: it comes out, just take a moment to remember our
Speaker 13: brave boys like Lonnie Burton, who tripped on a curb
Speaker 13: outside of the Wayland Baptist University police station and later
Speaker 13: died of complications, or brave officers like Trooper Jack Holland
Speaker 13: who died because he was allergic to yellowjackets, or officers
Speaker 13: like Deputy Sheriff Joseph Baka, who was trying to tackle
Speaker 13: a suspect to the ground and fell into a bee's nest.
Speaker 13: It turns out he was allergic to bees.
Speaker 3: It's beautiful, coach.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I should have I should have asked you both
Speaker 13: your hometown so I could get you a local boy,
Speaker 13: because one of my favorites is patrolman Billy Toot. Billy Toot.
Speaker 13: He was a jailer in Richmond who died when two
Speaker 13: inmates were trying to escape after they obtained pistols that
Speaker 13: were smuggled into the jail inside of a baked turkey.
Speaker 13: That just sounds like a cartoon.
Speaker 3: Hell not how it worked for them?
Speaker 13: Yeah, well it it was in nineteen thirty four. I
Speaker 13: don't think you could put guns inside of a turkey anymore.
Speaker 14: I just have a whole turkey as security detector or something.
Speaker 13: But yes, And I hope you're all having a safe
Speaker 13: and healthy police week and that you celebrate that by
Speaker 13: not encountering any policeman.
Speaker 1: Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 13: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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